The knitting needle she had dropped there nearly nine years ago, shortly after returning from Pakistan, is still there, undissolved by the passage of time and the lack of light. She sinks queasily to the edge of the bath, holding tightly against her breast the hand that had touched the slippery smooth solidness of the spike, as a mother might console and reassure a child by hugging it after it has witnessed something disturbing.
Equipped with that knitting needle she had shut herself in here after discovering herself pregnant — the smell of rust in her nostrils and the taste of iron behind her teeth and gums seeming to grow richer every second, as though chains to bind her were being forged within her — and had realized only then that she did not know how to proceed. How exactly was it done? In the end her courage had failed her and she had sat trembling. A legal termination at a clinic was an impossibility: her only source of money was her parents and they would not have allowed her to have an abortion, and would have used the pregnancy to renew their efforts to make her return to her husband.
In the end she had induced a miscarriage by taking quinine tablets for a fortnight, something a young mother of eight in Sohni Dharti had said she found effective whenever she needed to give her body a respite, her husband refusing to see reason and claiming the use of contraceptives would lead to the unborn children pointing to him on Judgement Day and saying to Allah, “That man is the one who did not allow us to be born and swell the numbers of the faithful!” with the result that once the woman had given birth in the January and December of the same year.
With surprising heat in her heart, she takes the flattened and curved tube of white cardboard from her pocket and tosses it — like the crescent moon come unstuck and spiralling down — into the rubbish before leaving the bathroom.
“Mother, what was the matter with auntie-ji?”
Kaukab is at the sink, washing the lunch dishes, Mah-Jabin’s coffee cup, the plate that had held her own orange pieces, and the henna bowl. She doesn’t answer the question immediately — once again concealing everything regarding the Pakistanis that the children might deem objectionable. She knows Mah-Jabin will ridicule the idea of djinns.
“Nothing. She was just a little tired.”
Mah-Jabin had heard a few words of what the woman had said to Kaukab: the girl’s husband is demanding to know why she hasn’t conceived yet — either she is secretly taking contraceptives or she is barren. He called her a stony valley that had wasted all his seed. “She mentioned something about her daughter and her husband—”
“Every marriage has it ups and downs,” Kaukab says abruptly, and then as abruptly: “What was in the letter?”
“I threw it away unopened,” Mah-Jabin hears herself state flatly.
Kaukab nods; she still holds on to the hope that Mah-Jabin will return to her husband, if he’ll take her back, that is, and if not that then perhaps another marriage could be arranged for her — which would be difficult because she is no longer a virgin, is used goods. She peers over her shoulder to meet her eye, “I forbid you to go to America.” Her hands clench into fists. “A strange country full of strangers! I’m sure your father wouldn’t approve either.”
“How do you know I’m going to America?” Mah-Jabin is puzzled. “And well, I’ve been to a country full of my own kind of people and seen what that is like so I thought I’d try a strange country full of strangers this time.” Trapped within the cage of permitted thinking, this woman — her mother — is the most dangerous animal she’ll ever have to confront. “I’m just going to stay with some friends during the summer. Who told you about it? And may I add that I am not afraid of Father.”
Oh your father will be angry, oh your father will be upset: Mah-Jabin had grown up hearing these sentences, Kaukab trying to obtain legitimacy for her own decisions by invoking his name. She wanted him to be angry, she needed him to be angry. She had cast him in the role of the head of the household and he had to act accordingly: there were times when he came in to inform the young teenagers that something they had asked from their mother earlier — the permission for an after-hours school disco, for example — was an impossibility, and it was obvious from the look on his face that he personally had no problem with what the children wanted. Sometimes Mah-Jabin wonders whether her mother knows Shamas at all. Shamas wouldn’t object to her visiting America, she knows. And she says these things out loud now.
Kaukab smarts at the words. “How your tongue has lengthened in the past few years. Is this what they taught you at university, to talk like this, your precious university far away in London that you had to attend because you wanted an education? If education was what you wanted you would have gone to a university within commuting distance and lived at home like decent girls all over these streets. Freedom is what you wanted, not education; the freedom to do obscene things with white boys and lead a sin-smeared life.”
Mah-Jabin’s head not only hums like a wasp’s nest but also feels as weightless as those oblongs of chewed-up paper glued together with spit. “I knew it was not the distance that worried you; you had after all sent me a thousand miles away at sixteen.”
“We did what you asked us to do.” Kaukab moves closer and stares at her as though pinning a dangerous animal to the ground with a lance.
“I was sixteen: in every other matter I was considered a child by you but why was that decision of mine taken to be that of an adult? Another parent would have given me time to think but you were thrilled that I wanted to go and live in your beloved country,” Mah-Jabin screams. “And I was afraid as the time approached for us to leave, but I knew I couldn’t have said no at that stage.”
“No you couldn’t. These things are not child’s play. We had given our word, the wedding arrangements were ready over there, and, yes, I would’ve tied you up and taken you there had it come to that. And what’s wrong with Pakistan? Many girls from here are sent back to marry and live there, and they are happy there. Only the other month, the matchmaker told me of a woman from here who has been divorced by her Pakistani husband by mistake, and she’s still eager to go back and live with him there. That’s what a good and dignified woman is like.” She pauses for a moment and repeats her question: “What’s wrong with Pakistan? I grew up there—”
“And look what happened to you, you fool!”
The hard open palm of Kaukab’s hand lunges at Mah-Jabin and in striking her face takes away her breath. This is something Kaukab has longed to do whenever she has thought about the girl in her absence and really isn’t a response to what she has just said: she simply happened to be within reach as the need overtook Kaukab and the moment chose itself.
The force of the impact knocks Mah-Jabin off the chair, while Kaukab’s rosary — looped double at the back of the chair — snaps and the beads clatter to the floor. Kaukab’s hand alights and grips the girl’s soggy gritty hair like a claw and slams the head many times against the wall with all her strength, the red stain of henna growing richer and larger on the wall, Mah-Jabin crooking her elbow against the side of the head until Kaukab finally lets go and moves to the sink at the other side of the kitchen, washing the redness — sticky as blood — off her hands, her back turned towards the girl.