Blasphemy , livre ebook

TEHMINA DURRANI
Blasphemy
A Novel
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1: Release
Chapter 2: Stepping Out
Chapter 3: Stepping In
Chapter 4: Jahanum
Chapter 5: Unbound
Chapter 6: Circling the Square
Chapter 7: The Lure of Innocence
Chapter 8: Chote Sain
Chapter 9: Killer Waves
Chapter 10: Heroes
Chapter 11: In the Name of Allah
Chapter 12: Stripping
Chapter 13:: Shattering the Myth
Epilogue
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
BLASPHEMY
Tehmina Durrani is the author of My Feudal Lord , her autobiography, which won Italy s Marissa Bellasario prize and has been translated into twenty-two languages; and Abdul Sattar Edhi s biography, A Mirror to the Blind , Blasphemy is her first novel. She lives in Lahore, Pakistan.
To Heer, who suffered it all
This novel is inspired by a true story. Names and certain events have been altered to protect the identity of the woman whose story this is.
CHAPTER ONE
Release
The early morning call to prayer reverberated from the mosque s loudspeaker.
Allah ho Akbar , Allah ho Akbar , ashudo an la illaha ilallah , swept across the sleepy village and rippled through the sands of the endless desert plain.
I stood in the doorway; my screams lacerated the lilting rhythm of the holy words. Ashudo an la illaha illallah interspersed with my cries.
The two together tore the black sky.
It ruptured.
I reached out to Allah.
Day broke.
Haiya las salah , haiya las salah , ordered all to rise and come to prayer. People were jolted out of their slumber.
In a flash, women swarmed over me like bees. Buzzing. When they saw the master, shrieks filled the air. I crouched in the midst of a mad crowd the noise seemed interminable, until men entered and the women scampered out.
A natural reflex made me turn my face away from his four brothers. Their presence was strange even on this occasion. They had never dared come in front of me before, if ever they did, I would cover my face and slip away from sight. Now they strode towards the bed above which the fan was still, still like my husband lying under it.
Dead.
I lifted my eyes surreptitiously. His were wide open. Terrorising?
No, strangely, they looked terrorised themselves.
A thin stream of blood had trickled down his ears and dried into two small stains on either side of his neck. The Imamzaman he always wore was still tied around his arm. Many more amulets hung from a black cord around his neck. On the table beside him, a heavy gold clock ticked.
The men were silent. When the fierce eyes of one of them met my frightened gaze, I froze; their foreboding presence made me feel as though they were going to play an important role in my life. An uncertain future flashed through my mind before I fainted.
When I recovered, I was lying on a sofa at the other end of the room, parallel to my husband s body. With such force did memories ambush me that I felt him breathing heavily upon me and yet the distance was so absolute. I thought death was an end, but was it?
There were no women in the room. The four formidable brothers stood around the bed, shook their heads in disbelief, and conferred among themselves. Conferring so soon after his death? I strained to hear but could not.
Outside, women hailed Rajaji, our only surviving son, as the heir, and cried out to him.
Your great father is dead. We have been abandoned, orphaned, and the door flew open. My son charged in to fall at his father s bedside. I swallowed more sedatives, reminding myself incoherently that I must pull myself together. The family doctor ran in and bent over my husband s body.
Rajaji asked me to leave. I staggered out thinking he would soon be taking over my affairs, like he had taken over his father s.
The courtyard was swollen with women, looking up at the sky and howling like wolves. Through the haze of tranquillisers I stopped to look for any sign of change, other than the noise.
Was it different from the time when he was alive? But they saw me and with shrill cries of sorrow gravitated towards me. Servants of our household, old, middle-aged and young. So many of them had seen me walk in here as a bride. Some had helped me bear my children, some had raised them and some had played with them. All of them had known my times of joy and sorrow. They clung to me and wept, and I was drenched by their tears and their stale, spicy sweat.
I wrenched my self free from the gnawing and clutching mass and pushed through the crowd into my mother-in-law s room. Amma Sain was propped up in bed with a seal of silence on her lips. Women reached out to weep on her shoulder and withdrew in the face of no response. Nor did she respond to me. If it were not the same stony silence she had maintained for several years, I would have believed it to be due to this tragedy. But it was not.
Amma Sain had been mistress of the Haveli for many years until I weaned away that burden. She had known everything and yet known little, or perhaps it was a feminine intelligence: she knew more than she let on. I sat down and held her hand. Turning it over I searched the wayward lines for a clue to break her quietude. But it was better for her not to emerge from her silence. In this maze of thoughts, women came and went. The rhythm of their wails was like a dirge, which reached a crescendo with Amma Sain, ebbed when it reached me and faded at the door with What doom, what doom!
Old aunts, sisters, stepsisters, my four inseparable sisters-in-law, their daughters and their innumerable children rushed in together. One by one they slobbered over me with loud kisses and louder sobs. Beating their breasts they lamented, May Allah give you patience to live a long life without a husband!
The ultimate curse.
A crumpled piece of flesh, my husband s bent Dai, fumbled towards me; up close her breath smelt of a lifetime spent in poverty She was mourning the loss of a child she had reared and now outlived Was it doom for him or for us, or for the change in our lives, or for what? We did not know. What doom, what doom, they all cried out.
When I escaped into the courtyard for a breath of air, there was a wild stampede. The terrifying shrieks of frightened women filled the air. At a distance I spotted the widow s two daughters who had taken refuge at the Haveli with their mother. My close companions and confidantes, they stared into my eyes as silent questions drifted back and forth between us.
What would it be like without the master?
What would become of those who enjoyed his good favour?
My thoughts scattered with the appearance of the widow, who beat her breast and dropped at my feet, pleading that I not abandon them. Then, all three of them clung to my ankles until I pushed them away.
At last, I slipped into the bathroom and turned the key. I squatted on a wooden stool and a flood of memories gushed from the deep and lacerated wound that was my mind.
A lifetime had passed here.
From my breast I pulled out a packet of cigarettes, another dip into my brassiere and a disposable lighter appeared. I dragged in nicotine and smoke curled out of my mouth like a death dance. Horrors escaped from within. Despite his death, thoughts of him refused to recede. Random thoughts also ran amok. In the chaos, a toxic mixture brewed. An image struggled through and sprang at me.
Yathimri, the orphan girl!
The thought of her spread through me like a fever. I tried to barricade my mind by winding my chunni around my forehead. I knotted it tight to shut everything out but disjointed thoughts still throbbed and pulsated within.
The wailing outside intensified.
Somebody very dear to my husband had arrived. The cigarette was only half smoked when the door banged amid women shouting over each other.
Bibiji , your orphan daughters have come. Bibiji , your daughters have come.
Death, the most dramatic event in our part of the world, had made them all theatrical. They believed that the extent of loss would be determined by an exaggerated display of emotion.
Before me the mirror distorted the thirty-eight years of my life. I had borne six children, three sons and three daughters. One son was stillborn. One died as a young man. The three girls were married, and I was a grandmother at thirty-three. More than all that, the strain of last night was carved on my face. To end the banging I opened the door. My daughters veiled their questions behind their tears as I held them close, to finally share this strange moment of change.
The loudspeakers at the ancestral Shrine pronounced Pir Sain dead. I stepped back into the death chamber where his absence from the world was no longer abstract. So much noise in his room! Nobody had ever dared enter it before first obtaining his permission. The few who had, always spoke in hushed and reverent tones. Now a din invaded it. I thought he might resurrect himself to banish them all to hell.
The man whom nobody dared touch except by bowing low to kiss his feet, or, if he deigned, to brush their lips across his hand, was lifted up by his legs and shoulders, placed on a charpai and covered with a sheet. The charpai was lifted in the air and carried out.
I recalled him walking through the door every morning, regal as a king.
Now worms awaited him.
Emotions exploded as the charpai emerged. Floating over hundreds of heads, it disappeared. Rajaji would wash him while his uncles poured the miraculous waters of Zum zum over him. The water, which drained off his body, would be distributed among his privileged devotees who would treasure it as a sacred balm.
The recitation of the Quran commenced. Pir Sain was cleansed and wrapped in a white cotton kafn to face the Almighty. The scent of the strong and deathly essence of roses filled the air. When his charpai was placed in the centre of the courtyard, the wailing became so loud it seemed as though we had lost Allah.
A sense of disbelief prevailed.
Pir Sain dead?
That was inconceivable.
But he lay under