I Should Have Honor Page 3

  These women in their festive clothing called Noor Jehan down from her tree and ushered her to a corner of a house. Children in my culture are taught to obey elders without question. The women decorated her like a little doll. They put her in a red dress with gold embroidery that had belonged to one of her aunts. They adorned her with jewelry lent by older relatives: big earrings that pulled on her small lobes, and a necklace that sagged to her stomach. They put fragrant oil in her hair and braided her short locks. Every time she tried to move from where she sat, women came and whispered to her in a tone that she had never heard before, a tone they used with their peers and elders, as if somehow she were now like her aunts. They told her to stay put in the corner until someone told her to move.

  Sitting in the corner, Noor Jehan watched the world before her shift and change. There was so much activity. Women were preparing food, and children her age were playing in various corners of the house. She wanted to join them, but she was stuck in the corner without knowing why. Men hurried in and out, escorting guest after guest inside until the house was full. As she sat in the corner, heat enveloped her body, the gold eye shadow dropped off of her eyelids, and her small heart beat fast. Many families came to greet her. They called her the bride. Some wept when they saw her. Some wouldn’t come into the room for fear of seeing her small child’s face and never forgiving themselves. (She was too young!) And some told her to be brave.

  Then through the corner of the tiny window in the room, she caught a glimpse of her eldest uncle and understood that what she was experiencing was serious. Her uncle’s jaw quivered, and his eyes were bloodshot with tears that he quickly rubbed off as he sensed her watching him. A few moments later, silence fell as three men escorted a bearded mullah (religious teacher) into the room. The women who sat next to her on the dirt floor moved to another corner. He came over and sat down facing her. The nikah (ceremonial signing of the wedding contract) began.

  After a short prayer in Arabic, the man asked three times if she, Noor Jehan, agreed to marry a man named Sikander, son of Allah Ditta. Her heart pounding, she didn’t know what to say. Then her mother whispered in her ear, “Say yes, my dear one, say yes.” And so she did.

  After the ceremony my mother’s heart grew heavy. Something had happened, something drastic that she did not understand and that nobody had explained to her. She would never again be a child. In that moment she didn’t even feel human. She had been a bride, she realized, and now she was a wife. This had been a wedding, and she was now married. She did not want this. But she had not been given the choice.

  As evening fell, the wedding procession took her to her groom’s house, and the bride for whom she was being exchanged was brought into that very home. Then my mother’s tears wouldn’t stop. She cried and cried, begging to go back to her mother, but the women only wept as they saw her, and the men acted as if she didn’t exist. Her friends were not there to tell her stories of their games or to bring their new clay toy to her. She was a wife now, to a boy whom she had not even met.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT AFTER the celebrations ended, Noor Jehan was scooped up and put on a cot with a colorful rili and a pillow in a tiny room inside the house of a husband she still had not seen. As she sat there looking around the dark room with her teary eyes, she heard a group of girls coming to her. They were all laughing, teasing someone in their midst. It was Sikander, her new husband. Finally they sent him in and closed the door behind him, giving him the flashlight one of them was holding. There being no electricity, he took it from them. In the pale light he could see that his tiny bride was shivering. It wasn’t cold. Although he was only thirteen and angry at what had just happened to him, his heart instantly filled with pity for this skinny girl with dried-up makeup streaked with tears. The silence was thick between them. They were two children in a room meant for adults. He lay down next to her, as the men had instructed him. But instead of following their other instructions, instructions for men of a certain age, he instinctively sensed her vulnerability. And he asked her a question. To this day, my mother remembers and cherishes this moment.

  “Do you go to school?”

  “No, I have never been,” she said timidly.

  Wanting to relieve their mutual anxiety, he kept talking. “What does your father do?”

  “He rides a donkey cart around town and earns money by taking people from one place to another,” she said in a small voice, still shaking. Neither knew what to do. They were both new at this.

  Lying side by side, the newlyweds kept talking, long into the night, until they finally fell asleep. The next morning Sikander showed his new wife the drawings he’d made with the crayons his older brother had given him. She was fascinated. The difficulty and sadness of the day before had lifted some, and her curiosity awakened. She asked her new husband questions about the drawings, about the pens and colors and paint that his elder brother had given him. He brought out an old rusty metal chest and opened it to show her his storybooks. He kept them there safe, away from rain and mud.

  Her eyes widened with wonder. At this moment, Sikander and Noor Jehan were not husband and wife but friends enduring a similar fate. They both had become victims to the customs of their culture, yet they were learning to find solace within each other by sharing experiences. Two children, two stories, were becoming one.

  MY PARENTS FOUND COMFORT AND friendship in their shared trauma. They enjoyed each other’s company even as they shared uncertainty about what would come next. They were both so young at the time of their marriage that their age was controversial even in the village where they lived. And Noor Jehan was so small and feeble. These facts brought unexpected attention to their families.

  Yet the two became inseparable friends. People were gossiping about the pair in unhealthy ways, so my father’s family decided to send Noor Jehan back to her family for at least a year so she could return to her husband at puberty. But by now their friendship had blossomed to the point that Sikander didn’t want to be without this companion who shared his curiosity about the world. The decision to separate them angered him, even as he knew he had to abide by it as he had endured all the other decisions made for him by his elders.

  Somehow the injustice of himself and his little bride being used as pawns in an ancient custom made him determined to change his lot. He saw education as his only chance at a different life. In his world of predetermined outcomes, where every aspect of his life had already been chosen for him, education was the only wild card. He began by seeking help from his best friend, Azim. They had been classmates in their small village. Azim came from a family of greater means and education than my father. He now lived in Jamshoro, Sindh, a small town famous for its educational institutions, close to the city of Hyderabad. Azim offered my father a place in his home in Jamshoro. My father took him up on the offer. He left his village and his family and went to live with his friend and pursue his dream of getting an education. For two years he slept in a barn and took his meals with Azim’s family. His determination, intellect, and thirst for knowledge were so great that he worked his way through intermediate education at Sindh University, one of the acclaimed government institutions in Sindh Province.

  When my mother reached the age of twelve, she was considered fully adult and went back to her husband’s house—a married woman with many responsibilities. While my father was away in Jamshoro, she would rise early in the morning with her sisters-in-law, and together they would clean, cook, wash dishes, and feed the cows and the donkeys. When the sun was high in the sky, they would make cow dung patties for fuel. They gathered the warm, grassy dung, scooping it up in their right hands, rolling it between their palms before slinging it against the sun-drenched wall of the house for it to bake. It smelled like earth and made a satisfying thwap when it hit the wall.

  Noor Jehan worked hard, but she was small, and the work was sometimes overwhelming. At
times her fragile hands were unable to pick up a big stack of dishes after she washed and cleaned them, and she would fall on the wet dirt. The dishes would scatter and roll and have to be washed all over again. Once when she was trying to feed the donkey, she slipped under it. The frantic animal kicked, jumped, and brayed. Just before its powerful hooves stomped and crushed her small body, she managed to catch its gaze and stare straight up at it. By some miracle this calmed it down, and she was able to escape.

  The foreign house, the new people, and the strange new responsibilities had made her afraid. She was afraid to make mistakes and afraid to disappoint anyone, especially her parents who had left her there. A daughter reflects the honor of her family, and a daughter-in-law is expected to bring a good name to her parents and her tribe. This meant showing how good she was at cooking, cleaning, embroidery, and saying yes to her mother-in-law in every instruction given to her. She was, however, the most afraid of her father-in-law. He was a strict man. He would shout at my mother for her clumsiness or slow pace and scolded her as mai! (woman!) when he was angry. Only then would her mother-in-law gently guide her, slowly showing her how not to stand out and how to do the work that needed to be done. Slowly my mother found her place in the family.

  Meanwhile, as Sikander studied at Sindh University, he was beginning to resent his situation and became rebellious. For the first time, he encountered new ideas and ways of thinking. Being surrounded by a wider range of voices and opinions made him realize how limited his life had been in the village. He was particularly astonished to find that women pursued education alongside men, for in his youth he had never witnessed a woman holding a book, let alone debating some of the country’s most crucial political issues. And he began to be inspired by, and felt drawn to, a girl from the women’s dorm next to his who came from an educated, Sindhi-speaking family. In class, she asked the professor challenging questions that amazed everyone. My father wanted to marry her and make a new and better life with her.

  But as soon as my father resolved to seek this woman’s hand, God planted in his heart and mind the image of his child bride, that nine-year-old girl in her red bridal dress borrowed from another woman, crying at her wedding. It was not her fault that she was married to him. He realized that if an educated mind was what he loved about a woman, he could go back and educate his young wife, to help her read and learn about the world. Maybe they would even grow closer.

  And so, with excitement and new resolve, my father returned to the village, bringing books and pens for my mother, who, at twelve, was growing up to be a beautiful young woman. As he sat among his family, who were beaming with happiness at his return, she shyly brought him water in a glass, and he couldn’t help but feel the connection that they had developed that first night when they lay on their cot talking.

  In a traditional Pakistani wedding, after the nikah, a playful ritual is performed that makes the girls giggle and even flushes the faces of the boys. This “scandalous” part of a wedding celebration is often the first time the newlyweds have any physical interaction. First the bride and groom shake hands, and then a big bowl of rice grains is placed between them. The groom scoops some rice in his hands and slowly pours it into the hands of his bride. She then pours the grains back into his, and so on. This tradition is to show that they will work together to make a home, that they will take care of each other and feed each other, hence building a promise of mutual honor for their marriage and doing nothing to betray that honor. In the end, after sharing the handful of rice back and forth, the bride lets the rice fall into the bowl. Then the groom takes out a handkerchief and wipes the hands of his bride as chants of zal mazur (servant of the wife) fill the air. It is a proud moment, even as the groom pretends to be ashamed, but he continues to clean the bride’s hands. The bride, feeling loved and respected, glows even more radiant than before. Tragically, for some rural brides, this traditional act is the first and only time they receive such respect from their husbands.

  Sikander and Noor Jehan were different. Their romantic life started not with rice sharing but at the moment when he held her hand and helped her write her first words. It began when my father taught her the English translation of a word, or gave her books to read, her face so red from shyness that she could not look him in the eye.

  Their love story became a topic of discussion in the village. The gossiping women both teased my mother and envied her. Rumors of zal mazur started circulating among the men of the village when my parents were seen together learning. “Look at Sikander putting all his attention on his wife. He should rather put on bangles and sit with her giggling!” they would joke over chai. My father was officially a servant of his wife and proud of it. But in a society where there are accepted understandings about what is correct gender-specific behavior and what is not, gossip can be harmful. Men would say, “We too like our wives, but we don’t make embroidery with them.” My mother and father became aware that all eyes were on them, so they tried to keep their interactions as secret as possible.

  After my mother finished her morning work in the house, and when the sun was bright in the sky, she would sit down next to my father and the lessons would begin. ABCs, Alif, Ba, Pa, and soon my mother was learning words! She could identify letters from the pieces of newspaper that flew in the wind and excitedly read them to my father. As soon as she learned to read, she fell in love with books. These were not big, fancy books, but early language-learning books or children’s storybooks, made on thin paper, and some were secondhand books my father had found at the bazaar. She read books in Sindhi and Urdu, and she even strained to read some printed in English.

  They tried hard not to make it too obvious, but their love was flourishing every day as they learned. The bond they shared was oblivious to strict traditions. My parents’ love for each other would later become a big part of our own storytelling at home. When the electricity would fail, my siblings and I would sit around them as my father told stories of his childhood, with my mother snuggled up right next to him.

  BUT THE YOUNG LOVE OF my parents would soon face a huge obstacle, something that no one could have prepared them for.

  Allah Ditta was weak from illness, and his sons weren’t making enough from sharecropping in the fields. The floods of 1983 had destroyed so much cropland in the area that their income opportunities decreased dramatically. His sons tried their luck at shopkeeping, herding, and paving houses or making bricks for a wage. Along with getting his education, Sikander ran a little shop in the village to earn money for his father. But nothing worked. The family suddenly became very poor and had to take loans just to feed the people in the house. So Bhalla Aba decided that his eldest son would go to Kotri, a small community outside the city of Hyderabad in Sindh, about three hundred kilometers from their hut in Larkana, where he had purchased the partially walled property that would become our haveli. He wanted Liaqat to build a shop on the land before anyone else could snatch it.

  And so Liaqat and his wife were sent off with their few belongings in a round heap atop his wife’s head.

  Not until years later would I learn what exactly happened afterward. My cousins and I would sit huddled in the corner of the very haveli where my kaka (uncle) Liaqat had moved, pouring water over dried dirt to make clay as we told one another stories. With our tiny fingers, we would carefully take small chunks and shape them into faces and little bodies, while innocently telling one another the secrets we knew. Now when I look back, I realize that I made my life’s biggest discoveries during those huddled playtimes. As the clay caked in our hands and we rolled it into balls in our palms, one of my cousins told me that Uncle Liaqat had beaten his wife to death.

  I knew Liaqat Ali as a scary man. Silence fell whenever he entered a room. Women who had been mindlessly cleaning around the house would run for their headscarves. Children would turn mute. Men would stand up to greet him. His booming voice, his thinning hair, and his fierce big eyes, at times bl
oodshot from lack of sleep, could make anyone tremble. And so years later, when we children whispered about him beating his wife to death, I could imagine his big hands rising in the air and coming down with full force on my aunt’s face. She would have had to stay quiet the whole time. In his loud voice, he would have shouted words of disgust, sometimes throwing in curse words in Sindhi. With his broad shoulders, tall features, and fierce eyes, Liaqat Ali didn’t listen to anyone but his father.

  Upon receiving word of the murder, Bhalla Aba ordered the whole family to move to Kotri. They gathered whatever they could. Liaqat was arrested, and the family scrambled to get him out of jail. Liaqat declared he had committed the murder out of sheer anger. And under the Pakistan Penal Code 300, he was set free.

  When I first heard this story, it felt distant from me, almost impossible. I imagined it like something that had happened in another time, far away. Little did I know that a bigger tragedy awaited me in the years ahead.

  The year before I was born, my uncle Liaqat had declared that he would marry again. He convinced Bhalla Aba to have my father agree to give me as an exchange bride to a tribe that lived back in the village, in order to bring him a second wife. My grandfather, who knew of his eldest son’s temper and naïvely believed that a wife’s care would help him, came to my young father to order him to give his first daughter (me) in phidi, to be betrothed before I was even born. This demand, my father realized, was one he could not honor. His duty as a son weighed heavily on him, but the tremendous injustice of such a request and its circumstances would be too much for him to bear. He had himself been victim to elders callously deciding his fate and that of his child bride. He knew the hardships. And he refused to let his daughter ever become part of this cycle of cruelty. It was the first time he raised his voice to his father, the first time he spoke up and said no, and the first time he saw his father’s eyes tear up with the shame of having a disobedient son. As my father tells me today, it was the hardest thing he did in his whole life and something he would never forget.