The Pakistani Bride

Sorely wishing to establish some sort of an identity before the buffeting superiority of the strangers, he said, “I live next to Nikka Pehelwan. We are like brothers.” He raised two stiff fingers to illustrate the closeness of their relationship. Pride surged through him and he sat up straighter. He would have given much for Nikka’s reassuring presence now. The deep social chasm between them would have been bridged by the fearless set of Nikka’s strong neck, his reckless smile, and his witty bravado.

“Ah, yes,” the Major said, “the lost tribe of Israel! Cyrus and Darais! But what about Taimur the Lame? and Changez Khan? and Kublai Khan? and Subuktagen and the other Mongols who swarmed through these mountains to India?”

“Chinaman!” he protested. Removing the turban from his shaved head, he thrust his bearded face forward.
“Look at this,” he said, tapping his nose that dipped, hooked, and sprang out between his flat cheeks and slanting eyes. “Is this a Chinaman’s nose? No! It leaps forth as a banner of my race! A legacy from Persian ancestors who came through those hills with Cyrus and Darais . . . or from the Yahudis even . . . some say the lost tribe of Israel settled here . . . or . . .”

Meanwhile, Zaitoon, crouching on her haunches, stared at Carol in wide-eyed admiration. The halo of golden, fire-lit hair, Carol’s light bright skin and her strange tight trousers, fascinated her.
Carol glanced at Zaitoon indulgently and said, “She’s beautiful.”
Zaitoon, overawed and confused by the sudden attention, made Carol uneasy. There was a slight strain in her smile. She asked, “ Tumhara shadi honay ka hai?” (Are you getting married?)
The construction of the sentence and the stilted foreign accent kindled Zaitoon’s smile. Then, she burrowed her head so low Mushtaq could barely see her nose.
Why must these women be so goddamn coy, thought Carol.
“You ought to know better than ask such delicate questions, dear,” reprimanded Farukh primly. “Our women, particularly the young girls, are modest, you know.”
Furious at the rebuke, Carol’s face burned red. Tears smarting in her eyes made them sparkle:
“Really! One would imagine they achieved one of the highest birth rates in the world by immaculate conception!”
The room was suddenly still, hot with Carol’s anger and Farukh’s consternation.

“She is my daughter, sir.”
The Major’s eyes slid over to the girl and back to Qasim.
“And, maybe, she isn’t your daughter, Barey Mian? The Memsahib here thinks not.”
Qasim raised his head and glowered at the probing face. He thought of a similar question put to him by Nikka years ago at their first encounter—the earth had been cool and wet with the passing of the storm; he had been hotheaded then and closer to the proud standards of his youth. The intervening years had taught him the ignominy of his illiteracy, and an awe of educated men of position. These men held bewildering power over the likes of him and could upset his plans at a whim. He little understood their ways.
“My lord,” he spoke with an anguished stare, “I got her when she was four or five years old. Ever since I have cared for her like my own and she has been a devoted daughter.”
“You got her? Where from?”
“We were on a train from Jullundur at the time of Partition. The train was ambushed. Her parents were killed. I had jumped off the train before the mob attacked. After the killing, when I ran along the tracks to Lahore, the child called to me, thinking I was her father. I carried her to Lahore.”
Qasim spoke slowly, carefully, his drawn face and sad brown eyes full of candor.

“That was all taken care of two thousand years ago,” smiled Mushtaq, his face lighting up. “We are following the ancient Silk Route of traders from Central Asia. Their caravans carried jade, bolts of silk, and tea—some perished and some made it to the Indus plains. The Silk Route follows the Indus gorge most of the way and then swerves east from Gilgit through Hunza to the Khunjrab Pass on the Chinese frontier. It continues to Yarkand, Kashgar, and other fabled cities of Sinkiang!”

Carol sighed, looking at the towering jungle of slate beyond them. She felt strangely unreal—adrift. “What a jumble. As if God scratching through the earth, had smashed the mountains in a mad rage . . . He too must have His frustrations.”
Mushtaq’s hand crept under her sweater, kneading her satiny skin. His voice was a husky gurgle, “Ummm . . . When Atlas lifted the world, he held it here. His fingers forced the earth into chasms and the rising mountains; the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, and the Karakoram . . .”

This was it! A sense of being catered to and protected—servants and leisure. Unhurried sessions with the dressmaker and languid gin-and-tonics on well-groomed lawns. These compensations made her stay despite Farukh’s morbid jealousy. They prevented her from carrying out her repeated threats to divorce him—to go back home. Prolonged morning coffees and bridge, delicious sessions of gossip with the band of women who increasingly formed her social group—American, Australian, British, and other Europeans, married to Pakistanis, who otherwise had very little in common. Sunk into cushions of leisure they shared confidences and wept with homesickness on each other’s shoulders. In moments of lonely alienation, turning hostile, they sneered at strange customs, at modernization not yet achieved, at native in-laws, and dirt, and dust, and primitive plumbing.
Once purged of their resentments they regained the sporty sense of adventure and curiosity that had brought them to this remote land in the first place. Their compensations were the Majors! The bright blue sunlit days!

Qasim, lightly dismissing the Mongols, said, “They came. And the Greeks came with Sikander!” He had been through this scene before when people called him a Chinaman. Each time he felt obliged to vindicate the honor of his ancestors.
“See here,” he pushed back a sleeve and waved a powerful, hirsute hand. The skin of his palm was like pale, cracked leather. “These veins flow with Kohistani blood, brave mountain blood.”

officers, indulging Qasim’s pride in his friend, bombarded him with questions. Qasim, swivelling obligingly on his haunches, answered each one, sensing a certain jocular acceptance of himself.
Meanwhile, Carol noticed a movement in the girl’s shoulders. Why, the child was crying! The discovery filled her with remorse. Hadn’t she known all along that the old tribal was not her father?
Zaitoon cried silently, unseen tears spilling on her knees. In her subconscious had lain a dim suspicion of the truth, a hint of pain closeted away and buried. All of it now lay brutally exhumed, and, tears soaking her shalwar, she kept thinking inanely, “Just the same he is my father . . .”
On an impulse, Carol reached out to touch her. She stroked the coarse shawl covering her head. Startled and embarrassed, Zaitoon’s crouched body stiffened.
Carol slipped out unobtrusively and went down the corridor to her room. She returned with a paper bag containing an embroidered chaddar, a slab of chocolate and some oranges. Quietly she resumed her seat.
“Take it,” she said gently to Zaitoon. The shadow cast by Carol’s body shielded the girl from view. Zaitoon raised her head slowly and was full of gratitude for the woman who sat on the edge of her chair to screen her. In the instant their eyes met, the green and black of their irises fused in an age-old communion—an understanding they shared of their vulnerabilities as women. For an intuitive instant Carol felt herself submerged in the helpless drift of Zaitoon’s life. Free will! she thought contemptuously, recalling heated discussions with her friends on campus. This girl had no more control over her destiny than a caged animal . . . perhaps, neither had she . . .