May 14, 2006

This book presents a collection of contemporary English language stories by over 20 women writers of Pakistani origin. They explore a host of issues ranging from gender, war and identity to age-old social customs and attitudes which shape our inner worlds


Fahmida Riaz narrates the tale of a strange kind of sisterhood

There they sat weeping, their heads buried in their knees, sometimes glancing at me with bloodshot eyes.

They were sitting in my courtyard, the women of her village and Aai. Her daughter wasn’t there, it would have been difficult to bring her. Perhaps she was in hospital, perhaps in a mental asylum. Even if she was still at home, it was difficult to bring her all the way to Karachi. She was pregnant again.

The village women had come to seek assistance from me. They sat on the floor gazing at me wildly. Their heads were covered with green, blue, orange tie-dye chunries. We sat gazing at one another: me, looking at their dark feet, their thick silver anklets, arms full of clinking glass bangles, and the glimmering, glinting nose-pins and heavy nose-rings.

“Why are you weeping?” I wanted to ask. “Is it only for Aai’s daughter that you cry?”

“What do you mean?” My sister, Shahbano, was wide-eyed, puzzled.

Aai bit her lips and wrung her rough hands. She worked at Shahbano’s house. My sister was married to a landowner. She lived in the farmhouse, surrounded by mango orchards, by the Asthla Canal. Beyond its tranquil cool waters, as far as the eye could see, stretched green fields. The colourful hutments of these peasant women were scattered on the canal bank.

Aai lived in one of those huts. How old was she? No one could tell. Could be 35 or 40. Not a wrinkle on her smooth fair face. Slim and tall, with tight round breasts jutting out of her kurta. Hard physical labour had kept her fit. Her husband was a drug addict and did very little. Theirs was a typical village when in the months between sowing and harvesting all the hard labour was done by women. Once when Shahbano had taken me for a walk through the fields, I had been amazed at the sight of all the men relaxing on their cots. I exclaimed, “These men, what kind of work do they do?”

A woman, her bangles chiming on her wrist as she balanced a large bundle of dry twigs in her head, said, “Madam, the men halal the chickens.”

They all burst out laughing. I too had laughed. How could I forget! It always took a man to say, “Allah-u-Akbar”, to decapitate a chicken or goat, to make the meat halal. Women could not perform this important religious task.

Aai had seven children. Her eldest daughter was severely handicapped mentally, the rest, simply malnourished.

What cruel tricks fate plays: a female child and mentally handicapped! Fatimah was a beauty, growing up so fast the hand-me-downs from the landlord’s house could hardly keep up with her filled-out curves.

Fatimah could not speak; she could only mumble like an infant. If you saw her you would never think that this village beauty was not like any other young girl. But when she walked you noticed the disharmony in her movements. She veered and lurched, vacantly smiling, spit dribbling from the corner of her full red mouth …

Between Shahbano’s house and Aai’s hut wild reeds grow in abundance. Aai would leave her children to play there and cross the reeds to come to work.

One day she came weeping and told my sister, “Fatimah is pregnant.”

“Who did it? When did it happen?” Shahbano was shocked and in tears. She slipped out of her house and went to see Fatimah. Several village women had gathered in that modest dwelling. All aghast, whispering quietly.

Aai had beaten Fatimah mercilessly, questioning her, “Who was he? Who did this?” The village women were caressing Fatimah’s bruises, rubbing hot mustard oil and turmeric on her swollen limbs, and weeping, weeping quietly.

Fatimah mumbled and smiled.

It was decided quietly that the pregnancy be aborted at once. Aai took a week’s leave and went to the next village with Fatimah to pray at the shrine of a saint — this is what they told the men in the village: it was important that they not have an inkling of the catastrophe that had befallen Fatimah. It would be a matter of their honour.

They would come out with their axes and there would be several murders. The last time an illegitimate pregnancy was discovered here, two clans had fought for a year. There were several killings, leaving behind widows and orphans and prolonged court cases which had drained the last rupee from the village.

Aai came back with Fatimah after the abortion.

“Madam, please send her to an orphanage,” she wept and pleaded with Shahbano.

My sister kept visiting me in Karachi, insisting, “Baji, you are a writer and so many people know you. Send her to the right institution where she will be safe.”

I held my head in my hands. Yes, I am a writer. I also know a few things about these institutions. “Where?” I would ask. It is well known that women in such institutions are sent out for prostitution. Normal women! And she, this unfortunate mentally handicapped girl! How could I guarantee her safety from sexual abuse?