caring about the proprieties in seeing her daughter in bed with her husband. She walked into the dark room and felt her way over to the bed. Peering down she saw her daughter. Alone. With her face buried in her pillow.
Moonlight from the verandah streamed into the room from the open door. When Gulshan turned over,Hajra peered closer, looking in concern at her beloved daughter’s face.
‘Are you all right, my daughter? Where is Haroon?’
Gulshan stared up at her mother in agony. Tears blinded her. Bending over the bed, Hajra touched her daughter’s cheek and then felt the pillow beneath it: it was soaked.
Now very alarmed, Hajra squatted on the cold floor, her knees shivering. ‘What is it, my daughter?’ she asked, her voice dipped low in fear and misgiving. What was the matter with her daughter and where was her son-in-law in the middle of the night? Had they quarrelled? Why was she crying?
Through dried lips, ‘
meh looty ghi
, mother,’ Gulshan whispered simply.
‘
Looty ghi!
’ Hajra exclaimed, stepping back. Had they been burgled? Had her daughter been raped?
‘Where is Haroon?’ Hajra whispered, unable to make sense of her daughter’s moans.
Gulshan sprang up on the bed, her eyes rolling wildly, and flung the quilt on the floor. ‘He is in the fields, in the arms of another woman.’ She spat out.
Hajra stared up in mute disbelief. ‘What are you saying?’ she asked, her voice faint with misgiving. Hajra’s world, too, was beginning to fall apart. Her bewildered eyes opened and closed.
‘He is with Aunt Fatima’s niece!’ Gulshan shrieked at her mother and, with one quick movement, she grabbed hold of the decorative vase on the bedside cabinet and hurled it across the room at the dressing table mirror. It crashed against the tall mirror, smashing one corner to smithereens.
Startled by her violence, Hajra grabbed Gulshan’s arm, just as she was about to reach for the water jug. Out of breath, she stared into her distraught face.
‘Stop it, Gulshan!’ she hissed. A look of sheer madness confronted her in her daughter’s face. ‘What do you mean, my daughter?’ she asked, her voice barely audible to her own ears.
‘Another woman has stolen my husband, Mother! Don’t you understand!’ Gulshan cried in agony, then collapsed in a heap on the bed once more.
Hajra stood up straight, staring silently down at her daughter for a long time. This was no dream. This was a nightmare, and of the worst sort.
‘Fatima’s niece!’ she uttered at last, through chilled lips and with a calmness that surprised her. ‘But she’s a stranger! She’s only been here for two days. Are you sure? Our Haroon would never do this, Gulshan. You must be imagining it, my darling daughter, surely?’ Inside she prayed with all her heart that it was in fact a nightmare, from which the girl would soon wake up.
‘No, Mother, no!’ The image of the woman’s face against her Haroon’s chest speared through Gulshan again. ‘See for yourself mother!’ she wailed, banging her arms against the headboard. ‘They are near the old village well …’ She swept round and buried her face in the pillow, trying to banish the picture of Haroon’s passionate kisses on the woman’s face.
Her heart thudding with a low, dull beat, Hajra walked out in a daze. In her room, she checked to see if Moeen was asleep. Mechanically picking up her warm night shawl from her bed, she threw it around her head and shoulders.
With quiet, angry steps, Hajra set off for the village well, her identity cloaked in the night’s darkness. Normally afraid of the dark, the deserted village lanes held no fear for her this night. Her body tense, her lips wordlessly prayed for her daughter to be proved wrong.‘Allah pak, help us!’ she beseeched. Sheer incredulity washed over her. ‘Impossible! Impossible!’ Her daughter and son-in-law were happy in their marriage. Nobody did anything like this in their world. Nobody dared! For no man