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Mehrunnisa:

A love story from Lahore

[Chapter 17]

Jamal wanted his family gone so that he could get away from Mehru. He didn’t know if he could get through another night with her in the same room as him. He was beginning to forget what she’d done. His hormones, he decided, were taking over.

His sister was saying something and he hadn’t heard a word.

‘…don’t understand why? She obviously loves you. I’ve seen the way she looks at you, so what’s the problem?’

‘What? Who?’
‘Jamal, pay attention! Mehru, who else?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What’s wrong with you? You look dazed.’

Jamal’s anger spiked. ‘I do not look, or feel dazed. And she’s not in love with me. She’s a fraud. And…’

Shocked

He stopped. He was shocked that he’d given the game away. He must be more affected than he’d realised.

Mallo looked at him quietly. ‘Tell me.’

Confused and angry and beginning to understand his own vulnerability to Mehru, and panicking at the realisation, he found himself telling Mallo everything. When he was done, he felt worse because he’d replayed it all in his mind, and realised again, how well she’d manipulated him. She’d never even said anything much, just hinted and demurred and let him do all the hard work of digging his own grave.

‘She’s in love with you. I’m a woman, I can tell these things.’

Signals

Jamal looked at his sister and said very quietly, ‘She can fool anyone. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to me.’

‘Jamal, please be reasonable. She’s…’

‘Incorrigible and probably I’m the only man around apart from Karim, so the signals she’s giving are not about love I’m sure…’

‘Shut up.’ His sister declared furiously. ‘Is this what I’ve taught you? She’s your wife.’

He shrugged, ‘Ami Begum knows her better than all of us put together.’

Mallo looked at her brother, who was like a son to her and said softly, ‘Jamal…don’t believe everything Mehru tells you…believe what you see. She’s been hurt a lot. Her mother died an outcast. Her father abandoned her and her mother. She bore all of this alone, completely alone. And the only family she had, disowned her and reviled her. Do you blame her for wanting to hurt them back?’

‘You’re not too popular with her either in case you haven’t noticed.’

‘I have. She feels we betrayed her that day when we didn’t rescue her from you, and she’s right there too. We believed you, not her…and she was the one telling the truth, apparently.’

‘What else could I have done under the circumstances?’

Mallo sighed.
Love

‘What’s done is done. But Jamal, open your eyes now and see what’s before you. She’s…she’s in love with you.’

‘That’s just rubbish, Apa. I don’t think she’s capable of that emotion.’

‘At the end of the day, one has to let one’s children make their own mistakes but it’s so hard. I don’t want to see you get hurt and I don’t want to see you hurt Mehru, and you’re doing both.’

Jamal brooded over what she’d said, and his own growing chthonic desires for the woman he’d married so recklessly.

‘Why’s this door locked?’

Jamal rattled the door knob and asked Karim, who shrugged and loped off. But Mallo replied, ‘I asked Mehru and she said she’d lost the key, a few weeks ago.’

‘Really? That’s interesting.’

It was open the day he’d come. This was the room she’d been in that first day he’d come. Why would she lie to Mallo about it? Was she hiding something here? It was like a study he remembered, there’d been books and a writing table, papers…a lot of papers, with neat script.

‘Apa, why don’t you ask Mehrunissa to take you out to see the neighbourhood today?’

‘Why do you keep calling her Mehrunissa so pompously? You used to call her Mehru like everyone else.’

‘I also used to think she was someone she isn’t. I can’t call her that any more. She isn’t that person for me…not any more.’

‘I have no desire to go out in this heat.’

‘It’s September. It isn’t that hot. Please Apa, I want her out of the house. It’s important. I just need about half an hour.’

‘Why, what’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you if there’s anything to tell.’

Secrecy

So when Mehru came downstairs that day, Mallo was ready to go gallivanting she had to go along with her unenthusiastically. As soon as they’d left Jamal got Karim to get the clutch of spare keys, and he had the door open in 10 minutes. Karim was sworn to secrecy on pain of losing his job. Jamal knew now how to keep his mouth shut thanks to Mehru.

Jamal rifled through her desk and found pages and pages of manuscripts and stories in her neat script…all in Urdu. He found the letters to the publishers too.

He found her English poetry and nearly lost himself in it. Who was this man she kept writing about? It was almost like hero worship or like love. He sat mesmerised, and he read bits here and there until he barely had time to lock up behind him at the sound of the car in the drive way.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. But certainly not this…

Was there anything about her that was what it should be? It seemed to Jamal that ever since she’d come in his life, he’d had one thing after another bludgeoning him on the head, making him feel stunned and dizzy, intoxicated…

Every night for the next three, Jamal stole into the study to read Mehru’s work. He marvelled at its depth, its craft and the beauty of her words. She wrote with such sensitivity. Who was she? How many faces did she have? Which one was really hers…or were they all her? Or none? Who was this man she seemed to love so deeply?

Invisible

He wanted her to be the woman her writing portrayed she was and the one he’d known she was almost instinctively. He wanted her to be his. But he was sceptical. He’d hardened himself against her so that when she came in front of him, her corporeal form had nothing to do with this invisible woman he’d been spending the last three nights with, the woman who wrote those beautiful things he read every night.

That woman he could love, and had loved, still did, he’d realised. But that woman was ephemeral, elusive, and refused to take physical form, especially that of this Mehrunissa, who’d so carelessly and heartlessly manipulated him.

Bibi couldn’t see Mehru so sad. She loved Jamal and he loved her and yet the two were being so very childish. She put the sewing away and opened her paan-daan, looking vexed.

What was she supposed to do? She popped the beetle leaf into her mouth and was chewing it with concentration when Mallo walked in.

‘Salaam, Bibi.’

Bibi nodded, still stewing over Mehru and Jamal.

‘What are you so worried about?’

Bibi chewed some more. Mallo helped herself to some beetle-leaf and having a good idea that their worries were probably of a similar nature, she asked, ‘So, how long have you been here, really?’

Bibi’ s jaw slackened. She stared. Her eyes wary, calculating. Mallo smiled.

‘Hmm. So you know?’ asked Bibi.

Mothers

‘We’re mothers. So what if we didn’t give birth to them?’ Mallo asked, putting the paan in her mouth with a flourish.

‘They’re foolish children.’
‘Agreed,’ mumbled Mallo.

‘Immature, stubborn, foolish children.’
‘Absolutely.’

‘They think they know everything because they learnt to read and write.’
‘As if experience counts for nothing.’

‘Huh!’
‘Exactly.’
Bibi glared at Mallo.

‘Are you going to sit here agreeing with me or are you going to do something about it?’

‘Tell me what to do, Bibi?’

Bibi rolled her beetle-leaf in her mouth and tucking it between her left cheek and her teeth, she said, ‘She writes.’

Mallo nodded, looking encouraging.

Novel

Bibi’s ears seemed to be steaming when she added, ‘That novel you love so much? She wrote it.’

Mallo stared. Bibi rolled the paan back into place and said, ‘Take it to Ami Begum. Read it to her. Show her who our Mehru really is, Mallo.’

Mallo had tears in her eyes.
‘It’s her? She wrote that?’
Bibi nodded and pressed Mallo’s hand in comfort.
‘I should have known. Bibi, I should have realised.’
‘Now you have, Mallo. We have to help our children. Show it to her father too.’

The two women sat late into the evening, planning and chatting. Mallo left with her husband the next day. Bibi was in the best of moods. Mehru was not. Jamal hadn’t left with his parents. Mehru wasn’t sure quite what to make of that.

‘Why isn’t he leaving?’ she asked Bibi.

‘It’s his house, little dove.’
‘It’s our house. He sent us here. He lives in the city.’
‘Then why are you whispering?’
‘Because…because…’
‘Go ask him yourself, if you are so troubled by it.’

‘Why should I?’ Mehru said with a breezy shrug. Then rounding on Bibi she said, ‘you ask him.’

‘What you want to ask, only you can ask.’
Mehru spluttered, ‘What? I don’t know what…what?’
‘Mehru…my darling child. Would it be so bad to tell him that you love him?’

Mehru’s jaw dropped opened.
‘Bibi?’

‘He’s your husband. You’re supposed to love him. It’s perfectly natural and acceptable. It’s allowed.’

‘Bibi?’ Mehru gasped again.

‘Listen, my love. He loves you too. But he’s a man. They’re stubborn. They’re different. You have to make the first move. Don’t be so foolish. You did him wrong anyway. You must make it up to him.’

Mehru opened here mouth and Bibi said quickly, holding up her hand, ‘Uh-uh! No more Bibi-Bibi. Go. Talk to him. He is your husband, Mehrunissa and he loves you.’

With a flourish Bibi was off and away leaving Mehru in her wake.

Glossary of terms:
Apa: older sister

Paan-daan: usually a silver box with a lid to carry betal leaves and its condiments that women used in that era.

Paan: beetle-leaf

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