Mehrunnisa:

A love story from Lahore

By Zeenat Mahal

Chapter 21

Jamal’s feelings were all in a jumble. He wasn’t sure what he was going through exactly. He’d never felt like this before. His heart raced and then suddenly sank. He felt angry and then guilty. She wasn’t right…she was the one who’d pushed him to it.

‘You’re over-reacting, Mehru. Don’t do this again…don’t ruin what we’ve barely got.’

‘Jamal, you said yourself so many times that it won’t be easy for you to forget or forgive. I don’t think you’ll ever be rid of your anger. You’ll never forget. Maybe, I won’t either.’

How could she compare what he’d done to how she’d behaved? She was being unreasonable. His temper flared again. He didn’t want to examine that uncomfortable feeling that was right in its wake. He had done nothing wrong.

Stubborn girl

‘Don’t tell me what I felt or feel now, Mehru. Or what I will or will not do. You’re such a selfish, stubborn girl. I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.’

‘The feeling’s mutual,’ she snapped back.

‘You’re making a mistake, Mehru. I’m not going to grovel at your feet, and I’m not going to pine away after you. That romantic hero you think I am is an illusion you’ve created for yourself. It isn’t me.’

‘I know.’

‘Then don’t expect me to come begging any time soon.’

‘I won’t.’

He stood still for a moment watching her, waiting for her to say something that would save their relationship, so fragile and already so precious. She didn’t, and so he had no option but to turn around and leave the room.

His heart thudding uncomfortably, Jamal made his way out with the nagging feeling that he was leaving something of himself behind.

Mehru sank back into her chair and waited for the sound of the car engine gunning. When it came, and then droned away into nothing, she let herself cry her heart out.

Speechless

Ami Begum was sitting in her room with Farooq, when Jamal walked in. She stared at him, speechless. He came and sat down beside her.

‘The last time you punished me, you said I was to read to you for an hour a day. Farooq Chacha, I’m so glad you’re here too. This is a story you’ll need to hear too.’

Without waiting for a response, Jamal opened the book in his hand and began to read…

Even as I nursed my anger, I hoped to find love from the woman my father had loved all his life. He was doomed to love women, my father, and he would betray each one, despite his good intentions…

He read on slowly, even as he heard the occasional sniff from Ami Begum. When the hour had passed, he got up to leave.

‘Who wrote this?’ asked Farooq Chacha.
‘I think you know that already.’

‘That cannot be. She couldn’t have written this. You must be mistaken.’

Jamal smiled.
Worried

‘Then why do you look so worried Farooq Chacha?’

Farooq Chacha looked like a statue. His face was pale. Jamal turned to leave.

‘Continue reading, I want to hear more,’ said Ami Begum.

Jamal smiled but didn’t let her see it. Instead, he said, ‘An hour a day of penance, Ami Begum.’

‘Where’s…’
Jamal looked at her keenly, ‘Yes?’

‘Where’s…your wife?’
He didn’t reply and took his leave.

For the next one week he came every day to read to them both. Mehru’s father and grandmother. Jamal’s only recourse was to make things right between Mehru and her father.

Ami Begum had to accept her as her grand-daughter. He felt responsible for his wife.

That was all. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t such a big deal as she was making it out to be after what she’d done.

Statue

He wasn’t going to go to her. Not after all this. It might kill him slowly, this pain in his heart and the constant ache for her he’d been living with for the past two weeks, but he wasn’t going to go back to her. She’d pushed him away twice now.

Jamal walked out and back to his lonely house with a bleeding heart and his pride.

Ami Begum felt the tears sting and she let herself cry for the first time since in years. Farooq sat there like a statue. She cried for her son, for what she’d done to his child and him. For a week now she had thought of nothing else.

‘Farooq…’

‘Ami Begum, please don’t cry. She’s right. I’m the one who failed all of you. I failed you when I married without your consent.

I failed Lispeth when I didn’t stand up for her. I have failed Mehru since the day she was born. It’s all on me.’

‘I shouldn’t have been so harsh…it was unforgivable. She’s right.

It is unforgivable.’
‘I am the one who should be ashamed, Ami Begum. It is all my fault. I am a failure.’

Ami Begum was divided. The regret, the desire to know her grand-daughter and to seek redemption was too strong to ignore. The guilt and shame had grown. Her grand-daughter was someone to be proud of and she realised that she was…very much so.

‘I want to see my grand-daughter, Farooq.’

Daughter

Her son smiled and said, ‘I want to see my daughter too, Ami Begum. I could bring her to you. I have to make up to her for so much.’

His face changed and he added, ‘However, I must warn you. I believe she and Jamal are having problems. Mallo Begum is concerned about them.’

His mother looked at him sharply.
‘What happened between them?’

‘I’m not sure I understand myself. Bibi is cagey but she told me ‘a few hard truths’ according to her.

It’s something to do with Mehru feeling…let down. She’s been...er…lying about a lot of things.’

He told her everything Bibi had told him. His mother stared at him for a long time. Neither of them spoke about it though.

‘I want to see Mehru. Today. This has gone on long enough. It’s time to make up for old wrongs, and some new ones too.’

Stranger

Lispeth, my mother was half-Irish. She used to tell me that as a young girl, she dreamed of a stranger, a poet, and he sang to her in his deep voice of love, but it was a language she didn’t understand, but knew only to be the language of love. She met my father, five years later, when she came back to India, and she recognized him as the man from her recurring dreams.

She was afraid to tell him that initially. But when she did, he didn’t laugh at her like she was afraid he would but stared at her for the longest time and then took out a ring he’d been carrying in his pocket for the last six months he said, since a week after they’d met.

Ami Begum had tears in her eyes along with Mehru.

‘She loved him.’
‘You have no idea.’
Her grandmother smiled. Her father wiped his eyes with his white handkerchief.
‘I knew that. I knew and still I…I’m so sorry my daughter.’
‘I know…Abba.’

Farooq clenched his jaw, but a tear slipped past the boundaries of his lashes. Mehru’s own eyes weren’t dry. She looked at her grandmother, the woman with an iron backbone who couldn’t say the words that hurt her still, because of all that she’d lost with their having come to pass.

Her heart warmed again towards her grandmother. Her father too sat smiling at her, through his tears.

‘Jamal means well, Mehru. He read every day to me, to us both for a whole week. He’s your husband. Do you want me to talk to him?’ asked her father.

Mending fences

Mehru didn’t know what to say to him. Her grandmother’s story of Jamal engineering their closure and mending fences didn’t sit well with Mehru at all. Had he? Why would he do something like this after all that he’d done to her? After his betrayal?

She shook the thought away and focused on her grandmother and father.

‘What’s going on with you and Jamal?’ asked her grandmother.
Mehru looked away.

‘Ami Begum…Abba. I love you and I’m very happy that we’ve found each other after all this time but…I don’t wish to talk about him. I’m sorry.

Please don’t think I’m being rude, it’s just that it’s too…complicated. I don’t know what is going on.’

‘Jamal is a kind-hearted man.’
‘He doesn’t have a heart.’
Glossary of words:
Chacha: paternal uncle
Apa: older sister

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