PROLOGUE #3
“Did you miss me?” Iram asked. “You told me how your Ammi did…” she stuttered.
“Our Ammi,” Mehrunisa clarified, shaking her head. “Gurun, our Ammi. She did nothing but cry at the door for you both. She died raving about you both. If only…”
“If only?”
Her gaze tore away, staring down — “If only Abba had not done this.”
Iram knew Mehrunisa carried a world of bitterness inside her for her father.
It was apparent in the way she spoke about him — respectfully because she had been conditioned to, but with anguish, anger, pain too.
That man had torn his twins from his sleeping wife’s bed and handed them over — not to die, but to burn in a cruel fate he believed was glorified by his personal gains.
He had killed them for his kingdom. Held a funeral too.
There were graves of those children here.
He had barred the two people who knew about it from ever uttering their names out loud.
While Mehrunisa, still a child, had gone silent, her mother had been unable to stop.
Iram thought about that mother, trying to picture her sitting here looking just like Mehrunisa. She no longer had to imagine her. She had seen photographs.
“What happened, Jannat?” Mehrunisa’s warm hand pressed over her cold forearm. “Are you feeling it?”
Iram shook her head. “Thank you.”
“What do you mean ‘thank you?’”
“For being here and believing me. For keeping me. For showing me those photographs of your mother…”
“Our mother.”
Iram lowered her gaze again.
“Have they helped?”
Iram nodded. It had been heartening to know that one part of her parentage was kind, that these two women had loved the girl who was lost, lamented her, waited for her.
But Iram had listened to it all like she was listening to a story.
Of a girl named Noorie, but a Noorie who was somebody else.
The dichotomy was strange. One part of her had been soothed, that there had been some good where she came from.
But the nothingness inside her had only been gaping larger and larger with every passing day.
Until this morning.
What a wonder this mind was! Sparking only when it felt like it.
A knock jolted her. Mehrunisa answered in their local Burushaski. The maid responded quickly.
“Come now, Faiz and his men are here. Cover your face, stay inside the kitchen. If Faiz insists on meeting you again, do not say anything in front of him. Just like last time. Hmm?”
Iram nodded, recalling the first and the last time she had met her younger brother — the Mir of Nagar. At the time, she had been even more lost. All she remembered was Mehrunisa doing the talking, telling him a story so fictitious that it was true.
My friend…
Married to Indian Kashmiri…
Had a miscarriage…
Is here to recover…
All fiction, all true.
————————————————————
Iram sat inside the kitchen, the servants and maids hustling to fill bowls and platters, carrying the full ones out to the table, sending the empty ones into washing. Their pandemonium was loud, she was quiet. She didn’t remember speaking words in many days. Except to Mehrunisa, and Gul.
Rahim Chacha carried a pail of milk inside from the garden door and set it by the fridge.
He panted, meeting her eyes from his half-bent stance.
His head nodded, as if in question. Iram nodded back.
His hand rose halfway and he waved quietly, leaving the kitchen the way he had come.
Iram stared at his back. He had thrown himself into this punishment with her. And not uttered a word.
“Jannat?” Mehrunisa’s quiet voice broke her out of her reverie. Iram held her shoulders from breaking into a shiver. The sun was going higher up in the sky. She knew it was coming.
“Yes?” She looked up.
“Mir wants to meet you.”
The servants were around, and Mehrunisa kept her poised command smooth.
Iram got to her feet, throwing the shawl over her head and covering the lower half of her face like she had seen so many women do around here when they appeared in front of the Mir.
It wasn't a rule; some younger ones broke it.
But Iram tightened her shawl over her jaw.
“The officers are gone,” Mehrunisa whispered to her on their way out. “It’s just him. Don’t worry.”
They walked down the alley, and the quiet voices of the Mir and his secretary rose.
“…leeches, the lot of them. Power and anti-India plots, they see nothing else.”
“All you have to do is offer them a little of both once a month and we are good, Mir.”
“For how long, though? Abbajaan has left this sycophancy as his legacy. My land, my people, my rule, and yet I get no say in who crosses it?”
“Dilshad Khan is coming tomorrow.”
“With his own commands, I’m sure. Tell me, Farhan, am I the slave of Azad Kashmir’s CM, Pakistan’s military or the great ISI?”
“Low, low, they just left.”
Iram’s ears stood to attention. She knew from her time here that Faiz, the Mir of Nagar was young.
He was a puppet in the hands of many. His father…
their father, had made it a custom to be subservient to the Pakistani forces.
Faiz wanted to fight it, or so Mehrunisa told her.
He was a topper from the Harvard Business School and wanted to work on their town’s economy and tourism.
But his image was that of a slow, eccentric, unhinged Mir who knew nothing of how to run what little he had left in the name of property.
Even the people of Nagar turned to Mehrunisa in times of need.
He was just a ceremonial head, a mad antique, placed on the throne.
They entered the dining hall and the two men stopped talking.
“Mir, Jannat is here.”
“Why is your friend always shivering, Aapa?” An unhinged laugh replaced the solemnity of Faiz’s voice. Iram did not look up from her downcast stance.
“I told you…” Mehrunisa cued. “She is not well.”
“Ahaaa…” the crunch of a vicious bite. An apple, probably. “Jannat? Bibi, you are welcome here. But we don’t want to be targeted as the Mir who kidnapped a man’s wife in his state,” Faiz laughed again. It was like he grabbed the idea of his unhinged image and worked easily to reinforce it.
“Actually,” Mehrunisa cleared her throat. “Jannat will be leaving soon.”
Iram felt her hackles rise. Now she couldn’t even run!
“Really? Where? Back to Dubai?”
“Yes.”
Iram could hear the forced courage in Mehrunisa’s voice as she made up the story as she went. “But first she will be going to India. Her jewellery is with her in-laws. She will collect it and then fly to Dubai to her husband.”
“Is it, Bibi?” Faiz asked her pointedly. Iram kept her head down, the shiver setting in hard in the back of her neck. Silence settled in the room when she didn’t answer. The eerie, scary kind. Nobody spoke. Nothing moved.
“Faiz,” Mehrunisa left her side and walked. Iram eyed her feet go farther and farther, around the long table and towards the head chair. She lowered onto a seat in front of him.
“There is a problem.”
“What, Aapa?”
Silence.
Then his secretary cleared his throat — “I will leave for Nagarkhas, Mir. After my collection, I will be at your service at the fort.”
Loud thuds of footsteps left the hall. And silence fell again.
“Faiz, gurun,” Mehrunisa’s voice softened. “I told you in what conditions Jannat crossed over. She had to escape her in-laws. She is here without her passport.”
“I suspected. She shivers like she is a mouse, but what guts.”
“We need to get her a passport to return to India, Faiz.”
“If I were a magician, I would point this stick there and a rabbit would jump out with Jannat Madam’s passport in British… no, American colours. Safe to go everywhere.”
“Enough, Faiz. This is not a matter to joke about.”
Loud cackles — “What else should I do?”
“Find a way to make her passport.”
“For that she has to first show us her face.”
The scrape of her chair and Mehrunisa’s loud words whipped — “Shameful.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. She is your friend, Aapa. Aapa to me also. But who can trust her when she does not even meet my eyes? Haan, Jannat Bibi? Are you an Indian RAW agent? Too many movies about those right now.”
“Go inside, Jannat,” Mehrunisa ordered. Iram turned and walked back inside, her mind running in overdrive.
Escaping here in the dead of the night was impossible now.
Faiz knew she wanted to leave. He had contacts with the ISI and the Pakistani military.
And mostly was their slave, in his own words. He would trade her for a month’s peace.
But what if… she could barter her exit?
Iram stalled. Wheels churned in her mind. Suddenly the place inside her head felt alive. It was dangerous but alive.
What did Faiz need? She thought. A way to sink his legs into his town.
He didn’t have any businesses here. The one mineral mining business that his…
their grandfather had pegged as the future, had been surrendered by their father in return for…
resources. Those mining rights were currently being sold to China, as per Mehrunisa…
Iram’s body shrivelled suddenly as bad thoughts, bad feelings, fears invaded her insides.
Her mind shut down. All thoughts of burrowing her way out of this place died and all she saw was haze.
She went into the kitchen and caught her corner, lowered herself on the small stool, breathing heavily.
Her shawl dropped from her jaw and she braved a peek at the clock.
9:15 am. Her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn't going. Today she had thought it wouldn’t hit her.
She squeezed her eyes tighter, willing it to pass.
How can I barter my exit from here? What can Mehrunisa offer Faiz?
What can I offer Faiz? Her stomach turned, panic rising, her delivery scar throbbing as if it had been cut just now.
She popped her eyes open and explained to herself — It has passed.
Water broke, you delivered, they didn’t live. It has passed.
“Jannat?” Rahim Chacha’s palm came in her field of vision.
It held two dates dipped in chocolate. Iram stared at them, the stash Mehrunisa had made and hidden for her.
Iram took one and bit into the fruit. The bitterness of the dark chocolate reminded her of that day in the kitchen again, but the sweetness of the date inside broke her fear.
She was not in labour. She was not losing her children.
She had already lost them. The worst had happened.
Now she was here, gathering her present by confronting her past. A small slice of pistachio crunched between her teeth and the surprise startled her.
Ammi’s pista phirni. Atharva’s pista ice cream in the winter of Dal.
The best memories. Those felt hers. Iram smiled, chewing the surprise element of this treat today and needing more.
She reached for the second date and placed it whole inside her mouth, crunching it, hoping for the pistachio.
And it did not disappoint her. She beamed into her open palms.
The nutty,
bittersweet texture of pista broke with chocolate and enriched her mouth. A hand patted her head and she glanced up. Rahim Chacha’s head nodded again — Ok?
She nodded back, feeling a smile bloom for the first time on her face that felt like Iram’s. His answering smile was immediate, and surprisingly excited.
“Jannat?”
“Yes?” She whirled to Mehrunisa.
“I am sorry about what happened there. He did not mean it in the wrong way. Trust me, I have not raised him to think like that about women…”
Iram nodded.
“I will talk to him again about it.”
“No…” she got to her feet. She covered the distance between them, swallowing the last of the chocolate, date and pistachio mix and sucking on her tongue to hold onto the taste.
She checked the empty kitchen for any lingerers.
Everybody seemed to have gone to eat breakfast now that the royals were done.
“Mehrunisa, you said he is a Harvard Business graduate?”
She nodded.
“And you said that he wants to establish his foothold in Nagar? Something that makes him indispensable to the people.”
“And to the military and ISI. There is talk of abolishing the titles and our right of property too… but you don’t worry about that. I will talk to him again and…”
“What if I help him with that?”
“Are you mad?”
“Can I meet him?”
“She has now gone crazy, Rahim Chacha…”
“On the contrary, I am thinking straight only now.”