Read Online And the World Changed by Muneeza Shamsie - Free Book Online Page B

Khan steps back hastily and bends over the prostate men. He says, “What’s all this? What’s all this?” The disconnected tone of his voice, and the underpinning of perplexity andfear gets us all to our feet. Moving in a bunch, displacing the chairs and small tables and crumpling the carpets, we crowd our end of the lobby.
    The fakirs lie face down across the threshold, half outside the door and half in the passage, their hands flat on the floor as if they were about to do pushups. Their faces are entirely hidden by hair. Suddenly, their voices are moist and thick, they begin to cry, “ Maajee! Maajee! Forgive us.” The blubbering, coming as it does from these fierce men, is unexpected, shocking; incongruous and melodramatic in this pragmatic and oil-rich corner of the Western world.
    Sikander, in obvious confusion, looms over them, looking from one to the other. Then, squatting in front of them, he begins to stroke their pricky heads, making soothing noises as if he were cajoling children, “What’s this? Tch, tch. . . . Come on! Stand up!”
    â€œGet out of the way.” An arm swings out in a threatening gesture and the fakir lifts his head. I see the pale, ash-smeared forehead, the large, thickly fringed brown eyes, the set curve of the wide, sensous mouth, and recognize Khushwant Singh. Next to him Pratab also raises his head. Sikander shuffles out of reach of Khushwant’s arm and moving to one side, his back to the wall, watches the Sikhs with an expression of incredulity. It is unreal. I think it has occurred to all of us it might be a prank, an elaborate joke. But their red eyes, and the passion distorting their faces, are not pretended.
    â€œWho are these men?”
    The voice is demanding, abrasive. I look over my shoulder, wondering which of the women has spoken so harshly. The sisters look agitated; their dusky faces are flushed.
    â€œThrow them out. They’re badmashes! Goondas! ”
    Taken aback I realize the angry, fearful voice is Sikander’s mother’s.
    Ammijee is standing behind me, barely visible among the agitated and excited sisters, and in her face I see more than justthe traces of emotions I had looked for earlier. It is as if her features had been parodied in a hideous mask. They are all there: the bitterness, the horror, the hate: the incarnation of that tree of ugly possibilities seeded in my mind when Sikander, in a cold fury, imitating the cries of the street vendors his mother had described, said, “ Zenana for sale! Zenana for sale!”
    I grew up overhearing fragments of whispered conversations about the sadism and bestiality women were subjected to during the Partition: What happened to so and so—someone’s sister, daughter, sister-in-law—the women Mrs. Khan categorized the spoils of war . The fruits of victory in the unremitting chain of wars that is man’s relentless history. The vulnerability of mothers, daughters, granddaughters, and their metamorphosis into possessions; living objects on whose soft bodies victors and losers alike vent their wrath, enact fantastic vendettas, celebrate victory. All history, all these fears, all probabilities and injustices coalesce in Ammijee’s terrible face and impart a dimension of tragedy that alchemises the melodrama. The behavior of the Sikhs, so incongruous and flamboyant before, is now transcendentally essential, consequential, fitting.
    The men on the floor have spotted Ammijee. “ Maajee , forgive us: Forgive the wrongs of our fathers.”
    A sister behind me says, “Oh my God!” There is a buzz of questions and comments. I feel she has voiced exactly my awe of the moment—the rare, luminous instant in which two men transcend their historic intransigence to tender apologies on behalf of their species. Again she says, “Oh God!” and I realize she is afraid that the cousins, propelled forward by small movements of their shoulders and