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Authors: Nadeem Aslam
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Jugnu and his white woman with a loud bang— dharam!
Kaukab rings Ujala’s number and stays on the line until the answering machine has played the two sentences spoken by him, and then she quickly replaces the receiver. Just then the doorbell rings.
“Jugnu?” Kaukab whispers to herself and then rushes across the room on legs trembling with excitement to let him in. Ujala? Charag and his littleson? Mah-Jabin?, but it’s a neighbourhood woman, the matchmaker, come to ask Kaukab if she has a veil that would go with the mustard-coloured shalwar-kameez she’s brought with her.
“I’ll need to borrow it just for one day, Kaukab. Moths chewed out holes the size of digestive biscuits from my own mustard-coloured veil and I haven’t been able to find the replacement of the exact shade,” she explains.
“I think I do have a veil of that colour upstairs. Its edges are crocheted, though—that won’t be a problem, will it? A row of little five-petalled flowers. Quite discreet.”
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, the matchmaker talks while Kaukab goes up to her bedroom, taking the mustard kameez with her. Of course the woman wants to talk about the arrest of Chanda’s shopkeeper brothers.
From the stairs, Kaukab says, “They are saying, sister-ji, that the police got the breakthrough completely by chance. They had spent hundreds of hours investigating the case but the main clue came not in England, but in the Pakistani village where Chanda’s parents are from. A white Detective Sergeant from here in Dasht-e-Tanhaii had flown to that village to make enquiries into a suspected fraud case—a case totally unrelated to the lovers’ alleged murder, I say ‘alleged’ because I don’t believe Jugnu and Chanda are dead—and there he happened to hear a chance remark: apparently Chanda’s brothers had confessed everything to their relatives in the village. The Detective Sergeant flew to England and informed his colleagues who then went to Pakistan to collect witnesses. Sister-ji, the white police are interested in us Pakistanis only when there is a chance to prove that we are savages who slaughter our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.”
The matchmaker narrows her eyes: “Imagine, they flew all the way to Pakistan just to be able to brand us Pakistanis murderers, at £465 a ticket, £510 if they minded the overnight stop at Qatar and went direct.”
Kaukab brings her the veil. “I know Chanda’s brothers are innocent because those who commit crimes of honour give themselves up proudly, their duty done. They never deny or skulk. I am certain they will walk free after the trial in December.”
The matchmaker nods vehemently. “And as for Chanda: What a shameless girl she was, sister-ji, so brazen. She not only had poor Jugnu killed by moving in with him, she also ruined the lives of her own poor brothers who had to kill them—if that was what happened, of course. Let’s hope they are found not-guilty in December. But what I fail to understand is how Shamas-brother-ji could have allowed the two of them to live together in sin? And how did you, Kaukab, manage to tolerate it, you who are a cleric’s daughter—born and brought up in a mosque all your life?”
The matchmaker holds her mustard kameez against the veil that Kaukab has brought. “This is a perfect match, Kaukab.” She holds the soft veil against the back of her hand. “It’s not georgette. Is it chiffon?”
Kaukab nods. “Japanese. From the shop way over there on Ustad Allah Bux Street. I don’t go there often—white people’s houses start soon after that street, and even the Pakistanis there are not from our part of Pakistan.”
“I have just been to that street. Do you remember years ago I tried to arrange a marriage between your Jugnu and a girl from that street, a girl named Suraya? No? Well anyway, nothing came of that, of course, and so I found a man for her in Pakistan. But now unfortunately she has been divorced. The
Kaukab rings Ujala’s number and stays on the line until the answering machine has played the two sentences spoken by him, and then she quickly replaces the receiver. Just then the doorbell rings.
“Jugnu?” Kaukab whispers to herself and then rushes across the room on legs trembling with excitement to let him in. Ujala? Charag and his littleson? Mah-Jabin?, but it’s a neighbourhood woman, the matchmaker, come to ask Kaukab if she has a veil that would go with the mustard-coloured shalwar-kameez she’s brought with her.
“I’ll need to borrow it just for one day, Kaukab. Moths chewed out holes the size of digestive biscuits from my own mustard-coloured veil and I haven’t been able to find the replacement of the exact shade,” she explains.
“I think I do have a veil of that colour upstairs. Its edges are crocheted, though—that won’t be a problem, will it? A row of little five-petalled flowers. Quite discreet.”
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, the matchmaker talks while Kaukab goes up to her bedroom, taking the mustard kameez with her. Of course the woman wants to talk about the arrest of Chanda’s shopkeeper brothers.
From the stairs, Kaukab says, “They are saying, sister-ji, that the police got the breakthrough completely by chance. They had spent hundreds of hours investigating the case but the main clue came not in England, but in the Pakistani village where Chanda’s parents are from. A white Detective Sergeant from here in Dasht-e-Tanhaii had flown to that village to make enquiries into a suspected fraud case—a case totally unrelated to the lovers’ alleged murder, I say ‘alleged’ because I don’t believe Jugnu and Chanda are dead—and there he happened to hear a chance remark: apparently Chanda’s brothers had confessed everything to their relatives in the village. The Detective Sergeant flew to England and informed his colleagues who then went to Pakistan to collect witnesses. Sister-ji, the white police are interested in us Pakistanis only when there is a chance to prove that we are savages who slaughter our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.”
The matchmaker narrows her eyes: “Imagine, they flew all the way to Pakistan just to be able to brand us Pakistanis murderers, at £465 a ticket, £510 if they minded the overnight stop at Qatar and went direct.”
Kaukab brings her the veil. “I know Chanda’s brothers are innocent because those who commit crimes of honour give themselves up proudly, their duty done. They never deny or skulk. I am certain they will walk free after the trial in December.”
The matchmaker nods vehemently. “And as for Chanda: What a shameless girl she was, sister-ji, so brazen. She not only had poor Jugnu killed by moving in with him, she also ruined the lives of her own poor brothers who had to kill them—if that was what happened, of course. Let’s hope they are found not-guilty in December. But what I fail to understand is how Shamas-brother-ji could have allowed the two of them to live together in sin? And how did you, Kaukab, manage to tolerate it, you who are a cleric’s daughter—born and brought up in a mosque all your life?”
The matchmaker holds her mustard kameez against the veil that Kaukab has brought. “This is a perfect match, Kaukab.” She holds the soft veil against the back of her hand. “It’s not georgette. Is it chiffon?”
Kaukab nods. “Japanese. From the shop way over there on Ustad Allah Bux Street. I don’t go there often—white people’s houses start soon after that street, and even the Pakistanis there are not from our part of Pakistan.”
“I have just been to that street. Do you remember years ago I tried to arrange a marriage between your Jugnu and a girl from that street, a girl named Suraya? No? Well anyway, nothing came of that, of course, and so I found a man for her in Pakistan. But now unfortunately she has been divorced. The
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