by Zara Zaheer Chowdhary
The royal city of Baroda gets mucky in the monsoons. Beneath slabs of concrete, in the veins of gravel, the dust waits. And with the first showers at the end of summer, those slimy fingers of brown slush start to reach for ankles, toes, little openings in the seams of shoes and chappals. The fingers get you just when you think you’ve gotten away.
*
The lane outside Nida’s home is covered in mud when she swoops down the staircase that morning— as only a 13 year old can— her delicate palm skimming the balustrade. The rain is pelting down and all she has shielding her is a thin muslin dupatta. She lands with a nimble jump in a puddle. The fringes of her white shalwar absorbing beige teardrops. She looks around, biting her lip. The entire length of the street has turned the color of rotting wood, the kind her sixteenth century home is built of.
The filigreed balcony upstairs where she and her father Rafiq live is peeling pistachio paint. It circles the upper storey and winds down the stairs in bygone gaiety to where Rafiq’s younger brother Taher and his family live. Across from the stairs, live Doctor Uncle—Rafiq’s closest childhood friend—and his wife Shireen. Marble squares, weathered through the centuries, form elegant pathways from one door to the other, especially useful when rains turn their wilting gardens into muddy swamps. These ancient wooden kothis cloister together in blood loyalty, a last bastion against the steel and concrete closing in on them. Families leave their doors un-latched so cousins and neighbors can roam and peep at will, taking a shortcut to a parallel street or a sniff at what’s cooking in the kitchen.
The only thing the residents never mention are the secrets these doors guard—of the hedonistic Nawabs who once ruled the city and whose ministers built these kothis, but also the more mundane everyday secrets of their penniless heirs: The extra bag of basmati which Doctor Uncle and Shireen Aunty hide behind their gas cylinder. They know Rafiq, being the miser he is, will stop buying groceries entirely if he finds there’s more to borrow. Or the secret of Nida’s favorite Barbie that Fatima, her cousin from downstairs broke and buried in panic. The blonde doll head remains buried under the pink bougainvillea and sometimes bobs up when the courtyard floods. The name of Nida’s classmate Dhruv— five jagged alphabets— carved with a pencil blade into the bottom step where she usually sits waiting for the bus in the mornings. Sometimes she runs her fingers over the inscription struggling to hold on to a fading memory of the day their fingers had barely touched in the classroom. Nida’s smile is like a guarded secret too, let out only on mornings like these when she’s blissfully alone.
The door across creaks open and her smile quickly fades. Doctor Uncle steps out into the courtyard and his broad fair face breaks into a grin,
“Do you need a ride, beta? The news guys are saying it’ll be like this all week.”
Nida looks up at the pregnant clouds.
“Come, you don’t want to spoil your uniform in this weather. Especially that beautiful… white shalwar.”
An old simmering anger starts to move inside her, thick like the mud. It surges up to her throat. Nida has yet to learn how to guide anger to her lips. It tends to form watery pools in her eyes instead. Her father appears, stretching at the top of the stairs.
“Haan, jaao. Go with Doctor Bhai in the car aaram se. Your bus isn’t coming in this weather.”
Nida glares at her father, her mouth an obstinate line: No, Abbu. I don’t want to. Instead she climbs into the passenger seat as Doctor Uncle revs up the engine. The gearshift of his tiny car lies between the two passengers and as he pulls the stick into first the back of his hand grazes her thigh. He fans his fingers open and grips the stick with just his thumb and first finger. The other three remain hovering close to her skin, separated only from his by her beautiful white shalwar. Nida looks upstairs at her father: bent over, picking up the soaked newspaper from the balcony floor. Tears sting the rim of her eyes: You should have said no, you stupid girl. This is all your fault.
*
The downpour continues over the weekend. Nida’s aunt Rabia from downstairs, insists the girls spend the afternoon learning to make thinner and softer rotis instead of splashing about in the courtyard. Doctor Uncle sends Shireen Aunty over to check if they’d like to play games on his new computer instead.
Fatima really wants to go, but Nida convinces her they’d rather knead, roll and toast. “We could make ourselves roti-pizzas!”
Fatima is easy to distract. When they’re done, Rabia sends them to invite Rafiq downstairs for dinner. As everyone digs in to the succulent gosht ka salaan and hot rotis, Taher watches his younger brother. Back from one prayer at the neighborhood mosque, he’s hurriedly wolfing down his dinner, in preparation for the next.
Taher turns to his daughter. “Fatima, have you told Rafiq chacha about your new cycle?”
Fatima grins, shreds of mutton stuck in her upper braces. She oohs and aahs about how lovely and shiny and pink and fast it is. Rafiq seems to be having trouble chewing all of a sudden. He clears his throat and sips on his water.
“Why don’t you get one for Nida, Rafu?” Taher chips in, “the girls are old enough to cycle to school now.”
Nida pretends to fold a neat little niwala of her roti around the meat, but her heart is pounding as she listens for Rafiq’s reply. His voice booms a little too loud:
“You give your daughter too much freedom, Taher. A hundred things can go wrong between here and school. She could get hurt. Or she could end up standing under some tree holding hands with some good-for-nothing.”
Nida’s lips part barely enough to place the carefully folded morsel inside. She’s embarrassed by how her father sounds out of a terrible Hindi movie. It’s as if all of his emotional education has happened in either of two places: the neighborhood mosque or the single-screen theatre down the road.
Rabia, feeling the conversation thicken more than her gravy, jumps in, “Arre Rafiq bhai, it doesn’t have to be so extreme! Don’t buy a new one. Taher’s old cycle has been rusting away outside! He hasn’t used it since the car came. She can just get the seat lowered and use it. Hai na, Taher?”
Taher shrugs bored now of picking on his brother. Rafiq, who can never refuse free food and gifts, smiles gratefully at his sister-in-law, “Thank you bhabhijaan. I can’t imagine what we’d do without you.” He turns in Nida’s general direction but doesn’t meet his daughter’s eyes. “You better not break or damage Taya-abu’s cycle. You won’t get another one.”
Taher snorts under his breath but Rafiq seems to ignore it. Nida can barely hold back her smile. She can finally taste the spicy sweetness of the gravy for the first time since this meal began.
Next morning Nida hops onto the seat and starts to pedal across the yard just as Doctor Uncle opens his door to leave. The sun has decided to come out for a bit, and she can feel its warmth on the dupatta she has carefully draped all around her. She can also feel Doctor Uncle’s eyes burning into her back, watching her ride away. Out of reach. She suppresses an urge to giggle, as Fatima and she race towards the main road where commuters are already flooding the intersection.
At the dismissal bell Fatima and Nida peel out of the gates, dupattas fluttering behind them; like wings, unaware of this thing called the rear wheel that could entangle the cloth and choke the girls if it so chose. They’re riding on the main road and Nida enjoys glancing down the tiny by-lanes they ride past, particularly the deserted one to her right just before they reach the main chowk. Many of the small stores that once lined both sides of this street were attacked or burnt down in the riots two years ago. The more prudent owners had emptied their safes, bolted their properties and fled before the first fires had started. Other shops lay wide-open even today— looted, burnt and left to dissipate into ash and dust over time.
Nida comes to a stop and dismounts. She vaguely remembers seeing a bike repair shop down there. A dog barks halfway down the lane, warning her off his territory. Nothing besides the creature seems to live or move here, except slivers of trash hovering over the dusty road, glinting in the sun. A window clatters open at the far end of the lane just then. Nida squints to get a better look. There it is. A cycle tire hanging from a tree branch and underneath the tiny shop she almost missed. In the window an old man hovers— the cycle mechanic— stooped over what looks like one of those old kerosene stoves. He lights it up and stands there staring at his kettle. Nida smiles. She’s never seen someone stand guard over their chai. She watches mesmerized—how the thin spire of steam emerges from the spout and floats up to his wrinkled face— then draws in a sharp breath. The old man is staring right back at her.
She quickly mounts her seat and pedals away.
Over the next few days, Nida slows down every afternoon as she rides past the street. Some days the window is empty, clattering in the breeze. Other days it’s tightly shut. Once she sees the old man hunched over a small bike outside, fixing bells on the handlebar. Nida’s bike is built for a tall man like her uncle and the seat has begun to really hurt her while hopping on and off at traffic signals. Yesterday it caught the bottom of her kurta, ripping a hole in it. Fatima told her the seat can hurt ‘that area’ real bad and make her ‘not a virgin’.
“You’ll know it’s happened if it starts to bleed”, Fatima had smirked.
Nida is more worried about how Aunty Rabia will tch-tch at her torn clothes and gossip with Aunty Shireen as they sit in the yard peeling garlic pods. Poor woman died too soon they will say, didn’t even teach her daughter how to sew.
Nida turns into the lane and pedals quickly to the bike shop.
The old man looks up from his kettle as she rides towards him. He sips his chai from his cutting glass and disappears inside the shop. As she nears the door, she notices the gaping hole in the roof where a burning rag was probably chucked in by the mob. He hasn’t fixed it. Nida nervously calls out. “Bhai? Erm, are you open right now? I need a.. Oh!”
He appears in the doorway startling her.
“That seat is too high for you.” He looks straight past her, at the cycle and takes another slurp from his chai, his voice like the gravel she just rode over.
“Yes” Nida agrees, shivering. The cool afternoon breeze has found the hole in her kurta.
He grabs a pair of pliers and steps out from the shadows. He’s even frailer up close. The tattered cotton shirt billows around his hunched frame. Blue veins pop underneath his papery skin as he sets about undoing the seat. Nida watches him twist the seat’s screws back into place with shaky old man hands.
When he’s done he turns to her but there’s something softer, kinder in his eyes now. “It’s done, beta.”
She digs up a 20-rupee note from her purse and mumbles thanks as he walks past her back into the shop, doing a little salaam with his hand. She notices it’s covered in burn marks but doesn’t wince.
As she hops on and starts to pedal, Nida is surprised how she can push forward with more ease now. She doesn’t turn to look back. Fatima is waiting for her ahead. Her whiny voice carries down on the breeze.
“Why’d you race off without me? I waited for you at the gate for 20 minutes!”
“Arre! I was just getting this seat fixed..”Nida yells back.
Her dupatta slips off her shoulder. She dismounts lightly and easily to adjust it. As she pulls it back over her shoulder she feels something there.
A cold, wrinkled hand. Nida freezes.
She skims her hand over the area again. Nothing. She doesn’t dare to turn back and look at the shop. Instead, she looks ahead at Fatima who pulls a face at her, and takes off.”
Fatty! Wait!” Nida yells. She starts to pedal hard. She can feel the cold imprinted on her shoulder, in the shape of a papery old palm. She mutters the qalma under her breath, snatches of prayers her mother taught her. She merges onto the main road. Fatima is already far ahead, threading through the traffic. She’s trying to race home, stupid girl! The chowk is jammed as usual with cycles, motorbikes, rickshaws and cows. Nida pushes her feet down harder and flies toward the jam. She reaches up to her shoulder again and checks. Nothing. Phew.
A voice rasps behind her. “It’s done, beta.”
Nida jerks back to see if he’s really there, riding pillion on her carrier-rack. A loud horn blares to the left. An auto comes hurtling out of nowhere and smashes into her front wheel. Nida watches the world tilt— autos, cycles, cows, people blur as her head smacks into the tar road with a dull thud.
“She took quite a hit. But she’s a strong kid.”
Doctor Uncle’s voice is rasping too close for comfort. Though it’s probably his nauseating aftershave that has woken her. “I’ve checked her ribs. The bruise is nasty. But superficial. If she’s still in pain tomorrow bring her in for an x-ray. Ah, chalo, looks like she’s coming to.”
Her father’s worried voice carries from across the room. “Allah ka shukar.”
The aftershave wafts away just as the azaan blares out from the mosque nearby. Eyes still shut, Nida can hear Doctor Uncle’s heeled shoes shuffling beside her father’s chappals as they leave the room. They’re updating Rabia outside. She might wake up scared. Might need someone to hug. Might miss her mother. Rabia should go in. They should go say their prayers, say thanks for the child saved. Nida wonders if God has saved her cycle too. She opens her eyes, and sees she’s on a clinic bed hidden behind a curtain, her kurta has been pulled down in a hurry. The nausea comes rushing back to her mouth, thinking of those smooth, clinical hands pressing into her abdomen, fingers fanning out for whatever they can reach. All while her father must have stood, clicking his slippers impatiently a few feet away. Nida pushes aside the curtain. Pain jolts through her ribs, like a nightmarish shard stuck in her side. That voice, that feeling of someone’s palm on her shoulder. His hand. Standing alone in the florescent light of the clinic, she can’t help but think how it was a different touch. Cold but not nauseating like the warm, clean ones that had just roamed over her abdomen; a kinder hand. ‘It’s all in your head, you stupid girl’ she says to herself, wrapping her dupatta around her and heading outside.
*
Rabia and Fatima have kept a rickshaw waiting. Fatima keeps a hand protectively wrapped around her cousin’s wrist on the way home. Rabia keeps reaching past her own daughter to pat Nida’s head, softly praying under her breath. The auto stops outside a pharmacy and Rabia goes in to pick up the prescriptions.
“So?” Fatima turns to Nida, “ Was it worth it? Don’t you hide things from me Nida! I know you ran off to meet that guy.”
Nida’s voice is still weak, “What guy?” In the rearview mirror she can see the driver watching their exchange with benign interest. “I went to get my seat lowered at the cycle-wala’s shop.”
“Rubbish. You left me and took off the minute the school bell rang. And that Dhruv has been telling everyone you guys have kissed. Quick! Tell me! How was it? Like, was it worth a head injury and all?”
Nida feels her cheeks burn. “Dhruv is a liar.”
Rabia returns with a plastic bag full of medicines, and the rickshaw sputters back to a start. Once home they insist on walking her upstairs and tucking her into bed. But Nida says she wants to get some fresh air, so Rabia leaves her with instructions for the night dose, kisses her forehead and leaves. Fatima hugs her tight.
“I really thought you had died. When I looked back and saw you lying like that on the road…”
She gathers Nida in another rib-crushing squeeze. “And by the way”, her whisper tickles Nida’s ear.
“That bike shop? Abba used to go there... before the old man and his shop got burned down last year. Don’t lie to me again. Or I might have to tell Rafiq chacha…” She winks at her cousin and leaves.
Nida’s legs feel shaky. She stumbles to the staircase and sits down on the bottom step. Burned. Charred beyond recognition. That’s how her father and Doctor Uncle had found her mother. Her Ammi. A patch of embroidered dupatta had helped them identify her in the same street as the bike shop, where she’d gone to buy some eggs and milk.
A brisk breeze picks up. Nida wishes she had her mother’s shawl to pull around her. But their house at the top of the stairs is drowned in shadows. She draws her arms tighter around her knees and hugs them instead.
How could Fatima say the guy died? She saw him. She spoke to him. His voice. She’d heard his voice. Do ghosts drink chai? Her mother believed in ghosts. Her father would just touch his ears and fearfully utter the words for them. Bhoot. Pret. Jinn. And Ammi would laugh at him and say they’re just souls who aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. Had the old man been standing there waiting for his kettle to boil when they came for him?
In the darkness of Taher and Rabia’s house, the TV comes on. Fatima has sneaked out to the living room to watch old late night re-runs of Baywatch on mute again. Watching semi-porn with your parents asleep across a thin wall takes guts. Which Fatty has always had way more than you, you stupid girl. Nida smirks at how easily she scares at Fatima’s inane blackmail. What can Abbu do even if he finds out about Dhruv? It’s not like he can save her from the things that hurt. The eyes that follow her, the fingers that get to her.
Nida inhales deeply just as the night azaan rings through the silence. The clouds have returned. The dust in her courtyard has already come alive in anticipation. That sweet smell of geeli mitti wafts through the courtyard, shaking the bougainvillea, making loose petals float to the ground. Soon this will all be just mud. Dirt. Dhruv. Nida’s fingers feel for the spot on the steps where she’d scribbled his name. She should scratch it over with a new name. Haraam-zaada. Nida’s never cursed before. It feels good on her tongue. Exciting. She whispers it to no one and giggles. She says it again. Slower. Delicious. She can feel the surging anger in her veins move for the first time in a new direction. Her whole body starts to relax as newer words form on her lips— Haraam-zaada. Suvar. Kutta. Bhen-ch—. No. That one perhaps she should save for the one person deserving of it. Headlamps light up gate as Doctor Uncle’s car pulls up, disturbing the storm’s silence with its clunking engine.
Her father steps out of the passenger side and hurries to open the door for his friend. The men embrace and bid each other goodnight.
Doctor Uncle spots her first. “Arre, why aren’t you in bed?”
Rafiq looks at his daughter meeting her eyes as he hasn’t in years. He walks up to his daughter and holds her face in his palms.“So jaao, meri jaan. God has been very kind to us today.”He awkwardly kisses her head. “If I’d lost you too, I don’t know what I would…” Nida wants so much to hug him, to not let him finish that filmi dialogue but she knows he will recoil and the this moment they both so need will be lost. Doctor Uncle stands in his doorway watching them.
“Why don’t you go on to bed Rafiq? I can wait out here with her.”
Nida fights back the rising nausea and instead bravely smiles at her father. “Yes, Abbu. I’ll be up in ten minutes. I’m not sleepy yet.”
Rafiq smiles at his best friend and walks upstairs, disappearing indoors. Doctor Uncle walks across and sits down close to Nida. She can smell the rank sweat beneath the aftershave as he places his palm on her knee, his finger drawing circles around the embroidered flowers on her shalwar. Nida is frozen but doesn’t flinch.
“Such a pity we can’t see any stars tonight.” He says, looking up as thunder booms in the distance.
“It’s not my fault.” Nida says softly.
“Huh? What, beta?” He leans in closer.
Nida is suddenly aware of something else. There it is again—the palm on her shoulder. Weighing down, a cold electricity pulsing through it and into her warming her blood. She raises her voice and repeats. “It’s not my fault.”
The doctor lets out a nervous laugh, squeezing her knee. “Of course not, Beta. And you know I’m always here to take you…”
Nida pushes his wrist away and stands up. “No! This. You. This… is not my fault, you…”
She moves up a few stairs higher, out of arm’s reach and levels her gaze at him, Say it. Say it and walk away. With pride. Call him all the names he deserves! Say them!
But the surging, rising mud of anger misses her mouth yet again. She can feel it. It’s headed for her eyes. Nida’s lips wobble and she bites it hard mad at herself. The rain starts to fall in big, loud drops. The doctor looks worriedly towards the door he’s left ajar. His wife will not be happy about the soaked doormat.
“You should go to bed, beta.” he says and turns away, retracing his steps across the marble slabs to his house as the skies open and rain gushes down.
Tears stream down Nida’s face as she watches him run, hands covering his perfect round head. She barely notices the frail figure standing in the middle of the marble path, shirt billowing around him in the wind and rain. The doctor doesn’t see him either and walks right through the figure. Suddenly he misses a step, landing hard on his back, his perfect round head slamming into the wet stone with a clicking sound that is drowned instantly in the clickety-clack of the rain. From the top of the stairs, Nida can’t tell if those are fingers of mud reaching for the doctor’s head or tiny rivulets of blood flowing out.
Lightning tears through sky lighting up the whole courtyard, and for a brief second she sees the old man standing over the doctor’s twisted body, kind eyes looking straight at her. The wind carries his gravelly voice to her.
“It’s done.”
Nida shivering and shaking rushes up her stairs, inside her house and bolts the door shut. It’s not my fault, she mutters as she takes off her soaked dupatta.
Downstairs Aunty Shireen is putting away the last of the dishes, cursing her husband under her breath for leaving the door wide open, clattering in the wind.
Zara Zaheer Chowdhary is a third year MFA candidate in the Creative Writing and Environment program at Iowa State University. Until early 2017, she worked as a screenwriter in a movie production house in Mumbai before recently transitioning to literary prose.