The Women's Courtyard Read online

  KHADIJA MASTUR

  The Women’s Courtyard

  Translated from the Urdu by DAISY ROCKWELL

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  The Women’s Courtyard

  Past

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Present

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Afterword

  Footnote

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  Advance Praise for the Book

  ‘One of the iconic modern Urdu novels. Basically about Partition—and about how people observed it and what actually happened to them—it is a highly symbolic narrative of fractured lives and peoples. Poignant, and in many ways prophetic of the events that happened after Partition, it is a novel that deserves much greater notice than it has received so far. It is a good thing that Daisy Rockwell, a knowledgeable and committed translator of Urdu and Hindi, has chosen to bring this truly great novel—and not just by a woman, but great by any standards—to the wider world through her English translation’

  SHAMSUR RAHMAN FARUQI

  acclaimed author of The Mirror of Beauty

  ‘Beyond the astute, masterful exercise of a translator’s art, her sensitive choices in diction and idiom, Daisy Rockwell’s translations are rendered with a subtle brilliance that transports our master writers’ original framework of sensibilities with great delicacy into a new language. We are fortunate to have, in Rockwell, a meticulous, virtuoso translator working on our literature’

  MUSHARRAF ALI FAROOQI

  acclaimed author of Between Clay and Dust

  The

  Women’s

  Courtyard

  Past

  1

  A winter’s night grows desolate so quickly. Today as well, clouds had been gathering since evening. There was a chill in the air now, and the electric street lamp burned silently. Across the gali, an owl hooted from the thicket of trees near the half-built school building, its ominous voice adding to the bleakness of the night. It was a bit quieter in the large room next door now—she could no longer hear Chammi tossing and turning.

  She’s sleeping soundly, Aliya thought with longing—she herself couldn’t get to sleep. Not being able to sleep at night is so very painful—even worse in a completely new place. Perhaps first nights in new places must always be spent sleeplessly like this. She tried once again to fall asleep, casting the room in darkness by pulling the shutters partly closed, then covered her face with the quilt and lay down as though she were actually asleep.

  After lying there motionless for a long time, she felt the whole effort had gone to waste. Sleep was nowhere in sight and memories of the past kept whirling through her mind. She sat up on her bed, cross-legged, feeling helpless. She opened the shutters and began to look outside. The school building on the other side of the gali, the dense mango and pipal trees—all were shrouded in darkness. Everything had looked so clear and lovely in the evening. She had sat at the window and gazed out with some interest then; but now, in the darkness, the trees looked like black mountains, and when a sharp gust of wind blew, they looked frightening, like something out of the ghost stories she’d heard in childhood.

  I’ll never get to sleep this way, she thought, and pulled the shutters closed again. Her body ached as she lay down. The anxiety of a full day’s journey had drained her.

  ‘Oh my!’ she moaned. ‘Now I can’t sleep—so long as I can’t clear my mind there’ll be no room for sleep!’ Memories rushed in from all sides. People say you should forget the past. What’s the point of turning and looking back? Just keep moving forward. But her past was all she’d inherited. Her past, from which she’d learnt so much. How could she wrench herself away from it now? And now, ever more memories filled her head because of how she’d come to be here.

  She had no idea if Amma was also asleep—the house had grown so silent. Someone passing through the lane in the chill night air sang out in a shivering voice:

  For you, darling, I was needlessly disgraced . . .

  Would this night ever end? ‘Abba, how are you spending your nights in jail?’ She clutched her knees to her stomach anxiously. From somewhere far off came the sound of the bell striking eleven.

  A light rain began to fall. Gusting drops blew against the shutters, thrumming a faint melody.

  What would life be like now? She was frightened at the thought. It was so dark in the room. She felt as though her question was similarly shrouded in darkness as she closed her eyes fearfully. Sleep was still far off, but memories of the past settled in to help her pass the night.

  2

  The new district had looked quite bleak. Red-brick houses were arranged in no particular order, as though someone had just picked them up and scattered them about. But there had been so many temples for such a small place! The golden spires lifted their heads as though praying to God. The faint sounds of priests singing hymns and ringing bells could be heard in the house from morning till evening.

  And there had been so many trees there. Both sides of the dusty dirt roads were lined with dense mango, jamun and pipal trees. Wayfarers would spread their turban cloths out in the shade of those trees, lay their heads on their travelling bundles, and sleep soundly. It had been spring then. The mango flowers had already blossomed. The cuckoos sang all day.

  When Abba had been transferred to that new place she had found it so lonely and sad, yet it was there that her intellect had awoken and she had developed a new-found capacity for thinking and understanding.

  Large bundles of their belongings had been left all about the courtyard on the day they moved into the new house, and Abba started opening these with the help of the chaprasi he had been assigned from the division. Amma seemed totally disconnected from the house and the luggage, but all the same she kept walking about the house, gazing at the high-arched veranda, the rooms, the bathroom and so on. Aliya’s elder sister, Tehmina, went about picking up small items with downcast eyes and placing them in various rooms. Amma lay half-reclining on an easy chair, a look of distinct displeasure on her face. Aliya’s cousin Safdar squatted under the arch of the veranda, his weak shoulders sagging.

  ‘You help your uncle too,’ Amma had said, gazing over at Safdar scornfully.

  ‘Leave him be, he’s still weak from the fever, and he’s also tired from the journey,’ Abba had said softly.

  ‘That one is always tired,’ grumbled Amma, and she angrily began to help Abba open the bundles. Tehmina glanced nervously at Safdar, and then gazed down again with a frightened look.

  That day it had seemed to Aliya that the atmosphere of the house was terribly strained. The grimaces on everyone’s faces upset her all the more. She missed their old place.

  There, all the offi
cers’ yellow bungalows had been built in a row, and there had been a mango orchard close by, as well as a small pond, where children and buffalo bathed together. There had been many girls and boys her age to play games with all day long. And when there was nothing else to do, they would throw mud balls at the buffalo. They’d slip into the garden and steal small unripe mangoes, and when they were caught in the act, the groundsman wouldn’t scold them at all, instead picking up fruit that had fallen on the ground and giving it to the children himself.

  ‘You are our masters’ children,’ he’d say affectionately, patting their heads. Kamala and Usha would make faces at him, taunting him for his large teeth, but he never got angry.

  At night, Aliya would demand that the cook, Khansaman Bua, tell her stories, such as the tale of the prince and the princess who slept in the same bed with a sword lying between them. This story always worried her greatly. What if the prince or the princess shifted in their sleep and someone got cut? ‘Sweetheart, people in stories don’t get cut,’ Khansaman Bua would explain to her, but that did nothing to lessen her anxiety. As she herself was falling asleep she dared not move at all. Who knew if that sword might have made its way into her own bed?

  Khansaman Bua told her many amusing tales, such as the story of Raja Bhoj and Gangu Teli, and the tale of the puppet that ate up everything in the king’s palace. The puppet’s story was so entertaining. When the king received word of the puppet’s evil deeds, the news was sung very sweetly:

  That wooden puppet, oh, king, she’s gone and devoured all the horses!

  ‘Khansaman Bua, when they sang that to the king, didn’t he get angry?’ she would ask with astonishment.

  ‘No, dear, kingly folk have very delicate temperaments, you must tell them everything nicely. Otherwise they might throw you and your whole family into the oil press.’ And when Aliya felt scared, Khansaman Bua would hold her to her chest, sticky with sweat.

  The only connection she had with Amma was that she’d hug her when she came inside from playing. Amma would speak affectionately to her and tell her to go play again. Abba she saw only from a distance. He went to the office in the morning, and in the evening the sitting room would fill with his friends. They all talked and laughed loudly, and Khansaman Bua would make them cup after cup of tea.

  After Aliya was enrolled in school, her world became broader. Several of her girlfriends had also started school and she made friends with new girls as well. When she came home after school, Safdar would call her to him, ask her questions about her studies, and laugh heartily at her every response—‘Oh my, you know absolutely nothing!’ he would tease. She didn’t like it one bit and would attempt to run away from him as soon as possible.

  When she entered class five, she began to play more refined games on the advice of Khansaman Bua. A large doll’s house was built in one corner of the yard, where the dolls would get married and wedding processions would depart with great fanfare. The dolls would have babies, and she would stitch them clothing from piles of scraps Tehmina had given her. Khansaman Bua always served sweets on special occasions, such as weddings and births. Sometimes she would even make zardah. On such days, Kamla, Usha and Radha would not observe the rules of untouchability and openly consume the sweet rice.

  But here there was nothing. She walked outside and looked all around: some shepherds drove their goats along and a handful of naked children sat playing in the dirt. She could see two small mud huts. There was only one two-storey house near theirs, and the chaprasi’s yellow mud hut. She stared for a long time at the tall two-storey house but she saw no girls that she could make friends with. A man came out and walked quickly down the steps, holding up the hem of his brilliantly white dhoti, and strode away. After that she could hear someone singing and playing a harmonium from the upper storey. She repeated the verses of the song to herself but found them boring.

  Birds twittered loudly from the trees. She went and sat dully in the doorway to the sitting room. She felt like sobbing loudly, tearing at her clothes and running away.

  ‘Sweetie, come over here to me!’ The wife of the chaprasi was leaning over the low mud wall surrounding the yard, calling out to her.

  ‘Humph!’ she said, and went back inside.

  Quite a bit of their luggage had been put away by now. The easy chairs had been set out in the courtyard and the chaprasi had made tea. Tehmina, Safdar, Abba and Amma were all sitting around silently, looking tired. No one said anything to her. There was a small henna plant in the middle of the yard with leaves that were turning bright green. She filled a pot with some water and began pouring it over the plant.

  ‘Drink some tea, Aliya.’ Safdar spoke to her so affectionately for the first time that day that she went over and sat down on the chair next to him.

  ‘You feel anxious, Aliya, it’s a new place, and you don’t even have anyone to play with.’ She burst into tears when Safdar patted her on the head. He was the only one who understood how she felt. She leant over and lay across his lap. When Amma looked over at her sternly, she closed her eyes to protect herself. Amma began ordering the chaprasi around in a harsh tone: ‘Your responsibilities are outside the house. You can’t do any inside work. Arrange for a maid for us right away, but make sure that she isn’t young; such women don’t do a bit of work.’

  ‘As you wish, ma’am. It will be arranged by tomorrow.’

  Evening was falling and Abba picked up his thin cane to go outside for a walk. Amma stared once at Safdar from the corner of her eyes. ‘Go now, play,’ Amma said mechanically, as she grabbed Aliya’s hand and lifted her up. Aliya went back outside to the doorway and stood there. Smoke rose from the upper storey of the house across the way. She could hear the clanging of temple bells.

  ‘Humph! Play? Play with whom! Who is there here in this jungle?’ She felt overwhelmed with grief. ‘She’s telling me to stay in the house or sit in this doorway and play,’ she muttered. On top of that, everyone else was sitting inside, looking grumpy. She began to choke up.

  ‘Come, sweetie, have some chapati.’ The chaprasi’s wife leant over the wall again. Aliya quickly wiped away her tears and turned her face away.

  ‘Aliya.’ Tehmina had come to stand behind her, her huge eyes downcast. ‘Come inside, it’s getting dark now. My, what a beautiful place this is, isn’t it?’ She sighed deeply and looked far off, then wrapped Aliya’s arm around her waist and brought her inside. As they passed by the small room near the sitting room, she stopped for a moment and stood still. Safdar was hunched over a book spread out on the table, reading near the lantern.

  The beds had been set up in a row in the courtyard. Tehmina’s bed was next to the henna plant, and Aliya’s was next to that. She lay down silently on her bed. The moon was rising. The sky was still light, but she could see Tehmina’s face even more clearly than the sky in the faint darkness of the yard. She had realized for the first time that day that Tehmina was distracted all the time. At that moment too, she sat on her bed tearing up the leaves of the henna plant and scattering them about in a preoccupied manner.

  The wick of the lantern beneath the arch of the veranda was set very low. The chaprasi was cooking in the kitchen. Amma walked from room to room with the other lantern held high.

  ‘When you enter school, you’ll make friends with many girls.’ Tehmina turned towards Aliya and reached out to hold her hand, caressing it softly. But Aliya was too upset for Tehmina’s affection to make any difference. She pulled her hand back and looked away. Then she began to watch the birds flying in the sky and, somehow, she didn’t even notice that she had drifted off to sleep.

  ‘Oh my, Aliya, you went to sleep without any dinner?’ Aliya started and opened her eyes. Safdar was leaning over her.

  ‘Why did you need to wake her?’ Amma spoke in the same tone she used to scold the chaprasi. Safdar was about to walk away when Aliya grabbed his hand, leant over and wrapped herself around his legs. He glanced over at Amma a few times, then sat down and laid Aliya’s head in his
lap.

  ‘Tell me a story, Safdar—there’s not even any Khansaman Bua here,’ she said tearfully.

  ‘What story do you want to hear?’

  ‘That one about the princess whose father puts her in a palanquin and sends her off to the jungle.’ She requested the story without caring what Amma might think. Tehmina sat up on her bed respectfully.

  ‘I’ll tell you a different story. It’s about a poor boy who loves a princess. Yes, so listen, there once was a boy . . .’

  Tehmina looked around nervously.

  3

  The rain had grown stronger. The wind seemed to knock at the door. Chammi was mumbling in her sleep. Aliya hid her face in the quilt as all different insignificant details came back to her . . .

  Safdar looked so handsome, but so meek. Amma’s extreme hatred was the cause of that meekness. Abba loved him every bit as much as Amma hated him. He was always considerate of even his smallest needs. Tehmina did not speak to Safdar, but she looked after him secretly as well. Amma was very upset that Safdar’s education was being paid for out of her husband’s money, and that despite earning an FA degree, all he did was lie around comfortably, reading frivolous books, with no thought of earning a living. She was always enraged at him. ‘How will he make a living off those books?’ she’d cry. ‘This wretch won’t leave until he’s ruined me.’

  This was when Aliya had also started hearing a new name: ‘Najma Aunty’—Abba’s youngest sister, who studied at Aligarh College and lived there in the hostel. During the holidays she would visit her eldest brother’s home. Najma Aunty loathed Amma, and whenever Amma thought of her, the snake of her hatred hissed loudly. Though Najma Aunty was far from Amma’s sight, Safdar was always right before her, and Amma did not know how to get rid of him.

  Amma was totally absorbed in her troubles, and Abba was lost in his own world. When he came home from the office, he’d spend only half an hour or so there. Amma would quarrel over something or other and Abba would immediately leave the house; but he had all sorts of friends who came by to have animated discussions with him.