Sughraa

Nusrat has returned home after two years. And we do not know whether to celebrate her return or to hang her high for scorching the family name. She had disappeared on her way to college. And now she has returned with an illegitimate baby. Amid the cacophonous ramblings in the house, Amma, melting with emotion, hugs her clumsily. While I am torn between muted anger and disbelief, no clear response comes from father. Except for casting a cursory policeman’s look that examines her like recovered chattel, he has not said a word. His gaze deflects on to the empty wall behind Nusrat where she stands transfixed, waiting for his final verdict.

As days go by father does not mind Nusrat staying at the house but he has been avoiding her. He spends most of his time patrolling the streets. He comes home late, consumed after the day’s hectic swirl and crashes on the bed, uniform and all. He avoids Bubble, Nusrat’s baby whose shrill squeaks fill the tense void of the house. Bubble is learning to walk. As he explores the new surroundings, he stumbles and rolls like a soft ball, wanting to be picked up and comforted, Only Amma picks him up.

When Nusrat was gone we were devastated but our pride was intact. We prayed for her safe return every day. Father would meet with the police and civil officials to press for Nusrat’s return. But the moment Nusrat put her foot in the house, his attitude changed. Nusrat is a defiled, stigmatized commodity, better off dead than alive. It is odd that Nusrat who suffered the most in her ordeal is willing to put her feet on the ground and move on but we wouldn’t let her.

We come from a farming family of Raajputs, the descendants of rajas. But instead of farming, my father, Raana Muhammad Alamgir Khan Niazi joined the Punjab Police as a sub-inspector. He was stationed in Jaranwala, a dusty tehsil of Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), in Punjab, Pakistan. In the rural Jaranwala, the appearance of any first class rogue in police uniform can send chills down the spines of ordinary mortals. Father is huge. And, fat. With his twirled mustache, heavy jaws, v-shaped threaded bars on the sleeves and the hardware he dons on his mammoth chest, he commands fear. Peddlers stop at our door in the morning to drop off daily supply of fresh meat, poultry, milk, ice, soda water, fruit, and other provisions. The Paan shop at the old city square serves as the repository of taxes father exacts from every truck driver, bus driver and tonga walah. Whenever quick cash is needed, father kick-starts his Indian motorcycle, installs himself at the main Lahore-Jaranwala Road, extorts money from drivers, and comes home fuming at the deteriorating condition of lawlessness in the town.

Father has resolved many murder cases and property disputes in the area. He dispenses quick justice, calibrated in proportion to the amount of cash paid by litigants. Those who have no desire or patience for the lengthy civil or criminal court proceedings concede to father’s rash arbitration. His verdict is final as he has connections with higher ups at the zilla katchehry.


Nusrat was father’s favorite. Among Jaranwala’s greasy socialites, she wore trendy denim jeans and men’s shirts and rode to school on bike. A servant would follow her, running, with books and a lunch box in each hand. Hashmat Baig was an old, trusted hand, an employee at father’s office who rarely shows up at the police station. He runs behind Nusrat’s ten-speed with unkempt turban billowing around his beleaguered frame. We never paused to think about Hashmat’s predicament. No, she would not stoop down to such level. I am sure that Nusrat was spoiled to the core. There were rumors of her numerous affairs, often ending for lack of convenience.

One day, on her way to school, Nusrat disappeared. Hashmat was found unconscious with a gash on his skull, and clueless about Nusrat’s whereabouts. Someone had hit him from behind. All of father’s influence and Amma’s heart rending supplications failed to bring her back.

Two years later, Nusrat has returned home with a child in her lap. Her abduction was the handiwork of a local zamindaar who fell for her unabashed ways and abducted her in broad daylight. Nusrat was transported to Rahim Yaar Khan where she was kept in hiding.

In her absence we were getting used to the tense but apparently calm atmosphere in the house. Her sudden appearance has prompted questions from well-wishers that are difficult to explain. Suddenly, Nusrat is a woman and a mother. The cataclysm has made father’s pompous head bow in shame. He cannot accept the violent mutation of his daughter, a college freshman, to an atrophied bibi, a reality that only mother has accepted.

Nusrat now lives with her husband in a haveli with scores of servants and money to burn. Her husband is the biggest landowner in the area. He permanently leases a suite in Hotel D’ Palace, at Anarkali, Lahore. I have been there. It is close to the Mall and Lahore High Court where Bhai Jaan has to attend his frequent peshis. Though our families are on speaking terms, father does not like to visit Bhaijan at his house. Nusrat sends ghee, sacks of wheat, brown sugar, fruit, fresh vegetables and cash to Amma. She lends us servants to help mother with daily chores. And, that is how Sughraa came to live with us.

Sughraa is fifteen. Tall, but frail. She hangs in the tense and atmosphere of the thanedaar household very dexterously, always there when needed and invisible otherwise. She helps Amma with cooking, cleaning, and washing. And she is on Nusrat’s payroll. In the past few months, the hefty leftovers from our dining table have started filling her in all her finer spots. Nusrat’s discarded clothes adorn her royally. Sughraa anoints her arms, face, and hair with ghee, rubbing the oil on her palms and applying it on her extremities. She is an aggregate of primal instincts, always hungry, hiding behind the pillars, and watching. She has calluses on her leathery face. She braids her lush hair very tightly, pulling the skin that makes her forehead look expansive. Underneath the curved forehead beam brown eyes that survey the domestic scene with an owlish curiosity, gathering and processing data to understand what is going on.


But wait, there is more to Sughraa!

Her name is like a musical note that flutters like the painted wings of a butterfly in the golden glow of summer afternoons. She is of deep dark olive-green complexion, with a round face, and wild tigress’s jaded eyes that shimmer in the sun. When she speaks, one can notice the pink velvety insides of her mouth that harbor two full rows of pearl-white teeth. The flange of her left ear has been pierced in frenzied repetitions at uneven intervals as if someone did not know where the needle would land. The perforations are empty, boasting of no ear rings or threads to keep the holes intact. The long supple neck that bears the load of her head curves outwards toward the expanse of shoulders that in turn yield to two full arms attempting to hide the swelling of a nascent bosom. When Sughraa speaks, the relaxed nasal tonality of her voice issues like slivers of Om Kulthum’s honeyed whispers that puncture the midnight blue silence in forlorn Egyptian deserts. Under the confluence of her winged eyebrows a sleek nose with rimmed nostrils stands watch above the cleft of slowly ripening lips.

Sughraa loves guavas. She eats in small bites, covering the circumference of raw fruit with her curved palm, spitting out the seedy morsels in the waste basket. I remember when working in the kitchen she had placed the half-eaten fruit on the table linen. I took out my handkerchief from my pant pocket and wrapped the left over fruit in it as she watched. “What will you do with it”? She had asked. I said I had to see the bite marks from her teeth. I hid the fruit behind my books for many days until it rotted and had to be thrown away.

Every time I get a scratch while working on rose bushes, I run to the medicine cabinet for some handy ointment to sooth the burning feeling. Once, when I could not find any thing, Sughraa put the tip of her index finger in her mouth and ran the moist finger on the rash. I looked at her. Her quivering glances were avoiding me, giving no further concession. I knew she liked me. At least I think so. She has never calls me by my name.


Once in a while, Amma beats her up without a reason “to keep her straight”. Sughraa retreats to her room and props up against the headboard probably wishing she were dead. The room is dark. She covers her face and cries silently. Her arms folded on chest. I walk in the room and tease her:


Dar’d naa dussan, ghul’di jaa’waan
Raaz naa kholan, mukdi jaa’waan
Wag di waa de tar’ley paa’waan
Kis noon dil day daagh di’kha’waan
Kidh’ray naa pain’di’yaan dassan, way par’desiya

I wished Sughraa could read Faiz, instead of looking like one of his poems! Sughraa can cry inwardly without letting a sob out.

At night Sughraa sleeps in the barn to watch for the Panj Kalyaan that Nusrat has given us. The barn has no light. A thick cotton wick soaked in mustard oil burns with a thick column of smoke. Its yellow, feeble light trembles on her dark complexion as she mends holes in her fate, eyes focusing on the imaginary needle, piercing in and out of the worn out tissue.

One night, as I was brushing teeth in the bathroom at other end of the corridor, I saw father forcing and dragging Sughraa to his room. Next day, mother beat her up, again. She is black and blue. This time Sughraa left our house. She refuses to work for us. She refuses to work for Nusrat too. At last, she can make her own choices, that hapless creature, that Sughraa who props up stinking dung circles on the walls of her clay house and sleeps among livestock in the barn. She can show such courage!

She is gone now and the feeling stabs me like a blunt dagger. Someone pokes my heart with angular rocks, squeezing the life sap out of its many chambers. I think of Sughraa and the trail of sorrow that greeted her at my parents’ house.


I hear that Sughraa is engaged to a man from her bradari. I have also heard that father has sent 5,000 rupees to Sughraa’s father to hush him up. I hear dholak songs rise in the air. The thought of someone marrying her crushes me. Young girls are singing. They make fun of her would-be-in-laws. I feel the stench of burning tissue. Someone is scorching the trees with bird tucked in the branches. Just when leaves drop and one can see the nests in the branches, so can I feel Sughraa’s suffering as I drop my vanity! I can see Sughraa, a mutilated dove who took refuge at my house and lost her innocence. I hear Faiz:

Is waq’t to yoon lagta hai ab kutchh bhi nahin hai
Mah’taab naa suraj, naa undhaira naa s’wera

Aanknon ke dree’chon peh kisi hus’n ki chil’mun
Aur dil ki p’nah gah’oon mein kisi dar’d ka dera

Sha’khoon mein kh’yalon ke ghan’ey paid ki shaa’ed
Ab aa ke ka’rey ga naa koi kh’waab b’sera

Ik ber naa ik meh’r, naa ik rab’t naa rishtaa
Tera koi apna, naa p’raya koi mera

In the still hours of night I cannot sleep. I imagine Sughraa’s inner sanctums being invaded by rabid hyenas. For the rest of her life Sughraa cannot smile. No more flowers; no laughter-filled echoes! No muted tingling of her bracelets around my ears. Only her vanquished body betraying the silent echoes of dreams her untamed imagination weaved in the flickering lamp light in the barn-- ransom to be paid by a weak, inarticulate dreamer! I see Sughraa mourning in red bridal clothes. They are anointing her body to prepare her for poachers who shall rob her of her virtue in the thick of the night. I see vultures clamping their claws on the cadaver.

The countdown has begun. The hourglass broken, releasing the foul sap; blood seeping from the ruptured veins.

I must stop wailing and do something.

I go to Sughraa’s house. I see greedy mouths and bulging stomachs gathered to sanctify one more heinous sin with their shameless presence; to devour biryani and chicken. Inside, rustic women sing their bucolic songs, clapping their hands in a mechanical rhythm. Their distant sounds grope the environment searching for relevance. They have gathered to celebrate another Inca sacrifice, coerce another sister, another daughter to jump from the mountain top to please the monster gods.

I locate her father who is sitting among his counterparts. He greets me, happy that I could come to bless the wedding. I tell him to stop the proceedings. I tell him I should be the one marrying Sughraa. Her father is speechless. He begs me to leave and looks at others for help. There is a big commotion and police is called. The person responding to the call is my own father. He is astonished to see me at Sughraa’s house and tries to pull me away. I resist. He slaps me but I do not relent. A crowd gathers around, pushing and shoving me, their insults circling like a swarm of mad flies. Someone hits me from behind and blood creeps on my eyes. I hear my father yelling. He raises the butt of his rifle up high, clenching his jaws and hits me in the head, and I fall. My senses fail me and I faint.