Typhoon Read online

  Praise for The Holy Woman

  ‘A dramatic story of family intrigue, religious passions and riproaring romance’ – Michèle Roberts

  ‘A lean, lyrical meditation on tradition and independence, sensuality and sacrifice, set against the moral background of moral day Pakistan. Shahraz’s debut beguiles throughout’ – The Times

  ‘An all absorbing adventure, from a vivid imagination’

  – She magazine

  ‘An international best-seller … an extraordinary story of love and betrayal in rural Pakistan’ – Manchester Evening News

  ‘An intriguing tale of love, envy and jealousy … compulsive reading’ – Asian Times

  ‘A riveting family saga, where three young women are haunted by the events that occurred two decades earlier’

  – Bradford Telegraph & Argus

  ‘A very moving tale of love, passion and Islamic traditions … difficult to put down’ – BBC National Asian Network

  ‘Stunning debut novel. An intricate study of love, family, politics and sacrifice’ – Eastern Eye

  ‘A real story-telling gift’ – Sue Gee

  TYPHOON

  Qaisra Shahraz

  For my beloved parents Mohammed Aslam and Amina Akhtar

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Joan Deitch, John Shaw and Richard Seidel for all their support and hard work.

  My gratitude and thanks go to Lord Ahmed of Rotherham; Sir Anwar Pervez; Baroness Uddin; Gerald Kaufman MP; Ken Ashberry; Abdul Kadir Jaffer; Nargis Jaffer; Attiya Mahmood; Saba and Aamer Naeem; Prof. Akbar Ahmed, Dr Sidra Hasan; Mohamed Sarwar MP; Yacub Nizami; Naveed Aziz; Muhammad Shoaib; Nazia Khalid; Rahela Bano; Shahed Malik; Riaz Ahmad; Margaret Meyer; Hannah Henderson; Dr Robert Snell; Mohammed Anwar; Salman Asif; Amanda Challis; Ann Gibson; Masood Khan; Dr Afshan Khawaja; Abaidullah Naeem; Lynda Robinson; Shahed Saduallah; Dr Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid; Mohamed Ejaz; Sajad Ashraf; John Paine; Sara Aslam; Ifthikhar Ellahie; Tariq Tao; Moneeza Hashmi; Nyla Daud; Zubeida Mustapha; Qassim Afzal; Neil Broady; Khalid Hussain; Raza Khan; Maeve O’Connor; Anne Coulson; Nikki Bi; Monna Rizvi; Joanna Penty; Kamlesh Khetia; Mark Williams; Emily Hamer; Sobia; Jon Aitkens; Inga McVicar; Salim Syed; Saba Nayab; Dr Rose Mary Harley; Rafat Hussain; Sayyara Sayid; Rafaqat Hussain; Steve Baker; Mel Harris; Stuart Broom; Maqsood Ellakie Sheikh; Anabel Turpin and Dr Musharaf for their support.

  My deepest gratitude to my husband, Saeed as well as Suhail, Zulfiqar, Waqar, Sajida, Naushene, Farah and last but not least my three beloved sons Farrukh, Gulraiz and Shahrukh for their support.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  ONE

  TWO

  Part Two

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  Part Three

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  Part Four

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  THIRTY NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY ONE

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Part One

  The door opens

  on my sadness;

  there they come, my guests.

  There she is, the evening

  to lay a carpet of despair.

  There goes the night

  to speak of pain to the stars.

  Here comes the morning

  with its shining scalpel

  to open the wound of memory.

  Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911–84) Pakistan

  From ‘The Guest’ in

  The Penguin Book of Modern Urdu Poetry

  Selected and translated by Mahmood Jamal

  ONE

  Tuesday, May 2002

  THE VILLAGE OF Chiragpur was in mourning. Its revered head man, Baba Siraj Din, was dying. Straight after the call to prayer, from the mosque, the local qazi or judge made an emotional appeal to the villagers, to offer a special prayer for the departure of the old man’s soul.

  Inside his large whitewashed home Baba Siraj Din lay on his bed.

  ‘Thalak! I divorce you!’

  Those terrible words came echoing back down the years.

  The crimson lips curved into a smile, as she peeped up at him from behind the dark sunglasses – her long hair draping to her hips. A confident foot strapped in elegant black sandals had stepped out. The second one faltered, his stern mask of disapproval whipping away her smile.

  ‘Assalam Alaikum, Baba Jee!’ She greeted him politely.

  She was a stranger in ‘his’ village and one who didn’t attempt to cover her head in his presence. Siraj Din dismissed her salutation and pointedly ignoring her walked on. The woman remained standing next to her car, bewildered by his rudeness. He turned his henna-dyed head and rested his green gaze on her bare arms and the thick curtain of hair spread over her right shoulder. Tapping his ivory walking stick firmly on the ground, Siraj Din ruthlessly trod on.

  ‘Aba Jan!’ His daughter-in-law’s honey-sweet voice beckoned, willing him back to her world.

  The dying man’s head jerked up and nestled on a fresh cool spot on the pillow, he ignored Shahzada’s intrusive voice, returning instead to the reel of memories rolling away behind his age-worn eyelids.

  With the tightly-wound chador around her shoulders and bowed head, she glanced up from beneath the edge of the shawl. Her eyes were those of a wounded deer. Beseeching and resigned.

  ‘I divorce you!’ The words dropped on the hushed silence.

  The awed leaves on the tree in the courtyard stopped rattling. The warm afternoon breeze stilled. The villagers held their breath.

  ‘I divorce you! I divorce you! I divorce you!’

  Three deadly thalaks pelted down onto her bent body, forcing her head to fall on her chest.

  ‘Aba Jan!’ The unwelcome voice of Shahzada careered in again, scattering the memories to join the chaos at the back of his mind. Her cold hand was massaging his forehead now, bringing him back to the present.

  Baba Siraj Din opened his eyes wide. Their icy green glare charged up to meet the warm brown glow of Shahzada’s; unafraid, and beaming down their steadfast love at him. Then, miraculously his eyes softened. It was Shahzada, his beloved daughter-in-law. His tongue slipped out of his mouth, moistening his dry lips.

  ‘Shahzada, my daughter!’ he croaked, craning up his neck and trying to speak once again. ‘I am dying!’ His hand feebly reached out to her arm. ‘Listen to me. Call her! Her!’

  Shahzada looked astounded. ‘Zarri Bano?’

  The old man’s head shook on the pillow. ‘No, her! Her! You must find her for me! Don’t let me die without seeing her, please!’ His head rested back again, his eyes closing tightly.

  She was looking up at him again from beneath her shawl, her wounded eyes and sad words boring into him: ‘I forgive you! I forgive you all!’

  The old man’s head jerked up on the pillow again, the gaunt face now supplicating, his hands held high in prayer: ‘Allah pak, forgive me
. Grant me enough life to beg for her forgiveness,’ Siraj Din loudly begged of his Almighty Lord, alarming his eldest granddaughter Zarri Bano who was standing at her mother’s side.

  ‘Mother, who does Grandfather want to see?’

  Shahzada stared at her baby grandson Adam in her daughter’s arms. She didn’t answer Zarri Bano’s question. She knew. She had promised him: it was his dying wish. Without a word she turned on her heel and went to summon the village matchmaker, Kulsoom Bibi, to the house. It was an errand that only she, with her enormous networking skill, could perform.

  ‘Zarri Bano?’ The old man smiled up at his beautiful eldest granddaughter, dressed in her habitual black veil, the burqa. Their Holy Woman.

  Zarri Bano placed her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder. With a great effort, Siraj Din raised his two frail hands and held them up in mafi to the young woman begging her forgiveness.

  ‘Zarri Bano,’ he panted, raising his head. ‘Forgive me for making you a Holy Woman six years ago. It was a cruel thing to do.’

  ‘Please, Grandfather don’t say that. There is nothing to forgive – I am very happy with my life. It’s all in the past now. Look at my son, your great-grandson.’

  His hand brushed baby Adam’s head. Contentedly he closed his eyes. But a moment later, his head moved agitatedly from side to side. His past would not let him rest.

  ‘Zarri Bano, find her for me! You must find her for me!’ the dry lips desperately repeated.

  ‘Who, Grandfather? Who?’

  ‘The doomed, badkismet woman!’ came the low whimper. ‘I have to see her!’

  Zarri Bano stood up. ‘I don’t understand, Grandfather. Who are you talking about?’

  But there was no answer. Her grandfather had sunk into total delirium.

  Kulsoom Bibi, the fifty-six-year-old village matchmaker, had been summoned to the hawaili, Baba Siraj Din’s ornate home, on a special errand by Chaudharani Shahzada. Always very honoured to be invited there, her face and body, nevertheless wore the strain of this particular errand. It was a heavy burden to carry. After saying her ‘salam’ and paying her respects to the dying man, Kulsoom headed off to the kitchen quarters to see the cook, her best friend, Naimat Bibi.

  Naimat Bibi was busy making stacks of chapattis. Guests were expected from different towns and cities within the next few hours, descending on Chiragpur to pay their last respects. It was reckoned by most that the old man would die before the night was over. Thus a five-inch pile of chapattis lay stacked on a round aluminium tray. It was better to prepare ahead. Who was going to bother helping her in the middle of the night? And hungry guests had to be fed, no matter what the hour.

  Crouched in front of her stove, on a footstool, Naimat Bibi was just about to lay the chapatti on the flat round pan to cook it, when her friend, Kulsoom Bibi, breezed in.

  Naimat Bibi quickly slapped the chapatti down on the hot pan, burning her little finger in the process. Pulling another stool out with one foot for her friend to sit on, she peered up at the other woman’s face, ignoring her throbbing finger. ‘What is it, Kulsoom Jee?’

  It wasn’t the deadpan expression on Kulsoom’s dark, narrow face, but the look in her eyes that immediately signalled alarm to Naimat Bibi. She knew how to interpret that look after thirty years of friendship.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she squeaked with trepidation.

  Kulsoom merely stared back at her friend. It was a long while before she answered.

  ‘The old man wants to see her.’

  As her friend carried on staring back at her, failing to understand her meaning, Kulsoom Bibi’s heart thumped away; she felt duty bound to explain.

  ‘He is dying and he wants to see …’ She whispered, leaning over and looking straight into her friend’s fearful eyes … ‘Her! Naimat Bibi! Her! Don’t you remember? The kacheri! Twenty years ago!’

  Her friend’s heavy lidded eyes twitched wide open. She ignored the burning chapatti on the hot pan and her feet shoved aside the basin of dough that lay next to her stool. ‘Have you still got your silk parcel, Kulsoom Jee?’ she asked.

  Her throat dry, Kulsoom Bibi swallowed and her shawled head dipped in assent. ‘Have you got yours?’ she croaked.

  ‘Yes,’ Naimat Bibi turned to the burning chapatti, as the smoke nearly choked them both, and plucked it off the pan. The tips of her fingers scorched, she threw the charred remains onto the concrete floor. ‘We are cursed, my friend,’ she added, meeting the fear in Kulsoom Bibi’s eyes: ‘We must return her pride.’

  The stack of chapattis and the remainder of the dough were forgotten as she thought of the small silk parcel, tucked deep into one corner of her steel trunk; it was probably moth-eaten by now, but she had to find it. Resolutely she stood up to go. Guests, dinner and chapattis could wait.

  ‘Yes, we must return our parcels to her!’ Kulsoom said heavily. ‘I shall go and find mine!’ She stood up to follow her friend.

  TWO

  NAIMAT BIBI FINISHED hanging up Zarri Bano’s clothes, leaving them to dry on the rooftop courtyard, and peered over the railing at the village fields below. Her eyes scanned the scene and then focused on a car crawling slowly along the narrow, winding road towards the village. She didn’t recognise the car. It belonged to no one in Chiragpur. It had to be one of the guests heading for Baba Siraj Din’s hawaili. What if it was her?

  ‘Kulsoom Jee!’ she shouted excitedly, panting down the steps to the central courtyard, where Kulsoom was busy playing with Zarri Bano’s baby son Adam in his cot under the shade of the verandah.

  ‘What is it?’ Kulsoom, looked up in concern, holding the baby’s rattle poised over his small face. She was desperately trying to get him off to sleep – her aching arms couldn’t possibly carry him around for another hour. If only he would take a short nap, she could then slip out to visit Sardara Jee, their village milk woman.

  ‘I think she is here!’ Naimat Bibi whispered solemnly. Kulsoom Bibi, gently lifted the baby from his cot.

  ‘I will give the child back to Zarri Bano Sahiba. I am getting nowhere with him. Go and watch, I’ll come up in a minute.’

  The car that had brought Naimat Bibi rushing down to her friend was travelling slowly along the road, blowing up gentle clouds of fine dust in its wake. The driver, his face impassive, turned to survey his female passenger, but she studiously ignored his quiet scrutiny. They were now passing the tall wall of sugarcane crops on either side of the road. Beyond, almost hidden from view, was Chiragpur, with its eleven narrow streets, meandering in and out of one another. An assortment of buildings and houses of all shapes and sizes lined the village horizon. The tall ones, with their elegant imposing marble and alabaster facades, mingled quite happily with the humbler, brick-lined and mud-baked dwellings.

  ‘Haroon, please stop,’ the woman commanded quietly. The words hung heavy between them – the first uttered during the three-hour car journey. Their effect was immediate. The driver obeyed at once, and the car came to a gentle standstill.

  His face impassive, he waited, wondering what she was going to say. Silently she opened the car door and climbed out onto the dusty road. She didn’t look back, but headed for the footpath between the mustard field, with its swaying yellow carpet, and the cabbage field.

  The driver stared bleakly through the car windscreen. He had guessed her destination. When she reached the spot he pressed his head against the steering wheel and closed his eyes in despair.

  She stood under the tree, next to the old well. This used to be the watering place, the hub of female activity where, in the olden days, everyone in the village had drawn their water. The beauty and the tranquillity of the green fields suffocated Gulshan. No one was in sight. The only sign of life came from a tractor far away, ploughing the land. Three green parakeets pecked at the leaves in the tree above her. Gulshan’s chiffon dupatta flew off her head in the warm afternoon breeze. She snatched it back and wrapped it tightly around her, tucking the grey strands of hair neatly behind her ears. Turnin
g, she glanced at the round cavern of the well, afraid to peer down. She had always been afraid of the well, of falling into its dark surface and drowning in its mysterious depths. Leaning against the tree, she squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to block out the haunting images that seared her brain and every living cell of her body.

  When she felt her cheeks get wet, she gently wiped them clean with the long end of her cotton chador, draped casually around her shoulders. She raised her wistful eyes and warm face to the sun, hoping that it would not only dry her tears, but also heal the scars inside her. Above all, she prayed for it to thaw the icy prison which had enclosed her for the last twenty years.

  Her eyes shut tight, she recalled the sight of Haroon’s face bent over the woman’s, his arms reaching around her, holding her close. The woman’s head was pressed intimately against his chest … Through the blur of tears, Gulshan turned back to the road. The car was still there. He was still waiting. Would always wait.

  Slowly she retraced her steps. This time she kept to the dusty path. Quietly, she climbed back into the car and sat with her hands neatly folded in her lap. Haroon watched her profile. A lock of grey hair had escaped from her plait. Remains of a tear still clung forlornly to the edge of her eyelash. His hands tightening on the wheel, Haroon set the car in motion and whisked his window shut against the dust and the flies from the road.

  Familiar, homely silence prevailed once again. Both retreated into their own personal worlds, watching the village materialise before them through the car windscreen. A few moments later, the car reached the old man’s imposing house in the centre of Chiragpur. Haroon parked it alongside five others on the carport reserved for visitors to Baba Siraj Din’s home. Gulshan climbed out of the car and then waited.

  From the rooftop, Kulsoom and Naimat Bibi had hypnotically followed the car’s slow journey towards the hawaili. Holding her breath, Naimat Bibi leaned over the railing, wondering who the driver was. When she saw a tall, grey-haired man get out, she immediately recognised him. ‘My God, it’s Haroon!’ she cried to her friend.