Parveen

Write a story about an ordinary day in a person's life. Use their internal dialogue to make the story interesting.

Parveen

Hakim is sleeping now. I’ve been rocking him gently in the family rush baby-basket. Family? It is haram to question Allah why these people have been inflicted on me? Some of them are just stirring – it’s always the women before the men. As the youngest, I’m up first to prepare the breakfast, Nashta they call it here. My aunt and cousins insist that I should. So different from when living with my parents in Scunthorpe when I was allowed in the kitchen so rarely, I barely learned to prepare chapati or puri. I can do most chores now in rural Malot. I put that down to being mocked, ignored and bullied. There aren’t even any Tavas here to be heated easily on a modern hob. It’s like going back in time but in Pakistan they don’t believe it is so.

First, I need to light an outside fire so long as it doesn’t rain and arrange the stones when the logs are reduced to embers. The morning air is sweet and clear, mingling with the enchanting wood smoke, mercifully a relief from the sweat, snoring and insidious insects inside. Now I have a short break from my husband’s demands since Hakim was born.

I’ve almost come to love the simplicity, quiet and open space here despite everything.

Aunt Syra, always immaculate, is first of the women to rise, today wearing a purple, ochre and green shamee kameez with matching pantalons. My chapatis will soon be cooked and kept warm, ready for everyone to scoop up my aunt’s delicious but stringy Nihari beef stew, some to belch as they chew its green chillies, and slurp the burned fried onions. The cooking’s pungent aroma’s begun to overpower those sweet scents of daybreak. Some jasmine plants struggle over low, scorched and mould blacked mud dwellings clustered along the drying river whilst other healthier ones are proudly nurtured over neater, more extended buildings which house families owning fields cropped with still green maize, cotton or wheat.

I flatten the uncooked chapati balls, slapping them side to side between the palms of my hands. I bow my head further as the moist dough makes that unbearable but unmistakable schlep, schlep, schlep. I screw up my eyes for I cannot avoid that sound’s association with Hamza’s desires following our marriage arranged over a year ago. He fumbled around to being with but then persistently forced his entitlement on me night after night, over and over again, schlep, schlep, schlep. We were both virgins. Tenderness is unknown in this strange village to which I was delivered. Apparently, it was for my own good. They never liked it when I was top in English and read English books. “Work at Maths and learn your Koran, Parveen” I still hear my father say. .Pakistan has become not just a place in the news and the country in which my parents told me they were born.

Hakim is awake again, placated only at my increasingly inadequate breast. Aunt Syra, unlike some others, is fortunately always supportive and, as my child sucks and kneads, my aunt tidies up, combs my hair and hands me a fresh scarf to cover it. Then, after that, she hands me another older, thicker, dirtier one, I tie the infant to my back and spend the rest of the morning in the maize fields

Clearing weeds, harvesting early ripened cobs, I ponder if my pared fingers or bent, broken back distress me most. I ponder again over how long I can continue to convince my husband that I am still healing from our baby’s difficult birth and that my young body still needs to repair itself. May he believe that Allah, in his infinite mercy, has not yet completed his task with my body. As I work, that familiar filthy grizzled, prematurely aged man emerges from woodland beside the field. His toothless smile is plainly seeking to attract me. Attract me! I look away and shiver, picturing how I saw him for the first time waiting for us at Islamabad Airport where my mother brought me. I try again to forget how she made out we were on a visit to ‘our homeland’. How could anyone think Pakistan was my real home when I’d never been there before? Huh, just because I am believed to have achieved womanhood. Fourteen. My mother’s luggage contained an overblown crimson and silver chiffon and jamawar gown. When I discovered it I knew the real purpose of the ‘visit’.  It didn’t need the further discovery of that Mahar of gifts. I hate those gold rings and necklaces, passed to the parents for starters. They mean I was just a promised chattel, my future cauterised amongst strangers, burned on the altar of a ‘good’ marriage. Now, in the fields, I shrink from the fawning figure to whom I had first been introduced at the airport.

There are also other men in the fields looking at me while I work. I turn my head when I see them relieve or satisfy themselves without shelter or shame. No one dares challenge those elders. Strange. In England it’s the young who cannot be challenged when openly peeing up our community’s front doors or exciting themselves on drunken girls in public alleys. Men, bloody men the whole world over. May I be forgiven.

But I now I’m sitting with my husband, Hamsa, for the mid-day meal after he has returned from the low, dusty village mosque; I still think of him as the arranged, still unknown one. I glance up silently and eat little. Despite his pronounced teeth, unkempt hair and poor taste in Nike tee shirts, this otherwise fit nineteen-year-old boy is better than the ugly matchmaker who so disgusted me in the airport and habitually leers at me in the fields. It saved me; saved me from ending it all.

I have an idea. Perhaps it would be better not to attend the mosque on Friday night as usually we do after the men’s prayers. Hamsa, please then assume I am now unclean, at my menses and leave me alone. To think touching me is haram. Allah forgive me.

I have to be with my cousins after our meal, cleaning, talking, drinking tea, making everything right for the men who talk and argue over the fire and then late into the night. To confirm I’m still, unclean I have also decided to refrain washing all over for as long as I can. Hamsa will know the washing ends being unclean. Our home is so small to hide it. Auntie told me of Ghushi as it was not spoken of our home in England. Mother never said but I still heard that tell-tale lengthy running water in a closed bathroom once a month.   I also remember the shock of my first period too and can see, even now, those tampon machines in the toilets at Foxhills School and hearing other girls’ uninhibited talk about pains and accidents. How I would love such things to be here but it is the wish of the prophet, ‘no’. May his holy name be blessed, for me to be here, serve and improve my life and faith. I clench my fists and put one in my mouth in rage. Feigning uncleanliness is hopefully enough though when I was when eight months pregnant Hamsa had his own nightly solution. I still feel humiliation and the occasional unaccountable pain.

Now, in the cool of a pleasant evening I sit peacefully apart from others, the goats gently ruminated and the chickens happily pecking away as usual. I glance across to the men where I can see Hamsa studying his iPad. I’m not allowed any communication devices. Sometimes he calls my parents. In the first week I yearned at least to say hello and ask why I must be here. I can no longer bear the thought of my mother. It was her hands that held me safe as we walked to school or the madrassa yet pushed me away as she returned to the airport when my marriage had been secured. How could she have done this? I say this daily and ask Allah’s forgiveness,

As I finally retire with the other women, the jasmine remains scenting the still clean air. Leaves rustle and dogs howl in the distant woods. No one seems discontent in this otherwise well-ordered village which supports itself so well and sends some of its sons to be financial advisors. I remember my father’s tales of leaving the village to be a well-paid head hunted chef in England. He even knew from the beginning that being called Paki would be no term of endearment. He went for a better life. Why does he think he knows what is a better life for me? It’s not that they’re bad people here, it’s just so hard for me.

As I lay down in the clothes I work in, my last thought is. “If only I could really feel part of this.” Then, after checking on Hakim I feel myself drifting into sleep.

1533 words