When She Was Queen by M.G. Vassanji Page B

of the country, going back two thousand years, was part of your history, too. They spent most of their time in Lahore, which was Abid’s hometown. To his family, Yasmin was royalty; she was greeted by them with embraces and tears of joy, with gifts of clothing and jewellery. There were elaborate family feasts in her honour,she went shopping and sightseeing, was invited to private music parties with blood-curdling qawalis by the best singers—that makes you envious, doesn’t it, Karim, all
authentic
and
real
, the way you wanted everything. Young women, older ones, confided in her, their new bhabhi or bahu from Canada, young men called her Auntie and teased her.
    Abid had two brothers and a sister in Lahore. He also had Aseema in Toronto and another sister in Chicago. The family’s business in Lahore was transportation. They also owned land. Abid’s father was dead—Yasmin was taken to pay her respects at the grave—and his mother, tall and bony with grey eyes and a wonderful smile, was the matriarch to whom all paid respect. Nothing was done without consulting her. The family had a spiritual adviser, Sheikh Murad Ali, who also advised in worldly matters.
    When the family took her to see the Sheikh, Yasmin had to tie a plain black scarf around her head—the Sheikh was insistent, they told her with a twinkle in their eyes, he had to be humoured. A loose dupatta, with wisps of hair blowing at the forehead, just wouldn’t do in his presence. He was liable to produce a rough cloth himself and tie it firmly around your head if he didn’t like your covering. He didn’t care for jeans either, even on men.
    He turned out to be a small-statured man with a radiant pink face and a long white beard, attired in a shimmering silk kurta of a pale colour and an embroidered cap. His cold grey eyes made her look away the first time he laid eyes on her. The walls in his study, where he received them, opening the double doors himself to let them in, were lined with books and bound manuscripts and hungin places with framed Arabic calligraphy. There was an odour of faint perfume and recent incense in the air. He bade them sit on the carpeted floor, from which a small prayer mat was first rolled away, and a large silver tray of offerings was placed before him, piled with presents—a pen and a Palm Pilot, some dried fruit, and cash in dollars—which he received without much ado. The talk soon turned to serious matters, and as his guidance to them the Sheikh warned them about Western materialism, which people everywhere in the world were blindly emulating while losing their own spiritual values. The men enjoyed discussing world politics with him, but they did this with due deference to his views. The women listened silently to this discussion or spoke to each other in whispers.
    To Yasmin, the Sheikh’s beliefs seemed narrow and rigid, and it was a trial of patience to keep sitting there on the floor meekly listening to them. She lost her control finally and sprung to the defence of her gender, saying, “But women are not men’s property, and they are not half the worth of men.” The Sheikh, at first startled into a pause, gave a look of amusement and replied, “They are worth
more
than men, Béta, that’s why Murshid-ul-kameel has given us all these elaborate laws regarding men and women.” Her in-laws explained to her what was meant, and Yasmin dutifully said, “Oh.” But that fooled nobody.
    “That’s one side of Pakistan I will never accept,” she said to Abid later, “this treatment of women,” having told him first that she didn’t think she cared too much for Sheikh Murad Ali.
    That pleased Karim. Told you so, the voice said. Pakistan, he had always said, was a tragedy on the Indiansubcontinent, a non-country that had never worked, never been really independent, never been democratic, was an embarrassment. He could go on and on, making judgments so sweeping, so cruel and unfair—the kinds of generalizations he would