“Good family. Good boy. We will not hear anything of this. Bis!”
Her father turned away and her vision filled with his back turned to her.
She could not remember a time when it didn’t.
Her sister Nisa was the timidly acquiescent one; eyes always downcast, jee ma, jee pa, in that kowtow caricature that scratched on every one of Zeenat’s common senses.

Her mother wouldn’t show face to her either. Everything was already arranged. The degs had been hauled out, the khalas had already cleaned all the chickens. Everyone knew Zeenat was flighty and four-minded. This was best for her. A good family. A good boy. It would sweep out her nasaarah fancies. Imagine, she wanted to bring home a white boy!
Zeenat sat in her room as the walls around her closed in to crush her ribs and the roof fell in on her head.
It was just like what she’d learnt in madressah; the aadhaab of the kabr. She even remembered the exact moment she died. She was hovering outside of herself, tethered to her shell by a silken thread. She saw her mother asking her something and her own empty head nodding consent. She could not get back in time.

And when she finally squeezed into the corners of herself, she saw how her mother’s brow was less a few lines. Could it be? A smile in those eyes; it had been a long time since Zeenat had seen that.

God was merciful, in His way. The white boy met what they usually call an untimely end; a freak accident at the factory where he worked as a welder. A beam fell on his head.
Zeenat mourned quietly, wishing it didn’t feel as painful and as comical as it did.
She didn’t even love him. Not like the way she read that people loved. He was a simple, kind man, the first who’d ever spoken to her as if he really cared to hear about her ideas on the world. She enjoyed their conversations whenever he came in to her father’s shop.

It was a mistake to tell Nisa about him.
The very next day her mother ambushed her in the kitchen. Zeenat always had the devil in her. Her mother told everyone it was because she never listened to her warnings about playing near the fig trees at Maghrib time. Perhaps it was a type of possession, for Zeenat often took great pleasure in riling up her mother with flamboyant untruths.
That was how a few conversations over a shop counter turned into midnight lovers trysts and an elaborate plan to elope.
Her mother’s jaw fell off of its hinge. Zeenat had gone too far.

After cutting the sleeves off of all of Nisa’s dresses, Zeenat fell onto her bed headfirst and wondered if it was possible to smother herself with the pillow.
She woke to Nisa’s wails and her mother’s shrieking threats of dispatching her to Mia’s Farm where they would beat the Shaytaan out of her.
It was less than a week before the Ahmeds came to ‘see’ her.

The mother was meek, the father seemed kind and the boy, well he just seemed average.
Polite enough and soft-spoken, Zeenat found the whole thing strangely bearable.
That was enough for her parents. Zeenat was just a handkerchief pegged to a washing line while the wind had its way with her.
A few phone calls, a few trousseau trips to town, a few awkward conversations between her and ‘the boy’; and now she wished a beam would fall on her head.

Or she could run off with Ridwaan.
Ridwaan. He boarded at her Aunty Khayroon’s house.
He was from some far-away farm town with a name she could never remember. He worked at some place in Jeppe and would often come to their house to drop off something from her aunt. He was really bad at pretending and Zeenat never missed the look he’d give her. She knew that look. She’d read lots about that look and how girls could get into trouble because of it. Nisa thought Ridwaan was like something out of the film magazines. Poor Nisa, stupid and naïve, Zeenat knew her sister would have her heart broken at least ten times by five different people before she learnt anything of the ways of the world. She did agree with Nisa on one thing though. Ridwaan was something of a looker, with those almost oriental eyes and cocky smirk.

While everyone busied themselves with wedding preparations, Zeenat slipped out of the house to look for him.
He was in Aunty Khayroon’s backyard, fixing a wheelbarrow.
Squinting up at her, he motioned his head towards the garden cottage he rented from Aunty Khayroon.
Zeenat looked around the yard quickly, and flew into the cottage. It was only when she sat down on a milk crate to find herself again that she realised they’d barely exchanged one word.
How could he have known what she wanted? Did all men just know?
She started to feel something bitter rise up inside her. Guilt? Rebellion? She tried not to think too much of the God she dutifully prayed to. If there was such a thing as a necessary sin, wouldn’t this be it?
Tomorrow night, she would lie down with an almost-stranger, how would this be any different? At least this, what she was about to do, was on her own terms and not her parents. Before she died to herself, she needed to know she had lived for herself.

Ridwaan entered the room.
“It’s not proper for a bride to be in a strange man’s room.”
“I couldn’t give a fuck about propriety.” Zeenat was outside herself again, a bopping helium balloon strung to the arm of a fairground mannequin.
She was the omniscient narrator and Zeenat and Ridwaan were the characters from a chapter in one of the novels she read while her mother and Nisa prattled on about stupid things like pastry dough.
It was over quicker than she’d ever read about. And no one had ever written about the burning. Or was that because she’d sinned so greatly, the devil had finally signed the papers for her soul?
“Zeenat, let’s get married. I know this one moulana who will do the nikah. We can go live in Cape Town. I have a bit of money put away.”
Zeenat lunged for the bin at the table side, and proceeded, in one solid gush, to hurl the day’s breakfast and lunch.
“I’m so sorry! I’ll clean this, I’ll take this outside. I don’t feel well. I must go. I’m sorry Ridwaan, this was a big mistake. A huge mistake.”

–

It would be 27 years before she saw those almost oriental eyes again.
They were now in the face of a portly middle-aged man, who shifted his weight on her leather sofa and coughed to hide the rude noises the movement made. Next to him sat his portlier wife and their son Ismail, a boy her daughter had met at a business conference and who was now determined to make her part of his family.
If only you knew the half of it Issy-boy. Zeenat hoped that only sounded uncharacteristically loud in her head because everyone else was so quiet.
“Ridwaan, Feroza, please have some biscuits with your tea.”
As she dipped one of the chocolate-coated ones into her cup, Zeenat wondered why it had taken so long for God to begin punishing her.

(part 3 tomorrow)

(for a glossary, leave the words/terms you’re unfamiliar with in the comments)

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