Zeenat found Nisa crying in the cupboard of the room they shared. Nisa’s paw-paw place, that’s what Zeenat called it. Whenever Nisa was teased or scolded, she would creep in amongst the packets and bales of their mother’s unsewn fabric and sponge her tears with the corners of her dupatta.
‘I should be the one crying in a cupboard,’ Zeenat thought.
‘How Nisa? What’s wrong? Who’s troubling you now?’
Nisa was incomprehensible when she was in one of these states.
Zeenat could just about make out the words ugly, fat and never get married.
‘Don’t be silly Nisa! You’re not ugly! A bit chubby, but that’s because you’re always eating the ghor* out of the pantry. You’ll be fine if you just watched yourself a little.’
Nisa responded with more unintelligible wailing.
‘Please Nisa. Stop crying. Mummy will think I’ve done something again.’
Nisa looked up at Zeenat with the big round brown eyes inherited from their mother, the only difference being that the matriarchs eyes had never flooded in front of her children or husband.
She sucked back her fullness in her mouth and said the first clear sentence Zeenat had heard from her all day.
‘I want to be you Zeenat.’
Zeenat fell to her knees and clasped her sister’s clammy hands.
‘No, you don’t. I’m a bad person Nisa. I’ve done a bad… I’ve done bad things. You’re nothing but good.’
‘Good for nothing.’ Nisa whimpered, her cheek cradled against a packet containing the scraps from the dresses her mother had sewn for Zeenat’s trousseau.
‘I also want someone to like me enough to want to marry me. No one ever likes me. Even that Ridwaan. I see how he looks at you. And that Ayesha from the butcher. He never once looked at me like that.’
At the mention of his name, Zeenat felt a coldness unfurl in her stomach.
‘Stop this Nisa. Ridwaan is not worthy of you. You’re a good person. You have a good heart. There are no demons in your shoes. You will get married and it will be to someone wonderful. You won’t be like me. I don’t even want this Nisa!’
Zeenat held Nisa close and tight. In the dark quiet of her sister’s sanctuary, with Nisa’s snot soaking into her shoulder, Zeenat cried for what she lost and was still to lose.
It wasn’t just about her virginity. Something about her decision to follow through on an impulse had altered her forever. A pyrrhic victory. She’d read that somewhere and it fitted.
Who did she spite, what did she achieve? She was still marrying ‘the boy’ tomorrow. She couldn’t leave with Ridwaan, if not for the scandal breaking her parents, she knew she’d be miserable with him. She’d be miserable anyway. She would not fight it.
With resignation steadying her, Zeenat lifted Nisa out of the cupboard and walked her to the bathroom to clean their faces and lift the pall of mourning. It was a wedding house after all!
The next day Aunty Khayroon came over to help set the tables and said that Ridwaan had left for home quite urgently, some family emergency, and asked for maaf that he could not attend the wedding.
While Nisa had her mother’s eyes, Zeenat got the poker face.
Soon, it was time for the nikah.
Zeenat took to making shapes with the clouds while everyone fussed around her. It was only when she found herself being hugged furiously by her strangely glossy-eyed mother the Zeenat knew she had become a married woman.
The aunties led Iqbal in to sit with her. That was ‘the boy’s’ name. Iqbal. She had to start calling him something for the rest of their lives together.
When he smiled at her, Zeenat felt more wretched than ever.
If she was more present at her own wedding, Zeenat would have said that it passed by like any other unremarkable Indian Muslim wedding in Jo’burg in the 80s.
After the feeding and the bawdy small talk from elderly relatives and newly married cousins, Zeenat was led to her mother’s room where she sat on the bed in her heavy dress and greeted all her relatives with customary eye rain.
Despite the spectacle of it all, she wanted to loop the scene infinitely.
But it was time to leave with Iqbal.

*jaggery/molasses

–

(Part 4 to follow)

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