Narcopolis

Salim, Pasina and Dimple were not looking in his direction, but some of the others were. Even Bengali, unflappable as the old man was, had forgotten himself and was staring. Khalid lit a cigarette and regarded Rashid as he smoked. His shirt was tucked into pleated trousers and the Kashmiri topi was tilted at an angle on his head. He was a drug dealer but he looked like a shopkeeper.

Finally he said, ‘The crazy woman? She’s mending a salvaar, she’s stitching, that’s why she’s half dressed. She’s crazy but she keeps quiet. Your kaamvali, the hijda Dimple, why do you let her talk so much?’

‘The customers like to hear her talk.’

‘Our scripture says women must be silent in the assemblies of men. It isn’t permitted for them to speak. This is a chandu khana but it is also an assembly of men. Tell her that.’

‘Tell her yourself, there she is.’

But Khalid would not look in her direction.

‘Kaam,’ said Bengali, as if to himself, ‘is work in Hindi, but desire or lust in Sanskrit. So kaamvali has a double meaning, which this gentleman is doubtless aware of.’

*

Rashid asked for tea and Marie biscuits to be sent to the beggar woman with the haircut who was still stitching, seated on the sidewalk on the junction of Shuklaji Street and Arab Gully. She was not, at the moment, reclining on the garbage. It occurred to him that she used the garbage dump as a toilet and the sidewalk as a living area. He heard Khalid say something about tapping new sources of income and the need to expand one’s consumer base if one wished to stay on top of the business. He was talking to save face. Rashid watched a boy from the teashop downstairs hand the woman a glass of milky tea and a plate of biscuits. She sat on a metal awning from Delite Restaurant, the restaurant out of business, the awning lying on the street for months now, its tin warped. She sipped at the tea, her little finger raised in the air. She ate the biscuits one by one, daintily, dipping each one in the tea before putting it in her mouth. She was smiling.

Chapter Four The Sari and the Burkha

She moved into the room halfway up the landing from Rashid’s khana. She never went to the floor above, where his family lived. But from time to time she met them on the staircase or on the street and she understood that Rashid’s eldest, Jamal, was her enemy. Rashid’s wives were friendlier, even if they didn’t speak. Only Rashid seemed unaffected. To mark her new situation, he gave her a new name, Zeenat, and he brought her a burkha. He sat in the only chair, sipping his morning whisky and peering at her through the smoke from his cigarette. No good, he said. See how lumpy it is? Take off the kameez and leave the salvaar. She took off the printed top and slipped back into the burkha. He watched her, his arm propped on the back of the chair. Then he nodded and took her to the mirror. She saw how the shiny black fabric clung to her. How revealing it is, she thought, and looked at herself and whispered, Zeenat. After a while Rashid asked her to take off the salvaar too and now the burkha was silk against her skin. He liked it so much he wanted to take her for a ride in a taxi, to sit in the back and watch the sights, and only they would know she was naked under the burkha. No, she said, no, never. But she was enjoying herself.

*

She didn’t stop wearing saris, which covered the legs and exposed the belly, exposed the intimate part that should be seen only by a lover or husband. She’d learned how to wear the petticoat low on the hips, how to lean forward accidentally on purpose and let the pallu slip just a little. She admired the uses to which women put the sari, how they wore it without underwear, slept in it, bathed in it, used it as a towel and comforter, and the convenience, to simply lift it up if you wanted to pee or if there was a customer. But she looked at herself in the burkha and understood that this was something very different. The tools were fewer. Only the face was visible, only the feet and hands, and because everything else was covered, a glimpse of eye or mouth became tremendous and powerful. And the blackness of it, the gradation, the way the fall of the fabric was different on her breasts and hips. She wondered at the men who designed such a garment. How much they must have feared their own desire. To want a woman to wear this thing you had to know the danger that lay in looking. You knew it and you knew your powerlessness and you dreamed up a costume to conceal the cause of your shame. But the costume only served to punish you further. It made you want to pluck out your eye, pluck it out and hold it, pulsing and sinewy in your hand, and offer it as some inadequate token.