Zulekha

The bus lurched and brought me back to my senses.

My head moved around aimlessly for a little while as I awoke from the semi-partial dream state I had been in.

She squeezed my hand in support as if to help ground me back to reality. I regained control of my body almost immediately and turned my head around to see her. I could feel she had been staring out of the window the entire time. My tiredness had gotten the better of me though and I had snoozed off.

Sunlight streaked across her face, highlighting her rosy cheeks, making them seem like red roses buried in the snow. She smiled at me. To be honest, I never knew if she did that to reassure me or herself. Her hazel brown eyes looked at me inquisitively. I made a face and squeezed her small hand back as a sign of reassurance.

I am fine. Just fell asleep.

I didn’t need to say it, my gesture had done the job; she turned her head back around and resumed looking back at the scenery as it passed us by.

The windows of the bus were filled with dry spots: marks and evidence of water droplets that had dried off and a glass surface that had not been wiped clean in a long time. But the dirtiness of the windows did not deter her; she supported her forehead on the glass as she continued to stare at the rock-strewn mountains that passed us by.

Then again, nothing had ever deterred Zulekha, my wife, from doing what she wanted. In every university trip we had shared together, she would always get the window seat. Even after five years of marriage, some things about us never changed I guess.

The tires of the bus thudded heavily against the dusty, rocky road again, causing the entire bus to shake. As the engine roared and whined to overcome the friction and gravity, all of the passengers, including us, swayed side to side or front and back due to the conflict of the opposing forces.

The mountains surrounding the roads seemed like large rock giants who watched over us; silently and suspiciously. The sun was dragged across the sky to first be hidden behind these mountains and finally off the horizon its weak rays became like paint. The clouds in turn became nature’s palette as the rays filtered through them to make the most splendid shades of color. The sky also obliged acting as nature’s canvas, hosting all of these colors in fluid layers: with majestic purple slowly encroaching like ink would on a paper, followed by the slightest layer of baby pink right in the middle and a receding yet very noticeable globule of sunny orange eerily disappearing right at the end of the horizon.

The bus smelled of decay. But it was very slight. It was not too harsh as to be the cause of any grievance. But it was there.  It was so slight that I assumed that this is how people expect buses to smell like.

I let out a yawn and noticed how tired I really felt. I looked to Zulekha but she was still engrossed in silently looking at the sky, I rested my head and tilted my chin upwards as I prepared to dose off again.

***

My eyes opened with a great amount of effort. Almost immediately, even while being heavily drowsy, I could feel the atmosphere in the bus had changed considerably. There was none of the light chatter and noise one would usually hear. In fact even the hum of the engine had been considerably reduced. We were slowing down for some reason. I looked to Zulekha and she was still looking outside the window but with confusion.

I leaned over and nudged her shoulder with my forehead lovingly. She looked back at me disapprovingly, reminding me that love was a private affair in this country, hidden from public view: like a piece of art that is always meant to be seen from behind a screen.  If you removed the screen, then the act of admiring it is no longer acceptable in public. To me, it seems as if we value the screen more than the art.

I was not deterred however; I held up my fingers to her cheek and softly brushed them across, all the way to her lips. She smiled and blushed at the same time as I did this. Yes, I still knew how to get her to smile. I rewarded myself for this little victory with a smug look on my face, to remind her whose boss. She looked at me with narrow eyes and I decided to back down, lowering my head down in apparent shame. She let out a tiny giggle and used her hand to brush my hair; apparently the incessant sleeping had caused them to be messed up.

The other passengers stood up and began to walk out. I looked outside and noticed a small restaurant. The driver had probably needed a break.

I slowly inched my fingers towards her small, white, soft hands. As she felt my fingers, her hands reciprocated the gesture and the tips of her fingers met mine. Just for a second, I thought I felt her pulse but it was probably just my own heart skipping a beat. Her fingers occupied the gaps that existed between mine. Our hands interlocked as if one depended on the energy of the other. Maybe that was true.

But we could not walk out like this. No matter how much we wanted, it would elicit too many stares. I slowly tried to slip my fingers back. She let me go and my hand slithered back to where it was just a second ago.

It was as if nothing had happened between us. If it wasn’t for our memories: maybe nothing had happened. That small moment we shared, like all the others, were just ours and nobody else’s. We never left any other proof.

I pointed the restaurant to her from my seat and she nodded. I let her adjust her chaddar like a good, respectable woman in this society would and we both proceeded to walk out in the cold evening to enjoy some chai.

***

The waiter had been kind enough to seat us away from the rowdy general section, into the quieter family section. We ordered chai and some samosas.

The road side restaurant was a unique anomaly in the area: amongst the dark savagery of nature, stood this lone spot of civilization. I then scoffed at my own thoughts. Had I just called this place filled with mustached and bearded old men who probably spent all day smoking drugs, gambling money and drinking chai civilization?

The restaurant was a shabby construction. The bricks had been arranged with cheap mortar to make what seemed like a small structure of a kitchen. Blue metallic sheets covered the entire area. Thin blue colored poles helped keep this entire structure up. Charpais, old wooden bed-like furniture, were arranged around the cheap plastic tables. We were sitting at one of the better maintained spots of the restaurant. No sewerage passed directly in front of us, the tables looked new and the charpais had been well maintained.

She sat opposite from me. Looking around and observing the area like me. The darkness around us was absolute. The lighting in the small dhaba, the term for small restaurants like these in this area, looked like a kaleidoscope of colors when seen from far away. A few blue tube lights, a handful of orange bulbs and multiple white energy savers, all arranged haphazardly, hanging off the walls, poles and roof of the dhaba made the light mix and break into each other. The mixture of blue paint and the brown brick walls added into this and made the structure look warm and inviting.

The service was quick: the waiter brought us our steamy cups of chai and piping hot samosas in a mere few minutes. I opened the packet of meethi chutni, a form of pickled sauce, and poured some of it over Zulekha’s samosa. I then began to crush the samosa’s pocket of fried bread, so that the sauce would run down into the hot potato salad inside. As I crushed her samosa, steam arose from it. The hot air escaping the pocket carried with it the fragrances of the masala and spices that had been added in the potato salad inside, this made my stomach grumble in hunger. But I restrained my urge to eat so that I could finish mixing the sauce in Zulekha’s samosa. She loved eating it like this but she would always be too lazy to do it herself. Once I was done with her samosa, I handed it to her and she accepted it with a greedy smile.

Watching her make that smile made all the effort worth it.

Another victory! Making her happy was one of only things in life I was good at, so I tried my best to excel at it.

I then took a sip of my chai, holding the small cup of milk based tea in both hands as I leaned forward so I could relax.

We proceeded to eat silently then. Zulekha looked a little hungrier even when she was finished with hers so I ordered another samosa. She didn’t need to tell me, I could see it in the way she was looking at me as I was eating mine. To be honest, I also had a little more space in my stomach to fill, so we shared.

She was sipping her tea when a group of ladies approached us and asked us if we wanted to join in their jammat (congregation) for the Isha prayers.

Zulekha looked at me inquisitively; I smiled and gestured to her that she could go if she wanted. It was a family area after all, I would be fine here.

She seemed to have understood and giving me a smile, she left with the ladies.

***

This seems far away enough.

I opened the packet of cigarettes I had and proceeded to place one in my mouth. Ever since I had finished the chai I had been craving this sweet stick for which I was risking my life for at the moment: standing alone, several feet away from the lights emitting from the dhaba.

I could not smoke in the restaurant because that would have, as usual, elicited a lot of stares and Zulekha and I had one rule: Do not do anything that brings attention to you. A rule I seemed to be breaking a lot these past few days.

I could get killed, raped or mugged here and nobody would know about it in this barren part of the world due to this deathly blackness but right now the darkness was my ally. I lighted the cigarette and as I inhaled the sweet, peppermint fumes, I kept an eye out for Zulekha and the prayer group’s return. I didn’t want her to find out about this. She would get all worried and worked up for no reason.

She was already feeling apprehensive about this second honeymoon to Abbotabad, even though I told her to stop being so negative. Nobody looks twice in this nation if two friends travel together. But she won’t listen, she was probably praying for us to have a safe journey right now.

I found her commitment to our religion still fascinating. I had grown out of it. The conflict had been destroying me.

I guess I always knew I was different from other girls of our society. It was an eerie sort of disconnection I felt I had. I developed ways to fool my mother as I got older. I learned there is only a specific age till when a girl’s attempts at being more of a boy are taken as cute.

So you end up spending life as multiple facades: in school you are the cute friend who just hugs a lot, at home you are the obedient daughter who behaves exactly as is expected of you, with guys you are the mirage of their sexual fantasies and alone you are the sobbing mess who has no idea who she is.

My release was, funnily enough, religion though. Allah was my friend, my protector, my secret keeper. Every day I would pray to him for help, for guidance. My relationship with my god transcended the one between the creation and the created; he became the only reason for me to continue on living.

But the authorities on religion, who claim to know more about Allah then me or you, told me I was wrong. They told me I was a sickness, a disease, a plague upon humanity and that if I couldn’t be fixed God would never grace me.

I finally found the courage to email a very educated Islamic scholar one day, somebody I revered, telling him my dilemma: I am a Momin, I love Allah but I have feelings for members of my same gender. Is my faith any lesser?

He replied telling me that this was my test, that this test was placed before me by God to test how much love I had for him. Like other men and women are supposed to keep their desires locked away until marriage, I shall have to do so all my life, for the glory of Allah.

I do not know what I felt when I read that. A part of me was relieved, this was only a test and a tough one, God would only do that because I’m special. Another part of me knew I could never live a happy and content life according to my wishes as long as I maintained my relationship with Allah. Sacrifice was necessary.

So I sacrificed for Allah, I gave up my worldly desires and committed myself to my creator. And that’s how I lived, as an anomaly of theology: A Muslim lesbian.

Then I met her. When I first met Zulekha, I knew she was my one and only. I knew this was the girl I wanted to marry, the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. There was nothing rational about how I felt about her. It was a very passionate, a very carnal desire that I could not deny. It was one of those feelings which would travel along my body exciting every part of me and numbing every other urge. She made my heart skip beats as if it had been taught to dance in one particular way all its life and she just makes it forget what it should do with its feet.

There was really no competition. From the first time we kissed, to when we first consummated our marriage, no matter what hardships we faced, no matter how many rules of God and men we broke, I did not care.

Whenever I hear the azaan now, all I hear is the admonishment of a spurned lover. Whenever I climb onto a prayer mat for social reasons, I feel God walk out of the building. Whenever I turn to somebody to pray to, his bitterness reminds me of my damnation.

Zulekha was my test. And I failed it. I made my decision: my sacrifice.