Sara Suleri
On an early April night Dadi awoke, seized by a desperate need for tea. It was three in the morning, the household was asleep, so she was free to do the great forbidden thing of creeping into Allah Ditta’s kitchen and taking charge, like a pixie in the night. As all of us had grown bored of predicting, one of her many cotton garments took to fire that truant night. Dadi, however, deserves credit for her resourceful voice, which wavered out for witness to her burning death. By the time Tillat awoke and found her, she was a little flaming ball: “Dadi!” cried Tillat in the reproach of sleep, and beat her quiet with a blanket. In the morning we discovered that Dadi’s torso had been almost consumed and little recognisable remained from collarbone to groin. The doctors bade us to some decent mourning.
But Dadi had other plans. She lived through her sojourn at the hospital; she weathered her return. Then, after six weeks at home, she angrily refused to be lugged like a chunk of meat to the doctor’s for her daily change of dressing: “Saira Begum will do it,” she announced. Thus developed my great intimacy with fluid properties of human flesh.
I learned about specialisation of beauty through that body. There were times, as with love, when I felt only disappointment, carefully easing off the dressings and finding again a piece of flesh that would not knit, happier in the texture of stubborn glue. But then on more exhilarating days I’d peel like onion all her bandages away and suddenly discover I was looking down at some literal tenacity and was bemused at all the freshly withered shapes she could create. Each new striation was a victory to itself, and when DadiÂ’s hairless groin solidified again and sent firm signals that her abdomen must do the same, I could have wept with glee.
After her immolation, Dadi’s diet underwent some curious changes. At first her consciousness teetered too much for her to pray, but then as she grew stronger it took us a while to notice what was missing: she had forgotten to pray. It left her life as tobacco can leave the lives of only the most passionate smokers, and I don’t know if she ever prayed again. At about the same time, however, with the heavy-handed inevitability that characterised his relation to his mother, my father took to prayer. I came home one afternoon and looked for him in all the usual places, but he wasn’t to be found. Finally I came across Tillat and asked her where Papa was. “Praying,” she said. “Praying?” I said. “Praying,” she said, and I felt most embarrassed. For us it was rather as though we had come upon the children playing some forbidden titillating game and decided it was wisest to ignore it calmly. In an unspoken way, though, I think we dimly knew we were about to witness Islam’s departure from the land of Pakistan. The men would take it to the streets and make it vociferate, but the great romance between religion and the populace, the embrace that engendered Pakistan, was done. So Papa prayed, with the desperate ardour of a lover trying to converse life back into a finished love.
That was a change, when Dadi patched herself together again and forgot to put prayer back into its proper pocket, for God could now leave home and soon would join the government. Papa prayed and fasted and went on pilgrimage and read the Quran aloud with most peculiar locutions. Occasionally we also caught him in nocturnal altercations that made him sound suspiciously like Dadi: we looked askance, but didn’t say a thing. My mother was altogether admirable: she behaved as though she’d always known that she’d wed a swaying, chanting thing and that to register surprise now would be an impoliteness to existence. Her expression reminded me somewhat of the time when Ifat was eight and Mamma was urging her recalcitrance into some goodly task. Ifat postponed, and Mamma, always nifty with appropriate fables, quoted meaningfully, “‘I’ll do if myelf,’ said the little red hen.” Ifat looked up with bright affection. “Good little red hen,” she murmured. Then a glance crossed my mother’s face, a look between a slight smile and a quick rejection of the eloquent response, like a woman looking down and then away.
She looked at my father’s sudden hunkering for God, which was added to the growing number of subjects about which we, my mother and her daughters, silently decided we had no conversation. We knew there was something other than trying times ahead and would far rather hold our breath than speculate about what other surprises the era held up its capacious sleeve. Tillat and I decided to quash our dread of waiting around for change by changing for ourselves, before destiny took the time to come our way. I would move to America, and Tillat to Kuwait and marriage. To both declaration of intention my mother said “I see,” and helped us in our preparations: she knew by then her elder son would not return, and was prepared to extend the courtesy of change to her daughters, too. We left, and Islam predictably took to the streets, shaking Bhutto’s empire. Mama and Dadi remained the only women in the house, the one untalking and the other unpraying.
(This extract is taken from Meatless Days: a Memoir by Sara Suleri)
Sara Suleri is an author and, since 1983, professor of English at Yale University. She is a daughter of late journalist ZA Suleri
Source: Daily Times
Date:2/11/2010
