Yours Truly, Mickie Maulwi

SOME MONTHS BEFORE IT STARTED

Tuesday Magazine, A supplement of English Daily Khabarnaak (Islamabad, Pakistan)

The Maulwi Episodes

Dear Maulana,

It’s been weeks now since I started feeling an inexplicable itch. This symptom manifests itself precisely when I see appointment notes stuck on the fridge, or laundry gathering permanent creases as it waits to be sorted, or lunchboxes crying to be filled. This seemingly harmless itch has escalated into dangerously disloyal sentiments towards my vocation of wifehood and motherhood.

My neighbour advised drinking chamomile tea before bedtime, my sister prescribed sertraline as a remedy for lifting my mood and my mother suggested a third child could be the balm for my mutinous thoughts. Although she regards procreation as an element of women under thirty, she generously conceded in my case.

I’ve tried everything— almost. Chamomile tea only increased my nocturnal discomfort. Sertraline put me in a blissful state until I was woken up by my son poking a straw up my nostrils to confirm if I was breathing. As for my mother’s suggestions, I appeal against those. The sleepless nights of early motherhood still terrorise me.

I’m unable to silence the welter of thoughts transpiring from this mysterious itch. At times I find my heart sputtering within my chest even when I’m perfectly still. My mother says my mind is the devil’s sanctuary although I have sought refuge from this devil numerous times.

God knows I’m frightened. What should I do? Surely a man of faith like you would have an answer?

Yours,

Unsettled Housewife

Dear Unsettled Housewife,

First of all, I’m not a Maulana, who by definition is a religious scholar. That is too high a rank I unfortunately cannot lay claim to. I’m simply Mickie Maulwi (that’s Maulwi with a w and not a v) who likes to believe he has a religious bone. The way some people have funny bones.

While I am no devil’s advocate, I don’t see the devil as the root of your problem. Neither do I see how adding another lunchbox and extra appointments to your calendar will ease your annoyance.

What I see are the sparks of your desire to find your calling. Making sure everyone is well fed is a noble cause, but you must balance your own needs with those of others. I would advise against unprescribed medication. After antibiotics, antidepressants are slowly annihilating the resilience of our country(wo)men. And although chamomile tea is a healthy choice, it doesn’t seem to address your predicament either. You could seek a hobby, join a fitness centre, attend a course or pursue a supplementary vocation. However, the desire to be cured must come from within:

Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.

Quran - Chapter: 13 Verse: 11

Yours truly,

Mickie Maulwi

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are only intended as advice and are not a substitute for medical, legal or religious counselling. The column, its author and English Daily Khabarnaak are not responsible for the outcome of following any advice in any given situation. You, and only you, are entirely responsible for your actions.

CHAPTER 1 - ABOUT AN INTERVIEW

Were it not for the thin film of mould crawling up the hem of Shehla’s wedding dress, one would presume her life as unfailingly monotonous.

When they moved to Rawalpindi two years ago, Shehla dumped her wedding trousseau in the basement cupboard. She had no need for the embroidered dresses with their spiky gold threads that stung the then two-year old Faadi when she carried him. The mothballs, thrown in as an afterthought, have done nothing to keep away the fungus that tiptoes along the intricately embroidered border of her bridal outfit. Shehla draws a palm over her mouth to thwart the muggy stench.

She would like to believe that the basement has suddenly been infested. A part of her wants to believe that this green-black intrusion in their lives is unexpected. But within her Shehla has known that the carpet always felt moist to her feet, that if she lifted the edge by an inch she would see a parallel viridian blanket running under it, and that the humid smell lurking in this neglected dark room was ever-present and not a sensory invasion caused by fluctuating hormones that signalled her crossing past thirty.

Change has been furrowing under the surface. Something she relentlessly denied because it was easier to do so. And now it’s impossible to look away from it. She came down to sift through old, unused bags. She did not boast of having an eye for fashion, nor did she have the vagaries of an employed woman like her sister, who sought a purse for every occasion. But last night Faadi wrenched the handle of the one she was used to, leaving it limp. If it weren’t for the interview later in the day, this wouldn’t be necessary.

A familiar dull ache crawls up her arms, like ants clambering to a cherished spot. But this time it’s accompanied by a bout of nausea. Is her body telling her to stop when her mind refuses to listen? Against herself, she flings open the cupboard door and stares inside. In the dim light of the bulb that hangs from an untethered extension wire, she sees a strap of the leather bag she’s looking for. She tugs at it with a finger as if trying not to contaminate herself and scampers up the stairwell.

The bag is soft and cold with hidden moisture, and a decade too old-fashioned, but the prominent golden G in the centre is enough evidence that it was once a bag in vogue. She looks closer at the fading Gucci logo and instantly reels. Even in the open air of their living room, the bag carries the musty smell of mothballs infused with the lingering aftertaste of Rawalpindi’s choked drains.

She eyes the clock on the wall, only fifteen minutes before the house is awake, before the day begins. A long list of to-dos cyclones through her head. She has no choice but to spray perfume over the bag and hope that her interviewers at the school believe that the odd combination of a peachy scent and rotten wood is a figment of their imaginations.

Anything outside her usual routine is uncomfortable. It tickles Shehla in the pit of her stomach to the point of making her jittery. Something doesn’t feel right. Is it Saqib with his unsmiling jaw wide, stretched out on the living room sofa where he fell asleep last night? Or is it the second helping of food he took late in the evening, with the curry-stained dishes spread out on the living room table, inches from where his nose is? Or is it the sound of the clock ticking closer to seven reminding her it’s already too late? Or is it the looming interview?

Piqued, Shehla piles the dirty plates into a noisy stack. Only when her husband batters his eyelids allowing his gaze to settle on her like a lazy drawl, does she stop. He looks amused, if that’s possible for a half-awake man.

‘It’s not even seven,’ he mutters, snuggling into the thin blanket he took from the spare bedroom.

She opens her mouth to remind him she’s in a rush today. How can he forget she has an interview at the school? She must have mentioned it at least seven times yesterday. Something thuds against the concrete pavement of the porch, forcing her to sit upright.

‘The newspaper,’ she mumbles, scooping the plates up.

On several occasions, Shehla has reminded the hawker not to fling the newspaper over the gate. That’s why she begged Saqib to install the tube-like holder in the first place. But across the border of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, even the hawkers find themselves equal to those they are serving. Like Shehla, Rawalpindi is the lesser of the two siblings. Peeved by the comparison, Shehla picks the dishes and carries them into the kitchen.

Moments later the agitated clanging of last night’s dinner plates forces Saqib to get off the sofa.

‘Do you want the landlord to come down at this hour?’ he says from the kitchen doorway.

When they first moved to this house, he contended that the low rent they paid compensated for the prickly intrusions of the pensioner they rented their portion of the double story house from.

Shehla squeezes a handful of dishwashing liquid onto the greasy orange plates and lathers them with foam, all the while watching the leak from the mouth of the faucet. She furiously scrubs at the stubborn turmeric stains from yesterday’s chicken curry but takes care not to make more noise.

‘Where’s my blue checked shirt?’ he asks.

Propelled by the voice in her head, Shehla twists the knob for a faster spray of water. Incoherent streams spit out from the leaking faucet in all directions, drowning Saqib’s voice. For some reason, it feels right.

‘My blue checked shirt— have you seen it?’ Saqib asks again, his words clipped.

Shehla fixes her eyes on the hinges of the kitchen window, a series of metal bars that look like a prison cage. ‘Did you check the laundry basket?’ she says, her back talking to Saqib.

‘You haven’t washed it?’ he asks. ‘It’s been a week now. What about the white one?’

Another one he must have casually dropped in the laundry. Is this it? Should she drop the interview and wash the shirts instead? A part of her—the one that reminds her of what her mother would say—tells her to run to the makeshift laundry room at the back of the house and wash the culprit shirt. That way there would be peace, at least for today.

Instead, she clutches the plate, her wedding china moaning under her grip.

Her husband curses under his breath and stomps out of the kitchen. When she briefly turns around to confirm his absence, she can see his receding form, a crumpled trouser leg riding up a hairy calf. In a few strides he has covered the breadth of the living room, a short distance separating their kitchen and the spare bedroom. The door handle jerks. The cupboard door bangs. And the legs of the stand groan as he pushes the iron against his clothes.

She follows him into the room, her shoulders aching with tightness. ‘I’ll iron them.’ Her timid voice sounds nothing like the voice in her head.

The bathroom door bangs in her face as Saqib drags the unpressed clothes with him. The electric cord is still hooked into the socket, the blazing light of the appliance indicating that it hasn’t been switched off. Steam sizzles out from its vents and makes sputtering sounds that resonate in Shehla’s chest.

Shouldn’t you unplug the iron before the house catches fire, she curls her palm into a fist but doesn’t voice her words. Her eyes move from the orange flicker of the burning iron to the multitude of shirts and pants strewn carelessly on the stand. She swoops the iron and presses it against the thighs of Saqib’s favourite cotton pants.

One. Breathe. Two. Breathe. Three. Breathe.

‘Mama!’ The cry behind her makes Shehla realise the lunacy of her act.

She jerks the burning metal away from Saqib’s crumpled trousers, briefly grazing the back of her free hand. The much-awaited sound of puckering finally comes, but it is the fuming skin of her hand and not the pyjamas.

‘Ah!’ she cries, tightening her grip on the handle with a mother’s instinct.

‘Mama.’ Seven-year-old Pari darts towards her mother.

‘Stop!’ Shehla says, putting the iron down. ‘It’s hot. Wait there, Mama is fine.’ Shehla blows at her hand, repeating. ‘Mama is fine.’

Pari watches her mother with wide awake eyes shadowed by ruffled brown curls.

‘Go back to your room, I’m coming.’ The demon within her has been subdued by a burning metal.

‘Mama, I can’t sleep,’ says Pari. ‘The bed is wet.’

Shehla’s burnt skin crimps sending painful reminders through her. That’s what she gets for expressing anger. It’s the devil in you that riles you, Amma’s voice far away yet palpable, fills her head. Shehla reaches for the half-filled glass of water on the bedside table. Left by Saqib. Of course. A few days old. Probably. But she is grateful for it. She gulps down the water, drowning her devil before it overpowers her.

Outside in the living room the shorter hand of the clock touches seven. The day has just started, yet her head is throbbing and her shoulders aching already. Is this how it will be if she starts working? She shakes herself. It’s only an interview.

‘You’ll start a fire, Mama!’ Pari points to the socket as Shehla strides towards her.

Shehla turns back and wrenches the cord out of the socket, leaving one leg of the plug permanently crooked. She drops the cable with a sigh and follows Pari out of the room.

Faadi is four and still in diapers? Her mother’s question is fresh in her head ten days later.

For God’s sake, he’s too old to be peeing in diapers! Besides, that size costs a fortune. That was Saqib skimming through the last grocery bill.

Why had she risked letting Faadi sleep without the diaper last night, when she knew that wasn’t a good idea? He isn’t like Pari, trained and retrained since she was two. Or perhaps Shehla was more enthusiastic about motherhood back then.

Her mind simmers down as she switches to the usual ordeal. She peels away Faadi’s night clothes, baring the pink rash she discovered two days ago. Still there and growing, but luckily no fever. She carries him away from the king size mahogany bed, one of the several articles from her dowry that crowd the rented house they live in.

In the bathroom, she turns the shower knob and waits for the cold water to subside. Then she pushes a wailing Faadi under a warm blast of shower and leaves him on his own only when he stops protesting and starts playing with his shower ducks. Briskly, she peels away the bed linen, washes the mattress in the growing circle shadowed by Faadi’s untamed bladder and yanks it to the backyard hoping the sun will dry it before Saqib returns from work.

Pari is next. Showered. Dried. Dressed. Combed.

When Shehla works on autopilot, it’s comforting. Taking decisions is not. Just like choosing what to wear. Her fingers drift over the emerald-green shalwar kameez she had pressed the night before. She had chosen the green outfit because she’s been told the colour made her alive, lifting her brown eyes into a lighter hazel. Yet, as she looks at it in daylight, she isn’t certain she can carry its brightness to the interview. Instead, she settles on the simplest option, a long grey tunic over black trousers, both of which don’t need to be pressed. She pulls her unruly curls into a tight bun at the nape and pats her parched lips with gloss. Staring at her pale reflection, she pinches her cheeks to force colour and attempts to smile but her jaw hurts, as if the muscles of her face have forgotten how to smile. There is nothing memorable about her face, Shehla notes, other than her heavy lashes that need no mascara. Hers was one of those common faces people easily forgot. In school, teachers called her random names, subject to who they confused her with.

She slips on a gold bracelet and her wedding ring, an oval sapphire surrounded by zircons, so heavy that at times it slips from her fingers. She considers if she should pull her dupatta over her head the way most of the women in their neighbourhood do but decides against it. The Elite School, where she is headed for the interview, is a modern school. Even the Principal didn’t cover her head.

Her eyes stray from her reflection to the bride staring back at her from a gilded frame on her dressing table. Nine years too old. Two pairs of eyes, that of her reflection and the woman nine years younger, follow her like Mona Lisa’s stare. Instinctively she looks towards the window. Just a tiny parting in the curtains can reveal too much. Suddenly feeling exposed to external eyes, she draws the grey curtains tightly together.

By the time she gathers the children at the dining table— a four-seat round table squeezed into one end of the living room— Saqib is pacing the floor, his hair wet from a shower, his face cleanly shaven, his entire self resplendent with a whiff of cologne that floats from metres away. He is so out-of-place in the rumpled setting of the living room. A blanket thrown lazily on the sofa. Two pillows against the armrest. Books lying on the floor with random papers crumpling under small feet. Tea-cup stains on the centre-table. A film of dust on the far corner of the bookshelf. In the morning sun that tears in through the living room curtains, every minutia of an unkempt life is starkly visible.

Saqib’s eyes follow his wife. ‘Where’s breakfast?’

She opens her mouth to remind him she’s already late but stops when she sees Pari’s eyes narrow, mimicking Shehla’s own distorted emotions. ‘I was cleaning up. Faadi wet the bed.’

Saqib exhales. ‘For God’s sake!’

‘What do you want for breakfast?’ Shehla looks away. ‘I should hurry. I have an interview at the school.’

‘Right. You have an interview,’ Her husband slides his silver quartz watch on his wrist. ‘I don’t want to be blamed for making you late. Just make sure you feed the children before you go to this very important appointment.’