Free The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif Page A

replied. “I haven’t thought about it much, but perhaps two or three children would be nice. If I were going to have them. But I think that would be something to decide with your husband, wouldn’t it?”
     
    “Yes, I suppose,” said the boy, smiling. “Do you want only boys?” he asked, pleased to be able to talk with her at last.
     
    “Why do you assume I would want boys at all?” she asked him, and his eyes widened in surprise and he looked down at his plate, embarrassed. The old lady moved swiftly in.
     
    “What rubbish!” she told Amina. “Everybody wants a boy first. Everybody.”
     
    Amina glanced at her mother, who had never given birth to a boy, and saw her shrinking in her seat again.
     
    “I am not everybody,” Amina told her grandmother in a clear voice. “I am not everybody, and I wouldn’t care if I had a boy or a girl as long as the child was healthy and happy. Anything else does not matter.”
     
    This drew an audible breath of disapproval from Mrs Ali, who exchanged knowing glances with her husband.
     
    “I think she’s right,” volunteered the boy, breaking the silence.
     
    “I think it’s time we were leaving,” said his father at once. “I have to work very early tomorrow.”
     
    “But you haven’t had any sweets yet,” said Mrs Harjan desperately, rising from the table. Amina rose with her and helped her clear away the plates.
     
    In the kitchen, Mrs Harjan plaintively asked her daughter what she thought she was doing, and began to plead with her to behave well and not to embarrass them.
     
    “Mum… ”
     
    “Please, Amina.”
     
    “Mum, I’m just trying to explain. Don’t you see?” She took hold of her mother’s arm and turned the reluctant woman towards her.
     
    “Did you really think I would marry this boy?” Amina asked slowly. She held onto her mother’s shoulder and looked into her eyes for some sign of understanding, but when her mother finally looked up, all that Amina saw there was a cold bitterness.
     
    “My mother ruined you,” Mrs Harjan said, in a whisper that was almost a hiss. Amina took a step back under the unaccustomed hatred of her mother’s look.
     
    “She ruined my life by what she did,” continued Mrs Harjan. “I grew up as an outcast that nobody wanted…”
     
    “My father wanted you… ”
     
    “I was lucky,” she spat, as though this luck were something she took no joy in. “And now she is ruining you, even from beyond the grave, and she is ruining me all over again. How can I look those people in the face? Her talk of bravery and being smart and looking after yourself. She has made you into what you are, and you are… ”
     
    “I like what I am,” said Amina.
     
    The sentence was spoken with such conviction that Mrs Harjan was left silenced. Amina had interrupted instinctively, not wanting to hear her mother’s evaluation of her. She watched her for a moment, her face drawn into a frown of sorrow and puzzlement. She was hurt by her mother’s words and appalled by the depth of her resentment towards Begum.
     
    “Did you really think I would marry this boy?” Amina said again, but this time, her tone held no plea for understanding, and in her own ears, her voice sounded harsh.
     
    But Mrs Harjan had collapsed into herself again under the clear light of her daughter’s gaze. She held out a plate of Indian sweetmeats, gaudily coloured and decorated, and she met Amina’s eyes for only a second before she looked down again.
     
    “Your grandmother thinks you should marry whoever she chooses,” she said. Amina closed her eyes for a moment, then took hold of the plate and went back inside.
     
    Chapter Five
    Delhof – April 1953
    O MAR WAITED IN SILENCE in the kitchen, at the foot of the stairs, straining to hear any sound from the room above. It had been two hours since he had heard anything of the women who had taken over the upstairs of his house. He held his breath, listening hard, and almost at once