Free Typhoon by Qaisra Shahraz

Sardara Jee. We need to be off now. We are sorry for having disturbed your breakfast!’
    ‘My friends, you must join me and my guests. There is a lot of food laid on – hot parathas!’ Sardara genuinely wished to offer them a seat at her lavish breakfast. Her friends would normally have taken up her kind offer, especially after seeing the feast laid out on the dining table. Today, however, they had another important matter on their minds. Their appetite was in another direction – to spread the word. There were so many other homes to visit before they caught up with Hajra. Thus they were forced to reluctantly decline.
    ‘Thank you very much, Sardara Jee. We need to visit Jamila and let her know, too, otherwise she’ll blame us later for not telling her.’ Sardara nodded her understanding.
    On returning to the dining room her eyes automatically fell on her yoghurt bowl. Oh! After all that excitement, she really did need the energy. Forget about thefat, she had to revive her strength. Happily she sidled back into place on her chair, making sure that she didn’t knock her sore thighs anywhere else on the table’s edges. With the creamy bowl of yoghurt lacing her stomach Sardara smiled at her three women guests, and generously decided to take her kurmani into her confidence.
    Her eyes beamed at her guest. ‘Well, my friend,’ she began, ‘you’ll never believe what happened here last night in the village, after you arrived.’ It was just as well her kurmani’s twin daughters were both married, otherwise she would have been forced to send them out.
    Sardara leaned forward on the table, moving her empty bowl of yoghurt aside. Somehow she had lost her appetite for the oily parathas. The discussion was bound to last well into the morning, but at least now she had something substantial to talk about – a real scandal with which to entertain her guests. Last night she had discovered to her dismay that there was nothing further to digress on or gossip about. She had virtually dried up. They had just sat and watched all the late dramas on television. Useless they were, too. For in no way did they reflect their way of life. The TV people forgot that there were people living out in the countryside whose problems and lifestyle needed to be reflected.
    Sardara beamed at her guests. This subject of adultery wouldn’t dry up any tongues in the whole village for days. For months. Probably for years to come, in fact. She knew that for sure.

EIGHT
    T HE NEXT STOP on Kulsoom and Naimat Bibi’s itinerary for this fateful morning was their ‘second’ best friend, Jamila’s house. Their own friends of course had to be top of their list of houses to visit.
    Tiptoeing carefully on the wet marble steps leading up to the large, majestic-looking wrought-iron gates, Kulsoom pressed the bell with her bony fist. Water was still gushing out from the top step into the gutter of the village lane. It appeared that Jamila already had all her floors washed, even down to the outside steps. And all this before seven in the morning! And such a big house too! How did she manage it? Newly built in the last few months, it was now topped with an upper floor of bedroom suites and an attractive gallery circling all around it. Now the villa stood out from the rest of the houses in that lane. Jamila prided herself on that fact and on keeping her house thoroughly spruced at all times. In fact, her penchant for cleaning had given rise to a village joke, that Jamila in the design of her home had certainly copied the
naqsa
, the plan of Chaudharani Kaniz’s hawaili, down to the very colour of the marble tiles on the outside wall. Having the audacity to copy Chaudharani Kaniz’s design, everyone also expected her to keep it in top shape at all times – just like the beautiful, arrogant young queen of the village, Malika Kaniz. The latter had her own particular standard of cleanliness. Whether Jamila would manage to keep upthe act in the long run was a