Free Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel by Samina Ali

was, and what my husband was expecting, a girl.
     
     
    DAWN. THE SECOND day of my wedding. Sanchak , the ceremony in which the women of the groom’s family come to the bridal home, dressing her in the wedding clothes the groom’s mother has chosen. Then the women pull off the bride’s golden veil and throw on a crimson one of their own, and, in this way begin taking possession.
    Outside my window, in the courtyard, the lamb was baying along with the azan. Last night had been the first the creature had passed in peace, the commencement of my wedding somehow providing it solace. I had passed yet another sleepless night. I now rose and went into the salon, finally viewing the decorations I’d not been able to the night before from under the veil, flowers and gold and modesty keeping my head bowed. As usual, only the servants were awake, the azan their call to work.
    Amme’s old house was designed like most old homes in this part of the city: a central living space surrounded by bedrooms on three sides. The fourth side opened onto the verandah, which led into the courtyard, across from which stood the kitchen and hammam, and the servants’
quarters. Over the years, Dad had added two more floors in the exact design as the first, intending to banish Amme to one of the upper levels. But she had refused to give up the master bedroom and he had no rights left to order her. After all, twenty years before, it had been the room she had entered as a new bride, her sari and veil blazing red. At that time, newly graduated from medical school and possessing little money to lay down as mahr , Dad had vowed in the marriage contract to give Amme his father’s house if he ever divorced her. He probably never imagined it would come to that.
    Now the house looked the same as it had when Amme had stepped into it as a young bride, and then, ten years later, when Sabana had entered it as a bride herself. She and Dad consummated their marriage on a bed facing the one he had once lain on with Amme. For my wedding, the cotton door curtains to all five bedrooms had been replaced with ones made of golden raw silk. As a symbol of fertility, small coconuts wrapped in gold and red tissue paper hung from the center of every doorway—the one that led into the bridal room, into the room the two boys shared, into the master bedroom where Amme slept alone, and, finally, into the small room across from mine, next to the one used for prayer, in which Dad and Sabana now slept, shutting the door on everyone, on Amme. During the day, their room became the divan , the place where guests were seated.
    In the inner courtyard, the circular staircase leading up to the empty floors blinked colorful lights against the purple dawn. Above the takat, the black tarp that covered the Fiat each time we returned to the U.S. was suspended from the branches to shield the musicians who would soon arrive from the glare of the rising sun.
    The furniture had been cleared from the large main area, and the servants had laid down long white sheets, covering the tiles from edge to edge. In the place where Dad and I had sat early yesterday morning, there was now that low stool I’d again be seated on for tonight’s ceremony, this time surrounded by Sameer’s family
    Raga-be came up the verandah steps, a stick broom in her wrinkled arm. She was thin and fit, her eyes thickly lined with kajal, and it
was only her slightly hunched back that gave away her age to be older than my nanny’s. It was her task to sweep the house each morning,.
    “Why you up so early, Bitea?” she asked me. One side of her mouth bulged from where she’d tucked tobacco. She placed the low stool against the wall and began sweeping the sheets of the rose petals.
    She was the reason I was up before anyone else, and I quickly approached the old woman. “Raga-be,” I began.
    At once, she glanced into the courtyard and turned away from me, bending over the broom even more, one arm slung across her lower