Free Tantrika by Asra Nomani

Bhai’s cage. At that time in Islamabad, though, I saw only a blur of yellow and orange in front of me.
    I tried to talk to one of my cousins from under my golden veil. A phuppi, my father’s sister, came over to scold me. “Stay quiet for at least one night.”
    I felt sick to my stomach.
    Two days later, I sat in a chair at the Mee Lee Beauty Parlour run by an immigrant from China, Mrs. Lee Chu Liu. A hairdresser caked foundation on my face like I’d worn only once before, when I’d had a free makeover at a Merle Norman beauty salon in New York City. My mother watched anxiously as they sprayed my hair into a high bun five inches above my head so that my heavy wedding dupatta wouldn’t lie flat upon me, making me look more peasant girl than princess.
    â€œNow, we wax your arms and bleach your face,” the hairdresser told me, ever so enthusiastically.
    I protested.
    â€œYes, yes, you’ll look more fair and more beautiful,” she said.
    My cousins uttered not a word. No one jumped to my defense to shield my arms from this violence and my face from this violation. I did it myself, refusing a tradition meant to beautify me in the ways that were important here, smooth skin and fair skin.
    It was more a wedding factory than a beauty parlor. Brides in various stages of preparation sat around me like tulip bulbs ready to popopen under the sun lamps of hair dryers. We resembled each other. Red streaked their cheeks. And mine. Glossy strawberry lipstick enflamed their lips. And mine. Pitch-black kajal lined their eyes. And mine. It was something my dadi had put on my eyes and even my brother’s eyes since we were infants to ward off evil.
    I walked with stutter steps and a beaming smile to the front door of the Margala Motel, white lights strung upon its edges like bead necklaces. I was getting married in a motel? I tried to forget that fact. Traditional brides weren’t supposed to beam. But I didn’t want photos without a smile, like in my mother’s wedding. I wore six rows of shiny twenty-four-karat gold necklaces from a wide jeweled choker down to the heavy necklace my mother-in-law had worn on her wedding day. I resembled a dark ruby set in gold. The dupatta, embroidered heavily with gold, lay like a weight upon my head. A golden teeka, like the one my mother wore, rested in the middle of my forehead. The dupatta flowed over a heavy velvet shalwar kameez. My doting phuppis flocked around me like peacocks in bright saris, wearing twenty-four-karat gold jewelry pulled out of their safe deposit boxes for the night.
    â€œBay-toh, bay-tee,” they instructed me. “Sit, dear.”
    They urged me onto a royal red sofa with golden curls edging it like a gilded frame that should have encircled a black velvet Elvis painting. Instead, it was I sitting inside this golden frame like an actress upon a dais in front of three hundred guests assembled in rows as if they were about to watch a theater production. I refused to sit in the side room where the bride usually waited for the nikah nama papers of a Muslim marriage to be signed, the bride and groom traditionally separated from each other in different rooms. In front of me were more strangers than familiar faces. The celebrity guest was the wife of the Pakistani army chief, a general and a phuppi’s brother-in-law. I sat quietly under instructions to utter little.
    The barat, the groom and his party, arrived, leading the man I was to marry into the side room usually reserved for the bride. Since I insisted I wouldn’t be shuttled to the side room, he went there.
    A few days before, I had told my father and Baray Abu, meaning father’s eldest brother, “I want women witnesses.” Under Islamic law, Ihad to have two witnesses. In Islamic law, two women equaled one witness. “We’ll see,” he’d told me.
    Now, as they brought the nikah nama to sign, an uncle, my grandmother, and youngest aunt,