Free Their Language of Love by Bapsi Sidhwa Page B

incredulous.
    Ruth held her eye.
    Her face a mask of suppressed fury and disapproval, Billo let the dog out and slammed the door shut.
    Chikoo growled and sniffed at the man’s sandalled feet and sub-inspector Junaid Akhtar took mincing steps backward, fearing the dog’s touch might pollute his clothes before he could offer his Friday Jumah prayers. He knew enough not to kick Chikoo in front of Ruth. He looked down from his great height at the rodent-sized canine as if Chikoo was a Rottweiler. Ruth picked up her agitated pet and tried to calm him, and calm herself.
    Billo handed her mistress the pen and notepad and took the dog from her. Without deigning to look at the man, she again positioned her bulk in the door like a protective sentinel.
    Placing the lined pad on the Buick’s bonnet Ruth wrote down name after name. Salma, Nishat, Shyma, Tita, Talli, Lubna—they came to her easily because they were no longer difficult foreign names but bore the shapes of friends. The opening lines from Sara Suleri’s memoir,
Meatless Days,
came to her. It was among the books suggested to them at the orientation when they were posted to Pakistan. ‘
Leaving Pakistan was, of course, tantamount to giving up the company of women
.’ The words had appeared disingenuous and mildly offensive to Ruth. Now, as she named her friends, they rang true. She had discovered the
company of women
! Not that she lacked intimate friends in Houston or Boston or wherever Rick had been posted, but here she had understood a different connection within her own gender. Perhaps it was the segregated nature of Muslim society that dulled the competitive edge and enabled trust—permitted women to derive so much comfort and pleasure from each other’s company.
    The sub-inspector was reading over her shoulder from an appropriate distance; he must have lynx eyes. Suddenly he said: ‘What about Shireen?’
    Ruth looked up at him puzzled. ‘Shireen?’ Which Shireen was he referring to—she could think of at least three or four.
    ‘Isn’t Shireen Walid a member of your club?’
    Even though Ruth realized that the sardonic edge of contempt verging on hate in his voice was directed not at her but at Shireen Walid, a sprightly woman dedicated to human rights and women’s issues, Ruth was offended. ‘I don’t have the membership list memorized.’ Her tone was, for the first time, short. ‘She could well be for all I know.’
    Shireen, who Ruth guessed to be in her sixties, and her late husband Mazhar were dedicated communists. With her liquid amber eyes and clean-cut Grecian features she still was a strikingly beautiful woman. Ruth had heard that herhusband had been jailed often for his fiery editorials in the
Pakistan Times
. Ruth had met their handsome firebrand son, on a brief and almost clandestine visit. He lived in semi-exile in London. Did all this still matter in the late eighties—now that communism was becoming increasingly discredited and irrelevant?
    ‘But you know her?’
    ‘Yes I do.’
    ‘She came to your house to meet the Indian woman?’ It was more an assertion than a question.
    Ruth didn’t know if she had. ‘I don’t keep track of who visits my house-guests,’ she said.
    Billo’s gruff voice suddenly cut in: ‘Memsahib, no need to talk when Sahib not home. Come inside. Tell him, go!’
    ‘My husband is not home,’ Ruth said primly, Billo’s intervention reminding her of Pakistani proprieties. ‘I shouldn’t talk to you when there is no man in the house. If you need information, ask my husband.’ She looked at her watch. She’d had enough. She turned her back on the man and stepped in through the door Billo held open. Moments like this increased her appreciation of Billo’s overbearing and meddling ways. They could hear Chikoo’s excited barks and growls as he escorted sub-inspector Junaid Akhtar out of the gate.
    Later that afternoon, on the way to the polo grounds, she told Shahnaz about the visit from the Secret