We were late for the fair. All fault lies with Sadiya, the moment we were about to leave the house, she couldn’t find her shoes. God knows why, but every time in the house she was searching for one lost thing or another. She kept on saying sorry, while Aunt Zubeida went ahead and bought circus tickets. We sat in the second last row. I had to look at the stage through the little gap between the heads of an elderly couple seated in front of me. Sadiya like always was lost in her world, in a parallel circus inside her head. First, they brought some animals— elephants and monkeys on the stage and made them dance and kick footballs. Sadiya later told me that they weren’t animals but humans dressed as animals. After the animals, came a young girl on the stage with an old man, who was bald and had a zig-zag beard. The zig-zag beard of magicians. The girl looked like Nusrat the granddaughter of our neighbor. She was wearing a gold-colored dress, like a cellophane tape pasted around her body. Her eyes were sad, like a house in the street where no one lives. At first, she played with some balloons bigger than her body. Then danced, moving wired circles around her body. The audience whistled. She bowed down to acknowledge. And then put out the last show of the event, the old magician poured some gasoline over the girl’s body and then blew fire out of his wrinkled mouth. The girl’s body got lit with fire, like a barn burning in an abandoned field. There was silence in the audience. She kept on burning. The magician stood in a corner like a peasant watching his farm burn. Then he blew water out of his mouth, and the girl came out unharmed. Everyone clapped and then left. I couldn’t take my eyes off that girl. Sadiya held my hand and dragged me outside. When I looked back at the stage, she was still burning like winter’s fire.

I and Sadiya slept in the same room. She was five years older than me. She was Aunt Zubeida’s daughter. I was her sister’s son. That’s what she told me. My parents were dead. She didn’t tell me much about their death. When I asked her once, she told me one should never discuss the dead. ‘If you talk about them, they woke up from their sleep in the grave. And it’s not auspicious to wake up the dead. They may come in search of you like ghosts’ Sadiya had seen my mother. Once she told me that my mother looked like a ghost. She had three eyes and four hands. I was mad at her. She was giggling. When she went to sleep, I put a bowl of honey on her face. When she woke up her face was covered with red ants. She went crying to her mother. Aunt Zubeida slapped me twice. ‘She was calling my mother a ghost’ ‘So what? You could have ruined her face. Who would have married her then?’ I sniffled the whole day at school. After the classes were over, I and Sadiya would walk back together. That afternoon I ran faster, and she kept calling my name. I reached home early, she was away but I could still hear her voice echoing with my name in the street. She told her mother everything, and that I was about to get crushed by a horsecart. Aunt Zubeida came to my room and tried to make sense to me. She also said sorry. ‘My son if your sister doesn’t get married. She would hover over our heads like a bat. She should leave this house as soon as she can, and then you would be the King of this house. And I will be the old queen’ She gave me a pomegranate which she was hiding in her scarf. ‘Eat it before that bat comes?’ She peeled it for me. And fed me with her cold wrinkled hands covered with stained gold bangles. Sometimes she was nice, sometimes she was nasty. She showed her worst when someone touched the pomegranates from her tree. They were like her children. Day and night she would look after them. Water the tree, cut the dry leaves and kiss the little pomegranates. The only pomegranates that we were allowed were the ones that fell on their own. Sadiya told me that the tree was her father. Her father was buried at the same spot where the tree grew.

The whole summer vacation the house echoed with Aunt Zubeida’s abuse and slurs. In the house beside ours, lived the family of Nawab Kazim Mirza. They said they were related to the first King of Lucknow, Nawab Burhan-ul-Mulk. Their Grandpa was a Colonel in his army. They claimed to be from the family of Kings but we knew who they were—fake Kings and Queens.

Their house was mostly locked and was opened during the summer vacations when the great-grandchildren and their families came to spend time in the city. We didn’t have any communication with them. They didn’t talk to anyone in the neighborhood. They knew they would go back in two months. And they had their own sets of friends and family in the city. They were rich. They called their parents Dad and Mom. The other in the neighborhood called their parents Amma and Abba. In Lucknow that was one of the indicators of wealth and education. The way you addressed your parents.
I knew Nusrat and Kaukab. They were the ones who were always crossing the street and going to Abdel Malek’s shop to buy Cremica biscuits and Kismi candies. I liked Nusrat. She was beautiful like that plastic doll I saw in the fair, with blue eyes, and dark eyebrows. I told Sadiya about my infatuation with Nusrat. She laughed. She said she would never marry me. She said they were rich and we were poor. And the rich never married the poor. They made the poor work for them as slaves. She laughed. She said I wasn’t even worthy of becoming her driver. I would run after her. She would go and hide behind her mother in the kitchen. I would stand at the door and ask her to come out so I could beat her. She won’t. She would take out her red tongue, red like the seeds of pomegranates, and make faces, like those animals at the circus. I would complain to her mother, ‘Aunt Zubeida she is calling me a driver’ The poor woman would be busy cooking the dal, moving the ladle in a clockwise circle 7 times, then anticlockwise. Those were her little games which she played while cooking. ‘Let her call whatever she wants. We know you are a King. The last King of Lucknow’ ‘See I am a King’ ‘Every driver thinks that he is a King’ And then she would run out of the kitchen. I would run after her, over the dried pomegranate leaves in the outer courtyard. We would keep running around the tree. It was hard to catch her. And then Aunt Zubeida would take her ostrich-like neck out of the kitchen window and cry, ‘Come inside you two devils or the ants will eat your food’

Aunt Zubeida would go to sleep after day-long cooking and games inside the kitchen. But within two minutes she would hear the rustling of the leaves as if her husband was crying. She would run outside with a long teak stick in her hand. Nusrat and Kaukab would be jumping on the walls with pomegranates in their hands. She would hit their backs with the stick. She would try to catch their shirts with her long wrinkled hand. Once Kaukab fell over the wall and broke his skull. He was lying on the ground with two pomegranates in his hand. He didn’t move. Aunt Zubeida was scared that he would die. She kept the stick slowly on the ground and went closer. The moment she touched him, he ran outside that iron gate, like the cat after drinking the milk in the kitchen. She abused him, and his ancestor Burhan-ul-Mulk. She once went to their house and complained to their mother. That was the first time we saw her. She was dressed in blue jeans and a red T-shirt with Levis written in the middle. She was from Anatolia, Turkey. Aunt Zubeida explained to her the ruckus her children caused daily in her pomegranate garden. But she couldn’t understand a word. She only knew Turkish and some English. She thought Aunt Zubeida was a beggar. So she went inside and brought her purse. And then gave her a crumpled two-rupee note. Aunt Zubeida’s face became red like the pomegranate seeds. She threw the note at her face. And abused her in a gibberish language that sounded like Turkish.

The whole summer vacation would pass like that. When she noticed that they almost came every day, she stopped sleeping and hid behind the door. The moment they would enter, she would run after them like a tiger pouncing on innocent deer in the jungle. It became her afternoon sport. I and Sadiya would watch from the grilled window of our room and laugh. Once I stole two pomegranates from the granary where Aunt Zubeida locked the fallen pomegranates. That heated afternoon when the roads shone like mirrors, I saw Nusrat crossing the street with her brother towards Abdel Malek’s shop. I went outside and gave her the two pomegranates clasped in my little palm. They both looked at me. ‘Who are you?’ Kaukab asked. I told them who I was. ‘We don’t want your pomegranates. We want those hanging on the tree. When we pluck it that ghost runs after us. That’s the whole fun’, Nusrat was hiding behind him as I was that child thief who gave children sweets and then packed them in his sack and took them to that empty castle on the mountain. I kept on looking at them as they crossed the street.

A few summer vacations passed and they stopped coming. Aunt Zubeida was happy. The tree was laden with pomegranates. No one was there to pluck them. No one was interested in plucking time. I passed High School with 57 % marks and was promoted to Class 11th. Sadiya started her graduation at Shia College. Aunt Zubeida was getting old, like the leaves of the pomegranate tree in autumn. She once called us to her room and showed us the little locker in her almirah where she kept all her gold jewelry and the money her husband had left. She told us that if she died, Sadiya was supposed to take out the key from her neck and take charge of the house. She clearly instructed me that my studies shouldn’t stop in any case, and only education could lift us from the curse of poverty, and make us the Kings we once were. We knew she had seen that old dream. She used to see dreams where she washed her corpse. That was a signla that she was soon going to die. And then she would call us and tell us about the money and gold. In a few days, she would forget it all, and become the old Aunt Zubeida running inside the house like a circus master. She sewed clothes in the day. In the night she knitted sweaters. She had also knitted a wool shroud for her, which she had instructed us to use when she died. ‘It’s very cold inside the grave’ At the onset of winter, she would wash the shroud and dry it on the roof. She wasn’t scared of death. She was waiting for death eagerly like a young girl waiting to get married. Her only worry was Sadiya’s marriage and my education. She said marriage was like plucking the right pomegranate from the tree. ‘A man is like a pomegranate you don’t know what’s inside’. We all had heard all kinds of scary marriage stories. The barber Aleem’s daughter got married to a man who came out to be an animal. He was half human half animal. They had only seen his face, but not the animal’s body he hid behind the clothes. Another girl, a very young and beautiful girl got married to a young man who later came out to be an old cleric hiding under the guise of a young man. The butcher’s daughter Khalida was married to a boy who talked like a chicken and even laid eggs. Sadiya’s senior at school got married to a man who in reality was a woman. A distant cousin of Aunt Zubeida was married to a man whose made of wood and worked like a toy. Sadiya said she would never get married. She would get married only if she knew the boy before and had seen him naked atleast 8 times. She had heard that a man could disguise a woman seven times but not the eighth. Slowly we got to that she was in a relationship with the barber Aleem’s son. His sister studied with Sadiya at Shia College. One summer night, the cleric Hadji Mourad’s wife saw Sadiya lying naked on the barber’s roof with his son. The news spread like fire in the neighborhood. Aunt Zubeida thrashed her with the same stick she used to run after Kaukab and Nusrat. Sadya was crying like the way I cried when the science teacher canned me for not completing my homework. Aunt Zubeida wasn’t stopping. She hurled abuse at her father. And said, ‘After all you are that devil’s daughter’. It came out that her father had a relationship with all the women in the neighborhood. And most of the children were his offspring. And there were chances that the barber’s son was her brother. He was killed by the barber. When he got to know about his relationship with his mother. His father had gone for a shave and came out with a sliced throat. Didn’t come out but was brought on a stretcher.

‘I would marry him or I would take my life’ Sadiya cried sniffling and wiping her tears. ‘Have you lost your senses? He is your brother’ Sadiya didn’t want to listen. She said her mother was lying because Azam was from a lower caste. It went on for days. She stopped going to college. Azam’s sister came to enquire about her absence from college. But Aunt Zubeida abused her and asked her to leave the home or she would tie her to the pomegranate tree and ask the pigeons to take out her eyes. The poor girl ran out like those little children who saw a woman in the window of a locked house. I kept on going to school. But the mathematics and science of Class 11th were difficult. I couldn’t understand a bit of the Binomial theorem and why the Laplace correction was required for an equation when Newton had already done his work. Two nights later Sadiya woke me up from sleep. I thought she needed water so I moved from the bed. Whenever she needed water she would wake me up. She was scared to go to the kitchen. Once she had seen a ghost on one of the Muharram nights. She fainted, but there was no ghost and it was her mother who was eating the leftover chicken haunched on the kitchen slab. I was going towards the kitchen to bring water for her, but then only she called me back. ‘I don’t need water. I think some ant had entered my pajamas. She moved her legs on the bed rubbing the edge of her thighs. She asked me to close the door. And then she took off her pajama. She parted her legs and asked me to look for the ant with the candle in my hand. The candle’s wax fell on her belly, and she twirled her body like a woman bit by a snake. She then blew off the candle and whispered in my ear to do it, the things she did with Alam on his roof. I was so scared. I ran out of the room. The whole night I slept on the sofa in the guest room. The next morning when Aunt Zubeida found me on the sofa, I told her everything. She held her head. That very evening she called the cleric Hadji Mourad and got her married to his eldest son. I still remember very vividly that spring evening. Sadiya was dressed in that old maroon gown that belonged to her mother. She had gold bangles on her meaty hands. And a faded necklace hanging over her bosoms. She was furious over me and made a devil-like face when I looked at her. ‘I would peel off your head like a pomegranate someday’ she said before leaving. I was happy that Sadiya was married. Now I had the whole room for my dreams. I would go to sleep after dinner blowing off the candle. I loved darkness. I would create dreams in my head—dreams of Nusrat. I would pluck pomegranates from the tree and we would eat lying naked on the bed. But God knows how, every time we were together Kaukab would enter inside that dream, like that cold winter’s wind which would enter even after the window was locked and closed. He would make her wear clothes. He would beat me like brothers thrashed their sister’s lovers. Sometimes he would take out the pomegranate seeds from her beautiful mouth by opening her jaws forcibly, the way dentists took out old woman’s teeth. And then he would drag her outside my dream. I was aghast. At school, I devised plans to kill him—inside that dream. I bought rat poison. I mixed in the pomegranate and gave it to him. He threw it on the ground. ‘I know what you are up to’

Once I even bought a gun by stealing money from Aunt Zubeida’s locker. I shot him that day when he entered the room. But he stood there laughing like a devil.‘You would never be able to kill me. I am already dead. We all are dead. Our mother killed us all’ and then he held Nusrat’s hand and dragged her outside the house. I looked at her face, that beautiful doll-like face, and her blue eyes which she didn’t blink. Sadiya came back from her home after two months. She had grown very weak and walked like those images you see in the X-RAY. She had a fever. Aunt Zubeida peeled pomegranates and fed her. I stood at the door of her room. She looked at and her face became black like coal. ‘Go away you devil or I will eat you’ Aunt Zubeida signaled me to leave the room. Sadiya wanted a divorce from her husband. She said the whole family was mad. She was made to sleep with the father and the younger brother. They said that was a family custom, and the child born of such a relationship would be a King. She sobbed for weeks. Aunt Zubeida reprimanded Hadji Mourad. He said she was lying, and that she was still in a relationship with the barber’s son. And they were planning to leave the city and his son caught them. Sadiya said he was lying. She begged her mother with folded hands, ‘Amma I don’t wnat to go back to that hell’ She tried to make sense to her like the way mothers did, ‘That’s your house now. When you have a child, you will be happy. No woman loves her husband. But you would love your child. You would be happy. She almost forced her to go back’. That night, the last night when she was about to leave, Sadiya set her body on fire. The way that old magician with the zig-zag beard had put the circus girl on fire. She ran over the stairs and jumped off the roof. Aunt Zubeida didn’t come out of her room for seven months. I alone arranged for her funeral and got her buried under the pomegranate tree beside her father’s grave.
That year I failed the Class 11th exams. I wrote a love letter to the science teacher. She was a widow. I wrote that I was mad in love and wanted to marry her. I thought she could help me pass the exams. But she complained to the Principal. He slapped me and asked me to call my guardian. I said she was sick and couldn’t come. He asked me to write an apology letter.

That very day while coming home from school, I decided I won’t study further. Like Javed (my classmate at Jubilee Inter College who studied only till High School), I would also open a spectacle shop in Kaiserbagh. I came home and tried to sleep. I must have closed my eyes for a minute and then I heard a sound, like someone opening the door in haste. I thought some thief had entered the house. I ran outside. I saw Aunt Zubeida standing beneath the pomegranate tree with that long teak stick in her hand. ‘What happened Aunt Zubeida?’ She looked nervous and couldn’t look at me. She was making a little circle in the dusty ground with that stick. I started walking back and then she spoke ‘They were trying to steal my pomegranates’

…

Andleeb Shadani(mshadani@gmail.com) is a writer based in Lucknow. His research work ranges from history of cities, migration, and cinema. He is working on a collection of stories, Reconstructed Portraits of Forgotten Ancestors.