Haveli

Haveli by Suzanne Fisher Staples Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Haveli by Suzanne Fisher Staples Read Free Book Online
Authors: Suzanne Fisher Staples
down a narrow passage and climbed the iron stairway to the dark balcony just under the painted and mirror-encrustedceiling of the great
baithak
, the men’s sitting room. The balcony, which was part of the
zenana
, was enclosed with walls, and carved screens covered the narrow, curtained windows that looked out over the room below.
    In the old days, the ladies watched from behind these screens as the men below celebrated harvests, hunts, and battles. The women laughed and gossiped, their perfumed breath trapped within silken veils, falling silent only when the dancing girls entered the
baithak
to entertain the men to the rhythm of tiny brass bells strapped in rows around their slender ankles.
    Shabanu went to the farthest corner of the musty balcony and pulled aside a curtain, brushing a cobweb from the cracked shutter.
    In the crowded hall below, men stood facing the doorway through which Rahim would enter. The room had been built more than two hundred years before, and its grand proportions reflected the significance of the life-and-death decisions made there over the generations.
    But it was a public place and, like most public places these days, bore evidence of profound neglect. Moss grew in the cracks of the damp tiled floor, visible between the ancient threadbare rugs. A grand chandelier hung from a gilt medallion in the center of the ceiling forty feet overhead, but the crystal was draped with cobwebs and dust, and fluorescent tubesblinked at intervals around the mostly dim room.
    Rahim’s secretary had collected a dozen petitions from people whose cases would be heard that morning. He stood waiting with them in his hand—crumpled pieces of paper carried with care from every corner of the tribal land by men who could not read but trusted in the saving grace of the signatures the slips of paper bore.
    Two dozen other men waited quietly, hopefully, clutching their own tattered papers. Some sat with legs crossed on cushions or on the worn ruby carpets; others stood with their backs against the ancient cracked walls inscribed with the words of the Holy Prophet and painted with trellises and vines along the casements, arches, and rails. Still others milled about, muttering to the relatives who had come with them.
    One man had brought his wife, a thin young girl in a tattered
chadr
, wearing a large pair of men’s shoes. The girl stood stiffly, as if trying to ignore the pain caused by her husband’s pride that she should not have come barefoot. She was the only woman in the room.
    A servant brought Rahim’s embroidered bolster and placed it with other cushions on a canopied dais. The murmuring hushed, and Shabanu watched as the men’s reverent eyes focused on the doorway.
    Rahim arrived fresh from his prayers, a blood-red velvet cap embroidered and set with diamonds on the back of his head. And to Shabanu’s surprise, behindhim came Ahmed, wearing a cap like his father’s—a cap that identified him among his clansmen as the next
syed
, a religious leader descended from the Holy Prophet Muhammad Himself.
    Ahmed appeared proud to accompany his father as he held court, and Shabanu was certain Amina had schooled him on the importance of the occasion and how he should behave. He watched Rahim from the corners of his eyes and imitated everything his father did. When Rahim scratched his nose, Ahmed did the same. So total was his concentration that a thin thread of drool escaped his lower lip and fell to his lap.
    Shabanu leaned her head against the shutter. She still had trouble comprehending that Rahim had arranged Ahmed’s marriage to Zabo. It was too cruel to them both. It wasn’t just the humiliation Zabo would endure; Shabanu was sure Zabo would suffer on Ahmed’s behalf as well.
    The first petitioner presented to Rahim was the man with the thin young wife. He complained that he had bought her from her father at the price of four goats and a
kanal
of land, and she had not yet conceived. He wanted his property

Similar Books

The Autumn of the Patriarch

Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa

Truth Lake

Shakuntala Banaji

Here She Lies

Katia Lief

Divas

Rebecca Chance

When We Fall

Emily Liebert