Under the Pomegranate Tree

University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Fall 12-20-2013 Under the Pomegranate Tree Aneela Shuja [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Shuja, Aneela, "Under the Pomegranate Tree" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1784. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1784 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. 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Under the Pomegranate Tree A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Fiction by Aneela Shuja B.A. University of New Orleans, 2005 B.A. Punjab University, 1998 December, 2013 Table of Contents Part One: Tobay ……...…...……………………..………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1……………………………………..……………………………………...…………….1 Chapter 2……………………………………...……………………………………...…………..14 Chapter 3……………………………………...………………………………………………….26 Chapter 4……………………………………...………………………………………………….32 Chapter 5……………………………………...………………………………………………….44 Part Two: The Shrine of Data Ganj Baksh………..……………………...……………………...55 Chapter 6……………………………………...………………………………………………….55 Chapter 7……………………………………...………………………………………………….64 Part Three: Heera Mandi……………….……...…………….…………………………………...84 Chapter 8……………………………………...………………………………………………….84 Chapter 9……………………………………...……………………………………………….....97 Chapter 10……………………………………...……………………………………………….115 Chapter 11……………………………………...……………………………………………….125 Chapter 12……………………………………...……………………………………………….136 Part Four: Upper Scotch Corner…………………………….....……………………………….146 Chapter 13……………………………………...……………………………………………….146 Chapter 14……………………………………...……………………………………………….154 Chapter 15……………………………………...……………………………………………….163 Chapter 16……………………………………...……………………………………………….173 Part Five: New Orleans……………………………………...……………...….……………….184 Chapter 17……………………………………...……………………………………………….184 Chapter 18……………………………………...……………………………………………….198 Chapter 19……………………………………...……………………………………………….208 Part Six: Lahore…………………………………...……………………………...…………….218 Chapter 20……………………………………...……………………………………………….218 Chapter 21……………………………………...……………………………………………….228 Chapter 22……………………………………...……………………………………………….241 Chapter 23……………………………………...……………………………………………….255 Epilogue……………………………………...…………………………………………………259 ii UNDER THE POMEGRANATE TREE PART 1 Tobay --1-- At the back of our house in the village of Tobay, there was a small, windowless room with mud walls and a tin roof. This was Dhaaga’s room. He used to say that when the monsoon rains unleashed their anger, it felt as though the whole village was pelting his roof with small stones. I teased him then, telling him that maybe one day he would do something really bad, and the whole village would stone him to death. He never teased me back. His bony face just took on a dark look, as though what I was saying would come true. As though there was a curse placed on him already. I didn’t know anything at the time. I didn’t know that that room would one day see Dhaaga’s blood spilled across its floor, just as it had seen my mother’s blood twelve summers before Dhaaga ever entered our lives. For it was in that room that I was born. “It was so hot and so quiet the night you came into our world.” Amma liked to relate the details of that night, because that was the only time she ever gave birth to a child who lived. “Baba tried to help Grandma Ma-ji fan away the mosquitoes – Allah knows there were so many in that room, flying around while I listened to Bindi’s tail thump the ground in the next room. But, that was where Ma-ji wanted me to give birth to you. It was in the back of the house, so the villagers wouldn’t hear my screams. She kept telling me to chew on my veil and not scream and embarrass Baba. The villagers had seen Ma-ji search for the midwife and Baba run for water 1 from the well, so they knew it was my time.” Amma always buried her face in her veil as if she still felt embarrassed that the whole village knew her time had come. “They quietly waited on their rooftops and in their courtyards. Balu Taya, your father’s big brother, came to the house and sat with Baba.” “And then the angels invented a window for me to squeeze through, and I fell onto your lap?” I watched her as she lowered her tone, as always ignoring my comments about the window. “The midwife, fat old Sakina Apa, came toddling along, saying men should sometimes control their hunger and not make their poor wives’ bellies swell with children. She squatted on the dirt floor, and I chewed hard on my veil – Ma-ji had rolled the end to make it soft in my mouth. She kept saying ‘chew, chew, chew,’ and I chewed until you were born.” “Then I fell onto your lap, and the window closed?” “Mina, don’t talk about the window in front of Ma-ji or Baba,” Amma said. “Just remember the angels brought you to me. That’s what my mother told me, and that’s what I’m telling you, silly girl.” Amma always ended her story by telling me that when Balu Taya informed the villagers that Baba was the father of a girl, they raised their hands to Heaven and said, “Whatever Allah the Almighty Wills,” and quietly went to sleep on their rooftops and in their courtyards. As a child, I remember peeking into the room where I was born and wondering in which wall the angels made the window through which I entered the world. If they had made a window, why hadn’t they made the mosquitoes go away? Why hadn’t they made Amma not feel so much pain, and why hadn’t they made me into a boy so that Baba could have celebrated? 2 That room lay empty until Dhaaga entered our lives, several summers after I was born. He was a homeless boy, begging on the streets of Tobay. Amma felt sorry for him and brought him home. He said his father had been a tailor in a neighboring village and had died some time ago. Then he burst into tears and choked on his words, refusing to give out his name, so Amma invented one for him. She said that since his father was a tailor, and the boy was as skinny as a string of cotton thread, a dhaaga, she would call him just that: Dhaaga. His dust-caked face had tears running down in tiny rivulets, but he stood motionless, as though the breath had been sucked out of him and left him dangling like his namesake, a dhaaga. Amma served him lentils and flatbread, and he ate quietly, squatting on the mud floor of our kitchen. Ma-ji insisted he take a bath afterward and wash his clothes. She gave him Bindi the buffalo’s old, iron bucket and had him fetch water from the well behind our house. Dhaaga did as he was told, never once looking up. He seemed soaked in sadness, as though he carried a heavy burden that weighed him down. I watched him through the small window in our kitchen that overlooked the back of the house where Bindi sat under the shade of the old peepal tree. By the time he opened the door to the small bathroom next to his room, half the water in the bucket had already spilled out. Next time, I thought, if Amma and Ma-ji weren’t looking, I would help him carry that bucket. I knew Amma and Ma-ji wouldn’t let me talk to him unless it was to tell him to do something for them. Even though he looked around ten or eleven years old, the same age I was then, I knew it wasn’t right to talk to him. Not only was he a boy, he was also our servant. We had kept an older servant boy before from some neighboring village to take care of Bindi, but Ma-ji said she’d caught him drinking Bindi’s milk and then adding water to the little that was left over for us. She had warned him several times and then finally kicked him out of the house. It 3 was the same story, Ma-ji lamented: every time she hired any help, the boy would eventually start stealing milk or food, and they would have to start looking for someone else. I think Ma-ji hired and fired the boys easily because she knew Amma and I were there to take care of Bindi. Each time a new boy arrived, Amma and I felt relieved. Then Ma-ji would start complaining about something or the other, and the boy was let go. The other boys had been older, so I kept away from them. But, with Dhaaga, it was different. He was a little shorter than me and had a perpetually frightened look on his face, making anyone who saw him want to take care of him. At least, that’s what I wanted. From that day he was officially in charge of Bindi the buffalo. Dhaaga awoke at sunrise, milked Bindi and churned butter and fresh cream for us to eat at breakfast. Later on during the day, he collected Bindi’s dark green, pasty dung and mixed it with hay to form large, round patties, which he slapped onto the mud walls of his room to let them dry in the hot sun. We used dried dung for fuel to cook our lunch.

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