A Beggar at the Gate by Thalassa Ali

Author:Thalassa Ali
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical, British - India, India, Asia, General, Punjab (India), British, Historical fiction, India & South Asia, Fiction, History
ISBN: 9780553381771
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2004-09-28T01:56:27.319779+00:00

“Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John

Went to bed with his trousers on….”

Mariana bent over Saboor, ignoring the glances of the whispering figures around her. It was silly to feel hurt because those two little girls had usurped her place beside Safiya Sultana. It was perverse to want Safiya to stop talking to the girls, to look up, to smile, to notice her in her native clothes.

But silly or not, as she sat beneath the latticed window, she ached with an all-too-familiar loneliness and humiliation.

It had not occurred to her that this might happen. Early in the morning, having at last received permission to stay at Qamar Haveli, she had thought only of Saboor, and of her soon-to-be-satisfied fascination with the Shaikh and his twin sister. Imagining Saboor sitting on her lap while great vistas of mysterious knowledge opened before her, she had flung her hairbrushes and a change of clothes into her smallest trunk and waved a cheerful good-bye to her bewildered aunt and uncle.

It must be a rare household that boasted both a respected Sufi Shaikh and a person like Safiya Sultana. How many Englishwomen, she had wondered as her bearers huffed along the dusty road from Shalimar, had spent even a morning with such a family?

Her head full of dreams, she had been halfway up the stairs to the ladies’ quarters before it occurred to her that there would be more to this reunion than she had imagined.

They knew of her request for a divorce. Safiya and all the family must already be aware that she had returned from Calcutta only to reject Hassan as her husband, and to abandon Saboor.

Her thoughts racing, she had bent to untie her boots outside the sitting-room doorway. How would the family treat her? Would they refuse to acknowledge her presence, then speak loudly and disparagingly of her within her hearing, as the English had done? Despising Calcutta society, she had managed to survive those cruelties, but this haveli, with its mysteries and magnetism, was no Calcutta bungalow.

Rejection by the Waliullah ladies, she feared, would hurt her more than she could bear.

But Saboor had come running, and Safiya Sultana had followed, marching toward Mariana on flat, purposeful feet, the wrapped Qur'an in her hand.There is nothing to forgive, she had intoned as she held up the Qur'an for Mariana to walk under as she entered the room.

At Safiya's side, under the silent scrutiny of a score of dark-skinned women and as many children, Mariana had felt herself overtaken by a desire to gain Safiya's calm power for herself. Too self-conscious to question the older woman in front of everyone, she had sat mutely upright on the sheet-covered floor, her stays biting into her ribs while she waited for someone to speak.

Later, the bird-like servant named Akhtar had been attentive as she took out Mariana's new native clothes. She had even offered to oil Mariana's hair. Buoyed by the girl's courtesy, Mariana had emerged with renewed confidence from Safiya's room, the questions she

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