The Plague Upon Us by Shabir Ahmad Mir

Author:Shabir Ahmad Mir [Mir, Shabir Ahmad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette India
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

It was the apple harvest that brought Aziz Pohal and Maimoona together.

When he was not tending to his flock, Aziz worked as a farmhand, and the Zaeldars had hired him along with half a dozen other men to pick apples at their orchard. Maimoona brought lunch from Zaeldar Kouet for the men every day, accompanied by the old spinster aunt of the Zaeldar clan, Fatha Boba.

It was during these lunch hours that the old, experienced eyes of Fatha Boba discerned what anyone else would have dismissed as too banal a detail to give any thought to – the slight colour that rose in Aziz’s cheeks every time Maimoona handed him a glass of water or passed him his broth of turnips and kidney beans in a bowl of rice. To confirm what her sharp eyes had inferred, Fatha Boba told Aziz one day, ‘You know, our Maimoona here, she has come of age. It is time to get her married. Do you happen to know a suitable man who could be her groom? We are looking around, but have had no luck so far.’

Aziz stammered through the better part of his reply, but even when he was not stammering he made little sense. Everybody could see his discomfort. It was as if he had suddenly found himself naked in the middle of a fair.

Fatha Boba chuckled all the way back home. Now sure of Aziz’s feelings, she immediately went on to discuss the afternoon’s happenings with the rest of the family. ‘Lateef is going to be married soon,’ she told them. ‘Sooner or later, Maimoona too has to be married. What if both of them are married on the same day? It will save us a lot of trouble and expense.’

Fatha Boba’s proposal was a stroke of genius. By now the Zaeldars had realized that Maimoona’s marriage, whenever it happened, would be a moment of reckoning for them all, the moment when the question that all of them had perpetually deferred would have to be answered. When it came to celebrating Lateef’s marriage, there was no question – there would have to be a grand feast, an ostentatious wazwan in the truest tradition of the Zaeldars. Maimoona would be married off just the way she stayed at Zaeldar Kouet – in ambiguity. If they hosted a banquet for her wedding, as was the norm for members of the Zaeldar clan, it would mean that she was not an outsider, but if there was little to no celebration it would indicate that her presence in their home was considered pure charity. By subsuming Maimoona’s marriage festivities into Lateef’s, however, grand feast and revelry all in place, the Zaeldars could remain firmly on the fence about the girl’s status in their home.

‘I might even have found a groom for her,’ Fatha Boba added with a smile.

In the days that followed, Aziz Pohal heard through intermediaries that the Zaeldars would not be averse to him marrying Maimoona. Bolstered thus, Aziz Pohal sent a marriage proposal to Zaeldar Kouet, which was solemnly accepted.

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