1 Zer Bibi (The story of an Old Woman)

"Don't go away. God-damn you! You are the only property I have in this miserable world" said this an otherwise very pretty tall soft creamy white-skinned old woman to a goat which was grazing there at some distance from her, and it started galloping for no evident reasons which are accustomed to any goat race. I extend my help in restoring the goat where it was grazing by this old woman and this is how I came close to her. I said "Assalamoalaikom! Abai,---(mother), a love word that we use for motherly figures.

"Walaikom Salam! Bachai, Allah di bacha ka,(may you be the emperor!)" She said this so whole heartedly and amicably as if I had really conquered a world for him like, they say, Alexander. "This 'Meraty' (wretch) has been teasing me so hard. I can't handle her anymore, as I have grown weak enough." She said this while adjusting herself on a rock.

As I came closer to her and had a close view of her, she happened to be the relics of great beauty of the world. She had still long silky hair which had turned gray; her fleshy cheeks, which could have been so tempting, I thought, when she was a young lady, had developed as many wrinkles as her numerous black eye-lashes. I saw that her brows were as if drawn with a pencil, and lips, which seemed to be life-long misery stricken, still looked as if faded cherries. Her teeth were evenly and bright like pearls arranged delicately and in time of leisure. I was going to ask if there wasn't anybody home, but I was lost in reading her such an innocent and beautiful face that I missed a chance, and she asked me first.

"You seem to be a stranger, aren't you?"

"How do you know that, Abai? " I said enquiringly.

She said, "It is from the dress and the way you talk I came to know that you are a stranger here."

And then I narrated that I was in Army and my family was settled there in Bajawar. My wife was a medical doctor and was serving there. That I had two kids and was living a happy life with my wife. All this I could finish I saw tears rolling down from her eyes, not for some jealousy, but I think, for what she couldn't have had, unfortunately. I consoled her and she restored herself.

She said, "it is not that I was feeling ill of you, but felt sorry for womenfolk here in this tribal society. They are not treated as human beings here." and then the story of her life flowed from her as the tears did from her eyes.

"I was engaged, and, eventually, married to a son of a Malaksaib (Chietian)." "I was", she said, sixteen years old then and my husband was twenty. We were very happy." She added this informatively.

Calling the goat to her side which responded to her call, she resumed the story. "The chieftain had two sons, her husband and an infant of six months."

She further continued. "The chieftain was a man of say in resolving the conflicts of people as he had strong acquaintance with the administration of Bajawar. He had friends in Afghanistan as well and was very powerful, in matters of influence and money." "His elder son, my husband, was his right hand who always existed by his side, wheresoever the Malaksaib went", she added.

"It was almost two months they had married she received this message as a thunderbolt at her home that Hassan was shot dead". She sighed and said that this accident had devastated her and paralyzed Haji Zabardast, her father-in-law. He remained isolated from the world and was prone to long, long solitude. He was thus disentangled from the tribal affairs and his enemies were at large in Afghanistan and were stronger than he.

"Meanwhile, I was leading my life of seclusion not to leave home for four months and ten days. In this long period of four months," she said, "As I had not conceived any fetus, I usually wondered as to what would be my future. After the completion of the period of seclusion, I was asked to stay widowed for that eight-month-old kid, my brother-in-law. This was harsher than husband's death."

"Wasn't there anybody to rescue you from such a long imprisonment?" I asked the old woman.

She said, "Bachay, it was a matter of 'Gherat' (honor). How could a widow of a home, in this case, of a chieftain's son be married to someone else? One can die but can't marry outside". She said so emphatically.

And from this, I realized the gravity of this custom. From the word 'honor' I came to know that it was so deeply rooted in the social structure of the tribal society.

"I could do nothing, but reared him up. I often fed him with the best we had and tried to protect him from any danger and prayed for him so that he grew up hastily and became my shield." She said with that old hope she ever entertained in her eyes.

"At last, that day came. He was sixteen years old when our nuptial knot was tied. I was then almost thirty-three years old----------- too old for him. For this reason and that I had reared him up; he grew up a small kid with me, he, as a husband, was not interested in me." "So fifteen or sixteen years of widowhood," she said so mournfully, "was a fruitless wait for nothing"

"It was for a struggle for some four years that once I became the mother of his child". Saying this she got lost into thoughts, as if, was pondering over the skirmishes, struggles, requests, threatening of a wife to husband, and in return, his refusal, delaying, and God knows what not.

She said, "He wanted to have a new wife, much junior to him, young and beautiful". "He would often say", She told, "Why does someone decorate me with the widow of my brother?"

"Didn't Haji Zabardast say anything to his son that you have lived a life of widowhhod for sixteen long years in the name of the honor of the family?" I asked the women, who was reshaping her scarf worn out with a hundred washings.

"Hmmmm, what could he say? Hmmmmm, he , like son, forgot everything I had endured in the name of this family. He said that it was his son's choice to marry twice or thrice, if Islam allows it, why should we stop him?"

"And so he married another girl of his choice." This she said so furiously as if it has just happened.

I could feel the trauma she was suffering from, even then, after an age.

"Hey-ya ma za, hey –ya" addressing the goat to return back to her, she resumed her story of a pathetic life she had lived so far.

"My daughter came------so cute and so sweet". She was saying this with a charm in her eyes as if her baby daughter was still playing with her.

"There, he was happy with his new wife; here, I was enchanted with my sweet little darling. Life went on, sometimes, peacefully. They say, it is to be in heaven with a single wife, but it is to be in hell with two wives. It was a disturbed life of him with two wives, and of us with a shared husband."

"bachay". She said with a sigh. "When our home ceased to be home and became more of a hotbed of domestic quarrelling, my husband made thhhat house for me." She pointed with her finger to a distant hat-shaped cottage erected on a mound of a hill.

She said, "It was with her daughter she shifted to that room in solitude. Her husband would come off and on to provide for the necessities of life. Life went on and her daughter became a young beautiful maiden---------so beautiful that she could outdo a Fairy from Koh-e-Qaff".

"People wanted to seek her hand in marriage. One after the other came to marry my daughter. We could not put up with this any longer and my daughter was married off in the next village; In the years, my father-in-law was under the ground. My husband established his business in Peshawar and shifted there with his family, except me. And leaving an old wife, for the luxurious life in the city of Peshawar was no more a bad name to the family honor."

While saying all this, the old woman was again weeping, maybe, for unfulfilled aspirations she had in her heart. Otherwise, she seemed to be a cool and calm personality, having a life of miseries concealed in her heart.

"After a year, my beautiful princess, my beautiful daughter passed away, along with her baby. She succumbed to the pang for no facilities were available." The old woman said while sobbing.

"bachay, now I have this goat. We are living together. I don't know if my husband. I still have this family name hanging from my neck, but it is nothing to him in the luxuries he and his wife enjoy."

"It is us, womenfolk, who suffer. It is us, womenfolk, who have to retain the family honor. It is us, womenfolk, who are a disgrace to a family. Man is at large."

"Ta di Allah da khpalobacho au khazysarakhushala sati-----may you be at ease with your family----I I am leaving. It is getting dark. May anyone not leads a life of ZerBibi!" She said this and was heading towards her cottage, with a light heart, I think.

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