"The "deconstructed heart" of the title concerns the disconnection between a husband and wife, but could also be a stand-in or metaphor for the disconnection within a family separated from loved ones in a former homeland, or between old and new cultures. The author has a fine sense of style, with a wry sense of humor, rich images, and skillful use of simile and metaphor. Writing this good is rare." O. Barnack
When you think
about major tragic events in human history, it is hard to fully grasp the
suffering and loss involved on such a large scale. The Partition of India in
1947 led to an almost unfathomable amount of sorrow and upheaval. The declaration
of the Radcliffe line, delineating the border between India and Pakistan led, over
a time span of a few months, to the deaths of approximately one million people
in interreligious conflict and the displacement of another 12 million.
As a writer of
historical fiction series about families living in India, I wanted to examine
the lives of people caught in the conflict as they went about their everyday
business. The stories that dominate the history books have other stories
tangled up in them: people trying to live normally, finding work and raising
children at a time when everything is falling apart around them.
I wrote The Dust Beneath Her Feet, a short story from The Purana Qila Stories series, to bring a
spotlight on one such family, struggling to make ends meet and hold their
family together in the eye of the maelstrom. The main character, Safiyah, is
married to a man who has all the ambition in the world, but no work ethic. Fate
brings him work in a wealthy home as a servant, but he soon tires of his
responsibilities and gets mixed up in a robbery that leads him to leave town
under a cloud of suspicion. Safiyah is left to raise their two daughters and
patiently waits for her husband to send money from his new job in the north of
India where he has moved to work with his cousin. As the country is pulled into
religious riots between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, Safiyah has to manage as a
single woman and depend on the kindness of others in order to keep her small
family safe. Partition is looming, just as Safiyah hears a child's rumor about
her husband and his new life in the North. She has to decide whether or not to
brave the dangers of cross-country travel at this time to find out the truth,
or give up on uniting her family, possibly forever.
It was important
to me to create a strong female character, who maintains a remarkable
resilience, despite the daily indignities of poverty and the vulnerability of
her position. Safiyah's story was personal. I wrote it to honor my eldest aunt,
whose story was told to me as a child. Like Safiyah, she had an extremely
difficult decision to make that would determine the fate of her family during
this dangerous time in Indian history. I know that almost every family from
India and Pakistan has their own story from that dark time.
While I know
what happened to my aunt, and the events of the Partition-era have been detailed
in history books, there are no tidy endings in my story. The Dust Beneath Her
Feet stands alone as a work of fiction, but is interwoven with other stories in
The Purana Qila Stories series; the reader will be able to revisit some of
these characters in my other stories to get the full picture of their lives.
In my series, I
wanted to create a sense of interconnectedness and flux, as we move back and
forth in dates and geography, getting a sense of time's pull on a once
tightly-knit community. The series begins with a focus on the families living
in or around a compound in India. I move forward in time to revisit some of
these characters, their children and grandchildren, to share what has happened
to them; some of my characters take part in the emigration that brought many
South Asians to the West in the 1950's and 1960's; in subsequent stories, I
will be examining the intended and unintended betrayals that come with
uprooting and building a life in a new land.
I hope that
visitors to The Writing Desk will join the characters of The Purana Qila
Stories series, like Safiyah, and share a little way of their journey with
them.
Excerpt from The Dust Beneath Her Feet:
When Safiyah was a small child, the
Spanish flu took away one family member after another, leaving only her mother
and a set of distant relatives who remained dazed and untethered to one another
so that they drifted to different parts of the country without apology or
regret. Aarif had lost both his parents not long after his marriage and a
bitter dispute over some farmland in the Punjab had broken all connections with
his older brother, Shauqat. A few years back, they had received news that
Shauqat too had died, leaving nothing but debt, the family farmland swallowed
into the neighbors’ acreage.
After Aarif and Safiyah were asked to
leave their home at the Grange and a hoped-for connection with another English
household did not materialize, there was no one to whom they could turn. They
moved into a small house in a neighborhood where they were not known.
Aarif announced that he would become a
teacher and that the last of their savings was invested in textbooks so that he
could “change their destiny.” He performed odd jobs during the day for the
shopkeepers on their street, hauling in sacks of rice or lifting carcasses onto
his shoulder for the butcher. When there was no more daylight left in the sky
to study, he took his textbooks outside and sat under the streetlamps to read.
Safiyah kept a tiffin for their savings
on a high shelf in their house and she brought it down once a week, waiting
patiently until Aarif brought out the last rupee from that week’s work and
dropped the notes and a few small coins into the tin. She would shake the tin
gently, looking intently at the money as if she were prospecting for gold,
then put the tiffin away with a sigh.
They were running out of serviceable
clothes, so she washed their clothes every evening and hung them up to dry on
lines of string that she tied from one tree to another behind the house; she
unpicked thread from clothes that had to be thrown out, harvesting buttons and
lengths of string for future repair projects. The girls were quiet when their
mother put bowls of ox bones swimming in oil in front of them at dinnertime, or
when she walked past the heaps of fresh produce gleaming in the stands to root
around in sacks of slightly spoiled guava or soft turnips that were thrown to
the side.
They were surprised one day, a few
months later, when their father came home with heavy bags oozing with blood
that seeped into the grain of their wooden table, and they watched their mother
as she floated around their small living room like a feather.
“I was watching him,” said their father,
as their mother started slicing an onion, looking up with a big grin from time
to time, before bending back to her task. “You don’t see good shoes like that
around here often, I knew he was someone important.” He sat back on a chair and
put his arms behind his head. “He didn’t notice the men following him, but I
could see right away they were goondas. I wasn’t scared, I’ve seen these types
before, shouting up and down the street about what saints Gandhi-ji or Jinnah
are, but then waiting for the dark to cut a man’s throat. I knew he could not
handle them at his age. I didn’t even think.”
“Listen,” said their mother, pointing
the rusty knife at him. “You could have been killed.”
“That’s what Masood Sahib said to me. He
said, “That was very courageous. You could have been killed.” But let them dare
bring crime into my town where I am raising my daughters! I told Sahib, these
damned political rallies just bring thugs roaming around afterward. Decent
people should be able to go wherever they want at night without being attacked.
The British can’t get out of here fast enough, but who is taking care of the
law?” Aarif smoothed his kurta over his small potbelly. “He lives at Purana
Qila. I walked over there today, it’s a fine house. I would have liked to be
his driver, but he already has one, but servant of a good-sized house will do.
Who knows? One day soon, we might be able to get these ones,” he pointed at the
girls, “in school.”
“I want to go to school, Baba! Take me
to school!” Laila was hopping.
“Not yet,” said their mother. She turned
to her husband. “What about your exams? Will Sahib give you time off to take
them?”
“Waste of time. It’s fixed. It’s who you
know, and I don’t have one thousand rupees to slip in the examiner’s pocket.
And chances are less I’ll get a job, without contacts. Being a servant is the
best opportunity right now, especially when you’re working for the big man in
town.” He reached forward and pulled at the handle of the canvas bag that was
slumped over on the table, and a potato rolled out. “Make something good, I
have an appetite.”
Their mother began working more slowly,
and she did not look up as the knife rose and fell absentmindedly, chopping the
onion into clumsy wedges that would not fry evenly. After a few moments, she
rubbed her eyes with the back of her knife-wielding hand. Henna went to fetch
another, smaller knife, stood next to her mother, and reached for an
onion. They worked in silence.
Reviews:
Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed won a national essay competition about life in India held by
the Indian High Commission in England and has had her poetry and prose
published in the Cadbury’s Book of Children’s Poetry, Nadopasana One and
Tomorrow magazine.
Shaheen lives in Chicago with her family. To follow her
blog, please visit: http://www.coinsinthewell.wordpress.com and Goodreads and follow her on twitter @hailandclimb
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