Kathryn and Rashid bumped down the lane in a rickshaw. Since leaving the main road connecting Rashid’s village with the bustling city of Lahore in northeastern Pakistan, she felt as if she were traveling back in time. The gritty, inelegant commercial buildings of the main road had given way to houses, rural compounds in varying degrees of disrepair. She leaned out the side of the rickshaw to get a better view of green fields of wheat and mustard, neat rows of dried cowpies stacked beside mounds of hay.
Her brilliant blue headscarf fluttered in the gentle breeze. So much more beautiful, Rashid mused, than the drab Arabic style headscarves she had bought trying to fit in to the culture she expected. Rashid surreptitiously slid a hand under the billowing cloth of the salwar kameeze. He had meticulously ordered these clothes from the Pakistani tailor in Dubai. In her apartment he had pulled the drawstring waist so the baggy pants dropped effortlessly to her ankles. He had made love to her standing up, a foreign woman in familiar Pakistani dress. But today she slapped his hand in mock scandal, hoping the rickshaw driver wouldn’t see.
Rashid signaled the rickshaw driver to stop at a wrought iron gate. A man, whom Kathryn immediately recognized as Rashid’s brother, opened the gate and ushered the couple into a large courtyard. A second rickshaw driver brought their luggage as people spilled out of the surrounding rooms.
Rashid hugged his brother, introducing him to Kathryn as Riaz. She barely greeted him before others called out Rashid’s name, laughing and touching his head and his shoulders. Several women greeted Kathryn with shoulder to shoulder embraces, pats to her head, strokes to her hands. Everyone spoke Urdu with a smattering of English words. She felt the reception incomprehensible, simultaneously restrained and effusive.
Two women led Rashid and Kathryn through a set of open doors into a room with several charpoys, wooden bed frames with lattice strung seats big enough for both lounging and sleeping. An older man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and handsome shock of black hair sat beaming, a tiny girl nestled up against his side. He held out his arms to embrace Rashid, who stooped down and momentarily touched his father’s feet in a display of deference. The older man set his hand atop his son’s head then quickly pulled him up by the shoulders and affectionately thumped his back.
Rashid motioned for Kathryn to approach the older man. For an apprehensive moment, she realized Rashid hadn’t prepared her to greet her future father-in-law. The whole family ceased their bustling, waited. The distance between the worldly American lover and the landed Pakistani patriarch took on an exaggerated dimension. Her breath caught in her throat. She searched Rashid’s expression for any shred of guidance. As if in a vacuum, she raised her arms as if to hug Rashid’s father. He did not reciprocate, blocked her gesture by awkwardly patting her wrists. She had blundered. They had all seen it. Then the patriarch’s eyes warmed into a laughing smile. “Welcome, beta, welcome, child,” he boomed, at which point the world resumed its spinning, the family returned to its musical chatter and Kathryn safely entered their familiar foreign world.
The family gathered in the courtyard for the evening meal, dragging charpoys and stools into a circle. The unmarried women unceasingly offered rotis, round wheat flatbreads, fresh from the stovetop griddle in the kitchen and ladlefuls of curried gravies. Only after the elders had repeatedly refused more food did the young women sit to eat their own spicy pallak gosh, spinach and goat curry, never spilling a drop on their multi-colored clothes.
Rashid’s female relatives surrounded Kathryn, talking and laughing with her, their headscarves brushing her shoulders when they readjusted them. The warmth of their bodies mingled with hers as they refilled her plate with creamy mustard greens and spicy lentil gravy.
Rashid sat between his parents, engaged in an animated conversation. Rashid’s mother, a handsome woman with strong features and a substantial build, exuded an aura of control. She deferred neither to her husband in conversation, nor to the family members who came to ask her questions or refill her water glass.
Rashid looked up at Kathryn, winked at her conspiratorially. His parents also looked at her, obviously discussing something about her in Punjabi. Rashid’s father raised his own roti toward her, smiling and nodding, encouraging her to eat more.
Rashid’s younger sister leaned over and said to Kathryn, “Mummy and Daddy like you. They can see you have a good nature. And you know how to eat our food. When will you marry?” The girl wobbled her head, half nod, half shake, a gesture Kathryn had come to appreciate for its vague possibilities of mostly yes with the look of no.
Kathryn wobbled her head back and started to speak when someone somewhere in the house turned on a stereo and energetic bangra music filled the air. A couple of Rashid’s cousin brothers—as he called them—shouted with delight, springing to their feet and shaking their shoulders to the beat. The whole family turned to watch. Light on their feet, they flew their hands in the air above their heads, lifted their knees high as they jumped with each step, their faces beginning to glow with the effort. Kathryn recognized the rhythm, Punjabi bangra remixes had been wildly popular in the nightclubs of Dubai. Almost involuntarily, she started to shake her shoulders. The women around her reached for her hands, pulled her to standing, urging her to dance. Kathryn looked to Rashid to gauge his reaction. Already on his feet, arms up, he strutted like a peacock, dancing, occupying a huge space in the courtyard with his relatives. Kathryn joined the group of women, repeating the moves he had taught her, right hand up like you’re screwing in a light bulb, left hand down like you’re patting a child on the head. Her shoulders bounced, her feet pounded the ground, filled with the sheer physical joy of dancing she and Rashid shared.
And everyone—young and old—was on their feet, moving, laughing. Kathryn watched two young girls cross their wrists and grasp each others’ hands, spinning around an unseen point, faster and faster, the centrifugal force spinning their clothes away from them. They disengaged and one reached for Kathryn. She mimicked the spin, her feet close to her partner’s, their shoulders leaning out away from each other. She saw only the delight on the other woman’s face as the rest of the family and the courtyard disappeared into a blur of sound and color.
Just when she thought she might lose her balance, her partner stopped, released one hand and steadied her with the other. Kathryn hugged her and sat on the nearest charpoy to regain her balance, the stars swirling above her.
Kathryn brought her future father-in-law a glass of warm milk. After almost a week in his home she had become part of his nightly ritual. He motioned for her to sit across from him while he drank. He spoke to her in Punjabi. Sabeen, Rashid’s eldest sister-in-law, translated.
“My mother and father chose my wife, and she has been a good woman for me,” he said. “She is strong and smart, and she gave me three sons.”
Kathryn nodded at the translation.
“My son is choosing you, that’s very different for our family, for our clan. But I can see you are also strong and smart. You will have to compromise sometimes because our culture is so different, but even my wife and me, until now we compromise with each other.”
When he had finished his milk, Kathryn reached out to take his empty glass. “You have all made me feel so welcome,” she said. “Any compromise seems like a bargain to be part of your family.”
Rashid’s sister-in-law smiled and patted Kathryn’s knee affectionately.
He continued, “My wife was not agreeing with my decision to split the family businesses between Rashid’s two elder brothers. But they’ve done well here in Pakistan, they’re happy here. The eldest runs our farms here in the village, and my middle son takes care of the trading companies in Lahore. Rashid though, always I saw he was different. He had a desire for adventure, the confidence to go abroad.”
Kathryn smiled as she looked down, swirling the cup in her hands. New glass bangles jingled softly against the intricate henna designs on her skin.
“Today at your engagement ceremony, my relations asked me where you’ll live after you are married. Of course, it’s your choice, Dubai, London, America,” he glanced heavenward with his palms upturned, “only God can be knowing for sure. But you will always be welcome here in Pakistan. We are Punjabis, we always have space for our families. And insha’allah, God-willing, you will bring sons here to know their father’s country.”
“Insha’allah,” she repeated. “Thank you, Daddyji.” They both smiled at the title, simultaneously intimate and respectful.
“Sonja, beta, sleep child,” he said to her directly.
He stood up and walked to his room.
“Good night didi, sister,” Sabeen said before heading in the opposite direction. Kathryn brought the cup to the kitchen, the bhai would come and wash everything in the morning.
Kathryn walked silently on bare feet out the door to the courtyard. The hinges squeaked. She looked for her shoes among the pile just outside the door. Moonlight glinted off the sequins sewn into ladies juttis. She stepped over the men’s slippers with their upturned toes to slide one foot and then the other into the pair she thought Mummyji had bought for her. But rather than stiff new leather, these were soft, well worn. She allowed herself the comfort of walking in someone else’s shoes. She went to the single charpoy forgotten in the center of the courtyard, spooking one of the nameless family cats away as she rested on the latticed strings.
She looked up at the moon and tried to imagine her wedding here. She had heard of local Muslim weddings in Dubai. The husband would sign a ceremonial contract with the wife’s father before the mullah, and the elaborate, but separate parties for the men and the women would follow. She knew nothing about Pakistani wedding customs, but she could not imagine her wedding would be nearly as somber, given the exuberant hospitality she had seen this week with Rashid’s family. She tried to imagine her parents here. Would her mother be able to eat the spicy food and heavy sweets? Would her father be dismayed at the seemingly frivolous practicality of Rashid’s family, the conversations devoid of intellectual debate or literary references?
She heard the door hinge squeak.
Sabeen appeared. “You are here alone, beta?” She slid onto the charpoy next to Kathryn, a gesture that would have seemed intrusive in Kathryn’s family.
“I was just looking at the moon.”
“Sometimes when it’s too much hot for sleeping, Daddyji and my husband pull all the beds onto the roof so that we can feel any tiny breeze under the stars. On the worst nights Daddyji even will go down the lane and hire the juice wallah to bring us fresh lemonade.”
“Daddy seems like a very sweet man.”
“Oh, you are very lucky to marry into this family, not all men are like Daddyji.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s very careful about the females in his family. He made sure all his daughters are educated, and he taught Mummyji everything about his business. When he goes traveling to the city she can go out to the farm and manage the workers and the business arrangements. Even me, when he arranged with my parents for my marriage with Rashid’s eldest brother, I had one year of university left before I would complete my degree. Daddyji suggested we postpone the wedding for one year so I could finish, and he even paid my university fees for that year.”
Kathryn turned to look at Sabeen, whom she had mistaken for a simple village girl. “What did you study?”
“Commerce and business administration. I wanted my parents to find me a boy in London to marry, so I could go abroad and have a career. But every boy we found, when we asked our relations abroad to call on him, we found out each and every boy was drinking and going to nightclubs.”
“Like Rashid,” Kathryn said.
“Mummy and Daddy worried about him a lot while he was in London. They thought he might go and run off with a goree, a white girl.”
“You mean like me?”
“But you’re different,” Sabeen said without any embarrassment. “You’re here with us. You came to our village, ate our food with us.”
“And I can dance the bangra!” Kathryn giggled as she lifted her hands into the air and spun her wrists bangra style. Sabeen joined her, dancing to an imaginary beat.
The door hinges creaked again. “Hey, bhabi, sister-in-law,” Rashid called out, “what are you doing with my wife?”
Sabeen, who answered to an entire constellation of words describing her relationships to her family members more often than she answered to her own name, sat up and laughed. “You brought her here, so now you have to share her with us. And she isn’t your wife yet!”
She helped Kathryn to her feet and they both slipped their shoes back into the pile beside the door. Rashid took Kathryn’s wrist as she walked past him in the doorway. The door hinges squeaked once more as Sabeen discreetly left. Rashid walked Kathryn to the room she had been sharing with one of his cousin sisters. The younger girl’s clothes, even her handbag, were gone.
“What happened?” Kathryn asked.
“She moved to another room.”
“Why?”
“I prayed for her father, my chachaji, when we were in Dubai. He’s well now, so I asked her for a favor in return,” Rashid smiled mischievously, closing the door behind them.
They made love quietly. The gentle breeze blowing through the open window, the sounds of crickets and distant dogs, the proximity of Rashid’s family somehow altered their pleasure.
“What will your family say in the morning?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Really? You’ll walk out of this room and Mummyji’ll be drinking chai, and your nephews will be running around with biscuits, and she’ll say nothing?”
“They know you’re a Westerner. They know your culture is different and you don’t follow our rules. Frankly, until now you’ve followed more of our rules than they expected.”
“They don’t seem very strict about Islamic rules. I mean, your uncles were drinking whiskey.”
He turned his head to look at her. “In our culture, it’s more important to follow the rules of our clan than the rules of Islam.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we have to be loyal to each other first. Our allegiance to Islam comes from that. We see other Muslims like part of our greater clan.”
“So how do you show your loyalty?”
He turned to look out the window. The moonlight reflected in his eyes. “When I was ten,” he said, “Indian army tanks invaded the Golden Temple, the most holy place for Sikhs. Two years later, Prime Minister Indira Ghandi’s Sikh body guards assassinated her.”
“That’s how you demonstrate loyalty?”
“No, that was a political action. But after that the Hindus in Delhi rioted. We watched it on the television news. Hindus killed Sikhs by the thousands, they threw gasoline on their turbans and burned them alive. We were seeing pictures of the burned bodies, the Hindu police did nothing,” he practically spat out the word Hindu.
She shivered despite the warm air and pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.
“I remember my mother saying to my brothers and me that if a mob ever came to attack our home, the women in the house would take the gas cylinder for our cooking range and blow it up. They would kill themselves, but also take out some of our attackers. Then my mother told me and my brothers, ‘You boys will run away, survive however you can, and grow up to take revenge on those families that tried to kill us’.”
“Your mother said that?” Kathryn, horrified, couldn’t imagine her own mother delivering such deadly instructions to her as a young girl in their suburban home.
“My parents lived through Partition. In 1947, when the British pulled out and Pakistan was created, their families were living on what became the Indian side. Until now my father won’t talk about the killings he saw when they crossed over to Pakistan.”
“Was his own life in danger?”
“Of course,” Rashid said, almost angrily. “Exactly when my grandparents crossed the border, they were taken in and protected by two brothers, Pashtuns who worked as drivers for a rich family. They hid my father, his brother, and their parents in a car in a garage for three days, until they could move safely to relatives in Lahore.”
“The Pashtuns were Muslims?”
“Yes.”
“So they were showing loyalty to their greater clan.”
“You understand.”
She let out a long sigh. The heavy story crowded out the previous week’s lightness, as if she had been playing jaxx at a funeral, a childish girl ignorant of the suffering around her.
“Hold me?” she asked quietly.
He put out his arm and she rested her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to him.
“We won’t live in Pakistan.” He tried to reassure her. “This isn’t your history, not your issue. Just respect my parents, that’s the only loyalty they’ll expect from you.”
Rashid’s middle brother, Majid, opened the car door for Kathryn, and held out his forearm for support. She climbed into the seat, gathering up her flowing kameeze and chunni.
“Thank you,” Kathryn said.
Majid’s wife, Aisha, giggled. “Americans, always you’re saying thank you. Are people in your country so selfish you must show gratitude for every tiny thing?”
Before Kathryn could answer, Rashid pushed in beside her. “Make space,” he said as the driver started the engine. She scooted closer to Aisha as Sabeen and her husband Riaz piled into the front seat.
They lurched into the lane, the brothers continuing a spirited conversation. Unlike their sweaty bumpy rickshaw ride in, Kathryn now viewed the farms and farmhouses speeding by from air conditioned comfort.
“What are you talking about?” Kathryn asked Rashid.
He laughed, still gesturing to his brother Riaz. “I told him he has crores of rupees, he’s rich, but still lives like a country boy. He loves his cows more than his cars.”
“Shoukart, what is a car for?” Riaz asked the driver, who only shrugged. “A car is only a vehicle for bringing you from one destination to another. A cow? Now a cow makes you milk, makes you money, keeps you company, maybe even takes you from one place to another.” He looked out the window. “Of course I care more about my cows than my cars.” He turned the air conditioning down from full blast. “I’m not like our brother Majid,” he said with finality.
“Why isn’t Majid with us?” Kathryn asked.
“He took his new car because he has to stop by his office for some business,” Aisha explained. “He’ll meet us at the gold shop.”
As they reached the outskirts of Lahore, the smells of charcoal and grilled meat, spices, rotting fruit, car exhaust, and incense all seeped into the car.
Kathryn could barely process the dizzying array of street vendors, small shops, apartment buildings they passed.
“Let’s stop for samosas, or pani poori,” Rashid told the driver.
Riaz shook his finger. “No snacks until after we arrive to the gold shop. I know you,” he turned to look at his brother, “I have to impose the discipline or we’ll never get everything done.” He turned back to the driver, “Shoukart, to the gold shop directly.”
“Han ji,” Shoukart affirmed.
They turned down a small lane and then another and another, seemingly lost. Then without warning, Shoukart stopped the car and everyone piled out.
Through a dingy door and up a set of old wooden stairs they arrived at the shop. Brightly lit glass cases sat atop marble tiled floors. Mirrors lined the walls and bright yellow gold jewelry sparkled from every surface. A man in a beautifully embroidered silk kurta greeted Riaz warmly. Majid stood up from where he had been drinking tea with the shop owner.
Riaz introduced Rashid to the shop owner, who turned to look at Kathryn. “And you beta, you are the lucky bride marrying into this family?”
Kathryn smiled. Rashid glanced proudly at Riaz.
Sabeen and Aisha moved toward the front of the store to inspect the ornate gold necklaces. Rashid thumped Majid on the shoulder. “You got here so quickly?”
“You know, younger brother,” Majid said, “I like to drive my car, I don’t waste any time.”
Sabeen led Kathryn to a glass case, “Which styles do you like?”
Kathryn, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold, tried to discern the differences between them. “I guess the shorter ones.” She pointed to a few studded with emerald and ruby colored stones.
“Don’t go for stones,” Aisha said quietly, “they sell the gold by the gram and the stones are never worth as much as the gold, so the value is not good.”
“Can I ask to try them on?” Kathryn asked Sabeen.
“Of course madam,” the shop owner said in a deeply resonant voice. “You should see what you will look like as a Pakistani bride.” He motioned to a young man behind him who brought a tray with six small cups of tea, and then to a slightly round middle-aged man who joined them from behind the counter. He aimed a remote control at a wall mounted television, generating sound and color as if to make them feel at home.
“Which ones madam?”
Kathryn, teacup in hand, tentatively pointed to three different necklaces. Sabeen took each one in turn from the salesman and placed them around Kathryn’s neck.
“I think I like this one best,” Kathryn said, fingering the clusters of small gold beads clustered amidst the intricately filigreed designs. “How much is it?” she asked Aisha.
Aisha, the practiced wife of a businessman, motioned for the salesman to weigh the gold piece. “Today’s gold price is a little lower than usual, and this shop’s making charge is always fair.” The salesman tapped his calculator and presented a price.
Kathryn gasped. “It’s almost five thousand dollars!” she said to Aisha. She took Sabeen by the arm to whisper into her ear. “I don’t need such expensive jewelry just for the wedding. Is there a gold set in the family that I could just borrow for the day?”
Sabeen stepped back and looked at Kathryn as if she had asked to wear fur in the middle of a sweltering Lahore summer. “Someone else’s gold? But you must have your own gold. It isn’t just for your wedding day. It’s your insurance. If your husband dies or you need money for an emergency you can sell your gold. No, you can’t borrow it, and you should choose as heavy a piece as Rashid is willing to buy.”
Kathryn looked up toward Rashid, saw his face light up. “Samosas!” Shoukart, the driver, handed him a little bag fashioned from last week’s newspaper, the contents already making big greasy spots over the photos of local politicians. He turned to Kathryn. “We have snacks. Now you can shop as long as you like.”
The television blared a Pakistani film song—a young man crooning wistfully, intercut with shots of a girl seen through a soft filter.
The store attendant appeared with small plates and paper napkins and the three brothers gathered around the snacks, greedily dipping the deep fried potato dumplings into sweet tamarind sauce. Rashid raised his hand, calling over to Shoukart to join them. “Aja virji, come brother, you were clever to buy so many.” The Pashtun driver who had stood quietly deferential, easily joined and engaged in their banter.
Rashid watched the television distractedly. The song had ended and a newscaster described the American military presence in Afghanistan, with footage of Bagram Air Base. American soldiers had been accused of forcibly searching Afghan homes, aggressively touching women, even shooting a man when he brandished a dagger in his own home. Shoukart shook his head. “How do they think they can occupy Afghanistan like that?” he spoke in Urdu. “The Americans don’t understand us Pathans, they will never escape our badan, our justice.” Rashid’s brothers nodded in sympathy. “Every one of us knows the Pashtunwali, we are bound like brothers to take revenge.”
At the jewelry counter Aisha turned her back to the salesmen, spoke in low tones to Kathryn. “You should tell me what you like, but don’t let the shop owner hear. We won’t buy today, you can tell him you’re not fond of his designs. Then I’ll ask Majid to bargain with him later, on a day when the gold price is more down.”
Kathryn discreetly reached toward the necklace still on the gram scale and nodded to Aisha.
“And the matching bangles and earrings, they are fine for you?”
Kathryn wobbled her head affirmatively. “Sir,” Kathryn asked the salesman, “can you show me plain gold bands for my husband? The jewelry set is your tradition,” she smiled to her future sisters-in-law. “A ring is my tradition.”
She picked up a simple, wide band. “Can you engrave the inside?”
“Of course,” the salesman said. “Whatever you like.” He offered her a piece of paper and a pen.
She wrote, Beneath the Same Heaven.