Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [21]
From the first day their marriage had been tainted by something mysterious. Uncle Saroor was a well-built, attractive, and lively man in his twenties who dressed like the gangsters from Punjabi films and kept his mustache in meticulous condition. His wife was nearly forty years old, her skin leathered and pock-marked. It was rumored that he had married her for her wealth, an idea corroborated by an argument that broke out when she didn’t bring a fridge as part of her dowry. Others claimed that she had used black magic to trap him. In any case, they didn’t get along well, and this made the family wary of her.
On Uncle Saroor and Gina’s wedding night, all the couples in the family pretended it was their wedding night too and acted accordingly. Within a few months it was revealed that four women in the family were pregnant—one of whom was Ammi, with Zain. Three of the four pregnancies were successful: all but Gina’s. This meant that not only was she a rich, aged spinster who had managed to get herself a young man, but she was also completely useless, since she couldn’t produce sons like the others. Naturally, given this background, the blame for Zain’s death fell upon her.
The first shot was fired by my dad’s older brother, Tau, who on the night of the death claimed that Gina had something to do with it. Due to the intensity of the moment, his comment had been forgotten. After the three-day mourning period, however, sources began to reveal strange occurrences involving Gina.
“I was in the latrine,” Dadi Ma whispered, leaning into Ammi. “I saw something burned. I don’t know what! Allah knows what it was! But that Gina, she definitely looked at Zain with envy!”
“You’re suggesting it was jadu?” Ammi blanched, at the mention of black magic.
Dadi Ma stayed silent and nodded. Then she consulted with Tau. Being a member of the Tablighi Jamaat, he was the most religiously inclined in the family. Holding his henna-tinged beard in his hand, he mulled the possibility of jadu for a minute and then whispered that he knew a jadu tornay walay ka alim—a religious man who could break hexes.
A preliminary visit was initiated by the two women with the alim. Since he was very close to Allah, he instructed Ammi and Dadi Ma to wear niqab in his presence; further, he refused to look in their direction. (Women had the propensity to tempt him and potentially lead him to think sinful thoughts.) After listening to the problem, the alim instructed Ammi to return in a few days, bringing with her a shirt that contained her “musk.”
This time taking Pops along, Ammi and Dadi Ma went back with the shirt. The alim smelled it and then instructed Ammi to walk around in front of him. Then he gave her a plain piece of paper, read something over it, and said, “If you now concentrate, you will see the picture of the person who did this.”
Dadi Ma pressed up close, expecting to see Gina.
“I see someone!” said Ammi.
“Gina?” Dadi Ma asked. “You see her?”
“No,” Ammi said in confusion. “I see a man. The dark man from the roof.”
The alim told Ammi to ignore what she saw and suggested to her that she should see a woman—a description that fit Gina. Ammi concentrated harder but didn’t see anything. The alim then gave Ammi seven pieces of folded paper and instructed her to take a bath every day with one piece mixed in the water. He advised her to be especially thorough with washing her hair. Then he gave a prescription to Pops.
It was unclear whether the alim had broken the hex, but a few days later Dadi Ma noted that Gina was being excessively sweet toward Ammi. “Now that she knows your child ended up the same as hers, she’s happy,” said Dadi Ma.
The hex-breaker’s ineptitude had the effect of redirecting discussion about the causes of death back