I’m sharing an excerpt of a translation from Bilal Hasan Minto’s collection Model Town. This story focuses on the discrimination faced by minorities in Pakistan (in this case Christians). This particular excerpt focuses on appropriate dress for women–something that we have been talking about recently at BP. Sometimes fiction brings societal dynamics to life in a way that non-fiction cannot.
When the Walters’ house was under construction, General Zia’s “Bakistan” had yet to come into being, and all sorts of new prescriptions had not been written to preserve the purity and piety of women. Even at that time most Pakistani women wore the regular shalwar-kameez. Fashion advancements consisted merely of lengthening the kameez or narrowing the shalwar cuffs a bit. Nothing more than that. It was another matter if someone’s dress was a different type for a special reason, but even then it was expected to conform to the style of some other part of the subcontinent or Arabia — meaning it had to be in keeping with the mores of decency, modesty, and other such things. It couldn’t happen, either then or now, that women from Model Town or Sukkur or Chakwal or any other part of “Bakistan” could say that since this June sun is on fire let’s wear shorts and undershirts or put on swimsuits and jump into the pond or canal and emerge only when needed, to cook food or wash clothes. That way we will not die from sunstroke, nor neglect serving our husbands — the task for which we have been created.
This, and other such shameless things that conflicted with the Ideology of Pakistan, could be allowed to happen neither then nor now. At that time, if anyone wanted to wear a different kind of dress, it had to be at least from a neighboring part of the world where women knew how to cook food properly, wash clothes, and give birth to children. Zakia Khala wore one such acceptable dress, known as the “sari.” Zakia Khala would always wear this dress — in the kitchen, in the bathroom, at bedtime, while speaking on the phone, strolling on the lawn, and while mixing salt in lukewarm water for gargling. In short, all the time.
Our mothers would also dress up this way from time to time, though for them it was something special, to be worn on an occasion like a wedding reception or the head-shaving ceremony of someone’s superfluous child. But Zakia Khala had arrived in Lahore via marriage from somewhere in India and because a large number of women there go around in saris so Zakia Khala had picked up the habit although it isn’t at all necessary that if you are visiting a place or residing there you have to adopt all the habits of the locals. For example, if spitting is a common practice of a group, adopting that habit is neither commendable nor reasonable for everyone in the area or for others coming from outside. But the sari is different. It’s not a bad dress, nor is it reserved for loose women, nor is wearing it a bad habit like spitting, except for the fact that a part of the belly remains permanently visible and at times even the navel is exposed. In Arab countries and in Pakistan there are many who are infuriated by this mode of dress and attack sari-clad women.
So, seeing the petite and skinny Mrs Walter in jeans and yellow or blue skirts suggested that these people were different from us in some ways. Which is why Akhtar Auntie had asked:
“Who are these people building this house?”
And Apa Sughra had added in her harsh voice, as if sounding a warning:
“What kind of people are coming here?”
Apa Sughra was not a free-thinking or modern woman and both her twin daughters, Fari and Pari, wore burqas to school. Had it been up to her, she would never have let the Walters move into the neighborhood. For one, they were ‘Sai’ and, for another, Mrs Walter dressed like a loose woman in blue or yellow skirts and sometimes even in trousers. Were there not Sai women who dressed like our mothers in a regular shalwar-kameez? There were. All over. For example, the cleaning woman in our house, Grace. So why did Mrs Walter have a special need to run around in such dresses with such brazenness? But even more shocking to the senses, horrible, and condemnable was what Apa Sughra had imagined about her and then passed on to Ammi:
“Someone who wears such clothes outside must be going around with her bony ass naked in her own house.”
These words made Ammi tremble because the thought of anyone naked, especially a woman, was so frightening that even the idea of it entering someone’s head was condemnable — whether that woman was thin and emaciated like Mrs Walter or plump and healthy. But Apa Sughra had said it just like that, out of spite, though it was completely wrong to argue that you wore less at home than you wore outside. It wasn’t like that at all. The pious women, who went out in shalwar-kameez, did they wear something else or less inside? Of course not. Maybe they didn’t always wear shoes or put on the dupatta, but not wearing shoes couldn’t be taken as a sign of nakedness or a step towards indecency. And although going outside or talking to a man without a dupatta is considered dubious, whenever such an occasion arose — for example to talk to the mali ( gardener) or to sign for a parcel brought by the postman — these pious women, some of whose husbands often slapped them and some who couldn’t even sign their names, immediately covered themselves with their dupattas. Only after donning this grand symbol of modesty and spiritual purity would they open the door and converse with the postman, the mali, or whoever had brought the newspaper bill.
In Apa Sughra’s life, Christians had only one purpose: to come in the morning, clean the house, and go back to their China Basti or somewhere even further away. She wouldn’t even have them clean the house, but cleaning the toilets, which involved cleaning up one’s own mess, was a task that most people around us considered extremely demeaning and wanted someone else to do. This work was appropriate for Christians, especially in the times when there were many houses without a flush system. One couldn’t just pull the chain and send the waste underground to some unknown destination. The commode pans had to be picked up, taken away, emptied, scrubbed clean, and brought back. According to Apa Sughra, Christians were made for such work because perhaps she had never seen Christians like the Walters, who lived in her own neighborhood and in a house quite like hers. All she knew was Susan who did this work, this dirty work of removing waste from her house. Or, before Susan, Alice. But Alice had to be fired because Apa Sughra had caught her one day in the kitchen drinking water from a glass instead of from her designated steel cup. The glasses were for Apa Sughra and her veiled twin daughters — Fari and Pari. The day she caught Alice in this disgusting act, Apa Sughra was crushed and mortified by the thought of not knowing how long she had been drinking water from glasses defiled by Alice.
“Hai, Nudrat Begum,” Apa Sughra had said to Ammi, “Who knows how long we have been eating and drinking out of these foul dishes? Who knows what else she has contaminated? Now, we will have to throw out all the crockery!”
At the time, Ammi had kept quiet but after Apa Sughra left she grumbled: “Despicable woman! She herself looks contaminated to me! She keeps spouting nonsense! Dumb woman!”
“Despicable,” I repeated. “Dumb woman!”
“You be quiet,” Ammi scolded me and began grumbling again. “She keeps talking about purity and impurity but picks her nose all the time! She always smells of sweat! Does she even wash or bathe?”
After the incident with Alice, Apa Sughra threw out all the crockery in the house. She didn’t even bother to ask anyone else if they might want the dishes defiled by a Christian woman. Okay, it’s possible she might have considered it sinful to ask a Muslim this question but she could have asked a Christian — another cleaning person for example. Or the Walters. Though it was quite likely that the Walters had better and more varied crockery than she did. Wine glasses, for example, which are such that the part in which the wine is poured rests on top of a long stem which itself stands straight on a circular flat base — who knows why.
Ammi was irritated by Apa Sughra’s discourse on piety and impiety because she sensed that these were sly attempts at conveying a message. That was perhaps the case for Apa Sughra was an unsophisticated woman and because in our house the religion of the servants — or of anyone really — didn’t have any special significance and we could employ Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, pre-Islamic Arab idol-worshippers, in short any type of servant, without compunction and could even eat food cooked in utensils washed by them. That was the reason Apa Sughra expressed her displeasure through sarcastic hints.
“You are mashallah very liberal and educated people!” or some other such pointed remark like the one she made when we hired Ismail:
“What a relief. He’s a Shia, but at least he recites the kalma. Next time, Allah will help make a better choice.”
The next part of the story can be read here:
