Eid visiting

Taayi describes her daughter-in-law as the classic Akbari from Deputy Nazir Ahmed’s novel, “Ghazala defies me in everything, she goes out into the street with wide-eyed wonder like a maidservant to watch the traditional slaughter of animals for Eid-ul Azha, she’s lazy and sleeps till noon…” The list goes on for half an hour with frequent repetition. Although Ghazala’s fictive counterpart, Akbari, was married to a thorough gentleman, Ghazala’s husband has grown up on Indian films and soap operas. In his wife has found his first partner who makes a king out of him by baring her flesh and soul to him. He holds her hand in public and eats off the same plate as her at weddings without a care for culturally acceptable codes of decency.

Taayi’s world is uncomfortably fascinating from a distanced vantage and driving through very congested lanes of Azizabad lined with MQM flags and tinsel kites (the election icon for MQM), I wonder if all those couples standing at nihari and mithai vendors have similar lives. The women clad in ubayas or shalwar kameez all cover their hair with diaphonous gorgette scarves that slip off their heads at the most timely instances to denude their tantalizing golden and silver jewelry. Bright lipsticks and long slivers of jet-black eye-liner coyly speak to their husbands over their Eid outing. Most of the men sport moustaches but not beards. Their eyes scan the crowd with the license of masculinity that entrusts them to fend off any unwanted gazes at their womenfolk. The responsibility of course comes with the fringe benefit of surreptitiously surveying other desirable women in the populace.

Shielded from this reality by the rolled up car window, I reflect on how these women’s ideas of a successful relationship compare to mine. They have all made their men believe that they are priviledged to have them for their wives.  The dynamics do not lead to the man and woman growing together and becoming better people unto themselves and for each other.  They do however lead the woman to feel cherished and have her say in the things that matter most to her.

In retrospect I believe I imbibed the idealism coded into Akbari’s antithesis and younger sister, Asghari, who married an irresponsible man and transformed him through her sincerity, her education and true love into a better man.  A friend once said to me, “you like bad boys”.  I laughed it off at the time but I see the verity of his words.  The caveat is that I don’t like them for their “badness” but the possibility of them being transformed into good men.  Yet even in my messianic heroism, I want to ultimately be with a good man who feels priviledged to have me, who doesn’t hold my hand or eat off my plate in public but walks with me with an aura that binds me to him.  Another Eid without a significant other.  C’est la vie.