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She was all of twelve years old;
Ghulam Farid was twenty-three.
“It’s a good match,” said Mohammed
Karim to his wife, when he had come home after arranging
the marriage. He was sitting on the charpai outside
the house, a vantage point which allowed him to see
but not be seen by the trucks and buses that passed
on the dusty road. Sebhagi had just given him a cup
of tea, and he poured it into the saucer and blew on
it to cool it down before tasting it. She settled down
beside him, something which not every wife felt free
enough to do in the presence of her husband, but Mohammed
Karim had been more liberal than most men. He allowed
her freedoms that had been unheard of in the village:
she could eat at the same time as her husband and sons,
she could walk to the nearby houses and spend mornings
with the women there, gossiping and chatting with them
as they cooked or cleaned, and she could watch anything
she wanted to on the old television set that Mohammed
Karim had mysteriously acquired from somewhere and placed
on the table in the middle of the main room in their
two-room cottage.
His son objected many times to these freedoms. “Baba,
this isn’t proper. It’s not the way for
women to behave. You must tell her. It’s a matter
of family honor.”
Son, your mother is an honorable woman. Spending time
with other women is no threat to me.” Mohammed
Karim would pull contentedly on his biri, confident
that the matter was settled. But Abdul Karim glowered
whenever
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