The Dance of Darkness

By Shameen Raza and Ayeza Raza

Time had not died.

It was still flowing like her blood.

Her mind had become what it had endured and more; for now, with the dust, she saw butterflies floating in her room – here, there, everywhere.

Infused with lyricism and the romantic aura of pre-colonial India, The Dance of Darkness is a story about a bewildered town with only women, girls and hijras. Raised as dancers and lovers, the girls Surma, Parveen, and Dilchasp traverse through their usual routines until the presence of one man triggers all that the town has ever wished for – LOVE AND FREEDOM.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398487376

Shameen Raza

Born in Peshawar (Pakistan), Shameen Raza has done her Masters in Gender and International Development from the University of Warwick. As a development practitioner, Shameen has worked on Violence Against Women and Girls to fighting Tuberculosis in Pakistan. This is Shameen’s debut novel.

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About the Author

Born in Peshawar (Pakistan), Shameen Raza has done her Masters in Gender and International Development from the University of Warwick. As a development practitioner, Shameen has worked on Violence Against Women and Girls to fighting Tuberculosis in Pakistan.

This is Shameen’s debut novel.

Dedication

To the years which brought me to writing.

And to the many wonders given to me by my nani’s house.

Copyright Information ©

Shameen Raza 2023

The right of Shameen Raza to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398487369 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398487376 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thank you to my incredible family and friends for manifesting this as much as I did. I was never really left hopeless because of the strength that all of you gave me through repeated words of encouragement.

Special thanks to the talented designer, Ayeza Raza, who brought this book to life with her creative cover design.

Glossary

Each word has been defined as per its use in the text.

A

Alam: Flag of victory in remembrance of the Battle of Karbala, signified by a symbolic Hand.

Aadaab: A formal ‘hello’

B

Bagh: Garden

Bismillah: In the Name of Allah

C

Chapati: A flattened and circular bread

Chaukidaar: Caretaker

D

Daigs: Massive pots of food

Darbar: Shrine

Deorhi: An arched entrance much like a gate to the house.

Dias: Small clay bowls used as oil lamps

Dupatta: A piece of long cloth intended to cover the chests and the head.

G

Ghazals: A lyrical poem with rhythmic verses most popularly based on love.

Ghungroos: bands of metallic bells and jingles to be tied around the ankles.

Gurh: unrefined sweet made out of sugar-cane.

Gurus: Controllers, teachers and mothers of Hijras

H

Hakeem: Healer, doctor

Hakeem-Ghar: House of the healers, an infirmary.

Halwa Puri: Two items of food; Halwa (sweetened semolina) and Puri (a sort of deep-fried, thin bread made out of plain white flour).

Hijras: She-Males, The inter-sexed, Neither male nor female.

J

Jalebis: An orange-coloured sweet made out of flour and sugar-syrup.

Jharokha: An overhanging enclosed balcony with intricate carvings

K

Kasidas: A mono-rhyme poem with panegyric verses.

Kathak: A traditional dance form

Khala: Aunt, Mother’s sister

Koyals: The Asian Koel

Kothas: Whore Houses

Khussa: Traditionally embroidered slipper

Khuda Hafiz: Goodbye, ‘May God be with you’..

L

Lailaha ilallah: There is no God but God

Lassi: A drink of yogurt and milk with crushed ice.

Loha: Steel

M

Malmal: Soft-cotton muslin cloth

Manhoos: Cursed

Mehfil: Traditional gatherings of poetry, dance and other recitals.

Mohtarma: Madam

Monosalwa: Food from the heavens

Motiya: Jasmine

Mujra: A classical dance form popular in the Indian Subcontinent.

N

Nawabs: Landlords and/or viceroys

Nath: Nose ring

P

Panja: The symbolic hand placed on the ’Alam proclaiming victory.

Parinda: Bird; fleeting bird

Peer: Master by virtue of lineage or spiritual status.

Peerhi: Wooden stool

Pulao: Spiced rice

R

Raat Ki Rani: Night blooming jasmines

S

Saheli: Friend

Sahib: Sir

Salam: Hello

Samosas: Fried dish with spicy potato fillings

Shalwar Kameez: A traditional dress comprising of two pieces; a shalwar (loose trousers) and a kameez (long shirt).

Sharaab: Alcoholic beverages

Shararati: Naughty

Shehzadiyan: Princesses

Sufi: A mystic, a wanderer in love with God.

T

Tabla: A membranophone percussion instrument traditionally consisting of a pair of drums.

Tawah: Flat pan

Thalis: Food plates

Bibi Jan’s House

Bibi (The Owner, Kotha Jan)

The Girls

Chaman and Mumtaz (Bibi’s daughters)

Surma, Parveen and Dilchasp

The Help

Shararati Khala (Naughty woman, also known as Nasreen Kalaam).

Begum (The cook)

Chuha (Rat boy, house boy)

The Parindas (Fleeting Birds, The Boys)

Shaahdat (Hakeem-boy, the healer)

Farhad

Part I

The Becoming

1

Prologue

He was sitting still on the wooden chair with his parchments waiting for the blue-eyed girl to come out into the night, while chasing his own thoughts and trying to curtail them into one world. ‘If she was not sent out, he would simply go back in and check her there,’ he decided to himself, without leaving any doubts.

She came out in slow steps with the flat-chested, thick-bodied Shararati treading alongside her as if she were to measure and record everything which was to be said and done. The hakeem-boy pulled a wooden chair close to where he was seated and stood up only slightly for Surma to sit. As she sat down on the chair, her confusion had completely swamped her mind and her body, raising too many poles to be confronted and questioned all at once. She did not know whether she should feel sorry or sad or fearful of what would follow after the hakeem-boy would leave. She also did not know how to be now for she had misplaced herself somewhere in a world which in itself had been misplaced. She had become anxious too, thinking how she would respond or talk considering that she had lost her voice to herself. She could not possibly try to dig in and excavate it for it had obliterated and dissolved like the smoke of a freshly blown candle.

The hakeem-boy asked her for her name again as he sat back down, ignoring Shararati’s presence and deeming it completely irrelevant to himself. Surma did not answer. She was looking down at the darkened blades of the grass with her head clothed in her black chaadar. The hakeem-boy kept looking at her, trying to read the marks and scars on her face as words that were written in a language he had perhaps only read in scriptures. He was engrossed by what these words suggested and what they had endured to have etched onto this face with ocean blue eyes within which was so much stillness and roar.

She has not been talking, said Shararati, her name is Surma..

Oh, I am sorry. Did something happen? asked the hakeem-boy without looking at Shararati.

Not really, hakeem sahib. Surma is a drama so it is okay. She will talk when Bibi wants her to, said Shararati with a snicker.

Your face…it is hurt, he said to Surma, taking out from the pocket of his kameez a purple-coloured vial. Do you have cotton in the house? Can you please get me a piece of cotton or cloth? he asked Shararati in his firm manner.

Shararati grunted on the inside and left the courtyard saying, Of course, we have cotton! We are women!

So, you do not talk anymore, Surma..

Surma looked up at him, peering into his eyes with all her brokenness as if this should not have been a question.

You know, sometimes I do not like to talk at all! It happens… he said, figuring in his mind how he was to take the conversation forward and how he was supposed to read this map of a most intriguing person.

Surma dashed another gaze at him, trying to tell him that he should not touch a flame for he might burn himself but also, in other ways, wanting him to touch it and seek himself in the deepest depths of her existence. He looked well to her, straight and tall with a strong back, it seemed, clothed in black, the colour of the night, the colour of her chaadar, the colour of ink on parchments and vellum and on Holy Scriptures.

You must have fallen or hit something hard to have gotten so many of these scars… he said, in a rather amused manner, thinking how the scars were hardly able to shield her earth-toned skin which reflected nothing but seemingly faultless clarity. She blinked at this; her lashes dropping like swaying leaves in the summer air, oblivious completely of what to do, overcome now with a strange sort of nervousness as she sat in front of a man who was neither her parinda or anything else for that matter.

Shararati came tumbling outside with a folded sheet of raw cotton clamped in her hand. She handed it to the hakeem-boy without saying anything.

The hakeem-boy tore a piece of cotton and rolled it softly in his palms, all the while Shararati glaring at him as if she could not afford to even blink her eyes. His face was full of concentration it seemed as he opened the thick round top of the purple vial and soaked the cotton ball which he had rolled with its fluid.

Look up for me, please, he said softly. He wanted to hold her head as he usually would have with any other person but he somehow was resisted by something rising within him. Surma heard him and complied to what he had told her, holding her face up with her oceanic eyes peering at what seemed to be the amber shade of a setting sun in the face of a man, all in the moment of a darkening night.

He dabbed the cotton ball gently on where her scars had sunk in and settled; his hand being light and taking its strength on itself. The fluid felt cool on her skin, smelling of concentrated mint, ginger and cinnamon. He was seeing more than he had before, spotting a purple mark just beneath her lower lip and a thin scar on the top of her brow. He soaked the cotton with a bit more of the liquid and then pressed it onto her bruise for it to lighten.

The bruise stung with the liquid as it was not to be disturbed. Surma felt the irritation and twitched with a low note of a hiss, sslllrrrrr.

I am sorry, he said, blowing cool air out of his mouth onto the purpled spot on her face.

Surma nodded, indicating that it was alright.

Once he was done, he corked the vial with its round top and put it back in his pocket, looking relieved and accomplished. You will feel better after this, I assure you. I will come by in about three four days to dab some more! You shall be without any marks soon, he said contentedly.

Surma was in the middle somewhere, surprised at how she was cheering in the midst of her darkness where she had not allowed herself to smile for a while. She had no right to feel warmth, she felt, in times like these when she had endured and sunk in and when she had been punished in her mind by the vile, worthless existence of herself that she had been carrying and would be carrying till the end of her time. If she did feel awe-struck, she would want to punish herself for it and in her mind, rightly so.

Now, Surma. You must say your name, said the hakeem-boy as a matter of fact. I know you think that you ought to not speak at all. I understand that. But I think it is time for you to say your name at least! I mean, you do not want to be nameless, do you?

‘She was nameless,’ she thought, and she wanted to tell him this too. She felt as if he should know her reality, about her wretchedness and her inability to pray. She wanted to shout out to him for help of some sort. He was the healer, they said, spoken so respectfully around MomeGarh as the venerable and kind Hakeem-boy. Perhaps, he was the answer to her silence.

He caught her silence as it was remarked by the chirping crickets as well. He held her face then, with the slender fingers of both his hands pressing her jaw as if they would instil in her what she thought she had lost. He kept rubbing and looking at her with great attention and then, he spoke, Now say, Surma.

She looked at him and nodded, claiming the impossibility.

It is alright. Say it. Surma, he said again just so she could hear and no one else.

Her heart felt sinking, and she felt unearthed. She gulped down the dryness in her throat, and without any cause or trigger at all, recited the kalma in her mind as if it was an echo, a beautifully set tone which was set everywhere and in everything—from the highest of the highs to the lowest of the lows.

She opened her eyes in a blink, looking into his.

Surma, she spoke, my name is Surma..

Shaahdat, the caramel-skinned hakeem-boy had had many superior moments of accomplishment before at various hakeem-ghars but this moment in the night, beneath the relentless sheet of the starry winter sky, he felt as if his own soul had somewhat been awakened. He smiled to himself more than to anyone else, not wanting this time to finish and wanting more and more of finding his soul in someone else’s voice and in someone else’s name.

Surma, he repeated, thank you!.

1

Autumn had thrown its colour onto the baghs; the heavenly gardens of MomeGarh, roasting leisurely the plants that blossomed once into their most divine forms to fraying weightless petals, bowing down defencelessly into submission. The trees stood tall still with thick barks and heavy roots grounded deep into the earth, with leaves half green and half dried; crisply baked in the name of the season. Hardly did these baghs desist or resist the change, each petal taking its own dear time into acceptance, each leaf being ready for its eventual falling; some too eager to go while others seeing their completion till the very end. The shelling and the going away made the baghs look splendidly divided into the grand works of nature; where the trees held some of their life and oozed out still, their praises of withering away into absolute infinities.

When he saw these lustrous gardens for the first time, he knew that this was to be his place to die at and to be resurrected from on his awakening. Lahore had always seemed warmer and darker than the colour of his skin and for the voices he had collected over the years whilst MomeGarh seemed just about right to his eyes and to his soul. This was to be the place of vast plantation and from what he sensed, the place of women who had let go of everything; even their bodies as they stood living. As time aged agelessly, MomeGarh bustled into a dwelling of women and hijras, igniting like wild crimson flames and then, haplessly melting from the very flame they brewed.

With the rise of the Sun, the Queen of the Earth, MomeGarh bustled with its little shops and vibrantly painted kothas, smelling like pots of incense through which rose soft whiffs of deep fried jalebis and spicy hot samosas. Butter melted softly on baked chapatis as the wood glistened in flames under the heavy black tawas for the breakfast to be made. The kothas stood still in the light of the morn as their finely arched deorhis welcomed the day with handprints of red and blue, signifying a deeply rooted presence of the past and the future as if time was but one braid. Many came to MomeGarh for its compelling wonderment and gloom. Men poured in to stretch and lay out their skins and build other worlds of realities and dreams while travellers stopped by on the way of their excursions to pray at the old saint’s darbar, pleading for their unfulfilled wishes to come true. Each kotha had a courtyard of its own; with carpets of grass, orange trees, lemon trees and flower beds cocktailing with poppies, marigolds, florid white motiyas and raat ki rani. On the roofs of the houses, in between half-lit candles and burning dias were the strong and tall A’lams with swaying golden red velvet in the sky, pronouncing in a placid, tranquil pitch that transcended beyond the barricades of time the spell of a battle long lost and found. The Sun-Queen, upon her time, seeped slowly into the browning grass as if the rose gardens were her final sight of burial, taking away with her all the light of the world and giving back to it a very silver and a very grieving moon. The night would fall like a love story, ending not abruptly but rather silently. This was the day’s end and in the catch of timelessness, the day’s beginning as well.

The Sparrows flew wildly, the crows cawed recklessly with the charges of the wind and the autumn leaves crackled with the bougainvillea on the silent ground. It was, again, the morning. Surma lay motionless on the charpoy beneath a rose patterned razai, peering blankly with her pearl blue eyes at the flame of the oil lamp which had suddenly exhausted itself against the spurts of the air that drifted so smoothly from the jharokha into the confines of the plain white room. She lay bare, raw and naked in her mud brown skin on the crinkled blue sheet with her un-brushed hair wildly open and still hopelessly clinging onto the wilting jasmines which she had plucked in earlier. Nothing really floated in her mind nor did anything move in her body. Her red rouge had been smudged and her skin felt dry as did the leaves with the change of the weather. She blinked softly and breathed in with her natural course, taking in the smell of the Earth, the smell of the walls, the smell of the jasmines stuck wildly in her locks; defeating unknowingly the smell of salt and tar that eroded from the man lying next to her. Everything seemed like a vacuum, a vast space of nothingness and only dust, where jolting the surface and shaking the rattle of things meant challenging the ways of the Sun-Queen at large. This morning, in the blankness of her being; she wanted to rattle. She wanted a shake, a change in the weather.

She looked straight onto the face of this nameless creature, not allowing her eyes to blink or shut. He was young it seemed and certainly tired as she judged by the way his bones had fallen onto the ropes of the charpoy. She had seen him last night when the rose petals had fallen from the sky as he had pushed himself against her body; claiming it, as the moments rushed, as his and his alone. She did not quite understand why so many of these men spelt their ownership with such desperate urgency but then, this she had accepted amongst other things, as part of a sickly, intangible trap of a routine. She continued to stare without blinking, intending to find an electrifying coil which would sizzle out of compulsion. ‘There was nothing,’ she thought,’nothing on him, except a slithering layer of beauty.’ She saw it intently as she had seen the defeated light of the flame, wanting against and in favour of her own will to jostle his beautiful form into something else. He looked so still, like the white walls of the room, brimming sublimely with the beauty of his youth and of his inheritance. His skin felt boundless in its beautiful limitedness as if it would never wither nor age and so, with her cold brown fingers, she touched his face. He remained asleep, breathing lightly as he had been before, floating in his dreamy slumber as if no other world existed. Surma placed her hand on his cheek, rubbing it softly against his trimmed beard and then reading the lines of his forehead with the tips of her fingers. He woke up saying ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘what’, where again and again. Surma, who had known nothing and had been nothing in the confines of this white room told him numbly that ‘it was okay’ and that he was here with her, with Surma.

Surma? he replied with brooding eyes. The name did not resonate at all. Surma, she said again, in the coldness of autumn.

Where is Aman? said the man, halfway between sleep and consciousness, bringing about within himself a sense of faithfulness and familiarity. This is what Surma had wanted—a sheer mockery, a theatrical display of the invisible roses and the copper coins. She knew what the girl’s name was, whoever she was. She had heard it all night. He had murmured it in his sleep, and he had murmured it in his prime. She wanted him to say more, to uncoil his tunes into the truth and duality of his existence so that he may seep out of his own beautiful skin and see himself through her eyes alone. She shifted her body up, moving her arm towards the mahogany table and picked up the metal glass full of chilled water. Giving herself no time at all, she splashed the water out of the glass onto the face of the half-awake, half-asleep man. He gasped for a second as if he had been struck by a strong bolt of thunder, crackling every instinct of striking back. His sleep had evacuated almost immediately from his eyes, leaving them vacant and burning with surprise and with a fierce urgency to reclaim his order.

He barked then, spurting out venom and heat. You worthless whore! Bitch! Slut! He bashed. How dare you? You filthy whore!

You ugly man. Go to your Aman now, spoke Surma. The man grabbed her then by her neck in retaliation and whispered close to her ears, Don’t you ever take that name from your filthy, slutty mouth, you filth. You worthless whore. I will tear your dirty skin apart, leaving your bones to be gnawed by the black dogs of this street. He spat on her face and, with a heated slap on her cheek, he let go of her choking neck. The wilted jasmines dangled onto her hair strands, really just willing to fall. Drifting off the bed with the sheet wrapped around his navel and legs, he said to himself, ‘I must go…’ and with a series of more insults spraying out of his mouth—whore, dirty whore, filthy whore, he quickly put on his shalwar-kameez and raced out, leaving Surma in an empty, white room in its usual, depraved form. The window-shutters were closed and the lamp had exhausted itself through the starry night.

‘She had gone blind,’ she thought, but it had only lasted for a second before she could see again. Her eyes had been filled with salty tears bubbling out of pain as her face ached tremendously from the harshness and burden of the slap. Bastard! Ugly bastard, she spurred after a while, hardly regaining her voice from her harassed throat. Electrified and jolted, she picked herself up as she did regularly and grabbed her shalwar and kameez from the edge of the charpoy to put on her skin. She drifted then to the jharokha, the centuries old balcony of her room, opening its panelled shutters completely to let in the freshly roasted air of the morning. She took in the vividness of it all; the sharpness of the smells that fermented off the baking grass and the falling autumn leaves. She heard coming from here and there, sounds and voices of women who had begun their day with the opening of the shops and the re-opening of the never closing kothas. She waited for the voices to come closer, for the voices of her own kotha to come and seize her and jolt her more on account of what she had done.

Her wait did not last for long as Shararati stormed into the room to make a monument out of the remains of the moments which had passed. Nasreen Kalaam—secretly known as Shararati behind her back was viciously naughty; a middle-aged, cotton-stuffed bodice wearing aunt who deemed herself to be the Aphrodite of MomeGarh and her self-conviction and resolution could hardly be denied. Being a hirsute was a hefty burden and a flat-chested hirsute in search of love was indeed out of the ordinary. Drenched in dramatic insinuations, Shararati pretended in her mind that her lover was seeing her perform and, on this note, her performance never failed.

What on earth did you do, you cursed woman? She yelled. Wait till Bibi gets back! She will break your legs and throw them out the window! she continued.

Oh, stop it, replied Surma.

"Stop it? You shameless creature! How do you have the audacity to talk right now? Shut your mouth or I will take your tongue out to feed to the dogs! You should thank your lucky stars that he had paid Bibi last night. Otherwise, these blue-blue eyes of yours would have been taken out of their sockets and set on fire. Manhoos! Cursed! Cursed!" screamed Shararati.

I know he had paid already! That filthy man! Sleeping with me and pronouncing the other woman’s name in the morning. In my bed. While I am with him. While he is still smelling of me. He is saying some other name! Surma replied, raising her voice.

Shararati rushed to where Surma was standing and slapped her tightly on her aquiline cheek. "You fool! He can say anything he wants! You wretched fool. He is a parinda. Not your husband! You are being a fairy, I see! Just you wait for Bibi to find out. And I swear, you better watch that filthy mouth of yours," said Shararati and with this warning of treachery, she decided to walk out of the room. She had affirmed what she already thought was too good to be dismissed. ’Situational comedy’—thought Shararati. She walked down the gallery of the vermilion wall which had enslaved so decorously the portraits of the late women of MomeGarh and of this house. The women peered with their dead eyes at the passer-by as if they had been cursed to wait for what might never happen. The grandest of the golden framed portraits was meticulously placed in the centre of the wall, with all the other frames fixed around it like pilgrims settled around the sacred rock. It was Bibi’s mother, Noor Jehan drenched in black-and-white, locked and preserved in the frame forever and ever. Bibi was the jan of the kotha; the owner who ran this house and dictated all its terms. The jans of each kotha were made either by natural hereditary or if a woman had become rich enough to buy her own kotha in time. This was of course rare, and seldom did this happen. In the case of Bibi, however, it was true. She had bought this kotha decades ago and had set a splendid example for all MomeGarh to see and laud. No one could really understand how Bibi had managed to buy a well set kotha out of sheer nothingness. Bibi was as regular a woman as anyone else at MomeGarh and regular women of MomeGarh gave to the jans whatever little they earned. The jans in return would provide for them all the basic amnesties of life—rice, roti, sugar, salt, cloth, rouge, kohl and wax. That was that. Bibi’s mother, Noor Jehan had been an ordinary, albeit an extremely venerable