Останься, дочь / Stay, Daughter

A few weeks before the great festival of Ramazan, wives, daughters, sisters and aunts would divulge their preferences to the men in the families who did the shopping for them.

Some men ignored these declared choices and bought what they thought would look good on their female relatives; others, returning home with arms full of packages, learned to their befuddlement that taffeta was not the same as satin, and that silk came in various grades and textures, not all of them equally desirable. A few particularly sharp fathers and brothers did know how to choose “a saree with threadwork along the edges but nothing on the front border and no sequins unless they were the kind that wouldn’t come off if a small child was to tug on the fabric.

”

Lately, some fashionable Fort ladies had begun to ask that they be taken to the entrance of textile stores in the Galle bazaar. Seated safely inside their curtained buggy carts, they chose from bolts of fabric that were brought to them. Marmee found it hard to believe that women could be so forward.

She gave no instructions, either, to her brother, so she said. And whatever Wappah brought her was alright, she said too. Yet, she counted the days till it was time for Majeed Nana to visit the village.

On one such day, Marmee, when she was fifteen or so, heard a loud voice.

Sarongs! Sarees! Cloth!

Sarongs! Sarees! Cloth!

She searched for her brother. Where was he? Had he stepped out into the backyard or gone to look for their roaming goats? Was he in the outhouse? She had no time to lose.

If no voice stopped him – and only a male voice could do that – the trader would walk right by their house.

Wappah had heard Majeed Nana too and came running. When he called out, the cloth trader stopped and turned, then with slow steps, walked up to the small house. At the front door, he propped a wooden yardstick under the bundle on his head, shifted it to his shoulder and carefully brought it to the ground.

“Salaam alaikum, salaam alaikum,” Majeed Nana said aloud, as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

He pitched his greeting into the air as though he was speaking to no one in particular. But he knew full well, that watching his every move through a crack in the doorway, holding their breath until he untied his package, were the women of the household. The older, married females holding the door ajar, and the komarus standing behind, peering over their shoulders.