PUNJABI MOON

NATASHA MANN

ust below us we could hear the chowkidar tut-tut-tutting his disapproval on the ground with his stick, pacing up and down, tut, tut, tut, while we two sat together on the flat-topped roof above, our backs to the Lahore skyline. Behind us the plains of the Punjab had been swallowed whole by a syrupy blackness, the villages, the wheat fields and beyond that the border with India. We were sitting in darkness.

Tut. Tut. Tut. The chowkidar continued his agitated walk. He was distressed at the scandal unfolding on the roof of 'Aunty's' house. We were in Pakistan, and here unmarried men and women do not mix alone.

'What's this bloody bastard doing?' snapped my lover, irritated that we were being spied on. So he moved across the roof, leant against a wall of unfinished brickwork and spread his coat on the ground so I wouldn't get dust on my purple silk skirt, He told me of the river on his land. His father used to take him there at night when he was a boy and tell him and his older brother Rashid to swim across it. 'Toughening us up,' he said, clenching his shoulder muscles, then laughing.

He told me of his earliest ancestors from Kashmir, two brothers, thieves and horse-rustlers, who fled the Kashmiri valley to the Punjab plains below. And he The Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize is awarded annually to the entrant best able, like the late Shiva Naipaul, to describe a visit to a foreign place or people. It is not for travel writing in the conventional sense, but for the most acute and profound observation of a culture evidently alien to the writer. This year the prize is worth 13,000.

This year's judges were the writer Caroline Moorehead, Mark Amory (literary editor of The Spectator), Boris Johnson (editor of The Spectator), Andrew Gimson (foreign editor of The Spectator) and Mary Wakefield (assistant editor of The Spectator).

There were more than 100 entries from a total of eight countries. The runners-up were Clementine Cecil, Gregory: Lascelles, Jonathan Ledgard, Rory: Stewart and Ben Yarde-Buller. with a Hindu girl. She ran away from her family to marry him. He took her to his village and the next day he sent her into the fields where everyone could see her. 'I want everyone here to know you are my wife,' he said, defying anyone to challenge the marriage (he nodded with satisfaction at this). But later the Hindu bride was filled with remorse at the shame she had brought on her own family. She killed every baby girl she gave birth to so they could never dishonour her husband's family as she had hers.

He talked and then he held me in his arms.

The chowkidar told Aunty about us and Iqbal was forbidden from entering the house.

We had met not long after I arrived in Pakistan while I was staying at the home of some friends. I was in the country working as a journalist. That first night he sat, pole-backed, on a chair in the corner of the kitchen with the ceiling fan roaring like a demented helicopter. He was dressed in a freshly pressed white shalwar-kameez and had a big-eyed, boyish look on his face.

He had been an officer in the army and had just retired at a particularly young age. He was a feudal: one of the landowners who wield real power in Pakistan. The family seat was in the southernmost part of the Punjab where the plains meet the desert. His family had arrived in Pakistan during partition, all 500 members of his tribe, leaving behind them the 44 villages they owned in India, crossing into Pakistan with nothing but what they were wearing.

And that, by the way,' he would say, 'was when the women in our family stopped wearing the burka: And he would nod his head for emphasis, and stop to check I was paying proper attention. 'The women went to get their burkas but the men said leave them. So they left with nothing. Numbing but the shoes on their feet and these clothes on their backs.'

He would end his tale sucking on his teeth so his lips crinkled. Then he would grin and, if we were sitting on the sofa, he would tuck me under his arm and plant an affectionate kiss on my forehead. We fell in love.

Oh, but the women warned, they change, they change, they change.

The land was in the interior of the Punjab but his home was in Lahore, in a sub urb close to the airport. Here the Pakistani elite lived in modern homes sealed from the outside world by high walls and locked gates. Windows were shielded from the sun and prying eyes by wooden slatted blinds. In the day the intense light of the subcontinent bleached the streets bare.

Not long after we met, Iqbal took me to the home he shared with Didi (his elder sister). Pakistan may be maledominated but in the Punjab you are likely to find an older female figure pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Didi was a typical Punjabi woman, robust, round-faced, with thick, black hair in a plait that fell down the back of her cotton shalwar-kameez. She had the gravitas of a headmistress and only needed to look at Iqbal to make her point. But she was quick to laugh. She had no time for the 'mullah-minded', or the `fundos' as the Pakistani elite labelled the right-wing Islamists. What liberties Pakistani women in a city like Lahore had, they wanted to protect. After all, there was always Taleban-ruled Afghanistan next door.

Their Abu, or father, had died only recently. His photograph hung on the dining-room wall, a handsome, clean-shaven man in military uniform. 'He had Hollywood looks, didn't he?' said lqbal, pointing at the picture.

Didi had no problem with us dating, especially since, and unusually for Pakistan, there had been love marriages in the family. And I never tired of listening to Iqbal's tales: his roguish cousin who insisted on being addressed as Sardar (chief) and who was being blackmailed by his village girlfriend; the booze-smuggling across the border; the dare-devil games that boys used to play to taunt the Indian border guards. Then there was the time his commanding officer in the army decided they should write a book review every week: 'While everyone else was running around getting War and Peace to impress him, I went into these back streets and bought some really dirty books called Venus in India and Mrs Lawrence's Lusty Adventure. So I reviewed these. And he called me in. "What is this?"

" But, Sir," I said. "These are the books I am reading."

OK, you bastard, I don't want any more book reviews from you."' Basant arrived: the kite festival that marks the start of spring, when everyone flies paper kites from the rooftops across the city. Unfortunately it had also become an occasion for macho posturing, with Pakistani men shooting their guns into the air. Invariably the papers would report the next day that some unfortunate passer-by had been hit by stray bullets. Ever since the Afghan guerrilla war against Russia, Pakistan had become awash with guns. Even Amma (mother) in southern Punjab had shot at some goondas who had broken into the house.

That evening we went to his sister's house and caused a mini-sensation. Women in embroidered shalwar-kameezes sat in the sitting-room, while the men and children danced to Punjabi music on the roof. Is that your brother's girlfriend?' they pestered Iqbal's sister. The gossiping irritated him.

Before I left for England we sat on the lawn, the mosquitoes gnawing at my ankles, and he asked me to marry him. I wanted to stay with him for ever.

Oh, but the married women warned, he is still a feudal in his soul.

September 11 did not change things at first. When I returned to report, the heat pressed against my skin and dried my eyes. And while the world waited for America to unleash its thunder on Afghanistan I sat on the rooftop balcony in Lahore with Iqbal's head at my feet.

Didi sat on a chair. She was explaining his feudal duties. 'It's all right,' said Iqbal tersely. 'She's read My Feudal Lord,' referring to the book by Tehmina Durrani about

her violent marriage to the tyrannical feudal politician Mustafa Khan I had read the book and then turned on Iqbal asking if this is what it meant to be feudal.

Didi looked horrified. 'No. Not like that. Mostly he is there to protect those villagers. Their families have been with us for many, many years. He has to sort their problems out, beat people up if they attack them. Mostly it is beating people up,' she said laughing.

'You know. They used to call Dad "Abbajan". Now they call Iqbal "Bhaijan" — big brother.'

Inside CNN bellowed 24 hours of nonstop war from the TV. I had nagged Iqbal all summer to visit England. Ever since Abu died the family fortunes had spiralled downwards, and he had asked me to see what opportunities there were for him there. But now he would just say, 'You think they are going to give someone like me with brown skin and black eyes a visa? I don't think so now.'

For a moment Pakistan moved closer to a war with India. He was on the army reserve list and could be called up at any time.

'I don't want you to go to war,' I said.

He laughed. `If war breaks out, I will marry you and send you and the family to the village.'

He said if I married him I could spend half my life here and half in England.

One night we were driving back from Peshawar and I saw a large white moon hung low in the sky over the plains of the Punjab. Only a handful of trees grazed the line of the horizon. 'Look,' I said, pointing at the moon. 'Doesn't that look like the face of a young girl?'

He peered through the windscreen. 'It's an old Punjabi woman,' he said after a pause. 'See, that's her chador. And there, see, is her nose.'

'It's just a young girl,' I said.

'No, it's an old Punjabi woman. We are in the Punjab and that's a Punjabi woman.'

'The moon looks the same whatever country you are in. It would look like that if we were in England.'

'That's a Punjabi moon.' I slunk back into my seat exasperated. 'Where is this coming from?' he said, after a pause. 'You know I will love your country, too.'

I went away on assignment for a few days and when I came back Iqbal's elder brother Rashid and his wife Aniqa had come to stay. I had never met them. They had only been names before. Aniqa was also Rashid and Iqbal's first cousin. Like many Pakistani families, clan ties are strengthened by marrying cousins. In feudal families it is a way of keeping the land together.

Aniqa was tall, stocky, with flared nostrils pierced with a spiral-shaped nose-ring. The moment she saw me she walked past without a word. Rashid followed her. I was damned instantly and I didn't know it.

Rashid and Aniqa's presence changed the dynamics inside the house. Hierarchy infected the atmosphere. Aniqa had just given birth to a baby boy and I did not quite comprehend her power and influence. The birth of a boy is considered an achievement in a Pakistani woman's life, especially in a feudal family where the family line runs through the male.

I felt the family politics shift around me. I went unspoken to. I would sit down while Aniqa and Didi were talking at breakfast and the talk would turn cold. Once I entered the drawing-room where the family were chatting idly. Moments later Aniqa picked up her baby and left. Rashid followed. I burned with humiliation. I had strayed on to another woman's territory I didn't even know existed.

Iqbal seemed oblivious to the freeze. But he was not unaware of my ambiguous status. Under the eyes of his brother and sister-in-law I felt him stiffen and withdraw. He no longer sat with me tucked under his arm. He was wary of talking to me in his brother's presence.

In a day's time the rest of the family was arriving for a gathering. Iqbal moved me out to stay with some friends. As I left, Dicii's eyes did not meet mine. She sat at the table, picking at a pomegranate, flicked her hand in the air and dismissed me goodbye.

Before I went back to England Iqbal pressured me to get married. I knew he meant to live only in Pakistan. 'Our family flower only grows in this soil,' he said. But could I live between here and England?

He asked constantly, yet still my questions went unanswered: how would my daughters live? Would they be free to marry whom they chose? Would a son be free to choose his own destiny?

Oh, the women told me, the men change, they change when they marry.

After I left they sent him to the land they owned in east Punjab. The family fortunes depended on him: every brother, sister, aunt and uncle looked to him for their share of the family pot. Months later he wrote to me. We would have to decide soon if we were getting married. Mama would not hear of it. She was already looking for a girl for him, and so were his aunties and uncles. He did not want to upset me, but that is the way things are done in Pakistan.

I felt his family closing rank. Society was reeling him in, forcing him to fall back into line.

He said he was coming to visit me in England in August so that we could decide. But if I wanted to visit in April, I was 'most welcome'. In April I went back to say 'yes'.

The fecund smell of the Punjab soil rose in the early morning heat as I stepped on to the tarmac at Lahore airport. Inside Arrivals industrial-sized air-conditioners cranked against the onset of summer. The passengers who had just filed off the plane were grumbling about the PIA staff. It all felt comfortingly familiar.

Pervez, the taxi-wallah, was waiting outside. We drove straight to the land, the yellow taxi bouncing up and down as Pervez barp-barped the horn constantly.

We passed town market-places thickly peopled with men in shalwar-katneezes, shopkeepers lazing and gossiping, and donkeys kicking up dust. Someone had turned an electricity pylon into a charpoy stall and hung his wooden charpoys from its rungs.

We drove further towards the border, where the land is greener: past coffeecoloured canals, men squatting in the fields; past the farmhouses, high-walled enclosures with bougainvillea peeping over the top.

There were hardly any women. Only occasional soft, cotton-covered forms in the market places, their faces covered with their chadors.

I saw him standing by a tree giving instructions to a worker, tall, slim in an ochre-coloured shalwar-kameez. He had turned quite dark in the sun, and grown a hairy, spider-legged moustache. He had become a pukka sardar.

He ushered me into the brick hut he had been staying in. Paper kites from Basant hung on the wall. He issued orders for cold drinks and tea. I sat on the charpoy and teased him about his moustache. 'Why is it that Pakistani men are so fond of growing moustaches?' I said.

'In a place like this it is a kind of taboo not to have a moustache,' he said, annoyed. 'I'm not about to start a fashion here and go clean-shaven.'

'You are going to conform?'

'Of course.'

Then he said, 'You know, the men in Pakistan are conservative. Yes, definitely they are conservative.'

The land had seeped back into his soul. He had hardened. There was no longer any question of dividing time between here and England. The land was his lot and he was looking for a housewife.

'You know, I am doubly checked now.' he said, curling the ends of his moustache.' Because I have no son. While my father was alive I was sorting out all this for him. But now I have no son to do it for me. I cannot wait any more to get married.'

'And daughters?'

'They will be brought up like my sisters. Religiously.'

He saw my face and softened, 'See,' he said, sitting on the charpoy and taking me in his soft, stilling arms. 'It's still me beneath the moustache,' I was tired. He told me to go to his house and get into his bed. He would come and we would talk more in Lahore.

From the look on Didi's face when I told her Iqbal had sent me there, I knew it was not OK. She said she had relatives coming and drove me to a hotel. I knew it was a lie.

On the way she talked about the current crisis in the Middle East and the Israeli military attacks against the Palestinians: 'You know. There is something about people who are of one faith. I know before I believed in this humanism. When September 11 happened and everyone was shouting about America and that they deserved it, I tried very hard to make people see the human side. I showed people all kinds of articles and said, "See, see how these people are suffering." I was very humanistic. But I don't know now. The Koran does say that when you are under attack you must defend yourself. It is very clear on that point. I won't watch this CNN any more. All that is rubbish. Even the BBC. The BBC is a little better, but even still. You know, when I saw what was going on in Palestine I cried. I actually sat down and cried.'

She paused.

'You see this change in me?'

'Yes,' I said. 'This is different.'

'I know. I know.'