The Dust Beneath Her Feet is the second short story in the Purana Qila series, (please see A Change in the Weather) an interconnected set of stories about families living in one neighborhood in India. Safiyah faces a difficult choice in Partition-era India to keep her family together, following the departure of her husband to a northern town in India, which is to be soon claimed as part of Pakistan.
Safiyah's husband has moved to north India under a cloud of suspicion to seek work, leaving her with their two young daughters and no money. It is 1947: the British are leaving and Partition is looming, as tensions between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus break out all across the country, beginning with political riots and escalating to mass murder. The division of India and Pakistan puts a border between husband and wife, just as Safiyah hears some gossip about her husband that makes her question whether her family will ever be whole again. Safiyah has a difficult decision to make and must decide how far she is willing to go to save her family.
Excerpt
The Dust Beneath Her Feet
Six strands of pink pearls, lifted from the trunk at the foot of Alima Begum’s bed and dropped into a coat pocket, provided six indisputable reasons for Laila’s father to leave. For a long time afterwards, Laila thought a different set of pearls was to blame for his being gone, but the longing of a child cannot break things the way the desires of men can. For years, however, Laila thought of her father like one of those large grey pearls, falling off the weak thread and skittering on the stone floor into a dark corner.
That morning, their mother scrubbed Laila and Henna with carbolic soap and scraped their hair into painfully tight braids, festooned with large loops of red ribbon. Laila was happy about the dress, which used to belong to her sister, and which hung loosely on her like an empty rice sack. Henna was in a starched cotton shalwar kameez and sighed as her little sister twirled in front of her, dancing under one end of her dupatta.
“Hurry,” their mother said, “I told them it was your birthday—don’t say anything,” she said quickly when her youngest daughter’s eyes grew wide. “Just be quiet and say thank you to whatever they give.”
The girls looked at each other and Henna shrugged.
“How old is she supposed to be?”
“I don’t know, five,” said their mother, irritated.
“Again?” asked Laila, “but I’m five already. I’m going to be six… when am I going to be six, Ma?”
“Hush,” said Henna, pulling her back by her elbow, while their mother marched ahead, her thin body at forty-five degrees to the ground. Henna spoke softly, “You’ll be six when they pull the black carrots out of the ground and Ma makes that halva you love to eat. Now be quiet. Nod if Sahiba says you’re five.”
The Grange was the biggest house in their town and the girls paused as they reached the gate, shifting from one foot to another for a moment, but their mother was walking slowly past the guard, her thin shoulder blades thrown back, holding her head as if she were balancing a jar of water, not spilling a drop.
“How is your husband?” they heard the guard call out, and they saw a thin sliver of their mother’s cheek as she turned her head to hiss “Quickly!” and they ran to join her.
The girls had not been to the Grange for nearly two years. Their father had been a servant there when they were younger, before the Buttles consolidated their staff and let him go.
The family had lived in one of the small homes at the edge of the grounds and the children had only been on the lawn a few times, when there were large parties. Once there had been a horse, Henna remembered, being led around with one child guest and then another on its mottled back. Buttle Sahib nodded to say that she could ride too, like the other children, but her mother stiffened next to her, so she just smiled and shook her head, reaching out to touch the horse’s tail as it trotted past her.
The grounds looked different now from her memory, but it was not the change over time that she could feel, but the unfamiliarity of disorder and decline. The lawn was overgrown and dotted with bright wildflowers; the roses were wilting, choked by weeds that took possession of the flowerbeds with a joyful ferocity.
Inside the house, there were boxes everywhere, vases and jars sunk into trunks full of sawdust and newspaper, ghostly shapes in shrouds of tissue paper. Large rectangles were propped against the wall, tied up in butcher paper with string.
“Ah, Safiyah,” said Mrs. Buttle, pronouncing the name as if there was a hard, boiled sweet, in her mouth.
“Salaam, Memsahib,” their mother cupped her hand to her face, and the girls watched her pantomime, before she pushed them forward slightly to greet their father’s former employer.
“So grown!” said Mrs. Buttle, beaming. “Almost young ladies. Now, before I forget, Safiyah, the old clothes I told you about are over there, do make sure you take them before you leave, I wouldn’t know what to do with them. Can you believe it!” said Mrs. Buttle, throwing her hands up in the air, indicating the packed furniture and belongings. “I feel like I’ll never be ready.”
“Will everything be alright?” Safiyah asked slowly and carefully, trying out the English words, like pebbles in her mouth.
“Yes, the arrangements are sorted. Richard is coming in a little while, he just booked his passage for next month, and the children are coming round to the idea. I have placed them in a good school, thankfully, but the adjustment will still be difficult. I mean, they are more Indian than English at this point.”
Safiyah, nodded, but looked doubtful. “Good schools. That is good. Good schools are very important, yes.”
“A little more time would have been nice, but then, you just don’t know how things are going to go. It feels so different, these days. Richard couldn’t see us staying another month, I’m hearing such things.” She stopped and looked at her former servant’s wife standing in front of her. “And how are you doing?” Mrs. Buttle’s hand fluttered from her necklace to land on top of Safiyah’s small, tapered fingers. “Have you heard from Aarif, yet?”
The girls watched their mother intently, but she shook her head and muttered something to her sandals, and Mrs. Buttle patted their mother’s hand. “In time, I’m sure. His cousin will look out for him, then you’ll be getting lots of fine presents,” she winked at the girls.
“It’s Laila’s birthday, today,” said her mother triumphantly. She smiled broadly at Laila, then at Mrs. Buttle. “She is five.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Buttle, taken aback. “Why happy birthday, Laila, how lovely.” She looked around her for a moment. “Well, I don’t know…” She brightened. “Of course! Why don’t you come with me, girls? I may have something for you upstairs in the nursery. I haven’t even started packing up there.”
At first, Henna thought that the nursery was crowded with children. The girls stopped at the threshold to the room and stared at the dolls. They were propped up on every shelf, their eyelashes like stiff caterpillars on their blushing pink and cream cheeks, hair glossy rivers of gold and chestnut.
“Take one,” said Mrs. Buttle excitedly. Henna looked at their mother, who was nodding vigorously at her, “Take… say thank you, Henna.”
“Any one.”
She looked around the room and settled on a large blond doll, wearing a nineteenth century blue and pink satin dress, blooming with ruffles and frills and a crepe hat with a black feather. She eyed the accessories, and imagined dressing and undressing her. She surreptitiously peeked under the dress and was baffled by the doll’s knickerbockers.
“Laila?” Mrs. Buttle smiled kindly at the young girl. “Any thing you want.”
Laila looked around the room. Their mother shifted from foot to foot, nodding, her own eyes scanning the room quickly. She saw a large brown-haired doll with blue eyes and nodded minutely at Henna. “That one is nice, Laila,” she said.
“I can have anything?”
“Anything.” Mrs. Buttle smiled. “Just tell me and I’ll get it down for you.”
“That.” Laila pointed at the pearl necklace Mrs. Buttle was wearing.
“A doll, Laila, choose a doll. She meant doll.” Henna tried to push her sister’s pointing finger down, but it came back up buoyantly.
“She said anything. I want the necklace.”
“Goodness,” said Mrs. Buttle, “No, darling, I can’t…”
“Doll, choose quickly,” their mother was hissing, but Laila started crying.
“She said I could have anything, she said-“
“Laila. Laila,” Henna said again, fiercely under her breath.
“Oh, darling,” Mrs. Buttle bent down, and put her hand on Laila’s shoulders. “I would love to…”
Mrs. Buttle gasped as the little hand shot forward and tugged at the necklace, breaking the thread instantly. They heard the pearls pinging on the stone floor, as Laila stopped crying momentarily before looking around her in surprise, taking a deep breath and then redoubling her efforts. Henna saw Mrs. Buttle, her mouth frozen in distress and their mother caroming all over the room, gathering them up one by one in the front of her kurta. She sniffed an empty glass on the dresser, and then dropped the pearls in, clinking like ice chips. “So kind for the doll, many thanks,” she said, before propelling her children out of the room and calling over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairs, “all the best for England trip.”
On the ground floor, she stopped to grab the mouth of a heavy cloth bag of clothes propped up by the front door. The girls watched her stagger out backward; her back bowed, as she strained to drag the bag out with her. They glanced up the stairs before hurrying out after her.
The doll, of course, became Laila’s. She had wailed until Henna threw the doll at her and folded her arms tightly in fury, while Laila gathered the miniature turn-of the-century woman into her arms and cradled her in her lap.
Over the next few weeks, Henna watched in pain as, one by one, each iridescent blue accessory was shucked off, falling into ruin into a gutter or dropping with a splash into a bowl of dhal, becoming grimy and ripped, oil-stained or simply absent, beginning with the feathered hat and satin shoes.
One day, Henna saw her sister bending over the completely naked doll, wrapping it in a facsimile of a sari, made from an old red dress that no longer fit Laila. “This is good,” she was muttering, “now you are an Indian bride.”
After they were asked to leave their home at the Grange and a hoped-for connection with another English household did not materialize, they moved into a small house in a neighborhood where they did not know anyone. Their father announced that he would become a teacher and that the last of their savings was invested in textbooks so that he could “change their destiny”.
He performed odd jobs during the day for the shopkeepers on their street, hauling in sacks of rice or lifting carcasses onto his shoulder for the butcher. When there was no more daylight left in the sky to study, he took his textbooks outside and sat under the streetlamps to read.
Safiyah washed their clothes every evening and hung them up to dry on lines of string she tied from one tree to another behind the house. The girls were quiet when their mother put bowls of ox bones swimming in oil in front of them at dinnertime, or when she walked past the heaps of fresh produce gleaming in the stands to root around in sacks of slightly spoiled guava or soft turnips that were thrown to the side.
They were surprised one day, a few months later, when their father came home with heavy bags that oozed with blood that seeped into the grain of their wooden table, and they watched their mother as she floated around their small living room like a feather.
“I was watching him,” said their father, as their mother started slicing an onion, looking up with a big grin from time to time, before bending back to her task. “You don’t see good shoes like that around here often, I knew he was someone important.” He sat back on a chair and put his arms behind his head. “He didn’t notice the men following him, but I could see right away they were goondas. I wasn’t scared, I’ve seen these types before, shouting up and down the street about what saints Gandhi-ji or Jinnah are, but then waiting for the dark to cut a man’s throat. I knew he could not handle them at his age. I didn’t even think.”
“Listen,” said their mother, pointing the rusty knife at him. “You could have been killed.”
“That’s what Masood Sahib said to me. He said, “That was very courageous. You could have been killed.” But let them dare bring crime into my town where I am raising my daughters! I told Sahib, these damned political rallies just bring thugs roaming around afterward. Decent people should be able to go wherever they want at night without being attacked. The British can’t get out of here fast enough, but who is taking care of the law?” Aarif smoothed his kurta over his small potbelly. “He lives at Purana Qila. I walked over there today, it’s a fine house. I would have liked to be his driver, but he already has one, but servant of a good-sized house will do. Who knows? One day soon, we might be able to get these ones,” he pointed at the girls, “in school.”
“I want to go to school, Baba! Take me to school!” Laila was hopping.
“Not yet,” said their mother. She turned to her husband. “What about your exams? Will Sahib give you time off to take them?”
“Waste of time. It’s fixed. It’s who you know, and I don’t have $2,000 rupees to slip in the examiner’s pocket. And chances are less I’ll get a job, without contacts. Being a servant is the best opportunity right now, especially when you’re working for the big man in town. Make something good, I have an appetite.”
Their mother began chopping more slowly, the knife rising and falling absentmindedly, chopping the onion into clumsy wedges that would not fry evenly, and she did not look up. After a few moments, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her knife-wielding hand. Henna went to fetch another, smaller, knife, stood next to her, and reached for an onion. They worked in silence.
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