“You will hate me and never speak to me again. If I tell you something.” All of a sudden Afsana spoke. It was a sweltering fly buzzing summer afternoon. She was colouring a caged parrot she had just drawn.
“Oh dear, why on earth would I do that?” I replied in surprise.
“Because I am a wicked girl.” She whispered.
Afsana lived in the shanty town next to the university campus where I taught. Every afternoon a group of girls would come to my home and enjoy art work and writing poetry.
Today Afsana stayed back.
A thatched mud hut in a congested squatters town housed her family of seven. Her father Furqan Ali was a mason, and mother Tabassum Bibi, a homemaker. Her two younger sisters Ifza and Aayesha were 10 and 8. Hannan and Mannan were twins and 15 years old. All they wanted was to become cricketers. The nearby government school is where they went. Except for sixteen-year-old Afsana.
She stayed home to wash all the clothes at the municipal tap.
She cleaned the dishes, swept the floor, cooked the meals and waited for her father and siblings to return home.
Ever since they bought a second-hand TV the day long soap operas held her mother prisoner.
Then one day, Tabbasum left for her village to meet her ailing mother. She took the younger kids along leaving an unhappy 14-year-old Afsana to cook and look after her husband’s needs. “Be an obedient child.” Mother reminded her. That’s when her nightmare began.
Every night Furqan, her father would bring home a bottle of country liquor and some halal chicken. He would force her to drink, switch off the solitary light in the room drag her to the floor and then begin the cruel sexual assault.
Her thin bony body ached all day.
One day, Rani ji, her neighbour found a frightened and miserable girl sitting on the doorstep sobbing her heart out. Rani ji worked with an NGO. She knew exactly what to do.
That night the cops came and arrested Furqan.
Afsana’s mother Tabassum returned in a hurry from the village. Only to abuse and accuse Afsana of lying, “you have sent your father to prison. Who will earn bread for us! You wicked girl.” She screamed.
Threatened and coerced, the 14-year-old was made to say she had lied.
Since then the shanty town dwellers ostracised her. “Such a wicked girl.” Some would say.
“Look at her. Lying about her father who works all day to feed them.”
Afsana was now an abomination.
You see she had the courage to speak up.
Afsana was now seventeen. She was thin bony and stress showed on her face.
Art and painting at my home was a great relief for her. The witch that used to haunt her every night had vanished. Slowly the stress lines left her face. She looked happy.
Mushtaq met her at the grocery store. Ramzan, the period of fasting was over and feasting and joyousness was in the air.
Afsana smiled shyly at Mushtaq. He felt strangely drawn to her. Everybody knew Afsana’s story. Mushtaq had heard it too.
He believed Afsana’s story. An orphan himself, he had lived with his alcoholic uncle and shrewish aunt. He had seen the ugly underbelly of life in the slums of Aligarh.
He craved for love and a family of his own. He asked Afsana’s parents for her hand. They refused. Her mother needed a house slave and the father had other intentions.
One night, with the help of Sunita, the washerwoman they quietly vanished into the dark.
Bio
Roopali Sircar Gaur, PhD is a published poet, travel writer, social activist and academic. She has edited a number of anthologies. As consulting editor for e-journal Different Truths, she mentors writers and poets. As a veteran spouse she writes and works with military families. Her recent anthology, The Force is With Us : An International Anthology Celebrating the Armed Forces has received much attention.