Travelogue – 12 – Pakistani Family Marriages
1965 driving was safe, peaceful and care-free wherever we went for a day or more. Nations that we visited spoke different languages but the people everywhere were friendly. Asian counties we drove thru were Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey but all equally hospitable. European roads in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany and Belgium were a sheer joy. Words are not enough to describe the wonderfully enjoyable atmosphere that prevailed then. The 21st Century man in the death-ridden Middle East cannot even imagine what peace was. See Travelogue -11.
I reached Lahore on March 16, 1965. Like a fast-moving whirlwind our families settled on our getting married on March 29, 1965.
Soon my wife and I were on the road again from Pakistan to England starting in May 965. The difference was that I had come in an air-tight VW two-door with German License Plate. I was returning with four others in the rattling four-door Corsair with a British License Plate.
On the afternoon of our wedding day we arrived in our Lahore home. My father told us to drive right away 100 miles to our considerably bigger house in Rabwah. My mother’s sister Massi Ji Nazir Begum disapproved our going to just a locked-up house. My father stated his dilemma that he had nobody else to go to the house and open it for us. Plus he had kept there a caretaker who could clean the house and shop whatever was needed. Massi Ji announced on the spot that she would herself go and make the house a home for us. She immediately got ready for the travel to go to the empty house and make it nicely livable. For her comfort as she rode with us and out of respect we seated her in the spacious front-seat. We were hardly out of town when she told me stop the car and she squeezed in the rear seat. She told my wife to sit with me in the front seat because that day onwards she must sit there. The relations between Massi Ji and my wife continued extremely loving for over 40 years. My wife was with Massi Ji in New Jersey when she fell in her last coma that ended her life. My wife willed to be buried practically next to Massi Ji in Lambertsville where she indeed is. Both so close to each other in life for forty years will stay so in their resting places on earth. All her life Massi Ji called my wife by her maiden name Azra or puttar that means my child. Massi Ji took, told and treated that my wife was more of a daughter than a daughter-in-law.
Pakistani marriages cover several ceremonies both before and after weddings. Mehdi takes at least one evening before the wedding day. Valeema food is served later on. My father believed in the simplicity precedent that had been set by the Holy Prophet s.a.w. All his life as a Judge and in a position to enforce his bent of mind was his firm way of life. He was inflexibly opposed to many of the traditional practices like Mehdi for the marriages. His strongly voiced views on the Huq-Mehr and other issues almost derailed our wedding. But the truth is that he was the only man in my life whom I saw practice what he preached. And his personal goal he pursued and he taught his kids was to become small Mohammeds. He taught us to follow him whom the Holy Qor-aan declared the Best Exemplar [033:022]. All my siblings in unison then stressed that he should enforce in his house what he wanted. But he must not impose on others what they did in their households and for their marriages. Being a judicious person he valued his kid’s freedom of expression he had himself tutored. That way our wedding reached the feat accompli in my mother-in-law’s Model Town house.
Valeema was held in our house in Rabwah. Guests were served from 11AM to 7 PM. The invitees came at the time their schedules permitted. Several of family members travelled far distance to welcome my wife as the newest family member. The principal of my alma mater Talim-ul-Islam College Mirza Nasir Ahmad honored an old student. My friend for years Mirza Rafiq Ahmad came and stayed the longest remembering the old stories. He had written a book about his mother and its Introduction named some who helped publishing it. My wife’s cousin got her husband Mirza Azhar Ahmad come early. Two of my five uncles came. I am indebted to all who honored us by gracing our Valeema.
Pakistani and Indian word massi stands for ma-jessi which means like the mother. My mother was very close to her sister and the four daughters of both her maternal uncles.. As the eldest child of my mother I was the first recipient of all affections of all five massis‘. Massi Ji Sardar Bibi was the oldest and died before all others and I still remember her visits. My mother before passing away on October 12, 1948 had told of a dream that she had seen. She saw that massi Sardar Bibi had come and taken my mother away holding her by hands. My mother was unable to personally greet my wife when I was married nearly 17 years later. But all the living loving ladies took my wife instantly as if she were their own daughter.
The middle cousin my mother massi Sakina Bibi came to attend our Valeema. My wife and I could not refuse her invitation to visit their home in Chak 78 close to Sargodha. We drove near their village until the point where the canal-bank road’s barrier was locked up. I left the car and walked to the attendant’s cottage to ask him to open the lock of road block He was away with the keys but his wife was at home and apologized for our convenience. I told her who I was and whom I was visiting and so had to leave the car there in her care. I noticed a push-bike in the courtyard and asked her permission to borrow it to go the village. Seeing my wife sit on the bare bar of the bike she brought in a sheet to roll it around the bar. That way she improvised the cushion effect so that my wife could sit on the bar comfortably. Thus I pushed the bike with my wife sitting on the front bar dressed as fully bejeweled bride. I biked the last mile and even asked someone for the directions while my wife sat on bike. In that most unorthodox unusual fashion we traveled and reached massi Ji Sakina’s house. They were waiting for us and had a good laugh seeing us reach their home riding a bicycle. Massi Ji honored us by giving each of us a foot-long tumbler of milk with the malai, cream. To me a wonderful welcome treat but to my wife the drinking of milk was quite nauseating. My wife did not drink milk and didn’t add it to even her tea as I saw for the next 51+ years. My wife passed her glass of milk to me and I finished that too by drinking to the last drop. All this was happening in just 2nd week of our marriage in Pakistan where I grew up.
The BBC broadcast a program on education in the early 1960’s. My wife was shown as the non-English teacher who taught English to English pupils in England. And we had driven the latest model VW that I had bought from its Wolfsberg plant, Germany. Massi Ji gave my wife a huge glass of milk which she could not drink even if she tried perforce. And the villagers had seen brides in cars, buses, horses or bull driven carts but never on bicycle. By this time the road-blocking attendant came but we preferred to return like we came on a bike. I can’t recall details of the procession that escorted us from the village to our car on canal bank. Some family members accompanied us on their bikes and small kids ran noisily flanking bikes. To my wife this was unforgettable experience the like of which she had never seen before in life. But I still cherish the bike-ride, welcoming treat of two whole glasses of milk and loud farewell. My wife often reminded me that she married a Pakistan Supreme Court Attorney, not a villager. But she consoled herself then: “You can get a person out of a village, but not a village out of him.”
My wife and I planned leaving Pakistan in the coming weeks. We decided to visit some family members who lived in various villages and cities around the country. In mid-April 1965 we drove to see my sister in Peshawar where her husband managed a company. Some ten miles before the Attock bridge and an hour to sunset in growing dark our VW got a flat. While I was changing tire a big truck speedily passed us by and then stopped short distance away. Elderly driver and his young assistant came and helped me to replace the flat with the spare I had. As I thanked them and tried to give them for their service some money they refused to take that.
But the older fellow offered an advise. “Tell your wife not to wear jewelry around this area,” he said. Apparently in the split second of driving by he had noticed my dress, my wife’s bracelets, German license plate of our car and knew that we were out-of-area newly-weds. On return to the car I told my wife about the advice. She remarked that I should have told him that she was a Pathani – fiercely strong dare-devil Yousuf-Zai. Her point became vividly clear to me near our 45th wedding anniversary when with the same DNA Malala Yousu-Zai acquired fame for fighting her right to get education, surviving after bullets in her head, and later on winning Nobel Prize.
In May 1965 our last stop in Pakistan was in Rawalpindi. We spent a night at the house of my mother’s brother Noor Mohammed who was married to his first cousin (033:051) Massi Ji Hussain Bibi. She was the third and the youngest of my aforesaid aunts who loved us beyond words. Next morning while discarding all unnecessary stuff out of the car I threw away an old paper packet. Unknown to me at that time the old paper was the wrapping that contained some crushed red hot chili. Massi Ji Hussain Bibi followed us to the car to bid us farewell when she announced my wife’s pregnancy. My wife couldn’t believe that Massi Ji had noticed pregnancy so early when she herself did not know of it. At that time we were married six weeks and later my wife’s craving for the spice confirmed pregnancy. My wife suffered for whole one month because her condition made her yearn for the spicy food. Bland food we got everywhere but chili we found nowhere until we had reached London home.
Probably 1992 was the next time my aunt and my wife met in St Louis, Missouri. That was the last time we saw my aunt because soon after she was taken away by a cancer. I was an Attorney in Philadelphia and Massi Ji and uncle Noor Mohammed came for a visit. They liked to see my wife before returning home and we drove from East Coast to Missouri. Uncle could not stop admiring the lush countryside and beautiful crops for miles and miles. Both sides of the I-70 in Indiana and Illinois had corn growing as far as the eyes could see. Massi Ji found it highly weird that pluming and fittings of no two bathrooms was the same. The dozens of stops on the way had as many different systems and faucets in the bathrooms. My aunt had to request for help in every rest room as to how to operate the water-taps in it. My wife consoled her that she would avoid such ordeal when they drive together next time. But such next time was never meant to be as my aunt passed away after reaching her home.
