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From Shen

Whoohoo! We made it to June! Somehow... *cough* We're also ON TIME, which is fabulous and amazing.

For years, Sreya and I have been trying to find the perfect online forum for writing. We wanted a site that attracted intelligent readers and writers, where critiques and reviews flowed- and where you didn't have to pay for every piece you put up. We couldn't find anywhere like that, so we started it ourselves.

I can't tell you all how happy I am to have this zine and this message board. Everyone who's gotten involved so far is absolutely awesome, and I want to thank you all, because we couldn't have a forum without you.

And that's more than enough out of me. Go read.

-Shen

Prose

Charminar | Psst- Submit something!

c h a r m i n a r
By Sreya

Ek, do, teen, char � Charminar. The four towers stood there, regal, unwavering, putting up with the swarms of people who would not let it go. Somehow it was the beginning of everything; these were the gates that led up to the city of glittering jewelry and of the masked women who walked in yards of suffocating black. It was a scorching summer, yet these women walked, in unwavering certainty that this weight was the burden of their ancestors which would be given, in that golden box of tradition, to their descendents.

When I reached the gate, I shivered with the intense heat. I was a woman; alone, and uncovered. I shouldn�t have been covered, and yet I felt as if I was somehow violating someone�s ancient pride, by not hiding myself from the world so completely in a nikab. The sun frowned at me, and at my kohl, and tried its best to bleach it brown, and I thought of the heat that these women must be feeling, as they walked in these large black incinerators. However, I could not be sympathetic toward them for long; my hand tingled with anticipation as I fingered a small tin can of paints in my worn handbag. If I had carried a camera here, surely they would have seen it, and then what would have happened to my hand?

An imaginary scimitar caressed my wrists, and I jumped back, with a small gasp. I could still feel the heat of it on my wrists, and I knew I was happy not to have brought a camera. A real blade might come crashing down on my hand had they seen even a shiny glimpse.

As I walked steadfastly on, I rubbed my wrists in anticipation. I saw that there were many men, in white, at the gates. They wore the traditional white garb, and the tiny white caps of gossamer but strong lace. Speaking in a stream of fierce Urdu, they looked at me as if I had popped out of the sky. Perhaps I had dropped out of the earth and came to a different world. I was wide eyed and although I had been here many times before, I didn�t remember it being so foreign, so exotic.

After I came through the gates I bowed my head, and let the sun play games with my already seared hair. My peripheral vision was dazzled with the color of gold, and I ached to walk inside the shady stores that lined the twisted streets and to try on the jewelry like some princess. I painted many beautiful women in the past years, yet the jewelry here was only fit for a princess; I began to remember the last woman I painted; she haunted my dreams with her jewelry and her voice. Her eyes were struggling fish in the ocean of her face. I don�t remember what I had done with that image. Perhaps I put it away. Her eyes bothered me.

I was not afraid now like I had been ten years earlier, although I felt those familiar shivers down the back of my neck when I walked down those dusty streets. My havaii slippers could not protect my feet from the harsh earth that congregated inside my toenails and it became painful even to walk. So I gave into temptation. I walked inside a shoe store.

It was out of the way, and inconspicuous, but that�s the way it had always been. I don�t know why they do that, I had thought first, but then I realized that this allowed these countless stores to become treasures, mysteriously discovered by travelers and then zealously guarded by them as secrets as they returned again and again to buy these rare, beautiful things. I sympathized with them as I entered this gold mine, Shoes, in every size and shape, winked at me from every shabby aisle. Some shimmered with fine threads and others were simple and comfortable. Here, moths craved every kerosene lamp here and fluttered their wings annoyingly as I handled a pair of silk shoes, fit for the woman of my paintings. The color reminded me of her eyes, freshly uncovered from a delicate veil.

I heard the steps of a hunched, heavy figure.

�Do you need something?� an old woman croaked in old, battered Urdu. She tried her hardest to cover her hand over her ebony veil; there were obviously broken threads hanging from the lace borders. Did she fear I would see her ancient face when no one had bothered to see it when she was a young, healthy woman?

�No, just looking.�

�Not at those you don�t.� She snatched them away from me, and took a dilapidated stool from the corner of the aisle so that she could put them on a higher shelf. She did not put them up too high, I noted. How would that stop me at all? �They are not for sale.�

Narrowing my eyes, I looked at the top shelf with longing. So I could not take them. Without a moment�s thought, I grabbed the shoes from the shelf, felt the silk heel, and ran out of the store.

Of course, the woman saw me. I could imagine her angry, ragged breathing behind her veil, even as I was running out of the store, but I couldn�t care less. I was only looking to find a way out through twisted and convoluted roads and outside to the end of Charminar.

I did not wonder why there were so many poisonous stares at me, as I walked through the streets because I remembered them well; those same eyes were only younger, fresher, and filled with the same unbridled rage as they were, now. I noticed that some of these eyes were green; but these were rare blossoms, shrouded in delicate eyeliner and kohl, and just like the last time I came there, these eyes were deadly. Their smooth hands gripped their scimitars, as if it was the same, and it was. This place cannot change, it is beyond change.

Ten years ago, I too walked the streets, scavenging corners, taking stray objects from the ground so that I could paint them, but these were not objects of sale or of value. Those were discarded objects, objects that even these people felt were too old for them.

�Scarves,� a hawker had croaked from a corner in the distance. The frail man pointed to an array of intensely bright squares of cotton, silk and satin. They teased my skin as I picked them up, one by one.

�How much are they?�

�Two for three annas. No more. Two for three annas.� I could smell the foul odor of his breath even from this distance.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, that's it? This is expensive, see. I can buy food with this. I can buy clothing. I can pay my rent! Three annas is not nothing!"

I gave him the coins. "I would give these coins to someone for nothing," I said, snatching up the scarves. He watched me as I turned around the corner and then began his weak chant once more.

I heard the footsteps of someone else come at the corner after me, holding a newspaper.

"I'd cover yourself if I were you," a voice reprimanded, harshly. "It is no good for you to be wandering here like this. Don't you have any honor?" I turned around to see a tall, dour man. His face was long and dark, and his eyes seemed to skin me alive. His lanky hands almost slapped my face; I was gratified he showed some self restraint.

"I do not live here," I replied, icily.

"Good women all over the world are covered." he said, dismissively. "They are learning, all over the place."

"I don't want to be burned to death by a cover."

"So you would rather burn for an eternity."

"Inshallah, I'd rather rot in hell." I retorted.

"And perhaps I shall send you there."

"So thou sayeth." I replied, and the man turned around another corner, and the last I saw of him the sleeve of his maroon shirt, caked with dirt. There was the sound of ripping cloth and the yell of an angry vendor. No doubt someone would receive an extremely painful, humiliating public flogging. Perhaps it would be long, I figured, the man had had a very long and dark torso.

At one dark corner, where I could not hear the sounds of the bazaar anymore, and all that sounded were the weak voices of bulls, I took out my tin can of paints, gingerly. And then the small brush, which looked like a pen but could draw more than just sums and writings, but the world itself. The tiny canvas, a gift from an old hawker who could do nothing with it, came out last, and I sat contently, doing the forbidden.

With every stroke, I felt an eye on my canvas. My wrist was tingling, every once in awhile I would be forced to stop and stare at the dust settling at my feet. After some time, however, I had captured a small, pitiful stall. The pots lay at the bottom of a small shack and a young girl held out her hands accepting the money for a vessel, fresh from the kiln. However, I had just finished the brown glaze over her eyes when I heard breathing behind me. I felt the burning sensation of a blade caressing my throat, and then it stopped.

I felt as if I were imagining it, but the burning sensation only came again. Again. Then the voices outside were silent no longer. They became louder. The bazaar was coming to my corner, it seemed, as their normally plaintive voices became shouts of fury.

"I tell you, they are here!"

"Who is here."

"Them."

There was a furious buzzing amongst those in the marketplace crowd. Scarves and pots and gold were put to rest, and in the middle of it all, there was a shout.

"INSHALLA'AH!"

And with that, it seemed like the weight of the entire world was blown away from its surface. The market was ablaze in the fury of its ancient blood, and smoke rose into the air and all the years I that I had been wondering what it was like on the other side of a veil were now satisfied. I was now one with the ebony cover.

When the ebony let me go, I wondered whether I was truly dead. I felt a cool breeze on my shoulders and my hair. I lay, prostrate, on something comfortable, and the sun did not scratch my eyes. Nothing like the harshness of the place from which I had evaporated.

I heard footsteps from somewhere. An angel perhaps, who had come to tell me that yes, indeed I had come to heaven, the place where the confused and noble reach. I fluttered open my eyes and saw white, disturbed only by a few cracks in something which I could only tell was whitewash. Maybe I had been relegated to something lesser; were artists who died breaking laws live a shabby and blissful eternity?

My suspicions were only confirmed when I had finally wrenched my eyes open and saw a pair of clear, opulent emeralds above my head. I rushed to grab them, and yet, they only moved back. Back, back and back. Why was bliss so tempting, so confusing?

"Ayah!" yelled a voice, and something slapped my hands away. "Why are you clawing at my face?"

I looked up to see emeralds, but they were set firmly in the whites of a woman's eyes. Still covered with a dark olive nikab, she knelt down beside the small cot which I lay on. The mattress was much richer than even the one I was used to. I wondered why. The breeze did indeed come from the sky, but it was a furious ceiling fan which lent me its cool breath.

"You do not wear nikab," the woman said, roughly. It did not sound like a reprimand.

"I am not Muslim." I replied. On my tongue, it sounded like the lie that it was.

"You look like it. I can tell. Why do you tell me you are not?"

"What is there to gain?" I asked, my voice monotonous and drugged with comfort. "I have only to lose two hands."

"Ah. But you are draining out your own blood, your own ancestry, by denying it. Is that any less painful than losing your hands?"

"I don't know. Are you going to cut them?" I spat.

"With what?" She giggled.

"Your scimitar. Or whatever you carry under that tent."

"Oh," There was a pause, as she fished inside her long nikab and pulled out a silver blade. I could feel the handle, and felt the fresh blood on the blade. The handle, I could tell, was of ivy, and thorns, so much like this woman with her knife. "What can I do with this? I can do nothing. I can only cut up my dress." She ran the blade against my wrists and rapidly beating veins.

"I don't think you'll cut my hands off." I said. "I really don't."

"You're right," she sighed. A little breath of the wind parted from lips I could not see. "I cannot."

"Why not?"

"I just brought you here. Why get rid of a guest so quickly?"

"Because you can bring new ones in. Doubtless you people haven't emptied out your stock of grenades."

She was silent for a few moments after this, and then she went to open the small wooden windows. Doves were inlaid on the ancient wood, and she traced them for awhile, before she left the room again. When she again emerged it was later, she held a metal plate in her hand, laden with food. It was a completely vegetarian meal; rice, with a steamed sauce, which I could not possibly name. There were cut pomegrantes on the plate.

I leapt to take the plate from her and she pulled it away from me. "Don't know whether you can even hold the plate on your own." Deftly she took rice from the plate and dipped it in the savory gravy and stuffed it in my mouth. It was my mother all over again feeding her squeamish daughter who thrashed around in her chair. I thrashed around on the small cot, looking at the broken table in the corner, covered in a coarse plaid cotton. The cloth was a hellish blue that made me think of bad blood, of poisoned and the cold.

"Stop shivering!" the woman commanded, laughing, "It's forty five degrees Celsius. Why are you shivering?"

"I'm cold," I whimpered, almost biting her hand in my eagerness to taste the hot rice.

"Who are you?" She asked. What a conversationalist, I thought.

"Nasreen," I answered. "I'm from Begumpet."

"Sure you are." she said, cramming some more rice into my mouth, "I can tell."

"Do you know where Begumpet is?"

"How am I supposed to know?" she asked. "You could be from the village next door. But you are not from Charminar. That is all that matters."

She finished with the rice, and started to hand me the pomegranates. The seeds were cool and tangy, and left a bitter taste in my mouth.

"These are very good, you know," I told her.

"Yes, I know." she told me. "I can't stop eating them. The seeds inside; to crack the pomegranate open takes a lot of work. But it's worth it once you get there. I wondered how anyone found out that there was something in that ugly green fruit."

I smiled. "Who are you?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?" she asked. "I've never been asked that question."

"Everyone knows who you are here. This is your home."

"Then my name is 'hey woman!'. Because that's what they call me. 'Hey woman! Off the streets! Hey woman, get the pots off of the road!' Yes. That's my name. 'Hey woman.' " she replied sardonically, scratching her face below the nikab.

"I did not ask what THEY call you. I want to know what you call yourself."

"Alone," she told me, "Very alone." She got up from my cot and walked to her tiny window.

I grinned, half-heartedly. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"

"Perhaps when I remember," she told me, and we laughed. I got up from the cot quietly, and startled her when she found me standing next to her at the window. She turned around abruptly when she heard me gasp. Minarets! Minarets like I had never seen before, snowy and white and taller than the tallest of buildings and melted in the top with the clouds. Here, you could not see the streets but only the white streaks of a doves path amongst the air and in the sky. These minarets were carved from white stone, untouched by any pollution. I was seeing the same view as perhaps the ranis had when they were living in opulence and gold. Here, in the same place, in Charminar.

My companion whistled. It was a low, sweet sound. To my amazement, it was a tune I recognized.

"Ek, do, teen, char ... CHARMINAR ..." And then we laughed again, without a care in the world as the doves fluttered wildly away, in utmost consternation.

"Shall we throw gold coins?" I said, wiping tears of laughter away from my face. "I hear they used to do that. From the windows."

"They still do that." she said. "I don't know how they can afford it, but I'm sure they find it on the ground after they realize they've been drunk ..." and we dissolved into more peals of laughter, so hard that she had to wipe her eyes, and then I noticed them again, for the second time that day.

"Your eyes are beautiful," I told her, frankly.

�They had better be,� she told me, �Because I spent three hours on them this morning.�

�Why so much time?� I asked. �Does kohl really take so long?�

�That is the only way I can ever hope that someone will see me. But I wear the nikab like a good woman. Three hours is not too much for my eyes.�

We didn�t speak for awhile; we contented ourselves with watching the doves careen across the vast clouds.

�Who can see you here?� I asked, impulsively. �Take off the nikab.�

Her eyes grew wide. �Why?�

�I am not a strange man,� I said, laughing, �It is no sacrifice, nor aberration of faith. I am a fellow woman.�

She looked away from me, and toward the minarets. I turned from the window and sat on the cot, sighing. I felt around the other side of the cot and hit upon something dusty, and pulled it up. It was my bag. I felt for the soft tin can and unfinished canvas.

I waited for hours, painting nothing on my canvas, waiting for her to turn around.

�Do you still want to see?� she asked.

�See what?�

�Me. My face.�

�Yes. I�m waiting. Have you made up your mind?�

She must have smiled under the nikab. �On one condition.�

�Tell me. What�s that?�

�That you should show others whatever you paint. I want others to see my face.�

�What?� I exclaimed. �You take so long to decide that I should be able to--�

�I know that you are going to paint me. I wondered if I should throw you out of the window before you could do it.�

I laughed. �So you didn�t.�

�So I didn�t.� she laughed. �Take out those paints.�

�Take off your nikab.�

�You first,� she commanded, sheepishly. She left and came back with a steel glass of water for my paints and set it down on the cot.

�All right.� I opened the can, and neatly set out the paints. My companion bent her head over to see what I was doing. She seemed fascinated by the myriad of colors, and her green eyes opened wide.

�Go away,� I told her, pushing her away. �How can I see you when you�re right next to me? I need to paint you!�

She bent her head and walked backwards, to the window with the carved doves.

�Take it off,� I told her, and I mixed the green paint first.

�Now?�

�Yes.�

It was an arduous task, taking off that nikab. First it was the face cover, and then the bottom of its hem. It was like unveiling a painting whose owner was reluctant to let it go, to give its darling away, but it was only so that others could share in its beauty. I wondered how much of her slowness was deliberate, but finally it was over.

I was staring at a woman and not a piece of cloth.

Her eyes seemed smaller in the glory of her face and regal nose. Her skin was fair after being covered for so long that she did not look like she had been living in a desert for so many years, and her full lips were serene, unsmiling but content. She wore a dark, shapeless floor length dress underneath the nikab, but it only made her more beautiful.

I could not put my brush to canvas for a full half-hour. I was too busy looking at her. Finally her eyebrows cocked, questioningly.

�Are you going to start?�

�Sure. I�m just getting a better measure of your face.�

�You flatter me.�

Finally I began the eyes. Her eyelashes were so huge, so sweeping, they took me a full three hours. The sky was turning dark, and she had to leave to turn on the candle, but the painting never stopped. It could not stop. I painted over the plaintive girl in the stall, and a beautiful, confident woman began to emerge in her place. I did not do a pefect job, it was far from it. Her face was held higher than I could paint it, and her eyes were larger than I could ever show them, but any photograph would not capture the essence of this woman, I felt. It would be a flat picture, not a name, but something flat. Something made out of machine. I was only human; so was this picture.

Never once did she move or falter; her eyes did not twich as another woman's might.

"You seem very used to sitting still."

"I've been doing it for the past twenty years."

Ebony seperated its threads into deeper blues, pinks violets and greens until it finally murged into hot white, and yet with trembling hands, I worked on my canvas. My hands were continually mingled in sweat and I had to stop sometimes, briefly. I'd wipe the tears out of my eyes. Was I crying? I had no idea what I was doing, but I saw tears fall down from my eyes onto hers. I put the picture back from me ... the eyes were crying on its own.

"Stop crying," I commanded.

"I will." To my surprise I found silent tears falling down my companion's face. We stared at each other for long time until she came to me and forced my brush hand on my paper and traced the shades of black. I jerked my hand away, and I waited until she stood away so that I might paint her. Her head was straightened higher.

Finally, when I had finished the last stitch on the end of the hem at the bottom of her shapeless gown, I lay the brush on the table and succumbed into a glorious sleep in what was now the blazing sun of the afternoon.

That evening, when the darkness seperated us from poisoned scimitars, and the world was safer, my companion woke me up from my deep sleep. This time I did not try to grab at her eyes, which was all I could see of her now. She had put on her nikab.

"It's on again." I mumbled, incoherently. "Why?"

She lifted me upright out of my bed, and packed my bag for me. She refused to let me help her, only pausing to take one last look at the painting, and then to look at me.

"If I ever see you again, never show this to me again. I will use my scimitar on you. It goes without saying you will die very painfully that way."

I did not doubt it either. She placed my bag, carefully on my shoulder, and we walked out of that bedroom and into a tiny kitchen, where she gave me some gur. I tried to decline- the moldy molasses seemed to be the only thing she had in that pantry.

"No." she said bluntly, and put her hand under her nikab, threateningly. Shrugging, I took the gur gingerly from her hands, and from there we came to a small door on the side, which lead to a spiraling staircase. I could feel that burden of earthly weight as I descended them, and down to the bottom of the minaret, she released my hand, pushed me out of the door and slammed it shut.

I sang a song, still in my head, uncaring as a busy nighttime market looked in my direction, scornfully. The stars illuminated the eyes, so many eyes, reflected in the golden market. "Ek.... do ... teen .... char ..."

I looked up. It was Charminar.

I fondled the sides of the wizened gate; it was still strong. It had been illuminated softly, with many kerosene lamps, to warn the bad intentions of others far away. What of those already inside, I wondered. I did not care to look back as I walked quickly through the gate ... and away from the premature dawn that had burst through the nighttime shadows which failed this time, to knock me out of my senses. The inferno of the angry sun stopped right at the gate, where it always had and where it always will.

In the full sunlight, ten years later, I still stood, at the same corner which everything had begun, and I heard the angry voices behind me, just like I knew that they should.

"Her hand. I want her hand for those!" That screetch sounded extremely familiar, and the fact that I held those shoes in hand did not help me much, either.

"Certainly," came a low, deeply feminine voice, muffled by her cumbersome nikab, "We shall take care of her, for you ."

"I WANT THAT HAND!" screamed the woman, "Or Inshallah, You shall be cursed to dwell in the ground!" A small breeze floated through the eerily vigilant marketplace. Vendors were on high alert, seeling their wares with the unsettling knowlege that there might be a rampant burglar around them. They certainly knew how to take care of themselves. I gulped as I saw their prominantly placed swords in the stalls.

I did not want to know what would happen to me next if I merely stood there, and so I set a brisk pace throughout the market. I went past the corner in which the third and fourth marketplace was, and I exited quickly through the second and first streets, my eyes shut against the wind and the dust.

"Ek ... do ... teen ... char ... ek ... do ... teen ...."

It was Charminar, again, staring at me now, a repentant old friend.

"Stay here," it beseeched me, "Do not leave us."

"What do you want from me?" I shouted at it. "What do you want?"

"I want you," it told me, "I want you to stay. I want you never to leave, so you'll never have to paint, and you'll never have to remember because you'll always BE HERE."

"I want to go. I want to go home."

"No you don't," it told me, pushing me back firmly, with its wide opening. "I want what you can give me. I want your bloodied hands. I want your talent." Charminar's shadow caressed my fearful hands.

What did I say? I could say nothing. Just ran through, a wounded dove forced on the ground. My skirt chased me, slow in going, its hem hugging the base of the tower, and I pulled it away, in earnest.

"Ek .... do ... teen ... char ..." Charminar. I ran and I ran and I ran, into the dust and out of sight and even further, and further. I ran until I could run no longer and I stood in the city of Hyderabad again, coated with dust older than the history of the world itself. Panting, I held the green shoes in my hand and looked back, and I thought if I should see the towers again I would be struck by a beam of lightning from its powerful gaze. A dosa vendor here looked at me curiously, unfolding his lentil pancake, eyeing these ornate shoes in the hands of such a plainly dressed woman, and I ignored him, trying to look around at Charminar. It was nowhere to be seen.

Had it relented? I'd never know until the day I died, and I don't know now, but I still whisper to myself when I ever think back, and force myself to look into that woman's eyes again. I whisper, "Ek, do, teen char ... and Charminar is gone."