Chapter 4 | Enigmatic Mumtaz (with audio)

Portrait in Words | Mumtaz Hussain

The Alphabet of the Image | Mumtaz Hussain’s short stories with paintings

“Mumtaz. What kind of a name is this? Are you a woman or a man?” asked Nawab Doda Khetran, laughing loudly, making fun of her.

Absorbed in thought, Mumtaz Begum looked down at her body and saw the path between two small hills leading to the threshold before a castle. You became the owner of this threshold simply by uttering two words and a marriage contract, under which I became your legal possession. Didn’t the two witnesses of our union reveal to you my sex? Or perhaps you are searching for a man within me?

Despite his question, Nawab Doda treated my body as he did the bodies of his other wives, maids, and mistresses. He seized my body like a warrior and held me captive. He looted and pillaged my treasures and left me lifeless. 

But my body remained static like a patient on whom a doctor has experimented with intoxicating injections and disfiguring surgery without the patient’s permission. My body lay cold as Nawab Doda spat the phlegm of his manhood into me, and his breath started to pant. His eyes, hungering for praise, looked at me like he had defeated his opponent in a chess game.

I was a beautiful fish captured from the ocean and thrown across the ice. My fish eyes narrated a story as heat dissipated from my body. Nawab’s breathing slowed down as he asked why I never smiled. I wanted to tell him that my passion was slumbering. I pursed my lips, feeling the irony of this helpless man’s question. “You have conquered my body, which is in your possession. But you cannot imprison my soul behind bars”. 

After a few days, Nawab Doda made an announcement. “This evening, an English lady will be arriving. Arrangements for a feast are to be made. And the piano from the library covered by books should be transferred to the women’s chambers.” Until that time, the piano had been a showpiece. Nobody knew how to press its keys. “Only the English woman knows how to fix the loose wires with her touch. Her hands on the keys will revive its body.” 

The English lady was unrivaled in her beauty. She was like a single, perfect ear of corn peering through the harvest with golden hair and rows of teeth like the pearls of unripe kernels. Her gait was graceful, like a swaying bough in a gentle wind. 

When she took a seat at the middle of the dining table, streams of light from the Venetian chandelier descended over her and fought like sworders to win a kiss on her cheek. As she picked up her spoon, my heart jumped into her bowl so I could be scooped up and raised to her lips. I longed for her to take my body or give me hers.

After dinner, cognac made the deep blue of her eyes take on the colors of a sunset over Lake Saif ul Muluk. She sat on the piano stool and started to stroke the piano’s keys with solid and rounded fingers. When she played, every pore of my body began to open like the unbuttoning of a shirt. My heart was aching to fit into her, one metal button snapping into another. I wanted to be a slave to the English. And this Englishwoman would be the master of my body.

As she played, the ends of her golden mane swayed against her waist-not only to the tune of her song but also to the rhythm of strings inside me. The tunes triggered something within me and affected me profoundly. My body was sprinkled with dew drops of lust. My eyes delivered the message of love sent by the carrier pigeons of my heart. The news came forth like a sermon, a Koran on a pulpit, and swaying to the words, “I accept, I accept, I accept.”  

Helpless, the lips of the English lady murmured, “Mumtaz, you are most beautiful.” This very much pleased Nawab Khetran since they were spoken in the language of his masters. Like an art piece on the mantle or a leather-covered antique book on his shelf, his prized possession was receiving praise.

The next day, Nawab Khetran informed me that she wanted to give me a gift of my choice. “Mumtaz Begum, please inform the cobbler to make a shoe with threads of gold and a sparkling ruby.” I require shoes that can take me to the garden of heaven. I want to taste the seed of lust, which Adam ate and for which he paid the price of having to leave paradise. Nawab Doda announced that a shoe of golden threads and red stones must be made for Mumtaz.

After some time, Nawab Doda received an alarming report regarding his health.  He could no longer sleep due to a growing fear that a suspicious mark on his neck could be dangerous, so he decided to leave for London for treatment. I prayed that his neck would be stuck there so I could be alone with the English lady.

We started to meet. I learned the language and culture of my lover, including her name, Judith. She understood the delicacy of my body in a way that only a woman could. Foolish men can never know that every small pore of a woman’s body is filled with the sweetest honey. On the road that is a woman’s body, most men focus only on a single converging point and cannot see beyond it.

At last, one day, I invited Judith into my bedroom dressed in a black tuxedo and hounds-tooth tie. I waited for her. As if a man, I wanted to absorb her body. A man and woman without sex would eat each other alive. Only a woman can recognize the emotional necessity of another woman, and with lust, it could become the strongest of relationships, exceeding the potential of a man and woman.

Judith entered my bedroom. Meanwhile, the cobbler Balaj had started working on my shoes in his shop. Golden threads illuminated my walls, bathing Judith’s body in golden water, and her center was a ruby. We commenced a spiritual and physical voyage, making two smoldering fires grow into one immense bonfire. Our bodies mingled like two kinds of sand, which could never be separated. It was as if my body gave birth to her, yielding a connection that could not be severed. Unlike a husband, I didn’t need to possess her but let my passion lead the way. After making love with Judith, I felt like the fruit of paradise was just an excuse to leave heaven so I could attain true heaven on earth.

Judith and I started meeting regularly. In the meantime, the cobbler, Balaj, worked on my gift. He softened the leather with fragrant oils and herbs.  He made toe covers shaped like the dome of the Taj Mahal and embroidered a design with gold and silver threads like a new bride’s henna. This was his masterpiece, from which he could not avert his gaze.

And in the same way, I never took my eyes off Judith. Sometimes, we were intimately together in the sleeping chamber, and other times, in rest houses or even open fields. If we felt a dust storm spiraling in, we held each other tight and became the eye of the storm. Our relationship was not the mindless physical counting of the rosary beads in which God’s name is uttered, but rather like the bowing of two personalities worshiping each other. 

Sometimes my fingers touched the skin above my lips as if waiting for a mustache to emerge.

At last, one day, the pot that held the life-sustaining water in a desert broke. Judith had to return to London. It was the death of pleasure.

As Judith prepared to leave for England, Balaj, the cobbler, prepared for his long journey through the desert to deliver my gift. He arranged all the other shoes against the side of his basket with the ruby ones in the center, like a daffodil standing in stagnant water.

Before the long journey, Balaj wrapped the basket with several layers of fabric and secured it onto his camel. After many miles, under open skies and a harsh sun with no trees, he found that his food and water were gone entirely. The sun’s heat absorbed every drop of water from his body like a towel running dry. He felt a prickly cactus growing in his throat. His poor camel cud food from its own body to survive.

Balaj felt faint. Far away, he saw a hand pump, put there by a man hoping to attain God’s blessing. Water was life for the desperate traveler. When he reached the pump, he saw no water and no spigot. Nonetheless, he covered the hole with his hand and pumped it as if he were squeezing water from the infertile womb of the earth. Slowly, pressure started to build, and some water emerged. But since there was no spigot, he couldn’t get enough water to reach his lips, and water was dripping on the sides… 

He suddenly remembered that in the basket of shoes, he had a loose piece of leather, which he curled in the form of a rod and stuck into the water hole. He pumped more water and desperately put his lips to the leather. After drinking for a while, his thirst was quenched. He gave blessings to the person who had built the hand pump, placed the wet leather back into his bag, and proceeded toward the castle of the Khetran tribe.

Mumtaz desperately awaited her shoes. Finally, Balaj arrived. After some rest, he presented them to her, praising them highly. She admired the shoes but glanced into the basket and saw the curled, loose piece of leather. Strangely curious, she asked about it. Balaj shared his story of how the leather had saved him. Mumtaz Begum picked up the leather and felt its natural softness. It has become his lifeline like the English lady was hers. Suddenly, the beautiful shoes with golden strings and rubies became Nawab Khetran. She knew what she wanted. She told Balaj, “I don’t want the shoes. I’ll take the leather.” 

Portrait in Words | Mumtaz Hussain

The Alphabet of the Image |
Mumtaz Hussain’s short stories with paintings

• Chapter 1 | The Barking Crow
• Chapter 2 | When the Rain Shines through the Sunlight
• Chapter 3 | Her Resplendent Face
• Chapter 4 | Enigmatic Mumtaz
• Chapter 5 | Mona Lisa of Bones and Flesh
• Chapter 6 | The Death of Life
• Chapter 7 | His Master’s Voice
• Chapter 8 | Half Shut Eye Wisdom
• Chapter 9 | The Bride of God
• Chapter 10 | The Fragile Mountains and the Flowing Moonlight
• Chapter 11 | Adam’s Rib
• Chapter 12 | Godly Bastard
• Chapter 13 | Poppy cultivated in Heaven
• Chapter 14 | Virus Bomb

See:

• Historic Win for Pakistani-American at International Impact Book Awards (April 13, 2024)
• Pakistani Mumtaz Hussain Bags 2024 International Impact Book Award (April 23, 2024)

Portrait in Words is available on Amazon’s Audible, narrated by Scott LeCote (4 hrs and 36 mins). Order here.