So far Rasheed had spoken with great, perhaps slightly exaggerated, conviction, maybe even with excessive animus against the great landowner of the district, who he knew was Maan’s friend; but there was nothing particularly odd about his manner of speaking or the logic of it. The word ‘duped’, however, acted as a kind of fault or fracture in his speech. He suddenly turned to Maan and said pointedly: ‘Of course, people who are duped are wiser than you think.’
‘Of course,’ Maan agreed amiably, though he was rather disappointed. Rasheed, he thought, would have been very helpful to his father in the area around Debaria, and probably even in Salimpur town. If it had not been for Rasheed, he himself would not have known anything about the place.
‘To be honest,’ said Rasheed, ‘I won’t deny that I hated you as well as the others when I realized what you were trying to do.’
‘Me?’ said Maan. He could not see where he came into it, except that he was his father’s son. And, anyway, why hatred?
‘But I have put all that behind me,’ continued Rasheed. ‘Nothing is to be gained by hatred. But I must now ask for your help. Since you are partly responsible, you cannot deny me this.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Maan, bewildered. He had sensed, when he visited the village at Bakr-Id, that there was some tension involving Rasheed, but what had he to do with it?
‘Please do not pretend ignorance,’ said Rasheed. ‘You know my family; you have even met Meher’s mother – and yet you insisted on these events and these plans. You yourself are associated with the elder sister.’
What Saeeda Bai had said to Maan now clicked in his mind.
‘Tasneem?’ he asked. ‘Are you talking about Saeeda Bai and Tasneem?’
A hard look passed over Rasheed’s face – as if Maan had confirmed his own guilt. ‘If you know it, what is the need to take her name?’ he asked.
‘But I don’t know it – whatever it is,’ protested Maan, amazed by the turn in the conversation.
Rasheed, attempting to be reasonable, said: ‘I know that you and Saeeda Bai and others, including important people in the government, are trying to get me married to her. And she has decided on me. The letter she wrote – the looks she has given me – Suddenly one day in the middle of her lesson she made a remark which could only mean one thing. I cannot sleep for worry, for three weeks I have hardly slept a wink. I do not want to do this, but I am afraid for her sanity. She will go insane unless I return her love. But even if I undertake this – which I must do on the basis of humanity – even if I undertake this, I must have protection for my own wife and children. You will have to get complete confirmation from Saeeda Begum about this. I will only agree on certain clear conditions.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Maan a little sharply. ‘I am part of no plot –’
Rasheed cut him off. He was so annoyed that he was trembling. But he tried to get a hold on himself. ‘Please do not say that,’ he said. ‘I cannot accept it when you say this sort of thing to my very face. I know what is what. I have already said I bear no hatred towards you any longer. I have told myself that however mistaken your intentions, you were doing it for my good. But did you never give any thought to my wife and children?’
‘I don’t know about Saeeda Begum,’ said Maan, ‘but I doubt she wants Tasneem to marry you. As for myself, this is the first I’m hearing of it.’
A cunning look passed over Rasheed’s face. ‘Then why did you mention her name a minute ago?’
Maan frowned: trying to think back. ‘Saeeda Begum said something about some letters you sent her sister,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t advise you to write any more. They will only annoy her. And,’ he added, getting annoyed himself, but trying to contol his temper – for he was, after all, talking to his teacher, young though he was, and one who had, moreover, been his host in the village – ‘I wish you would not imagine that I am part of some plot.’
‘All right,’ said Rasheed firmly. ‘All right. I won’t mention it. When you visited the patwari with my family did I ever criticize you? Let us close the chapter. I won’t accuse you, and you will kindly not make these protests, these denials. All right?’
‘But of course I will deny it –’ said Maan, hardly even wondering where a patwari had entered all this. ‘Let me tell you, Rasheed, that you are completely mistaken. I have always had the greatest respect for you, but I can’t see where you have got these ideas from. What makes you think that Tasneem is in the least interested in you?’