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 The story of Qismet is an antidote to fairy tales such as "Sleeping Beauty" in which only the marriageable suitor can give a young woman life. In older versions of "Sleeping Beauty," Beauty lies limp and voluptuous in a death-like sleep as her prospective suitors rape her in turn. Only the rape of the properly marriageable suitor can fill her with life. The image of the passive feminine being given life by the active masculine is common enough across cultures. I'd like to make some bitterly humorous, yet somehow appropriate, wild thematic associations. Beauty's story reminds me of needlessly sexist interpretations of the Qur'anic tablet and pen in which the woman is a pure, feminine, receptive tablet waiting for the man's masculine pen of life to write on her. How much that is like Rolf's words to Liesel in their romantic duet from "The Sound of Music": "You wait little girl on an empty stage for fate to turn a light on. Your life little girl is an empty page that men will want to write on." "To write on....." Liesl repeats dreamily. If we have learned anything from "The Sound of Music," shouldn't we understand danger of this sort of romanticism since Rolf turns out to be a Nazi? --Laury Silvers
Qismet - A Short Story
by Ali Eteraz
Qismet's childhood was spent on the beach. Every afternoon a herd of the village's children descended upon the soft white beach with their buckets, buried each other in the sand, ran in and out of the water like lemmings, and built sandcastles with high walls and fat towers. They carved pillars mimicking the marble pillars of the Greeks; made defensive moats around their fortresses; and the more architectural ones fortified the structures with large stones and plastic. Once the castles would be complete each group of children would remain within the territorial limits of the castle, protectively encircling their structure, jealously guarding from the vandalism of the other groups. Sometimes competing factions launched harmless objects at each other's castle but usually the fortifications were enough to withstand the attack. At any given afternoon more than eight or ten groups of children dotted the beach with various children rummaging over, inside and around each castle. Each afternoon a community of castles arose only to be washed out by the high-tide that struck after sunset.
The only thing as constant as the arrival of the waves was Qismet's lack of participation in the castle-building activity. She was a small girl with bright brown eyes and lips that stretched horizontally when she smiled. Her mother had cut her brown hair boyishly short and with her slightly elf-like ears it was easy to call her cute. Qismet had a quiet way of distinguishing herself from the rest of the group. While most of the children willy nilly cast their clothes off their backs to run into the oncoming waves, no one ever recalled Qismet taking off her bright orange shalwar kameez. In fact, when the children made their dash into the waves, she simply smoothed the creases of her shirt, adjusted the straps on her bright red shoes, patted her hair in the wind and moved towards the castle with her bucket in hand. Squatting next to each castle she erected palm trees and flowers made from sand, scattered sea-shells in the moats. If she disapproved of the architecture of the castle sometimes she kicked it down and casually moved onwards without anyone knowing. Needless to say the children did not include her and she remained a castaway amidst the castles.
Twenty years later, that beach was frequented only by Qismet and the waves. The castle-building children had moved away long ago. The city had turned towards other directions, the beach had become deserted as commercial real-estate had been sold a few miles down on the other side of the beach. The only children that stepped on this beach were those who passed through on their way to the resorts with their mothers and stopped by the young puppeteer's stall.
AMOORA'S MARRIONETTE'S was an operation run by a boy not much older than Qismet who pushed his stall into the beach one afternoon. He was tall, thin, appeared a little dazed and dressed shabbily, looking around in herky-jerky movements, often scratching the little beard on his chin or playing with the strings on his puppets. Contrasted to Qismet, who twenty years later had not lost her sense of style and had grown into a beautiful woman, he seemed awkward and out of place.
Her hair was long, a little past the middle of her back and black like obsidian. Her lips were made of soft red coral; her long body was languid; the lines on her body were exquisite and fine. She often strolled by his stall and made her contempt known to him.
"This is my beach," she said to him. "Why don't you go where there's more money?"
"I like it here," he would say simply and return to tinkering with the little puppets. His puppets were not original. He had taken six chess pieces and attached strings to them. When the children gathered he hid behind his stall and tugged here and there, generally carrying out mundane fables or folksy story.
"What originality! Wah Wah!" she mocked.
"How dare you question art?"
"It's more like torture…" she smiled.
Despite their banter, they were on good terms. She often sat in the shade of his stall, sharing a Pepsi with him and talking about the new dramas going on at her house.
"Damn rishtas, they never stop." She said. "Every day after school I have to hear about a new one. But its like they keep talking about the same person. No originality. Just like your stupid puppets."
"Damn shame," he replied. "Must be horrible being so…wanted."
"Who do you think you are going to marry?" she asked.
"One has to have a soul to marry," he said.
"What happened to your soul?" she asked.
"It died."
"Souls don't die stupid," she said simply. "But sometimes we do forget that we have one."
"Very well then, I have forgotten."
"Well, whatever, I still have a soul," she said. "And I go find it every morning."
"How?" he asked.
"I take it from the ocean." she said. "I give it something, and it returns the favor."
"Like a virginal sacrifice?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure, something like that….weirdo." she said.
But it was true, every morning, a little past dawn, Qismet approached the salty ocean, stepped into its cold embrace, and shivering ever so slightly, took off her simple night robe and let it drop on the sand. Her body quivered in the cold; she threw a handful of sand on her body and individual particles ran down her skin; the goosebumps ran along her clavicle; her long fingers ran down her sides. It was not a sacrifice because there was nothing she gave up. If anything, it was a conquering; a full-fledged challenge to eternity every morning. She was like a pearl-diver; except she dove for her soul.
One day Qismet came to see Amoora as he sat by himself under the stall waiting for the arrival of the children.
"God, I wonder what you're going to do with your life." she stated.
"Just grab the strings and puppeteer, what else?"
"It's so important for you, isn't it?" she asked. "I mean, having control of these strings. It makes you feel good, doesn't it?"
"Yes it does. I feel…well, I feel that I have control over something, I guess."
"What would happen if you just let go of the strings?"
"I guess they would die," he pointed to the chess piece puppets. "They would not have motion, they would have no life."
But Qismet did not agree. "They would live even without you. They don't need you." She smiled at him with those horizontally stretching lips, grabbed him by the hand and pulled him away from the stall. From a distance they watched the puppets. Initially, there was no movement. Then a sudden gust of wind caused the hanging chess pieces shake and move in random patterns; sometimes they clanged together; sometimes they moved away. It looked as if the wind was making them dance. "See, doesn't it look like one of your puppet shows? I mean, its just as random. But they're moving, aren't they? More importantlly, they move all without you!"
"Yeah, I guess," Amoora said but didn't know what else to say. He looked sad. "Dang, that broke my heart."
"What?"
"The fact that they don't need me. I thought I gave them the one thing they needed. I guess I don't. You know what? That's the end of this puppeteer's career."
Qismet shrugged. "It shouldn't break your heart to find out they have a soul of their own which answers to the wind."
"It does. My relationship with these puppets now is like the relationship your poor husband is going to have with you."
"What does that mean?" she turned with anger.
"Let's assume that you get married. If one day you decided to get up, strap on a backpack and start walking, you would not stop. Hell, you probably wouldn't even turn around. Your poor husband will have to deal with all that." he said.
"Ok? So? He has the option of walking with me!" she said.
"That's not what people want. Uncertainty is scary!" he said.
"Then people and their fears aren't for me. Amoora, we shouldn't want strings. Just the water and the wind."
Qismet did not return to see Amoora again. Rumors spread that Amoora forgot his stall after that day and left for Karachi. Other rumors stated that he still hung about the beach, wearing nothing but a necklace made from the same chess pieces with which he had used to delight the children.
Qismet's father had discovered her early morning walks to the beach and commanded her to cease. Qismet's mother prevented her from leaving the house as "shareef girls did not just saunter around with lafungas." Besides, it was time for Qismet to settle upon a husband. There were many potential considerations and decisions to be made, including the preparation of the dowry and the clothes. "No more bachpanna!" and with those words Qismet became tradition's puppet.
Qismet was forced to meet many families and many boys. Her parents gave her the freedom to choose amongst a handful of boys of equal stature. But when she spoke with the boys in private she said things to make them fear her.
"Will Qismet become my wife?" they asked.
"Yes, I will be your faithful and devoted wife," she said, "but I make no guarantees of certainty."
Some men were intelligent and thought that love could change her. They laughed at her when she threatened them with uncertainty. "Well, then, I suppose I'll have to win Qismet over with devotion," they said. But when she told them that she would not be devoted to them in return, they harumphed and swiftly departed.
No one, it appeared, wanted Qismet as she was. Even an Imam came to try and speak to Qismet and convince her to marry him. When he saw her beauty, his eyes lit up and his heart forgot Allah and he promised that if she should love him he would forget the great Allah himself and pray to her for all his life. Qismet told him that she did not need recognition and that he should save his prayers for those gods, like Allah, that needed others to thrive.
One chilly morning Qismet absconded to the beach. She walked slowly to the vast expanse. It had rained the previous night and the sand was damp. Her bare feet left footprints in the sand. At a distance she could see Amoora's forgotten stall and remembered him for a moment. Her eyes returned to the horizon. Her hands freed her from her clothes. She stood with closed eyes in front of the emerging sun. The hot sunrays leapt onto her body like little savage panthers ready to devour her skin. The simmering heat lit her body with fire.
A hot mouth began kissing her shoulders and her back. She felt a sunlit body behind her and they stood skin to skin. Her shivering stoppped and the blood rushed to gather in her thighs for her dive into the ocean. Neither Qismet nor her soul were seen again; but a fisherman did recover a necklace of chess-pieces sitting in the footprints. Ali Eteraz is a freelance writer.
The art is entitled "Sleeping Beauty"
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