held in store for my former pupil and acutely pained by her unhappiness. An inner flow of life seemed to be sustaining her in her fight to seek some other world where she could refashion her life.
‘Noorjehan,’ I said, ‘don’t you think you should tell your parents that you will not go through with the wedding?’
‘You know that my feelings don’t count with them.’
I sensed her inordinate bitterness and disappointment at what her parents had done to her young vulnerable life.
‘I must go away,’ she said softly, sipping coffee.
I looked out of the window at the medley of lights in the street and the rectangular gems adorning terraces of windows.
‘When do you intend to marry?’ she suddenly asked in a sharp hysteria-tainted voice.
Her question, so irrelevant to the situation and so unexpected, left me looking at her in bewilderment and curiosity.
‘Not yet,’ I said, recovering, ‘but I intend to get engaged soon.’
She went on sipping coffee. I detected a tremor in her as she held the cup to her lips. It ignited within me a fervent sense of being implicated in her life, and aroused a strange, almost occult feeling that I was withholding some mysterious power in me to protect her and restore her to happiness.
She looked at her watch and said that half an hour remained before her train arrived.
‘Please write to me,’ I said.
‘I promise to keep my teacher informed like a dutiful pupil,’ she said, forcing a tepid smile and replacing the cup in the saucer.
‘Noorjehan, I hope you will be happy.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking her handbag and standing up. ‘I think we should wait on the platform.’
We walked towards the platform and stood there looking at the movement of passengers and porters, the gliding black engines as they entered the station or departed, the hissing of steam and the glowing of furnaces, and at the swift passage of electric trains.
When the train to Cape Town arrived I found an empty compartment for her. I sat down beside her and spoke of some people I knew in Cape Town.
‘I shall be glad to meet them,’ she said, ‘I spent some school holidays there once, so I should be able to find them.’
‘Please go to them if you need any help,’ I said, taking my notebook out of my pocket and jotting down a few names and addresses on a page.
When I looked up to hand her what I had written, I saw her holding her embroidered handkerchief to her eyes.
‘You will be happy again, Noorjehan,’ I said.
I looked around the compartment, at the green leather seats, the cramped space, the oval mirror above the washstand. She would be incarcerated in here for many hours, carrying with her the memory of unfeeling parents and her fear of an uncertain future in a distant city.
She took the handkerchief away from her face, pushed back a few strands of hair with her fingers and looked at me with her dark moist eyes.
As it was about time for the train to depart, I alighted and stood on the platform next to her compartment window.
Punctually at half-past eight the train gave its initial jerk and then began to move slowly. Noorjehan gave me her hand for a moment, then lifted it and shouted in a strident schoolgirl’s voice: ‘Good-bye sir! Good-bye sir!’ as the train gathered speed and left the station.
Stunned by the formality of her last words, recalling the academic atmosphere of the classroom, I failed for a moment to register her meaning. Then I was overwhelmed by the rebuke implicit in them, and experienced a trenchant sense of guilt for having been so blind to the romantic image of me which she had conceived.
Her words resonated in my mind as I made my way home. I began to feel that they were not only a rebuke, but a cathartic rejection of me from her inner most self.
cathartic – freeing herself of strong emotions and so healing
impeccably – without flaw
implicated – involved
oblique – indirect
occult – supernatural
precocious – gifted
rebuke – a telling off
resonated – echoed
strident – shrill, loud
| Post-reading | |
| 4. | Noorjehan calls her forthcoming marriage “a marriage of obliteration”. |
| a) | What does she mean? |
| b) | Do you believe that her longings for rescue from her situation are in fact, “silly, romantic and sentimental”? |
| 5. | The teacher shares Noorjehan’s views on arranged marriages. |
| a) | Quote a sentence that shows the teacher’s view. |
| b) | Why does he not do anything to help her? |
| 6.a) | Why has Noorjehan told only her teacher of her plans? |
| b) | Why does she suddenly revert to calling him “sir” saying “Goodbye sir” as the train starts to move away? |
| c) | What does the teacher realise at that point about Noorjehan’s hopes and romantic longings? |
| d) | What effect do Noorjehan’s parting words have on him? |
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