Chudail
Everyone said that she should be grateful he’d married her, and the landowner knew it to be true. After all, not only had her family been poverty-ridden for generations, they also had a reputation for being addle-brained. If it had been up to him, wealthy zamindar that he was, he’d never have deigned to even look her way. But his late father had owed hers a favor and this was how they’d wanted it fulfilled. Still, he’d had no intention of following through at first. He’d assented to seeing the girl so that he could dismiss her. But when she was brought before him, he discovered her beauty and pronounced his decision to wed her on the spot.
Her family was most gratified. The wedding took place mere days later, after which the couple settled into their new marital home, freshly built on lush, expansive land he’d recently acquired as part of his inheritance.
The zamindar was well-pleased with his new life. For there was another reason why he’d chosen to marry the girl after all: the women of her family were rumored to have remarkably fertile bodies. The girl’s numerous relatives were a partial cause of the family’s poverty, but the landowner’s father had at least seen to it that they were all well-fed. Now that they were married, he saw no reason to cease this practice. This was exactly what he sought in a wife, for he intended to have an abundance of progeny.
The girl herself thought she was most fortunate. What had she ever contributed to the world, to have been thus blessed? All that set her apart from her nine siblings was that she had been born first. Now with her father gone, their fate and that of her mother’s rested on her shoulders. If all she had to do for their continued wellbeing was revere her husband and bear his children, then, as her family consistently urged her, she had better give herself over to it above all else.
*
But weeks went by, and then months, and the wife’s womb remained empty. With each course of blood, the zamindar’s brow darkened. He couldn’t understand it. Had he been duped? But no, the girl’s vast family was testament that this was not the case. He began summoning the physician to examine her. After the third time he’d pronounced the girl fecund and functioning, the physician tentatively asked if the zamindar thought an examination for himself would be beneficial. He received a flogging such that it took a week for him to walk upright again.
The landowner fumed for days over the incendiary suggestion. To imply that he was impotent! But he would prove them all wrong, he resolved. He would father a child at all costs. While amid one such resolution, he spotted the timid figure of his wife at the door. He beckoned her in.
“Sire,” she began. “I have something to tell you, but I fear you won’t take it well.”
He asked what it was in relation to. She responded that it concerned their struggle to conceive.
“Your struggle,” he corrected, nettled that she’d neglected to frame it properly. “And go on, I am all ears today.”
“My struggle. Yes. I’ve learned something deeply troubling. Beneath the land atop which this house was built, lies a ghulah. I saw her when I was in the garden. She is vengeful over how she and hers have been treated. This is where her loved ones used to rest before the house was built over it. She’s the reason why I remain barren. She says she shan’t stop preventing me from bearing fruit unless we depart—”
The zamindar’s laughter came out in bellows. “A ghulah?” he barked. “Those imagined undead demons who prey on human flesh? You say you talked to one? When I allowed you to speak your thoughts, I presumed you had something of value to tell me. But now I see you have a propensity for absurd, fantastical stories.”
“Sire, I speak the truth,” the wife insisted. “The ghulah used to live here when she was human. She lost all her children and is now determined that you have none. All she seeks is to be left beneath this land in peace so that the time can someday come for her to pass on—”
The zamindar silenced her with a gesture of his hand. “Enough of this foolishness. Go and tend to your duties. Afterwards, we shall retire to bed. My goal is for my descendants to further my legacy by settling on lands far and wide. That can’t happen if I cede what rightfully belongs to me.”
Despairingly, the wife acquiesced. Who was she to challenge her benefactor?
*
Life continued as before, except that the zamindar’s efforts grew more vigorous and unrelenting. Morning and night, he set about creating an heir. The wife grew fatigued more easily as the days passed. She was increasingly frustrated, partly by her husband’s refusal to acknowledge her qualms, but more so with her body’s own inability to be impregnated. Whatever she may know of the ghulah who haunted this dwelling, she couldn’t help but feel like she should be able to overcome her obstructions. What kind of a woman’s fertility was so easily thwarted? It must not have been strong enough to begin with. All her husband required of her was to become a mother, and she couldn’t even manage that.
Every monthly cycle, each examination with the physician wore her down a little more. One day, she asked her husband if they might temper things a little so that she could have some time to rest, perhaps become more rejuvenated for when they tried again.
“And lose all the progress we’ve made?” the landowner said, a hard edge to his voice.
“No chance of that.”
Desperate, the girl took to praying. When it failed to yield results, she began fasting, eating and drinking little even after sundown. When she wasn’t on her knees in supplication, she was sleeping the day away until her husband arrived, ready to plant his seeds. Before long, she dreaded the hours she was awake.
A trusted friend of the zamindar’s family came calling one afternoon. The zamindar met him in the parlor, where they sat and reminisced. Noticing that the girl was nowhere to be seen, the guest enquired after her. Her husband informed him she’d been feeling unwell lately.
“Is it serious?” the guest asked with concern.
“Not at all,” the zamindar snorted. “She’s only tired. Though it probably has more to do with her own fanciful thinking than anything else. If she’d only concentrate on making our child
and nothing else, the matter would be settled.”
“Fanciful thinking?”
The zamindar told him about how she’d been aggrieved about a supposed ghulah living beneath their house. His guest grew grave. He’d served as a longtime advisor of the zamindar’s late father. He had been in the room when the bedridden man had dictated his will to the scribe.
“Young master,” he ventured. “There is something about your wife’s family you ought to know.”
He proceeded to tell the zamindar that, while alive, his wife’s father had been a particularly special aid to his own father. He helped him acquire lands. The land atop which their home currently rested had indeed passed down to the zamindar through his many forefathers. However, it could not be settled due to the numerous lingering spirits of the departed souls that his ancestors had either slaughtered or displaced. Much of the earth had been a cemetery before this house, and others like it, were built. Their vengeful, acrimonious roaming of the land had made it barren and uninhabitable.
“That was where her father came in,” his friend said, “and concocted magic to exorcise them all. This was the sort of thing your father would call upon him for. But this last act of sorcery, owing to its caliber, took an immense toll on the man before he could fully finish the job. It was what killed him in the end. Your father owed him an enormous debt.”
The zamindar had listened to all this in silence. “So you say that my wife’s father was a sorcerer.”
“It’s why some denigrate her family as mad,” the friend said solemnly. “In truth, they have abilities that the rest of us cannot comprehend. The magnitude of such powers can sometimes harm them physically, as with your deceased father-in-law. Or sometimes, they affect their minds. This is why, young master, it may be wise for you to heed your wife’s words.”
“And for this, you would have me believe that she is a witch. A chudail.”
“She may not even know of her own abilities,” his guest protested. “Her father was adamant that what he did be kept a secret. You know how those with magic are persecuted. It was why his family allowed the rumors about their lunacy; better for people not to know.”
The zamindar sighed. Rising to his feet, he told his friend to certainly come again for tea another time.
*
Only a few weeks following the visit, the unthinkable happened: the zamindar’s wife was with child. A period of celebration unfolded. The zamindar ordered lavish monthly banquets to be held, celebrating every stage of the pregnancy. He had garments sewn for his wife from the finest of silks. He commissioned jewelers to fashion rings, pendants, even aigrettes for her to wear. His pleasure knew no bounds.
Never mind that during the feasts, the wife ate little and spoke even less. Never mind that even with her rapidly expanding belly, each of the new dresses sagged around the rest of her body and had to be taken in when it came time to wear them. Even as she struggled to stand under the weight of all her jewelry, as her skin dried and her hair grew mousy, the zamindar perceived nothing out of the ordinary. But to all who attended these extravagant banquets, it was evident that something troubled the landowner’s wife.
The last of these celebrations was a month before the birth was due. Everything was as usual when suddenly, the girl dropped the goblet in her hands. It crashed onto the tiles with an audible shatter, but this was drowned out by her own piercing screech. She fell to the ground while clutching her sides and whimpering. Fortunately, the physician was in attendance. He and several midwives bundled her up and carried her to the bedchamber.
The labor was long and harrowing. Even guests who had vacated the house hours before could hear the girl’s bone-chilling screams of agony carrying on throughout the night. She wailed, uttering garbled prayers for her own death. Her cries were almost mournful. At her side, the midwives had to strip the sheets from the bed and replace them numerous times on account of their being sodden with her blood. More than one of them had to excuse herself to void the contents of her stomach. And all the women could have sworn that for the briefest of moments, the ground quaked and the floorboards creaked just before the girls’ yells were loudest.
In the late hours of the morning, the girl delivered a baby boy. But no one in the house rejoiced that day. For the child was stillborn.
*
A customary forty-day period of mourning ensued. All in the zamindar’s family wore black and left any finery off their persons. On the first day, the child was wrapped in satin and buried in a hastily-commissioned coffin. Before he was lowered into it, the zamindar looked upon his face. It was remarkable how this fully-formed child was not living. He had hair, even long, curved eyelashes. The zamindar could count each individual lash. Once the last grain of sand covered him, the men, for women are forbidden from attending burials, evoked prayers over the grave. The mourning period passed peacefully.
On the forty-first day, the zamindar approached his wife in the bedchamber. She was resting slack against the headboard, gazing out of the window. The zamindar told her it was time to create a new heir.
Vacantly, she turned her face to him. He noted her sunken, shadowy eyes. “My firstborn took so long to arrive, and now he will never come back. Am I to now lose another?”
“Losing one child is no reason not to have another. You’ll be better once we have one to replace him.”
“He almost killed me coming out of me. I was never meant to carry him. It only happened because I’d prayed so hard. But I hadn’t thought of what would happen afterward, and that was why he was born dead. It was the ghulah. The night I found out he was in my womb, I saw her in the garden again. She said that every single one of her children perished when your forefathers claimed this land. She’s resolved never to let your lineage continue for as long as you reside here. I only survived this time because she took mercy on me. I shan’t risk it again. Relinquish this land or the cycle won’t end.”
The zamindar exhaled. Here she was again, spinning these tall, infuriating tales. She should have been grateful he was willing to bed her again. That he’d afforded her forty days to overcome whatever weaknesses weighed her down. He was even generous enough not to turn from her. He could have strayed from their marriage and taken another wife, banished her, blamed their child’s death on her failure to bear him the way a woman should. Couldn’t she see his magnanimity? Instead she wasted his time with this drivel. She’d never understood his vision, he realized.
“I think you need reminding,” he said coldly, “that your family has avoided starvation and ruin thus far because of me. Their fate is in my hands. You can decide whether they continue to benefit from my generosity or are condemned to damnation. So you had better resolve to producing my heir from your belly, or I’ll see to it that nothing goes into theirs.”
If the girl had not been so exhausted, she might have pulsed in anger. She might have glowered at him, raged, cursed. Instead she continued to stare. Resigned. He approached the bed. The girl knew that fighting would only lead to worse suffering on top of whatever she was about to undergo. And so, she lay unmoving as her husband had his way.
*
Strange occurrences began to take place in the village. People’s crops rotted away before they could be harvested. Trees shed their leaves and fruit too early and the soil felt arid, even in the rainy season. Livestock grew ill and frail before their time, as though something was accelerating their lifespan. Children got food poisoning from drinking polluted well water. The villagers murmured that it was all a bad omen. The zamindar was often summoned to make sense of these mysterious phenomena along with his advisors. Though he was away often, upon his return, he never neglected to resume doing the only thing he sought his wife out for.
There were times when people would suggest leaving the land and settling elsewhere in a mass exodus. His most trusted advisor asked whether he wouldn’t reconsider his wife’s warning. But to the landowner, relenting would mean admitting failure. And so, all of these entreaties fell on deaf ears.
The girl stayed mute and withdrawn through it all. Hardly anyone saw her anymore. Less and less she ventured outside, excepting the garden, where servants would occasionally find her sitting motionless for hours. She was on her back every night at the behest and mercy of her husband.
Sometimes, when no one was with her, she would catch sight of herself in the full-length mirror that stood in the corner of her room. Her eyes would rove over her withered body, her drooping shoulders, her deflated breasts. The effortlessly supple olive skin now looked ashy and chapped. Her hair, formerly russet and thick, now hung brittle and rusty. Her belly was puckered with stretchmarks, her eyes had lost their luster. In just a few short years, the beauty she’d once boasted was all but gone. Was anything left of her at all? Often as she gazed upon herself, her hands would form fists. Sometimes, they would tremble, nails piercing her palms.
*
One of these times, the girl saw the ghulah. Not as her own reflection, but next to it. Standing in the back of the room. The girl recognized the emaciated body draped in muddy white, the dark hair that was long enough to look like a shroud. She was watching her from the corner of her eye. She was turned to the side, poised to leave the room. It looked as though she wanted the girl to follow.
What should she do? It wasn’t the first time the ghulah had done this. She had been appearing in the mirror ever since the last time she’d materialized before the girl as she sat in the
garden. It had been at night, when nobody else was there.
“We are two of the same now,” she had said, her voice raspy and rattling.
It had been so many days since the girl spoke, that she had trouble parting her jaws.
“No,” she said. “I would never harm anyone. We are not the same.”
“We are the same in that we have both lost children to that monster.”
The girl took in the ghulah’s skeletal face, the scabby, cratered scalp, the sclera-less eyes, oblong pits of black that made her think of tunnels to hell. It should be ironic that she called another a monster. If she had said it of anyone else, it would have been.
“You killed him.” She couldn’t bear to say any more.
“Yes,” the ghulah assented. “But not you. I knew from the start that you were as much his victim as me. So I spared you. Because you can do things I cannot. You can help us both.”
“Why should I help one who has brought me nothing but grief?”
“I told you before. I only seek to pass on. I shan’t until I’ve received my justice. I know
you have the power to mete it out. Because you can see me. You have magic.”
“No one believes I can see you. They think I’m only mad.”
“They are the fools. You have magic, and your grasp on it is firmer than your father’s was. I remember him. He could not dispel me as he had the others. He died because the magic sapped him of his life. A woman’s magic never kills her. It only feeds her. It makes her stronger.
Shall I show you how to do it?”
The girl had covered her ears with her hands and lowered her head, wishing for nothing but to be left in peace. When she looked up again, the ghulah was gone. The girl had thought that that was the end of it. Strangely, this left her with mixed feelings.
These feelings only grew more conflicting once the ghulah started appearing in the mirror. The girl never made any move to follow her. And yet, here she was again. Staring and waiting. As though she knew that this time, the girl’s resolve would either break or strengthen.
*
One night, the zamindar proceeded towards his wife as usual. He rolled her onto her back. Her eyes were open, as he expected, and they looked past him blankly. He lowered himself onto her, and at first everything seemed as it always was.
Then a searing pain engulfed his nether region. He howled in anguish, his loins scorching. He tried to prise himself free, but something felt clamped around his private parts, forcing him in place. Two rows of something sharp, plentiful, firm, almost like teeth.
Horrified, the zamindar’s frantic eyes scanned his wife’s face. She was looking squarely at him now. Was that a smile lifting the corner of her mouth? With an almighty tug, he tore himself away from her. Blood spurted over his thighs and hands in torrents. He fell backward onto the ground, scrambling away in terror as she rose to her feet. In the darkness, against the backdrop of the moonlit window, his slight and dainty wife appeared looming and ghoulish.
She’s gone mad, he thought frantically. “Chudail,” he whispered in a strangled voice.
“Chudail!”
The woman gave no indication that she’d even heard. Slowly, deliberately, she raised a hand and pointed one long finger at him.
“Get out,” she said, her low voice making his hair stand on end, “or I’ll tell the whole world about the vile, impotent, pathetic creature you truly are. If you ever approach me or my family again, you won’t be so lucky.”
The former zamindar fled akin to a dog with his tail between his legs: though, from that moment on, what he had between his legs was something no other woman would ever discover. The physician who treated him afterward was the only one who did know, and a good deal of the former zamindar’s wealth was spent to guarantee his continued secrecy. He absconded from the territory he’d been so adamant on occupying and retreated to his familial home with only a few trusted folk, hidden away from the people whose respect he’d once commanded. He lived out his days there in wretched seclusion.
The girl remained on the land his ancestors had wrested from its rightful inhabitants all those generations ago. It didn’t take long for it to become hospitable again. Flora and fauna thrived once more. The girl sent for her family, and they all settled into the obscenely large house that her former husband had intended to populate with all his offspring. Some of her kinfolk took up farming while others performed domestic duties for the neighbors. But the girl herself made a living through providing the villagers with spells and magic: the same kind of magic she’d used to protect herself against being violated any longer. Magic she learned to do when the ghulah, who had finally passed on the night the landowner fled, showed her how.
Areej Quraishi’s fiction appears in The Normal School, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Baltimore Review, Porter House Review, jmww, Southern Humanities Review, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. It has received accolades and finalist spots from Glimmer Train Press, CRAFT Literary, Salamander Magazine, and others. Her writing explores familial relationships, cultural identity, and memory. Her surrealist fiction is inspired by myth and fairytales. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington—Seattle and a PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she was a Black Mountain Institute fellow. She is at work on a novel and two short story collections. Find her at www.areejquraishi.com.
