Summary
Begum Jaan continues to give the narrator instructions on how to massage her like Rabbu does. Between directions, Begum Jaan expresses her satisfaction with “sensuous breaths” and laughter at being tickled. Begum Jaan smiles and chats with the narrator, saying she will send her to the market the next day. Begum Jaan asks what the narrator wants: a doll that sleeps and wakes up at her will? The narrator says she doesn’t want dolls and asks if Begum Jaan thinks she is still a child. Begum Jaan laughs and says the narrator must be “an old woman then.”
Lost in thought, the narrator isn’t paying attention when Begum Jaan takes her hand and places it where Begum Jaan itches. The narrator scratches Begum Jaan without thinking. Begum Jaan says the narrator needs new clothes and that she will ask the tailor to come over the next day. The narrator is oblivious to where her hands are traveling as Begum Jaan lies still. Suddenly the narrator jerks her hand away. Begum Jaan gives her a mischievous smile and tells her to watch her hands because she nearly hurt Begum Jaan’s ribs. The narrator is embarrassed.
Begum Jaan invites the narrator to lie down beside her, making the narrator put her head on Begum Jaan’s arm. Begum Jaan tells the narrator she is skinny and begins counting her ribs. The narrator begins to protest but Begum Jaan says, “Come on, I’m not going to eat you up.” Begum Jaan comments on the narrator’s tight sweater. The narrator feels very uncomfortable. Begum Jaan changes the subject, asking how many ribs a person has. The narrator blurts out nine on one side, ten on the other—what she learned in school. Begum Jaan tells the narrator to take away her hand from where she covers her torso. Begum Jaan begins counting her ribs.
The narrator wants to get away but Begum Jaan holds her tightly. When the narrator tries to wriggle free, Begum Jaan laughs loudly. The narrator says that, to this day, she feels jittery when she pictures Begum Jaan’s face at that moment. Begum Jaan’s eyelids droop, and tiny beads of sweat form on her nose and upper lip despite the cold in the room. Begum Jaan’s hands are cold as ice and clammy, as though the skin has been pulled off. It is evening and the room is becoming enveloped in darkness. A strange fear overcomes the narrator. With Begum Jaan’s focus on her, she feels like crying. Begum Jaan presses the narrator as though she is a clay doll. The odor of Begum Jaan’s warm body makes the narrator want to throw up. It is as though Begum Jaan is possessed, and the narrator can neither scream nor cry.
Eventually, Begum Jaan stops and lies back exhausted, breathing heavily, her face pale and dull. The narrator thinks Begum Jaan is about to die; the narrator rushes out of the room. Thankfully Rabbu returns that night. Because she is scared, the narrator goes to bed early and pulls the quilt over her. But she cannot sleep for hours. She thinks about how her mother is taking so long to return from Agra. The narrator is so terrified of Begum Jaan that she spends the day with the maids. She is too nervous to enter Begum Jaan’s room. She wonders what she could have told anyone. It would have been difficult to say she was afraid of Begum Jaan, who was so attached to her. That day, Rabbu and Begum Jaan have another argument. This heightens the narrator’s concern, because Begum Jaan’s thoughts are immediately directed toward the narrator. Begum Jaan scolds the narrator for wandering outside when it is cold, saying the narrator would bring public shame to her if the narrator died of pneumonia. She makes the narrator sit beside her while she washes and changes. During Begum Jaan’s post-bath massage, Begum Jaan calls repeatedly for the narrator to bring things. The narrator keeps her face turned away and runs out after doing the errands. The narrator feels jittery when she changes again.
The narrator yearns for her mother to return. The narrator says that having to stay with Begum Jaan is more severe punishment than the narrator deserves for fighting with her brothers and other boys. Her mother thinks of males as a threat and believes in strict segregation for women. But her mother doesn’t know that Begum Jaan is more terrifying than all the puny men in the world. If it were up to her, the narrator says she would run out in the street. But she is helpless, and has to stay against her wishes.
Begum Jaan dresses elaborately and perfumes herself with the warm scent of attar, a fragrant oil made of rose petals. She showers the narrator with affection. The narrator says “I want to go home” in response to every suggestion Begum Jaan makes. The narrator starts crying. Begum Jaan tries to reassure her, and tells her to come near her, saying she will take the narrator to the market. But the narrator insists on wanting to go home. Toys and sweets hold no interest to her. Begum Jaan tells the narrator her brothers will bash her up, jokingly calling her a witch. The narrator says, “Let them.”
Rabbu tells Begum Jaan that raw mangoes are sour to the taste, hissing in jealousy as she does. Begum Jaan has a fit, flinging to the floor a gold necklace she had a moment earlier offered to the narrator. Her perfect hair-parting becomes a tangled mess. The narrator runs out. After a great deal of fuss, Begum Jaan calms down. The narrator peers in to see Rabbu rubbing Begum Jaan’s body and nestling against her waist. Rabbu tells the narrator to take off her shoes. The narrator snuggles into her quilt.
The narrator hears the peculiar noise again, and Begum Jaan’s quilt is swaying like an elephant. The narrator moans for Allah, in a feeble voice. The elephant in the quilt heaves up and then sits down. The narrator is mute. The elephant sways again and the narrator is scared stiff. But she has decided to switch on the light that night. The elephant starts shaking again, and it appears it is trying to squat. The narrator hears the sound of someone smacking her lips, as though savoring a tasty pickle. The narrator suddenly understands: Begum Jaan has not eaten anything all day, and “the witch” Rabbu is a notorious glutton, probably finishing off some goodies. But when the narrator inhales deeply, she smells only the scent of attar, sandalwood, and henna—no food.
The quilt starts swinging again. The narrator tries to lie still but the grotesque shapes the quilt assumes disturb her. It seems as though a large frog is inflating itself noisily and is about to leap on her. The narrator whimpers for her mother but no one pays any attention. The quilt creeps into her mind and grows larger. The story ends with the narrator going to the edge of the bed and groping for the light switch. She switches the light on and the elephant somersaults inside the quilt, which deflates immediately. But during the somersault, a corner of the quilt rises by almost a foot and the narrator sees inside. The narrator gasps, “Good God!” and sinks deeper into her bed.
Analysis
When Rabbu doesn’t return from visiting her son, Begum Jaan’s aches and pains—Chughtai’s coded way of hinting at her sexual frustration—lead her to accept the narrator as a replacement for Rabbu. The narrator is pleased to be able to bring her aunt some relief as she massages her. Begum Jaan’s attitude switches from one of quiet frustration to one of playful affection, and she talks to the narrator about the nice things she would do for her, like buying her things in the market. The aunt’s offer of gifts is a haunting echo of the nawab’s tendency to buy gifts and clothing for the young males he has sex with.
The narrator is oblivious to Begum Jaan’s motivations; she is merely happy to be of service to her aunt. As the two chat away, the narrator barely notices when Begum Jaan guides her hands to the unnamed more intimate spot on Begum Jaan’s body. When the narrator suddenly realizes where she is touching, she jerks her hand away. Begum Jaan laughs and makes a joke, acting as though there is nothing inappropriate about the area she guided her niece to touch.
The theme of child sexual abuse builds when Begum Jaan makes the narrator lie next to her and put her head on Begum Jaan’s arm. As if to dispel the awkwardness of the narrator having just touched an intimate area, Begum Jaan feigns playfulness as she touches the narrator. Although the narrator lacks the experience and vocabulary to name the abuse occurring, she senses the inappropriate quality of Begum Jaan’s touch and intense gaze. She notices a physical change in Begum Jaan: her hands are clammy and she is sweating and an odor is coming from her warm body—all signs of Begum Jaan’s sexual arousal.
Begum Jaan proceeds to feel the narrator’s body, pressing her as though she is a “clay doll,” a comparison that emphasizes how Begum Jaan disregards the narrator’s bodily autonomy and treats her like an object. The narrator tries to wriggle away but Begum Jaan keeps her pinned in place, seeming to delight in her power over the child. The narrator only escapes her aunt’s escalating abusive touch when Begum Jaan lies back exhausted. It is unclear what causes Begum Jaan to stop. Whether Begum Jaan suddenly realizes what she is doing or simply achieves sexual release, the narrator is horrified by the sight of the woman’s dull and pale face.
For the rest of her visit, the narrator does what she can to stay away from Begum Jaan, around whom she has developed a nameless terror. The trauma of Begum Jaan’s inappropriate touching, which will stay with the narrator until adulthood, causes her to spend time with the maids. Begum Jaan, however, insists on making the narrator stay near her, and continues to try to buy her affection with offers of gifts. The narrator stubbornly insists that she simply wants to go home, and Begum Jaan has a fit when she finds she cannot use her power over the child. Behaving like a child herself, Begum Jaan throws a tantrum that Rabbu eventually treats.
Still stuck in her abuser’s house, the narrator goes to bed early that night. Eventually, she wakes to Begum Jaan’s quilt swaying again. She also hears lips smacking and slurping—likely cunnilingus—but believes, in her innocence, that Rabbu is eating snacks surreptitiously. Having resolved to turn the light on, the narrator finally discovers the truth of what Begum Jaan has been concealing under her quilt. As Rabbu and Begum Jaan tumble under the quilt, a corner lifts and the narrator glimpses the women engaged in sex. Once she sees beneath the quilt—a symbol for unacknowledged truths—the narrator sheds her innocence. With this revelation, the narrator will come to understand and contextualize the discomfort she felt when Begum Jaan touched her.
