No, denies the cousin, he has never done anything to spoil the khandaan’s izzat.

‘How dare you suggest that my daughter is lying?’

‘She is your family,’ says the cousin, ‘I do not wish to comment on how she has been brought up. But I will say this, even at the risk of incurring your wrath for which I beg your forgiveness. If I were such a horrible man should there not have been a similar complaint from your elder, beautiful, daughter?’

‘Are you daring to suggest that my daughter is imagining all this because she is plain?’

‘It is not for me to comment on your family. But, again, I risk your wrath. I can give you some instances of when I have visited your home and your younger daughter has stuck to me like a leech, crying all the while that she wants me to marry her.’

‘You liar!’

‘I swear that she has said I must marry her.’

‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

Razia’s abba is silent for a while and then he sighs. ‘I have to beg of you not to come here again.’

‘It will be as you wish,’ says the cousin. ‘And again, at the risk of incurring your wrath I must say this, there are other male cousins who come into this house as well. Perhaps they too should be stopped so that they do not suffer the humiliation I just did.’

Razia’s ammee asks her the next morning as she breakfasts before leaving for her painting class, ‘Tell me the truth. Did he ever do those things to you?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘But he has sworn that he has done nothing, it is you who has flung herself on him.’

Razia turns hard-as-stone eyes on her mother. ‘You only listen to what you want to.’

‘Razia! Swear that you are not lying.’

‘I swear it.’

‘Say swear, say I swear on all that we hold holy.’

‘I swear on Allah that it is all true.’

Razia’s ammee breaks down and sobs, she holds her crumpled, cotton dupatta in her left palm and covers her wet eyes, ‘Who am I to believe when they both swear that they are telling the truth? Please help me, oh God, please help me.’

Razia watches her mother weep for a while. Then she walks away. When she returns from her painting class, she has an as-yet damp sheet of thick white paper on which something has been painted in rough brush strokes. She gives it to her mother in the kitchen and walks away once again.

The mother looks at it, she can make no sense of the painting at all, it looks like some bizarre kind of modern art. Razia’s ammee sets it aside, mentally counting the years left before they can legally marry off Razia.

‘Did you like my painting?’ asks Razia of her ammee at lunch.

‘Oh yes, it was very nice. You must spend more time painting than imagining things.’

Razia looks at her abba and asks of him, ‘Did you like my painting?’