The Islam Quintet

by Tariq Ali

  Alice announced supper just as Zaynab was leafing through the Plato penises. She smiled at some of the drawings but lingered on none. I knew then that the book would stay with me. Ally had been looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Zay-Nab, don’t you think I was right? I may have mellowed somewhat, but I still think that these paintings offer nothing to the world or to anyone.’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Zaynab in a reflective tone. ‘But they obviously meant something to him or he wouldn’t have done them. I think Dara as his biographer should retain custody, as we often say in our country. Perhaps one of them could be the cover of your book on Plato.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps they could replace Fatherland flag, more representative of the people who run the country.’

  Zaynab laughed. ‘I’ll suggest it to my brother, who’s now a senior minister for something.’

  ‘Corruption?’

  ‘Suppertime, children.’

  Zaynab seemed so self-assured and at ease in the world that I wondered whether her life had been as much of a tragedy as it had been painted by Plato and others. I knew that Alice would broach the subject before too long, and she did not disappoint me.

  ‘Zay-Nab, er, we’ve been wondering. Plato said he had fallen in love with a married woman. Is your husband alive or are you divorced?’

  ‘Neither, really, Alice.’

  Alice, slight puzzled, looked at both of us in turn. ‘I give up. What’s the mystery?’

  ‘Surprised Plato hasn’t told you. I’m married to our Holy Book.’

  ‘What? Is this real? Are you kidding? Dara, did you know?’

  ‘Yes. These things happen in Fatherland.’

  Zaynab explained her plight to an astonished Alice, who had thought she knew everything on matters related to gender. It was wonderful watching her face register an escalating scale of incredulity as Zaynab’s story proceeded. The effect was enhanced by the deep calm voice in which Zaynab told it.

  ‘In my part of the country the big landlords are so desperate to preserve their estates that anything that threatens the size of their holdings has to be fought. As a female I was entitled to my share of the property—under Islamic law that’s a half of what the men inherit. Were it not for sharia I would get nothing at all. Makes one think. In the absence of laws that insist on a totally equal share, it’s better to get something. Don’t you agree, Alice?’

  Would Alice agree? She would. I snorted with delight, only to be silenced by a gesture from Zaynab.

  ‘Even a quarter of a man’s share of our estate amounted to thousands of acres, and in the natural course of events all that land would have gone out of the family. If I married and had children, my share of the estate would be divided among them, diminishing the family holdings. Even if I married a cousin, my brothers would lose my share. There was one remedy, a scheme devised many moons ago: a female whose right of inheritance threatened her family’s estate could be married to the Koran. So a ceremony took place when I was twelve in which the local pir, a retarded pockmarked primitive—a male cousin of mine—declared my marriage to the Koran legal and holy. For a month I was locked up with our Holy Book and nothing else. Food would be left outside, and none of the maids was allowed to speak to me. How I wished my mother were still alive.

  ‘The purpose of this confinement was to acclimatize me to my future. A year later, when I began to menstruate, the book would be removed while I was unclean. They thought that under this treatment I would either adjust to my new reality or take my own life. There were stories of women in my position who had done so. And, to be honest, there were times I thought it might be easier to die than to live like this, and I spoke of my thoughts with women friends who would start weeping at the idea. But one woman did promise that if I really wanted it, she would obtain a cyanide capsule from her husband, a senior officer in some intelligence agency. I promised I would never swallow it without talking to her first, but I needed a couple for emergencies. She obtained two. I wanted to make sure that they worked, so I fed one to my brother’s frightening hound, a dog that had cost him a fortune and was as large as one of your Shetland ponies. It worked.’

  Alice was horrified.

  ‘Oh, Zay-Nab. Tell me it isn’t so. You poisoned a pedigree greyhound. Why not your brother?’

  ‘It was the Hound of the Shahskervilles, my dear. It terrified the peasants. There was much rejoicing when news of the animal’s death spread. Some of the serfs called the dog Pir Sahib, and at first people thought it was the pock-marked pir who had met with an accident, which also pleased them, but the dog’s death came as a relief, since he had already killed a child. Don’t tell me hounds are gentle creatures, Alice. Depends on their masters. Sámir Shah had encouraged the hound to be what it was. Do you want to see the other capsule? I keep it in this little naswar container that once belonged to my mother.’

  She reached for her bag and took out a tiny old silver snuffbox. Inside it lay the beautifully disguised killer, a capsule the size and shape of a pearl. She told us how on hearing of the hound’s death her brother had become totally distraught, cancelled an important political tour and immediately returned home in his official helicopter. The country’s top veterinary surgeon was sent for and an autopsy performed. The poison had left no trace. The vet, who smuggled heroin as a night job, declared with an air of total confidence that the Shah hound had suffered a fatal heart attack. Sámir Shah screamed at him.

  ‘I never knew that hounds had heart attacks, you pimp.’

  ‘I’m afraid they do in Fatherland, sir, and especially in this region. Must be the heat. They are used to cold weather, you see. German shepherds are immune, but not hounds. General Farooqi’s hound had a fatal heart attack only three months ago. If I had known your beast had a weak heart I might have attempted a dual bypass or organized a transplant. Too late now and I’m truly sorry, sir. To which honourable person should I send my invoice?’

  Even Alice managed a smile as Zaynab continued her story.

  ‘The dog was mummified, and that is how I first saw Plato, though from a distance. My brother had asked for the best painter in the country to be hired to paint the beast. I. M. Malik was away at a biennale somewhere in Europe, so your Plato was given the commission. He heard the official story, and, being Plato, found out a great deal more by talking to the villagers. As we know, he can never paint a realist portrait. What he did instead was brilliant. He portrayed a strange beast with angel’s wings and, alas, too large a private part, but it was the face that was remarkable. At first glance you would realize it was my brother. The expression on the hound’s face replicated the permanent frown that disfigured his master’s. I thought my brother would be furious, but no. This is a wonderful painter, he told us later, who has captured the affinity between hound and master so beautifully. The painting hangs in the hall where you enter his house.

  ‘When I asked for permission to congratulate the painter in person, to my astonishment, Sámir Shah agreed. Strange man he was, my brother. He was amoral, without scruples of any sort, ready to trample on anything and everything that stood in his way, as I know only too well. Yet the death of the hound undoubtedly affected him, and quite deeply. Plato was very handsomely rewarded for his work and I had my first conversation with him. It lasted exactly fifteen minutes, and then the Pajero drove him back to Karachi. Of course, he knew immediately that I had guessed his real intention and did not attempt to dissimulate. All he said was that every landlord and politician in the country should be painted as a mongrel. The mischief in his eyes was appealing, and also, I suppose, the fact that he was the first man outside my immediate family, excluding our serfs, with whom I had ever spoken, and I was fast approaching forty. That made an impact, though even at first sight he did not seem very developed from a sexual point of view. A woman in my position is more alert in these matters than someone like Alice, for instance. I felt that physical pleasures were not a Plato priority. There are some people I know, male and female, who can nev
er accept any feelings they themselves are incapable of experiencing as authentic. Plato was the opposite. I could read that in his eyes, and it was confirmed in the months that followed.

  ‘Are you wondering why I didn’t escape from my prison, especially as I had the key to the door in my pocket? Simple. I had no money in my name. No bank account. No nothing. I didn’t really exist. There was another factor. Had I met a man and married him it would have been a suicide wedding. The primitives would have met and decreed that I had dishonoured the Koran, and pirs would have been found to pronounce the death sentence. It wasn’t till Sámir and the brother next in age to him, whom I hated so much that I prefer not to mention his name, died in a plane crash and Sikandar came home to take charge of the estates that my life began to improve.

  ‘Sikandar and his wife took me out everywhere, and for the first time I began to experience everyday life in the big city. Sikandar bought my share of the land, and gave me the money and a great deal more, including the large apartment in Karachi. He had a sorrowful expression when he told me that though he wanted my happiness, it would be best if I didn’t marry. He was not powerful enough to prevent the pirs from issuing a death sentence. By this time I did not have any desires in that direction, and then Plato entered my life, bringing happiness and intellectual comforts that I had not thought possible. Everyone believes he’s my cook-chauffeur. You know his face. With a tiny disguise and a change in body language he can play any part. He told me that he had taken you in, Dara, by pretending to be a Bengali caretaker.’ She threw back her head and laughed. Alice looked shell-shocked. None of us spoke.

  ‘Tell me, Zay-Nab, is marriage to the Koran permitted by Islam? Never heard of it before.’

  ‘Of course not. The clerics attack the practice every day, denouncing the landlords, but they do nothing. A few suicide bombers in the haunts of these guys might work wonders. Instead, they punish the poor.’

  ‘A primitive device to destroy primitives,’ said I. ‘The idea is not without merit, but it’s their economic power that needs to be destroyed. No point killing individuals if the institution survives.’

  ‘Which government in Fatherland will ever do that, Dara? It’s been going on for too long.’

  ‘So medieval,’ said Alice. ‘So bloody medieval.’

  ‘Medieval Europe perhaps, Ally, but not the medieval Islamic world. They were spared feudalism. Zaynab’s misery can’t be blamed on Islam. Didn’t you once say in public that patriarchy plus property equals murder?’

  ‘Spare me my juvenilia, Dara. Please. There are more important issues at stake. Zaynab, may I ask you a very personal question? We can tell this male monster to leave if you want.’

  ‘The monster can stay. Ask whatever you wish.’

  ‘Are you a virgin?’

  For the first time that evening, her face clouded over, and for a moment it seemed that Alice had crossed a heavily protected frontier. Zaynab sighed, then said, ‘I don’t mind the question at all. Plato asked me exactly the same one and became quite upset when I replied truthfully, and it was the memory of his sadness that I was thinking about when you repeated the question. No, I’m not a virgin. Technically, if I can put it like that, I deflowered myself with a candle when I was seventeen. That was also the year I was beginning to read Balzac, not that the two events are linked in any fashion. It’s just that when I started rereading him many years later, memories of the candle I had burnt at my altar always reappeared. The maids had replaced the sheets very quickly. They were my only confidantes and friends. I told them everything and they never, ever betrayed me. It was the only girl talk that was possible and I enjoyed it greatly. There were no affectations, no melodrama, no feeling that we were entering uncharted or perilous waters. None of that. They were all married and would describe their experiences in great detail. Two of them had husbands who performed like animals. They made the comparison well, because their sex education had consisted of watching stray dogs and donkeys and horses copulating at various times. One of them had a more thoughtful husband who would give her a great deal of pleasure and she was not shy about describing the foreplay. The others would giggle and ask to share him. I actually did.’

  Even I jumped up at this point.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘When I first put this proposition to her, she thought that I was teasing and giggled at my joke. I said I was serious and her face went pale as the sand. At first I imagined it might be jealousy on her part. That I would have understood, even though I had not at that time felt the emotion myself, but had read about it a great deal in French novels. If she had been jealous, I would have immediately withdrawn the request. When I made this obvious she was mortified. It wasn’t that at all, she told me. She then admitted she had talked about me to him, told him about the candle and the stained sheet. He had expressed sorrow at my fate and abused the men who had reduced me to these straits.

  ‘She was sure he would oblige, and for her part she was happy to share him. Had I not after all, she asked, shared much with her and the other maids? Her only fear was that we’d be found out, and there, too, she was not afraid on her own behalf. If he and I were caught we would both be put to death. Him first. They would disembowel and burn him. She could not bear the thought of losing him or me. I reassured her: it was merely an idea and between the idea and the deed there is often a long interval. In any case, everything would have to be very carefully planned.

  ‘When she informed him of my proposition and her concerns, he immediately calmed her fears. Over the next months we devised a plan. Its details are of no significance. In my situation, melodrama was never far from the surface, and with some reason. And so one day it happened, and everything his wife had confessed regarding their most intimate moments turned out to be true. From that day on, whenever I was menstruating, he would come and pleasure me, except when unforeseen circumstances made the operation risky. That is how I came to experience the delights of being a woman. And you know something, after my first year in Karachi, where I observed the unhappiness of so many women from my class who had been married for some time, and heard their tales of woe about philandering husbands and being abandoned by their children, I did begin to wonder whether being married to the Koran and being pleasured by a man I shared with a dear friend had in some ways been a less cumbersome experience.’

  Alice applauded loudly, which grated on me. ‘It’s truly wonderful,’ she crowed. ‘It restores my faith in humanity. When we were young we used to say that marriage was akin to prostitution, since cash dependency made many women prisoners. May I ask how long this business of sharing went on?’

  ‘It still does, but extremely irregularly. Once or twice a year, I send for him. I once tried a very clever journalist, but his cleverness, alas, was confined to his newspaper columns. He was very stupid and crude in bed and I had to ask him to leave before it went any further. Afterwards when we met on social occasions I think he was more embarrassed than I was.

  ‘My friendly maid moved to Karachi with me, and so did her children. He would come here once or twice a fortnight to see them. So we’ve never lost contact. He’s also a very sharp-witted observer of what goes on in that world. Often I pass on the things he tells me to Sikandar, who is always amazed by my “spy network”. I wrote a poem about him in Sindhi but it doesn’t sound so good in English. It was in praise of the soil, rich in ardour, that produced such men, compelled to seek the sun inside themselves; their secret passions, concentrated energies that kept their muscles taut and produced a voluptuousness without a trace of languor. Enough. I’m very fond of him, even though our conversations are often limited to issues relating to the land. That is what upset Plato. He found it all quite disconcerting. I told him I would be delighted if he could replace my aging peasant, but he simply couldn’t. We did try.’

  ‘So did we,’ said Alice, unable to resist the competition. ‘That’s when Dara walked in and served my needs so well. I can recommend him.’

  ‘All th
at is over now, praise Allah. My life has changed its course: I’m on a grand tour, first Europe, then China.’

  I left to visit the washroom with their mocking laughter in the background. I could see how Plato had fallen so badly for her. She was an amazing creature. Could she be the inspiration for all the mermaids that he now painted? When I returned I asked whether she was his latest muse and model.

  ‘I am. I sit for him, but he can’t explain why I must always be depicted as a mermaid.’

  ‘Surely it’s disgustingly obvious,’ said Alice. ‘He doesn’t want to imagine you with private parts. What other possible reason could there be? The role of the mermaid in ancient mythology is essentially that of a prick-teaser.’

  The remark irritated me. She was trying to show off. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ally ... er, Alice. Mermaids have a totally different function in different ...’

  ‘Please, let’s not argue abut mermaids. I’ve had a really nice evening, but we haven’t yet discussed your Plato, and I’m worried.’

  ‘Why?’ we asked in unison.

  ‘His depressions are getting worse, not better. You can see all of this in his latest work. There are days when he is completely suicidal, which is why I never leave this capsule at home. I carry it wherever I go. In a melancholic fit he could grab and swallow it, and where would that leave me? I see less and less of him. He spends more and more time in his studio. Drinking and painting, day and night, as if he were racing against death. The humour in his work has almost disappeared.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There is this absurd and foolish rivalry promoted by the press. Is Pervaiz Shah as good as I. M. Malik? Numerous articles, and people who know nothing about art writing long and dull essays on both painters. Even those who praise Plato haven’t a clue as to what he’s about and where his art stems from. Has either of you seen I. M. Malik’s work?’

  Alice had never heard of him. I knew him slightly from the past and had seen his paintings at various exhibitions.