by Ali Sethi
The forceful applause returned.
“That was the principal, please,” said the coordinator over the noise, reclaiming his practical place at the podium.
The principal stood beside him with his chin raised.
The coordinator was looking at his notes, waiting for the applause to die, and now spoke in a flatly cheerful tone: our hockey team had just returned from Bahawalpur; the boys had participated in the All-Pakistan Inter-School Hockey Tournament and gone as far as the semifinals; they had brought back some trophies that were now going to be distributed; could the captain please come up and hand them out?
The assembly was dismissed after the national anthem. I waited in the house enclosure, which disintegrated as the boys headed out haphazardly toward the hallway. There were five minutes between this bell and the next one, and I was waiting for the monitor to return, to resume the argument about the shoes and award the appropriate punishment.
“He’s not coming,” said Saif, who was waiting with me. All around us the noise continued as the crowd slowly drained away.
“Then he’ll come tomorrow,” I said. “It’s better to wait now.”
“He won’t come tomorrow,” said Saif.
We began to walk away from the abandoned enclosure.
“What’s wrong with these shoes?”
“Nothing wrong.”
“So? Why’s he acting all worked up like that?”
“He has to. He’s new.”
We walked through the field, then along the crowded hallway, where confident voices rose continually above the hum; boys embraced and shook hands and stood chatting in doorways; some were talking to teachers just inside the filling classrooms, and looking around as they talked, taking up their places again after the void of the summer holidays.
I asked Saif if he knew the monitor.
“Not yet,” he said.
We reached the building where the junior classrooms were situated, a low brick block with recessed corridors under a series of arches. The noise here was pronounced. Saif and I were in the same class (though he was repeating a year) but in different sections: every class was divided into seven sections, with no apparent method of differentiation; it was management, Saif explained, and it would undergo additional changes in the coming weeks, with boys being shifted from one section to another until the arrangements were defined.
“I can come to yours,” I said.
“You can’t choose,” he said. “The teachers will decide.”
The second bell had sounded and the commotion in the corridor had increased. Teachers were visible now, coming down the stone path from far-off buildings. Saif and I parted in the noise and went in opposite directions. I was in 9B, a room with a broken door, smashed in from long ago and left to hang at a slight angle in the doorway; the room itself had a high ceiling with grooves at the top and a single fan that dangled on a long cord; a dead fireplace sat to the side, a blackboard was hung at the front, and lots of chairs with thin legs, and with slate-like surfaces attached to the arms, were littered all around. The room had filled up at the front and in the middle, and only some chairs at the back remained. I took the one near the window, which was made of a rusty old mesh and dented. A dead wasp lay on its back in a corner of the window-sill with its legs curled up. It had wandered in past the mesh and never found its way out.
The first period belonged to the English teacher, a woman. She came in with her books and walked up to the teacher’s desk, landed the books, picked up a stick of chalk and began to write isolated words on the blackboard. The room was silent. The boys were copying the words. The English teacher wrote and wrote, moving width-wise along the board, then moving back and starting a new row of words, and onward until the board was filled up. She twirled now and sat down in the teacher’s chair. She was reading her own book, her head tilting from side to side in solitary involvement. When the bell rang she got up promptly with her pile of books and left the room. The noise started up again, and again stopped when the next teacher came in, a short young man who brought only one book. He wrote Algebra on the board and turned around to confront the class. “In algebra,” he said, leaning against the blackboard, his legs crossed at the ankles, “we use two variables, x and y.” He turned around and wrote x and y on the board. “Algebra was invented by Arabs. Zero—you know zero—was also invented by Arabs.”
A voice said, “Sir, will that be on the test?”
There were sniggers.
The teacher conceded a smile of amusement, and said, “Maybe one question.”
The laughter was relieved.
“Arabs invented algebra,” he continued, “and Arabs also invented the decimal—you know the decimal—which is widely used in mathematics today—”
“Sir, will that also be on the test?”
The math teacher stared, his lips pressed out and his nostrils twitching, and gave a series of quick blinks. “Stand up,” he said, and then in a shout: “Stand up!”
The boy stood up.
“Get out.”
“Sir—”
“I say get out!”
The boy, a tall and clever one who looked older than the others, began to make his way past the chairs. When he had left the room the teacher turned again to the blackboard and wrote Fixed Variables. “Write it down,” he said, his back to the class, the humor gone from his voice.
After the math period there was the physics period, and after that chemistry, for which we had to go to the chemistry lab in a line led by the teacher, a quiet and dignified old man who performed an experiment with a test tube and tried toward the end to contain the chatter that had broken out in rebellion, encouraged by the shift in location and also by the prospect of the lunch break: the bell rang and a flood of bodies broke past the door. I managed to find my way back to the junior building, and then through the already empty corridor to 9D, which was the room allotted to Saif’s section. It was deserted. I walked out again into the sun and, with my hands in my pockets, up along the hot path all the way to the canteen, which was located in a low white building. The queues inside were too long, and I waited outside by the benches and tried to find Saif among the groups. Then I started walking back toward the junior building, frowning in the sun, my hands secure inside my pockets, and the bell rang on the way and the noise and the rush swelled up, and the monitors appeared, shouting at the junior boys and stopping them at will and awarding punishments that were then carried out on the path.
At home that night my mother asked, “And how was your day? Did you make any friends?”
“I’m sure he did,” said Daadi, but desisted from asking for proof.
I saw Saif in the mornings at the start of assembly. We no longer shared a house; I had only stood in his enclosure on the first day because I didn’t then know that I had already been assigned a house, which was across from his on the other side of the field. It was a release from the monitor who had taken me up on the matter of my shoes. And my new monitor was kind and forgetful, a plump senior who had recently won recognition in the inter-school debating championships and was often late to assembly himself, lacking the time and the authority to conduct inspections. He stood at the back of the house enclosure and hurriedly marked the register with his pen, making comments that never led to punishments. The junior boys indulged him in the morning but considered him a failure because they saw the subtly teasing way his contemporaries had with him, a way that was regretted and later ridiculed.
Saif was the one boy I knew. But he had a life from before, and had friends from before who accompanied him at lunch break to the canteen and sat with him on the benches, boys he had known last year and who were now one year ahead and brought with them the advantage of seniority. I sat with them a few times but felt alone; they had ways of talking to one another, ways of joking about other boys and teachers and the people they knew outside the school. And their methods were established: they knew where to meet and knew what they wanted from the canteen, and had a way of buying a
collective lunch that was distributed equally. I listened when they talked, and laughed when they laughed, and gave them my money and ate the food they brought back from the canteen. But I felt alone.
The search continued in the classroom. All the chairs in the front were taken, and most of the chairs in the middle, but the chairs at the back retained a temporariness that was due to their proximity to the door, from which new boys entered and old ones exited continually. Here I had a series of vivid encounters, first with a boy called Daniyal, who was small and enjoyed making lewd jokes but was withdrawn and grudging when I asked to borrow his notes—he turned away at once and began to do his own work, as if to guard against a larger intention—and then with a boy called Saqlain Raza, a practicing Shiia who gave solemn, lurid descriptions of the muharram ritual. He claimed to lash his own back with chains—he insisted that I touch the back of his shirt to feel the ridges, but the math teacher saw us and told us to stand up and get out, a humiliating episode from which our friendship never recovered. Then Munawwar, who had moved from San Diego, and Ahmed, an aspiring scientist; and then, for a few days, a boy called Qaiser, whose father was a teacher in the biology department and whose views reflected the dilemmas and ambitions of schoolteachers. He enjoyed spending time outside the staff room and claimed to know the salaries of the heads of departments, and insisted that his father’s was the highest, though at other times he said that the teachers weren’t paid enough and were likely to go on strike.
When Daadi next asked about my friends, I told her I had none and told her also not to ask me again.
Naseem commented on the change in tone.
And Daadi said, “The boy is maturing,” and closed her eyes serenely, drawing on her powers of persuasion.
The week consisted of five school days, and every day (except Friday, a half-day) was divided into seven periods, four before the break and three after. Both English and math were given a period a day; their importance was derived from the role they played in shaping the other subjects, such as physics, chemistry and biology, each occupying four periods a week. Urdu was allotted three periods a week; Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat one each, though they were taught by the same person, a hat-wearing, red-bearded man called Dr. Qazi, who was rumored to possess a Ph.D. and drew attention frequently to the lack of regard at this school for his subjects, which were the best subjects, since they alone determined our destinies in this world and the next. Indeed, Dr. Qazi, with his dark trapezoid hat and fiery beard, wearing simple sandals and a plain white shalwar kameez with the shalwar raised an extra inch at the ankles, was conspicuous among the many shirts and trousers and, though ridiculed for his fervor, was singularly able to extract for his subjects an air of sanctity; the class was rowdy until he began to pace the room with his lecture, which was likely to appear on the test and had to be faithfully transcribed by each of us because there was no copy of it in the library.
“Women,” said Dr. Qazi. “What is the place of women in Islam?” He had stopped beside the blackboard; he hid his hands now and looked from one side of the room to the other.
Pens and pencils went to work.
Dr. Qazi was pacing. “The place of women in Islam is better than their place before the advent of Islam in Arabia.” He had delivered the sentence in a stretch; he turned now and began to pace in the other direction. “The place of women”—his voice had slowed—“in Islam”—he said it with imploring sweetness—“is better than their place before the advent of Islam in Arabia.”
Hands moved quickly and efficiently. A few had finished with the writing and made a show of it; they went into hair, went to rest on cheeks, implying boredom and superiority. The boy at the desk across was still writing, but leisurely, his hand working in a continuous slanting motion. As he wrote he seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, leaning forward and back and then turning the angle of his face for perspective. He stopped now to examine the work, and his look was searching and then pleased, aware of his achievement, for while appearing to write he had begun to make a drawing.
He settled his hands on the desk and looked up at the teacher, his small dark face finely angled, culminating in a sharp chin that was raised slightly with interest. The hands were covering the sheet of paper to hide the drawing.
I looked away.
And he began to draw again, his hand moving with speed: the two eyes already made were darkened with lines above and below, and acquired lids and a sprinkling of lashes.
“Women in Islam,” said Dr. Qazi, “are to be regarded with tenderness. They are not to be inherited. They are not—it is forbidden—to be inherited, like slaves, as they once were. As they? Once were.”
The eyebrows determined the expression and made it artfully unaware.
Woman is given to man in the role of mother, sister, wife and daughter. The Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) has gone as far as to say that “Paradise lies at the feet of the mother.”
A line became a triangle, and grew into an M with two dots inside: a nose.
It is said in the Quran, in ayat four and verse thirty-two: “To men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn.”
Two inward-slanting lines made the cheeks, then a plateau for the chin; a final M at the forehead was connected to a cascading hairstyle, and the face of the woman was complete. It now grew a neck and a body in a succession of quick lines and curves.
But there are differences. For while men and women are similar in the eyes of God, they are not made equal. They are not. Men have their place, and women have theirs. And they must know their place. In the Quran it says, surah twenty-four and ayat thirty: “Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty.” And in the next line it says: “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty.”
The completed woman stood holding her hips, wearing gloves that came up to her elbows and boots that came up to her knees. There was a mirror beside her, containing a reflection, and an open window on the other side with the sky and the moon and the stars outside.
“Very nice.”
The hand had stopped moving. The drawing was almost finished.
“Beautiful,” said Dr. Qazi, smiling.
The boy twirled his pencil slowly in his hand.
“We are learning,” said Dr. Qazi to the class, “about modesty. And this one here”—he thwacked the face with his hand—“is making this”—he thwacked it again—“in my class.” He squeezed the boy by the collar and hauled him up—he lifted limply—and threw him across the floor. The boy stumbled on a chair that was in the way, which the occupant then moved conscientiously to the side.
“Do it again,” said Dr. Qazi, crumpling the paper in his fist and throwing it into the ashen fireplace, “do it again and I will draw it on your smart little face and make you walk around this school in front of everyone, you understand?”
I followed him out of the classroom.
The bell had just rung and the corridor was rushed, but he found a way in it, walking beside the wall, his schoolbag strapped on both shoulders and his thumbs tucked in beneath the straps.
I said, “That teacher’s crazy.”
He was trying to walk ahead, his legs making precise, equal movements.
“You draw a lot?”
It was the wrong thing to ask.
“What’s your name?” And this, at least, was not probing or pitying.
“Kazim,” he said in a way that was almost humoring, so that it sounded after a moment like a challenge.
“Zaki Shirazi.”
But he hadn’t thought it necessary.
So I said, “It’s not right, what that teacher did. He shouldn’t have hit you like that in front of the whole class.” But this had the sound of an added affront, so I said, “Your drawing was really nice.” And then, to make it less meaningful, “You’re good at drawing, you should draw more. You should take art, you’ll get good marks in it.”
We had reached th
e crowded parking lot, where the boys were waiting on benches and standing among the cars. And the stares were suddenly visible, daunting and stabbing and lustful and even surprised stares that now took on an aspect of reproach. It took a moment to recognize the intention.
“You have a lot of friends,” I said, and laughed without meaning to, hoping that he would understand the impulse and forgive it. But he was already moving ahead into the crowd. “Bye,” he said, almost cheerfully, and walked on.
Kazim went home that afternoon in the school bus. And it brought him back in the morning: he emerged from the rear door, his hair combed back, his tie askew, a button missing from the middle of his shirt and his shoes polished and shining—an odd mixture of particularity and vagueness, a display of attention to a few chosen details within a larger negligence. He wore his schoolbag in the same way, tightly and protectively with his thumbs under the straps; and in that odd way, with legs that seemed to have only now learned to carry out the task, he stepped off the bus and began to walk.
He was absent at assembly and late to class. When he was present he appeared to listen and to work in his notebook, and was then found to have drawn inside the margins, below diagrams and on graphs. It was ignored by some teachers, but to others it gave a fresh chance for enactments of contempt and fury and revulsion that were later ascribed to the need for discipline, without which, they said, no schoolboy’s character could be formed. In the first month alone Kazim Naseer was sent three times to the coordinator’s office, twice for insulting a teacher (vulgarities were found at the back of his submitted homework) and once for failing to answer a simple question in class, which showed that he was elsewhere, mentally, even as he appeared to be involved.
He liked to spend the thirty-minute lunch break in the art room, which was located in an upstairs corridor of the senior building. It was here, in this large, many-windowed room, among the bottles of turpentine and linseed oil, the hardened brushes softening in the sink and the canvases recovering on easels and the paint tubes laid out on the windowsills, that he was free at last to do as he wished: he made his drawings on large, colored sheets of chart paper, using the crayons and markers he had got out of the supplies cupboard. He repeatedly changed his place, for he tired quickly of locations, and went to observe the progress of the few other boys who were allowed to work inside the room. (Entry was regulated by a slim, polite man who had once been a communist and was now an art teacher; he lived in a small brick house behind the campus, the nearness of which caused him to come and go at will, a habit that was noted by other teachers and had led to complaints.) The boys who came to the art room were not of a uniform disposition; they were athletes and debaters and academics, and some who had no professed interest or talent to mark them out; but here they wore aprons and worked with the same materials, and spoke to one another in the shared language of art. Some were better than others: a senior called Salman had a startling gift for rendering things exactly as they appeared in life; one of his paintings, the picture of an ordinary jar beside a window, was up in the principal’s office and was displayed every year in the talent show. And there was a boy who had gone around with sticks of charcoal to the historic monuments of Lahore and produced sketches that were later shown in the youth section of an English-language newspaper. But the art teacher had told Kazim that he alone had expression, an ability to bring things out in novel ways. Village Life consisted of four murals that were up outside the art room and showed women, one from each province of the country, in traditional dress and setting, though even here they had staring eyes and sharply angled faces and developed postures that made them seem, among the even fields and matching trees and far-off bullock-carts, like transplanted entities.