by Bina Shah
They finished the game they were playing; Ahmed losing both rooks and then his queen in rapid succession to the Pir’s elusive bishop. And then when the outcome was evident, the Pir, instead of announcing his checkmate, pushed his chair away from the board and slowly stood up. Ahmed could hear the rattling of the bars as Omar Bachani opened the locks, heard the murmurs of the British officers waiting to see the Pir escorted to the gallows. Ahmed wanted to weep, to shout, to rush forward and embrace the Pir, protect him from their bullets and their nooses. But he was paralyzed; he could only watch as the Pir slowly cleared all the chess pieces from the board, leaving it an empty battlefield without even the corpses of war left to keep the ground warm.
Then the Pir extinguished his last cigarette and turned to face the English man, a colonel of the British Army, who had come into the cell.
“Colonel Young,” the Pir said, his deep baritone heavy with cigarette smoke.
“Your Excellency,” replied the colonel. He, too, was a young man, with sandy blond hair and a sweeping mustache; Ahmed shrank back into a corner of the cell and kept his head bowed, biting hard on his lips to keep them from parting and betraying him to the two men.
“They are safe?”
“I have seen to it. They have been sent on to London. They will be taken care of as wards of the court.”
“I thank you for your assistance.”
The colonel bowed his head. “It is time.”
The Pir glanced back at Ahmed Damani. The faintest hint of a smile appeared at the corners of the Pir’s lips, lifting his mustache slightly. He looked like a man who was unafraid, and instead, amused at the vagaries of life, the unexpected destination to which fate had brought him. “A worthy opponent,” he said to Ahmed. “A boy, but a worthy opponent.” He turned and nodded at the colonel, then walked out of the cell unaided, past the rows of men who flanked the corridors to watch him go. Ahmed brought his sleeve to his eyes and wept then, brokenhearted, until his eyes grew bloodshot and his head grew too heavy to keep it lifted.
The Pir was thirty-four years old.
December 17, 2007
ISLAMABAD
Ali and his friends were gathered outside Aapbara Chowk, shivering a little in the breeze. It was early afternoon, not the coldest time of the day for Islamabad, but the enormity of what they were about to do made them all feel the fear as a chill deep in their chests. He glanced around at Salma, who kept the ends of her shawl wrapped up around her cheeks, and gave her a cheery thumbs-up. She rolled her eyes back at him.
Salma had flown up to Islamabad with the rest of the activists, on this trip that Bilal, Imran, and Ferzana had organized, arranging for the Karachi activists to join the march supporting the deposed chief justice. She’d lied to her parents that she’d been asked to participate in a special medical conference for students. A great honor, she’d told them; you can’t let me miss this opportunity. They’d relented, moved by the sincerity in her voice, she told Ali on the flight up to Islamabad.
“I feel so guilty lying to them …” She bit her lip, staring out of the plane window, as if she could see her parents’ reproachful faces reflected in the pane of Plexiglas, or in the shapes of the towering clouds beyond.
“You’re doing something really important, Salma,” said Ali.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Well, my moth—my parents wouldn’t like it, either. So don’t feel so bad.”
“Really?”
“No way. I didn’t even tell my father …” The word had come out unbidden; Ali blinked at his own mistake. This was the first time in years he’d spoken of his father truthfully. He looked away, overwhelmed for a moment with the futility of all the lies.
“Wow …” Salma’s eyes were wide with wonder.
“What?”
“Well, you’re so much older than me. I always thought that when I was thirty, nobody would be able to tell me what to do. Or that I wouldn’t care what they thought of me by then …”
Ali opened his mouth to protest at Salma's having added five years onto his age, but then he saw she was smiling impishly, her cheeks dimpling on both sides. Reminded of his sister Jeandi, he sent up a small prayer that she would grow up one day into a young woman as brave as this one. “At this age, if your parents don’t like what you’re doing, you’re probably doing the right thing.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Before coming to Islamabad this time, he’d told his mother his plans; he had to stop being controlled by her disapproval, or her fear. She had looked at him wearily when he said he was flying out to Islamabad to take part in the demonstration. “I suppose you’ll be covering it for work,” she said.
“No,” Ali had said. “I’ve taken an indefinite leave of absence.”
“What does that mean? You’ve quit?”
Not yet, Ali could have said. Or, it’s only temporary. “For the time being. I just want to see what my options are.” She would not understand that he had to leave City24 because of his desire to be more than just an observer to the events that were taking place around them. He didn’t want to chronicle them: he wanted to live them. Nor would she ever appreciate that he had grown weary, after twenty-five years, of being only a participant in his own life. He needed, at last, to be its arbiter.
“And you’ve got exams to study for,” his mother had added, after a long pause in which he looked away while she studied him as though it were the first time she’d ever set eyes on him.
Ali had repeated halfheartedly, “Yes. I’ve got exams to study for.” His exams had finished the day before the demonstration, but he had no idea how he’d done. He’d already failed one class; he’d have to repeat it again the following term. But even the classroom had lost its appeal, compared to what he was learning every time he went out onto the streets to protest with the People’s Resistance.
Ali had noticed, as if for the first time, the lines around his mother’s eyes and nose, the gray in her hair, the veins bulging from the backs of her thin hands. She’d been through enough, he decided. There were people who derived their strength from being angry all the time, from holding grudges, and nursing grievances. Ali was discovering for himself the possibility that real strength might actually come from generosity and tolerance; he no longer wanted to be the kind of person who thought of compassion as a weakness, forgiveness as foolishness. He wanted to forgive his mother for not being able to understand him. For not being able to talk to him, or listen to him when he was the one who needed to communicate. And even for accepting so passively the treatment she’d received from his father. By putting down the burden of his anger at her for being only what she was, he would be freeing himself.
He had reached forward and hugged her unexpectedly. “What are you doing, Ali?” she said, bewildered, trying to push him away, then surrendering to the strength of his embrace.
“I don’t know, Ama.” But he’d been surprised to realize how good it felt; that home would always be the feel of his mother’s arms around him.
Ali’s thoughts then drifted back to his last day at work. He’d left the City24 News building early in the evening—the first time he’d quit the office before 7 p.m. any time in the last year. He carried his personal belongings in a flimsy box, hoisting it high and stretching his arms underneath to hold it closed. Just as he thought the box would spill all its contents on the road, he’d spotted Jehangir rounding the corner of the building, talking on his mobile phone and gesticulating energetically in the air. Ali set the box down on the ground and waited for Jehangir to approach him.
They hadn’t spoken since the day they’d betrayed each other in front of Ameena; they’d avoided each other in the office and maintained no contact outside. Ameena had never mentioned the conversation to either of them, but she had subtly started to pay more attention to Ali, while discounting Jehangir’s contributions at work. Every t
ime she called Ali into her office to discuss the People’s Resistance movement, Ali wanted to make an excuse and run in the other direction, but he suppressed his discomfort and went to her office, a pleasant smile nailed onto his face. Jehangir always glanced away when Ali came out. Ali often escaped to the bathroom and locked himself in a stall, kneeling in front of the toilet and trying to retch out all the anxiety and stress festering in the pit of his stomach. Finally, it all grew too much, and Ali had walked into Ameena’s office that afternoon and resigned.
She’d stared at him, her fingers steepled in front of her face. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be so hasty. I’m not letting you go that easily. Take a leave of absence. Take as much time as you need. But I’m going to call you one of these days, and you have to come back.”
Ali had left her office, grateful that at least she hadn’t said anything about his father or his family. He hoped he would never have to see her again.
When Jehangir had spotted Ali, he stopped in his tracks and slowly switched his phone off. He came forward, stopped, took another step, then came to a halt a few feet away from Ali, the box between them marking an invisible boundary line. The cars and buses passed on the busy street; the men pouring out of the building’s large double glass doors stepped around them like water flowing around a small island in the middle of a river.
“So,” said Jehangir.
“So.” Ali shook his arms, wringing out his wrists to relieve the tension that was gripping his body.
“You’re off, then?”
“Looks like it.”
They both glanced away. Ali found a point somewhere in the traffic to focus on, while Jehangir stared down at his shoes. The pause grew longer, heavier with their unspoken words. Ali had considered telling Jehangir that it wasn’t what he’d said about Ali’s father that had made him decide to leave. Should he have apologized for revealing Jehangir’s secret? There must have been things Jehangir wanted to say to Ali as well—they couldn’t possibly end their friendship like this, on a busy street, with men staring curiously at them from the tops of buses as they drove by in the evening rush hour.
“Yaar …” began Jehangir.
Ali had glanced at him, hungry for the reconciliation he hoped Jehangir wanted as well. It didn’t matter what Jehangir had said about his father. How long would he have kept his father’s second life a secret?
But Jehangir had pointed at the box “What’s in there?”
“Just my stuff, you know … CDs, a few photographs, books … nothing important.”
“Are you sure you aren’t taking your computer with you?”
“I should. It’s the least they owe me. Bastards.”
Jehangir’s lips twisted in a half grin. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I just finished my exams, and then I’ve got one more semester before I graduate in May, so … I’ll just concentrate on university for a while, then look for something more serious next summer.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Jehangir had scratched his head, fiddled with his mobile phone. Ali was starting to sweat, the fumes from the cars and buses making him feel queasy. He wondered if he should just pick up the box again and start walking to his car. Maybe there really was nothing more to say.
“Heard from Sunita?” Jehangir asked.
“What?”
“I said, have you heard from Sunita?”
“Oh …” If Ali heard her name when he wasn’t expecting it, then he had to press his fists into his eyes to keep them dry. This was one of those unexpected moments, but he kept his fists down by his sides. “No, I haven’t heard from her. It’s been a while.”
“Sorry, yaar.”
Ali had nodded. Another pause, filled with beeping horns and squealing brakes from the stop-and-go traffic. Then he decided to ask anyway. What did he have to lose now? “How did you know about my father?”
Ali could still remember how Jehangir had tensed, as if expecting a blow from Ali. When none came, he dropped his eyes to the ground, then raised them again and met Ali’s gaze with half-hidden regret. “You said your father was a bureaucrat but I thought, there’s no way you could have gone to study in Dubai on a bureaucrat’s pension. I thought he was a tax evader. You could have told me, Ali.”
Ali shook his head. “All those things you said about my family … that’s why I didn’t tell you anything. It was exactly what I was trying to avoid.”
“I didn’t mean … I know you’re not like that. You’re different.”
Ali had ignored the usual words that so many meant as a compliment but which always sounded to him like a condemnation. “How long have you known?”
Jehangir had shrugged in his customary way, lips pouting, head bent to the side. “I don’t know. Six months, maybe? There was a picture of your father in the newspaper, attending some PPP function in Hyderabad. He looked just like you. It caught my eye, and then I saw that you had the same last name as him. I did some digging. I didn’t expect to find any of this out.”
Ali knew he had to end the conversation or he would just sink down onto the street and begin to weep. He was tired, so tired of all the pretense, and it hadn’t saved him any trouble in the end. Haroon was still dead and Sunita was still gone and his father still lived in the house in Bath Island, a universe away from him.
He put out his hand to Jehangir. “I’ll see you around.”
Jehangir looked at Ali’s hand as if deciding whether or not to take it. Finally, just when Ali was about to withdraw it and walk away, he leaned forward and shook it. “Good luck, Ali.” Jehangir’s hand was cool and dry, the clasp noncommittal.
“You, too.” They might have embraced had the parting been taking place under different circumstances. But there were no promises to keep in touch. No long goodbyes. Just a severing of connections, almost clinical in its efficiency. Ali watched his friend retreat into the building. Then he bent down and picked up the box, relishing the physical pain that overshadowed the sorrow in his heart.
The police were watching them warily, lined up in ragged ranks on the knolls around the Chowk. The trees behind them formed a second line of defense, casting eerie shadows and filtering the sunlight through branches so that everything appeared somber and gray. Usually traffic would be whizzing by, but they’d cordoned off the roads so that the five hundred protestors had room to gather on the street, their placards and banners at the ready. A few hundred yards away stood the Lal Masjid, an invisible reminder to them all of what the state was capable of doing when its fury was aroused. The state of emergency had been lifted on Saturday night, but they knew that the gesture, aimed at pleasing the Western countries that were pushing Pakistan in the name of democracy, had no real significance.
They were nervously pawing the ground like bulls before the death fight in a Spanish stadium. One of the leaders of the protest, a tall young student from nearby Quaid-e-Azam University, a black band tied around his arm, glanced at his watch, then nodded to the others. On his signal, they raised their placards and began to shout, “Go, Musharraf, go! Go, Musharraf, go!”
Ali, Salma, and the crowd—made up mostly of black-coated lawyers and university students—joined the rising chorus and pushed their fists skyward. The policemen gave them a wide berth, their faces impassive, although their eyes followed the group with suspicion and hostility. There were more than Ali had seen at any demonstration in Karachi. Lined up around the protestors, they were clad in full riot gear, their weapons adding extra tension to the electricity in the air. Some of the students were holding sticks, but Ali and his group had refused the ones they’d been offered. A passing man in a shalwar kameez and a thin beard held out a stick to Bilal and nodded at him to take it.
Bilal shook his head. “We don’t want to fight with the police. We just want to make
our voices heard.”
The man snorted. “You’ll remember me when the fun starts.” He walked off toward another little group and they could see him offering the stick to other people down the line.
“Maybe we should listen to him,” muttered Ali, standing on Bilal’s left, Salma a few steps behind him, arm in arm with Ferzana.
“He’s MI. Military intelligence. They want us to clash with the police. Makes us look bad,” replied Bilal.
“Oh shit,” said Ali. Then he jerked his head back in Salma’s direction. “Don’t scare them.”
Imran raised an eyebrow. “They’re grown-ups, Ali. They know what this is all about.”
The protestors stood in the same place for about fifteen minutes, raising their signboards and shouting slogans. Then the men in front shouted, “Release the chief justice!” and Ali’s heart began to race.
The crowd took up the cry, a wave that swelled from the beginning of the gathering and rolled powerfully in all directions. And then feet began to follow intention, as the people began to walk. Salma grabbed Ali’s arm and shouted in his ear, “Where are they going?”
“The chief justice’s house!” he shouted back. “Come on!”
They began to move as one, pressing forward, adrenaline surging as they chanted to the rhythm of their marching feet. Ali saw the excitement on the faces around him: they were laughing, smiling, lips parted to take in huge gulps of air, as if tasting oxygen for the first time in their lives. This was the feeling he loved, his senses sharpened, everything looking and sounding clearer and sharper than he’d ever remembered. Nothing before this moment existed; nothing after it mattered. Here, now, they were only of this time, as excited as children on their first day of school, as filled with potential as newborns in their first day on earth.