A Season for Martyrs

by Bina Shah

“Ah.”

  Just then the intern reappeared with Ali’s X-rays: he summoned them into the examining room to tell them that there was no permanent damage, but two fingers were broken and had to be padded in a splint, and Ali needed bandaging around a cracked rib and a stitch just under his eye, which would leave a small scar. “It will make you more attractive to the ladies,” the intern said, as he poked around with a needle and surgical thread, while Ali’s father watched with a frown as Ali tried not to wince at the doctor’s ministrations.

  The car ride from the hospital to Ali’s house took less than ten minutes. The driver navigated the darkened streets, while they sat in the back, each encased in his own world of private thoughts and silent regret. Ali knew by now that his father held many sorrows about the events of the past. And he was just like his father: suspended in the amber of his mistakes, nursing the wounds he had sustained in the trauma of separation. All this time, Ali and his father had been longing for each other, hurt and grieving in isolation. That they had reconnected now, and managed to show each other the depth of their pain, was a possibility too momentous for Ali to contemplate.

  Suddenly, Ali’s mobile phone beeped. He glanced at the screen: it was a message from Ferzana.

  Released just now. Coming home tomorrow. Salma with me. Imran & Bilal still in jail.

  Ali quickly sent back a reply: Thank God. R u ok?

  After a minute, the phone beeped another affirmation. We r ok.

  He let out a long, shuddering sigh, and then the tears broke through the fog in his mind that had been holding them back all day. He wanted to press his fingers in the corners of his eyes to stop them, but the stitches were in the way, so he let them pour out over the wound on his eye, stinging him as the salt seeped into the stitches, and he raised his arm and wiped his sleeve on his face.

  Ali’s father was alarmed. “Khariyat?”

  “It’s … it’s okay. They’re all right. I was really worried … there’s this girl, a friend, really young, and … she got arrested, and I was scared about what might have happened to her.” He could hardly get the words out. The sobs caught in his throat and he had to swallow hard to push them back down. And then, to his surprise, he felt his father pat his arm gently.

  “Bas, put … Enough, son. Don’t cry. Come on, everything is all right.”

  Ali resisted the urge to lean into his father’s embrace. But he managed, somehow, to stop crying, and when his father offered him a clean starched handkerchief from somewhere in his pocket, Ali took it gratefully and wiped his face, dabbing carefully around the cut beneath his eye, before giving it back to his father. “Here … thanks.”

  “Keep it.”

  They were outside Ali’s house now, and the driver was holding the car door open for him. Ali put one foot on the ground; half in and half out of the car, he tried to turn back to look at his father, but the movement sent a wrenching pain around his waist and up his back. With difficulty he planted his other foot outside and heaved himself up to a standing position. Like a man in a suit of armor, he turned so that his whole body faced his father, still seated in the car. “I’m going now.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to.” The response was automatic, proof that his defenses were still active, still second nature. He already needed to ward off the rejection that he was sure would come tomorrow. He had spent too many years of his life waiting by the phone, looking down the driveway, standing trembling in the doorway of his father’s room, his childish schoolwork in his hands. He was almost superstitious about it by now: think no thoughts of your father, push his image from your mind, because he’ll know you want him, and then he won’t come.

  A shrug of the shoulders, a hand through the hair that had once been generous but was now receding and grayed. “Well, you know where I am. If you need anything.”

  Ali nodded. I don’t need anything, he wanted to say to his father. I haven’t needed anything for years. And then he closed his eyes and saw Haroon’s face, his friend, his brother, who had died without being able to say goodbye to his father. The pain in Haroon’s father’s eyes when he’d come to the office, searching for the remains—the remnants—of the boy in whom he’d invested his hopes, his dreams.

  “Thank you, Baba Saeen.” Until the other day, he hadn’t uttered the endearment in years, but now he was using it as he always had when he was young. Was there love behind the name anymore? Or just respect, an acknowledgment of what his father had done for Ali tonight? He didn’t know. He would never know. But he would remember what there had been, once upon a time. Ali would know forever, because of what his father had done for him tonight, that once, a long time ago, he had been loved.

  And just maybe there was still some of that love left for him. He didn’t want to dwell on the thought, but if the chance was there, then he’d have something to hold on to when he had to face the next day, and the next, and all the difficult ones after that.

  As the driver closed the car door, Ali thought he heard Sikandar say one last thing before the engine started and the car pulled away into the night.

  “Give my salaams to your mother.”

  The magician had by now moved into the poor family’s home, but was eating up all their food, taking up their valuable space. He wore a green cap and a comfortable brown housecoat and lolled on a chair, reading a newspaper upside down, while the family members squatted on the ground in front of him.

  The head of the family said, “We’ve done everything you asked. You said we’d have more food, better housing, better jobs if we let you stay. Now it’s your turn!”

  The magician put down his newspaper and looked down his nose at the man and his wife and daughter. “You still need to do more. You must keep some fierce dogs to protect yourself, and make the walls of your house higher. Only then can I bring richness into your house, because then it will be properly protected!”

  “We can’t afford that. You’ve been here for months, my mother has died, and my young son is still unemployed! It’s time for you to deliver on your promises!”

  The actors playing the family looked into the audience, holding their hands up helplessly. “What should we do, friends?”

  The crowd began to call out: “Kick him out! Get rid of him! Send him away!” Nobody was naïve enough to believe that the play was only about a magician and a poor family, even the children. Some of the men in the crowd were muttering to each other about the president and other unpopular politicians who had also outstayed their welcome. Ali grinned at the curses heaped upon their heads. After eight years of dictatorship, they had gained nothing, despite the extravagant promises, the dreams of a prosperous future that the power-mongers had guaranteed would someday turn into reality. Their leaders were like an artist standing in front of a blank canvas and telling them the beautiful painting he would create, if only they supplied him with the right kind of paint; they knew full well that they had been duped, and that the masterpiece would never be completed.

  “Throw him out!”

  “We’ve had enough of these looters, these plunderers!”

  “They can go to hell!”

  Ali, too, called out, enjoying the feeling of being able to vocalize his displeasure. Frustration and anger were written large on everyone’s faces; why else did people misbehave the way they did on the streets of Karachi, driving like maniacs, littering the streets, defacing property? Because nobody cared. The country and its people were a whore to be used violently and greedily until the users were spent and exhausted and could grab and take no more. And they would be forced to give and give and give, for generations, not able to lift their heads or think of anything beyond daily survival. It was the quickest and surest way to destroy a nation, poison its people, shatter a land into pieces that could never be put together again.

  Ali’s mobile phone beeped in his hand. He looked down; he didn’t recog
nize the number. He put his free hand over his ear and pressed the phone to the other ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you?” It was a female voice, a soft voice that made his heart hammer frantically inside his chest like a moth beating against a lit window.

  “Sunita?”

  “It’s me, Ali. Where are you?”

  “Uh … I’m at Seaview … where are you?” His hands grew clammy, even though the day was cool and dry. “Are you at college?”

  “Put your hand up and wave so I can see you. I’m in the crowd, I just can’t see where you are.”

  Ali turned around, but his vision failed him, and the faces surrounding him melted and blurred into one indecipherable mass. He blinked his eyes over and over again, trying to find the one face that he’d been looking for, all these days and weeks. He put his hand up in the air and searched desperately for that dark hair, those doe eyes, the tea-colored skin that he missed as much as the gentle laugh, the teasing smile, and the generous warmth of the girl he loved.

  Sunita.

  She was standing there, having somehow materialized behind him. She wore a dress in a wine-red color, one that he hadn’t seen before. It gave her skin an added luster, brought out new highlights in her hair. Weeks had gone by since he’d seen her last; perhaps she had a whole new wardrobe by now, a new boyfriend, a new life. She looked healthy and well, but there was surprise on her face. She reached out for him and touched the scar under his eye. “Does it hurt?”

  “No.” He knew she’d want to know how it happened. “It’s a long story …”

  “Did they do that to you on the march?”

  It was his turn to be shocked. “How did you know?”

  She smiled crookedly, then moved her hand from his face to cover her mouth. “Don’t you know? You’re a TV star. It was on the news. I didn’t see it, but Jehangir called me and said that you’d been arrested.” He held up his hand for her, and her eyes widened at the bandage around the two fingers of his left hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Let’s go sit down over there.” He led her to a bench, away from the crowd. She followed him, and they sat side by side. Ali wanted to stare at her, to fill his eyes with her beauty. But he was suddenly embarrassed, and instead gazed out to the sea, where a trawler was crossing the horizon, just west of Manora Island. He’d been to that island once on a navy boat, a long-forgotten picnic from his childhood, where he and his brother and their friends for that day had played around the lighthouse and watched the boats ferrying people to and from their jobs on the mainland. Karachi from that distance looked like a different place, the white buildings stretching on the gentle curve all the way from the West Wharf to Seaview, where they were now. Maybe some children right at this moment were on that island, looking at the city that had morphed and grown into something gigantic, something beyond anyone’s control.

  “My father took us to Manora once, on a picnic,” Ali said. He’d never been able to tell her the truth about his father; she thought he had died five years ago. She’d believed the lies he’d told her, just like everyone else. He took a deep breath. “My father … he came to get me out of jail after the march. I got arrested. Beaten up. I don’t know what they would have done to me if he hadn’t come. Two of my friends are still in detention up there.”

  Sunita was silent, but Ali could hear the fresh hurt in the way she breathed out in a long exhalation that was midway between a sigh and a gasp. A smattering of applause burst out; the play had ended and the crowd was dispersing, leaving the actors to stand together in a little band, smiling and shaking hands with a few supporters who’d hung back to talk to them. There’d be a discussion; they’d talk about whether or not the play affected them, related to their lives. Ali would have liked to take part, but the person whom he’d affected was sitting right next to him, and he had to make things right with her before he could think of fixing the rest of the world.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said quickly. “That I’ve lied to you about everything. And you’re right. I have. I’ve been a coward.”

  Sunita was twisting her hands in her lap. Ali reached forward and took one of her hands in his own. He massaged her palm lightly with his thumb, stroked her fingers, felt her warm skin and the beat of her pulse in the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. “My father’s a Pir. He’s a zamindar. He has two wives. I have a half sister I’ve never seen. I thought you wouldn’t love me if you knew all of this …” His voice trailed off before he could confess that he hoped she would love him still. He would make no excuses for his deception. Perhaps she would sense his earnestness like she sensed so many things about him: his insecurity, his fears, his weaknesses. And most of all, his shame, through the nights when he was unable to sleep and lay awake in bed, smoking and talking to her for hours on the phone. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just tell me you forgive me.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

  Sunita shook her head. He knew she wanted to say more, and waited for it. She swallowed instead, and he watched as her delicate throat moved with effort. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Then why did you come?” He asked the question gently, but a knife edge of desperation lay underneath his soft tone. Her answer would tell him whether he had a chance at redemption or whether he should give up now and never hope for her again.

  She looked down. “I missed you.” Her lips were trembling, and she pulled her hand away from his, but he couldn’t help the slow spread of joy that started at the base of his spine and moved up his back, gooseflesh rising on his arms, a warmth that lifted the hair off the nape of his neck and caused his cheeks to burn. This was not the moment for the arrogance of the victor, the triumph of the conqueror. In losing Sunita, he had very nearly lost himself. In humility he had to kneel at her feet, hope that her compassion would grow into forgiveness, that forgiveness would once again blossom into love.

  They sat together, side by side. He breathed with her and mirrored the movements of her limbs, crossing his arms when she crossed hers, stretching out his legs when she stamped her feet and shook her sleeping foot up and down to wake it up. He had never felt so peaceful, so whole. The sun began its descent toward the horizon, and a chill embraced them both. She shivered; he would have put his arm around her, but they were in a public place and it was still Pakistan. He leaned into her and willed his blood to warm her just as her words had warmed his soul.

  Half an hour passed, and then his phone rang again. It would be his mother, asking where he was. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

  Sunita nodded. He smiled at her as he flipped open the phone and held it to his ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Ali, it’s Ameena.”

  “Ameena? Is everything okay?” She must be calling him about his last paycheck, he thought. He still hadn’t received it; there had been some question about Ali not having given proper notice when he’d quit. He didn’t care much, but he appreciated her following through. He’d heard enough horror stories at other offices of people who didn’t get paid for months, or who had to come every day to finance departments and beg for the money owed them.

  “Ali, glad I caught you. Listen, I know you’re on leave, but there’s something I want you to do.”

  He frowned. “What is it?”

  “I want you to cover a political rally for me. Benazir Bhutto’s going to be speaking tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “In Rawalpindi. Liaquat National Bagh. I know it’s short notice, you’d have to take the first plane out tomorrow morning, but you’d be there in time. The rally starts at three p.m. Can you do it?”

  “Ameena, I’m not supposed to be working right now …”

  “What can I say, Ali? I want you to come back to us. In my mind you’re still on the payroll. You’re a damned good repo
rter. If you say yes, I’ll make sure you host your own youth show in six months. And I’ll make you an anchor after you graduate from university.”

  “Hold on.” He put his hand over the phone, quickly related everything to Sunita. In Sindhi, which he knew Ameena could not understand, he asked her, “Should I do it?”

  “Ask for twice as much money as you were being paid before.”

  Ali grinned. “You are a genius.” He spoke into the phone once again. “All right, Ameena. I’ll do it.”

  “Come to the office in the morning. There’ll be a plane ticket waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be there.” He didn’t realize, until he heard Ameena’s tones of command even while begging him for a favor, how much he’d missed being at the channel. It made him feel good to know that his absence had been felt, that Ameena wasn’t ready to reject him because of his true background.

  He shut the phone and put it in his pocket. Then he took Sunita’s hand again. This time, he wanted to talk to her until the sky turned the color of crushed dark velvet and the stars came out, first the North Star and then the other constellations, winking out their silvery Morse code above the heads of the Sindhi fishermen in their boats on the Arabian Sea. He wanted to be with her until the moon followed the path of the sun toward the flat line of the ocean, and the sun rose up again in the east, bringing the new day, and with it, a new start for both of them, with no more interruptions.

  Signs

  RAWALPINDI, 2007

  When the world was still to be born

  When Adam was still to receive his form

  Then my relationship began

  When I heard the Lord’s voice

  A voice sweet and clear

  I said “yes” with all my heart

  And formed a bond with the land I love

  Rawalpindi had always made her nervous. In this garrison town lived the army in their fortified barracks; GHQ was not half an hour from where she was right now, in her Islamabad home. She had spent months in detention here, waiting for her father to die. He had been hanged in the Rawalpindi Central Jail on April 4, 1979, a date emblazoned in her mind, always taking precedence over the birthdays of her children, the anniversary of her sister’s marriage, her own anniversary. Not a single happy day could pass without her thinking of him, weakened and ill, dying a martyr’s death when he should have been living a king’s life.