by Anees Salim
When I had to slink out of home and sneak back into it my bedside window served as the gateway. It opened to a narrow path running alongside Abbas Chacha’s house, and led to the back of the shed where the imam parked his Hercules and Ammi tethered her two lambs, Tabu and Humera – the brown one named after an Indian actress, the white a Pakistani singer. Tabu let out a long, quavering bleat whenever she detected suspicious activity near the shed; that way Tabu was a dog. I once tried feeding her Big Babol so she would stop bleating. No such luck. She detested bubblegum.
Every time I regained entry into the house after a trip to Mangobagh’s underbelly, I instructed myself to be quiet and cautious. A false step and the imam would be in the room, the pill in his hand, the prayer on his lips. Tabu had still not stopped bleating when I climbed over the sill and got into bed like an acrobat in slow motion. Wasim was in good health that night, and slept with his hands tucked between his legs. The moment I closed the window the room was filled with the smell of the Corolla we had steered down the backyard of Mangobagh to the recovery yard behind the kabristan.
The car continued to be in motion in my sleep, tearing through the heart of the city then sliding past unending stretches of parrot green cane fields, chased by police cars that had leapt straight out of Transporter 1. Beeps from Wasim’s alarm clock broke the rhythm of this blurry grand prix once and, maybe an hour or so later, I heard him ask if anybody had seen one of his textbooks.
Jerome Pinto, who used to hang out with us till his father threatened to lock him up for the rest of his life and feed him three square meals a day through a window, once said that the best thing about being Christian was you could do bad things knowing they were bad, step into a tiny booth knowing you were going to be forgiven, confess everything to Father José or Father Rosario knowing they would never spill the beans, and step out feeling considerably less guilty.
Yours is a great religion, Junior Pinto.
– Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1983-2009)
Not being Christian, we sat on the steps of the mosque and merely rambled on until the adventure lost its sheen and our laughter its edge, and the imam knocked a bunch of keys menacingly against the window frame.
The pawnbroker had promptly paid up, and we had promptly splurged. I bought a pair of roadside Nike for Wasim, a tricycle for Fatima’s son Moin, a gas lighter for Ammi and nothing for the imam. The rest I spent on a facelift.
Nice sunglasses, Imran.
They complete your look of a pickpocket.
– Abbas Chacha (1959- )
Then one day I fished in my pockets and found there was no more money to be spent. Our sortie at Mehendi had lasted a little over a couple of hours, its spoils less than a fortnight. With the city showing no sign of recognizing our talent and bestowing upon us more complex and rewarding assignments, our career options were reduced to a bleak list of bad jobs, the kind of jobs no loving person would recommend to his blood relation: at petrol stations, ice cream kiosks, supermarkets and pizza outlets.
Get a job with Domino’s. Uniform is good.
They mightn’t even mind those funny sunglasses of yours.
– Fatima Jabbari (1979- )
In spite of our quick and clean operation, the pawnbroker picked a middle-aged, potbellied gang the next time he wanted a vehicle to be confiscated. We saw them all in the newspaper, stripped to their waists and standing with shy smiles around a table spread with their armaments, most of which looked as outdated as themselves. The pawnbroker stood to the extreme left, looking away from the camera, pretending to be the guy who got these people arrested.
‘Next time he calls me, he will regret having dialled my number,’ said Navaz Sharif. But when the pawnbroker did not call him even after a month, Navaz Sharif called him to ask if he had any defaulters to settle scores with. No, the pawnbroker said, he had left that business for good. Only big-time criminals and super morons would lend money to the people of Mangobagh. He hung up after a curt thank you, and Navaz Sharif sat staring into the distance like he had more terrible news to share than the disillusionment of an entrepreneur. It was not that nobody wanted our services; it was just that the right people still did not know about us – a lone operation could not have made anyone infamous. We needed something more than a stolen car to be talked about, a bank robbery probably, or a wall with the name of our gang scribbled in blood.
‘5½ Loafers,’ Zia said in a rare moment of introspection.
‘You took the words out of my mouth,’ said Jinnah.
In the evenings we played football in the alley where Abu Hathim sahib lived quietly behind heavily buttressed doors, a house from which people rarely came out. When someone fell ill, an old doctor with a weathered attaché case was escorted into the house and back. When the vegetable seller passed through the alley yelling out his wares like a string of abuses, the door of an upstairs balcony would open and a basket would be lowered to the alley on a rope. The vendor sent only the pick of the vegetables up, and knew better than to haggle when the basket descended a second time with some currency anchored with a stone. When death visited the house, the doors opened cautiously for mourners from the extended family and the green casket from Purana Masjid. Not knowing if they would be stopped at the doorway, frisked and then asked to explain their relation with the departed soul, the mohalla-wallahs normally lined the alleyway to pay their last respects. During Ramzan a tiny window attached to the centre of the door would readily open at the ring of the doorbell, and a hand would dole out zakat and disappear before you could admire the many rings on its fingers. You could go twice and get alms without getting caught, but no one dared to cheat, either in deference to the holy month or out of sheer fear of the alms-giver.
The goalposts were imaginary and stood unmanned, but the tackles were real and of a Cameroonian crudeness. The match was paused whenever someone walked down the alley to get to the main street, or the postman rode up with letters for Abu Hathim sahib.
Can’t you play your wretched games elsewhere?
Good that Abu Hathim sahib loves football.
Had it been cricket …
– Postman ( - )
Abu Hathim sahib’s love for football made me love the game even more dearly; I dribbled with a flourish, developed a forced deftness and bore down on defenders with an unnecessary aggression every time I heard Abu Hathim sahib’s crutches pick their way to the window through which the sound of a television frequently drifted out. It tickled me to think that Vanity Bagh’s hero in exile was watching us, his gaze finally settling on the Messi of the mohalla. Little did I know then that Abu Hathim sahib had long gone half-blind, and could not even see the pigeons perched on the awning below.
The month of Ramzan is here when the pious eat on the sly.
– The madwoman outside the masjid ( -2007)
Ramzan turns the business hours of Vanity Bagh’s popular eateries upside down. They keep their shutters down till the skies start to darken, and after sunset they do roaring business well past midnight, the smell of spices and meat making pedestrians sniff and sniff as if they are cocaine addicts. Ramzan is a period of relative calm in the mohalla. Siestas get lengthier, swearing less.
As the holy month was drawing to a close in 2007, Vanity Bagh suddenly found itself out of breath and up in arms against its arch rival. Disquiet spread through the mohalla as quickly as the thick aroma of Ramzan-time cooking and nearly, very nearly, plunged the neighbourhood into a full-fledged riot.
Everything was shipshape till the twenty-sixth day of Ramzan. On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, as the mohalla was getting ready to welcome Lailatul Qadr, the Night of Power, things went topsy-turvy. According to the imam and Ammi, Lailatul Qadr was so special a night that they could not begin to describe it.
A night holier than a thousand ordinary months,
when angels descend on earth
to leave you as sinless as newborns. Do good deeds.
– Syed Farkudeen Maulavi (1922-2009)
; Do good deeds? Even when Mehendi stands in the way of incoming angels? With due respect to you, Syed Farkudeen Maulavi sahib, go fuck yourself. When we get slapped we chop off the hand that has risen to slap us. Angels could wait.
What happened on the twenty-seventh day of Ramzan left the mohalla-wallahs so enraged that they yelled out more invectives in the course of a single day than they must have done in one hundred ordinary months.
Most of Vanity Bagh had congregated in the mosque for the afternoon prayers and was kneeling in the direction of the Kaaba when it happened. We didn’t know what had happened in the alley of Abu Hathim sahib’s heavily armoured residence until the prayers were over: the screams and shouts from his bungalow were not loud enough to win over the drone of traffic and the hum of prayers. But what we saw was enough to make us want to reach for stones and wield sticks and smash the windshield of every government vehicle that passed through Vanity Bagh, which we did, after listening to eyewitness after eyewitness, one of whom was Ammi. She had gone to Abu Hathim sahib’s for her share of zakat soon after we all had left for the mosque.
But you went and took your share last week, Ammi.
This was Wasim’s share, Imran. The gentleman is now too big to go and knock on Abu Hathim sahib’s door. He thinks it is equal to begging.
She had barely entered the alley when two men passed her on a motorbike. She could not see their faces for their elaborate helmets. This was strange: Mangobagh never cares much about road safety, nor does its traffic department pull up anybody unless they jump red lights. So the only helmeted bikers you find in the city are either anti-social people or people in motorcycle hoardings.
A few blocks from Abu Hathim sahib’s house they parked the bike under the neem tree and walked quickly to the tall, riveted door. Ammi stopped in her tracks when one man rapped apologetically on the door while the other fished under his collar for a machete with a beaky end.
You should have shouted for help, Ammi.
I should have, Imran. But my mouth had gone completely dry.
Apparently all eyewitnesses, mostly women, had mouths as dry as deserts and legs that trembled like leaves. On the third knock, the little window on the door was flicked back from inside, and a hand holding a crisp, mandatory ten-rupee note came out. The man who had knocked on the door grabbed the wrist with both his hands and tugged it until the hand was hanging out through the tiny window. His companion raised the machete high in the air, as if he were going to lop off a branch, and brought it down with a yell. Once, twice, thrice … Some women covered their faces, some others tried to shoo away the attackers, and the rest simply fainted. But Ammi stood perfectly still as the men jumped onto the bike and sped out of the alley.
You should have stoned them down, Wasim’s Ammi.
Didn’t I tell you my whole body had turned numb, Imran’s Abba?
To judge from the timing of the attack, it was a well-plotted attempt to leave Abu Hathim sahib more handicapped than he presently was. They had opted for the afternoon knowing men would be in the mosque; they had chosen the month of Ramzan because it was the only time of the year when Abu Hathim sahib’s hand would emerge through the tiny window at a mere knock. But how wrong they were, whoever they were!
Once the wailing, fainting and chest-beating were over, the eyewitnesses saw the door open and Abu Hathim sahib emerge into the alley, both his hands safe by his sides. On that fateful day, probably on all days of the Ramzan month, it was his youngest son Ijaz who had sat with a bundle of currency behind the door and dispensed zakat through the little window. Vanity Bagh heaved a mighty sigh of relief:Abu Hathim sahib was safe and sound, though he was copiously weeping, swearing revenge on those two bikers and those who had sent them.
To the Maqbool Memorial Hospital, where Ijaz had been rushed to, there was a long procession of blood donors from the mohalla; some of the volunteers were even too young or too old to donate blood.
You should also have gone, Imran’s Abba.
I don’t even have blood enough for my own body, Fatima’s Ammi.
I have no clue if it was Abu Hathim sahib who had ordered the ruckus that started by late afternoon, or if it was the mohalla-wallahs who had taken the law into their own hands in undying reverence to their yesteryear hero. The regular rioters grabbed the opportunity and whatever else they could lay their hands on, and hit the street. The enormity of the crime had turned even the celebrated peacemakers of the area into lawbreakers, the most prominent among them the imam, who rolled up his sleeves and ran after a fleeing bus to hurl a fair-sized stone at its windshield.
Don’t, motherfucker, don’t.
– Commuters ( - )
The stone, way off target, whistled its way to the other side of the street where it took off an ancient lampshade that had survived many decades of turbulence and had been the pride of Akbar Electricals. As the flower-shaped lampshade showered petals of pink shards onto the sidewalk, Vanity Bagh, after uncountable years of obscurity, shot into the limelight. All kind-hearted newspapers put us on the front page: medium-sized headlines, fairly big pictures.
Look at your jubbah, Imran’s Abba. You always get photographed in your worst clothes.
Next time I will remember to be in my sherwani and fur cap when kafirs come to attack us, Wasim’s Ammi.
Not dispirited by the imam’s bad dress sense and worse sense of humour, she clipped the picture of him gunning for the bus’ windshield (in the picture he still wielded the stone and the antique lampshade still hung prominently outside Akbar Electricals, round and regal) and kept it between the leaves of an old diary.
The buses that ended their day trips at Ashraf Bagh Terminus had a bunch of late-night visitors, who walked around them with rolls of papers, cans of paint and homemade gum. When the buses resumed their journey in the morning and rattled through the city, people frowned at the posters stuck on their sides and rear windows: BLOODBATH BEGINS NOW. Under the dark prophecy scribbled in the closest shade of blood was the impression of Yahya’s hand dipped in red enamel. Beneath the bleeding palm, sketched in green felt pen, the name of our gang made its first public appearance.
5½ Men? Who are these new jokers?
Sounds like clowns escaped from a circus.
– Wasim Jabbari (1988- )
We were particularly harsh on the buses that passed through Mehendi, and stuck the posters even on their windshields. One evening one of those buses came back with a meaner missive pasted over our work of art. LEG FIRST, HAND THEN, HEAD NEXT, it warned. At the top of the poster was a cartoon trident, at the bottom the caricature of a one-legged Abu Hathim sahib. And there started a war of posters which more and more buses from the local depot carried across the city like advertisements for a gangster movie.
On Eid day, dressed predictably in his beige sherwani and black fur cap, the imam seized the microphone by its neck and demanded an immediate ceasefire. Smoothening his sherwani with his palms, he cautioned the gathering that the circulation of any inflammatory material, posters included, did not go well with the spirit of the holy month.
But he relinquished the poise and the topic the moment the congregation was cleaved in the middle to make way for Abu Hathim sahib’s wheelchair; he now enlightened us on a less complicated though more jaded topic: how our benevolent deeds in this world would earn us rewards in the Jannatul Firdaus, the after-world. As predictable as his costume for the Eid speech was the final part of his discourse; his voice would gain an emotional twist as he called for brotherhood among the believers, as he assured the gathering how the departed souls would be reunited in the Garden of Allah. A short while later most of Vanity Bagh would hear tears rolling down his voice. Sitting absently on her prayer mat beside her marital bed, Ammi’s eyes would well up with tears as the wind carried the imam’s tearful voice down the alley, though neither had any idea why the sermon should always have such a weepy wind-up.
I knew you would break down towards the end, Imran’s Abba.
I knew you too
would weep, Wasim’s Ammi.
After the speech, everyone hugged everyone else and the most hugged one, much to the imam’s concealed displeasure, was always Abu Hathim sahib, who normally welcomed this spree of embracing with a broad smile. But not this time; propped up on his crutches, he stood stiff and surly as the crowd milled around him and his bodyguards screwed up their eyes to see if the hands that reached out held a knife.
The tiny window of charity remained shut forever after that Ramzan, but news from the house found other crannies to seep out into the alley and spread through the mohalla. Rumour had it that Ijaz Hathim started to wince at the sound of windows shutting and refused to be anywhere near them, even the ones in his second-floor bedroom. The mohallawallahs who slept late or very little claimed they heard him wail at small hours, lamenting for his chopped hand, asking the minarets of Masjid-e-Mosavi why his home had become a house of tragedies.