She sobs, letting the misery flow without constraint. She cannot bear the prospect of more pain. Easy to talk of torture, to discuss it as a phenomenon in a living room where the torturer is far away; one thinks on those occasions, perhaps, Well, I could stand it, I’m no baby, and then one sees people who have been tortured and they look the same as us; they laugh, they joke. How bad could it be? Secret, shameful thoughts, but there they are. Sonia has known any number of the tortured-they are common enough in Pakistan-and she has had these thoughts.
But now she knows they will take her out in front of the mosque tomorrow and lay her on the ground and tie her feet up to a chair and whip the skin from their soles. And a few hours later again, cutting the intricate weave of muscles and tendons into red jam and bringing her back to lie in this filth. Infection will set in immediately, she will die of septic shock, delirious and alone. She knows, too, that even this is not the worst. She knows that what utterly shatters the soul is this: when the pain is applied, sooner or later the victim feels in her deepest core that she would yield her place to anyone; she would say in her heart, Torture my babies, torture my son, torture my husband, all my loved ones, but not me! Thus the victory of the torturer is the absolute victory of the self: Hell incarnate.
Yes, the self, the nafs, what the Sufis spend their lives trying to control. Sonia thinks this, the word nafs is present in her mind, and all at once, astonishingly, her weeping turns into a bubbling laugh. So this is what you meant, my murshid!
Now, in darkness, hungry for the brassy colossal skies of Asia, she thinks of her journey with Ismail, which she put into her first book and which made her enjoyably famous for a season, although Ismail had told her that fame was like wax dripping on the nafs from a great candle, thicken -ing it and making the soul more than ever its prisoner. She thinks about warming his bedroll, which she did not put into that book. And most of all she thinks of his lessons, the Sufi training he gave her, for despite his lighthearted manner he was a hard master in the ways that the murshids of his order had, over six centuries, devised to strip the self from the body and allow God to burn it away to nothing.
From a pocket of her ruined kameez she takes a Sufi rosary of thirty-three beads, a tasbi-e-Fatima, the kind given by the angel to Hazrat Bibi Fatima, daughter of the Prophet and mother of all Sufis. Sonia rolls the wooden beads through her hands as she begins the recitation, the zikr, at the heart of Sufi practice. The zikr she recites is the Name of God. As she does so she visualizes the calligraphic representation of the Name, in Arabic, in the approved golden-wheat color. Before, when she was with Ismail, she never quite achieved the reported glow, her visuali -zation flickered like the neon of a cheap motel sign. Somewhere after three hundred of the usual thousand repetitions, her concentration would flag and the self would issue forth like a fungus. She confessed this to her murshid. He told her not to worry. He told her to wait for God. He said God would find her when the conditions were right.
Now, obviously, the conditions are right, for the Name of God shines like the noon sun on a field of grain and she is also able to visualize her murshid. There he floats in the black cell, grinning, vastly amused, his face lit by the golden glow. The beads fly through her fingers; the Name echoes in her head like a gong. Apparently the right conditions for one such as her is the prospect of being tortured to death. Ismail thinks this is amusing and so does she, and all at once she understands that God is laughing too. Nothing is as she thought; everything familiar is now wonderful, and the esoteric is plain as bread. She understands that she is departing the alam-e-nasuf, the material world, and entering the alam-e-malakut, the realm of angels, the ground reality of the universe. In her ears, faint at first but growing louder, is a sound, indescribable, which is the sout-e-sarmadi, the eternal sound that permeates all the worlds, of which the most beautiful music is but a shadow.
Sonia chants without thinking, listening to the breath of God; the sound fills her, it removes the pain of her wounds, it banishes her fear-or not really, she thinks, looking back at herself as from a great distance, it’s more like the pain is still there, but the being, the poor nafs, that feels it, the horrible person who behaved so badly to Farid and Theo and Wazir, who suffered under the whip and the rats and merited that torture, is not the real person.
I will never be able to explain this to anyone, she thinks, as Ismail was never able to explain it to me. I thought it was a trick to be learned, like legerdemain, but it’s not. It’s a grace. How peculiar not to have known it all along, although, now that she thinks of it, she did know it all along, but the nafs cast a cloud between her soul and the knowing, for it did not want to die.
The sound is still in her ears when the trapdoor swings open, letting in a flood of light and the guard, Mahmoud. She continues with the beads and smiles at Mahmoud. She realizes she can see the real person in him too, the image of his Maker, and she can also see, like an encrusting leprosy, the structure of pride, greed, lust, and folly that controls the man Mahmoud in the alam-e-nasuf. She climbs the ladder effortlessly, or so it seems, she feels like she floats on the rungs. Mahmoud seems taken aback now; he was expecting a cowed and beaten woman-the only sort of woman he has ever known, in fact-and now he sees something quite different and he is frightened, Sonia can see his fear, like worms roiling the shadows behind his eyes.
It is the time of Fajr, the dawn prayer. She is brought to the same wide place before the mosque, the same crowd of turbaned men are there, having just finished praising the Compassionate One and looking forward to seeing a woman tortured. Above, the sky is still pink, shading to the palest possible blue. Sonia is still handling her beads. She notices that the men have seen this, and there are murmurs. The mullah stands out of the crowd and gives a speech, in which he again describes Sonia’s blasphemy and offers her a chance to confess. She answers in a loud but mild voice, as if explaining something to a child, that she has not been judged according to the sharia and therefore it is haram for her to be punished. She quotes the Qur’an on the wages of injustice.
The mullah shouts at her, although he does not quote from the Qur’an. Like most village mullahs he is an ignoramus on the subjects of sharia and Islamic theology, substituting a crude bullying style for both. Some men drag out a heavy wooden chair. Sonia is made to sit on the ground. Her legs are tied together and her ankles are lashed to the slats of the chair back. She is as modest now as could be wished. Mahmoud does this work and he is clumsy doing it, so she offers a word of encouragement.
“Mahmoud Saiyed, I forgive you your crime. In Hell you will be repaid for this, but although your feet will be lashed with red-hot wires forever, but I will look down from Paradise and beg the demon to temper the strokes.”
Mahmoud is not quite trembling now, but he looks ill at ease. He takes up his bamboo cane and whisks it back and forth a few times, perhaps to pump himself up.
Sonia fingers her beads and increases the volume of her chanting. The praise of God echoes from the low buildings. The lash descends.
Sonia feels the agony and her body records the damage but it does not reach who she is now. The nafs suffers but she is no longer it. She shouts “Haram!” and continues her chanting Sufi prayer.
Another stroke, although this one seems to spend much of its force on the seat of the chair.
“Haram!”
The mullah calls out for Sonia to be gagged. This is done, with rags. A new murmur floats through the crowd. It is a grave sin in Islam to silence prayer.
On the next stroke a voice floats out past the shutters of a house, a woman’s voice: “Haram!”
On the next stroke, there are more voices from the hidden, a chorus of voices, and the chilling ululation, a sound like the insanity of all the birds. Forbidden! Shame!
This is now the nightmare of the Pashtun male. The women are out of control and it is the women who have the honor of the men in their hands. The women know everything. They know who likes to fuck boys, and who is a drunk, and who can’t ge
t it up in the marriage bed, and for this reason they can never be allowed to escape the iron grip of the men.
Now, almost as one, the men trot off to their homes, including the mullah, who has two wives and a boy. Sonia thinks they will beat all the women now, but not very hard. She is left alone on the dusty street with poor Mahmoud, who looks like he is going to cry.
“It is over, Mahmoud,” she says. “Untie me and carry me back to my room in the hujra. You have been saved from Hell today; God has been merciful to you. And when you have done that, I will interpret your dream for you.”
Mahmoud carries her toward the hujra, but on the way he is stopped by two armed men with the look of seasoned mujahideen. There is a brief argument. The men don’t want her returned to her prison; someone wants to see her. For the first time she hears the name Alakazai and it seems to be a significant one, for on hearing it Mahmoud stops arguing and follows the men. They go down several streets, the roar of the diesel generator grows louder as they walk. They go through a gate in a high mud wall and enter a house. Mahmoud is dismissed, protesting, at the door, and Sonia is forced to hobble on the edges of her feet, following the men, who make no effort to help her.
One of them grabs her arm and hustles her through an open door and into a small room with a high window. In it there are two charpoys and a low table, upon which is a tray with a tea service and a covered basket from which issues the smell of fresh naan. On one of the charpoys sits a man. Sonia collapses on the other. The guard goes to a corner and squats down with his rifle across his knees.
The man on the other charpoy indicates the tea with a flick of his hand.
“Would you like some tea, Mrs. Laghari?” he says in English.
“Yes, thank you,” Sonia answers, and pours. To her surprise it is not the strong milky tea of the region but some herbal brew, flowery, like chamomile or jasmine. But it is hot and she drinks a whole cup and eats a piece of bread. The man watches her and she returns the favor.
He is a comfortably padded man, broad-shouldered, with a tan face and a neatly trimmed dark beard. His ethnic origins are not at once clear, for he has the hawk nose and the hazel eyes common among the Pashtuns, but his air of comfortable self-assurance, relaxed, faintly amused, is one she associates with the plains to the south. And there is something wrong about him, a cast of ill health; the whites of his eyes are yellowish, and there is a faint unpleasant odor in the room. That’s why the herbal tea. The man’s innards are not right.
“How are your feet?” he asks, after she has drunk the tea.
“How do you think?”
He shrugs. “That was a clever ploy. You almost started a riot there, among the women. Idris is very angry with you.”
“It wasn’t a ploy. I was perfectly sincere.”
“Were you?” A look of amusement here. “You consider yourself a Muslim?”
“I am as much a Muslim as you are.”
“Even though you wander around without your husband, unveiled? Even though you are an infamous blasphemer and apostate?” He sips his tea, not taking his eyes off her. “You know, I saw you on television. It was quite a per for mance. I thought you seemed more an ally of our jihad than not.”
“Really. Then you couldn’t have been listening to what I said.”
“Oh, I listened. And I was intrigued. Who was this American who spoke perfect Urdu and had such interesting ideas? Why had I never heard of her before? So I made inquiries, and of course I quickly learned that I had heard of her before; the whole umma had heard of her. And I was amazed that this Sonia Bailey would have the arrogance to lead a party of spies into a Muslim country.”
Sonia surpasses a shudder of fear. She says, “We are not spies. We are scholars. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, says that the ink of scholars is more precious than the blood of martyrs.”
The man waves his hand as if shooing flies. “Yes, yes, anyone can quote from the Hadith when it suits them, but the fact remains that you have already been condemned by competent judicial authorities. I could have you executed this minute.”
“Yes, you could,” she says agreeably. “Or you could have me beaten five times a day and locked in a filthy stable. I’d be dead in a few days from septic shock, and you wouldn’t have to confront the women again.”
“I’m not afraid of a few women.”
“Nonsense, Mr…?”
“My name is Alakazai.”
“Really? Then we are clan cousins of a sort. My son is an adopted clansman of the Barakzai.”
A transient look of irritation passes over the man’s face; Sonia observes it with interest and switches to English. “Although you’re not a big one for clan connections, are you, Mr. Alakazai? You’re not a real Pashtun at all. I suspect your father or grandfather was a detribalized Pashtun living in the south, what they call a Pathan in that country, and one or more of them must have intermarried with the locals, Punjabi or Sindhi perhaps, even Bengali. There is something of the babu about you, I think. Idris and the others are true Pashtuns; their lives revolve around honor, loot, and beating up any women or foreigners that come their way. But not you, and so we have to ask why they follow you. And the answer must be that you’re the one with the connections. the paymaster, feeding money and arms from the Pakistanis. You might even be an actual ISI agent. On the other hand, I’m sure you have good connections with al-Qaeda as well. You’re just the sort of deracinated, half-educated, semi-Westernized misogynist they like to recruit.”
He regards her expressionlessly, tracing the line of his beard below his lip with a forefinger.
“And please don’t tell me you’re not afraid of women, Mr. Alakazai. Sexual terror is the motor of your entire movement. That’s why you blow up girls’ schools and toss acid in the faces of their students.”
“Is that what you really believe? Remarkable, when you have traveled so much in the umma. You must be willfully blind.”
“You don’t blow up girls’ schools?”
He made the fly-chasing motion again. “I have the greatest respect for women. A modest woman caring for her family is one of God’s greatest creations. But it is also obvious that when the head is full the womb is empty, as we observe throughout the West. In whatever nations that accept the curse of women’s education and freedom from the control of men, we see a rapid decline in population; we see pornography; we see sexual disease. Not a single one of the so-called advanced countries is reproducing its original population at replacement levels. In Europe, virtually all the population growth is Muslim, and it is clear now that in a certain number of years all these nations will have Muslim majorities. This is because we understand that the function of women is established by God and anything that seeks to destroy that function must be haram. Do you see? It’s really very simple. Islam is a simple religion, and therefore it is the truest and most beautiful of all religions. So tell me, who are you working for, the CIA?”
“That’s what everyone thinks, but I’m surprised you do too. I thought you would know that someone who speaks the local languages and is conversant with local culture couldn’t possibly work for the CIA. The CIA is a bunch of white men in suits having cocktails at the American embassy, when they’re not firing missiles into villages from drones, usually the wrong village.”
“Very amusing. But if you’re not a spy, what are you doing in the Northwest Frontier Province?”
“I was traveling to my brother-in-law’s house in the Leepa Valley to participate in a conference about how to bring peace to this region.”
“Oh? And how shall we bring peace to the region?”
“I have no idea. We didn’t get a chance to hold the conference.”
He makes a generous sweeping gesture. “Then by all means hold it. No one is stopping you.”
“You don’t mean that you’re setting us free.”
“Unfortunately not. But you can hold it here. The dining hall at the hujra will do very well. And I will attend. I too am a great lover of peace.”
/> “You’ll let me consult my colleagues.”
“You may inform them that such is my will. We will all attend, and we will provide burqas for you and the other female hostage. Perhaps you will learn something about modesty in your last days. You know, there is a long tradition in this region of kings bringing scholars before them to dispute philosophical matters. And I am, as you have perhaps observed, a quite traditional man. I believe I will find your conference entirely interesting.”
“In that case, I hope I can assure my colleagues that they will come to no harm while they are in your custody.”
“Well, yes, providing that our demands our met. I hope Idris was clear on that score. All of you are hostages for the good behavior of the crusaders. On any day that innocent Muslims are killed by their forces we will be forced to behead one hostage. Of course, I should not want to execute anyone whose presentation I had not heard, so I will trust you to arrange the speakers however you choose, and I would also insist that you personally select the hostages to be executed.”
Sonia stares at Alakazai and he returns her gaze blandly, as if he has just foretold the arrival of the next bus.
“Oh? Why me, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Because you are the enemy. In you is distilled in the purest form everything against which we fight. You are worse than a mere infidel. You are a Muslim who perverts and dirties everything that is most sacred in Islam. You are woman, who destroys modesty and encourages others to do so. I have read your books, you know, yes I have. I read them when I was a student, when you caused this great furor and you were condemned by the ulema. I wished to find you and kill you then, as did many others, but you know how it is with the enthusiasms of youth, one forgets, one gets involved in work and marriage, and so forth. But always in the back of my mind I thought I would do it. And now God has placed you in my hands, all unknowing, like a gift. Don’t you find that remarkable?”
The Good Son Page 20