Scattered Souls

by Shahnaz Bashir

  The white ambulance stands quietly in a section of the hospital compound shaded by a wall, uncertainly sleeping through its moments of peace for some indefinite time, its melted front tyres tilted right. The two old chinars behind the old barrack-like hospital building are completely leafless, the snow-crowned top of mount Harmukh behind them looms close in the view against a cerulean November sky.

  Sakeena’s turn to enter Dr. Imtiyaz’s consultation chamber is just after a young man with frissons. She has been noticing him and his seizures for all the six years now. The man is accompanied by an elderly woman. He has been silent and shaking from the day he forgot to lower down a waterboarded captive who had been suspended upside down in a police torture cell. That is what the elderly lady, who happens to be his mother, is narrating to everyone. The young man was a constable in the State Task Force—a special police wing in Kashmir constituted by the government to eliminate the militants—and had been on duty, watching over a dangling upside-down captive through one night, and had fallen asleep before he could loosen the captive’s rope and put him back on the ground. When he had woken up later, the captive was already dead.

  Dr. Imtiyaz is glad about the improvement Sakeena has made over a long period of time. He crosses out the drugs he had earlier prescribed for her query seizures, but she has to continue taking Olanzapine 20 mg BD, twice a day, for her cycloid psychosis.

  Six years ago when she was admitted to this hospital for acute onset of confusion, delusions, hallucinations, altered behaviour, pan anxiety, elation, happiness or ecstasy of high degree, self-blaming and mood swings—with her bleeding, razor-nicked wrists—she had to be literally tied to her bed in the general ward. The doctors and her attendants had been prepared for her transfer to the asylum section of the hospital, just in case. But after showing a reasonable comeback, she had stayed in the ward. And later that year, with some psychotic symptoms intact, she had birthed a baby boy, Bilal.

  Considering Sakeena’s condition, Dr. Imtiyaz had been kind enough to adopt Insha for that crucial year, and taken care of her like he would of his own children. His twelve years of experience treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) patients had melted his heart, so much so that he had begun to sound irritatingly humane to his wife, relatives and friends. His patients visited him at home, some disturbed him at night. Besides free consultations, medicine and endless counselling, he had even started lending money and providing shelter to poor or distant patients and their attendants.

  ‘So, how do you feel now?’ Dr. Imtiyaz asks.

  ‘The nightmares have become infrequent. Now I don’t see my body rolling down the riverbank. Nor does my bloody shalwaar appear. But the smell of sperm barely leaves me. Even pleasantly scented things smell dirty to me.’

  ‘Good that the nightmares have abated. I hope the smell will go too. And what about the hallucinations?’

  ‘Not too often.’

  ‘Very good. And what about the other dreams?’

  ‘Some days ago Ghulam Mohiuddeen came in my dream and said he couldn’t return now and therefore I should take care of myself and Insha.’

  ‘And did he only talk about you and Insha?’

  ‘He didn’t talk about anyone else.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Silence.

  ‘And did he say that you should remarry, or something like that, a hint?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you convinced he is not alive, that he won’t return?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. My heart says he is not alive.’

  ‘Then isn’t it better that you remarry?’

  Silence.

  In her neighbourhood, the two idle men, whom Sakeena noticed in the morning when she was leaving for the hospital, are still sitting on the sill of the shop, sucking on their hookah and gossiping. They are talking about a notification the government has sent to the squatters, asking them to vacate the riverbank before they are hauled away. The government has decided to clear the area and make hanging parks along the bank to entice tourists.

  When Rasheed, the shopkeeper, notices Sakeena, he suspends a customer in the middle of a deal and calls out to her. ‘Excuse me, your favourite soap has come. I thought I should inform you,’ he says to her flirtatiously.

  ‘No thank you. I don’t need it now,’ she says brusquely, flouncing off.

  ‘It comes with a scheme. You get a pencil for free,’ he adds, but Sakeena doesn’t respond.

  The two men continue smoking and consider protesting instead of demanding rehabilitation from the government. Rasheed leans over the jars of confectionary and giggles softly and suggestively as she passes the shop. Before the two men turn their heads to look him in the eye, he resumes his conversation with the customer he had left hanging.

  Back home, Insha is making tea for Sakeena. A pan is stewing on the gas stove. The tea comes to seethe soon, so Insha turns the knob of the stove and simmers it down to a low flame. The bubbling brown frothy tea throws the tea leaves to the walls of the pan. ‘It took you long today,’ Insha remarks to Sakeena, looking away from the brewing tea.

  ‘Yes, jaana,’ Sakeena responds, panting as she enters the one-room shanty house.

  The house is built on a rostrum that sits on thick round wooden posts in a squatters’ settlement near Zero Bridge. The settlement is looked over by tall hotels that have come up across the riverbank, shaded by a canopy of chinar branches. The river laps the wooden stairs that lead to the door of the shanty beside its attached wooden privy. Recently the government has suddenly declared the settlement as ‘illegal encroachment’.

  Sakeena tosses her plastic bag to the floor, sits in a clean corner and gazes at the motionless houseboats through the tiny window. Unlike in the hallucinations earlier, the houseboats don’t appear aflame to her now.

  On the inside, the shanty is wallpapered with cheap gift-wrapping paper: a pattern of white polka dots on a purple background. In one of the corners is Sakeena’s kitchen. Glass jars filled with spices sit on wooden shelves fixed to the wall. A pressure cooker lid hangs by a rusty nail. Beneath the shelves, there is a gas stove and a shallow steel tub for dish washing.

  In another corner, there is a pile of bedding: a folded quilt on a pair of pillows; pillows, in turn, topping a folded mattress—all draped in a bedspread. And a neatly folded mink blanket set over all.

  To Sakeena’s right is a roughly folded prayer rug on a triangular shelf, tucked under an X-shaped, primer-painted, small wooden rack. On the rack is a velvet-encased Quran.

  Wicker baskets and plastic bags hang from the rafters of the ceiling.

  Between the kitchen side and the bedding side, a television rests on a low trestle table. Under the table there is a bald, naked doll, a school satchel, unevenly stacked textbooks, notebooks, a worn-out green eraser and a pencil chewed on the top. These things belong to Insha. The walls are dirtied with stray pencil work: amorphous shapes of animals and birds, creatures and things that don’t actually exist. The doodle is visible only to a sensitive eye—all the handiwork of Sakeena’s son Bilal.

  Insha strains the tea into three cups, keeps one for herself, gives one to Bilal and places another in front of her mother. She distributes peanut-studded biscuits as well.

  Sakeena dips a biscuit into her cup and angrily watches Bilal scattering crumbs of his biscuit on the floor mat, his legs splayed out under him.

  ‘Bastard!’ she says, grimacing at him.

  Insha widens her eyes at her mother and says, ‘Please Mamma, don’t.’

  ‘See, he is good for nothing. He has spoiled the mat. I swept it this morning only.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I will clean it again,’ Insha says.

  Bilal looks at Sakeena. She glares back at him. The soggy part of the biscuit between her thumb and forefinger crumbles and falls into the tea.

  Sakeena was married to Ghulam Mohiuddeen.

  She had seen him for the first time at a friend’s wedding. That was where everyth
ing had begun. For his militant background, her parents didn’t approve of him. The couple went ahead and got married in court.

  They came to live in the crammed squatters’ settlement, all the shelter Ghulam Mohiuddeen could afford. Sakeena was still happy. It was bliss to live with the man she loved, however small, creaky and impermanent the place was.

  Ghulam Mohiuddeen had had an adequate education, but because of his ex-militant status, he decided to strike out on his own and earn his livelihood by driving an autorickshaw. Since there were frequent curfews and shutdowns in the city that severely affected the public transport system, the autorickshaw job paid well.

  Ghulam Mohiuddeen was very loving and caring and full of respect for Sakeena. He would smother her with surprises and gifts—shawls or sandals or suits or purses or bangles—every month.

  Within the first seven days of their marriage, he bought her a TV set. ‘I know you are fond of films and old songs,’ he said, unwrapping the Styrofoam packing.

  Insha was born a year after the marriage. Ghulam Mohiuddeen had wanted a daughter, and was delighted with her.

  He was a diehard fan of the radio. He was a member of the Raj Bagh Autorickshaw Listeners’ Club. Besides the daily BBC Urdu news, he listened to cricket commentary. He hardly missed any match played between India and Pakistan. At home he followed the TV broadcast too, but the radio kept mewling beside him, whining on fours, sixers, outs and commercials.

  A few more years passed by. Ghulam Mohiuddeen and Sakeena began to plan a second child. To that end, he fixed up an appointment for Sakeena with a local gynaecologist. Sakeena awaited his arrival from the day’s job.

  That day at his autorickshaw stand, he had an argument with another driver: Bitt’a Shuad’a.

  Bitt’a Shuad’a doubled as a renegade, a counter-insurgent, who had links with the local Army unit in Raj Bagh. The passengers from the stand were taken on a rotation basis. But Bitt’a would browbeat other autowalas and often snatch their passengers. That day, Bitt’a jumped the queue and seized another driver’s passengers. Ghulam Mohiuddeen had been quietly tolerant of Bitta’s attitude towards his colleagues, but on that day he lost his temper. He intervened and had a heated argument with Bitt’a that turned into a serious dispute when Ghulam Mohiuddeen beat him.

  And on that evening Ghulam Mohiuddeen didn’t come home at his normal time. Sakeena sat by the window and watched for him, looking at the spot on the riverbank road where, every evening, Ghulam Mohiuddeen would bump up his roaring autorickshaw and then descend the riverbank towards the shanty.

  Later that night, it wasn’t Ghulam Mohiuddeen in his auto who bounded up the road. There were two Army cars instead.

  A contingent of troops cordoned the shanty off. Some barged in. Sakeena tried to switch on the lights, but a dark hand pushed her aside. In the faint light filtering in from the street, she could see that four soldiers and a masked boy had barged into the shanty. Two more kept guard at the door. The whole neighbourhood seemed to be alert and listening.

  The men threw her down to the ground and held her legs and arms. One of them stripped her of her shalwaar and stuffed it into her mouth. Insha shrieked, calling out to the neighbours for help. One trooper lifted Insha by the neck of her shirt and took her away.

  The men didn’t let Sakeena go for an hour. ‘Your husband is with us, so take care,’ they said while leaving.

  As soon as the troops were gone, the neighbours rushed to the shanty. Sakeena was lying half naked on the floor, unconscious. A woman covered her with a blanket.

  Sakeena raved for the next few days. Nobody had any clue about Ghulam Mohiuddeen. Her mental health deteriorated. Her neighbours admitted her to the Government Psychiatric Diseases’ Hospital.

  There was no such Army camp, no interrogation centre, no jail that Sakeena didn’t knock the doors of while searching for Ghulam Mohiuddeen. But she found nothing, not even his autorickshaw. Finally, someone told her that Ghulam Mohiuddeen had been seen in Sonawari renegade camp.

  The guards at the gate of the Sonawari camp demanded one lakh rupees in exchange for providing information about her husband. She promised to pay them the amount once it was ascertained that Ghulam Mohiuddin was there, in the camp. In the meantime, she began to borrow the money from shopkeepers like Rasheed and started begging for it in places unknown.

  Then one day she went to Sonawari to pay a small amount of five thousand rupees as advance. But then the guards demanded that she sleep with them. Sakeena left, crying.

  In the evening as the sun slumps behind the new tall buildings at Zero Bridge and birds flock back to their nests flying wingtip to wingtip, Sakeena, as usual, padlocks the door of the shanty from the outside and jumps in through the back window. She draws the curtains and switches on the lamps.

  From the corner of her eye during her namaaz, she sees Bilal diddling with his sister’s pencil. It is hard for Sakeena to fight the urge to slap him. Bastard! she says in her mind.

  She has beaten him most often just because of what he symbolizes. He is the human shape of a painful memory.

  Earlier, she has even tried killing him. She would leave him alone at home for hours so that he could wander in the shanty and consume something, anything, pick up the conspicuous green sachet of rat poison from the window ledge and fiddle with it, or pick up the knife that lies beside the gas stove and cut himself. Or die from the simple fear of being alone for hours.

  In the posh colony of Raj Bagh, where Sakeena is a domestic worker, she would leave him outside in the lawns to let him eat mud. But he wouldn’t.

  Insha did and this bastard doesn’t, Sakeena would think.

  Bilal was not even properly breastfed, only granted the privilege temporarily at the insistence of Dr. Imtiyaz. He was the one who named the boy. Sakeena herself has barely uttered his name in the past six years.

  Bilal resembles Sakeena. Large blue eyes, silky hair, plump red cheeks, straight snotty nose. He is always silent and confused in front of his mother, but happy with Insha.

  Insha does everything for Bilal. She washes him, dresses him and feeds him. She protects him from his most dangerous enemy—his own mother.

  After dinner Sakeena takes out a plastic box. She sorts through various strips of medicine—medicine for her backache and migraine and hypothyroidism—searching for her Olanzapine tablets.

  While the kids watch TV, Sakeena looks away, and languidly stares at the framed picture near the clock on the wooden wall. In the picture she and Ghulam Mohiuddeen sit in a garden, both scowling at the sun.

  Insha slips between Sakeena and Bilal on the bedding. She studies the henna on her mother’s palms and says, ‘I thought bus handrails had faded the ducks …’

  ‘Dear foolish girl, how could it fade away only in a day,’ Sakeena says, kissing Insha’s brow.

  For a few weeks now the mercury has been dipping. The change in weather has come as a relief. Tonight Sakeena may sleep in relative peace.

  It rains at night now. And it gets a little cold inside the shanty. The thrum of the rain on the tin roof wakes Sakeena. She ensures that Insha is well covered, but finds that Bilal has rolled out of the quilt. She lies on her back in her place, considering the boy.

  She comes out of the bedding, softly moves Insha aside and slides between the two children. She leaves Bilal in the cold, without his share of the quilt. After sometime Bilal curls up from the chill in the room. She looks at the boy, observes the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, his incessant sighing, and the innocence of his face in sleep.

  Then she carefully draws him close and covers him in a good deal of the warm quilt. For a moment, she feels like stroking his hair. But she withdraws her hand just as her fingers are about to touch him. ‘Bilal,’ she says under her breath and settles on her back. Tears stream quietly down her temples.

  It has rained heavily the whole night. In the morning when Sakeena leaves for work, she finds that Jhelum has risen. The lower steps of the stairs that lead to th
e door of the shanty have been submerged, forcing her to wade through the spate towards the bank, her children enfolded in the crooks of her arms. Insha is uniformed and has to go to school. Bilal has to go with Sakeena, to the houses where she cleans.

  One month has passed and Sakeena is once again in front of Dr. Imtiyaz. Not many patients are lined up outside the Out Patient Department today.

  ‘So, how do you feel?’ Dr. Imtiyaz asks.

  ‘Better than last time.’

  ‘Good. I am going to reduce the dosage, okay?’

  ‘Your kindness.’

  Some patients in the corridor of the hospital press their noses against the panes behind the meshed windows of Dr. Imtiyaz’s chamber. But the doctor doesn’t care to pay attention.

  ‘And since you are improving, how about giving a thought to my suggestion?’

  ‘Which suggestion, doctor sahab?’

  ‘Marrying again?’

  Silence.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  Long silence.

  ‘I am still waiting for him.’

  When Sakeena comes back from the hospital, she finds a bevy of police men and a giant yellow bulldozer in the neighbourhood. All the squatters have gathered and they are protesting against the government. The bulldozer is being readied to shove the shanties off the riverbank. For some time, Sakeena stands still, silent, trying to convince herself that this is not a hallucination. Insha and Bilal stand in the doorway of the shanty, watching the chaos. Then, as protests intensify, Sakeena joins in.