by Nadeem Aslam
Mujeeb Ali made as if to speak but changed his mind. Nabila sat up and placed the book on the night-table beside the bed. ‘It’s a sin even to offer food to a fornicator.’ She had stood up. ‘Even a mother is supposed to refuse food to her son if she suspects him of …’ She left the sentence unfinished, completing it with a wave of her hand.
Mujeeb Ali followed her with his eyes as she crossed to the wardrobe. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ he asked quietly, undoing his shirt.
Nabila had opened one side of the wardrobe and was taking out a change of clothes for her husband. White muslin shirts and linen trousers were arranged neatly on the shelves. Each garment bore the small indelible insignia that the laundryman had assigned to the household. ‘You, ji, seem to have forgotten that we have daughters in the house.’ Every time she spoke passionately the vein on the left side of Nabila’s neck swelled up. After a brief pause she added: ‘And that we are also responsible for the safety and honour of the servant girls.’
Mujeeb Ali nodded. ‘She’s a Christian, isn’t she?’
Nabila’s glance yielded at last. She looked at her husband and said quietly: ‘Elizabeth Massih.’
Mujeeb Ali unbuckled the belt that held the holster under his left arm and, with the revolver resting by his side on the bed, he took off his vest. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Stop inviting him into the house. Deputy commissioner or no deputy commissioner, I don’t want any sinners in my house.’
‘How do you know her name?’
Nabila closed the wardrobe after making sure that nothing inside would catch in the door. ‘All the women were talking about it.’ There were sharp creases in the fabric of her tunic running across the stomach, caused by her having spent the last few hours sitting cross-legged, praying for the repose of the dead man’s soul.
‘How is Asgri today?’
Nabila heaved a sigh and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. ‘Everyone knows that crying never brought anyone back but what else can she do?’ She was twisting her hair into a bun.
‘They’ll be caught,’ Mujeeb Ali said matter-of-factly and sat down two places away from his wife. He picked up the shirt he had taken off and began to clean his shoes with it.
Nabila was securing her hair into place; she held the hairpins between her teeth. She took out the last one and said, ‘Parveen Shafiq says that she was washing herself for the dawn prayers when she heard someone running past her bathroom window.’
Mujeeb Ali gave a nod. ‘We’ll see what can be done.’ He felt for the keys in the old shirt.
‘Remember, ji,’ said Nabila, ‘I don’t want him in this house any more.’
Mujeeb Ali looked back from the door. ‘I’ll be back about this time tomorrow,’ and he left the house without acknowledging the greetings of the servant women who were returning for the evening, having spent the afternoon with their families.
The ticking of the clock was a clear, precise sound in Nabila’s head. She was thinking about Asgri. Shortly after daybreak the previous Monday – before the servants began arriving and the children were awoken – Nabila had answered the door to find a distraught Asgri standing at the doorstep. Her fingers seemed to tremble. ‘I want you to take me to the Clinic,’ she had said in a voice that betrayed a night without sleep. Nabila had taken her into the kitchen. ‘I pleaded with him to leave me alone just for tonight, but he wouldn’t listen, Nabila,’ she said through tears. ‘I don’t want another one at my age. And anyway, it will probably be a girl again. I don’t have to explain anything to you – you have five girls of your own. Only Allah Himself knows why He has decided to punish us both this way. Take me to the Clinic.’ As a pretext for calling at her friend’s house at such an early hour – a pretext thoroughly unconvincing – she had brought an empty flour bowl.
Maulana Hafeez transferred the folded newspaper to his other armpit and knocked on the door. Above him bird-droppings had caused a tomato plant to germinate between two loose bricks. The walls of the small house were streaked with broad vertical bands of lichen. During the summer months the sun would scorch this lichen, turning its lush green to a dull grey, but the monsoon always restored these stripes to the poor people’s houses. Maulana Hafeez knocked again.
Mansoor’s wife, her face painted pink with cosmetics, came to the door. To numb a headache she had tied her stole tightly around her head. ‘Maulana-ji!’ she said, reaching behind her ears to untie the knot in the stole. Then, on noticing the newspaper, she said, ‘You shouldn’t have troubled yourself, Maulana-ji. Mansoor would have collected it himself.’
She dutifully covered her head and chest with the stole and backed on to the narrow courtyard to allow Maulana Hafeez into the house.
Mansoor sat on the edge of the bed, eating. He raised each mouthful – a well-worked ball of rice and lentils – on the fingers of his right hand and guided it into his mouth with the thumb. At the other end of the small room the television set gave off a bluish-white glow. Ranged around the set, their heads tilted backwards, were about a dozen of the neighbourhood’s children. Most of them were half-naked – taut stomachs swelling up beneath xylophone ribcages. They were watching a violently energetic cartoon.
Mansoor stood up when his wife entered the room followed by Maulana Hafeez. With his shins he pushed away the small table on which his meal was set. His exuberant adam’s apple and long neck made him look like an estuary bird. ‘You shouldn’t have troubled yourself, Maulana-ji.’
Since his right hand was greasy from the food Mansoor offered Maulana Hafeez his right forearm. His wife meanwhile had switched off the television and voltage stabiliser, and was quietly asking the children to leave. They left in silence but from the street their excited voices reached the room.
The cleric insisted Mansoor continue with his meal. Mansoor repeated his half-hearted greeting and sat down.
Staring into his lap where the tips of his fingers were engaged with the beads of the rosary that Mujeeb Ali had brought back for him from Mecca, without further preamble Maulana Hafeez revealed the real reason for the visit.
‘On the outskirts of every town in this province there is a cinema which shows immoral, indecent and sinful pictures.’ Between each adjective Maulana Hafeez paused for a few seconds. ‘However, it is our good fortune that the God-fearing citizens of this town, in collaboration with the diligent people who have influence over such matters, have made sure that no such establishment be permitted to take root here.’
For over a fortnight Mansoor had been expecting a visit from Maulana Hafeez. He chewed quietly on a sliver of raw onion.
‘It would seem that all their good work was pointless,’ Maulana Hafeez said. ‘Because we can now, if we so wish, turn our homes into little cinemas.’
Mansoor’s wife came in, stirring sugar into a glass of lemon water, and with an anxious glance at her husband presented the drink to the cleric. He accepted gratefully and drank – keeping to the Strictures – in a succession of three short sips.
Mansoor said, ‘Forgive me, Maulana-ji, but a television programme is not the same as a cinema film.’
‘That is irrelevant.’ Maulana Hafeez closed his eyes. ‘If something is forbidden, it is forbidden. You only need a pinch of poison.’
Mansoor explained how the transmission began and ended each day with a recitation from the Qur’an, and how since the new religious measures by the regime the programmes broke off at prayer time. These intermissions were long enough to allow men to make their way to the nearest mosque, discouraging them from praying at home like women.
But the maulana was shaking his head. ‘In my opinion,’ he said to his lap, ‘this will lead to other, more serious, neglect of the rules laid down by Hazrat Muhammad sallula-hé-valla-hé-vasalum.’
On hearing the Prophet’s name, the woman kissed the tips of her fingers and lightly touched them to her eyes. ‘I don’t understand what you mean, Maulana-ji,’ she said irritably: the stole which she had been using before
Maulana Hafeez’s arrival to numb her headache was now back in place, covering her head and the upper part of her body, and the headache had resurfaced.
Maulana Hafeez looked up. The woman was standing by a shelf at the other side of the room. He reached into his pocket – the movement released the smell of attar from the folds of his shirt – and pulled out his glasses. On the shelf there were many framed samplers with verses from the Qur’an, and in a soda bottle filled with water a shoot of vine had thrown long hairy roots which looked like rats’ tails. The shelf was draped in white cloth embroidered with colourful bouquets and fragments from the poems of Wamaq Saleem. There was a photograph of a very young man, not much more than a boy, standing against the backdrop of clear blue sky.
‘Your guard has already been lowered,’ Maulana Hafeez said. ‘There was a time when a death in the area meant no one celebrated Eid that year. Now I see that with the dead man’s shroud not yet soiled in the grave you were entertaining yourselves.’ And bowed like a crescent on the edge of the bed, he repeated quietly: ‘Your guard has already been lowered, my dhi.’
‘But we were doing it privately, Maulana-ji,’ the woman said, ignoring the angry glances from her husband. Her face was pink with powder but the skin on her neck showed dark brown.
‘That is precisely where the danger lies,’ Maulana Hafeez said, visibly disappointed, ‘in this talk of privacy. It causes people to become selfish, and will lead to the founding of a morally base society.’
Mansoor raised his hand and nodded. ‘I realise that I was wrong to switch it on so soon after the death, but, with respect, Maulana-ji, you seem to be suggesting that mine is the only television in the town.’
The woman said: ‘Far worse things go on behind the walls of the bigger houses, Maulana-ji. The very night they kill the judge for being corrupt the town finds a woman in the deputy commissioner’s house.’
Mansoor looked sharply at his wife.
But Maulana Hafeez placed a hand on his arm. Then he looked at the woman and said, ‘You’d better go into the other room, my dhi.’
She left in silence.
Maulana Hafeez took a succession of deep breaths but failed to locate the smell of roses. ‘The deeds of others are not our concern. We must dedicate our lives to the pursuit of moral and religious excellence.’ The tips of his fingers, smudged with newspaper ink, slid a bead along his rosary every few seconds.
The call for prayers from the other mosque – the denomination called its followers twenty minutes before Maulana Hafeez – alerted him to the time. He noticed that he had drained his glass. ‘The days are getting shorter. It’ll be time for Magrib soon,’ he said, and stood up with considerable effort. During the rains his muscles felt as though they had developed knots along their lengths.
Dusk had fallen. Bats were out and fluttered above the courtyard. ‘I sincerely hope you will think about what I’ve been saying,’ Maulana Hafeez said to Mansoor who had accompanied him to the door. ‘My privilege is simply to warn people of the dangers of straying on to the wrong path, I don’t have the authority or the means of preventing them from doing so.’
An unfamiliar room becomes larger once you get used to it. Nusrat’s husband died in this room, peacefully in his sleep – a filament losing its glow over a period of time. The trees in the outside garden reach up to pluck a few notes from the balcony railing.
A butterfly alights and becomes one with its shadow, like when you make the tips of your forefinger and thumb touch each other. Nusrat sings:
Eggs and their shells.
Once all the butterflies were white,
One day, too tired to fly,
They fell asleep on a flowerbed
And the dew stained their wings
With the colours of the petals.
Winter and summer she wears an old sleeveless jumper, the blue of tattoos. ‘My Afghanistani ayah taught me that poem,’ she tells us. Her father was personal physician to the emperor of Afghanistan, long long ago. ‘He was a doctor,’ she makes clear; and proudly: ‘Imagine, an FRCS in those days!’ The pomegranate in the courtyard is from Kundahar. The sapling was smuggled into the country through the Khyber Pass. ‘Others were bringing in pearls and’ – a quick glance to either side, offering us both her profiles – ‘alcohol. But I only brought in a plant.’ She laughs at the moulded ceiling. A pomegranate blossom is leathery, resembles a pitcher, and is orange in colour, the intense orange of the back of mirrors. She produces a photograph of her mother. The woman’s hairline is hidden beneath a row-of-coins headdress; she sits on a round stone by the fanfare of a trumpet vine. Mother and daughter look alike – their profiles would fit into each other as snugly as two teaspoons. Nusrat’s brother died of wasp bites. Ina lila hé va ina ilia é rajeon. He collapsed into a flowerbed with his mouth open. When they lifted him up they saw that a tiny daisy had been enclosed, unharmed, inside the open mouth. ‘Once a month we’d both be taken to the cinema,’ she remembers, bringing to life with words the crowded cinema theatre where smoke from the cigarettes rose to catch, like latecomers, bits of the projection on itself. And they had owned a gramophone with an elbowed limb to carry the needle. Nusrat’s marriage forced her to change countries. She bade farewell to the sound of the walnut sellers, méva vendors and bearfights degenerating into bloody brawls, and to the rattle of weapons being tested by potential customers in the gunshop behind the mansion; and she crossed the border to the west.
She offers us dates and lumps of holy soil to eat and spoonfuls of the water of Zumzum to drink.
Poplar pollen floats in the still air. A few of Nusrat’s cats sit in the sunlight, washing themselves. Others stitch their way through our legs, incorporating us – crosswise and lengthwise – into their invisible embroidery; the pattern also includes tables and chairs, the pillars of the veranda and the top branches of the Afghanistani tree. They are given boiled offal to eat twice a day. They cannot digest it uncooked. Someone had once asked, ‘Why don’t they run away?’ Nusrat had smiled: ‘They can’t. They get their favourite food here.’
‘It’s all ruined, no doubt, since the Russian invasion.’ She runs a fingertip along the rim of her eye and harvests a tear. ‘You hear about it in the news every day. All those refugees …’ She gives a heavy sigh and the hairs of her nostrils are visible for a brief moment. Aunt Khursheed sympathises: ‘No doubt, no doubt. Things change. It was the same with us. When we went back to India it was all so different. When they announced that there was going to be a partition, no one took it seriously. We left our horses and mules with a neighbour. A Hindu. Everyone thought it was a temporary division and that one day India and Pakistan would be a united country again. But …’ Aunt Khursheed and her husband had gone back to the place of their birth some years ago and had been unable to recognise the old street, let alone their house. The talli in the courtyard had been cut down; they found the trunk set by the outside wall. Around one of the boughs, Aunt Khursheed recalls with sadness, were two loops of rope: the decaying remains of a swing they had put up as children. She tells Nusrat of the journey they had made following the announcement of Partition, the pilgrimage they had undertaken across the bloody August of 1947. ‘We were followed by Sikhs who held in their hands moons dripping with blood.’ Her features contract in pain, her eyebrows are tense as bows. ‘Savages!’
To this, Irfan, her eldest son, would have replied, ‘That is not true. Hindus and Sikhs did not harm any emigrating Muslims. Not until the Muslims of this area, the area that is now Pakistan, slaughtered a trainload of Hindus and Sikhs going in the opposite direction, from Rawalpindi to Amritsar.’ He is constantly quarrelling with his parents. On the night before the last elections they had stayed up till three o’clock, arguing. In the morning Irfan had left the house without breakfast, before anyone else was awake, and did not come home till the fireflies. He was born on a pile of corpses as his parents were fleeing the massacre.
A bushel of peacock feathers standing in a vase on a chest of drawer
s watches the open door with twenty-four wide-open eyes. A kitten discovers a place never before visited and tries out new echoes.
Aunt Khursheed pushes out her elbows and stands up. Nusrat says, ‘Tell brother-ji it was very neighbourly of him to think about my well-being, but I don’t have any relatives alive.’
Outside, Aunt Khursheed whispers to us, ‘She may not have anyone now, but wait till she falls ill. Each day will see a new chacha-zad brother standing at the doorstep with a basket of langra mangoes. The house alone is worth thousands.’
Saturday
Five dry months had altered considerably the form, appearance and character of life in the town. The rains arrived at last on the night of the judge’s murder, catching many women unawares with their washing left out on the lines overnight. Thursday night was suffocating but – the monsoon had arrived – at noon on Friday the rains returned in force. The servant girls spent most of that evening sterilising with turpentine the many puddles that formed outside the houses. The infernal winds of June and July had exterminated almost all of the insects hatched in April but with the rains came the threat of another wave of mosquitoes.
‘I’ve discovered a flaw in the Maulana-ji’s argument,’ Azhar whispered, bringing his mouth up to Elizabeth’s ear.
Elizabeth opened an eye on to the dunes and caves of the dishevelled sheet – the other still buried in the pillow – and mumbled something incomprehensible to Azhar. She reached out her hand and running a finger along Azhar’s spine felt for the place on his back where an over-active follicle had produced a lone curved hair.
‘Here’s the join,’ said Azhar, touching the ridge of skin between Elizabeth’s legs.
With a little moan of pleasure and the words ‘You have no shame’, Elizabeth slapped Azhar’s back gently.
Yesterday in his Friday sermon Maulana Dawood, having no doubt read the article on the Japanese robot in Wednesday’s newspaper, had denounced all ‘misguided mortals’ who attempted to mimic the ‘Almighty’s adroitness’. ‘Allah’s curse on science and the scientists!’ He had taken great joy in the fact that whereas the robot was covered in riveted joins, the human body was free of such imperfections.