The Reluctant Mullah

by Sagheer Afzal

  Musa held his arms open, dismayed by the fickleness of events.

  Mufti Bashir considered Musa’s answer. “How did you feel when you put it on?”

  “Well at first I couldn’t feel a thing. It was sticky and uncomfortable and when I looked in the mirror I couldn’t sense anything. But later – Musa leaned forward excitedly – when I was in the interrogation room, I could feel the policemen treating me differently. But the strangest thing was when I was in there I felt protected by the veil, like I could look at them and react to them but they couldn’t react to anything I said or felt because they couldn’t see me!”

  “Did you gain knowledge that you wanted?” asked Mufti Bashir, smiling.

  “Yes sir.”

  “At what cost?”

  “I don’t know what you mean sir,” replied Musa truthfully.

  “You gained knowledge at the expense of your own dignity.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Musa reluctantly.

  “Could you not have asked someone?”

  “Well you see, the thing is sir, the alims and the elders don’t seem to be all that approachable and I couldn’t exactly go up to them and ask them about this sort of thing could I?”

  “Why not? Are you not talking to me about it?”

  “Because sir, no offence, but I’ve always got the feeling that you and the other elders and alims don’t really like young people. You just want us to act like we’re old,” said Musa earnestly.

  Mufti Bashir stood up and slowly tottered over to Musa. He handed him the photograph.

  “Do you recognise me?” he asked gently.

  Musa held up the photograph and stared at a black and white image of three young men wearing suits with very thin ties sitting on a sofa. The two at opposite ends of the sofa were English. Their expressions were assured, smiling, and they sat with their legs wide apart. The one in the middle looked proud and sat up straight with his arms folded and his knees close together. An English woman holding a baby stood behind the three and her eyes were tense and unhappy.

  “The man in the middle,” said Musa quietly.

  “Yes. That photograph was taken forty-five years ago. When I was…like you.”

  “But how did you end…”

  Mufti Bashir raised his hand to cut off any questions. He walked to the window and gestured to Musa to join him. It was now night and the street was empty. A pub, the Red Lion, had its sign illuminated by a flashing red light. Suddenly a figure emerged from the pub, an elderly white man. He walked unsteadily to the pedestrian crossing and looked up. Slowly, he touched the peak of his cap and Mufti Bashir placed his hand on the window in response. The old man smiled and started to walk carefully across the road.

  “I have seen that person three times a week for the past twenty-five years. Always he greets me and always I return his greeting in the exact same manner, three times a week for the past twenty-five years. Yet I have no desire to know him or to communicate with him. Do you think it is because I do not like people Musa?”

  Musa was silent, unable to merge what he had seen into his reasoning.

  Mufti Bashir continued, his voice carefully even. “The lines of our worlds are very clear to me. I have no wish to push against that line. I have no wish to see beyond what I can see. But with you Musa, it is different. You hunger for the colours of experience and such hunger is like fire in your belly. All that you are is fuel for this fire. Do you understand what I am saying, Musa?”

  “Yes sir, but I am not a bad Muslim.”

  “Islam is a religion of peace. If you are not at peace with yourself, how can you find peace in your faith?”

  “Islam can give me all the answers that I need, sir. I believe that with all my heart,” said Musa passionately.

  “Yes, Islam can do that. But will it give you the answers that you want, Musa?”

  “That depends on the question, sir,” said Musa defensively.

  “Yes, it does depend on the question.” Mufti Bashir raised his finger and wagged it at Musa. “That my son is why you must leave the Madrasah. You cannot be a leader of men in prayer if you do not know what you are leading against.”

  Musa gazed at the elder: one eye knowing and sad, the other grey with meaning and purpose. He felt himself cast to a strange netherworld by the reflection in his eyes, a world torn apart by the tug of opposites; the sensation of leaving and the sensation of arriving; the unknown freedom and the secure familiar; the excitement and the ignorance.

  “It is written in the Quran, ‘God is the ally of those who believe: He brings them out of the depths of darkness and into the light.’ Follow the light Musa. Follow the light so that you may become a child of the light and let your steps be as happy and carefree as those of a child,” he said sadly.

  Musa handed Mufti Bashir the photograph and took off his gloves, his eyes never leaving the elder’s face. As he turned to walk away, Mufti Bashir laid a gentle hand on his arm.

  “Know this also, Musa. With each step you take to the light, my prayers are with you. And should you step the other way, know that my tears shall lie in your footprints. For it is also written, ‘For the disbelievers, their allies are false gods who take them from the light into the depths of darkness, they are the inhabitants of the Fire, and there they will remain.’”

  3

  Eunice Benton looked out of the window and scowled. As usual, clogging up the street and raising an almighty row were the Asian kids playing cricket and screaming like mad every time they connected with the ball. It was impossible to tell the difference between them, they all looked the same to her. Grinning brown faces with huge eyes and big white smiles.

  Eunice was the oldest resident on her street. She and her Ernie (who had succumbed to one cigarette too many) had watched the arrival of the Pakistanis with just the faintest hint of disapproval. She remembered with a bitter smile her Ernie’s take on it (he was known to dabble in a bit of philosophy now and then).

  “Look love, since Churchill sent us to war killing them Nazis, there’s no one here to do all ’em little jobs like sweeping the streets and such like. And I’m sure as hell not gonna do that. I’ve just come back from France and I’m still pissing gun oil. You watch love, soon as they make their five bob they’ll be out of this street in a jiffy.”

  The problem was though they never did leave in a jiffy. They stayed and had wives who stayed, and worst of all they had kids who never left the bloody street. Feeling her radiation, the Asian kids stopped playing and recognising their old foe they made for her window, excited by what they were about to do. A few of the more adventurous started thrusting their hips towards her. The tamer ones made loud kissing noises.

  “The dirty animals,” thought Eunice. One time one of them had even taken his trousers down and bared his buttocks to her. When she complained to the local Neighbourhood Watch she was told (amidst many chuckles) that this action was known as a “moony” though it didn’t look much like a moon to her at the time.

  She frowned suddenly as an idea came to her. “Herbert!” she called, and at the sound of his name a large Alsatian came running towards her.

  “Good boy. Good boy,” she said, ruffling his neck.

  She opened the front door and issued an order to the dog.

  “Attack, Herbert! Attack!”

  With his large, liquid, honey-coloured eyes, it was difficult to imagine Herbert attacking anyone but since Alsatians were German in origin they must have it in them to kill, reasoned Eunice.

  Herbert looked at the Asian kids, then back at his mistress and barked.

  Eunice smiled with the murderous delight of a huntress about to close in on her prey.

  “Go boy go!” she said, pushing the dog out.

  Herbert bounded across the street and was immediately met by a great cheer as his detractors rushed towards him and embraced him as one of their own. He barked and pranced about excitedly, euphoric in his newly found role as mascot.

  Eunice sighed in disgust at her fick
le canine.

  “Maybe it’s because he smells like them,” she wondered out loud.

  She noticed the old Pakistani who lived further up the road walking along with his head down. He always walked like that, like he just didn’t want to know anymore. You could always tell him a mile off because unlike the others he didn’t have a beard. He was a small neat man, with a poker face and small fierce black eyes. She watched him cross the road. He was wearing grey schoolboy trousers and a thin brown jumper that pushed against a huge shirt collar.

  They were a strange family. She would often see the wife on her way to the supermarket. She had obviously been pretty in her time with a fair round face that dimpled every time she saw the kids playing on the street. Now and then she would walk with her daughter, who was a real stunner. Ernie (who never really got rid of his eye for the girls) used to like to watch her.

  “She’s a looker that one for sure, but she has a mean expression.”

  Eunice would glare at him and he would then grin and playfully smack her on her behind.

  She knew there was a boy too. A young man to be exact, who seemed to come and go as he pleased, but there was also someone else. Every so often, when it was really late, a car would stop outside the house, a big expensive car that made no noise. It would stay for about five minutes and then drive away silently.

  “You watch love, their kids are gonna be like us when they grow up,” were the prophetic words of her Ernie but at the time she thought he was talking rubbish.

  The old man whose family so intrigued Eunice and the late lecherous Ernie was in fact Musa’s father Itrat, or Aboo, as he was known, and at that particular moment he was feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders – a most unacceptable burden at his age.

  Aboo went into his home of thirty years and as always the crisp pungent aroma of his wife’s cooking greeted him. This always soothed him: that odour had been one of the markers of his day for so many years.

  Small to begin with, the house stayed small as Aboo was completely against the idea of extensions and now it was cluttered with over-large furniture. The front room had been the scene of many great and epic dramas and accordingly gave you the feeling that you were walking on a holy battlefield.

  Overlooking all was a giant rug that hung on the wall. Inscribed upon it was the Ayatul kursi, a passage from the Holy Quran that was supposed to ward off evil spirits. Its effectiveness was debatable because a closer look revealed signs of damage from objects that had been hurled at it with great force.

  Shabnam (Aboo’s daughter) and Amma (his wife) were sitting in silence. Shabnam was idly flicking through a glossy magazine and Amma was stroking a strand of her long hair. She did this when she was upset about something and Aboo briefly wondered if she somehow knew the news that was erupting within him.

  Shabnam looked up at him. He wished he could take pride in her beauty the way Amma did but instead he felt a dark sense of urgency whenever he looked at those large cold green eyes. At times he hated himself for it.

  Because he felt the need to bark, he exploded, “What are you doing reading that trash?”

  Amma spoke softly. “What’s wrong?”

  Aboo sat down in his red leather-backed chair, his one extravagance, his face drawn.

  “Musa has left the Madrasah,” he said, hoping to sound contemptuous and detached but failing.

  “Why? What’s happened?” asked Shabnam.

  “They wouldn’t say but I asked Abdul Jaffer as his son studies there as well and he told me quite a few things…” he spoke in a slightly accented though fluent English.

  This time Amma spoke for she knew better than anyone how to draw Aboo out.

  “What did he tell you?” she asked keeping her voice soft and calm.

  “It seems Musa has created quite a name for himself over there. Always arguing and being cheeky. Abdul Jaffer told me that the boys even have bets on him. Every time he gets into trouble someone makes a lot of money.” He shook his head disgustedly.

  “He told me something about Musa dressing up as a woman and getting found out.”

  “Musa dressing up as a woman?” asked Shabnam in delight at the image she conjured up.

  “No…No…I don’t know exactly. All I know is they’re sending him home,” growled Aboo.

  “Have you spoken to anyone at the Madrasah?” asked Amma.

  “I phoned this morning and spoke to one of the alims. He said not to worry and try to think of it as a holiday for Musa. He said he needs to sort his head out.”

  Shabnam laughed. “Do you think staying here is going to straighten him out?”

  Amma looked disapprovingly at her daughter and spoke sternly. “Shabnam, don’t be stupid.”

  “What he needs is to understand that money doesn’t grow on trees, and he needs to be showing some more respect for his father’s hard work. He needs to have more fear of Allah and stop acting like a spoilt boy,” said Aboo forcefully.

  Through this noisy conversation a faint noise could be heard, the noise of a door handle softly turning and quiet footsteps that seemed to be able to contract their impact as they approached the room. The practitioner of this well-rehearsed skill was Suleiman, the second oldest son and Musa’s elder brother. Tall with a thin wiry build and a full head of curly black hair, his inscrutable eyes were like his father’s but the smooth dark complexion and the razor-sharp alertness that made him stand out as a child seemed to have come from nowhere.

  Suleiman worked with some friends who had formed a company called Sharif Construction. What Suleiman did within the company remained undefined. Aboo, happy to be relieved of his role as provider for the family never asked. Whatever it was it gave Suleiman an edge of tension that never seemed to ease and made his life largely nocturnal.

  Aboo gestured sharply at the sofa for him to sit down. Relishing his role as leader of the family, Aboo surveyed them imperiously.

  “There is nothing the matter with Musa. He is just showing off his quick tongue and he is being given too much attention. When he gets excited people always think he has a point but they forget he’s still a kid. Talking doesn’t get you places. You have to bend your back and sweat and even then you can’t be sure. Musa doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know life. All he does is daydream and I put up with it because I thought he was going the way of Allah. But if he is getting twisted I will straighten him out.”

  Amma looked up at Aboo trying to filter out the bluster in his speech.

  “How you gonna do that Aboo? Musa’s not easy,” said Suleiman.

  “And if he does stay here what’s he gonna do? Just sit around, eat and watch TV all day. You know the kind of stuff that’s on TV these days, it will drive him wild and that’s not gonna do anyone any good,” said Shabnam.

  “He needs to learn what it is to work. He needs to learn responsibility and when he learns what it is to graft, he will understand that it is much easier to learn the words of Allah,” insisted Aboo.

  As Aboo’s continual invocation of the Almighty’s name obstructed any attempt to lighten up the situation, nobody bothered replying. Trying to get something across to Suleiman, Shabnam caught his eye.

  “Do you want me to sort him out a job with the guys?” asked Suleiman.

  “No,” said Amma sharply.

  “Why not?”

  “Because black money makes people black inside,” muttered Amma.

  Though no one understood what Amma had said, everyone understood what she meant.

  “Enough!” ordered Aboo irritably.

  He settled back. “Dadaji will be coming in a few weeks. We can decide what best to do with Musa then,” he said quietly, in deference to his father.

  Dadaji was the family patriarch and the final source of authority. When the kids had been younger they had likened him to Don Corleone in The Godfather. After a while the analogy became too accurate to be funny as Dadaji was completely confident in the expectation that his sons would obey him at any cost. More often than no
t, the cost had been to his daughters-in-law whom he regarded quite unfairly as usurpers of his sons’ loyalty and money. Dadaji was old, cold, and harder than any nail. He was also wise with eyes that were both eloquent and sad. He had endured the partition of 1947 and the aftermath of poverty and hunger with unbending principle and discipline. As a consequence he feared nothing and no one and his only enemy was disobedience.

  Amma rose noiselessly and went to the kitchen and Shabnam would have pleased Dadaji greatly had he been able to observe her silent pursuit.

  Aromas that seemed to encapsulate every mood abounded in that well-lit expanse and the pressure cookers whistled with a warm gust of welcome every time mother and daughter sought sanctuary. The kitchen was the largest room in the house and the best decorated. Aboo’s thrifty nature had not been able to withstand his wife’s insistence that her domain be bright and homely. This victory shone in the tiled walls which gleamed their pattern of a yellow vase of flowers and the floor was not covered with a dull fading carpet as was the rest of the house but was instead a more modern brown linoleum. All utilities and appliances were sheltered in matching wood; even the cooker glinted with expensive stainless steel. Overlooking a small garden was a set of double-glazed windows with gold-tinted handles, and long and heated had the debate been for their existence.

  Shabnam began to peel potatoes into a large container. She did this quickly and efficiently, her mind on other things. Amma stood next to the cooker stirring a large pan. Now and then a great hiss would sound and the air would seethe with the smell of cumin and coriander. Shabnam noticed that the kitchen door was ajar and got up to close it. In the next door garden, their neighbour – a buxom woman – was hanging up clothes to dry with a fag hanging out of her mouth. Shabnam wondered if she realised that the smell would get into the clothes and ruin them. She wondered again how Suleiman always managed to hide the smell of nicotine from his family. She smiled then, delighting in the craftiness of her brother. Amma looked across at her and understood why she smiled but did not smile with her.