The Reluctant Mullah

by Sagheer Afzal

  He nodded at Khadija. She cleared her throat but when she tried to speak no words would come. Musa gently took her hand in his and she began again.

  “I have given myself away to you in Nikah on the agreed gift.” Khadija looked at Musa in alarm and whispered,” Wait a second, I haven’t received any gift!”

  “No gift?” asked the mullah.

  “No gift?” echoed Musa.

  Babarr swore under his breath and carefully lifted a gold chain from around his neck and handed it to Musa. Surprised at its weight, Musa gave the necklace to Khadija.

  “Good,” smiled the mullah, nodding at Khadija again.

  “I have given myself away to you in Nikah on the agreed gift, the mahr,” she said slowly and shyly.

  Musa’s eyes filled with tears and he spoke the words which he would remember for the rest of his life.

  “You are proof of the Mercy of Allah. You are the reason that I was made…I accept the Nikah.”

  “Congratulations,” said the Mullah.

  Holding hands, Musa and Khadija stepped to the front of the stage. Everyone in the restaurant jumped to their feet and this time the applause was deafening. Khadija felt a light envelop her as tears of joy ran down her face. And then everyone fell silent and, bewildered, she looked up at Musa. He was staring in horror at something or someone behind her and in that instant she knew. She turned and saw her father with a pistol in his hand, the pistol that she had so often seen him assemble. Hope diminished and her life began to abate as she felt the dart of her father’s hate.

  Major Nawaz ran. He would return a hero to his tribe in Pakistan, the upholder of his family’s honour. So much honour in the midst of such madness, so much honour and yet such misery filling the lives of his children. So much contempt from a father so base.

  Musa gently held Khadija in his arms.

  “Everything’s going to be OK. We’ll get you to a hospital. Everything’s going to all right. Just hang in there,” he sobbed.

  “This is as far as it was written for you and me.” She touched his hair and he raised his head. “I’m going to wait for you, Musa. Because I am your wife and I will be your wife in that world too. Only I have to wait for you a little bit. And you must wait for me too.”

  “No, no, please no!”

  “Musa…listen to me…It’s no one’s fault. Really it isn’t.”

  Musa’s eyes blurred and he could see her no more. He buried his face in her neck and felt her pulse weaken.

  She clutched his shoulders and moaned. “Musa…Can you hear it?”

  He blinked for indeed he could hear the words from the Holy Quran that were sounding in her mind. “Go in among My servants; and into My garden.” He could see the grey-blue eyes that for so long had been tinged with sorrow now filling with peace.

  “I won’t live without you, Khadija. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Don’t you see Musa? Wherever you are I will be there too. Don’t let hate come inside you. You must go on being you. That was what made me love you, Musa. I’m a part of you now. Promise me you won’t lose me.”

  In that instant their world of hopes and dreams split apart at the seams. A future yet to be born blew away as faintly as the breath of a dusky dawn. His passion, so great and glorious, departed and left no trace; no memory of joy, not even a smile to light up his face. As he had not heard the screams, he did not now hear the sirens: his bride was dead.

  Dadaji lay on his bed. Out of nowhere a butterfly swam into his sight. He stared at the flutter and flurry of its wings. So delicate was their play and so magical was their dance. The pretty butterfly spiralled slowly down towards him and as she flapped her gossamer wings at him, he felt his life unravel. The song of his life played to the tune of those ethereal wings.

  “I could have been a better man,” he said.

  But the butterfly let him know that at the time the angels had blown life into the womb of his mother then was written the sum of his deeds. He was all that he was meant to be.

  Hesitant and awed, Dadaji slowly raised his finger and touched the pretty butterfly and the ethereal wings stopped beating. The world ceased its motion and there opened before him a path to a mystical river. By the shore of the river was a raft on which sat two old friends and a beautiful bride. Dadaji’s hand fell with the heaviness of a burden that could no longer be borne. And the pretty butterfly beat her wings once again and flew away, quivering in the trail of her forgotten song.

  36

  Distraught, they gathered together in Babarr’s office but Musa was not with them.

  “Did she have any family?” asked Armila.

  “A brother who nobody can find and a father who’s on the run. That’s all she had to call family,” answered Babarr.

  “Musa was looking for his dream and for a moment he found it in Khadija. He really did. Some people have got memories they can always hold on to. He doesn’t even have that,” said Shabnam sadly.

  “Musa brightened things up,” said Babarr. “He was so like a kid. We all got such a buzz helping him out. I don’t get it. It just doesn’t make any sense. What he wanted was no big thing, it was so simple. But he couldn’t get to the finishing line.”

  Suleiman shrugged, unable to speak.

  “What’s he going to do now?” asked Armila.

  “Do you even have to ask?” said Shabnam. “He’ll go back to the place that makes him feel safe and secure. He won’t ever get that here.”

  “So he’ll just become another Holy Man, preaching the same sermon every Friday?” said Babarr gloomily.

  “No he won’t,” said Suleiman. “He’ll be different from the rest of them and he’ll be better than the rest of them. His heart has been cut into little pieces and that will bring him wisdom which he’ll pass on. Musa was born to be wise, just like Dadaji, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be happy because I can’t believe the truly wise ever are.”

  Musa sat leaning against a pillar in the prayer hall of the Central Mosque. In the middle of the hall was his bride’s coffin. Weeping women, her sisters in Islam, walked around it.

  His eyes fell on a phrase from the Quran etched on the inner wall of the dome, a phrase he had remembered seeing not so long ago. “Which, then, of your Lord’s blessings do you both deny?”

  Musa stared at words which seemed to be filled with a heavy inverse meaning. That chapter was said to be the most sublime in the Quran. It spoke of the fruit of the earth which sustained all creatures. It spoke of the setting of the sun and of scented herbs and of the pearls and corals that lay at the bottom of the sea, all the while asking that same question. “Which, then, of your Lord’s blessings do you both deny?”

  But, Musa thought, it is not enough to rejoice in the setting of the sun and in the bounty of the earth. It is not enough to delight in the beauty beneath the ocean. Not when you knew that you could have lived your life with a beautiful and pure woman.

  And what claim, after all, did he have over the bounties of Allah? He was raised to be a servant of Allah. All his knowledge had just one aim and that was to deepen his sense of servitude. The sun and the moon were perhaps content servants because they had no passion. It was his passion that had led to his distress and his folly was to seek an answer to a question without meaning. For there was no meaning to the puzzle of what he deserved. The angels who said we hear and we obey were better off; it was better to be made of light than to be filled with darkness.

  He remembered talking about the Garden of Eden with Khadija. In that place the boundaries were clear. Here everything was blurred. Nothing made sense, and he did not have the tools to understand. All he had was enough faith to keep bitterness at bay but not enough to fill the emptiness or take away the pain.

  Those by the coffin would at some point wipe their tears and walk away. They would look back in regret and move on and the lessons of their lives would fill their days and nights. But he, Musa, would forever carry the coffin of his wife in his nights.

  He tried to sta
nd up but was unable to. He was crying but that was OK. The tears would end and he would get up and go to the place from whence he came. And he would let it all go. He would be like a wave in the sea. In time, he too would be content with the Creator’s decree.

  Epilogue

  “Who is going to be leading the prayers today?” “Old misery guts. The man who never smiles.”

  “Mufti Musa?”

  “Who else?”

  Musa opened his eyes and stared into the darkness for a few minutes. His wife slept peacefully beside him. The sound of her breathing at the time of dawn had grated on him when they first married as it intruded on his special hour of reminiscence. Now, though, he found it strangely comforting.

  He got out of bed and walked over to a photograph of Dadaji, a teardrop on his cheek, and Khadija. He gently touched the teardrop, his first ritual of the day.

  “Will you have your breakfast now?” asked Iram.

  Musa shook his head and she cursed herself for forgetting that whenever her husband turned away from the picture he was incapable of speech for a few minutes.

  He strode across the prayer hall and nodded to the group of people who stood up as he passed. He saw Mufti Bashir watching impassively from the first floor. The elder was now wheelchair bound and a stroke had robbed him of his speech, but the different coloured eyes had lost none of their steel.

  Ali and Basto stood in the front row. They too were muftis but were much more popular than he was with the youngsters. Musa was pleased to see that the hall was full as he began to recite the obligatory Surah Al Fatiha followed by the Surah Hadid, the Iron.

  “No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or in yourselves, that was not set down in writing before We brought it into being – that is easy for God – so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain…”

  He stopped, unable to continue. Those in the prayer hall shuffled awkwardly and Mufti Bashir’s eyes filled even as Musa’s tears began to flow. Alarmed by his distress Ali and Basto broke their prayer and stepped forwards, placing their hands on Musa’s shoulders.

  He nodded his gratitude and continued in a choked voice. “God does not love the conceited, the boastful, those who are miserly. If anyone turns away, remember that God is self-sufficient and worthy of praise. We sent Our messengers with clear signs, the Scripture and the Balance, so that people could uphold justice:We also sent iron, with its mighty strength and many uses for mankind, so that God could mark out those who would help Him and His messengers though they cannot see Him.”

  Musa bowed and, placing his hands on his knees, intoned,” Glory be to my Lord the Great.”

  He then rose and said calmly: “Truly Allah is powerful, almighty.”

  “Allah is powerful, almighty,” came the response.

  About the Author

  Sagheer Afzal, whose parents come from Pakistan, was born in Harrow. He read Physics at university and after years teaching IT he is now working with school-leavers. This is his first novel.

  Copyright

  This ebook published in Great Britain by

  Halban Publishers Ltd

  22 Golden Square

  London W1F 9JW

  2011

  Originally published in Great Britain by Halban Publishers, 2010

  www.halbanpublishers.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 905559 27 5

  Copyright © 2010 by Sagheer Afzal

  Sagheer Afzal has asserted his right under the Copyright,

  Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified

  as the author of this work.

  Originally typeset by Spectra Titles, Norfolk

  Printed in Great Britain

  by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall