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The Place of Shining Light

Page 3

by Nazneen Sheikh


  There was a fair amount of disturbance on the phone line, and Khalid tried three times before being successfully connected.

  “How are you, my friend? I am sorry I have been delayed in calling you but there are good reasons for this,” Khalid said loudly.

  “Salaam, Khalid,” said Reza Mohsinzadegh, whose voice was not at all effusive.

  “Reza, I need a little more time to transfer the payment.”

  “That will not be possible, Khalid, we have an agreement,” said Reza. Although he spoke in English, his Iranian accent became heavier with ire.

  “I am waiting for a payment myself and there has been an unforeseen delay. Reza, please, we have been doing business for many years.”

  “You must respect my wishes.” Reza’s voice rose.

  “I always do. But I want you to be reasonable. It is a large payment and I need some time, that is all.” Khalid hated the wheedling tone he had to adopt.

  Reza was a senior official in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Iran, and he was not averse to making cultural artifacts disappear. Khalid had stumbled upon him at a gallery in London where some rare Persian manuscripts were being exhibited. Khalid pursued his friendship, entertaining him lavishly in an expensive restaurant where Reza ordered champagne while Khalid discussed his great love for Persian history and antiquities. Khalid deliberately courted and tempted Reza, whom he knew instinctively wanted to make more than his government salary. That night, Reza mentioned that some rare folios of Persian manuscripts had come his way through unusual circumstances and had not yet been added to the museum’s inventory. Knowing their value, Khalid took the bait. Over a period of ten years, Reza contacted Khalid about various artifacts and Khalid arranged their transportation into Pakistan. In his lighter moments, and in safe company, Khalid would chuckle and boast that his bribes to the Pakistan customs officials in Karachi were in the millions.

  On this day, though, Reza Mohsinzadegh was in no mood to exchange pleasantries. He wanted his payment.

  “My dear Khalid, do I have to inform your government about this last purchase?”

  “I don’t think that would be good for your health, Reza,” Khalid said sternly.

  “My hands are tied. As for my health, a good masseuse can untangle the knots this conversation has created!”

  “I know just the spot. Bangkok is famous for masseuses. Your health will be restored in more ways than one. Let me arrange a week there for you,” said Khalid.

  “Khalid, I will give you forty-eight hours.” Reza spoke briskly. “After that, there will be no further contact between us. Instead, our governments will talk.”

  The line went dead.

  Khalid silently handed the phone to Faisal and, with the other hand, waved him away. He closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch. He thought very carefully about Reza’s ultimatum. Was the man prepared to lose his job in Tehran over a delay in payment? Perhaps he had made enough money from Khalid. Maybe his retirement villa in Shiraz had finally been completed. The last shipment of antiquities that Khalid had bought had come into Pakistan through a diplomatic courier, and Reza had taken many risks. It was always money, Khalid thought. Someone was putting pressure on Reza and he had to buy his way out. People had to be paid. Khalid knew that better than anyone.

  Hassan appeared in the doorway, wearing a long white kurta with a high Chinese collar over blue jeans. Khalid gazed at his son’s impossibly beautiful face and grief lanced his heart.

  “What is it?” he said softly.

  “I bought a new computer today,” Hassan announced from the doorway, not stepping in.

  “A computer?”

  “Yes, a laptop. I can help you with your emails,” Hassan replied hesitantly.

  “I do my business with a handshake,” Khalid said brusquely.

  “It’s all your fault!” Hassan burst out.

  “What is my fault? You squandering my money? Not continuing with your education? Abusing your wife and marrying a prostitute illegally?” Khalid shot back.

  “I never had a father.”

  “I never had a father either because he worked day and night, but at least I learned from him.”

  “I hate the things you collect.”

  “I buy history, Hassan. It is the only thing that tells us who we are,” replied Khalid.

  “I prefer animals.”

  “What kind of animals?” Khalid asked, bewildered.

  “Horses, buffalos, and camels. We can race them and make a lot of money,” Hassan replied.

  “Get out!” Khalid shouted.

  As Hassan spun around and darted away, Khalid lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and tried to regain his composure. Reaching his son was next to impossible. Sharing his present dilemma with him was unthinkable. Only Faisal, his devoted nephew and assistant, could be relied upon. Faisal was the son Khalid deserved. He could never inherit anything from Khalid, yet the young man stayed by his side, learning everything he could about the world of antiquities. Faisal entered the room quietly. His devotion brought tears to Khalid’s eyes; all he could do was clasp Faisal’s shoulder and embrace him.

  Knowing that Khalid was upset, Faisal said, “Chachu, you are my father and my teacher, and it is an honour to be by your side.”

  Khalid knew that these were the words he would never hear from Hassan.

  “Faisal, I have two obstacles to overcome. I need solutions immediately.”

  “Please do not worry. Just tell me what you need to do first,” said Faisal.

  “The ISI agent turned out to be a thief and has disappeared with the statue. We need to find him ourselves.”

  “We have a senior contact with the police in Peshawar,” replied Faisal, reaching for the phone.

  “No.” Khalid removed the phone from his grasp. “We have to work independently. The police cannot be involved.”

  Faisal stood up. “Then I will go myself and take two people with me.”

  “I need you with me, Faisal. I need you to contact the carpet dealer.”

  Faisal was stunned. The man Khalid referred to was the greatly feared leader of a Taliban group who was seldom seen in public. Khalid had befriended the man in Afghanistan after one of Khalid’s gem traders was kidnapped and the “carpet dealer” rescued him. Khalid flew to Kabul to thank the man in person and reward him with a very large sum of money. As the two men sat cross-legged on a faded rug, Khalid convinced the bearded Afghan with the hard eyes to come to Peshawar to trade. Khalid made a casual request for some carpets to get his business started and overpaid generously to buy the dealer’s eternal goodwill. The man shifted his base to Peshawar and became prosperous. The carpet business was a convenient cover for his work with the Taliban.

  Khalid opened a little notebook and read out a number for Faisal, who dialed the phone and handed it back to Khalid. The telephone rang for a long time. Eventually, it was picked up, but no one spoke.

  “Sher Khan, this is Khalid. I need your help, brother.”

  “Wait, I will call you back.”

  The line disconnected and Khalid waited. After a minute, the phone rang from a blocked number.

  “Salaam alaikum, Khalid sahib.” Sher Khan’s voice was unmistakeable.

  “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam. I need an Afghan lion to hunt a jackal for me.”

  “You want him alive?”

  “Yes. He has taken something that belongs to me,” said Khalid.

  “Khalid sahib, it is always better to kill the jackal.”

  “That is not how I do business, Sher Khan. He will never find a job again and that will kill him for us.”

  Details were exchanged, and Sher Khan assured him that a tracking team would depart immediately. Khalid thanked him profusely.

  KHALID HEADED FOR his personal living quarters, where his wife, Safia, had turned one of his exhibit halls
into a bedroom flanked by a sumptuous marble bathroom. A velvet canopy hung above their antique, hammered-silver bed. Their sitting room had a matching set of pure silver armchairs and a chaise upholstered in brocade. The walls displayed stunning works by famed Pakistani artists. Around the room, glass étagères housed exquisite sculptures and silver filigree work from Kashmir. The entire suite shimmered with an ethereal light. A door through the sitting room led to the dining room, and beyond this to his wife’s kitchen. The kitchen had a large glass window that looked out onto rolling hills. Here Safia cooked all the family meals herself, sorted her fresh produce from the markets, and placed packages in her deep freezer. This was her chosen world. Khalid could have placed an army of kitchen staff at her disposal but she refused. She cooked for Khalid, Hassan, and the rest of the family — even guests never ruffled her feathers. She could prepare an array of dishes at short notice.

  As Khalid entered the kitchen, Safia looked up from the carrots she was slicing.

  “Are you ready for lunch?” Her curly brown hair rippled down to her waist.

  Khalid shook his head.

  “What is it?”

  “My shoulder is hurting again,” Khalid said.

  Safia set the knife down and rinsed her hands at the sink. She returned to her husband and placed her hands on his shoulders.

  “Come with me. I will massage some ointment into your shoulder.”

  Khalid followed her to their suite. Just under five feet tall, Safia had retained her girlish appeal; it often appeared that she skipped rather than walked. Khalid loved his wife deeply, fully aware that all of the wealth he placed at her disposal was of very little interest to her. Her simplicity and domesticity was how she expressed herself. She loved her children fiercely and habitually sheltered Hassan from Khalid’s wrath. But she loved her husband too, and possessed a thorough understanding of his temperament. Khalid suspected that she knew it was more than an aching shoulder that had brought him to her kitchen at midday. They seldom met at lunch, but always had dinner together unless he was entertaining for business. Half of Khalid’s business world was known to her and the other half concealed. Safia had grown to love the art that Khalid collected and, followed by a retinue of housekeeping staff, she organized mammoth dusting exercises a couple of times a week.

  After taking off his shirt, Khalid sat bare-chested on the edge of the bed. Safia knelt behind him, applied the ointment with light fingers, and then massaged his shoulder. Her hair, which slipped over his shoulder, was lightly scented with a fragrance he could not place. The tenderness of his wife’s ministrations made Khalid close his eyes and savour this blessing in his life. When he opened his eyes a few minutes later, his gaze rested on the antique Persian glass perfume bottles adorning Safia’s ornate dressing table.

  Reza Mohsinzadegh’s thin-lipped, pallid face floated in Khalid’s mind. He stiffened involuntarily.

  “What are you hiding from me, Khalid?” Safia whispered.

  “I have a bill to pay, Safia, and it is large,” he said, then rose from the bed and slipped his shirt back over his head.

  “Do you need money?”

  “I have money, but there has been a delay in its arrival. I will get it,” he said, and smiled at her.

  “I can give you what you need.” Safia replied, sitting back on the bed.

  “Oh, so you have a secret bank account now.” Khalid winked at her.

  “No, I have my Mughal jewellery. It belonged to a queen, but I am content to be myself. Sell it,” Safia said.

  “Please do not talk about the jewellery I have given to you. You will wear it forever,” Khalid replied.

  “You have given me so much, Khalid. I want to help if you are in trouble.”

  “I do not need your help, Safia,” he replied, then walked out of the bedroom.

  The sun blinded him as he walked across a large terrace that led to a flight of stairs. Reza had to be reminded of a few hard facts. Khalid returned to his office and called Shiraz again.

  “Khalid, I am in a meeting,” Reza said curtly.

  “You will have a bank credit in a week, Reza. That is the best I can do. Listen to your Persian nightingales and wait,” Khalid said before disconnecting the call.

  A few minutes later, Khalid stood before the intricately carved door of his Mughal pavilion. One of his workmen flipped through a heavy ring of keys until he found the right one and opened the door. Khalid stepped inside and motioned to a stack of paintings that leaned against a wall. He sat in a chair and asked the man to turn each one over for him to see. The works by Pakistan’s legendary trio of master artists — Naqsh, Sadequain, and Gulgee — still enthralled him. Khalid felt as if he were at a poker table, holding three aces.

  THREE

  GHALIB — BENT OVER THE BILLIARD table. He glanced over the cue at his fourteen-year-old protegé and noticed how his worn T-shirt outlined the contours of his rib cage. He looked down the length of the table and slammed the cue into the cluster of balls. The game was over. He had lost again. Ghalib straightened up, handed the cue to the next teenager who stepped forward, and walked out of the large playroom and onto the unpaved ground. The wall sconces embedded into the stucco walls of his ancestral village home, deep in the heart of the Punjab, lit the night air. He gazed toward the main wooden gate and nodded at the armed guard who immediately shot up from his reclined position. Ghalib’s two cars were parked farther down the driveway under a vast tree. In the distance a huge generator, sitting on a trailer behind a tractor, hummed furiously. Here, in the village, was where Ghalib felt most comfortable. It was 1 a.m and although the night stretched ahead of him, it was in fact only the start of his day.

  Ghalib wore a blue-plaid cotton sarong and a white undershirt, but his feet were encased in soft leather slippers. At seventy-three, his belly had distended and his balding head retained only a ring of grey hair. He wore spectacles and his gait was ponderous thanks to the stiffness that plagued him in one hip. His melodious voice and expressive face still retained all the evidence of a superbly handsome man. Although his life had once been as redolent as the champa tree, Ghalib was now covered with a deviant stench; these days, he lived only to fulfil his sensorial pleasures.

  Ghalib had not worked for more than five years in his entire life. He lived on his inherited wealth, which took the form of agricultural land. His only noteworthy pursuits were his poetry and paintings. His most costly addiction was the acquisition of art. His other addictions did not cost him a penny.

  Ghalib’s latest act of lunacy was a run for Parliament in his home constituency’s upcoming elections. Ghalib embellished his existence with lofty dreams of putting this political feather in his cap. He actually believed that if he delivered his hard-pressed and disenfranchised villagers’ vote bank to his political party, he would be rewarded with a weighty cultural portfolio. No one in Ghalib’s immediate circle had the courage to tell him that he had not lifted a finger to improve the conditions of the villagers by either building more schools or setting up a medical clinic. His reputation in the village was based solely on philandering and the assumption of a thoroughly courtly air.

  Ghalib was typical of Pakistan’s landed gentry, who controlled the destinies of people whose lives bore a striking similarity to the indentured serfs of an earlier era. He maintained two country estates and a large town home staffed by villagers who continued to see him as a benign patriarch. His largely invented family history was part and parcel of Punjabi culture. Punjab was a sprawling province responsible for most of the agricultural revenue of the nation. Provincial folklore and mythmaking were equally fertile. In the salons of his country home, large, framed portraits of his turbaned and bearded ancestors, eyes glowing, hung in dubious splendour.

  As the largely ignored son of a dazzling father, who rejected Ghalib’s mother for a foreign wife, Ghalib had no endearing father-and-son tales on which to fall back. He was edu
cated at good schools, picked up an undergraduate degree from Oxford, sat for the civil service exam, and added an American diploma to his resumé. He then married a slender, luminous-eyed woman from a noted family, produced two beautiful children, published poetry, and painted sporadically. After the untimely death of his young wife, he spiralled into severe clinical depression, from which he emerged after a few years, and constructed his town-and-country life. He became a master consumer with appetites that were carelessly concealed. Of late he had become more reclusive, abandoning his society friends but holding court at night with art dealers, pimps, singing girls from Lahore’s red-light district, and a host of teenagers from his village. His generosity knew no bounds as he fed and watered his motley entourage by ordering copious meals from his gentlemen’s club.

  Ghalib was served by a personal valet who dressed him to the point of kneeling down and slipping on his socks. His house boasted a moody chef; a lascivious, burly head butler, who was a fount of gossip; a good-looking, tall chauffeur with an erect carriage; and a comely maid who was not averse to offering sexual favours to her employer or his guests. There was also a gaggle of gardeners, handymen, carpenters, and a group of cleaning boys who did rotational visits from the villages. Members of his staff travelled with him back and forth from town to country along with his easels, paints, and canvasses. Being a nocturnal creature, Ghalib travelled late at night with a pistol under the driver’s seat and a prepared meal served to him by his valet in the moving car. Life was good for Ghalib and despite his largely fictional ailments, he was built to endure.

  Ghalib’s art collection was substantial and worthy of any museum. The paintings had been skilfully amassed, and interspersed among the masterpieces were his own works: large canvasses bearing the vision of a Punjabi artist besotted by large trees and women with almond-shaped eyes and mounds of pubic hair. His work was largely second-rate, with an odd exception or two in which Ghalib had taken some risks and pulled off a wonderful painting. Had he starved in a garret, his work would have more likely achieved its potential.

 

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