Joseph Bhatti suddenly remembers that he is talking to Alice, his daughter who has just come home after fourteen months in the Borstal. He feels he should tell her about his life, give her some parental advice. “I did your Pereira Sahib’s house for a few weeks. To pay back for all the help that he gave us, all the petitions he filed. And they fed me in their Choohra dishes and then washed their hands as if I was spreading leprosy. They hovered around me at a distance thinking that if I touched something it would get contaminated. I’d rather clean up sewers. When I walk the streets, the streets belong to me. Have you noticed that when I walk the streets with my bamboo, they cross over to avoid my shadow? What are they scared of? Getting contaminated by their own refuse?”
“I don’t know about others, but Dr Pereira is a decent person. He was my only defence witness. He even bailed me out the first time.”
“I know, they are good at that. Dressing up and turning up for events. Courts. Meetings. Prayers. Funerals.” Alice Bhatti knows by now that when Joseph Bhatti says ‘they’, he doesn’t just mean Dr Pereira and his fellow doctors; he means anyone who has become a clerk in local government, or a receptionist at a foreign embassy, or a guest relations officer in a hotel; any woman who has set up a Montessori school in her living room, everyone who doesn’t work for the Corporation. And even in the Corporation, if you have risen to become a supervisor, you have joined them.
“And then they turn up at church on Sundays wearing their suits and their devotion, as if Yassoo is not the saviour of all mankind but an usher who has got their names on the guest list, who’ll escort them to the roped area in the VIP enclosure, as if he was born and died and was resurrected for the sole purpose that he can whisk them through the formalities and take them into paradise.”
Alice Bhatti starts collecting the plates and speaks without looking up. “I am applying for a job, at the Sacred. I need money to buy a uniform. I’ll return it to you when I get my first pay cheque.” She doesn’t expect a straight answer. She actually expects no answer. If he has the money he’ll leave it on the kitchen table; if he doesn’t, he won’t. He won’t talk about it. He is as likely to talk about money as she is likely to tell him how she dealt with her periods in the Borstal.
He gets up and starts to go out, then stops at the door and looks back. “Choohras were here before everything. Choohras were here before the Sacred was built, before Yassoo was resurrected, before Muslas came on their horses, even before Hindus decided they were too exalted to clean up their own shit. And when all of this is finished, Choohras will still be here.”
“Yes,” says Alice Bhatti, the fresh graduate from the Borstal. People can learn various crafts in jail: to pick pockets, to wield a knife, how to use your knee in a fight, to plant flowers in pots made out of cardboard or hook up with someone and hatch a plan to kidnap a film star, or to write poetry. Alice has learnt only one thing: to keep quiet and speak only when absolutely necessary. “Yes, when everything is finished, Choohras will still be here. And cockroaches too.”
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Seven
The out patients department corridor is cleared of motorbikes, bicycles and anything else with wheels; there are no food trolleys, wheelchairs, stretchers. Even mops and buckets are piled along the wall, as if the Sacred is closing down for the summer. A gleaming double-cabin Surf, so new it seems to have just rolled off a Toyota assembly line, is parked in the corridor. Those who saw it bump and screech its way up the staircase, negotiating the steep ramp meant for emergencies, are still whispering to each other in admiration and awe. “No, no, it’s not 3400cc, I bet it’s 4200cc. Yes, I know it’s a four-by-four but it didn’t even have to engage that to climb up.”
The number plate bears no numbers. In red lightning bolts it says Devil of the Desert. Everyone seems to understand what that means. Habitual sticklers for parking rules, especially grumpy ambulance drivers, approach it gingerly, planning to lecture the owners about parking etiquette. But at the back of the cabin, in the open half of the vehicle, are seated four men in uniform. It’s not the uniform of any state institution or a recognisable security agency, just black cotton shalwar suits and crimson berets with a random number of stripes on their shoulders. Their Kalashnikovs are pointed vaguely outward, the muzzles lazily tracking any passer-by, even when the gunmen are looking the other way. There is only one person in the front, a driver sporting the same uniform but with more stripes, one arm dangling outside, holding a revolver and flicking its safety catch off and on out of sheer boredom. He seems like the kind of person who, if bored for too long, could start a small massacre.
Patients milling about the ward are not scared by this little militia; they are resigned to the fact that someone has arrived with a shiny new object and obviously the owner has every right to protect his investment. They had seen the owner step out of the vehicle: Rolex, Ray-Bans, Bally, Montblanc; he walked like someone wearing a million rupees’ worth of accessories in a place where half a pint of O-positive costs two hundred rupees. It’s only the grumpy ambulance drivers who have a problem internalising the notion that it’s not just a vehicle with a whimsical number plate; it’s movable property. It can’t be parked just anywhere. They are missing the whole point. It needs to be protected, but it also provides protection. The vehicle occupies a space and then makes it its own, like a ferocious dog marking its territory.
♦
“Your bedside manner has really improved,” Sister Hina Alvi tells Alice that morning, unexpectedly tousling her hair and then withdrawing into her professional reserve. “But there is always room for improvement, so I am assigning you a room where you can really improve. VIP Two. Night shift. Don’t think you are doing me a favour. I am doing you a favour. Fatima Jinnah spent a night there.”
Alice feels a bit baffled, first at her own ignorance about the history of this place, then at the fact that this knowledge is not likely to help her in any way in performing her duties. She does wonder how Sister Hina Alvi gets all that time to read history books. Doesn’t she have a family to take care of? It must take her a couple of hours every day just to do that hair.
“Have you read her letters to her brother?” Sister Hina Alvi asks her and continues without waiting for an answer. “Did you know that Fatima was a dentist, a trained dentist? But she sacrificed her whole life for this country. And how do we remember her? As an old spinster. Someone gives you their whole life and what do you call them: mother of the nation. Now if her brother is the father of the nation, how can she be the mother of the nation? They could have called her sister of the nation, but no. Because then people might have mistaken her for a nurse, one of us. It’s a nation of perverts, I tell you.”
Alice agrees. Sister Hina Alvi might be a control freak, but at least she has a sense of history.
If the patient is so very important, what are they doing in the Sacred? Alice wonders. Why not Agha Khan Hospital, if they can’t go to Singapore or Bangalore, where hospitals are like holiday homes, complete with kitchens and swimming pools.
“She is old money.” Sister Hina Alvi looks at Alice in a now-what-would-you-know-about-that kind of way. Her voice conjures up polished wooden floors, walls full of commissioned portraits, family names adopted from central Asian villages and combination lockers stacked with cash and secrets. “Her father died here, her children were born here,” she says. “She is not one of those new importer-exporter types who boast about their grandfathers dying in Cromwell Hospital. She has roots. And those roots are here.”
Alice Bhatti has a vision of the Old Doctor in the courtyard, its trunk made up of gleaming Hilux metal, its branches twisted Kalashnikov barrels, little birds in black uniforms and dark sunglasses and oversized berets hopping on its branches. Sister Hina Alvi sees a smile spread on her face and reminds her.
“You are on death watch, not on a picnic.” She puts the glasses on the bridge of her nose and spreads the newspaper in front of her.
Life has taught A
lice Bhatti that every little step forward in life is preceded by a ritual humiliation. Every little happiness asks for a down payment. Too many humiliations and a journey that goes in circles means that her fate is permanently in the red. She accepts that role. “I’ll do my best.”
“Her name is Begum Qazalbash, but she likes to be addressed as Qaz. Convent education, a very self-made lady in a family where even the sixth generation of men don’t have to do anything to make a living.” Sister Hina Alvi speaks without taking her eyes off the newspaper.
Alice Bhatti doesn’t pay particular attention to the Surfer or its number plate. She has seen enough nicknames, poetic flourishes, family titles, fictional cities and urban legends passing themselves off as vehicle licence plates. She is not amused by somebody’s high-school idea of looking important. Devil indeed, she thinks. Why don’t they pray to their Devil of the Desert for their Begum of Qaz.
As she enters the corridor that leads to VIP 2, she sees a little gathering of men, a small army wearing black shalwar suits, sitting amid a jumble of Kalashnikovs, eating a meal from stainless-steel plates. They are passing around a naan the size of a tablecloth and are in the midst of a passionate conversation about the comparative merits of the country’s best jails. Somebody suggests that Machh might be the most difficult to get out of but that it is the only one with running water in its bathrooms. “More showers than I have taken in my entire life.”
“What showers?” Another guard speaks through a mouthful of food. “You were probably jerking off your death-row friends. Didn’t they call you Helping Hands?” The Machh jail man giggles and slaps the joker with a piece of bread.
Alice Bhatti stands looming over them and wonders how to negotiate this lunch party when one of them, an elderly man whose henna-coloured moustache somehow complements the mistrust in his eyes, notices her.
“Let her pass.” He moves the plates aside.
“Someone needs to search her,” the death-row slut shouts. They stop eating but keep sitting with their heads down. As if the only thing they haven’t learnt in jail is to figure out when a woman stops becoming a threat.
“How do we search her?” someone asks. “Can’t you see she is a woman?”
“A sister,” someone else chimes in, licking the gravy from his moustache with his red tongue.
The plates are moved aside, the bread rolled, and eight pairs of eyes follow Sister Alice’s feet like those of caged animals who have just learned to respect their new captor.
The double door closes behind Sister Alice with a discreet, expensive VIP click. A blast from the heavy-duty air conditioner hits her in the face and she smells roses. Later she will count eight bouquets of different sizes. There is the strong smell of coffee cake and green tea. She takes in the patient, a fat old woman with pink cheeks and silver-grey hair, the kind who is always described as a grand old lady, defying disease, her upper half covered in a two-coloured shatoosh shawl. Alice was once told by a transfer prisoner in the Borstal that these shawls cost as much as a two-bedroom house. A sandwich nibbled delicately at the edges sits on the bedside table on a huge china plate.
Two men, their ages indistinguishable and relationship unclear – they could have been thirty or fifty, brothers or uncle and nephew – are sitting in the lounge area, taking little sips from their cups and playing a quiet game of poker. The place is set for three people but the third position is empty, and they take turns playing for the absent player. Some old-money family tradition, she thinks. They look at Alice and nod with indifferent politeness. Their faces are puffy; too many late nights and fading illusions of power. The rustle of a fresh thousand-rupee note is the only sound in the room. Death watch indeed, Alice Bhatti thinks.
She looks at the bedside chart, fiddles with the IV, looks under the bed for a pan. The attendants play with quiet intensity, as if following an old family ritual, as if their mother’s life, or auspicious end, depends on the result of this game of cards. CNN plays on a small television. Wolf Blitzer promises to be back in a minute. Fashion models from a developing African country wearing bras made of coconut shells and elephant bones walk down a ramp. Alice Bhatti sits down on the bedside chair and wonders about this woman’s life. Her vitals are fine but there is impending renal failure. Periodic blood transfusions will keep her alive but she’ll have to go in the end. She has probably had the kind of life that induces people at funerals to shake their heads approvingly and say, “What a fulfilled life”, in tones of mock envy usually reserved for lavish weddings and fanciful birthday parties. Two fat sons at the table, an army of guards outside and a naughtily named vehicle is enough proof of a life well lived. But there is probably more: vaults full of jewels and immaculate wills drawn up by family lawyers. A paid obituary will appear in the papers with a long list of mourners at the end, a list so distinguished that the newspaper will refuse to charge for the advert.
Wolf Blitzer, as he had promised, comes back asking in a voice full of television despair: “Can we really cut a good deal with the bad guys? Which way is it going to go?”
Alice Bhatti notices that the younger man, the clean-shaven one, is restless now. He is not even concentrating on his cards and he pushes his stack of notes absent-mindedly towards his senior partner. He is imagining me naked, Alice thinks. It never ceases to amaze her that men, even those on death watch, all think the same thing. One eye on the dying mother, the other on the paramedic’s tits. She is relieved that at least it doesn’t matter whether you are doing your duty in the filthy general ward or in a VIP room, some of the rules are the same. She feels at home for the first time. She allows herself a little smile.
Sister Hina Alvi had explained to her in one of her lectures: “They are grieving, they want to cling to someone, they want to cling to life. They want to be comforted. And your job, indeed your challenge, is to comfort them without canoodling them. Some mix up the two and bring a bad name to our profession. That’s why when your average man hears the word ‘Sister’, he gets an erection.”
The younger one clears his throat and says, “Can we have some cake, please?” Alice is amused at the fact that these people can’t tell the difference between a nurse and their personal maid. Old families treat everyone like a servant. She puts on a smile, slices a thick wedge, puts it on a plate and plonks it on the table. As she turns to go, Junior stops her. “Pick up a card, please.” Alice hesitates for a moment, then bends down and picks up a card from the deck. In that instant she can feel Junior’s gaze piercing through to her cleavage. She hands him the card and in turn he picks up a thousand-rupee note from the table and waves it in front of her. “Here, you have won.” Alice doesn’t mind accepting little gifts from her patients and their carers, but nobody has ever offered her a thousand-rupee note. “I am not allowed to play cards while on duty,” she says, and turns to go back to her seat. Then she looks back and says, “But thank you.” She doesn’t want to offend them.
She sits on the chair and is wondering if she should ask them to change the channel when Junior points towards the TV and asks, “OK if I turn up the volume?” Alice gives a confused nod. He gets up, finds the remote and turns up the volume. Wolf Blitzer is still not sure which way it’s going to go but has moved on to the bad deals that all the good guys have been getting.
Junior comes and stands close to Alice, so close that his crotch is practically in her face. The smell of sweet perfume is so overwhelming that she has to hold her breath in order to stop herself from sneezing. She tries to stand up. He pins her down with one hand and pulls out a revolver from under his shirt, then stands there with a blank face as if he has forgotten what he was planning to do. “Suck,” he says in a low voice, as if asking for another slice of cake, waving his revolver towards his crotch.
Alice Bhatti realises that all her struggles and dreams will die in this VIP room. She wonders if Sister Hina Alvi or Dr Pereira know anything about this family tradition. She fears that if she resists she’ll end up back in the Borstal. This time for l
ife, probably. “What?” she says, still not quite able to believe the suggestion. His shalwar is around his ankles now and a flaccid piece of cold meat grazes her cheek. She feels a wave of nausea rising from the pit of her stomach and clenches her throat muscles. She doesn’t want to throw up in front of a patient. The barrel of the pistol hits her face and a bit of vomit spurts out of her mouth.
“Do you really have to?” Senior speaks in an exhausted voice from his chair.
This gives Junior another idea, and he says to Senior, “I can’t. Not in front of you.”
“OK. I’ll go for a walk,” Senior says in a voice full of protective concern. “But for God’s sake don’t wake up Qaz.”
As the door clicks shut, Alice is slapped again, hard. She still thinks she hasn’t done anything to deserve this, but she has made up her mind to go through with it. There is, however, nothing to suck at. Her tormentor is still flaccid. He seems intent on doing something that his body has no desire to do. With her eyes shut, Alice reaches out, takes it in her left hand, and pumps her fist a few times. As soon as it stiffens, Junior’s hand gripping her shoulder goes limp, as if the rush of blood to his groin has made him weak and light-headed. With one hand still on his penis, Alice reaches with the other into her coat pocket and only looks up when she hears him scream. She is careful and steps out of the way of the tiny shower of blood that has erupted from his penis.
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti Page 6