School notebooks are looked at, pockets are searched for clues to the victims’ identity, the mob slowly gathers around the truck, petrol is extracted from the tank and sprinkled over its cargo of three tonnes of raw peanuts. Teddy with his broken heart and the truck driver with his bleeding shoulder both realise what is coming even before the mob has made up its mind; they first mingle in the crowd and then start walking in opposite directions.
A lonely fire engine will turn up an hour later but will be pelted with stones and sent away. The truck and its cargo will smoulder for two days.
In a house twenty miles away a phone rings. A grandmother rushes on to the street beating her chest and wailing. Two motorcycles kick-start simultaneously. Half a dozen jerrycans full of kerosene are hauled into a rickety Suzuki pick-up. A nineteen-year-old rummages under his pillow, cocks his TT pistol and runs on to the street screaming, promising to rape every Pathan mother in the land. A second-hand-tyre-shop owner tries to padlock his store, but the boys are already there with their iron bars and bicycle chains. A police mobile switches its emergency horn on and rushes towards the police commissioner’s house. A helicopter hovers over the beach as if defending the Arabian Sea against the burning rubber smell that is spreading through the city. An old colonel walking his dog in the Colonels’ Colony asks his dog to hurry up and do its business. A bank teller is shot dead for smiling. Finding the streets deserted, groups of kites and crows descend from their perches and chase wild dogs, who lift their faces to the sky and bark joyously. Five size-four coffins wait for three days as ambulance drivers are shot at and sent back to where they came from. Carcasses of burnt buses, rickshaws, paan shops and at least one KFC joint seem to have a calming effect on the city. Newspapers start predicting ‘Normalcy limping back to the city’, as if normalcy had gone for a picnic and sprained an ankle.
♦
During the three-day shutdown, eleven more are killed; two of them turn up shot and tied together in one gunnysack dumped on a rubbish heap. Three billion rupees’ worth of Suzukis, Toyotas and Hinopaks are burnt. During these days Alice Bhatti is actually not that busy. When people are killed while fixing their satellite dish on their roof, or their motorbike is torched while they are going to buy a litre of milk, they tend to forget about their various ailments; they learn to live without dialysis for their kidneys, home cures are found for minor injuries, prayers replace prescription drugs. Alice has time to sit down between her chores, time to take proper lunch and prayer breaks. Between cleaning gunshot wounds and mopping the A&E floor, Alice Bhatti has moments of calm, and finds herself thinking about that scared man with the Mauser, his mad story about the disappearing moon. She wonders if he is caught up in these riots, if he is still having those dreams. She wonders if she has been in one of his dreams.
On the fourth day a fisherman bicycles slowly through the rubble with a wicker basket brimming with his home-made fishing net. With his back to the city he dips his toe in the seawater, likes its cold-warm-cold feel, rolls up his trousers, and starts laying his net for the night.
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Nine
Senior sister Hina Alvi doesn’t ask Alice Bhatti to take a seat, and looks at her as if she is seeing her for the first time, as if it has never occurred to her that this junior nurse is capable of doing anything that has not been explicitly ordered by her.
Hina Alvi’s hands move briskly, paan is rolled in fast forward, and instead of tucking it into the side of her mouth, she starts chewing it fiercely and speaks in a raspy, nervous voice. “Just because there is no police case, just because Qaz’s family haven’t launched a formal complaint, doesn’t mean they are going to forget about it,” she says. “In fact you should be more scared that they haven’t registered a case against you. It means they want to deal with it on their own. It means they want to deal with you on their own.”
Alice Bhatti hadn’t reported the VIP room incident to Sister Hina Alvi or anyone else. In fact she went home afterwards as if she had carried out a minor surgical procedure or given someone a tetanus shot. She had hoped that no respectable man – and Junior, with his team of bodyguards and raw silk suits and a mother dying in the same VIP ward where he had been born, was nothing if not respectable – would go around complaining about a little cut on his private parts. And she was right. He hasn’t complained. Now Sister Hina Alvi tells her that she should be scared because he hasn’t complained.
“I think I should have complained. And I didn’t because I thought they were your friends.”
Sister Hina Alvi looks at her with hurt eyes, as if Alice has accused her of running a pimping racket. “I am not that old. Now sit down and tell me what happened.”
♦
People on the night shift had heard screams. Patients sleeping in the corridor had assumed it was some VIP dying. They had seen Sister Alice Bhatti walk out of the VIP room taking off her gloves and coat and shaking her head as if she had just lost a patient she could have saved. Soon after, they had seen a man running to his Devil of the Desert Surf pressing a white hospital bedsheet to his crotch. And they had connected the dots and come up with the most obvious explanation: that Sister Alice Bhatti and the man running with the bedsheet were involved in a kinky sex game in the VIP room that had gone too far. These people won’t stop having fun even when their mother is on her deathbed, they speculated. Maybe the mother on the deathbed is part of the fun. She had bitten him off in the heat of passion, and then taken it home, one rumour went. He had chased her all the way to the edge of French Colony, but had to stop and turn back because you can’t track anything down in French Colony. Even if someone has slashed your dick and disappeared, you don’t go there. Then there were those who always hear a shot during such incidents and they swore upon Allah that they heard a shot. And then there are those who always hear an autorickshaw’s silencer misfiring when they hear a shot. Nobody even remotely believed Senior’s bodyguards’ version: that it was a minor accident in the VIP room’s loo, that Junior had tucked his handgun in his raw silk shalwar and it had gone off. Only a scratch. A bad scratch but only a scratch, the bodyguards told everyone, and in turn had to field some silly questions. “Did you see it? The scratch?” they were asked. “With your own eyes? Is that part of your job? To take care of the scratch?” At which point the guards started mumbling curses and fiddling with their guns.
♦
“What would you have done in my position?” Alice Bhatti asks, as if enquiring about her options in a basic medical procedure. Do you go for stitches or do you just sterilise and put on a bandage?
Sister Hina Alvi swallows a bit of betel juice, licks a drop that is about to dribble off her lower lip, smiles and leans forward. For a moment it seems she is about to share a fond memory from her past, but then she leans back in her chair as if she has just remembered that she is a senior sister with senior sisterly responsibilities and must resist the temptation.
“I have learnt my trade at the bedside, on the job, not in some second-rate nursing school. I would not let them go that far, I would not have let the situation get out of hand. This is not some Pashto film that you are living out. This is real life. That thing that you slashed was a real cock.” Sister Hina Alvi emphasises the word ‘real’ as if the country was full of fakes.
“And he was waving that real cock of his in my real face.” Alice Bhatti feels that Sister Hina Alvi understands perfectly what she is talking about but doesn’t want to agree with her because that might compromise her official status. She doesn’t want to be misquoted later. Sister Hina Alvi feels powerless but doesn’t want to admit to being powerless. God knows how vast the Senior’s family connections are. God knows how long Sister Hina Alvi has known them. What if she herself has been through the same situation? She obviously wouldn’t want to bring that up. She wants to start blaming the victim before the victim can blame anyone else. She wants to be remembered as a solid administrator.
“You are not the first one and yo
u wouldn’t be the last one to occasionally get something in your face,” Sister Hina Alvi says, throwing her hands up in despair. “But your duty is to convince them to put it back in their pants and zip up. That’s what you are trained to do. You are not taught to go around hacking them.” Sister Hina Alvi slashes the air with her right hand like a mad TV gardener.
“And how do you suppose I should have done that? He had a gun to my head.” Alice Bhatti is angry now, as she remembers the large plate with a little sandwich on it, the smell of green tea and thousand-rupee notes. She mimes a gun with her hand and holds it to her own head.
“Cut out this gun-shun business. Everyone is holding a gun to everyone else’s head. If guns could get anyone to do anything, then this country would be sorted by now. Just count the number of guns you see on your journey here from your home and tell me if it has done anyone any good. Where is home, by the way?”
“French Colony.”
“Nice place. I hope they keep their own neighbourhood clean, your people, I mean. Because they are definitely letting this city drown in its own filth.” Alice Bhatti knows that people think that everyone in French Colony is a janitor and works for the Corporation. But she refuses to be drawn into this discussion. It never goes anywhere. “I don’t know anyone in the Colony,” she says. “I just moved there and it’s as clean as any other place I have lived in, which means not very.”
Sister Hina Alvi realises that she has touched on a topic that Alice Bhatti does not want to discuss. “What about family? Any brothers, sisters?”
Suddenly Alice Bhatti feels that she is being interviewed for a marriage proposal. She feels she might be asked if she can cook and sew, whether she would be OK living with an extended family.
“Look, what alarms me is that they haven’t called, they haven’t complained, they haven’t even written. I know their mother passed away and nothing will happen for forty days. But I can’t say what will happen after that. I went to offer my condolences and they were very polite. They thanked me. They are an old family, they have long memories. They can also be very creative when it comes to taking revenge.”
“Do you think I should go to the police? It was self-defence, you know that.” Alice knows she will not go to the police – she has struggled half her adult life to keep away from the police – but she wants to see what Sister Hina Alvi has to say about this.
Sister Hina Alvi shakes her head in despair, as if Alice Bhatti is that stupid child who is always asking why, if the earth is round, people on the other side don’t fall off into space. “In our VIP room you had to deal with one man. In the police station there will be a room full of them in your face. You’ll need a chainsaw.”
Sister Hina Alvi reaches into a file and pulls out a typed sheet of paper. “This is the best I can do. I am suspending you for two weeks. I haven’t written it on the suspension letter, but you’ll get paid. I’ll try and get the word out that you have been punished and hope that will calm them down. Consider it compulsory leave. Relax. Things will be better when you return.” She says the last sentence looking down, as if she is sure things will never get better.
Alice Bhatti takes the paper and starts to fold it carefully. “So basically I am being punished for resisting an armed assault.”
Hina Alvi lifts her enormous bag from the floor, plonks it on the table and starts rummaging through it.
Alice is already wondering what she is going to do for two whole weeks. She can’t think of a thing. Will she have to find a hobby? Or listen to Joseph Bhatti’s rants about the state of Christianity? The prospect makes her even angrier. “I thought you were my colleague. I thought you knew these people; after all, you put me on that shift. I thought you would take some responsibility for this. At least pretend to be on my side.”
She stops abruptly as Sister Hina Alvi produces a palm-sized gun out of her bag and holds it towards her. “Keep it. I hope you don’t have to use it. I have had it for four years and I have never had to. I don’t even know if it works.”
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Ten
Noor sees Alice and Teddy walking out of the Sacred, hand in hand, and starts to suspect that love is not just blind, it’s deaf and dumb and probably has an advanced case of Alzheimer’s; it’s unhinged. Look at them holding hands, whispering to each other, smiling, walking out of the hospital like they are leaving this world of pain behind for ever. Alice is pretending to have lost her eyesight, holding on to Teddy’s finger and walking with her eyes shut. She has probably lost her brains too. Noor has walked for too long holding Zainab’s hand to find anything remotely cute about anyone pretending to be blind. To have eyesight is to be blessed. Pretending to be blind when you have a perfect pair of eyes seems to him grotesque blasphemy. And to derive some kind of sexual pleasure from it is downright perverse. Noor wishes there was a government department where he could report this offence. Surely if there are laws against non-believers pretending to be Muslims, there should be a law against people with perfect eyes pretending to be blind.
Love, he concludes, is a runaway charya.
It started with a casual enquiry. Alice Bhatti came over when Noor was massaging Zainab’s feet, nudged him aside and started kneading her feet and ankles with expert fingers. “Where is that police tout friend of yours?” And when Noor looked at her quizzically, she pulled out what looked like a toy gun and pointed it towards Noor’s head. “Answer before I shoot,” she laughed and lowered the gun. “I need his help with this. I want to be able to shoot moving targets.”
“You definitely need help,” Noor sneered. “But I am not sure if my friend is the man. My friend doesn’t have a permanent address. But I’ll let him know when he shows up next.”
How can there be love between these two? Noor wonders. How can there be anything between these two? Noor knows that Alice likes sucking toffees in her breaks. He also knows that Teddy carries Accu-Chek in his front pocket to monitor his sugar level and can inject insulin while riding a motorbike. She is trying to bring order to a world full of sick people, administering IVs at two a.m., holding old women’s hands, pretending to be their daughter, reading the Kalima with them as they breathe their last. He rides high on entropy; he pees right under the sign where it says Look, a dog is pissing here. Sometimes when he sees an approaching beggar he puts his hand in his pocket, and as the beggar hovers around in anticipation he takes out a comb and starts to groom his hair. He waxes his body hair every week; she shaves her underarm hair only at Easter and Christmas, when she goes to church and wears a sleeveless dress. She looks left and right at least half a dozen times before crossing the road, sometimes walking half a mile to find a pedestrian bridge or a safe zebra crossing. He rides his motorbike at full speed on the wrong side of the road and expects traffic to part for him, and it usually does. He watches National Geographic Channel in his free time.
Alice has never had any free time.
It’s only when he sees them walking out of the Sacred compound holding hands and getting into an autorickshaw that Noor realises that he might have played a role in this fucked-up love story.
Noor had conveyed to Teddy the basic facts, in the most casual way.
“Junior Nurse Alice Bhatti has been looking for you,” he had said as he took the bandage off Teddy’s thumb. The multiple fractures had started to fester and it smelt of impending gangrene.
“Was she angry?” asked Teddy, biting his tongue; he seemed to be reliving a painful memory.
“She is always angry,” said Noor. “She was carrying a gun and she was asking about you.”
Noor knows the old saying about opposites attracting each other, but these two belong to different species. It’s like a cheetah falling for a squirrel or bats trying to chat up butterflies. Noor keeps his analogies to himself, doodles an occasional bat in the margins of his register and follows this unlikely love as it takes shape amidst the dying chaos of the Sacred Heart, which Ortho Sir has started calling Slutsville after hearing ru
mours about Alice and Teddy.
Noor sees them just before sunset behind the A&E building, Alice and Teddy’s right arms outstretched, Teddy’s chin resting almost on her shoulder, his hand steadying her hand as it aims the gun. Noor sees that their shadows overlay each other and stretch a long way, right up to the Sacred’s back wall. Noor thinks this is the saddest afternoon of his life.
In the last few days there have been other moments, little gestures that should have alerted him. Teddy curling his lips when he sees a patient talking to Alice in a loud voice, Teddy holding a door open for her for a second longer than he should, Teddy walking behind her and trying to fall in step with her, Teddy appearing at lunch breaks with fried fish wrapped in newspaper, Teddy pretending to read the newspaper, Teddy riding in the passenger seat of the police jeep rather than sitting in his designated place in the back. Noor has no idea whether Teddy is following a road map or has just woken up one day with ideas of self-improvement and coupledom. He knows not where this story is headed. Or maybe he has known all along but doesn’t want to believe it.
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