Teddy Butt waves his gun towards Noor’s shalwar. “Show me. Prove it.”
Noor wants to shout out his defiance. No. No. It seems it doesn’t matter whether you are in that hellhole called Borstal or this hellhole called the Sacred. They like to play the same games. In the Borstal, every crime, real or imaginary, every mistake, accidental or deliberate, ended in a punishment that involved Noor taking off his shalwar.
Noor wants to tell Teddy that he doesn’t do it any more. Not in front of his mother. So what if she can’t see him naked. He is seventeen years old and she is his mother and he can see her. He was twelve and Zainab still insisted on changing his clothes with her own hands as it gave her a measure of his growing body, but the day he got his first erection he refused to let her change his clothes again. Now she reaches out sometimes and feels the fuzz on his face with the tips of her fingers and sighs.
He looks at Zainab, who has slipped back into deep sleep now, her mouth slightly open, a fly hovering over her nose. He wants to go and shoo it away.
He shakes his head in an emphatic no.
The jab that brings his left eyeball out of its socket is a gun slap, the side of the gun hits his temple, something pops and there is an intense pressure in his forehead as if his eyeball is straining to leave the socket behind. As he drops his shalwar, he has an intense desire to look in a mirror. His right eye is shedding tears, his left eyeball has popped out of its proper place. But he doesn’t feel pain any more. He just doesn’t want a shot fired here. That would not only wake Zainab but also really scare her. Loud bangs give her headaches that last for days.
Noor wants to move his hand to push his eyeball back in its socket but decides against it because that might remind Teddy that there is a trigger on this gun and probably a few dozen bullets in it, waiting for the slightest movement of his finger.
Noor starts to educate himself. Watch the finger on the trigger, forget about all the crap about the man behind the gun, all the nonsense about steady nerves; what he might say or how you might answer is all redundant. Because that slight movement of the finger can terminate the most persuasive argument in the world.
Teddy starts putting his guns in a bag like a plumber finishing his job. Then in a casual voice he asks Noor, “Do you love her?”
If somebody had asked this question during the day, without the presence of a gun, Noor would have laughed it off, he would have used the word ‘co-worker’, mentioned their camaraderie; he would have definitely invoked team spirit and family atmosphere. After all, he is Dr Pereira’s protege; he has learnt all the good manners and ultra-polite, pointless bullshit. He might even have said she was just like his elder sister. But now with an eyeball dangling out of its socket, his lip broken and a tooth lodged in his tongue, he knows that Teddy has asked the only relevant question: Noor knows that he loves her, whatever that means. It’s often said that love turns some people into martyrs and others into poets and philosophers. Obviously it turns many into downright liars and criminals.
“You are asking the wrong question,” he says calmly, as if he is taking the medical history of a stupid patient who doesn’t know what to ask his doctor. “What you should be asking is, does she love me?”
Teddy listens to him quietly, as if trying to decide whether what Noor has said might mean something else. “And last I saw her, she had a baby. A boy. Shouldn’t you be worried about that baby?”
“Baby?” says Teddy.
“A very cute baby. Everyone’s saying it’s a miracle. You guys need to communicate more.”
Teddy moves towards Zainab and pulls the pillow from under her head. Zainab sits upright for a moment looking straight ahead and then falls back on the bed and starts to snore. Noor has had enough; he lunges towards Teddy. But Teddy has drawn his pistol and moved its safety catch. He wraps the pillow around his left forearm and presses the gun into the pillow. For a moment he shuts his eyes and his face muscles clench in anticipation of pain, like a junkie a moment before the needle enters his flesh. The sound of the gunshot is strangely muffled, like someone coughing into a pillow. But suddenly the room is full of white little feathers flying everywhere. Some have blood on them.
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Twenty-Seven
“Should we give him a name? I hate it when people call him ‘dead baby’,” says Alice Bhatti, sitting in the passenger seat of Hina Alvi’s tiny car. Hina Alvi is an awkward driver. She doesn’t drive so much as she carries out a running feud with her car, banging her fist on the dashboard, changing gears abruptly and promising to teach it a lesson when it stalls. It’s strange to see her outside the Sacred. Suddenly she is in a world where she doesn’t have total control, where she cannot expect each one of her wishes to be carried out. Her face is softer, even her hair looks a bit limp and real. She drives hunched over the steering wheel, and curses every time a vehicle passes her on the wrong side.
“Can we call him Little Yassoo while we think of a proper name and do the paperwork?” asks Alice.
“Is that a joke? Little Jesus? Does this world need another baby prophet? Do you want him to die young and single and misunderstood for eternity?”
“I had a neighbour who was called Jesus Bhatti,” says Alice. The car bumps over a speed breaker and the baby begins to cry.
“See, even he doesn’t like it. I think just Little is fine with me.”
Alice picks up Little from her lap, puts his head on her shoulder and presses him against her chest. His shaved head tickles her cheek. They travel in silence. Little falls asleep in Alice’s arms. She looks towards Hina Alvi and wonders if she should thank her for offering to put her and Little up, but then decides that it might be a bit early.
♦
Sister Hina Alvi opens the double lock on the door of her second-floor flat; the air inside is stale, as if trapped for a long time. Burgundy-coloured frayed velvet curtains are drawn, and even when Hina Alvi flicks on a light, the room stays semi-dark. She takes Alice Bhatti straight to a bedroom, as if she doesn’t want her to see the rest of the apartment. The bedroom is small but has a double bed on which Hina Alvi has already prepared a little nest for the baby, complete with a pink baby blanket and rows of plastic parrots on a mobile positioned over the pillow.
“Nestle formula is in the fridge, nappies in the cupboard. I am going to sleep for a while. If you need anything, just knock on my bedroom door,” says Hina Alvi before walking out of the room. Alice feels that Hina Alvi is already regretting her decision to invite her to stay.
As Hina Alvi shuts the door behind her, Alice sees a Bible Study Centre calendar from the year before hanging on the inside of it. This is probably her idea of making me feel at home, Alice thinks. Alice does feel at home and drifts off into a deep sleep with her hand on Little’s stomach. When she comes to, it takes her a while to orient herself. Little has wet his nappy; she changes it, cleans the drool on his face, comes out into the living area and goes straight to a window to draw the curtain.
“I don’t like to open the curtains. I have some really nosy neighbours.” Hina Alvi’s voice catches her by surprise.
Alice Bhatti looks back. It takes her a moment to locate Sister Hina Alvi, and when her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees her kneeling in front of an open cupboard. First she thinks that Hina Alvi is looking for something in the cupboard, then she realises that she is still on her knees, hands folded at her chest, and she seems to be whispering something vaguely familiar. “Are you OK?” Alice asks. When she doesn’t get a response from Hina Alvi, she rushes towards her, suspecting that she has either pulled a muscle or is having a stroke. She stops when she is just behind her. In the cupboard, right in front of Hina Alvi, is an altar, a simple affair, plaster-of-Paris Yassoo figurine on a tin tray, some withered marigolds and a tea candle.
Alice Bhatti freezes; she feels as if she has walked in on a very private act, that she is witnessing something she is not supposed to, but she is afraid to move back now. Backtracking would
mean that she had meant to spy on Hina Alvi, and now that she has discovered her secret, she wants to walk away with it. Next she does what she thinks is the only logical thing to do: she starts to go down on her knees behind Hina Alvi, but as soon as she bows her head and folds her hands, she hears Hina Alvi say, “… and the glory be yours, now and for ever”, more of a sigh than a prayer. Hina Alvi gets up, blows out the candle and shuts the cupboard. Alice Bhatti finds herself praying to a Formica panel.
“No reason to get excited. I am the same senior sister you have known all along,” Hina Alvi says, taking her dupatta off her head and sitting on a chair at the small round dining table.
“Do people at the hospital know?” Alice Bhatti is not excited, just flabbergasted. She has always felt ambivalent about faith-based camaraderie, she has never bought into we-are-all-His-sheep-type sentiments. In fact she feels a bit let down. Is Hina Alvi helping her because she considers her a sister in faith? What is Hina Alvi’s faith anyway? What kind of woman goes around insisting that everyone address her as Ms Alvi, a name only slightly less Musla than Muhammad, and then goes home and prays to a Yassoo hidden away in a wardrobe?
“What is there for them to know? Why do they need this knowledge?” Hina Alvi’s voice is low, as if she is talking to herself. “Will it improve the conditions in the hospital? Will it save somebody’s life?”
“It’s your personal choice and I know that you are not the first one. And who can blame people if they choose to hide their religion? All I am saying is that you have done a good job of it. I never suspected – ”
Alice Bhatti is cut off sharply by Hina Alvi. “What would you have suspected? Is this some kind of illness that a trained nurse like you should have detected?”
Alice Bhatti keeps quiet and desperately wishes that Little would wake up and start to cry so that she can get out of this awkward situation. She wants to be understanding, she is understanding, but she also knows that whatever she says will come across as some sort of inquisition.
“I slept with Mr Alvi. I was married to him, hence the name. I pray to Lord Yassoo because I was born a Christian.”
“You took his name?” Alice Bhatti asks in the hope that they’ll talk about her marriage. Maybe she’ll tell her something more about Mr Alvi. Why can’t they just be two colleagues talking about their bad marriages instead of suspecting each other of bad faith?
“What’s wrong with taking your husband’s name? Everyone does it. And if you think I should have gone back to my maiden name after my divorce, then you try changing your name on your ID card and see if you can do it in one lifetime.”
Alice Bhatti feels that this conversation has already gone too far. “Yes, I know. That’s why I never thought of changing my name. Do you want me to make some tea? Is there anything else around the house that I can help you with?”
“Oh, stop trying to be a considerate house guest. It’s so irritating. That’s why I never have people over. Either they are rude and want to be waited on and leave filthy cups and plates behind. Or there are others who just want to take over your house and rearrange the furniture.” Hina Alvi is staring at her as if trying to decide whether she can trust this girl with her kitchen or her life story.
“I am only trying to help,” Alice says and turns to go back to her room. She is already wondering how she can escape this place without offending Hina Alvi any further. She is also wondering who are worse: Catholics, or Catholics pretending to be not Catholics?
“Hannah. That was my name. Hannah,” Hina Alvi says, slightly lost, as if she has just remembered a word that she hasn’t used for a while.
“I guessed that much. Easy enough.”
“Massey. Hannah Massey.”
“Bishop Massey’s daughter?”
“You are quite naive, even for a Sacred nurse. No wonder the whole city thinks you are some sort of idiot-saint. Do you actually believe Bishop Massey’s daughter, any bishop’s daughter for that matter, would be slaving away at the Sacred? She can buy a hospital in Houston if she wants. Actually she runs a bed and breakfast in Houston.” Hina Alvi laughs. “Imagine. Madame Massey always had her breakfast served to her in her bed and now she runs a bed and breakfast. They are distant relatives but still very embarrassed at their poor cousin who went and married a Muslim. If I was a bishop’s daughter, I would probably not change my name either.”
“I am no bishop’s daughter, not even related to a common priest. But it never occurred to me to change my name.”
“Well I like the name Alvi. And changing back to Massey might give someone the idea that here is a Musalman abandoning her faith. And you know how much they disapprove of that. Listen, I am a fifty-one-year-old single woman. That is a whole religion in itself, with its own rituals. It has its own damnation and rewards. I don’t think I need to shout Lord Yassoo’s name on street corners to prove who I am. Can you make some tea now? Two tea bags for me, please.”
♦
Next morning, over breakfast, Hina Alvi is relaxed. With her washed hair draped in a towel, she helps Alice to bathe Little, who can’t seem to make up his mind whether he likes being immersed in warm water or not. One moment he giggles, the next moment he begins to cry his lungs out.
It’s after Hina Alvi has made breakfast of toast and fried eggs and Alice has made two cups of tea that Alice musters up the courage to talk about her pregnancy. Hina Alvi isn’t surprised, and if she has any sarcastic insights to share about contraceptives and nurses, she keeps them to herself. Her advice is measured and to the point. Alice needs to tell Teddy immediately. The only thing marriage is good for is children. Men change after they have children; they don’t necessarily become better human beings but bearable human beings. Sometimes they become responsible and grow up, even bums like Teddy have the potential. Alice must not give him the impression that she is planning to leave him, even if she is planning to leave him.
“You go, make him a meal and wait for him to come home. Then sit down at the table with him and tell him with a smile. Tell him he’s going to be a father. They like the sound of that. And if he continues to be an absentee dad, then we’ll kick him out.”
Alice Bhatti is not sure if this is such a good idea. She has just cleared out her wardrobe, she doesn’t want to lug her stuff back to Al-Aman and pretend nothing has happened. And what would she do with Little? She can’t leave him with Hina Alvi.
“I’ll take him with me to the Sacred. I have got enough slaves there to take good care of him.” Hina Alvi is precise with her instructions. “And when you are done, come back to work. We will both wait for you there.”
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Twenty-Eight
Inspector Malangi brakes hard to avoid running over a spotted dog that jumps from the pavement and starts to limp leisurely across the road. The car stalls. He has been planning to get his battered Toyota overhauled soon or replace its engine (or get a new chassis and a new body as well, but he has been wondering whether if he replaces both it would still be the same car). He restarts the car but before he can move forward, the traffic light turns red. Inspector Malangi hears the knock on his car window and rolls it down to shoo away a boy who, in his thick jacket, is clearly overdressed for the weather as well as this kind of work; he is offering him a trip to Mecca in lieu of five rupees. Since when did beggars start wearing Klashni jackets at traffic signals? Inspector Malangi wonders. He has just given and received his farewell presents at the G Squad headquarters. His short speech had ended with a plea to ‘forgive and forget but remember me in your prayers’.
He is feeling generous, like people do when embarking on a new life, and his hand automatically reaches for his wallet as he prepares a short lecture about the curse of begging and the dignity of work. The boy opens his jacket, flashes a rusty-looking Mauser, then bends down, puts his neck through the window and whispers, “Hands on the steering wheel.” The traffic signal starts its countdown: 90, 89, 88…
Inspector Malangi almost pitie
s this boy who, with a gun tucked inside his jacket, thinks that he has got the situation under control. If Malangi presses the accelerator down to the floor, he’ll probably find the boy’s decapitated head in his lap, leaving a writhing, headless body on the road. But he knows that boys this age don’t understand the velocity of life. There was a time when he would have done something like that just to teach the boy a lesson, but he has left that life behind. He wants to spend his retirement working on his children’s maths, a subject in which they have consistently underperformed, despite private tuition. After thirty-six years of public service, the only thing Inspector Malangi has learned is that the next generation needs to do better at maths than you.
“Take out your wallet and put it on the dashboard.” The boy in the Klashni jacket looks sideways as he barks his orders. A newspaper hawker, an old man in a tracksuit, hurries towards Inspector Malangi’s car waving a copy of The Daily Ummah, but then sees the robbery in progress and swiftly crosses the lane using the newspaper to fan himself and continues to hawk his paper on the other side of the road.
Inspector Malangi feels a pang of nostalgia for the life he has left behind just this afternoon. The days and nights that he spent hunting them down, talking to them late into the night, testing their supple young bodies to the limit. He’ll miss these boys. This one looks quite jittery and nervous, someone new at this, someone still not sure whether what he is doing can be a long-term career option or just a one-off for tidying up his monthly budget. Inspector Malangi looks past the boy in the Klashni jacket, and, as he expected, he sees another boy on a motorbike, poised to take off, revving the engine, looking at the traffic building up behind them, then looking at the traffic light, where the red-digit countdown continues in slow motion. A baseball cap is pulled over his face, and Inspector Malangi has that veteran policeman’s premonition that he has seen this boy before. But boys this age all look the same; fashion victims with no individuality.
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