SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  Was it really just three weeks ago? Sikander closed his eyes. He used the sounds from the road outside to dub the memories of the trip taken with his brother, Jamil, and their father, Javed, during summer break.

  Magical Dubai! A slow motion explosion of concrete and glittering glass, it had been giddying. Everything about it was so unlike Pakistan. But now he was back and felt as if he’d peered into paradise through its windows and been told to move along. Still, his passport, from which he had become inseparable, provided some consolation. He could at least take the occasional peek at the newly-acquired stamps and kindle dreams of more to come.

  Beyond the pleasant memories, however, something deeper stirred. Sikander was troubled by his difficulties with Javed. To be sure, there was much about his father to respect; even admire. After all, Javed had built a successful business from the humble electrical parts store started by his own father not long after Partition. But for Sikander, nothing he could say or do ever seemed to earn Javed’s respect and often sparked the opposite effect. Most recently, filled with enthusiasm from the Dubai trip and the hint of involvement in the business it implied, Sikander had an idea for improving the way in which goods were stored and retrieved in their small warehouse and had suggested it to Javed upon their return.

  Like many fathers, however, Javed gave little credence to his son’s inexperienced offerings. Worse still, his ridiculing the proposal as naïve had been in front of Sikander’s mother, Sofie, and fifteen-year-old Jamil. The dismissive snickering, the witnesses, and Sikander’s own adolescent convulsions, led him to fume silently. But culture and religion ruled out wanton displays of frustration to parents.

  Sikander’s effort to repress his sulking was not entirely successful. It irked Javed sufficiently to provoke a slap on his son’s mop of hair, along with a simple “get over it.” Compounding his irritation had been the scolding Javed received from Sofie for his earlier ridicule of her firstborn. She had yet to learn of the slapping incident.

  To Sikander, his father’s dismissal of his views typified their exchanges, not least of which, were during their frequent arguments over Afghanistan.

  As far as Sikander was concerned, providing refuge to Afghans was all very well and certainly more needed to be done, but without stepping up military support, the Soviets would never leave.

  Javed didn’t share his son’s perspective. What could Sikander truly know of the world? He wasn’t even twelve when the Russians had invaded. Javed was in no doubt. Despite the undeniable benefit to his own business from their presence, the Afghans had been given too much freedom to wander around Pakistan and his beloved country was now awash with drugs and weapons, straining its already fragile social fabric. For Javed, President Zia-ul-Haque had been myopic about the consequences of his policies and should have imposed more restrictions on the refugees. Sikander’s views merely hardened his opinions.

  Now, unless Sikander’s mind was fully occupied, he invariably returned to struggling with his father’s reluctance to acknowledge the obvious. Sikander had become an adult.

  The bell rang. Sikander returned to the moment, awaiting only Aftab’s permission like the rest of his classmates before heading for the door. Aftab took his seat, pausing as he always did before any pronouncement. Finally, in a firm but amused tone he proclaimed, “Hence! Home, you idle creatures get you home!” quoting from Caesar while peering over the rims of his eyeglasses, which clung precariously to the end of his nose. The hint of a smile flickered on his lips as he gazed upon the class of ‘88 filing out of his doorway.

  “Hamid!” bellowed Sikander. “Yaar, I have to get home quickly. We’re at my aunt’s this evening and I’m losing time to get ready. Come on!” More urgent than enthusiastic, Sikander’s tone betrayed his desire to avoid further trouble at home.

  “Coming!” Hamid replied, struggling to snap the padlock on his locker and catch up with his friend.

  Hamid’s ambition was simple. Getting a Pakistani Air Force commission after high school was the only thing he cared about. As if to telegraph this, he had begun cultivating the wisps of a square mustache, emulating the look that had become popular among PAF pilots.

  Sikander and Hamid had been friends since Hamid’s family had moved into the area just three years earlier. The easygoing Hamid was generally happy to follow Sikander, a safe bet in the unlikely event of an encounter with bullies. The two families interacted on friendly enough terms and though the fathers were simply acquaintances, the mothers were the best of friends.

  Hamid had done very little over the summer break. He was keen to continue hearing about Sikander’s experiences of Dubai. It would pass the time during the walk, and Sikander was happy to oblige. Chatting as they strolled briskly toward and into the peaceful precincts of Hayatabad, they finally parted company at Hamid’s house, leaving Sikander the short walk to his own home.

  A large, cream stucco wall defined its outer perimeter. Behind the wall, the building grew like a giant redbrick tree, with its upper floors overhanging the lower ones. The dwelling was arranged with a front block facing the road and a rear U-shaped courtyard, flanked on the upper floors by the family’s bedrooms. In other respects it was not especially different from any well-to-do Pakistani home.

  Hayatabad was a better suburb than most. But as with all cities in Pakistan, the tranquility and structure within the boundary walls of most of its homes contrasted sharply with the ill-managed and chaotic nature of anything within the purview of the municipality. It was why the homes had boundary walls at all, and why they stood so high. In the middle of the front wall, the black metal gate was wide enough to admit a vehicle, and in one of its halves, a second hinged door-within-a-door allowed for convenient pedestrian access.

  Sikander waited after pressing the door buzzer. There was more calm and quiet than usual. Impatiently, he buzzed again, for longer this time.

  Jamil was home. His classes had finished earlier that day, so he came to let his brother in. Sikander brushed past him, heading directly for his room. Attempting to follow him, Jamil seemed to want to say something but before he could, Sikander cut him off, muttering, “Can’t chat now,” as he raced upstairs. He entered his bedroom, dropped his satchel on the bed, and began changing into the dressy qamees and shalwar that would be needed for the evening’s visit to his aunt’s.

  The hurried buttoning of his qamees was arrested, however, when he heard sobbing. There weren’t any young children in the house so it was hardly a common occurrence. Completing his change of clothes, Sikander followed the sound as it became louder and more familiar, leading him downstairs into the kitchen. Sofie was the one crying.

  Ordinarily, Sofie was comfortable as the one in charge of things, but there were vulnerable areas of her psyche, and whatever it was at this moment had plainly assailed some of them. Facing her from across the kitchen table with his elbow firmly planted on it and his chin on the palm of his hand was Javed.

  Sikander reflexively muttered the customary “Assalaamu ‘alaykum!” though it was clear he wasn’t about to receive the customary reply. His father briefly glanced at him, dismissively, as far as Sikander was willing to interpret. His mother, after pausing to see her son, returned to her lament with renewed purpose. His presence underscored the challenges she was processing. Unable to contain himself, Sikander turned to his father, more curious than distraught.

  “What? What happened?”

  Sikander was concerned that the problem might once again be related to the business. He didn’t want to be drawn into making yet another “foolish” suggestion.

  “It’s the business,” uttered Javed. “We’ve taken a hit from one of our suppliers. With all our past dealings, I… They’ve always been straight with me. I never expected this problem. Never.” He said, shaking his head.

  Still wary of leaping to a misguided grasp of the issue, Sikander continued, “What kind of problem?”

  “Five million! I’m out five million rupees!” Javed sighed, barely able
to contain the lump in his throat. “The Kabeers in Dubai. I’d given them a large payment for some heavy-duty motors. Huh! Borrowed most of it.”

  Such transactions normally went through bank letters of credit. However, when Javed was in Dubai, the Kabeers offered him a large shipment of the hard-to-obtain motors to come to him directly from Taiwan. They were willing to make the deal with an extra eight percent discount, but only if he paid them first by direct wire transfer. Having dealt with the Kabeers for years he had looked them in the eye, given them his trust, and accepted their terms. He had been mistaken.

  The Kabeer Brothers Trading Company had been a longtime supplier of electrical products, bringing items in from other parts of the world to the free port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates. From there, shipments could efficiently be broken down and sent to nearby countries without incurring local taxes. But internal sales in the Emirates were taxable and the Kabeers had evaded paying them. Now that the local police was seeking the brothers, any hopes of recovering Javed’s money were dashed. In 1986, the amount came to more than three hundred thousand U.S. dollars, which was a large enough figure to demand unpleasant consequences in their lives; consequences that were for Sofie, inescapably imaginable.

  “So, how are we handling it?” Sikander asked.

  “Hm! Wish I knew!” Javed replied, avoiding eye contact with his son.

  An extended family might have been helpful at a time like this, but Javed was an only child. His cousins lived in Lahore and Rawalpindi and they hadn’t been in touch for years. Sofie’s sister, Naghma, and brother-in-law, Nadeem were wealthy landowners. But they were far too aloof and full of themselves, as far as Javed was concerned. He’d die before asking for their support and certainly not for such an embarrassing problem. “We’ll have to sell things,” he muttered. “Including the house.”

  Sikander’s friendships, schooling, career, and any number of other aspects of his life would be devastated. Something had to be done. But what? It didn’t occur to him that his father might already have considered all the obvious things, when Sikander allowed his thoughts to spill onto his lips. “How about collecting from people who owe us? Economize, maybe? Sell just a few—”

  “Of course! But it won’t be enough,” snapped his father. It was the tone of wearied exasperation, usually reserved for well meaning but ill-considered offerings of the “How can I help?” variety. Sikander understood that he had probably pushed far enough, for now at least. Pathans were naturally irascible.

  Knowing that Javed had been forced to abandon school to support Sikander’s grandfather in a business crisis, Sikander was keenly aware of the same possibility befalling him. It would save money. It would thrust him into the business, and that would be that as far as hopes of leaving the country, and studying in America were concerned.

  Footsteps echoing in the hallway broke into his thoughts. Glancing behind him, Sikander saw Jamil and Sameena, their thirteen year-old sister, leaving the staircase as they approached the kitchen. They stopped at the kitchen doorway, hesitant to enter. For them the situation was grave only because their parents’ faces said so. They had little grasp of it but were old enough to be denied the blissful ignorance available to infants. Their worries added fuel to Sikander’s urge to do something.

  “If we don’t come up with a solution then… Ya Allah! It’ll mean an auction,” bemoaned Sofie. “We won’t be able to live anywhere near here!”

  Each wave of imagined consequence came crashing into her troubled consciousness, bearing its own particular brutality. She struggled to hold herself together.

  Javed continued to scour his mind for options, occasionally coming up with something that might work, only to realize a moment later its fatal flaw before moving on to the next futile idea. Between attempts, mortified by his own stupidity in trusting the Kabeers, he struggled to evict from his mind the persistent image of a jackass.

  For now, however, it would mean wearing a brave face, negotiating their way through this, selling whatever made sense to liquidate, and trying to find for themselves a new, more lightweight existence; at least until things improved. Javed also knew that Sofie could be strong once she quieted down and took a moment to focus on immediate practicalities. She was better with adversity than uncertainty and needed time to work things out in her mind. Her waves became ripples and the crying reduced to a sniffle as the normally steely Sofie began to emerge.

  “Well,” she sighed, cocking an eyebrow and staring through the marble floor in front of her, “we’ll have to start organizing what has to be done. Going to Naghma’s right now isn’t a good idea. I’ll call her.” She arose, reflexively adjusted her dupattha, and drifted off to the lounge to make the call.

  Javed turned to the children. “Look, for now, let’s avoid the long faces. Try to behave normally and pray for the family. Okay? We might work something out so let’s just…wait and see.”

  More demand than encouragement, thought Sikander. With a nod and having little else to do, he went to his room. Act normal, he mused cynically as his gaze wandered, landing eventually on the satchel still lying on his bed. Homework.

  After changing into simpler clothes, he lay on the bed with his Shakespeare open and thumbed through to the fourth act. Despite his strength in English, its arcane language was heavy going, but before long, he came to: There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

  Sikander mouthed the words silently as a smile flickered on his lips. He recognized them as one of Mr. Aftab’s many favored sayings. Along with the new realization of their origin, the words resonated with him and made him think about life’s turning points, and how the present circumstances were about as easy to imagine being a turning point as any. Maybe at this moment he was supposed to be heading in a different direction. The family’s misfortune might simply be the trigger; the flood tide of destiny urging his life’s boat to venture forward and be launched into it.

  Only a matter of time before they pull me from this expensive school, he thought, returning to more pedestrian concerns. He tried imagining leaving school and minding the ordinary affairs of the business while his father focused on extinguishing the financial fire. There was little point in his worrying about that crisis. But taking the burden of routine business off Javed’s shoulders? That was surely a different matter.

  There’s less than two years of school to go anyway, he justified. I could always return. Once we’re back on our feet. But the sinking feeling of inevitable setback was quick to engulf him. He’d be resuming classes with more junior boys in the school. His present class fellows would be out in the world pursuing careers while he still had another year, perhaps more, in front of him. Hamid would be in the PAF and no doubt flying jets, or learning how. As one thought drifted into the next, Sikander drifted into sleep.

  Leading the rising sun by about an hour, the azaan came blaring over the loudspeakers that Friday morning. In the greater Peshawar area, with its densely concentrated mosques, azaans could be heard approaching from the east, each three-minute recitation overlapping the next in a growing westbound sonic montage. Most locals were already awake from the earlier, more distant calls when the nearby Zarghooni Masjid’s loudspeakers dutifully burst into their particular rendition for Hayatabad. The soundscape meanwhile marched on, mosque after mosque, progressively fading into the west, given chase by the sun.

  After rising and performing fajr, Sikander returned to bed. He was tired and there were still a couple of good sleep hours left of the morning.

  Shafts of sunlight streamed through large gaps in the drapes. As the light fell on his eyes, Sikander stirred. The normal feeling of ease associated with any Muslim Friday-to-Saturday weekend greeted him at first, but it did not take long for the pressing reality of the previous evening to surface in his mind. After a pensive breakfast, Sikander continued his homework before preparing for Jumma.

  As they left the Zarghooni after Jumma, taking Sikander with him, Javed b
egan the firefighting task in earnest. Initially, they took to the roads of Peshawar, going from one customer’s home to the next. It didn’t help that Javed was bothering them on a weekend. In some cases, nothing was actually due and in others he was really asking for an advance on trust for the next ninety days of supplies. At best, Javed could identify commitments for a million rupees though he knew it probably wouldn’t all materialize. Depression threatened as the day wore on and nothing meaningful seemed to emerge. The more Javed struggled, the more stressed he became, further jeopardizing his ability to smooth talk the next person.

  Looking on, Sikander felt thoroughly helpless. It was hard to watch what was happening, and feeling his own inability to affect the situation, he just wanted to get away. After exhausting local possibilities, they came home so that Javed could begin making calls throughout the country to people who owed him.

  Sikander walked over to Hamid’s and swearing his friend to secrecy, let him know most of what had happened. Hamid became visibly troubled.

  “That’s serious, yaar. Where will you all go? And what about school?”

  “No idea,” Sikander replied, as he held a weary shrug.

  Neither Sikander nor Hamid realized that Hamid’s sister, Rashida, had been coming quietly barefoot downstairs before picking up the conversation at just the point where it seemed appropriate not to reveal her presence. Rashida was thirteen; too young to understand how lives can be transformed by indiscretion and too old to let an interesting neighborhood fact go to waste.

  Later that evening, Rashida let her mother, Rubina, know what she had heard about the Khans having to move and possibly being in trouble. Concerned, Rubina pondered what to do. Her family was relatively well off and they might be able to help. But with Sofie having shared nothing with her as yet, guile would be needed to uncover the truth without needless embarrassment.