by Paula Guran
He looked at me with awe, then at Baba, who stood by the door, hands laced behind his back, looking pleased. “He’s good,” Mr. Kurmully said.
“Yes,” Baba said.
“So when are you retiring, Jamshed?”
Baba laughed. “Not for a while, I hope. Anyway, let’s get on with it. Daoud,” he said to me, “can you find the pain point in his ankle?”
I spent the next thirty minutes probing and prodding Mr. Kurmully’s diabetic foot, feeling between his tendons for nerves. It wasn’t easy. Over the years, Mr. Kurmully had lost two toes and the stumps had shriveled, distorting the anatomy. Eventually I found two points, braced myself, and gently shot them.
“Feel better?” I said, as Mr. Kurmully withdrew his foot and stepped on it tentatively.
“He won’t know until tomorrow,” Baba said. “Sometimes instant effect may occur, but our true goal is nocturnal relief when the neuropathy is worst. Am I right, Habib?”
“Yes.” Mr. Kurmully nodded and flexed his foot this way and that. “The boy’s gifted. I had some burning when I came. It’s gone now. His first time?”
“Yes.”
“Good God.” Mr. Kurmully shook his head wonderingly. “He will go far.” He came toward me and patted me on the head. “Your father’s been a boon to our community for twenty years, boy. Always be gentle, like him, you hear me? Be humble. It’s the branch laden with fruit that bends the most.” He smiled at me and turned to Baba. “Let me pay you this once, Jamshed.”
Baba waved a hand. “Just tip the Edhi driver when he takes the cadaver. One of their volunteers has agreed to bury it for free.”
“They are good to you, aren’t they.”
Baba beamed. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was sudden commotion at the front of the clinic and a tall, gangly man with a squirrel tail mustache strode in, followed by the sulky-faced Edhi driver looking angry and unhappy.
Baba’s gaze went from one to another and settled on the gangly stranger. “Salam, brother,” Baba said pleasantly. “How can I help you?”
The gangly man pulled out a sheath of papers and handed it to Baba. He had gleaming rat eyes that narrowed like cracks in cement when he spoke. He sounded as if he had a cold. “Doctor Sahib, you know why I’m here.”
“I’m not sure I do. Why don’t you tell me? Would you like to take a seat?”
“Just read the papers, sahib,” he said in his soft, nasal voice.
“Oh?” Baba looked at the Edhi driver. He was a gloomy, chubby boy fond of charas and ganja and often rolled joints one-handed on his fat belly when waiting at red lights. I had ridden with him a couple of times and once he showed me his weird jutting navel. Everted since birth, he told me proudly.
“Zamir, what’s going on?” Baba said.
“Sahib, they’re giving us trouble with the burial,” Zamir said. “This man is from the local Defend The Sharia office. They have a written fatwa stating that since the dead boy was Christian he cannot be buried in a Muslim cemetery.”
Baba turned back to the gangly man. “Is that true, brother?”
Gangly Man thrust the papers into Baba’s hands. “This is from Imam Barani. Take a look.”
Baba took the roll, but didn’t open it. “This boy,” Baba said, “was tortured by someone.”
Gangly Man’s shoulders stiffened.
“He was beaten badly. His teeth knocked out with a hammer. Someone took a razor to his mouth. When he was near dead, they threw him in the river.”
Gangly Man’s lips pressed into a thin, white line.
“He was sixteen. He had a scar on his stomach from a childhood surgery, probably appendectomy. He wore a tawiz charm on his forearm his mother likely got from a Muslim saint. You know how illiterate these poor Christians are. Can’t tell the difference between one holy man and another, and—”
“Doctor Sahib.” Gangly Man leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “He and his filthy religion can ride my dick. My orders are simple. He will not be buried in the Muslim cemetery, and if I were you I wouldn’t push it.” He grinned and shook his head as if talking to a child.
Baba’s face changed color. He looked around and for the first time I saw how angry and tired he was. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Maybe he hadn’t. It was hard to know. He and Ma were talking less to each other lately.
“If you make it difficult for us, well, things could go many ways, couldn’t they? Sometimes clinics run by quacks can be shut down by provincial governments until NOCs are obtained. I don’t even see a diploma on your wall. Surely, you went to medical school?” Still smiling, he toed the foot of the threadbare couch, the only piece of furniture in the room. “Besides, you might be Muslim but blasphemy is blasphemy, brother, and punishable under the Hadood Ordinance. The boy is Christian. That cemetery is not.”
The Edhi driver took Baba’s arm and led him aside. They talked. Zamir gestured furiously. Baba’s shoulders rose and sagged. They came back.
“We will take the body to Aga Khan Medical College and donate it to their anatomy lab,” cried Zamir.
“But he has already been—” Baba began
“I’m sure they will find more to do with it,” Zamir said, nodding and smiling.
Gangly Man took the front of his own shirt with a tarantula-like hand and began to shake it, fanning his chest. “Very wise. How they will appreciate you!”
Baba remained silent, but a heavy ice block appeared in my belly and settled there. I turned and ran from the clinic, ran all the way to our house three streets down. I burst into the shed and went to DeadBoy and wrenched away the tarp. His insides were tucked in with thin stitches. I yanked the stitches out, peeled back his skin, and pressed my gloveless fingers into his muscles. I discharged the biocurrent again and again until his limbs twirled and snapped, a lifeless dervish whirling around his own axis. I let the electricity flow through my fingertips like a raging torrent, until the room sizzled with charge and my nostrils filled with the odor of burnt flesh.
After a while I stepped back. My cheeks burned and the corners of my eyes tickled. Even though it was close to noon, the shed was dark from a low-hanging monsoon ceiling. Interstices of sunlight fell on DeadBoy’s half-face, revealing the blackness of his absent teeth and his mutilated lips.
“Sorry, DeadBoy,” I said.
He twitched his shoulder.
The movement was so unexpected that I jerked and fell over the toolbox on the floor. I sat on the sodden ground, gazing at DeadBoy, my heart pounding in my chest. He was still. Had I imagined it? That movement—it was impossible. The deadboys couldn’t move without stimulus.
I got up and went to him. His disfigured flesh was placid and motionless.
“Hey,” I whispered, feeling foolish and nervous. “Can you hear me?”
The shadows in the room deepened. Somewhere outside a swallow cheeped.
DeadBoy never said a word.
After the Edhi driver hauled DeadBoy away, I walked around for a while. Soon it began to drizzle, the kind of sprinkle that makes you feel hot and damp but never really cool, so I took off my shirt, tucked it into my armpit, and ran bare-chested to Sadiq’s house.
He lived in the Christian muhallah near Kala Pul, a couple kilometers away. His two-room tin-and-timber house was next to a dirty canal swollen with rainwater, plastic bags, and lifeless rodents, and the rotten smell filled the street.
His mother opened the door. Khala Apee was a young-old woman. Her cheeks were often bruised. Her right eye was swollen shut today.
“He’s at the Master sahib’s,” she told me in a hoarse voice. She smoked cigarettes when her husband was not home, Sadiq had told me. “He’ll be back in an hour. Want a soda?”
They couldn’t afford sodas. It was probably leftover sherbat from last Ramadan. But what was Sadiq doing at Master sahib’s? Summer vacation wouldn’t be over for another month. “Thank you, but no, Khala Apee. I’ll wait under the elm outside.”
She nodded and tried to s
mile. “Let me know if you want something. And if you can, do stay for dinner.”
Plain roti with sliced onions. No gravy. “I’ll try, Khala Apee. May I borrow a plastic bag?”
She brought me one. I went to the charpoy under the elm where we sometimes sat and made fun of our families. Rain pattered on the elm leaves and hissed on the ground, and as I sat there with my plastic-draped head on the steeple of my fingers I thought about Baba and Ma and how they had been arguing for months. Ma was worried about the house, she wanted Baba to start charging patients. Baba refused. His father and grandfather had never charged a fee, he said. They lived on food and gifts people gave them.
Ma laughed bitterly. Those were different times, you fool. So different. And the house, what about the house, Jamshed? We are in debt. So much debt. What will you do when they come to take our home? If you cared as much about your family as you do about your goddamn corpse-learning, we could live like normal people, like normal human beings.
But we’re not normal, Baba protested. This is a good way to blend in, to be part of this world. Be part of the community—
Blend in? Mama said. We will never blend in if you keep antagonizing them. What was the point of arguing with that mullah? You know they are dangerous people. You keep going like this, we will never be part of the community. How could we be? We are . . .
Sadiq was shaking me awake. “Hey, Daoud, hey. Wake up.”
I opened my eyes. “Hey, how was . . . what?” I said when I saw his face. Sadiq was a small boy with mousy features and at the moment they were chiseled with worry.
“You’ve got to leave, Daoud,” said Sadiq, glancing around. “Now.”
“What’s going on? Everything okay?”
“Yes. Master sahib had heard some rumors and he wanted to warn us. He . . . ” Sadiq gnawed at his lip, his fingers still tugging at my arm. “Go home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Why?” But he was already leading me away from the elm and toward the canal. The drizzle had stopped and the canal water eddied gently. I put on my shirt and watched as Sadiq took a tin box from his pocket and tied a brick around it with jute twine and twice-doubled rubber band. He waded into the shallow canal and deposited the box at a spot two feet from the bank.
“What are you doing?” I said when he climbed back up the embankment.
“Nothing,” he said, but his voice was strange. “Run back home now. I’ll come by in a couple days if I can.”
I went up the canal road, occasionally looking back, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Sadiq stood there, hands in the pockets of his shorts, a skinny, brown boy with a sad face and a fake-silver cross gleaming around his neck. Sometimes even now I see that cross in my dreams, throwing silver shadows across my path as I trudge down alleys filled with heartache and rotting bodies.
As I glanced back one last time, Sadiq took off the cross and slipped it into his pocket.
Baba was waiting for me.
“Where were you?” he said, his eyes hard and red. “I was worried sick.”
“At Sadiq’s. I wanted to—”
“Foolish boy,” he said. “Don’t you know how dangerous that was? Don’t you realize?” I stared at him, feeling my head throb. He saw my incomprehension and his voice softened. “Someone vandalized a church in Lahore yesterday. Someone else found feces strewn in a mosque in Quetta. As a result, two people are dead and tens more injured in riots around the country. These tensions have been building for a while. You saw what that Defend The Sharia asshole did this morning. This will only get worse. You cannot visit Sadiq until things settle down.”
“But what does Sadiq have to do with that?”
Baba gazed at me with pity. “Everything.”
I met his eyes and whatever was in them frightened me so much that my hands began to shake. I couldn’t stand facing him anymore. Quickly I walked past him and went to my room, where I sat on my rickety charpoy and watched the dusk through the skylight. In the other room, Ma prayed loudly on the musallah. She might have been crying, I couldn’t tell. I tried to read a medical textbook Baba gave me for my last birthday, but my mind was too restless, so I gave up and went to the kitchen where Ma had arranged unwashed raw chicken breasts on a chopping board.
I lay my hands on the meat. I thought about Sadiq and his tin box, and softly let the current flow. The chicken breast jumped and thudded on the wood. I discharged again, this time with more force, removed my hands, stepped back, and watched as for a whole minute the meat slapped up and down, squirting blood that puddled on the wooden board, making curious dark shapes.
That should have been impossible but clearly wasn’t.
In school during physics class our teacher had explained capacitors to us. Strange ideas came to me now. Words that Baba taught me from his textbooks: cell membranes, calcium-gates, egg-shaped mitochondria, and polarized ionic channels. Could they act as capacitors at times and hold charge so the flesh would stay alive even after I removed my fingertips?
The boy is gifted, someone said in my head.
I should have felt better. Instead I felt angry and miserable. I went to Ma’s room and opened the door.
She was sitting on her haunches in front of the only pretty piece of furniture in the room, a mahogany dresser Baba’s mother gave her as a wedding present. Ma had been fiddling with a half-open drawer, a jewelry box glittering in her hand. When I entered, she plunged the drawer into place. “Are you so ill-mannered now that you won’t knock?”
“Sorry, Ma. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Idiot boy,” she said quietly. Her gaze drifted back down to the box she held, fingers sliding up and down its metallic edges. The space beneath her eyes was dark and wet. “Next time mind your manners.”
I thought it prudent to remain silent. Ma lifted the lid and gazed within and her eyes turned inward. The effect was so intense that for a moment she looked dead, her lifeless eyes watching something in the box, or behind it. Uneasy, I took a step forward and glanced inside. A picture of a naked man nailed to a cross, surrounded by wailing people; then Ma was snapping the lid back into place so violently that I jerked and fell back.
Ma’s hands shook and she said something that didn’t make sense, “Never wanted to come here. Your father made me. I never wanted to leave my people,” and she glared at me hatefully. It was a brief moment, but nothing in my life since has made me feel so ashamed. So lonely and self-loathing; a mutant child broken and hated forever.
I turned and ran from the room, blinded by anger or tears or both, while my mother watched me from the darkness of her room, the jewelry box still in her callused hands.
Later they told us it was an accident, that a wooden shanty caught fire and set the muhallah ablaze, but we all knew better.
It was the tail end of monsoon season and the rains had petered out which worsened the conflagration. Fifty Christian houses burned down that night; the flames and smoke ceiling could be seen from as far as Gulshan Iqbal, we were told. Twenty people died; Sadiq’s father (who survived tuberculosis and, later, the 1999 Kargil War) was among them. Their corpses were pulled out from the wreckage, burnt and twisted. Sadiq’s mother recognized him only by the hare-shaped mole on his left foot.
When I went to see Sadiq, he sobbed on my shoulder.
“They took everything,” he wept. “My house, our belongings. My father,” he added as an afterthought. “They burnt the house down. My cousin saw them, I swear to God.”
“Which God?” I said. My right arm was around him. My left hand dug so hard into the flesh of my thigh I popped the blood blister a biocurrent discharge had raised on my finger. “Which God?”
He stared at me with bloodshot eyes, threw his head back, and cried some more; while his mother sat stone-like in the charpoy under the elm, rocking back and forth, her face blank. One hand tapped the bruises on her cheek. The other hid her lips.
I held Sadiq for as long as I could, then I went home, where Ma sat knitting a cotton sweater. Winter wou
ld come in two months, and we couldn’t afford to buy new clothes. Baba was out—he’d been delayed at the clinic—so I sat at Ma’s feet and counted her toes. Ten.
She watched me through the emptiness between her needles and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yes.”
“It was horrible, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t we take Sadiq and his mother some naans and beef korma tomorrow? I’m sure his mother is too upset to cook right now.”
I recalled Khala Apee’s vacuous stare, the hand covering her mouth, and nodded.
Ma placed her knitting needles aside, lowered herself to the floor, and hugged me.
“The world is a bad place,” she whispered. “We’re in danger all the time. People who are different like you, like us . . . can sometimes seem like a threat to others.”
I listened. Outside, thunder cracked. The skylight window rippled with water as the night opened.
“You use your gift to heal others, you hear me?” she said. “Don’t get involved with anger or hatred or sides. There are no sides. Only love and hate.”
Behind me the door banged open. My left eye twitched, the vision in it dimmed transiently, and cleared. Ma sprang to her feet.
“Zamir?” she said. “What is it?”
“Your husband,” someone said. I turned. It was the Edhi driver. His hair was dark from rain. His cotton shirt was soaked and I could see his abnormal navel protrude through it like a hernia.
“What about him?” Ma’s voice was full of fear. “What happened?”
Zamir had a look on his face I had never seen before. His lips trembled. “There was an incident at the clinic.”
Ma stared at him, eyes wide and unbelieving, then comprehension dawned in them and she screamed. It was a sudden noise, sharp and unfamiliar, and it wrenched the air out of me. I shrank back and clutched the end of Ma’s couch, and the knitting needles slipped and fell to the floor, forming a steel cross.