He then turned around the cardboard he was holding to his chest and we all witnessed a collage of black-and-white pictures of a horribly scarred back and arms. The crowd fell into a hush. Men looked around, searching one another’s faces for clues about how to react.
. . . if any one of you, respected brothers or friends, still doesn’t believe me, or has doubts, he is welcome to come with me and visit my brother and ask him to pray for him. Because God put him through such a misfortune, his prayers are heard and people find their heart’s desires through his means. If you cannot come along and still wish to benefit, here is some water that he has prayed on. It will cure all kinds of pains and aches. Five rupees each bottle . . .
I wasn’t sure what to make of it but in a strange way I felt an affinity toward him. He reminded me of something—something I did not wish to think about. I kept watching him from a distance as the crowd thinned out. He sat on his haunches, carefully removing the two pieces of the dangling dagger from the sides of his neck. I stepped closer. He continued to wipe his neck and face with a little white towel, which had turned crimson with the goo he had pasted all around his neck. He threw the towel on the road, and stood up.
“I want to see your brother. I am a news reporter. I have to interview him and ask him for some prayers.” I said all this in a rush of breath and immediately realized my mistake.
“Mash’allah.” He smiled welcomingly. God has willed it. And then, putting his finger inside his mouth to pick his teeth, he asked, “You want to come with me now?”
But I did not wish to go. I wanted to be home, to be in my apartment. To be away from this man. From this feeling of knowing him.
My father was particularly fond of stories from the long epic fantasy Tilism Hoshruba. In those stories about evil sorcerers and good tricksters, when a sorcerer was killed, his head would split open and a bird would spring out announcing the sorcerer’s name and the murderer’s name one by one. “In this city, a part of us dies each day, and a bird springs out of our open skulls each day announcing our deaths and the address of our murderers,” he said to me once while we were taking a walk at the beach, “but nobody listens. The air is thick with the chorus of these birds of death. Listen.”
My father imagined the world and each object as part of continuous stories. In his stories the unfounded were found, the universe answered his questions, the past was visible, and the future illuminated. Things had reasons and they all connected.
But unlike my father, when I looked back into the past, all I saw was pitch-black darkness and heard unnamed voices trying to override each other in their attempts to reach me—and I felt indifferent to all of them. That’s when I concluded that my father’s way of imagining the universe was naïve, simplistic, and wrong, just plain wrong. He was wrong about the world. The world and its stories did not continue or cohere. We were all just broken parts and so were our stories. True stories are fragments. Anything longer is a lie, a fabrication.
But now, faced with the Bird of Death, I felt as if one of my father’s fabrications had come alive and I was in the middle of one of his stories. I had no choice but to follow.
I followed the Bird of Death through the ballooning mass of men, watching the hem of his pink cloak drag along the road. He seemed to be in a hurry, and at the back of my mind I was evaluating the sorts of risks this sort of journey entailed.
I felt awkward being in this part of the city. I was back here again after years, in the ferocious noise on the street. Everything around me was shouting—the vendors, the cars’ horns, the rickshaws—even ordinary things hollered, “Watch where you’re going!” The leaning telephone pole yelled at you if you stepped too close to it. Everything could hurt. Insulation was the most important lesson you learned on Karachi’s roads: see as little as possible, hear even less, and touch absolutely nothing. Half the trick to surviving here was to learn to extricate yourself from all the invasive influences around you while keeping a calm appearance. The other half was to emanate some of those influences, so that strangers would stay away.
I followed him onto a bus where we took the bench seat right at the back. The ever-open rear door was the only major source of ventilation apart from the jammed plastic windows.
The conductor stood at the rear gate of the bus, shouting out the names of the stops the bus would make: Nayee Karachi number teen, Kharadar, Meethadar, Ta, Ta, Ta, Ta . . . (Ta, the short form for “Tower,” which is the short form of “Mereweather Tower.” This is the other rule of this city—fit things to your need, even if it’s a name. Borrow someone’s finger and make it your screwdriver.)
Finally, the bus moved, like a giant turning in his sleep, and as soon as it gained a few inches, the conductor was upon us. He pointed the bundle of sweaty notes in his hand at me. “Yes, brother, where do you want to go?” I took out the change and turned toward the Bird of Death to ask him for our destination, who said, “He’s with me.” The conductor took the money from him and moved on. We exchanged smiles. “You didn’t have to do this, you know,” I said.
“No, no. You are our guest today. Please.” He smiled. I was startled by the change in tone. It was an honest smile.
“So . . . is this all you do? Help your brother?” I asked him after an uneasy pause.
“No, I have other jobs too.” He smiled.
“What do you do?” I asked, but he didn’t hear me. He was eyeing something outside the door. He winked at me. “Watch what I do now.”
He slid off the seat and went over to the open rear door and waved wildly to a young kid selling newspapers on the road. The kid dodged traffic and ran toward the moving bus, holding out a paper, shouting, “Which one, which one do you want?”
“Not the paper, boy! I want to know the latest news! Tell me the latest news!” the Bird of Death shouted back.
The boy had reached very close to the bus when he got the joke. His face flushed with anger and he stopped dead in his tracks and yelled at the top of his voice, “YOUR MOTHER IS BEING FUCKED ON THAT ROAD OVER THERE! THAT’S THE LATEST NEWS! YOU UNDERSTAND, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
The bus gained speed and he just stood at the gate waving his fist at the kid. “Stay here you bastard! Stay here! Tomorrow I will come and fuck you! Just wait! I will come for you tomorrow!”
When he returned to the seat, judging from his face, I realized it would be impossible to continue speaking to him. Then he unzipped his bag and I saw a gun lying on top of his other paraphernalia.
“Listen, can we do this interview later? Next week, maybe?” I asked after a few minutes had lapsed.
“No,” he replied without even looking at me. “Do it now. I have come here only for you. You do it now. I have informed them. They are waiting.” Then he suddenly turned to me. “Show me your ID card again,” and then reading my face, he moved closer and said in a lower voice, “show me. I have a weapon. You saw, right?”
I handed him my ID, which read: REPORTER/SUBEDITOR. (I was only a subeditor, but they always added an extra designation, in case they fired somebody and needed a quick replacement.) “Hmm, yes, it looks fine,” and then he pocketed my ID. “I’ll keep this as security,” and smiled. “Just do your work and we’ll be fine.”
They say everybody in Karachi has their own crime story: people were looted and beaten up on the streets, inside banks, in their offices and homes, on buses, in cars and restaurants and cafés, but I was in a unique position where I was accompanying the criminal to his preferred spot. None of my father’s stories had bastards like this one.
We sat together in silence, without even exchanging glances. He was looking out through the open door. After about twenty minutes, he stood up and banged the door. The bus slowed down and we got off. So this was where it will be: in a squatter settlement. He turned to me. “Just be respectful. Don’t ask too many questions. Listen to the answers carefully and don’t question a question. Also, don’t ask too many questions.”
He was walking briskly ahead of me, almost unmindf
ul of me following him. For somebody holding me at gunpoint, technically speaking, he was doing a pretty poor job. But I think both of us knew that it was his area and I would not try to run away, so I just tried to pay attention to the maze we were in, making mental notes of things I could remember in case I had to find my own way back. As we went farther, the lanes became narrower, houses turned into shabbier huts made from an assortment of tattered jackets, old bedsheets, wooden lattices, plastic nets, bamboos tied with plastic bags. It almost seemed impossible how they were a single construction the way they grew out of each other’s backs and fronts. They all seemed knotted at each other’s torsos, and one wrong move could undo a whole row of houses.
Officially speaking, I was nowhere. This place did not exist. A million people here didn’t actually exist on the state record; hence this place had no official source of water or sewage lines. People dug their own holes and installed hand pumps that drew undrinkable water. The children lived and played in garbage heaps and died of common fevers and mosquito bites.
Settlements such as this one bleeped on the radar of the city only when an “operation” was under way against a criminal gang located there. These places supplied cheap labor for this city’s large industry and the majority of its domestic servants. And yet, most people in the “civilized” parts of this city would have never visited a settlement such as this one. It was the long dark shadow of their city they chose to ignore.
He turned into a broad lane and we stood facing a solid cement and brick house. My sandals by now were covered in the dark thick stinking slime and I could feel the sticky thing even on my feet. The place smelled exactly like a garbage dump.
There was a long queue outside the house, mostly women, standing and squatting in the heat.
We entered the house through a back door, which was hidden behind a pile of trash. We climbed up a narrow staircase, and as we stepped into a room, the stink entirely disappeared. “Wait,” he instructed.
He went behind the curtain, and reappeared in a couple of minutes. “Just remember what I said: don’t ask too many questions,” he cautioned me once more as he parted the curtain for me.
It was a large room littered with charpoys, at least six of them, and had dirty cyan walls, and—on one side, in a TV-trolley-like box, sat the dark head of a man with a big, silent smile and a thorough gaze. He was just shoulders and head. In a box. A giant head. On giant shoulders. Below the shoulders his body was concealed in a box from his chest downward. It was a box with wheels. Little box. About two-thirds the size of what his torso would be if he had one. . . .
His naked, scarred hands gathered food from a plate set in front of him. The skin on the visible part of his body and hands seemed like shriveled pieces of desiccated, parched mud. His face was healthy with well-cut, oiled hair combed to the side, and a neat, dark, and dense beard. His palms showed mutilated stumps instead of fingers of different lengths; the thumb seemed like the only surviving tree in that thicket. He dipped his fingers in a plate of rice and lentil and consolidated the contents into a lump that the thumb deftly gripped and the hand brought to the mouth.
As he chewed his food, he glanced at me only once and smiled. “Please join me,” he offered, pointing to his plate.
I didn’t remember what I said, but I refused. Politely, I think.
Luminous—I loathe the word, but there is no other word to describe his eyes—intensely luminous. In that room, I felt I was in a presence.
He finished the food and then lifted his plate and wiped it patiently with his thumb. He then licked the thumb. Gradually, he rubbed the plate spotless. He then gestured to the servant standing behind him. I noticed how tightly and neatly his body fit the box. The servant brought a bowl of water in which he dipped his fingers as he recited a prayer. He was then presented with a small, white towel with which he dried his hands.
All this while he did not look at me.
Finally he turned to me and smiled. “Salam, my friend.”
I returned his greeting, which was followed by a long pause. Finally, I said, “I met your brother on the street. I wanted to interview you. I am a reporter at a newspaper.”
“Ah, yes.” His facial expressions remained the same, soft and unruffled. He shifted his gaze to the floor and the awkward pause resumed. When he finally looked up, he let out a deep sigh. “So what do you wish to ask us?”
“I . . . I did not really prepare . . . I just saw him . . . your brother on the road. . . .” I said.
That face, those shoulders, still undisturbed.
Finally, I said, “I think I would ask you, most importantly, how you respond to people who say you are an impostor. . . .”
I let the sentence drop. It took me a moment to realize what I had just said.
But to my surprise, the smile on that face broadened. He heaved out another sigh. “Yes, that is true. There are people like that.”
Silence again. I noticed the Bird of Death fidgeting in a corner. Will he shoot me now? His brother though was still smiling.
I felt sweat gathering on my brow but I didn’t say anything.
He finally said, “Yes, you are right, my friend. There are people who say such things. But what can you say to such people?”
I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or what. I stayed quiet.
“Yes, there are such people, you are right. But there are people who say there is no God, no spirit, no spirituality. . . . And they give you very good reasons to believe them. You can believe those reasons if you want.” Then he added softly, “But these are all people who do not see. And people who come to us, are all suffering from blindness. With the help of God, we cure their abilities to see and hear.” He stopped and stared at me. “We all lose our ability to hear when there’s too much noise inside. We can’t see, can’t hear what’s outside. Like you my friend. You cannot see.”
Then he asked, “Are you bhai’s son?”
It took me a moment to realize that he had just uttered my father’s name. I sat there utterly shocked. He knew my father and somehow recognized me too. I had no way to say how.
“How . . . do you know?”
He smiled. “We knew him well.” He paused and shifted his gaze to the ground. “He was a good man. He could see things. You should try to be like him.”
“I am sorry but you will have to excuse us,” he said. “There are people waiting for us. But you should come at a good time. Give us a call. We’d love to speak with you. Please don’t leave without having some tea. You are our special guest.”
He gestured to his servants who pushed his box toward the curtain. I stood up and watched him leave. As he was about to exit, he turned his head slightly toward me. “Oh, for next time, please come with a photographer. People like to read interviews with photographs in them.”
The Bird of Death was sitting on one of the charpoys. He came into my view as the wheel-fitted trolley glided across the room toward the other room where I assumed the people were waiting.
“I will show you the way out,” he said. He had taken off his cloak and bag and looked strange and ordinary. We walked out of the house and he asked me, “So are you really bhai’s son?”
“Yes?”
“He was a great man, you know,” he said, pointing me out of the lane. “He used to come here to perform. I was a kid then.” Then he laughed, his voice eager and childlike. “You might be taking me for just an advertisement on the road, but I got into this business because of your father. He was not an ordinary performer with magic tricks. He was different. He told us stories. I learned about stories from him, and that’s what I do myself now. Once you tell somebody a story, you all are in the same world and you can all speak to each other about the same things and understand the same things. Bhai used to do strange tricks I have never seen anybody else do. He made sculptures of smoke! Can you imagine, sculptures! We had nicknamed him ‘Jahaz’ around here. He imitated sinking ships, sputtering out smoke as they sank.”
I knew what he
was talking about. My father died spitting blood because of that smoke.
“But how did your brother know I was his son? I have never come here before,” I said.
He laughed dismissively. “He’s God’s man. We all have veils on our sight. He doesn’t. In one glance, he can see generations of your family tree, and oh, here’s your ID card,” he said, handing me back my ID card.
We turned into a narrow lane and suddenly I realized that he was surrounded by a swarm of kids who had been standing around the water hand-pump at the other end of the lane. They all carried buckets and cans and bottles in their hands: pink, yellow, green, blue . . . When they spotted him, they ran like mad Ballee! Ballee! they yelled, their buckets and cans flying behind them like balloons.
Ballee, become a bear na? Make that sound. . . .
Ballee, swing me on your arms? Please please please. . . .
Ballee, become an airplane, fly for us again, Ballee?
He dropped his bag and lifted the smallest kid in his arms, who immediately complained: Ballee, what did you become in the bazaar today? Ballee you said you’re going to show me what you became. I waited for you. . . .
Ballee—the Bird of Death—with a child in his arms looked toward me, smiling embarrassingly. He put the kid down, and then told them he would come to play with them in the evening and become a bear, airplane, butterfly, shooting star, and collapsing building. All right, an eagle too. Okay, Okay, that as well . . .
We were startled by a loud honk. A Suzuki minivan, just a couple of feet less broad than the width of the lane itself, was coming straight at us at an uncomfortably constant speed. The driver had his hand on the horn and did not seem to believe in brakes. The children scampered against the uneven walls of the lane.
The Scatter Here Is Too Great Page 13