by A. A. Jafri
When Farhat told Javed Sultan that Noor had named their son Mansoor ul Haq, he too, liked it and responded, ‘It is a very auspicious name.’
*
After finally having the child that they both had wanted so much, and a son at that, Noor slipped back into his regular work routine while Farhat devoted her full attention to the newborn. They began doting on him in their own ways.
Just before his friend Zakir was due to return to Rome, Noor gave a farewell dinner in his honour. Both Haider and Sadiq came as well, and the discussion turned to Pakistani politics once again.
‘Your government is rotting, Zakir. It is suffering from gangrene.’
Whenever Noor referred to Pakistan or the Pakistani government in front of his friends, it was always preceded by the second person possessive pronoun, as if he himself were a detached resident, an alien who never embraced his citizenship. Deep in his heart, Noor felt embarrassed to be the citizen of a country defined by religion. To be religious, according to him, implied a step backward towards anti-intellectualism.
Circumstances had condemned Noor to become an unwilling resident in a country that he frowned upon. Nonetheless, it was his choice to remain an outsider. He proudly called himself a self-ostracized man. To him, it was this self-ostracism that gave some justification to his life in Pakistan. His friends, however, often challenged this dissonance.
The new country’s Constitution was finally being written down by a few Pakistani lawyers, all trained in Britain. As someone who had studied law there, Noor had known and intensely disliked them.
‘They were all self-righteous hypocrites,’ he said, ‘giving sanctimonious speeches about faith and country during the day and partying at night.’
‘Now, how do you know that?’ Zakir asked, crossing his arms, his eyebrows tightening.
‘I was at Oxford, remember?’
‘I was there, too, but I didn’t hear anything.’
‘No, you had already left for Harvard,’ Noor reminded him.
‘But we’re all hypocrites. Aren’t you one?’ Zakir asked, finally ticked off.
‘How am I a hypocrite?’
‘You call yourself an agnostic, but you invoke God at every opportunity you get. Why do you say “inshallah” when you don’t even believe in Him? In my book, that’s hypocrisy.’
‘My friend! That is a cultural phrase, a phrase of habit rather than of conviction. It has the same profoundness as the empty phrase “you know”!’
‘But you have been proved wrong before, Noor,’ Zakir replied, changing the subject back to politics. ‘We will have a Constitution soon.’
‘Well, only time will tell . . . inshallah.’
Sadiq noted the sarcasm, and Haider, seeing the vitriol in the air, tried to change the topic to cricket. It was a contrived attempt, and they all knew it. Noor, however, did not want Zakir to leave his house with a bitter taste in his mouth, so he apologized to him and the friends shook hands and made up. The next day, Haider and Sadiq went to see Zakir off at the airport, but Noor said his goodbye on the phone.
*
Work and the Sindh Club remained central to Noor’s existence as his life lumbered over the potholes of Karachi, powerless to absorb the shocks and jolts of Pakistani politics. His drinking increased, and so did Farhat’s daily vexations. His kisses became more intolerable for her; his attempts at lovemaking, more disgusting. Why did he have to drink every day, she wondered. He was not like this in the beginning. To her knowledge, his drinking began after they migrated to Pakistan and it intensified when his law practice started to flourish. The invitation to become a member of the elite Sindh Club had made matters worse. After that, whenever Farhat confronted him about his drinking, he would always have one reply.
‘Your country stresses me out,’ he would declare, ‘and the whisky relaxes me; it helps my sanity. So leave me alone.’
In the beginning, he was discreet about his drinking, but later, when he became open about it, she began giving him paan, the betel leaves, to suppress the smell of whisky on his breath.
‘At least eat one of these after you drink. I don’t want people to catch a whiff of whisky on your breath.’
At times, she felt unloved. She felt as if fate had condemned her to be with a man whom she would never learn to love. At times, she longed for Israr, her first cousin, whom she had been engaged to be married to since she was twelve. Everything had been agreed upon between their parents even before she was born. She hardly knew him; she barely saw him. But everyone raved about Israr. They said that he was the most handsome man in town. That he was kind and gentle, and best of all, he was deeply religious. All her female cousins teased her and said that they would make the perfect couple, and they would have boys so handsome that everyone else would want to have their daughters marry them. Conditioned to accept Israr as her life partner, Farhat had begun developing feelings for him. However, kismet had other plans. While riding his horse to his farm one day, Israr was thrown several feet into the air; he broke his neck and died on the spot. They told Farhat that some evil churail had cast her ugly shadow on Israr. She felt cheated and crushed. She felt that without Israr, life would end. It did not; instead, she became part of an exigency plot; her marriage was arranged with Noor, who, on their wedding night, recited meaningless poems, some of them in Farsi! In the early years of their marriage, she felt disconnected, later she felt neglected, and after Noor started drinking, she felt downright disgusted. She hardly felt any warmth for him; now it was just contempt, while he grew more indifferent towards her.
‘Khuda ke wastey, please stop drinking; it is haram in our religion,’ she had pleaded one day when he came home tipsy.
‘For God’s sake?’ Noor had turned around and replied. ‘Farhat Begum, I don’t believe in your God, so keep quiet.’
When life appeared unjust to Farhat, she buried herself in religion and its occupying rituals. Their separate attempts at preserving their own sanity caused Farhat and Noor to drift apart. They could wander away from each other’s existence, as far as possible, but they couldn’t separate. The word ‘divorce’ had not entered their cultural vocabulary yet; although permitted by religion, their traditional society did not condone it. Handcuffed by circumstances, Noor thirsted for an intellectual outlet that Farhat couldn’t provide, while Farhat searched for a spirituality that Noor couldn’t offer. They stayed lonely and alone in their togetherness.
*
That Pakistan was created by secular leaders like Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan as a homeland for the Muslims of India, had initially made Noor hopeful about the country’s temporal path. After all, these were men steeped in the lofty traditions of Western education. But soon after their deaths, when their secular agenda was first challenged and later expunged by the reactionary right, Noor became increasingly disillusioned. Ironically, many of the same conservative leaders who had vigorously opposed the idea of Pakistan, migrated to the country when it became a reality. And upon arrival, they began sowing the seeds of their parochiality. As sectarianism deepened its roots in Pakistan, Noor felt more deracinated. He felt as if he had been transplanted into a country where normality meant heeding to the language of exclusion and bearing witness to the politics of hate.
During Noor’s college years, alcohol had been his preferred symbol of rebellion, but in Pakistan, it had hardened into a daily ritual. In whisky, he found release, and he rationalized his increasing intake by calling it his ‘defence mechanism’ against the ‘suffocating anti-intellectualism of this country’. Unable to speak his mind in public, he ranted privately at home about the political and religious situation in Pakistan. And so, when he wanted to lash out, it was Farhat at the receiving end. But Farhat was too smart to listen to these silly tirades. She also had her coping rituals. Every night, when she felt that a lecture was coming, she would pop two Optalidon pills from the orange bottle, take out a cotton ball (which she had ripped into two), stuff it in both ears and go to sleep.
> *
On Mansoor’s first birthday, Noor remained missing from the festivities at home, choosing to spend the evening at the Sindh Club. Farhat had invited all their close relatives for an elaborate dinner, and Noor’s absence made people talk. Embarrassed and angry, she moved from one relative to another to avoid the wicked whisperings, until Nawab Khan Namaqul, Sarwat’s ne’er-do-well husband, finally caught up with her. Noor had a private nickname for Nawab Khan: Nawab Khan Namaqul, or Lord Khan Idiot. An ageing Lothario, Namaqul’s chief interests lay in erotic poetry, lascivious banter and patronizing Karachi’s crumbling brothels. To embarrass Farhat, he recited what seemed like an extempore Urdu couplet about Noor, loud enough for everyone to hear:
Koi roshni nahi baqi baghair-e-Noor
Aaj shub chiraghan karain andhere me
(There is no light here without Noor,
Tonight, we will rejoice in darkness)
‘Where is our Noor?’
‘He . . . He . . . he is extremely busy these days with a very important case. He . . . usually w-works till la-late night,’ Farhat replied.
Everyone knew she was covering up for him. The rising colour of her face revealed her anguish; her words betrayed her emotions. When all the guests had left, she put Mansoor in his crib and sank into her bed without changing her clothes. A deluge of emotions swept over her and she cried bitterly. Much later at night, Noor returned home, drunk as usual, and fell on the bed without changing his clothes or taking off his shoes. Farhat got up, covered him with a blanket and went to sleep in the women’s quarters, taking her son with her.
She had a restless night, her dreams transmuting from one nightmare into another. Noor, Israr, Mansoor and Nawab Khan, all jumbled together as her brain created grotesque imageries. It was a dream about death, about her sobbing incessantly and about a horse. She woke up perspiring. Where had that horse come from? Had she suppressed her emotions and her pain for so long that they were coming back now in her dreams? Every night when Noor came home drunk, she felt that something inside her had died. Glancing at her son, she caressed his tiny hands and gently kissed his forehead. It was still dark and quiet outside, but then the muezzin’s call for prayers shattered the night’s serenity. Farhat got up, went to the bathroom and performed her ablutions. Spreading the prayer rug, she prayed to God, almost hysterically so, begging His forgiveness, pleading with Him to make her husband change into a better man, to show him the light, to put him on the righteous path. She prayed to Him to make Noor give up alcohol, and then, finally, she prayed for her son.
Outside, the vermilion sun began spreading its light over the dust-covered city. Farhat’s heart ached and a dull pain throbbed in the back of her head. The soft call of a mynah bird lured her out to their dew-covered backyard. The crisp morning air mesmerized Farhat, softening the memory of the nightmare.
Four
Mansoor had a normal childhood, and much to Kaneez’s amazement, he had no visible markers of a djinn. The boy’s eyes seemed ordinary: the iris a bright brown, and the sclera as white as Tibet Snow’s skin-whitening cream. Although, when Kaneez had touched his forehead a few times, much to his annoyance, it did feel hot to her.
A shy, quiet boy, Mansoor studied at the prestigious Karachi Grammar School. His early life had been so ordinary that the rumour about his djinn-hood began to dissipate as the years passed. Even Kaneez had started to doubt herself. But for Farhat, the very word ‘rumour’ was infuriating, not to mention that horrible churail Kaneez. She couldn’t even make herself say the word ‘djinn’. She couldn’t risk any evil befalling her son.
‘Why don’t you send Mansoor to the Madrassa-e-Ifrit? They teach you how to control the evil djinns,’ Sarwat had advised. To which Farhat had replied, ‘Do you want my husband to divorce me?’
But now Mansoor had reached that age when formal learning about religion and its rituals became obligatory. Of course, Noor, the godless barrister that he was, did not believe in any of this and vehemently opposed the idea of a traditional religious education when Farhat broached the topic one night. It was terrible timing, too, since he had just poured himself a glass of whisky.
‘What nonsense! I don’t want my son to become a mullah,’ he replied as he dropped a couple of ice cubes into the crystal glass.
‘Who is saying he has to become a mullah? I just want him to learn to read the Qur’an and to offer the namaz,’ Farhat protested.
Ever since Mansoor’s birth, she had become more disciplined about offering the five daily prayers, and she wanted to instil the same sense of religiosity in her son. To her, Mansoor was a miracle baby, and she had promised Allah that she would thank Him in her prayers every day. Sometimes, she even woke up at night to offer the special prayers of tahajjud.
‘I don’t want a mullah to drill the Qur’an into Mansoor’s head in Arabic, without teaching him its deeper meanings. What will he learn from a mullah? Rocking back and forth? When he is slightly older, I will teach him about religion.’
‘You and religion! May Allah shield my son,’ Farhat laughed.
‘Farhat Begum, I am the son of a religious scholar,’ Noor replied and took a gulp of the whisky.
The fact was that despite his secular bend, Noor was well-versed in Islamic theology. His father, Mashood ul Haq, a well-regarded Islamic scholar and author of The Philosophical Traditions in Islam, had schooled him personally. By the age of fourteen, Noor had memorized the entire Qur’an and was on his way to following in his father’s footsteps. But then he went to Aligarh Muslim University. There he met a few left-leaning intellectuals and Marxists, got exposed to the Muslim heretics—the Zindiques—learned about Western philosophers of the Enlightenment, studied the British empiricists, and his entire perspective changed.
‘Aligarh was where I had my baptism, and Oxford was where I had my awakening.’
‘Aligarh university was your bhool-bhulaiyan, your labyrinth. You never got out of it,’ Farhat shot back.
‘In Aligarh, the light of my being became a pest to all my darkness,’ Noor replied, blurting out a well-known Farsi saying. He then continued, ‘Once the seed of doubt gets sown, Farhat Begum, dogma withers. And then, what they did to Abba Jaan . . .’
Farhat firmly believed that it was this unburied memory of his father’s murder during the Partition riots that gnawed at Noor’s entrails. She had suspected all along that whatever lingering faith he had in a higher deity died on that ghastly day. She was there when strangers had brought Mashood ul Haq’s bloodied body to their house.
‘Abba Jaan’s death was a shocking tragedy, but maybe God was testing you . . . He puts everyone to test,’ Farhat replied. She noticed then that the whisky bottle by Noor’s side was half-empty.
‘My jaanum, I put your god to test and he flunked miserably. Don’t talk about religion or god or his tests to me again.’
Realizing that the discussion had slowly veered towards blasphemy, Farhat changed the subject. She could tolerate his harangues against the politics of Pakistan, but she did not like his diatribe against God. As his rants became more regular, more impassioned, Farhat grew more resolute. She would give her son the religious education that she herself had received from her father, even if she had to do it covertly. Farhat did not want her son to follow in Noor’s deviant footsteps. So, to keep off the infidel influence of her husband, she secretly hired a maulvi and set his visitation hours for well after Noor had left home for work following his lunch break. This was her first act of defiance, her first rebellion. In all these years of marriage, neither Noor nor Farhat had declared their love for each other; and now she did not need to assert her defiance.
To keep it a secret, she warned Mansoor as well, ‘Don’t ever mention Maulvi Nazir in front of your father, otherwise he will be very angry with both of us.’
Although they both showered their love on him, Mansoor remained afraid of both his parents. He was terrified of their relationship. Their usual iciness, their frequent sarcasm, their constant bickeri
ng, everything frightened him. Early on in his life, he witnessed his father’s resentment of his mother’s lack of formal education; he saw his mother’s revulsion towards his father’s drinking and his heretical bent. The word sharab was never mentioned in their house, and while nobody dared to tell Mansoor that his Muslim father drank the forbidden drink, he guessed it, realizing that his father was unlike the other fathers of his cousins and friends, devout men who he knew did not drink or berate their god and country every night.
Mansoor received doses of religious indoctrination not just from Maulvi Nazir, but also from his mother, and sometimes even from his English tutor, S.M. Zaidi, whom Noor had hired to refine his son’s skills in the English language and to teach him literature. He had been highly recommended by Sadiq, who had told Noor about his erudition.
‘Despite his religious bent, he knows his Dickens and flaunts his Shakespeare.’
‘Where does he teach?’ Noor had asked.
‘Well, that is the problem . . . the young man teaches in one of those yellow schools,’ Sadiq had replied.
The term ‘yellow school’ was a pejorative label that the snobbish elite of Karachi used for the government schools that dotted the city map with their crumbling yellow buildings. These schools and their poorly paid teachers were eschewed by everyone except the poor dwellers of this city. After all, you don’t make the ‘right contacts’ with the ‘right people’ at a yellow school.
‘If he is so good, why is he teaching at a yellow school and not at a private school or college?’
‘Well, he used to teach at Karachi Grammar School, but he’d rather teach poor kids than rich kids.’
‘Then why would he agree to teach Mansoor, a rich kid?’
‘Well, I guess you have to make compromises somewhere . . . but to allay your fears, he was highly recommended by the principal, Mrs D’Souza, whom you know well.’