by A. A. Jafri
Noor wanted to select a tutor who came highly recommended, who could expose his son to the treasures of literature, and who could teach him to use the English language, the lingua franca of the educated class, not just correctly but also aesthetically. And so, after much deliberation, Noor hired Zaidi, who also became an afternoon fixture at the Kashana.
*
No one handed them any books about the rules of parenting, so Noor and Farhat made up routines for Mansoor. He would wake up at 5.30 a.m., eat his breakfast at 6.15 a.m., leave for school at 7 a.m., ride back home with his father at 1 p.m., have lunch with the family at 1:45 p.m., and have his siesta till 3 p.m. At that time, Noor went back to work and Zaidi came to tutor Mansoor. Maulvi Nazir followed discreetly around 4.30 p.m. and stayed for about an hour, filling the young boy’s head with things he didn’t really understand. By 8 p.m., Mansoor had to be in bed. And then there were all the infuriating don’ts without any dos that controlled all his hours: Don’t play with the servants; you will learn bad words from them. Don’t play in the blazing sun; you will become as dark as Kaneez. Don’t fly a kite or play marbles; these are the games of the lafangas, the scoundrels. Don’t play latoo, the spinning top; you might end up injuring your eyes. Don’t eat kulfi sold by the kulfi-wallah; he buys the milk discarded by patients in hospitals across the city. Don’t go out bareheaded in the afternoon; the Shaitan (Satan) will hit you on the head so hard that you will get a splitting headache. Don’t yawn without covering your mouth; the Shaitan will pee in your mouth. Don’t say salaam alaikum in the bathroom; evil djinns live there. If they reply, you die.
But these routines grew tiresome and Mansoor began stealing time from his siesta hour to get some respite. Of course, it wasn’t any inner rebel coercing him to break the smothering rules, it was Mehrun, the daughter of Kaneez, the churail. She enticed him to do the don’ts. Mehrun was the temptress, the siren, whom Mansoor could see from his bedroom window, cartwheeling and cavorting in the backyard near the guava tree, displaying her simian skills.
*
With Jumman’s persistent pleading and a solemn promise from Kaneez to never spread any more rumours about the family again, Farhat allowed her to get back into the folds of the Kashana some five years after Mansoor’s birth. There was a shortage of domestic help, and Farhat needed someone to do her laundry. Kaneez’s transgressions at Mansoor’s birth were neither forgiven nor forgotten; they were simply cast away in favour of expediency. And so, Kaneez started coming to the Kashana three times a week, while Jumman came every day to tend to the garden and for other errands. Mehrun turned up every day after attending school. Sometimes, she helped her mother with a job that needed to be finished or invented work for herself. Occasionally, she also helped her father. Mostly though, she felt free to spend her afternoons at her favourite hideout—the guava tree in the back garden. The idea of playing under the guava tree in the afternoon, with the mischievous Mehrun, had a seductive influence on Mansoor.
One day, while his parents were napping, Mansoor sneaked out of the house and ran towards Mehrun, who was playing in the back garden. She seemed to be having an expansive conversation with her crude dolls, all of them made from strips of rags. Two shoeboxes haphazardly painted and glued together to look like a two-storey house, complete with cut-out windows and doors, stood under the guava tree.
‘What are you doing?’ Mansoor asked Mehrun.
‘Playing.’
‘What are you playing?’
‘With my dolls.’
‘But what are you playing?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
When Mansoor persisted, she said, ‘This is my house. I have invited some guests to my house, and my servants will make tasty chicken tikkas and kebabs, and I can do anything I want to in my house. Do you understand?’
Mansoor laughed and then said, ‘Your servants are ugly, aren’t they?’
‘Your bottom is ugly. If you call my servants ugly again, I’ll slap you so hard, it will make you pee.’
A few years older than Mansoor, Mehrun had inherited none of her mother’s deformities, but she definitely had her sharp tongue. And although she was a beauty by no standards, the girl had striking features. She played games in which she was always the begum, the lady of the house, who issued orders to her imaginary servants, each time in broken English. She had picked up a smattering of this alien language at her Urdu-medium yellow school and also from eavesdropping on Mansoor’s lessons with Zaidi, who preferred teaching him out in the verandah, making it easier for Mehrun to listen and absorb the lessons. Even when they were inside, she would find an excuse to stay nearby, within earshot. Every afternoon, when she saw Zaidi approaching the Kashana, she would casually drift towards the verandah, pretending to be busy with her work, while her ears stayed glued to Zaidi’s diction and delivery.
Joseph Solomon also joined them sometimes. A tall, muscular, dark-complexioned boy, he came to the Kashana to help his mother, Pyaro, the sweeper, clean the toilets and collect the rotting garbage. But mostly he got distracted by Mehrun and Mansoor. Always dressed in a bright-coloured dhoti and a contrasting kurta, he would announce his entry into the back garden either with a bhangra dance or a bawdy Punjabi song. Whenever he saw Mehrun, he would raise his eyebrows, wink at her and smile impishly. If he found her listening attentively to Mansoor’s tutor, he would make kissing gestures with his fingers or offer her a bidi to smoke. His antics always made Mehrun smile and Mansoor blush. To Mansoor, he was forever the most welcoming disruption.
Joseph belonged to the sweeper community in Karachi, which was entirely Christian. Originally untouchable Hindus, they were converted to Christianity by the missionaries from Europe. The change of religion, however, did not expunge their pariah status. The Hindus of the city still regarded them as untouchable because they originally came from the lowest of castes, while the Muslims avoided physical contact with them because they considered them unclean. Discrimination against them continued unabated and they remained social outcasts, languishing at the bottom of the social ladder. Joseph was fortunate to get some education at The School, run by British nuns in Bhangi Para, where he lived with his mother.
*
At first, Mansoor took extra caution to ensure that his interactions with these ‘undesirable elements’ remained hidden from his parents, but as their games in the Kashana’s back garden became more amusing, more engaging, he became careless. To him, Mehrun and Joseph were far more exciting playmates than his wealthy classmates or his ornery cousins, Khaleel and Jaleel—Sarwat’s sons. Joseph always had something new to tell: a cheap joke, a vulgar song, or a crude story, and Mehrun kept up a steady supply of her ever-ready tuk-bandi, her concocted Urdu doggerels.
‘Mehrun, do you want to see a filim with me?’ Joseph asked Mehrun one afternoon when the three of them were sitting under the guava tree in the back garden, whiling away the hours.
‘Get lost! You’re crazy.’
‘The hero in the filim looks like me.’
‘Have you seen your face in the mirror?’
‘I see it in your eyes; I don’t need a mirror. One day, when I become a hero in my filim, you will beg me to marry you.’
‘I’d rather marry an idiot millionaire.’
‘Just for you, I will become a millionaire first, and then I will change into an idiot.’
‘Okay, so what filim are you going to see?’
‘Chummi Dey.’
‘Give Me a Kiss’ was a made-up movie title, and Mehrun knew it. Mansoor blushed, and she convulsed into laughter.
*
While Joseph’s flirtatious games were fraught with delicious anticipations, Mehrun’s coquetry and her reciprocity to his lewd banter always had the element of the unexpected. Mansoor never knew what the next surprise would be. And that was the allure.
That day, Mansoor had been outside with his friends for longer than usual. Realizing that his parents would get up from their siesta any time, he decided to return to his
ridiculous routine. But just as he was about to leave his forbidden friends, he saw Khaleel and Jaleel saunter in his direction. He despised them, especially Khaleel, the shifty blackmailer. Khaleel knew that Mansoor enjoyed the company of Mehrun and Joseph, ‘the scumbags’, and so, to keep quiet and not tell his aunt about what was going on, it was only fair that Mansoor paid him something.
Khaleel’s usual cut, eight annas for himself and four annas for his younger brother, were wrested from Mansoor’s weekly allowance of five rupees, and although it was not much, it still upset Mansoor. Both Joseph and Mehrun knew about the brothers’ nasty habit. So they nicknamed them after the most commonly used Pakistani coins: the older one became Athanni, meaning eight annas or half a rupee, and the younger one, Chowwani, meaning four annas or a quarter rupee. The fact that Joseph and Mehrun had nicknames for them enraged Khaleel and he became more brazen in extorting money from Mansoor whenever he had the opportunity.
‘Mansoor, what are you doing playing with these lowlifes?’
Mansoor kept quiet.
‘Where is our money?’ Khaleel asked.
Mehrun came and stood between them and started singing her made-to-order Urdu doggerel:
Athanni ney yeh gaana gaya:
Mein paisa churaney aya,
Chowwani ney mara panja,
Athanni Babu ganja
(Athanni sang this song:
I came to steal the money,
Chowwani hit and clawed,
And now Athanni Babu is bald)
‘Get away from me, kutiya!’ Khaleel pushed Mehrun aside.
The word ‘kutiya’ or ‘bitch’ was used so frequently at Mehrun’s house that it did not sound like an insult to her. But as Khaleel moved closer to Mansoor, it was Joseph who now became a wall between them.
‘Get out of my way, you bhangi’s litter,’ Khaleel tried to slap him, but he missed.
Although the word ‘bhangi’ literally means one who is addicted to the narcotic drug bhang, it is used as a racially offensive term. Calling a sweeper ‘bhangi’ was a grave mistake. It was the ultimate insult. It was something that made even the pachydermatous Joseph bristle with anger. Scream the worst profanity at him, and he would laugh with you, but call him a bhangi, and you are dead. As the word stung his ears, Joseph grabbed Khaleel by his balls and snarled, ‘Listen, you son of a . . . first of all, don’t ever call me a bhangi. And second, if you ever take money from Mansoor Sahib, I’ll cut these balls off and feed them to my kutiya.’
Khaleel wasn’t sure if Joseph had just called Mehrun a bitch, or if he actually had a bitch and was serious about his threat. He pushed him away and ran towards the house, shouting, ‘That’s it! I’ll tell Farhat khaala that you play with the bhangi and the churail.’
Both Joseph and Mehrun couldn’t stop laughing as they watched the brothers run, but Mansoor smiled awkwardly, not knowing if what had just happened was a flash of victory or a loss of his freedom. Should he run back to his room, or should he try to hide behind the banana tree? If Farhat found out about his afternoon escapades, it would be the end of everything. But it was too late to do anything, for the ratty Khaleel was walking back towards them with a fuming Farhat right behind him, ready to have all of them thrashed.
‘Mansoor!’ Farhat shouted the minute she saw her son. ‘What am I hearing? How dare you play with these two? Don’t you have anyone else to play with besides servants and sweepers? Don’t you have any concern about what people will say? If I catch you playing with them again, I will break your legs.’
She twisted Mansoor’s ear so hard that he squealed. Then she pushed him towards the house and ordered, ‘Now go to your room! And the next time I see you play, it better be with your cousins.’
Finally, Farhat turned her wrath towards the two ‘lowlifes’, berating them until she heard Noor calling her from inside. Throughout, Khaleel and Jaleel stood there, smirking and making faces, feeling triumphant.
Five
Although Mansoor remained a prisoner to his vexing routines, the punishment for his defiance did not last long. It wasn’t that Farhat Begum suddenly became relaxed about class structures or social mores. It was merely that she became more gregarious and left the house more often to visit friends and relatives. Mansoor’s flashes of freedom became more recurrent as his parents became lax in their supervision.
An unusually grey afternoon greeted the inhabitants of the Kashana that March. The clouds toned down the heat a little and made the indoors muggy. Farhat had darkened the rooms of the house by drawing the silk curtains together. Soon after devouring a heavy lunch, Noor and she fell into their usual, deep afternoon sleep. Outside, the fresh smell of moist earth permeated the backyard until one came to where Joseph sat under the guava tree, a bidi sticking out from the corner of his mouth, blowing a thick trickle of circles, the acrid smell filling the air. He seemed engrossed, whittling the stalk of a leaf from a coconut tree with his knife; Mehrun hung upside down from the guava tree, attentive to Joseph’s artistry. The verandah in the backyard, packed with gardenia and rose shrubs in terracotta flowerpots, publicized the start of spring, a season perpetually scarce in Karachi. A cool breeze blew across the neatly manicured lawn. Butterflies played hide-and-seek, and somewhere in a jamun tree, a koel sang a mournful note. Across the verandah, near the boundary wall, a batch of fruit trees, all planted in a straight line, provided thick vegetation. The adjacent wall, blanketed with bougainvillea, was testimony to the care that Mehrun’s father, Jumman, had given this garden. He had lovingly planted banana, mango, guava and coconut trees, and had made himself vital to the garden and to Farhat. By transforming the Kashana into an oasis in the middle of this desert city, he seemed to have gained permanent employment not only for himself, but also for Kaneez. He had convinced Farhat that he would turn the garden into a piece of heaven, and there was no question that he had done this.
As Mansoor’s parents snored, he bounded out of the house, straight towards Joseph, slapping the flowers on his way out.
Mehrun dropped down from the guava tree when she saw him coming.
‘What are you two doing?’ Mansoor asked.
‘Shush,’ said Joseph. He pointed towards a lizard that sat brooding on the boundary wall near the jasmine vine next to them, its head raised up towards the sky and its tongue sticking out.
‘Wait and watch,’ Joseph whispered. His lips tightened and his murderous eyes narrowed into slits. A shiver ran down Mansoor’s spine as he saw Joseph make a slip-knot noose from the coconut tree leaf in his hands and tie it carefully to a dead branch from the guava tree.
‘Why?’ asked Mansoor.
Mehrun answered him with another of her Urdu tuk-bandis:
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab,
Girgit ko marna bara sawab
(One-half roti, one-half kebab,
Killing a lizard is the highest reward)
‘It is our religious duty to kill these girgits, these lizards, because they are always mocking Allah by sticking their tongue out,’ she explained, as if reading out aloud from a textbook.
Joseph, like an expert lizard hunter, practiced tightening and loosening the noose to make sure that it worked perfectly. Then, getting up quietly, he tiptoed towards the lizard, the other two following him. The creature remained motionless, its basilisk-like glare freezing the moment. Joseph carefully lowered the noose in front of it and patiently brought it around the lizard’s neck. As if hypnotized by the knot, the lizard remained catatonic. And then with a sudden jerk, Joseph pulled the loop. The lizard struggled and wriggled and tried to escape as the noose tightened around it, suffocating it. Once it stopped struggling and all movement stopped, Joseph yelled at Mehrun, ‘Go! Quickly!’ Awed and excited, Mehrun scampered towards the kitchen, which was on the other side of the house, and within a few minutes, came back carrying a small kerosene lantern and a matchbox. Joseph handed over the dead branch with the comatose lizard to Mehrun and took the lamp and the matchbox from her. With his eyes still sealed on t
he limp vertebrate, he quickly removed the glass covering of the lantern and opened the kerosene container. He then took the lizard from Mehrun, doused it with kerosene and ignited the match. With a big poof, a flame leapt up and engulfed the poor lizard. Within seconds, the blazing glow had charred the hapless creature. The lizard was cremated alive, and Mansoor, paralysed by horror and fear, witnessed the raw power of fire. The child, rumoured to be a djinn, a being created of smokeless fire, now trembled at the sight of it. Seeing Mansoor frozen with fear, Mehrun approached him.
‘Why, Mansoor Babu, you look as if you saw a djinn!’ Laughing at her own joke, she continued mockingly, ‘But why should you be afraid of yourself? You are a djinn yourself!’
‘I am not a djinn! I am not a djinn . . . don’t say that!’
Mansoor scurried back towards his house, whimpering, tears running down his cheeks. His divine duty done, Joseph danced with Mehrun, holding the partly burned branch with one hand and Mehrun’s waist with the other. They both sang the bloody doggerel repeatedly. The odour of kerosene and the stench of the burnt lizard dangling from the branch subdued the combined fragrances of all the flowers in bloom at the Kashana.
*
Mehrun excitedly recounted the whole story to her mother that night after they returned to their ramshackle one-room home that had no electricity, no running water and no bathroom. Every wall displayed patches where the paint had peeled off, while the corners of the ceiling displayed a vine-like network of cracks. In one corner, on a charpoy, Jumman rested comfortably in his undershirt and lungi, his eyes closed, his left hand on the back of his head and his right hand listlessly twirling the curlicues of his oiled moustache. Two cotton sheets, draped over a clothesline strung across opposite walls, created a rough-and-ready second room. A couple of reedy bamboo mats lay on the other side of the clothesline. The flickering wick of the kerosene lantern made Mehrun and Kaneez’s shadows dance as they squatted in front of the mud stove in one corner of their tiny home. Mehrun made chapatis while Kaneez stirred the potato curry. The deadly smoke from the burning coal and the smell of spices from the curry hung in the air in the stuffy room, making Mehrun cough as she embellished the events of the day.