Of Smokeless Fire
Page 9
‘Oh, she is working at Sadiq Sahib’s house now.’
Mehrun had seen the professor at the Kashana and knew that Sadiq was very fond of Mansoor. She also knew that he was an English teacher.
The professor and his wife, Talat, a kind, petite woman in her fifties, lived in the newly built university housing complex. They had three daughters, who were all happily married. Lately, Talat had developed constant aches and pains in her joints, and when the doctor diagnosed her with arthritis, she began looking for hired help to assist her with all the work around the house. When Mehrun learned about it, she promptly offered her services.
At first, Talat had been reluctant to hire a young girl as a servant. But after hearing Mehrun dramatize her family’s plight, she employed her to do the cooking and the dusting. Mehrun, however, had an ulterior motive in working there: she wanted to work at the professor’s house to learn English from him. After all, he was a teacher of English literature and she was someone who was eager to learn this foreign language—a perfect match!
So, every day after school, Mehrun started taking the bus to go to work at the professor’s house. Intelligent and industrious, she impressed Talat with her efficiency and her cooking skills. Talat also enjoyed Mehrun’s company, especially her stories. Mehrun, too, liked her mistress and was touched by her kindness; Talat was so unlike Farhat, whom she found icy, aloof and insulting. One day, as they exchanged stories while she cooked, Mehrun casually mentioned her desire to learn the English language. As if it was the most ludicrous thing she had heard all day, Talat chuckled at the idea.
‘You want to learn English?’ she asked. ‘What will you do with it? Make pickles?’
Mehrun shrugged. After a pause, Talat continued, ‘My husband teaches English at the university.’
‘Oh, really?’ Mehrun feigned surprise. ‘Do you think he will teach me a little?’
‘I don’t think he has the time.’
Mehrun devoted most of her time in the Mirza household to dusting the books in the professor’s modest library. It was her downtime, caressing all those neatly bound titles that lined the bookshelves. It was there that she could leave behind her wretched world entirely and lose herself in the presence of books. All the writers on the shelves were strangers to her, and she could not even dare to look beyond the covers of the books, afraid that the professor might get angry and whip her, Zaidi-like, but one day, she finally succumbed to a tempting volume while dusting the room.
Pulling out the ornately bound copy of Oliver Twist, she wiped off the dirt, savouring the smell of old leather and buckram. Just sniffing these musty volumes made her giddy. Mehrun knew about Oliver Twist because the professor had gifted an illustrated edition of the book to Mansoor on his birthday. And Mansoor, after finishing the book, had recounted the tragic tale to Mehrun, reading bits and pieces from the book to her and showing her the illustrations. Now, with trembling fingers, she opened the book and started to go through the illustrations, searching for the sketch of Nancy’s murder. There it was, in the end, with Bill Sykes, the cold-blooded murderer throttling her. How she had longed to learn how to read the story for herself, and then Mehrun’s mind flashed back to that horrid day when Zaidi beat her ruthlessly—the pain still raw; the banishment still hurting. She dropped the book as her heart shuddered with fear. Tears rolled down her cheeks and trickled on to the hardcover. Why did Zaidi have to insult her? Why did Noor Sahib kick them out? And Mansoor, why did he not come to her defence? Lost in her thoughts, she brooded over that terrifying incident, and then she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder. She jumped.
‘Sadiq Sahib, I’m sorry, I was just . . .’ She shuddered, wondering if history was going to repeat itself, and braced herself for more indignities, more drubbing. But that did not happen. To her surprise, the professor seemed compassionate. He made her sit and then asked her why she was crying. And Mehrun found herself recounting the violent encounter with Zaidi, the ruthless beating she had received, the abuses she had heard, just for asking him to let her be there with Mansoor Babu during the tutoring session. The man had even called her harami, the worst profanity anyone could throw at a decent human being. Sadiq put his hand on her head to comfort her, as Mehrun dried her tears with the sleeve of her kurta.
After a moment, she turned to the professor and said, ‘I know the story of Oliver Twist.’
‘Oh? Have you read it?’
‘No, somebody narrated it to me, but I would like to learn English so that I can read it myself. I want to speak the language fluently.’
‘Don’t they teach any English in government schools?’ he asked.
‘They do, but it is simple English. I would like to speak English fluently, like Mansoor Babu.’
‘Then you must. I will not only teach you to speak and read English, but I will also teach you to see life through books.’
And with that, the professor left the room, leaving Mehrun puzzled about the last thing he had said. Not knowing what to make of either that or of Sadiq Mirza, she shrugged her shoulders and resumed her dusting.
*
Sadiq Mirza, a portly man in his late fifties, felt smothered by his family life. As was the case with most of his close friends, his marriage to Talat had been an intellectual disaster from the very beginning. It had been arranged by his parents when he was only twenty and she was sixteen. They were on a different plane when they started their married life, and with time and age, they had wandered further away from each other. Tethered together for thirty-seven years, they continued their life journey without any spark of love, without any bond of empathy between them. The longer they stayed together, the more detached they became. It wasn’t a contentious marriage like Noor’s by any means. Far from it, it was placid—their whole existence too unruffled for Sadiq’s taste. He often reflected on a line from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which he had underlined: ‘. . . there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, “This is he” or “This is she.”’ He felt bored in this togetherness, just like Mr and Mrs Ramsay did. Their only common link, the one that made them feel alive, were their daughters, but they too had got married and moved on. But Sadiq was not an egotist; he was not Mr Ramsay, for he did attend to Talat’s needs; only, he did not love her. Like Noor, he too experienced solitude in marriage.
*
After she had finished her work for the day, Mehrun headed towards the bus stop. The thought of going home and making dinner for her parents made her feel exhausted. As she sat on the bench at the bus stop, she yawned and closed her eyes. To veer her mind away from all thoughts of the drudgery that awaited her at home, she began dreaming about her future again. Next year, she would be done with school. After that, college!
St Joseph’s would be nice, she thought, but that was an impossibility. Maybe President’s College, if she could get a first division.
Her mind meandered to her imaginary house—a house, not unlike the Kashana, where she, as the begum, would rule from her august divan, dressed in her expensive Banarsi saree, sipping imported coffee and talking mostly in English or refined Urdu. What a great life it would be! She imagined being taught by Sadiq Mirza in his nurturing tone. Was he her ticket to riches? No longer uneasy about him, she smiled. From a distance, she saw a packed bus, coughing out thick, noxious fumes, approaching her. As it stopped, a few passengers got down and Mehrun boarded it from the women’s entrance. She paid for her ticket and stood sandwiched between two buxom women, both of them veiled. Summer stretched the daylight, and sparrows flew longer in search of food. The cloudless sky sighed as the cool evening breeze provided some relief from the heat.
Ten
When General Dundda gave the nation a brand-new second Constitution in March 1962, Noor declared to his son, ‘Two Constitutions in fifteen years is no ordinary feat, Sahibzadey. By the time this country of yours is fifty years old, this version could very well become a collector’s item!’ His father’s use of the word ‘sahibzadey’, which in Urdu
means a sahib’s son, was a sarcastic third-person syntactical way of telling Mansoor that he should have known all this. It was a word that always irritated him.
At first, Mansoor did not understand why his father lived in his country if he hated it so much. Why did he not move to the United States or Britain, the two countries he admired the most? But later, Noor’s constant cynicism about his country and his leaders began to rankle his mind. In school, Mansoor was taught the binary lesson of ‘My country, right or wrong’, that being patriotic meant never criticizing your country. At home, he was lectured about the perils of blind patriotism.
‘If you just sweep the dirt under the carpet, you don’t actually believe in cleanliness. And if you don’t criticize what’s wrong in your country, you are not serious about its future,’ his father would say. And Mansoor, his shoulders slumped, his hands cupping his chin and his eyes cast down in a desolate gaze, began paying attention to his father’s critique of his country.
*
General Dundda shed his stuffy military uniform for a sombre business suit and made himself the President. He banned public gatherings, prohibited political meetings and reined in the ‘irresponsible’ journalists. Haider Rizvi, a well-known irresponsible journalist, tried to play hide-and-seek with the government and often got into hot water with the censor board. When the progressive coalition, in tandem with the mullahs, took to the streets, Noor felt betrayed. It was as if he had rested all his hopes on the liberals. The mullahs and their left-wing foes were protesting together. The former were incensed that a country like Pakistan, formed on a religious identity, still had a secular Constitution, while the latter were enraged that there was still a dictatorship. Banding together, the opposition formed a new party, the Combined Opposition Party of Pakistan (C.O.P.) and protested in more cities.
To placate the vociferous religious parties, the general had amended the Constitution, and by the stroke of his Montblanc pen, inserted the word ‘Islamic’ in front of the word ‘Republic’. When he heard the expected news, Noor exclaimed to Mansoor, ‘A simple word, a simple insertion, and voilà, you are a grand theocracy!’ The man who had repeatedly told Mansoor that nothing shocked him about this country was stunned by this cold official conversion.
One Sunday in August, Noor invited his friends to the Kashana, but only Zakir, who was in town visiting his family, and Haider came. As usual, they discussed politics and drank Scotch.
‘So, the brilliant Oxford-slash-Berkeley educated lawyer is now our brilliant foreign minister. What do you have to say to that, Noor?’ Haider asked, referring to the appointment of the new foreign minister.
Noor kept quiet, but Zakir answered, ‘And he is a brilliant feudal lord, don’t forget that.’
That Zakir’s sarcasm was aimed at a government official did not go unnoticed. Had he started to see the reality of the government he served under?
‘General Dundda has at least lifted the martial law. Maybe he is serious about democracy after all,’ Haider said.
When no response came from Noor, the friends looked at each other. The barrister was not his usual self that day. He seemed weary and restrained, and his friends, unable to instigate him into making any bold predictions, left early.
*
On that cold day in November, when the dry wind scattered scraps of discarded newspapers everywhere, rubbishing every report that came in its path, the C.O.P.s held a massive protest rally in the city. Unaware of the protest call and feeling slightly ill, Kaneez had already left for Dr Minwalla’s clinic to work her morning shift. But by early afternoon, she began complaining about dizziness, headache and nausea. When her condition became worse, she begged the doctor to let her go home early, but Minwalla refused. Kaneez pleaded several times, but the doctor remained steadfast in her refusal—the midwife had already used too many days off by ‘pretending that she was sick’. Unable to take it any longer, Kaneez grabbed her tattered black burqa, picked her burlap bag and sneaked out of the clinic. Feeling fortunate to find a waiting bus at the nearby bus stop, she climbed on gingerly. Her entire body quivered as she sat down, the bus’s violent lurching and jerky movements jarred her spine, as it picked up speed.
Kaneez had been dozing in her seat when the bus, virtually empty, suddenly stopped with a loud screech, jolting her awake. Kaneez heard a ruckus and, looking out of the window, saw an angry mob surrounding the bus. The protesters were yelling obscenities at General Dundda. One young man clambered inside the bus and ordered everyone out. As soon as the bus emptied, Kaneez saw someone splash kerosene on it from a canister and throw a burning rag. Within minutes, the entire bus was ablaze. Engulfed in a massive ball of fire, it looked like a fiery ogre. Kaneez felt a tremor under her club foot as she hurriedly limped away from the flaming bus, the smell of kerosene and the wafting black smoke making her feel even more queasy. Still quite a distance from her house, she decided to walk up to the next bus stop that was a few blocks away. The gusty wind continued to blow away discarded newspapers, plastic bottles and debris as she dragged herself towards the bus stop. Feeling cold, Kaneez tried wrapping herself tightly with her burqa. When she reached the bus stop, she found it deserted. She waited for a long time, but no bus came. It must be the cold weather that has driven people away, she thought. She was about to move again when she saw a turbaned man, tightly bundled in a thick blanket, coming towards her.
‘Bhai, do you know when the next bus will come?’ she asked him.
‘There won’t be any buses coming today, Mai. Everything in the city is shut down due to the strike,’ he told her and quickly walked away.
Kaneez felt dizzy, her strength was slowly radiating out, her courage was gradually betraying her. But she had no choice; she could not give up. Not then, not there. She did not want to die on this deserted street. Taking a deep breath and bracing herself for the long walk ahead, poor Kaneez hobbled along. Even Farhat would have melted, had she seen Kaneez on that cold, empty street that day. As it became dark, Kaneez’s condition grew worse. Two more blocks and she would be home. Her body was on the verge of collapse, but it was her stubborn spirit, the one she had also handed down to her daughter, that kept her pushing on. When she reached the men’s clinic, which she crossed every day while riding the bus, she knew that her house was not too far away. She decided to rest for a few minutes before walking the last leg of her journey. Spotting a dilapidated bench in front of the clinic, she pulled herself towards it. As soon as she reached the wooden bench, she crashed on it. A giant billboard above her read ‘Cure for Men’s Weakness: Cure for Generative Organ.’ A faded picture of a Western couple, embracing each other, appeared as irrelevant as Kaneez sitting in front of an erectile dysfunction clinic. From her burlap sack, she took out an elongated tin box and a bottle labelled ‘pethidine’, both pilfered from Dr Minwalla’s dispensary. With some difficulty, she opened the tin box and took out a small syringe. Inserting its needle into the bottle, she extracted a small quantity from it and quickly stabbed the needle into her left arm. As the drug began to dance in her limp body, she felt better.
Suddenly the wind picked up speed, and from a distance, Kaneez heard a whirring sound, like a helicopter approaching. ‘Allah has arrived!’ she screamed, quickly dumping the entire paraphernalia back into her burlap sack. Lifting herself up, she staggered down the lonely path, her alley still nowhere in sight. After every few paces, the poor woman felt like collapsing, but Kaneez did not stop. She kept pulling her weight. And then, the familiar alley near her house suddenly appeared out of nowhere, veiling none of its ugliness. Her spirits brightened; her courage returned. But the very next instant, the whole alley lit up unexpectedly; it was as if somebody had turned on the floodlights. The whirring sound grew deafening and Kaneez froze. Her feet felt like boulders, her head like a ton of granite. She just could not move. Scared and trembling, she lifted her head and got the shock of her life. Standing in front of her was a gigantic apparition. His legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, his face fam
iliar and his entire body engulfed in a bright blaze, he looked disdainfully at her. Without any doubt, it was a djinn.
‘Ya Allah, it is a djinn,’ she murmured. ‘Mansoor Babu? Forgive me.’
She turned back and tried to flee but could not. Her legs remained heavy and motionless. She squeezed her eyes, scratched her arms and tried to recall the evil warding chant that she had heard Mehrun chant:
Jal tu Jalal tu;
Sahib-e- Kamal tu;
Aye bala ko taal tu
(You are Glorious; you are the Glory;
You are the bearer of miracles;
You are the warder of all that is evil)
‘That won’t work! That is in Urdu,’ she heard the djinn say, his voice loud, as if it was coming through a loudspeaker.
She tried to remember something in Arabic, but her foggy memory failed her.
‘Do you know who we are?’
‘I don’t know, Djinn Sahib. Please let me go.’
And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it disappeared, without warning, without alerting. The whirring ceased. Kaneez, her feet liberated, raced through the darkened alley and kept running until she saw her house.
Upon reaching the door, she forced it open, screaming and panting all this time. Once inside the house, she bolted the entry, turned around, and grabbed the confused Mehrun. Howling hysterically, she started to hit her and then tore her kameez. A non-stop ream of gibberish gushed out of Kaneez’s mouth, followed by unconnected profanities. Mehrun struggled to restrain her, but the more she tried, the more violent she became. And then she bit Mehrun and began frothing at the mouth. At the door, Mehrun heard Jumman yelling and banging. She pushed her mother aside and ran towards the door, holding on to her torn shirt.