Of Smokeless Fire

by A. A. Jafri

  Despite too many noisy upstarts, the opposition parties had remained scattered and leaderless. Disarrayed and unprepared by this sudden call for elections, they fought each other. But as soon as they realized that their bickering helped General Dundda’s cause, they reached a compromise.

  To challenge the general (now affectionately known as the Saviour of the Nation, a title given to him by his brilliant foreign minister), the opposition parties had jointly nominated the sister of Pakistan’s founder as their leader. A frail, silver-haired dental surgeon in her seventies, she had no political ambitions of her own but had been a close adviser to her brother and a supporter of civil rights. After her brother’s death, she had devoted herself mostly to charity work. Drafted as a consensus candidate, she became a symbol of resistance and came to be known as Madār-e-Millat, the Mother of the Nation. Her candidacy appeared so formidable to the general that, to delegitimize her, he extracted a fatwa from a conservative cleric, declaring that a woman could not be the head of an Islamic republic.

  ‘I think the Mother of the Nation will give General Sahib a good run for his money,’ Zakir commented.

  ‘Do you seriously think that Dundda Khan will let her win?’ Haider asked.

  ‘Noor, what do you think? Will the fatwa derail her candidacy?’ Zakir asked.

  ‘No, but the general will,’ Noor replied.

  The political discussion continued until after dinner, but then Zakir and Haider had to leave. The former had to catch a flight the next morning to Islamabad, while the latter had an editorial meeting to prepare for. Noor, too, was ready to leave, but Sadiq insisted that he stay back for a while.

  After Zakir and Haider left, Sadiq opened the bottle of Rémy Martin that Noor had brought for him, and then tempted his friend with some chocolate cake, which Anna had brought for her father from his favourite Pereira Bakery earlier in the day. Anything chocolate was Noor’s weakness, so this enticement made the invitation to stay longer a tad more interesting. As Sadiq got up to get the cake from the refrigerator, Noor surveyed the drawing room. It was small but cozy. On the side table next to the sofa, he noticed the familiar orange and white cover of a Penguin book. He could not see the name of the book from where he sat, so he got up, put on his reading glasses and picked up the paperback. It was Nabokov’s Lolita. Noor had read the novel some years ago, but he still felt uneasy about it. Throwing it back on the table, he subconsciously shrugged his shoulders and returned to where he was sitting. Sadiq came back with two slices of cake and gave one to Noor. As he sat down, he talked about Anna’s love of baking and books, especially her interest in literature. After a while, Sadiq changed the subject to Kaneez’s death.

  ‘I didn’t think that you knew Kaneez,’ Noor remarked.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you I hired her daughter, Mehrun, after you fired them?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that, and in any case, I didn’t really fire them.’

  Sadiq told Noor how Talat had found out about the whole episode and had promptly offered Mehrun a job cleaning the house and cooking for them. He then praised Mehrun’s intelligence and casually told his friend that he intended to teach her English language and literature.

  ‘You know, your Mansoor introduced her to Oliver Twist.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  An uncomfortable silence overtook Sadiq, as he fidgeted with the cake on his plate. After a moment, he placed the plate on the narrow coffee table and turned towards his friend.

  ‘Noor, what do you think of Mehrun?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I love her, Noor,’ he said in English. Uttering the words ‘I love her’ in Urdu somehow cheapened the sentiment, at least in his mind.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  ‘Don’t be angry with me!’

  But Noor was not angry with him; he was merely taken aback by this declaration of love. If Haider had said this, it would not have shocked him; if Zakir had uttered those four words, it would not have surprised him. But Sadiq Mirza, the distinguished scholar and literary critic, a married man with three married daughters? That shocked him. His eyes shifted between the copy of Lolita on the side table and Sadiq.

  ‘Is that why you are reading this filth?’ he asked, gesturing towards the book.

  ‘It’s not filth, and I am reading it to understand . . .’ Sadiq paused and then completed his sentence, ‘I don’t know . . . I am trying to understand myself, I guess.’

  ‘I think the cog-nac has affected your cog-nition, Sadiq,’ Noor said sarcastically, emphasizing ‘cog’ the way his driver, Sikander, pronounced ‘cognac’.

  But it was not the cognac speaking. Ever since that day in his library, when Mehrun had talked about her love of the English language and her desire to read literature, it was as if she had guided Sadiq’s heart towards the possibility of romantic love for the first time in his life. He knew it was stupid; Mehrun was not even twenty, but he had never felt like this before. He told Noor about that brief encounter in his library.

  ‘You, my friend, are not in love with Mehrun; you are in love with language and literature, and with the idea of an intelligent young woman being enamoured with what you love—language and literature,’ he paused and then asked, ‘And what about Talat? Are you going to divorce her?’

  ‘No, I don’t have to divorce her. Islam allows for polygamy.’

  ‘My God, Sadiq! I can’t believe that I am hearing this from a liberal, educated and secular man like you! You have gone stark raving mad, my brother.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do. All day, I think about Mehrun. I know I can teach her English. I can be her Pygmalion, Noor.’

  ‘Pygmalion, my foot! Pygmalion carved the statue and then fell in love with it. You, on the other hand . . .’

  ‘I know what you are thinking, but I want your guidance.’

  ‘You need to see a psychiatrist! Now, look . . . think about your family, think about your age difference, your intellectual difference and your distinct backgrounds.’

  ‘Noor, you of all people are asking me to not fall in love because of our different social backgrounds?’

  ‘I am talking about reality and your teenager-like behaviour at this age! Snap out of it, Sadiq. Stop reading Lolita. If your wife lets you live, you will regret everything.’

  Right at that moment, Sikander rang the bell and informed Noor that he had come to pick him up. Worried that his friend had gone mad, Noor admonished him one more time to not be stupid and then left.

  *

  The elections came and the general won. The bigwigs of the C.O.P.s, charging the government with blatant rigging, promised massive protests. But internal party squabbling ended their lacklustre rallies, and the Mother of the Nation, demoralized by the election result, died a few months later.

  Although the general assured the nation that he bore no malice and would exact no revenge as his election was nothing but ‘the people’s glory’, his son had other ideas. Intoxicated by his father’s victory, which the Daily Jadal called ‘obviously rigged’, he sent truckloads of thugs to beat up anyone who spoke out against his father. Sending his goons to Soldier Bazaar, the hub of the C.O.P.s in Karachi, he inflicted reprisal—burning property, firing at unarmed people and sowing the seeds of ethnic hatred. The city that had become the symbol of resistance against authoritarianism now became permanently labelled as the city of muhajirs, immigrants from India. The children of these immigrants, children like Mansoor, could never be the sons of the soil. Dictatorship got validated, and Western governments praised the new civilian President for bringing his nation into the family of democracies.

  *

  After the elections, among the many decisions that the government took, the one that shattered Joseph’s heart and hopes the most was the banning of Indian films from Pakistani cinema halls. These Indian films had provided Joseph with a distraction from the dirty drudgery and the filth that summed up his life in Bhangi Para. But then Joseph realized that the ban might actually help
fulfil his dream of becoming a movie star. Deprived of the Indian films, audiences thronged to see Pakistani films. Increased demand led to increased production. The ban thus became a blessing in disguise for the fledgling Pakistani film industry, and the 1960s became the golden era of films in Pakistan. It also coincided with the rise of the film star Waheed Murad, known as the Chocolate Hero, who dominated the industry until his premature death in 1983. Waheed captured Joseph’s imagination in a way that Dilip Kumar, the Indian heart-throb of that era, never did. He began to talk like Waheed Murad, walk like Waheed Murad and even paid a full ten rupees to a barber to make him look like the actor. When he found out that the Chocolate Hero’s bungalow was in the same neighbourhood as Noor’s, he began to spend a great deal of his free time there, waiting to catch a glimpse of him. The stalking paid off, and Waheed Murad offered him a role as an extra in one of his hit movies. That offer, small no doubt, made Joseph feel big. And when he heard the news, he bought a pair of sunglasses, a cheap scarf and a pipe, and paid a visit to the Kashana. He found Mansoor and Mehrun in the backyard. When Mehrun saw him, she asked, ‘Why are you dressed up like a cheap villain?’

  ‘Meet Chocolate Hero Number 2,’ he bowed, and then turning to Mehrun and pointing at her, said, ‘Meet my Chocolate Heroine Number 1.’

  Detailing his encounter with Waheed Murad, Joseph told them that he had been offered a key role in his up-and-coming movie Heera aur Pathar. He added, ‘It can be translated as “Diamond and Stone”, for the lovers of Angrezi language.’

  ‘We will believe you when we actually see you in the movie,’ Mehrun said.

  Joseph did not care if Mehrun did not believe him. The proof of his stardom would be in that epic donkey-cart race, which, he was told, was one of the best scenes in the film. He did not have a donkey cart, so he just rented a donkey and a cart from a dhoban, a laundress, who lived outside his neighbourhood.

  Unfortunately, on the day of the shooting, Joseph overslept, and that was the end of his chance to succeed Waheed Murad as the next chocolate hero. But now he was entirely obsessed with becoming a movie star. Cleaning ‘people’s shit holes’ was no longer an option. He could not be a bhangi any more. That was history as far as he was concerned. But then his friend Anthony Masih, who did work in the film industry, told him, ‘Once they find out that you are a bhangi, you will never work in the film industry here. I am going to go to Bombay, where they will never know anything about my past.’

  Now the word ‘Bombay’ got stuck in Joseph’s ears. It played inside his mind like a technicolour movie with no intermission. He wanted to leave his shack; he wanted to leave Bhangi Para; hell, he wanted to leave the country. There was no dignity in the scutwork that he did. For him, the only way to make a clean break from the bhangihood he was born into, was to make a clean break from Pakistan. His new fascination was Bombay, a city where no one would know about his life as a bhangi.

  So one day, when his mother informed him that she had asked Farhat Begum to give her a raise, and that the begum had agreed without any arguments, Joseph dropped his bombshell: he was going to Bombay to work in the Indian film industry.

  ‘Did you smoke bhang today? Or did you get bitten by a mad dog? Son of a lunatic! Where will you get the money to go to Bombay? From your father’s inheritance?’ his mother demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘And who is going to take care of me?’

  ‘You should come with me. What is there for you in this damn country anyway? You are an achoot, an untouchable, and you will always remain an achoot here.’

  ‘Do you think that you will not be an achoot in Bombay? Listen, putter, I left my home once when your father dragged me out of Amritsar. I don’t want to leave my home again. And this damn country is my home.’

  She burst into tears as she said that, and Joseph put his arms around her shoulders. But she quickly shrugged him off, saying, ‘You are good for nothing. All day long, you just sit and cook imaginary pulao.’

  Anger seared through his body as Joseph looked at his mother. Her flash of cynicism felt like a punch to his gut. Beaten down by life, she could never see herself as anything but a sweeper, nor could she imagine any other future for her son. His mind was now firmly made up. He wanted an escape, a permanent break from the work that generations of his family had done.

  Unfortunately for him, his dreams of going to Bombay were shattered by the outbreak of hostilities between Pakistan and India. In their chequered history, the two impoverished nations went to war with frightening fervour, confident that they could casually bomb each other into oblivion. Blood was spilled, cities were shelled, children were orphaned, women were widowed and nothing was achieved—in the end, it was another meaningless war that wasted the lives of so many.

  These useless motherfuckers; I will show them, Joseph thought, seething with anger as if he were the sole target of this insane, obscene war. That evening, he went out to unleash his rage even though people had been warned to stay inside their houses. But Joseph did not care. Death would be a better alternative compared to the shit he was living in. A scrawny dog trying to find some dinner in a reeking rubbish heap became the unlucky victim of Joseph’s anger as he bent down, picked up a large stone and hurled it at the dog. Bullseye! It hit right on its head. The dog howled in pain, curled its tail between its legs and scudded like a bullet. ‘Motherfucker, get out of this shithole!’ Joseph yelled in Punjabi.

  Darkness draped Karachi as the blackout snuffed out any remnants of nightlife. Every window was covered with dark-coloured papers: black, blue and green. Any gaps around the windows were sealed with black tapes. In the blacked-out city, artificial light underwent house arrest.

  Joseph should have been going home, but instead, he kept walking, roaming aimlessly, his head bowed, his foot kicking anything it could find, his vacuous eyes lost in hopelessness. Suddenly, he heard the stabbing noise of warplanes approaching, followed by a flash of red and then the concussive sound of a bomb that had fallen. The blaring air raid sirens followed languidly, making a mockery of the early warning system. Suddenly, the starry sky was lit up by the fires of ack-ack guns. The loudspeakers of several neighbourhood mosques reverberated with the muezzins’ calls for special prayers. Joseph stayed put, watching the lit-up sky. It was as if he was watching a dazzling display of fireworks, far removed from death and destruction. No one would bomb Bhangi Para, not in any war. It had no strategic value.

  *

  That night, it seemed as if the nation had a collective dream. It was a story repeated so many times by so many people that it became a fictive reality. The tabloids published it, the mosques relayed it and the people believed it as if the tale was solidly backed by undeniable evidence.

  They said that an army of semi-invisible giants (now you see them, now you don’t) made their divine intervention on behalf of the country. Dressed in flowing green robes, their effulgent faces dulling the blazing flames from the incendiary bombs, they shouted, ‘God is great.’

  So loud were their slogans that they muffled the noise of the enemy planes as they caught the bombs with their bare hands, blunting the attack and stunting the attackers. Then they drew their heavy swords from their scabbards and sliced the enemy planes, like cucumbers. The enemy planes that were piloted by Muslims were spared; the pilots were admonished to never kill their brothers again. An infidel air force pilot, who watched the miracles happening from the cockpit of his plane, converted to Islam instantly; his aircraft was safely escorted by these mysterious beings to the nearest Pakistan Air Force base.

  People climbed on their rooftops and chanted:

  Victory nears if God’s help is included.

  Victory nears if God’s help is included.

  The Greatest Slogan: God is great.

  The Greatest Slogan: God is great.

  The next day, people stuck bumper stickers on their cars: ‘See you at Delhi’s Jama Mosque next Friday!’ and ‘Crush India!’ and ‘Victory Celebrations
in Delhi.’

  The newspapers’ headlines bellowed every day:

  War till Victory!

  Enemy Planes Destroyed!

  Attack Repulsed. Heavy Enemy Casualties!

  Houses shivered, heavens trembled, myths continued and delusions grew. People clasped on to these myths indiscriminately to repudiate the ugly reality that awaited them. But it was a short war, lasting only seventeen days and ending abruptly. Both countries agreed to a ceasefire. General Dundda went to the Soviet Union to meet the Indian prime minister. A picture of the general, holding hands with the Indian and Russian prime ministers, smiling at the press, appeared in the newspapers under the headline: ‘Accord Reached!’

  The nation was stunned! People came out on to the streets and shouted: ‘How can he hold the enemy’s hand?’

  ‘Why did we have to stop when we were winning the war?’

  ‘God was on our side. He sent an army of angels and djinns to protect us, to help us conquer the cowards who had attacked us in the middle of the night.’

  *

  The Indian prime minister died of a heart attack the day after the accord was signed. Some people said it was the overpowering presence of the general that killed him, while others declared confidently that ‘it was the wrath of God.’

  The newspapers blared again: ‘Allah’s Rod Is Noiseless.’

  All this time, while the nation was led to imagine and believe that the enemy had suffered a heavy defeat, the sceptical Noor had never believed this. He told Mansoor the brutal truth, ‘Sahibzadey, your country lost the war.’ At that moment, Mansoor wanted to yell at him, ‘No, you are wrong!’ but instead, he kept quiet, ingesting his anger. Years later, when Mansoor read an interview of a chief of armed forces, in which the man confessed that the nation did not win the 1965 war, he remembered his father’s sarcastic comment.

  Part II

  ‘When there was nothing, there was God.

  If nothing had been there, there would be God.