Of Smokeless Fire

by A. A. Jafri

  ‘What are you doing, Sahib?’ she asked, her voice trembling. ‘Talat Begum, she just called me beti!’

  Sadiq did not know what to do as he watched Mehrun run out of the house. It all happened suddenly. How did he lose control of his instincts? He felt embarrassed. What should he do? Should he run after her and apologize to her? But he stood there nervous and hesitant, long after Mehrun had gone.

  *

  The city lights returned with hurried normality, but the blackout in peoples’ minds continued unabated. People wanted to block the memory of that inane war; so they avoided discussing it. But Haider Rizvi was not one of them. He wrote an impassioned editorial, entitled ‘The Questions’, in the Morning Gazette:

  There is a sense of loss, but what is utterly lost cannot be identified. There is a sense of ruin, but what is genuinely wrecked cannot be fathomed. Why did we fight this war? Was it indeed about self-defence? Was our territory really invaded? Was our honour actually slandered? Who will do the objective analysis? Who will be held accountable? Who will lead the way so that we do not waste our humanity in fighting unnecessary wars and devote it instead to solving the problems of hunger and illiteracy, and bettering the condition of 80 per cent of our people who wage a daily battle against grinding poverty?

  The government issued a warrant for his arrest. The charge: incitement of public anger against the government. But the war had changed Haider, too. He was angry and he no longer feared the general. When the labour leader and their friend Hassan Nasir disappeared, it shook them all. Secretly arrested for being a communist, he was tortured and killed by the government. No, Haider Rizvi couldn’t be silent any longer. He must fight the charges.

  Noor gladly offered to take up Haider’s case and began preparing a vigorous defence. Knowing fully well that he would be in a kangaroo court fighting bogus charges, he remained determined not to give the government a free pass. Noor was willing to risk arrest; staying on the sidelines was no longer an option. He couldn’t let his friend languish in the Central Jail, not without putting up a good fight.

  Thirteen

  Joseph’s quarrels with his mother turned into daily battles. He insulted her family and her profession, and hurled curses at Pakistan, where he thought his future was bleaker than hers. She, in turn, just bawled and called him an ungrateful traitor. Seduced by the dreams of becoming a movie star, he felt these dreams would become a nightmare if he remained in this morass that was Bhangi Para. Thoughts about faraway places like India, Dubai, England and even America obsessed him. Anywhere except Bhangi Para.

  He stopped doing shit work altogether and found part-time employment at a decrepit restaurant called Café de Jamadar in his own neighbourhood. He could do a non-sweeping job only inside this enclave. Beyond it, cleaning toilets was the only fate of a bhangi. Society would not even allow him to enter a restaurant, let alone toil there. They were like lepers, ostracized and abandoned in their colony.

  Joseph had also developed an addiction for American action movies, squandering all his earnings to satisfy this obsession. When his earnings ran out, or when he was a few paise short, he stole from his mother, borrowed from Mansoor, or begged Mehrun. Indian and Pakistani films were his first love, but American movies had more action and violence, and the censored sex scenes satisfied his sex-starved imagination.

  It was a well-known fact in those days that some of the seedy movie theatres often inserted two-minute cuts from X-rated movies in between perfectly normal film scenes. Why those theatres were never shut down by the Censor Board remained a mystery to the aficionados. Known as totay, these X-rated clips popped up abruptly, and completely unannounced, in between a sequence. In Ben-Hur, for instance, the chariot race would suddenly be interrupted by a scene from what appeared to be a German porn flick. And when John Wayne snatched the gun from Mickey Kuhn’s hand in Red River and said, ‘Don’t ever trust anybody until you know ’em,’— a naked, ageing Casanova would appear, uninvited, trying to seduce a half-naked English porn star. Joseph figured out the time and the day when these bits would suddenly appear. And so, he became a frequent patron of these movie theatres. One unintended effect of watching so many movies was that Joseph became a diehard fan of John Wayne. One day, he appeared at the Kashana wearing a cowboy hat and a plastic gun holster over his dhoti. When Mansoor saw him, he cracked up, to which John Wayne Joseph replied in a thick Punjabi accent: ‘Howdee, mainu pardoner!’

  Once, Premier Talkies, where the totays were shown with regular frequency, was screening Ronald Reagan’s Cattle Queen of Montana. After the scene where Barbara Stanwyck is putting on her blouse behind a boulder and a young Ronald Reagan is watching her from his horse, the film projectionist introduced an erotic scene from a Greek movie, albeit one that had no nudity. When the scene was over and the feature film restarted, the people felt cheated. They began shouting and protesting, demanding their money back, for they had been denied a titillating sex scene. Joseph egged the audience on, complaining that the scene was not even in English, as if that would have made any difference. Suddenly, he saw a familiar face amongst all the men shouting in the hall. It was Khaleel Khan ‘Athanni’, sitting in the middle row. At first, Athanni did not see Joseph, but his continued stare made him conscious and he turned around. Joseph did not know if Athanni recognized him, but he saw him quickly exiting. He followed Athanni. Wearing dark glasses, Athanni tried to mix in with the pedestrians and began to walk fast, but Joseph walked faster. It was time to embarrass and humiliate him, to exact revenge for all the contempt Mansoor Babu, Mehrun and he had endured from that harami.

  ‘Salaam, Athanni Sahib!’ Joseph shouted as he caught up with him.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, Sahib. I just saw you watching the totay, so I thought I better convey my salaam.’ Joseph smirked, scratching his neck.

  ‘Are you mad? What totay? I . . . I . . . Get lost.’

  Khaleel Khan quickly hailed a taxi and sped away, leaving the smiling Joseph in a fog of acrid exhaust fumes.

  *

  Joseph was fed up of everything. He felt tortured hearing the sound of the wind, breathing in the pungent smell of the food his mother was cooking, his mind was constantly venting rage, wanting to shatter the emptiness, to break things. He felt uprooted in his own neighbourhood. Nights of arguments with his mother turned into shouting matches—things thrown against the floor, meals dumped outside, abuses hurled. These were moments when Pyaro could hardly recognize her son and the person he had become. As for Joseph, he could not take it any longer. So one night, just to get away, he set off towards his newly discovered hang-out in the city’s red-light district on Napier Road, fondly called Sona Mandi, or the Golden Market, by its diehard patrons.

  The road was named after Sir Charles Napier, a general in the British Army, who brought Sindh under the rule of the British East India Company in 1843. Two years after the conquest, Napier heard rumours that his troops were frequenting Karachi’s boy brothels. Becoming obsessed with the ‘corrupting effect’ the brothels were having on his troops, he asked Sir Richard Burton, a secret agent and the English translator of The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, to investigate the matter. If the rumours were found to be true, Napier had declared, he would shut the brothels down. After his investigation, Burton concluded that Napier’s hunch was correct and wrote a report that was so detailed and graphic that many who read it came to believe that Burton was a closeted homosexual. Napier got so incensed with what he read in Burton’s report that he gave orders to destroy all the brothels and to rid them of the transsexuals, whom he called ‘beasts’. In a remarkably ironic twist of fate, the man who wanted to clean up the brothels ended up having his name forever associated with them.

  Napier Road had always been eclipsed by the famous Heera Mandi, or Diamond Market, the red-light district of Lahore. So, in an act of one-upmanship, the regulars of Napier Road began calling it Sona Mandi and the prostitutes they visited, dulhanain ek raat ki, brides for one
night.

  Sona Mandi was located in an old, decrepit part of the city where cheap hookers were the leading merchandise. The more expensive but anonymous call girls hung out comfortably in small pockets within the newer settlements—invisible amidst bungalows and mansions. Extreme poverty pockmarked Sona Mandi at every twist and turn. Conspicuous by the absence of light, it was a red-light district only in name. The only red colour that one could find in Sona Mandi was the cheap lipsticks smeared on the lips of its prostitutes, who subsisted without any of the usual singing or dancing. Around here, life itself had become a memento mori. The hookers of Sona Mandi were destitute, pathetic and revolting. Existing only for the grubby green rupees that their customers left behind, their squalid quarters cluttered with sleaze, they offered unpretentious, mechanical sex and cut-rate primordial thrills, day and night. In the sleepless alleys of Sona Mandi, a putrid odour hung heavy in the air. A steady multitude of faceless, nameless poverty-stricken men sauntered in and out, ogling at the prostitutes through open windows and doors, exchanging vulgarity with them as they, in turn, tried to seduce them with their tired bodies and lewd gestures.

  His eyes wide with excitement, Joseph followed a throng of men as they walked through Sona Mandi. Someone from the crowd made a crude remark about the whores and his companions guffawed; one man laughed so hard that he was overtaken by a fit of bronchial cough. A small boy, hardly ten years old, singing a hit Punjabi song, tried to sell jasmine garlands to the men. A little girl, probably his sister, her eyes hollow and her cheeks sunken, pushed her plastic begging bowl in front of the gang of sex-hungry men. One of them pushed her so hard that her begging bowl went flying as she fell to the ground, but she didn’t cry. Life had impounded all her tears. Joseph lifted her up, found her begging bowl and gave her a few coins. Leading her down the narrow footpath, he admonished her to stay close to her brother.

  Joseph wondered about these children, trying to earn a living at this godforsaken hour and in this hellish place. Was he better off than they were? Did he, Joseph Solomon, have a future brighter than these beggar children? He walked away from them, but then he came back to buy a jasmine bracelet from the little girl’s brother. As he smelled the garland, he heard an enticing female voice singing a lewd parody of a Pakistani Punjabi song:

  Apni biwi de ishq biyan kar kay

  Aa seenay nal lug ja tha kar kay

  (After declaring your love for your wife

  Come cling to my breasts with a bang)

  Joseph turned, and under the hiccupping fluorescent tube light, he saw the withered frame of a woman dressed in a cheap brocade shalwar-kameez, her jet-black hair cascading down her left breast. She looked tall, perhaps because of her thin frame. The grotesque make-up on her face that would have repulsed anyone else seduced Joseph. But what was precisely seductive about her was hard to say. Her dreamy kohl-lined eyes divulged tales of misery, her oversexed body chronicled stories of exploitation. Joseph sauntered towards her and handed her the jasmine bracelet, which she willingly accepted.

  ‘How much?’ he asked her the price of pleasure.

  ‘Ten rupees for me and seven for the batli, the liquor bottle,’ she replied casually.

  ‘Five for you and five for the batli,’ he haggled.

  ‘The bottle’s price is not fixed by me,’ she replied.

  The haggling continued until they settled upon a price of six rupees for her and seven rupees for the bottle. Even the crudely made liquor is more valuable than your trampled body, Joseph thought. He gave her thirteen rupees and smiled at his bargain. She motioned him to follow her, and they walked through a narrow, dimly lit corridor into a dull room that stank of sweat, stale cigarette smoke and cheap liquor. An unwashed rag of a curtain tried in vain to cover a grilled window, opposite the door. The only furniture that decked the room was a dirty charpoy that was wide enough for a single person to recline. Ordering Joseph to sit on it and wait for her for a moment, the woman went outside the room, leaving him alone to survey the bareness. A small lizard hugged the wall above the door, waiting for the show to begin, while a spider in the other corner slept soundly in its web. After a few moments, the woman came back to the room, carrying a green bottle and a plastic tumbler. Setting them down on the floor beside the bed, she raised her arms and set off tying her hair in a bun with her hennaed hands. The slit of her kameez rose up, revealing her bare waist. Joseph’s heart started pounding like a tabla, a drum, and sweat beaded on his forehead from nowhere. Done tying her hair, the woman latched the door and then turned around to pass the tumbler to Joseph. She poured the liquor into the tumbler, then put the bottle to her mouth and finished the remaining alcohol in a single gulp. Joseph, on the other hand, had hardly taken a sip. The woman then took off her clothes, threw them in a corner and, after climbing on to the charpoy, waited for him to finish his drink. Joseph, however, was in no hurry, for at that moment, what interested him most was satisfying his voyeuristic itch. Plunging forward into coital ecstasy could wait a while. The woman destroyed both the burning itch as well as the anticipated thrill by ordering him to speed it up.

  ‘The meter is running, hurry up. I don’t have all night for you,’ she said.

  Joseph placed his drink on the floor and began undressing. Then he climbed over her, lusting with a frenzy while she lay there on the charpoy, cold as a fish, as if brooding over the ensuing transaction of feigned lovemaking. It was all over in a few minutes, a short burst of raw energy and the unadulterated performance of sexual oomph. As Joseph dropped to her side, she got up and quickly got dressed. She was just about to disappear from the room when Joseph caught her hand. He winked at her and asked, ‘Marry me?’

  She twisted her hand free from his and snapped, ‘Get lost, haramzada bhangi.’

  Joseph only heard the word ‘bhangi’, not ‘haramzada’, which meant bastard’s son, but it seemed as if he did not care. Had the hateful word lost all its derisive character? Had it become impenetrable nonsense? But then suddenly, as if he was hit by the realization, Joseph got up and landed a stinging slap on the woman’s cheek. She staggered back and howled and shouted, ‘You motherfucker, get out of my house. I will call my dalla.’

  Joseph reached for his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled bidi. He lit it up and inhaled its poison, slowly. He was not afraid of her threat to call her pimp. Sitting stark naked after a quickie, smoking a bidi, and hitting the prostitute for her insult made him feel liberated. But when the woman’s pimp came in and saw Joseph—a big, naked guy—he politely asked him to cause no more trouble. Joseph gave him a dirty look, put on his clothes and came out, only to be accosted by another suspicious-looking man.

  ‘You want pencil-in?’ he asked Joseph in a hushed tone.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a drug for “bee dee”,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s “bee dee”?’

  ‘“Bee Dee”, saala! Bee Dee! Benereal Degeez!’

  Scaring Joseph with horror stories of venereal diseases and the importance of penicillin after sex, the man took him to another dingy flat where he saw a long line of people waiting for a shot of penicillin. Joseph joined the line and waited for a tedious hour to get the injection, marvelling at the cottage industry that the sex trade created. An hour of post-sex-waiting, after six minutes of crappy pleasure, was not his idea of fun. His mind once again began planning escape strategies from his profession, his work and his country.

  *

  Haider Rizvi’s trial in the august Sindh High Court building was short, swift and fair. Using several precedents and references, Noor destroyed the government’s arguments. The rule of law had prevailed. In vindicating Haider, the judge not only defied the rule of force, but he also asserted the independence of the judiciary. In his ruling, he lectured that it is only in law-observing societies that human potential is achieved. After the verdict, a rather overwhelmed Haider hugged Noor and slumped back into his wooden chair. His head in his hands, he began to weep. Both Sadiq and Zakir, who
were there for support, tried comforting him. The lead prosecutor later confided in Noor about the weakness of the case; but what could he do as a government prosecutor? He had to carry on with the sham. After the friends calmed Haider down, they all drove together in Noor’s car to the Sindh Club to celebrate the victory. Noor wondered if General Dundda’s grip on power had weakened, if the sycophants who flocked around him were finally abandoning him.

  That night, Noor came home early, elated, and with an enormous, colourful box of sweetmeats. Mansoor was in his bed reading James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips when Budhoo knocked at his door.

  ‘What is it, Budhoo?’ he asked.

  ‘Mansoor Babu, Sahib wants you.’

  Budhoo’s serious tone made Mansoor’s face flush and then go pale. By now, he should have been used to those nightly lectures that metamorphosed into long discourses, but they still caused his stomach to churn.

  ‘Why does he want me?’ he asked Budhoo.

  ‘I don’t know, Babu, but he has brought a box of mithai, sweets, from Abdul Hannan’s store.’

  Abdul Hannan Sweetmeat Merchants, near Guru Mandir, was Mansoor’s favourite store. Hearing the merchant’s name, he jumped out of bed, straightened his crumpled shirt, put on his slippers and headed towards his parents’ bedroom. Noor had changed into his kurta-pyjama and looked incredibly relaxed, while Farhat lay on their king-size bed, nibbling a sweet laddu.

  ‘Come on, son, we are going to celebrate today. What do you feel like eating?’ Noor shouted with exuberance.

  ‘What are we celebrating, Abba?’ Mansoor asked, sitting on the bed across from his father’s tufted armchair.

  Uncharacteristically, his father gave him a brief account of his legal victory. He seldom discussed the law or his practice with his son. In fact, he had forbidden Mansoor from even thinking about going into law. The only good thing about the profession, according to Noor, was that it exposed one to the Socratic method of arriving at conclusions.