Of Smokeless Fire

by A. A. Jafri

  ‘Let me wash up. I’ll get the chapattis ready,’ Pyaro said.

  ‘Ma, don’t bother about dinner. I am going to get the food from the restaurant today.’

  ‘Where did you steal the money from?’

  ‘Ma, I didn’t steal it. I have good news. I’ll tell you all about it after I get the food.’

  Joseph went to Café de Jamadar and bought kebabs, tandoori naans and some mint chutney, all of it wrapped in an old newspaper that prominently displayed a picture of General Dundda soaked in the oil from the kebabs. He wanted to celebrate in style. At home, he excitedly told his mother about Reza Dabiran as he served the food. Pyaro listened quietly. Once Joseph was done, she got up without finishing dinner, wiped her hands on a dirty towel and sank into her tattered mattress. Joseph felt a tightness in his throat as he swallowed the kebab in his mouth.

  ‘I thought you would be happy to hear my good news.’

  Pulling the blanket over her face, Pyaro turned towards the wall.

  ‘I have told you a thousand times, I’m not like you or Babuji. I am not going to die in this pit like a dog,’ Joseph said through gritted teeth.

  *

  The government finally ordered the schools to reopen for the first time after the war. The long, protracted period of political turmoil that followed the war had finally subsided, and people welcomed the news with a sigh of relief. The Education Board announced the dates for the school exams, which made Mehrun anxious. This was her final year in high school, and she was determined to achieve a good first division to get into President’s College, the college of her dreams, her ticket to a good life, or so she thought. Because she needed the money, she kept working at Sadiq’s house, both of them pretending that nothing had happened. Her satchel packed with books, Mehrun went to his house every afternoon after school and used every minute of her break to study for her exams. The professor helped her, polishing her English and making her memorize lines from Shakespeare.

  But Mehrun’s attention remained divided. She worried about her father, who was fast regressing towards insanity. Time, instead of healing his wounds, had created deep lesions in his soul. Kaneez’s death made him look gaunt and prematurely grey. His existence atrophied right in front of Mehrun’s eyes. And as his nightmares continued, his interest in life fizzled. No longer did he care about his garden at the Kashana; no longer did he care about going out, and no longer did he care about his own life. With stony eyes and a blank mind, he stared at vacant spaces, weighed down by grief. Mehrun, who had made her peace with Mansoor after her mother’s death, finally convinced Jumman to visit the Kashana with her, for a change of scenery. He would spend some time there at her insistence, sharing his lunches with Chaos, who ate the food guiltily, as if somehow sensing his sorrow. But his attendance there, too, became sporadic, and Farhat, noticing his absence, started docking his salary. But Jumman never complained. Mansoor worried about Jumman as well, but he felt helpless. He tried to convince Mehrun about consulting a doctor, but she had lost faith in all healers—fake and real. At that point in her life, her only goal was to get a first division and a scholarship to President’s College. Like Joseph, she was in a hurry to change her future.

  Rain arrived early that year, but it did not drown the city, only sprinkling it gently, trying not to upset the already hard life of its inhabitants. On that misty Monday afternoon in June, Mehrun waited for the university bus outside her school. She was happy; she had done well in her preliminary exams. Nothing could make her sad. Not the wait for the bus, not the drizzle, not the denuding eyes of those odious men at the bus stop who looked at her as if they had never seen a woman in their miserable lives before. With a glow on her face and a romantic rain song on her lips, she waited for the bus.

  How should I tell the professor about my preliminary exam results? she thought.

  The professor, her mentor, her confidante; that mysterious scholar who had showed her great kindness but had also kissed her. After Mansoor, he was the one person she trusted the most. And Sadiq made her feel special. In those days, she rarely talked with Joseph, who remained lost in his secret fantasy.

  At last, she saw the ugly British Leyland bus jolting and trundling towards the bus stop, emitting a toxic cloud of fumes. As it pulled over, a horde of young university students jumped out even before the bus had stopped completely, their angry impatience all too palpable. She got in and found an empty seat near the window.

  ‘Double hai, double hai,’ shouted the bus conductor, signalling the driver to drive on.

  In half an hour, Mehrun was at the professor’s doorstep. She rattled the door knocker. The drizzle had moistened her hair and clothes. After a few seconds, the professor, with his pipe in his mouth, opened the door.

  ‘Areý, areý. Come, come. Come on in; you are drenched!’ he said in a concerned tone and continued, ‘Go and dry your hair with the bathroom towel.’

  Mehrun dropped her satchel in the foyer and went towards the bathroom. After she had dried her hair and combed it with her fingers, she came back and excitedly began telling the professor the good news about her preliminary exams. He was genuinely happy for her. Mehrun reminded him of his promise about President’s College. He nodded, as if without listening, his eyes distracted by her wet clothes that clung seductively to her body. Sadiq began to tremble, as if from the cold rain, and then suddenly overpowered by an uncontrollable urge, he caught her hands, pulled her towards him and kissed her. The warmth of his body melted her and she returned his desire with complete abandon. They kissed long and passionately, and Mehrun let his hands wander over her body of their own accord; the ecstasy, the joy, the rapture utterly mesmerized her. She would have given anything to remain captive to the embraces of this portly middle-aged man, but then a lightning bolt hit her back. It was Talat’s hand that had slapped her backbone, inflicting a sharp pain on her shoulder blade. It was as if someone had stabbed her with a hot knife. When Mehrun turned around and saw Talat’s livid face, it ripped her heart out. Talat pulled her away from the grips of her husband and continued with her beatings. She slapped her, hectically and hysterically. Covering her face with the back of her arms, Mehrun tried to counter the blows. Sadiq, who was shell-shocked at first, regained his composure when he heard his wife shouting: ‘Get out of my house! You churail! You ungrateful whore! Never show your filthy face here; otherwise, I am going to break every bone in your body!’

  Sadiq tried to intervene, meekly, but Talat pushed him aside. Mehrun took advantage of the momentary pause in Talat’s attack and ran towards the front door, her eyes streaming with tears, her ears ringing with the slaps. She wanted to vanish from the house. Grabbing her satchel, she ran out in full speed, still hearing a salvo of imprecations behind her, only now they were directed towards Talat’s husband.

  Vilification had hunted her down once again. The cycle of beatings had returned. What was she going to do now? Without a job, where would she get the money for her exam fees? What was she going to tell her father? Haunted by these questions, she raced towards the bus stop. From a distance, she saw the same British Leyland bus that had brought her to her present misery now come back a full circle to fetch her again, as if playing a crude joke on her life. She did not climb into the bus. She was in no mood to let that contemptible means of transportation wreck her life again. The bus left her, belching noxious carbon monoxide fumes in her face. She held her breath, not wanting to inhale any more poison. The questions returned to torment her again. Sadiq Mirza had disrupted her life. He had pushed her back into darkness, making her feel forlorn, frightened and fatigued. Was she so worthless that everyone had to hit her? Was it her kismet to always be humiliated? The wait for the next bus became painful. When it finally came, it was one hour late. She waved at the driver to stop the bus. As it came to a halt, she climbed up and sank behind the driver’s seat, near the window.

  After she had settled, she was once again rattled, this time by her own weary reflection in the window. She tried to look
outside, but she couldn’t escape it. It became an image and then a picture, and then it transmogrified into her churail-like mother. Her mottled face, her hurtful cries were all too real. The word ‘churail’ echoed from the window, from the seat Mehrun was sitting on, from the metal bar she was holding, the very word Talat had uttered, the name conferred on her mother. The heir to the churail was now crowned—Mehrunnissa née churail née harami née whore—her list of humiliating nicknames growing long and weary. When the bus stopped near her alley, she stepped out with a heavy heart, her legs like soft vermicelli, and dawdled towards that gutter that her father called home.

  *

  That day, when she had panicked about not having the money to pay for her exam fee, it had been a moment of helplessness. But poverty often teaches the value of frugality; Mehrun had been religiously saving money from her job at the Mirzas. So, when the time came, she paid the exam fee on her own, and then for three whole months buried herself in her books, neglecting her shattered self and blocking out whispers of the scandal at the professor’s house. On the day of the exam, she entered the hall poised and prepared. That year, all the examinations took place without any ugly incidents and disruptions. For the first time in many years, the students did not walk out of the examination halls to protest against difficult questions; they did not demonstrate when denied the opportunity to cheat, and they did not threaten the invigilators for being too vigilant. It was as if the students had finally become serious about education. The results were announced two months later, and Mehrun got the first division that she had hoped for. But getting admission into President’s College was not on the cards any more. She even sent Mansoor, secretly, to Sadiq Mirza to remind him about the promise that he had made to her, but the professor made lame excuses. And without any sifarish, any recommendations or intercessions, getting admission to the prestigious college was unthinkable. She did not have a civil servant for a father or a rich uncle. She reminded herself that she was the daughter of a lowly gardener who was slowly surrendering to the madness of perception. Mehrun released her anger by burning the newspaper that had printed the exam result. She did not even try to get admitted into any of the other prestigious colleges in the city, but instead, got herself registered at the Government College for Women, merging her destiny with a ‘yellow’ institution once more. To feed herself and her father, she found a part-time job as a clerk at the newly formed High Finance Bank Limited, all on her own, without any pull or influence, and she was proud of that.

  The chairman of the bank was the legendary Ameer Abbas Alvi, also known as Triple-A, a self-made man who overcame poverty, rose to the top and, in the process, amassed a considerable fortune in a short time. Despite his own new wealth, he despised the nouveau riche and the old moneyed class equally. But that is not to say he did not suck up to them when he needed to. In the age of puffery and pretence, he saw no contradiction in loathing and slavering in the same breath. He was a man possessed with an all-consuming drive to prosper in the emerging banking industry of Pakistan.

  When Mehrun got this part-time job, she did not have to worry about finding work as a domestic servant any longer. The new fount of income made Jumman quit his job at the Kashana and become a full-time schizophrenic. The only annoyance that re-entered Mehrun’s life was Khaleel Khan, alias Athanni, who, despite failing his school exams, also found a position in this new bank.

  *

  Reza Dabiran came through for Joseph, finding him work at the National Iranian Petroleum Company, and even sending him money for airfare and other expenses. Pyaro pleaded, cajoled and emotionally blackmailed Joseph, even threatening suicide, but nothing worked. Joseph’s mind was made up. Anxious and ready to depart, he promised his mother that he would send her enough money so that she wouldn’t need to do the ‘shitty’ job again. Feeling helpless, she hugged him and prayed to God for her son’s health, all the while hoping he would not get his passport.

  Her prayers went unanswered and Joseph got his first passport. It surprised him that the government had made it so easy that he was able to get it without paying any bribe and in good time. Was the reason for this to encourage its nationals to work overseas and send foreign exchange remittances to boost the country’s dwindling reserves? After he bought his plane ticket, he went to the Kashana to bid the Haq family goodbye. Mansoor had mixed feelings when Joseph told him about his impending departure the following week. Happy that he had found a better-paying job, but sad that he may never see him again, he controlled his tears. Much to Joseph’s surprise, Farhat gave him two hundred and fifty rupees and told him to buy some clothes. Noor asked him, ‘What will your mother do?’

  ‘Sahib, she says that she will go back to her family in Punjab.’

  Noor asked him to wait and went to his bedroom. When he returned, he had an envelope in his hand. He gave it to Joseph and said, ‘This has money for your mother; not for you. Give it to her.’

  Joseph started to weep at the generosity of his employers. He wanted to hug them, but societal barriers prevented him from doing so. Mansoor followed him to the gate. As he was about to sit on his bicycle, Joseph said to his friend with a smile, ‘Tell Mehrun, my marriage proposal is still valid.’ Mansoor laughed and said, ‘You will have to tell her that when you become an idiot millionaire.’

  *

  Meanwhile, Mansoor’s imperious father forced him to study economics and political science in his senior year. Literature, philosophy and religion—Mansoor’s newest passions—could wait until his career was established. When he had argued about this, his father had replied with his usual sarcasm, ‘Sahibzadey, do you want to sell peanuts after you graduate, or do you want to teach in a mosque? Or maybe you can do both.’

  Mansoor had slowly begun to feel that religion was that part of his culture which was sorely missing in his life. Except for Maulvi Sahib’s wishy-washy, one-dimensional limited knowledge and his mother’s odd chunks of dogma, he knew little else. At that juncture in Pakistan’s history, for all practical purposes, religion remained a mostly private matter. But that cavity, a gift from his father, suddenly needed filling. Unable to explain to Noor his love of the liberal arts and his want of religion, Mansoor struggled within. With Joseph gone and Mehrun busy with her new job, he felt lonely. So, Mansoor immersed himself in books and read everything from the trashy to the transcendent, from James Hadley Chase to Albert Camus, from Harold Robbins to Bertrand Russell. He also pored over Urdu literature and read Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Saadat Hassan Manto and Qurratulain Hyder. Manto stirred his sexual consciousness, while Camus, Russell and Haider stoked his philosophical interest. And then there was Faiz, who made him fall in love with the poetry of dissent. The beliefs that had been hanging in his embrace, like dangling participles, came under fresh scrutiny. Vague religious convictions, which had been seeded here and there and had begun to take root, withered under reflection. Purveyors of religion, on his shortwave radio and the new television in the house, appeared as charlatans. And when the newly formed religious party, the Guardians of Divinity (G.O.D.) offered frayed certitudes wrapped in glossy packages, Mansoor’s doubts hardened.

  *

  General Dundda sacked his brilliant foreign minister, who, with a blasted ego and a determination fed by anger, began plotting retaliation. He first tried to join different political parties, and when that failed, he formed his own—The Party of Oppressed People. Some people abbreviated it as P.O.P., while others went with P.O.O.P. Noor preferred the latter. And so, the P.O.O.P.s clashed with the G.O.D.s, and they both fought with the police. And when things did not calm down, the general imposed a curfew and arrested his brilliant foreign minister on trumped-up charges and made him a star. To divert the nation’s attention, the general then ordered his sycophantic advisers to prepare for the ‘Decade of Development’, which was to be launched on the tenth anniversary of his coup d’état. Noor called it the ‘Delusion of Development’ and wrote an op-ed page for the Morning Gazette, but Haider vetoed it. It was too infl
ammatory.

  Fifteen

  The ‘Decade of Development’ was celebrated with pageantry and parades as General Dundda officially inaugurated the first television station in Karachi and gave his first and last televised speech. The cities shimmered with decorative lights, while the newspapers published special supplements paying glowing tributes to the President. Poets and writers wrote painful panegyrics, their barbarous expressions mocking human intelligence. And the flagrant contradiction of the last ten years stood there in all its nakedness as a farcical tragedy. Who prospered, who suffered, who won and who lost was no longer a mystery. A handful of the wealthiest families had amassed more wealth than the rest of the country put together. And when the news about the opulent lifestyles of these wealthy industrialists began to appear in the newspapers, patience started deserting the people of Pakistan. A fit of anarchic anger overtook them, and the time for violent action finally arrived; it was now or never. The day after the celebrations, the brilliant ex-foreign minister gave a stirring speech. Threatening to let the Russian bald cat out of the bag (a reference to the accord that the general had signed with the Indian prime minister in the Soviet Union), he suggested that his former benefactor was an American puppet. The nation rallied behind him as he called for demonstrations and strikes, his supporters clashing with the police, burning buses, destroying government buildings and torching cinemas, as well as the American and British consulates. Once again, the general retaliated by throwing the brilliant ex-foreign minister into jail and made him a bigger hero. Once again, schools and colleges were shut down. And with nothing better to do, the jaded students joined the protestors and the professional rabble-rousers, backing them in their chaotic protest marches and abetting them in arson, looting and killing. Then, in a strange twist of politics, General Dundda performed a volte-face and released all political leaders languishing in jail, calling for a ‘reconciliation meeting’ with them. When everything fails, you can always count on what the Pakistani public calls ‘lota’ politicians. These are turncoat politicians who are ready to wash the ass of anyone promising them power. But this time, nothing succeeded. And then, on the anniversary of his Constitution, demoralized and dejected, the general abruptly handed over power to the then commander-in-chief of the armed forces, making him the chief martial law administrator, and faded into obscurity. The people’s agitation had finally succeeded in removing General Dundda.