Of Smokeless Fire

by A. A. Jafri

  According to the ‘sources’ of the lurid tabloid the Daily Hulchul, when the general had called the commander-in-chief, he was ‘rumoured to be playing blind man’s bluff with a bevy of beauties in a five-star hotel, utterly inebriated.’ His bacchanalian temperament later earned him the epithet Rangeelay Shah, or the Colourful King. The scandalous story mentioned that the telephone call from the outgoing general had annoyed him as ‘his frivolity’ had been disrupted. His ‘women’ had to give him gallons of coffee to clear his head. With a semblance of sobriety restored, he gave a tiresome televised speech, promising a new constitution and fresh elections. At first, the people did not believe the Rangeelay Shah, but what option did they really have? The change of leadership and the promise of elections scattered the agitators and sent the students back to their schools and colleges. Much to everyone’s surprise, Rangeelay Shah relaxed the emergency laws that General Dundda had hurriedly passed and re-allowed political meetings, even as he continued the martial law.

  *

  During this whole political turmoil, the banks had remained defiantly open. Although many clerks and officers absented themselves, Mehrun diligently came to work every day. And since the colleges were closed, she could work full-time too. Her sedulous efforts and painstaking industry caught the attention of Ameer Abbas Alvi, who advised her to quit college and work for him full-time. Heeding his advice, Mehrun withdrew from college and buried herself in the affairs of this nascent bank. Success kissed her feet and she inched towards becoming the begum of her dreams. Mehrun now acted and attired like a successful professional. She was promoted to a loan officer and soon became a close confidante of Triple-A. In Mehrun, he saw his own past. He found affinities in her social background and the economic hardships they had both endured. Observing her working long hours, hearing her talk self-assuredly with her clients, and seeing her solve problems, he decided to take her under his wing. Alvi gave her the lift that he himself had got early in his career. Now, her career kicked into high gear and she was ready for the take-off to prosperity. Her personal life also returned to normal as her father suddenly snapped out of his melancholic state and went back to working at the Kashana. Life was suddenly a sweetheart, but not for too long.

  One day, as Mehrun finished her afternoon meeting with her boss, a bank secretary came and whispered in her ear that a woman was waiting for her in her office. Mehrun quickly checked her diary to see if she had forgotten an appointment. But there was no entry for 2 p.m. Puzzled, she excused herself from the meeting that had almost ended and went to her drab office. Through the partially open door, she saw Talat Mirza sitting and waiting, twirling the loose end of her saree. Her stern face jaded the elegance of her beautiful saree. Suddenly, Mehrun had a sense of déjà vu: the face resembled the one she had seen on that fateful day, when Talat had found her with her husband and had hit her. She told herself that Talat was in her territory and could not resort to violence, but that did not calm her. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open her office door.

  ‘Begum Sahiba?’ she said.

  At the sound of Mehrun’s voice, Talat took out a wad of cash from her purse and threw it on her desk.

  ‘I have sold my jewellery for all this. Take it and leave this city. Leave my husband alone, for God’s sake,’ she said.

  Mehrun looked at the bundle of fifty-rupee notes and approached her desk. She picked up the money, looked at it with pursed lips and then, as an afterthought, threw it back into Talat’s lap.

  ‘Please leave my office,’ she gritted her teeth, fighting hard to maintain her composure.

  But Talat sat there defiantly, her choler rising, and said, ‘I will never allow you to become his second wife! And if I ever see you with him, I will personally strangle you.’

  Without saying anything else, Mehrun rang the bell on her desk. Within minutes, the security guard came in. He looked at Talat and then at the ashen-faced Mehrun, unsure as to why he had been summoned.

  ‘Please show Begum Sahiba the exit door,’ Mehrun instructed him.

  Talat put the money back in her purse and left her office, but she issued another warning as she left: ‘If I see you within twenty feet of my husband, I will kill you.’

  The mild headache that had been lingering at the edges of her temple all day now began to pound Mehrun’s head with full force. She rang the bell again and asked the guard to bring a couple of Aspro tablets and some water. As the guard left, her boss, Alvi, knocked on her door. He craned his neck through it and asked her if everything was okay. Mehrun just nodded and was relieved that her boss left without asking any other question.

  The guard returned with the Aspro tablets and the water a few minutes later. Mehrun sat there at her desk, a little dazed, and swallowed the Aspro, washing it down with the cloudy water that the guard had brought, not even noticing when he left the room. Did she have any reason to feel guilty about anything? All she had wanted was to benefit from Sadiq’s intellect. Why did her love of learning become a constant source of violence? Why did those written words, sources of serenity, become sources of sorrow? It was something she just could not comprehend. Why did Talat come to her office to humiliate her? And what was the second wife contention all about? As tears began to well up in her eyes, she buried her head in her hands. Was she losing her mind? She sat up and took out a handkerchief from her purse to wipe her eyes. Then she reached for the telephone and dialled Mansoor’s number, but just as the phone rang, she put the handset down. What if Farhat or Noor picked up the phone? A second later, she picked up the handset again and redialled the number. If anyone else picked up the phone, she would say that it was a wrong number and just put it back down. But, after a few rings, it was Mansoor who picked up the phone at the other end. She asked him if he could come over to the bank.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No, just come to the bank,’ she replied.

  ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  Mehrun buried her face in her palms again and thought about calling Mansoor back to tell him not to bother, but it was probably too late. He must’ve already left the Kashana. She needed to unburden herself and the only person she could think of was her childhood friend.

  *

  There is an old saying that when the mind reaches for the stars, the soul yearns for the ordinary. While Mansoor’s father was drilling into him esoteric ideas, he longed for simple teenage pleasures, such as being with friends, eating out and having a good time. Mansoor’s edification by his demanding father had detached him from his friends. The few, who had found it difficult to relate to him in the past, now considered him downright tiresome. Noor’s insistence on the value of doubt made Mansoor introspective and reflective, but it also deprived him of a healthy social life. Mehrun, on the other hand, had also grown intellectually under Sadiq’s tutelage, and Mansoor found a kindred spirit in her. And although her presence at the Kashana had become irregular after her run-in with his English tutor, whenever Mansoor did manage to meet Mehrun, he cherished her company. The passage of time only brought the two of them closer. But until the day she called him and asked him to come over to the bank, Mehrun had kept Sadiq’s pass a carefully guarded secret.

  *

  Mansoor had also taken his Senior Cambridge exam and done exceptionally well. He enrolled himself in the University of Karachi. The institution was no intellectual powerhouse, but he found a few teachers who excited his imagination and aroused his curiosity. His mind, however, remained agitated and his beliefs continued to collide. On the surface, he appeared tranquil, but inside he was bursting with uncertainties. The more profound metaphysical questions of life plagued him. He was a young man struggling with self-doubt. The sense of belonging to a family, to a tradition and to a geography began to elude him. Did belonging provide cultural comfort? Was an un-belonging self, a drifting self with no meaning, devoid of intent or purpose? Did a djinn reside inside his soul? Why did Haider Rizvi still call him the twelfth man?

 
; These ontological questions tormented Mansoor regularly, and his utterly incompatible parents muddled things up every day. On the one hand was his father, a worldly man, well-read, thoughtful, secular in his politics, agnostic in his beliefs and resentfully living in a country where religion had gradually become a public face. On the other hand was his poor mother, an uneducated woman without opinions, faithful to her husband not out of love but out of loyalty to tradition, unwavering in her faith in God and deeply rooted in religion. And both wanted Mansoor to grow up with their beliefs, and in their likeness.

  *

  As a reward for doing well in the exams, Mansoor’s father had bought him a new Datsun, which he now drove maniacally towards the High Finance Bank. He was trying to park near the curb when he saw Mehrun waiting for him at the bank’s door, dressed professionally in a cream-coloured silk shalwar-kameez. She hurried over when she spotted him and opened the car’s door, collapsing on to the front passenger seat.

  ‘Are you okay? You look like you saw a bhoot, a ghost.’

  ‘What? Yes, that’s exactly what I saw,’ she replied with a sigh, and then added, ‘Could we go and have coffee at Chandni Lounge?’

  Mansoor nodded and drove towards Hotel InterContinental, which lay in an exclusive part of central Karachi. The hotel’s restaurant, Chandni Lounge, was the newest hang-out for the bohemians, the intelligentsia and the industrialists of the city alike. The dimly lit restaurant luxuriated in Mughal décor. The pistachio-green-coloured heavy silk drapes and the miniature Mughal paintings created an ambiance of warm elegance. In a corner, sitting on a slightly raised platform, a beautiful young woman, dressed like a courtesan from King Akbar’s court, played the sitar.

  Mansoor found an empty booth in the corner, and when the white-uniformed bearer came, he ordered coffee and jam tarts for both of them.

  ‘So, what is bothering you?’ he asked Mehrun.

  With nervous trepidation and halting speech, she told him every detail: her job as a servant in Sadiq’s house, his tutoring her, his flirtatious glances, his amorous embrace, his brusque kisses and then Talat’s beating. She talked about how her job at the bank had restored her and her father’s sanity. Then she spoke of Talat’s visit an hour ago, the money she had offered, the reference she had made to Mehrun becoming a second wife and her departing threat about killing Mehrun. The stress apparent on her face, her voice quivering, she held nothing back. Mansoor did not quite know how to react. The sadness in Mehrun’s voice jarred him. He could only shake his head slowly in utter disbelief.

  ‘I could never have imagined Uncle Sadiq doing what he did to you, and then he did not even dare to come to your defence!’

  ‘I can’t understand, Mansoor Babu . . . why did she have to insult me like this, and that too in my office? She was practically shouting at me.’

  She paused for a while and then continued, ‘I tried to take good care of her house at less money than what your mother gave my mother. Sadiq Sahib taught me so much. And she too was good to me in the beginning. Why can’t she understand that it was her husband who initiated all this?’

  The bearer wheeled in their coffee and jam tarts on a squeaky tea trolley. A whiff of freshly baked scones brought out for another customer made Mansoor hungry. He poured the coffee from the pot for them and then asked Mehrun if she took sugar and milk in her coffee.

  ‘One spoonful of sugar and plenty of milk, please,’ she replied.

  He added the sugar and milk to her coffee and passed the jam tart to her before adding some milk to his own coffee. While performing his gentlemanly duties, he saw Mehrun fidgeting with her pastry fork.

  ‘Mansoor Babu, I am going to go crazy if this continues. Tell me, what should I do?’

  ‘I don’t know! I wish I could tell you.’

  ‘Talat Begum wants me to leave Karachi.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to do that. You belong here.’

  ‘I don’t know where I belong. My father . . .’

  Her words dissolved in the delightful atmosphere of Chandni Lounge as Mansoor’s mind focused on the word ‘belong’.

  ‘Mansoor Babu,’ Mehrun whispered, bringing him out of his reverie.

  ‘Do you remember that day when you and Joseph cremated the lizard, and then later you called me a djinn? I was so angry with you,’ Mansoor changed the subject.

  ‘Well, you are a djinn, and I am a churail. What difference does it make? Maybe we should team up and use our powers to destroy all those who hate us,’ Mehrun said.

  Mansoor did not reply. He kept drifting into his own nether world, far from the restaurant, far from the town, far from its people. But suddenly he noticed Mehrun’s searching gaze.

  ‘What? What are you looking at?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh nothing!’ She replied hurriedly. ‘I just realized how much you have grown.’

  ‘Not much, actually. I feel as if I stopped growing after I was ten.’ And then Mansoor changed the subject again. ‘You know, Mehrun, your mother was strange.’

  ‘Huh!’ She forced a smile, as if saying ‘tell me about it.’ And after a pause, she said, ‘You know, when I was younger, she used to beat me up quite regularly and would blame me for all her problems. I know you know this, but I was the harami who brought innumerable miseries in her life.’

  The word ‘harami’ slit his heart, just as it had some years ago when Zaidi had hurled that opprobrium at her. He still carried that oppressive guilt around.

  ‘What did your mother say about me? My mother told me that she had spread the rumour about me being a djinn.’ Mansoor didn’t know why he asked that question.

  Mehrun sighed deeply, then sipped her coffee and said, ‘My mother was a superstitious woman. She lived superstitiously and she died because of it. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘I want to know what she told you about me,’ Mansoor said.

  ‘Your mother’s eleven miscarriages sowed the seeds of this whole thing. My mother believed that there was a djinn inside your mother’s womb and that the djinn killed every child that was conceived in there. When your mother was pregnant with you, Amma was convinced that you would end up with the same fate as the other eleven, but when you were born alive, she couldn’t believe it. What could be the reason for such an anomaly? The only way for her to sustain her deep-rooted superstition was to believe that the djinn himself had come out. And so, Mansoor Babu, there you were; you were the djinn—’

  ‘And so the rumour became a reality!’ Mansoor interrupted her.

  ‘She swore that she saw a djinn the day you were born,’ she paused. And then she said, ‘You know, she never really liked me playing with you. In fact, during her last days, before she went into a coma, my mother regained consciousness briefly, and the first and last words that came out of her mouth were your name and the word “djinn”.’

  ‘What? Are you serious? Why would she say my name?’

  His heart began to race when he heard this. Was he, in some way, responsible for Kaneez’s death? Why would she say his name on her deathbed? When Mehrun saw the change in his face, she tried to joke about it.

  ‘But you are a good djinn,’ she said, ‘and my mother was an illiterate, gullible woman.’

  Just then, Mansoor spotted Haider Rizvi entering the restaurant with Sadiq Mirza. Lowering his head, he whispered to Mehrun, ‘What is the distance you have to keep from Uncle Sadiq to avoid getting killed by Auntie Talat?’

  ‘What?’

  Mansoor repeated his question.

  ‘Don’t joke, Mansoor Babu.’

  ‘I am not joking. Don’t look back, but guess who just walked into the restaurant?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. Finish your coffee, and we will try to sneak out without getting noticed. Here are my car keys. Go sit inside, in case they see me, and I am called.’

  Mehrun had not finished her coffee, but she pushed it aside and got up. Mansoor left two hundred-rupee notes on the table and followed her. They tried to slip out of the rest
aurant quietly, but Haider noticed them.

  ‘Mansoor!’ he waved at him.

  Mansoor tilted his head ever so slightly, signalling Mehrun to go to his car.

  ‘How are you, Uncle Haider, Uncle Sadiq?’ he asked the two men as he walked over to their table.

  ‘Fine, fine! Who was that young lady, huh?’ Haider demanded.

  ‘No one; just a friend.’

  ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ Haider winked conspiratorially at Mansoor as he said this.

  Sadiq, however, appeared to be having the most awkward moment of his life as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes trying to avoid looking at Mehrun when she passed them. He knew that Haider had recognized Mehrun and would try to tease him incessantly. He had regretted telling Haider about his feelings for Mehrun as soon as he had confided in him. Sadiq tried to change the subject swiftly, ‘Congratulations on your exam, Mansoor.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Sadiq. I would have stayed and chatted, but I have to go.’

  As he sped out of the restaurant, he heard Haider yelling after him, ‘Tell your abba we expect him at the club next Friday.’

  Mansoor saw Mehrun inside the car, slumped against the seat, looking pale and scared. He started the engine and began driving back towards her bank on McLeod Road.