by A. A. Jafri
Alvi never looked back at his life in India. When the madness of Partition claimed his entire family, fate spared his. Living in Bombay at the time, he worked as a lending officer at the Imperial Mercantile Bank of India. The financial hub of India, Bombay was one of the few lucky cities to have been spared the worst of the rioting. He received the news of his family’s massacre with a resigned calmness. Losing the connection to his biological past made him rupture his relationship with his emotional self. He couldn’t mourn their loss; he never went back to his ancestral home and he never bothered to find out what exactly happened. What was the point? Human beings are bastards, anyway. They will always find a reason to kill each other. Look at East Pakistan.
For another year, he remained in Bombay, worked hard, saved money and created fake short-term loans in fake names. When these loans came due, he converted them into long-term counterfeit investments and transferred the ‘borrowed’ money into foreign banks. Once all the money was in a safe haven, he fled to Turkey and from there to the newly created Pakistan, where he joined the nascent Muslim Trust Bank (MTB) and began his career as an accountant. Changing his identity from Sameer Lukhnavi to Ameer Abbas Alvi, he faked his place of birth from Lucknow to Rawalpindi. In his mind, it was all justifiable felony. To him, the Imperial Mercantile Bank of India was a British bank, and he had no compunction about ‘looting the looters’. And changing his identity was just a tactical manoeuvre against the colonial enemy.
As an officer at MTB, he now put his prior banking knowledge to principled use. And it was his attention to detail, his disciplined work ethic and Atatürk-like self-confidence that thrust him up the hierarchy. Very soon, he rose to become one of the directors at the bank. Political intrigues and disputes with the managing director, however, led to his ouster. But it also provided a perfect opportunity to create a rival bank with the help of his former customers and wealthy acquaintances, all of whom he despised. As the managing director of the High Finance Bank, he made tremendous strides and put the new bank within striking distance of the MTB in terms of total deposits.
Triple-A worked hard and chased opportunities like an addict chasing hashish. He never forgot one lesson that his father taught him early on in his life: Don’t become money’s slave; make money your slave. Determined and ruthless, he expected the same single-minded tenacity from his subordinates, and in turn, rewarded the energetic and the efficient and punished the lazy and the laggard. Mehrun was one of the beneficiaries. She had the brains; and Sadiq Mirza, with his Pygmalion bhoot, had made her sophisticated enough to pass off as a modern begum.
While Alvi guarded his homosexuality ferociously, his enemies gossiped about it openly. He could compete with any bank, tear apart any opponent, but he could not risk any public humiliation. Pulling his feet down from the table, he reached for the intercom and asked his secretary, ‘Mister Mehdi, please send Mehrunnissa to my room. And bring tea.’
He always called Mehrun by her full name. As he waited for her, he got up and went towards one of the bay windows. An ugly pastiche of vehicles and humanity called his attention to the chaos that was McLeod Road. Donkey and camel carts competed with rickshaws, trucks, cars and elderly ramblers for the scarce space. He saw a heavy-set woman in an orange shalwar-kameez balancing a rectangular wooden crate on her head. A skinny boy, his shirt torn, stood selling newspapers next to her. He saw beggars and pedlars fighting for their spots on the sidewalk—everyday scenes of a reiterated reality concealing the crush of human existence. Watching the people on the street, carrying on with their lives with a regularity and routine, was like seeing a mujra dance that you knew would end in a terrible tragedy. The world below dissolved into an indeterminate actuality as Alvi withdrew from the window and strolled back towards one of the large palm plants to appreciate the gentler side of life.
Ameer Abbas Alvi, a man in his mid-forties, of medium height and a dark brown complexion, his jet-black hair, slicked backwards, was an act of sartorial seriousness. Lately, his neurotic obsession was to be the Asian J.P. Morgan. The horizon never looked clearer.
Hearing a faint knock on the door, he returned to his seat and ordered the person to enter. It was Mehrun. She had changed her hairstyle recently and was wearing light make-up, the pale grey saree giving her an elegant look.
‘Come in, Mehrunnissa, come in,’ he said. It was not unusual for him to summon her to his office once or twice during the day.
‘Please, sit down,’ he said, gesturing to the chair across his table.
Mehrun sat down and waited for Alvi to open the conversation. But a long, painful moment of silence greeted her instead and she realized that Alvi had something important to say. He gathered his thoughts and forced himself to articulate them as clearly as he could.
‘Mehrunnissa, what I am going to tell you is very confidential,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied and became more attentive.
‘I have not told anyone else about this, and I expect that you, too, will keep it to yourself.’
‘You have my promise, sir,’ Mehrun replied.
‘I have decided to resign.’
‘Sir?’ she flinched, unsure about what she had just heard.
‘Yes, Mehrunnissa, I am going to quit.’
There was another knock at the door, and Alvi’s secretary entered the room, carrying a silver tray with a Royal Doulton tea set on it. The secretary placed the tray on the side table and got busy making two cups of tea. As soon as he was finished, Alvi signalled him to give the first cup to Mehrun, who accepted it with a thank you. Mehdi then gave the second cup to him.
‘Anything else, sir?’ he asked obsequiously.
‘No, that will be all. And, Mr Mehdi, please hold all my calls.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied and left the room.
‘Sir, may I ask why you are quitting?’ Mehrun continued once they were alone.
‘Mehrunnissa, I have been told point-blank by the new commerce minister that our bank will be the first one to be nationalized. I have slogged like a donkey for this bank, and I haven’t done this so that some stupid bureaucrat or some illiterate son of a minister or a landlord may come and park his fat ass on this chair,’ he paused. And then he continued, ‘This is not acceptable to me. I have worked hard to be in the place where I am now, and I am not going to let this feudal landlord-turned-prime minister tell me how to run a bank. I hate to boast, but no banker in Pakistan has accomplished what I have, that too in such less time.’
‘I agree with you, sir, and I would not be here without your kindness. But what will you do? Where will you go?’ she asked.
‘Well, I have been in touch with some foreign dignitaries in the Arab world. I have known them for years now, and they know me and my potential. They have asked me to set up an international bank in Dubai. It is a big challenge, but I have accepted their offer.’
He became quiet after that, and Mehrun, not knowing what to say either, started imagining her life without Alvi. In a male-dominated world, where positions were acquired through influence and promotions were gained through buttering, she and Ameer Abbas Alvi were a couple of rarae aves. Her confidence waned and she had this sinking feeling of being sent back to that hellhole of a house where she had grown up stifled. The image of working for a fat bureaucrat was hideous to say the least. Alvi noticed the tension on her face and tried to put her at ease.
‘I don’t know if your father will allow you to work in a foreign country, but you are welcome to join me if you want.’
Mehrun had never lied to him about her family background, but then, she had never really told him the truth either. She never discussed her personal life. At that point, however, she wanted to unload the facts on him, and unload she did. She told him everything: her struggles, the insults, her mother’s estranged life and her tragic death. She told him about her father’s schizophrenia. She told him about Mansoor and Noor ul Haq. Alvi knew Noor personally, as he had sought his legal opinion on many occasions.
‘Mehrun, stop! Mehrun!’ he practically shouted at her.
‘Oh, Khaleel Khan! I did not see you,’ she said as she turned around.
‘Can I talk to you, privately?’
‘Sure, come to my office.’
The words ‘my office’ resounded deeply in Athanni’s mind.
As they walked towards her office together, Mehrun noticed a gash on Athanni’s face, extending from his left sideburn to his cheek. ‘What happened? Did you get into a knife fight?’
‘Wha . . . What? Oh. No, no. I fell and hit my face on something,’ Athanni lied, covering up for the fight he had with his father trying to save his mother a few months ago.
Mehrun did not ask any more questions, and once they entered her office, she closed the door and motioned him to sit. It was difficult for Athanni to be in the office of someone who had once been a servant girl, but he knew that Mehrun could help him advance his career in the bank, and so he swallowed his pride. As he pulled up the chair, he said, shifting between Urdu and English, ‘I have heard that Mister Hashem is going to start the Islamic banking section at our bank. I want to work there. Can you . . . um . . . ask him if he . . . I mean . . . could put me in that department?’
‘I don’t think anything concrete is going to happen soon, but if it does, I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you, that is all I ask.’
After a few more moments of awkward silence, he got up and left her office.
*
Athanni’s humiliations had piled upon him like the dirty laundry that piled up in the cavernous teak hamper outside his parents’ bathroom. That hamper had been his childhood refuge from his father, an escape from his violent temper. For long stretches of time, he would lie hidden beneath the dirty clothes, unmindful of the stale smell, unflustered by his sisters dumping their undergarments. Lately, however, he began sensing that his life had stranded him on this strange island where all his acquaintances were spreading their wings. He had heard from his mother that Joseph had left for Iran, where he would probably make more money than he earned at the bank. And then there was Mehrun, ensconced in her air-conditioned office, she had become a close confidante of Alvi, her new success contradicting her preordained destiny. Mansoor had aced his exams and would soon be leaving for higher education in a foreign country. And all this while, what was he—a gofer for nameless people in unknown departments, running around doing meaningless errands? To make matters worse, the defeat of his party in the recent elections had robbed him of any chance at higher politics.
As he sat outside on the stairs of the bank, thinking about his brief conversation with Mehrun, Athanni’s scar started to itch, but he resisted scratching it. His arms and face had received knife slashes when he had fought against his father with his bare hands, trying to protect his mother. The horrific memory still stunned him. When he was little, he remembered the shouting episodes and the continuous shoving and pushing. Later, the pummelling became more violent and came barbed with expletives and threats to kill. He was tired of his father, his constant yelling, the relentless beatings and then the attempt to kill his mother. Festering with hate towards his father, Athanni had promised his mother to always protect her. Tears rushed down his scar now, causing a burning sensation in the wound—the image of his mother crying and begging forgiveness still fresh in his memory. He thought about the G.O.D.s; he would leave the party as soon as he got into Islamic banking.
*
The shock of Pakistan’s defeat in the war had been eclipsed by a new sensation, a new hero—Sher Khan, the son of the former cricket captain. By piling up a scintillating century and bundling out the visiting Australian cricket team cheaply with his fast bowling, he made a sensational debut in test cricket. He instilled terror in the hearts of the best batsmen in the world, with his accurate yorkers. His rugged, handsome looks and his Caucasian features made him an instant heart-throb not only in Pakistan, but in every other cricketing country. Wherever he went, his fans mobbed him; whatever he did, his devotees emulated him. Even those who knew nothing about cricket knew who Sher Khan was. He became the Lion Prince.
*
The new legislative assembly wanted all traces of General Dundda obliterated. So they repealed his Constitution and created the third Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Among many new features, it guaranteed ‘the freedom of press’. Haider wrote an interesting editorial about it, asking the lawmakers to be explicit about what these words meant. To most journalists, the freedom of press was an alien concept. Obviously, it did not mean absolute freedom, for there is no country in the world where you have unqualified, unrestricted freedom of expression. Surely, you don’t have the freedom to print anything or say anything; you don’t have the freedom to publish scurrilous lies about others, and you don’t have the right to come and piss on the boundary wall of someone’s house. But of course, the right to free speech in a country that had just started to flirt with democracy was narrowly defined. You still did not have the right to condemn a bad law or criticize the dreadful government or complain about corrupt rulers.
The Ministry of Measurement under the new government began to codify what was not free speech. No one was allowed to use ‘muddy language’ or a ‘mocking tone’ or commit ‘morphological errors’, whatever that meant. They all came under the letter ‘M’. Anyone found guilty would be subject to the following humane punishments: an unannounced tax audit, denial of foreign exchange and the rejection of an exit visa. Freedom of the press was, of course, guaranteed, but journalists had to use it ‘wisely’.
As the new prime minister began to peddle his neurotic new utopia, called ‘Faithian Socialism’, the hyper-intellectuals became co-conspirators and keen collaborators. The latest recruit was the distinguished professor of English literature and humane letters, Sadiq Mirza, who was initially absolutely reluctant to write anything for the government, but persistent and rather graphic threats made him change his mind.
At his university, word had leaked out that Sadiq Mirza was an Ahmadi, the most heretical of all deviant Muslim groups. The smear campaign against his community that had gone on for years had finally reached his doorstep. It began when he noticed that some of his colleagues stopped using the traditional religious greeting when they met him. This was soon followed by them calling him Dr Mirzai, which was a spotting term for Ahmadis. But when the hate mail and the threats of extreme violence started appearing regularly in his mailbox, Sadiq contacted one of his students, who had become a top official in the new government, for help.
His student came back with a quid pro quo from his boss: if he desired protection, he must join the P.O.O.P. as its official ‘writer’. Sadiq had no choice but to acquiesce. And so, he became their apologist—trading panegyrics for protection. Noor, who did not know anything about the threats and the hate mail, read his writings in disbelief. How could someone who was so steeped in erudition write such rubbish? It was nonsense, calculated and intentional. He could find no other adjectives to describe it. Had he lost all links with his intellectual past? Noor saw the inscription at the end of the article: ‘The writer is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Karachi.’ He wondered if Sadiq now represented the new mindset of the intelligentsia that remembered little, retained nothing and wrote rubbish.
&nb
sp; To prevent anyone from challenging his authority, The People’s Leader created a paramilitary force, called the Security, Command, Action Brigade (SCAB), and gave it absolute powers. Noor, with his wry sense of humour, called it the Sinister, Coercive, Abusive Brigade, instead. The SCAB beat up the very people who had helped The People’s Leader come to power. As the people’s government turned despotic, Noor took Sadiq to task regarding his article.
Sadiq had known Noor since they were students at Aligarh Muslim University, and he knew him inside out. While his colleagues at the university lauded his articles, Sadiq knew well what Noor would say. So, to pre-empt him, he phoned his friend and invited his entire family for lunch the following Sunday. Mansoor felt awkward when Noor told him that Sadiq had invited him also. He made excuses, but his father wouldn’t have it any other way.
When they reached Sadiq’s home, Farhat went straight to Talat in the women’s quarter, while the men sat in the austere drawing room. Noor noticed that the bookshelf filled with classics, which used to be a prominent feature of the drawing room, was now replaced by a glass cabinet filled with religious artefacts: an ornate Qur’an, a couple of verses from the Qur’an elegantly framed, a marble slab with the words ‘Allah’ and ‘Muhammad’ beautifully calligraphed. After the usual pleasantries, Noor turned to Sadiq’s newspaper articles. But Sadiq quickly changed the subject, making some frantic gestures with his hands to indicate that his house was bugged. At first, Noor didn’t understand his cryptic signs, but then he realized what could be going on and began talking about cricket.