by A. A. Jafri
‘Abba, is everything okay?’
Noor shrugged his shoulders in response. Mansoor knew that his father wanted to talk about something, something important. Once dinner was over, Mansoor made a gin and tonic for himself and offered the same to his father. But Noor only drank whisky. Slowly, he eased his father into opening up about what was bothering him. Noor began complaining about Farhat’s religiosity, her superstitions, her ignorance and her blaming him for everything wrong in her life. Although he did not spell it out, it was also about his self-isolation.
With Sadiq’s horrific murder, Haider’s betrayal of his principles and Zakir’s regressive certitude in matters of faith, Noor’s loneliness was complete. When Mansoor had been in Pakistan, he had felt his father’s pain and had listened to his cynicism, but with him no longer there, Noor’s social cord had been permanently cut off. In lampooning the grotesque politicians who ran the country, he found himself not only rejecting Pakistan, but also utterly abandoned.
Mansoor had never seriously reflected on his father’s ‘regrettable citizenship’. Was his Abba still grieving for the India that he had lost? For the home that he had to flee from, the dreams that had dissipated? And what could he say about his life with Farhat? Tradition had wedded them, but their conflicting natures had separated them. Love had little traction in their conventional marriage; it was merely a Plan B, one concocted by their respective parents.
Suddenly, Mansoor’s ears perked up when he heard the name Khaleel Khan.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said your mother is turning into a zealot.’
‘No, what did you say about Khaleel?’
‘I said people like your nincompoop cousin Khaleel Khan and that troglodyte Zakir Hassan fan her extremism.’
‘Extremism? What do you mean?’ Mansoor asked.
‘Well, your mother’s life nowadays revolves around a very harsh belief system. She performs all the rituals, which I don’t mind, but then she goes to that bloody fool Zakir’s house for his weekly sermons. He has become her spiritual mentor. He incites her, and she criticizes my every habit and blames me for her past sins,’ he said, making air quotes when he uttered the words ‘past sins’.
‘What past sins?’ Mansoor asked.
‘She says that I prevented her from performing her religious obligations in the past. She blames me for never taking her to perform hajj. She even blames me for all her miscarriages.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know why she blames me for everything, but I have never ever imposed my beliefs on her or on anyone else. I never forbade her from practicing her faith. And if I had taken her for hajj, I would have felt like a total fraud. Why should I do something that I do not believe in? I told her that I would pay for her trip if she found someone to go with.’ He stopped, gulped his drink and continued, ‘She nags me about my drinking, she pesters me about my beliefs, and she accuses me of corrupting you . . . The other night, she asked me if I believed in the existence of God.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I got really angry and just told her off. I didn’t want to have a theological discussion with a . . .’ Noor’s voiced trailed off.
Mansoor had heard his father’s explanation about his non-belief. His father didn’t believe in the supernatural. Human existence was just brain chemistry according to him—the firing of neurones and the synaptic connections. Take away the brain, and you take away the being. Religion, to him, was nothing but wishes and fears.
‘So what’s Athanni’s role in all this?’ Mansoor asked.
Noor laughed when he heard Khaleel’s nickname. Mansoor had told him why Joseph had coined that sobriquet.
‘Khaleel Khan has become Zakir’s trusted lieutenant. You know he was fired from his job?’
‘I knew that he was fired, but I didn’t know that he works for Uncle Zakir now.’
‘I don’t think that’s his full-time job. Haider told me that Khaleel has found work as a photographer for the Daily Hulchul,’ Noor told him.
‘That’s a perfect fit, Maulvi Athanni, a tabloid journalist,’ Mansoor said.
It was getting late, and Mansoor realized that his father’s crapulous recollections were making him sentimental. He felt sorry for him. Sitting there across from him, Noor cut a figure of lonely irrelevance to his wife, to his friends and to his country—a grim relic of disconnection, stranded in his own time zone. The Unholy Quartet had collapsed; his wife of nearly fifty years had openly rebelled and there was nobody who could commiserate with him, nobody who could share his angst. That was the oppressive cruelty of his life in Pakistan.
*
Mansoor was in no mood to start his doctorate immediately; he wanted to take some time off to see the world, but his father tried his best to veto that.
‘You will have plenty of opportunities to see the world, but I won’t be there to support your studies for long. I can continue to support you for now, but if I retire, as I am planning to, I may not be able to support you later,’ Mansoor’s father told him.
‘But, Abba, I’m not sure if I want to do a PhD, and even if I do go for it, I would like to do it on my own, without your financial help.’
A blank expression suddenly appeared on Noor’s face. He sighed and turned his body sideways, as if avoiding his son.
‘Abba, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I am sorry.’
Noor pursed his lips. He appeared deep in thought for a moment; then he turned his head towards Mansoor and said, ‘Look, son, I am supporting you not because I have to, but because I want to. I am one of the highest-paid lawyers in Pakistan, and I can easily afford to support you. Everything that I have belongs to you and your mother. So even if you can support yourself, let me continue to send the money anyway. If you don’t need it right away, you can save it for the future. In any case, the money will have more value here in America than it will back in your country.’
‘Let’s talk about it later. I just finished my master’s degree. I need time to think.’
They didn’t talk about it at all, and Noor, after staying for only ten days, left for Karachi. In his presence, Mansoor had felt stifled, but the day he left, he missed him sorely. Old age had finally defeated his father. His tall frame now slightly bent, his salt-and-pepper hair completely grey, his eyelids darkening and the sagging skin under his chin, all publicized the onset of his autumnal years.
*
It was Haider who had told Mansoor about Zakir’s new mission: reminding people to become better Muslims. Like a true evangelist, he would wake up seven people every morning for the predawn Fajr prayers and would give fragmented sermons to them. But his mission expanded from waking up people for the predawn prayers to warning them about the menace of ‘Faithian Socialism’ and creeping secularism. As he extended his base from the mosques to the corporate offices of Karachi and Lahore, Zakir’s fame spread and countless people became his devotees, including Farhat and Nawab Khan Namaqul’s family. Prestige, power and glory grazed his feet, and he moved people with his rhapsodic speeches. As a diplomat, he had learnt several foreign languages, and his ability to fluently move from Urdu to Arabic to English and French made him a unique preacher—the likes of whom people had never seen before. He enjoyed the limelight and relished the attention; it fanned his ego and sustained his mission. For him, conviction demanded certainty; there could be no doubt in religion. Faith made us human; secularism made us animals. He had been both, so he knew what he was talking about. Zakir spoke to his followers with a forbidding rigidity; the sterner his sermons became, the more following he gained.
To Noor, Zakir had transformed into a dangerous demagogue, a charlatan who was probably on the payroll of a foreign government. The founding member of The Unholy Quartet, who regularly toasted Scotch and pledged to always remain unholy and secular, had now become sanctimonious.
To Farhat, however, Zakir was the quintessential true Muslim who had found the light, who had saved himself from eternal da
mnation, and maybe, just maybe, he could do the same for her wayward husband. And that was how Zakir’s house became her new hang-out, and Athanni, his right-hand man, gladly drove Farhat there. It was here that Bhabi Farhat received special treatment. Zakir had always referred to her as bhabi, meaning sister-in-law, a term that is commonly used in Pakistan and India as a mark of respect for a friend’s wife.
*
Every afternoon, men and women congregated in Zakir’s magnificent drawing room and offered the midday prayer, the women behind the men, all prostrating synchronously, all supplicating earnestly. After the prayer, the women went to the zenana while the men stayed in the drawing room. From a microphone that connected both the rooms, Zakir ladled out his latest dollops of homilies with the delight of a new convert. And after the pious dramaturgy, he answered questions. One day, he talked about drinking.
‘In the dark times, known as Jahiliyyah, there were many vices. Two that were out of control were gambling and drinking. But our faith gradually outlawed them. I have lived in decadent America, my brothers and sisters, and I have survived corrupt Europe; they are the dens of debauchery. Gambling, prostitution and alcohol are their gods. I know that some of our brothers are involved in those depravities; in fact, some of my best friends still indulge in them.’
When Zakir said ‘best friends’, Farhat knew he was talking about Noor; her head went down in shame and trickles of tears coursed down her cheeks.
‘I am ashamed to say that I, too, once strayed from the path, brothers and sisters. I, too, lost my sense, my peace and my soul. I, too, acquired a taste for that forbidden drink. My head spun with pride and my heart throbbed with greed. I became the gravest sinner of all, the most serious evildoer. But one day, I had an ilham; in English, they call it an epiphany. God picked me up from that street littered with offal and put me on the true path. I gave up that life; I escaped the path of evil and left the company of sinners. And by the grace of God, I am at that stage in my life when I am at peace with myself and with God. My message to all of those who drink is this: avoid it, give it up. Break that bottle of sin, for it is the mother of all evil. Alcohol is the enemy of faith; they cannot be mixed together; they cannot live in the same heart. If you know a brother who drinks, beseech him to give it up. If you see a bottle of alcohol, drain down the poison and shatter the bottle. A house where liquor is kept is a house of shame, a house of sin; it’s a cursed house where Allah’s blessings are absent.’
That day, Farhat came back home with a firm resolve. Taking the alcohol bottles out from her husband’s liquor cabinet, she emptied them into the toilet—Royal Salute, Chivas Regal, Rémy Martin, all flushed down the gutter.
‘It looks like urine, it smells like urine and now it goes down the toilet like urine,’ she muttered to herself in her frenzy, her hands trembling, beads of sweat trickling down her cheeks.
The thought that her husband drank something that looked and stank like urine made her throw up, and with her vomit now mixed with it, she flushed thousands of rupees worth of whisky and brandy with apostolic zeal. It was as though she had drained all the family sins down the toilet.
After emptying the bottles, she ordered Budhoo to smash them to pieces and throw them away. She then went back to the bathroom, where the stench of alcohol and vomit still hung resolutely, and opened the window. She brought in a pedestal fan and turned it on, full speed, to force the smell out. Now she needed to cleanse her body because she had touched that uriniferous drink. In the bathroom in the zenana, Farhat took a long shower, performing her ablutions seven times, until her sins-by-association were wholly washed away. She put on a fresh pair of shalwar-kameez, offered the prayer of thanksgiving and asked for God’s forgiveness.
That night, she slept restlessly. The house was cleansed of the ‘bottles of wickedness’, but her heart was filled with fear chewing her entrails. With Noor in Iowa, however, she had the luxury of time before his wrath descended on her head.
The next day, she went to Zakir’s house early and confided in him about what she had done and about her fear of her husband.
‘Bhabi, I know Noor. I know you are scared of his temper, but if you fill your heart with only one fear, the fear of God, believe me, you will liberate yourself of all other fears. You can withstand any scolding, you can buck any rebuke, any berating,’ he said.
But Farhat remained apprehensive and her heart continued to pound nervously.
That day Zakir spoke about scepticism and faith in his sermon. Doubt should never reside in a faithful’s heart. Belief requires certainty. Anyone doubting or rejecting the basic tenets of the faith, through words, deeds or thoughts, was an apostate. ‘And that, my brothers and sisters, is no laughing matter because apostasy means death. An apostate must die and burn in the eternal fire of dozakh,’ the preacher thundered.
By the time Farhat returned home, she was shivering, as if suffering from the contagion of impiety. She had never directly asked about her husband’s beliefs and he had never clarified anything. However much he ridiculed the mullahs, he never blasphemed against religion, at least not in front of her. She had often heard him say that of all the human frailties that existed, convictions without evidence were the most perverse. Should she confront him or just leave it at that? Should she reason with him? She must seek help from her new sage.
So, the following day, she went to Zakir’s house again, early enough to have a confidential audience with him. As she sat in the women’s quarter, she asked Begum Hassan if she could talk privately with her husband. Farhat’s discussions were becoming more like confessionals behind the curtain. Mrs Hassan willingly obliged her and went to get her husband. She knew Noor well; she knew about his habits and his beliefs. Not too long ago, her husband had also been a part of this ugly landscape, and so sympathy for Farhat came naturally to her. Zakir came as soon as he heard about Farhat waiting for him and announced himself from the other side of the curtain that divided the zenana.
‘Bhabi, I have known Noor since our student days. I do not know what is in his heart now, but I know that not too long ago, his heart was filled with doubt and disbelief. But maybe he has changed. Ask him directly about all the elements of faith. Because, let me tell you candidly, if he does not believe in any of these, then he is an apostate. And then your nikah with him is null and void. As a matter of fact, if he openly disavows his faith, then your marriage is automatically annulled. You will be guilty of zina, and so will he.’
When Farhat heard the Urdu word for fornication, she clamped her hands over her ears and shook her head vigorously. Not long ago, Zakir would have concurred with Noor that this was the most minimalist definition of fornication. But not now. Now it was simply a matter-of-fact, no-nonsense explanation. The irritating sore that had festered for so long was now becoming a full-blown malady of the heart. In Zakir’s freshly minted unencumbered mind, Noor epitomized all that was evil in the country. His other former friends, like Haider, were all lapsed Muslims who occasionally went off on a drinking spree, but not Noor. For quite some time now, Noor had become persona non grata in Zakir’s books. How Zakir came to develop such a militant view of his ex-friend was something that even Haider could not fathom. The man who had cried uncontrollably at Sadiq’s murder now believed that it ‘could be a justifiable homicide’. When Haider heard this austere verdict, he too began shunning him like Noor.
That day, throughout the sermon, the word ‘zina’ kept reverberating in Farhat’s ears. She did not know what to do or how to confront Noor. A sinister fear lurked in her heart: what if he actually did not believe in any of these things? What would she do? How would she live? When she began hyperventilating, Zakir’s wife called Athanni and told him to immediately take her home. At home, Farhat spread the prayer rug in the zenana and earnestly begged God to show her husband the correct path. All night she prayed, and the next day she fasted. When she finally fell asleep the following night, she dreamt of her wedding day.
Noor had looked handsome in his
white sherwani, and at the time of the nikah, when the maulvi had asked him if he was a Muslim, he had answered: ‘Alhamdolillah, praise be to Allah.’ She woke up from her brief slumber, content and happy, for the dream was a clear sign from God that her husband had seen the enlightened path. She knew that her prayers had been answered, and why not? After all, the house was free of alcohol.
*
On the day of her husband’s arrival from America, Farhat felt better, confident that he had changed. The message in her dream could not have been any clearer. She sent Sikander to pick him up from the airport. But when Noor arrived home, her hopes shattered to pieces. He was drunk again. She threw a fit so intense that Noor’s blood alcohol level dropped quickly. Shocked and jolted, he was caught completely off guard. There in front of him was his wife, her head covered in a hijab, her mouth full of insults, her hands out of control; she pushed him so hard that he fell and hit his head on the edge of the bedside table. Blood trickled from his forehead. Was this a new sort of a welcome? Who was that woman? Had he somehow come to a different house? He took out his handkerchief. Pressed it against his forehead and surveyed his surroundings. But he found nothing bizarre, nothing odd. Before he could say anything, Farhat shoved him out of her bedroom and locked the door. Jet-lagged and confused, Noor staggered to the men’s quarter and slept fitfully, still dressed in his travel clothes.
The next day when he woke up, it was high noon. His head throbbed with intense pain as he went to his bedroom to check on his wife. But Budhoo told him that she had already left for the sermon. Noor tried recalling the events of the previous night, but all he could remember were the incoherent curses of this woman who had stood gesticulating wildly in a hijab, and the banging of his head on the edge of his bedside table. He checked his forehead; the blood had congealed, but his head still hurt. Ashamed and confused, Noor dragged himself to take a shower in an attempt to revive himself. It didn’t help. Feeling hungry, he called Budhoo to bring his lunch. Noor had eaten alone in the past, but he had never felt so lonely and miserable. He thought about his increasingly frayed relationship with his wife. What had got him to this point?