Of Smokeless Fire
Page 28
‘Abba! Are you okay, did you slip?’ he asked.
Noor did not reply. His face distorted, his breathing shallow, he struggled to get up, but could not. Mansoor helped him stand up and realized that the left side of his body was entirely lifeless. He knew then that his father had suffered a stroke. Summoning all his strength, Mansoor grunted, lifted his frail father up and carried him back to his bed. After putting him down on his bed, he bolted outside and hollered for the servants. His hysterical shouts brought Budhoo, Sikander and Changez inside the house.
‘Abba fell down. We have to take him to the hospital,’ he told them, and then addressing Budhoo said, ‘Budhoo, you and Changez take him to the car.’
They each took an arm, placed them around their shoulders and half-carried Noor to the front porch towards the car. Blood ran down from Noor’s nose. His breathing was sluggish and his contorted face displayed a cryptic fear. He tried to say something but only managed a guttural sound, his speech muzzled by the stroke.
‘Don’t worry, Abba. We’ll take you to the hospital. You will be fine.’
Mansoor tried to elevate his father’s sinking spirit even as panic assaulted his own. When they reached the car, Changez and Budhoo laid him down on the rear seat. Mansoor ran to the other side and squeezed in by his father. He raised his head and placed it on his lap. A feral cat ran out from under the car as Sikander turned on the ignition. Stepping on the accelerator, he swerved the vehicle towards Aga Khan Hospital. In a vain attempt, Mansoor tried to clean his father’s bloodied nose and stem the flow of blood with his handkerchief, but it continued to ooze out. His trousers soaking in blood, his heart beating furiously, Mansoor cradled his father in his arms. He was still alive, still breathing, but any moment now he could cease to be. His existence was slowly dissolving. Noor struggled to breathe, barely clinging on to life. Mansoor hoped against all hopes that his father would use his will power to defy death, to frustrate the angel of death, Malak ul Maut, at least until they reached the hospital, but alas, that did not happen.
They were just ten minutes away from the hospital when Noor ul Haq breathed his last in Mansoor’s arms. The sun had set on the eminent barrister. His life was done. With tears in his eyes, Mansoor said goodbye to his father, closed his lifeless eyes and caressed his non-existence.
A few months ago, while he was sitting in the university library, Mansoor had suddenly found himself thinking about his father’s mortality. He had felt an immense sadness flowing through his arteries. Still, he had never imagined it would happen this way, and this quickly. The tungsten filament had finally snapped. His father’s life would burn no longer.
*
In the aftermath of Noor’s death, Farhat was an emotional wreck. Weeping and wailing, she begged her dead husband’s forgiveness. After waging a bruising battle with him in their old age, she now felt contrite. In her mind, the purpose of her struggle was to show Noor the ‘true light’, the ‘path to salvation’, not to kill him. But now that he was gone, she just hoped that he had recited the kalimah before his soul departed. She began reminiscing about the last hours she had spent with him—the silly couplet, the last lunch and, of course, that wretched Mehrun who had appeared from nowhere just hours before, like the courier of death. And then she concluded that it was Mehrun who caused his death.
‘That churail . . . that Mehrun . . . She struck him dead. She came and he died.’
Mansoor shook his head when he heard her whispering to Sarwat and Athanni.
Athanni’s eyes gleamed. Embittered by Mehrun’s change of fortune and her new prosperity, he found a perfect opportunity to join in and vilify his former co-worker. Mansoor noticed that he had his Yashica 35-mm camera hanging around his neck. The lurid journalist was hard at work, searching for the sensational even in death, he thought.
‘Farhat Khaala, she is her mother’s daughter, a pukki churail, an immoral woman. I used to work with her. I know her kind. She seduced Alvi Sahib, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she cast a deadly spell on Uncle Noor,’ he whispered back.
‘Shame on you, Khaleel Khan, for smearing an innocent woman and spreading nasty rumours. Shame on you,’ Mansoor whispered in his cousin’s ear.
In Athanni’s mind, Mehrun, Mansoor and the other ‘low lives’ collaborated and contributed to his miseries and failures, and his aunt’s insinuations confirmed his convictions.
Feeling the heat from Mansoor’s assault, Farhat came to her nephew’s rescue. ‘Don’t try to defend that churail, Mansoor. She killed your father and you know it. And you stay away from her, too. Or she will put a spell on you as well!’
‘Listen to your mother, Mansoor. Mehrun is evil; don’t join her against your own family,’ Sarwat added, trying to defend her son.
‘And why do you have a camera?’ Mansoor demanded. ‘Don’t you dare take any pictures of my dead father.’
‘Farhat Khaala has asked me to take pictures,’ Athanni replied with a smirk on his face.
Mansoor wanted to snatch his camera away from him, but if it was his mother’s wish to participate in this ghoulish act, there was nothing he could do.
*
The news of Noor’s death had reached every corner of Karachi. His clients, colleagues, relatives, friends and former friends began gathering at Kashana-e-Haq. Haider Rizvi came and hugged Mansoor warmly. His long absence from Noor’s life had dried his tears for his friend.
Outside the house, the humid air and the gathering dark clouds threatened a downpour. In Mansoor’s mind, a thought leavened: would his Abba have preferred a cremation rather than a burial—going out defiantly, just to spite those insufferable idiots? He remembered when Noor had told him that he wanted to donate his body to science. He did not want to be buried because he did not like the idea of becoming a meal for underground creatures, but then a cremation was not for him either, for he did not like being overcooked. His father liked the idea of donating his body to science, but not to Pakistani science which, according to him, was nothing but superstitions disguised as science. A soft smile appeared on Mansoor’s face. He felt calmer, remembering his father’s sense of humour.
When the rain came, all the men waiting outside rushed into the house, upsetting the carefully segregated gender gaps. In the crowd, Mansoor saw the bearded face of Zakir Hassan. How dare he make his grand entrance? And the gall, the utter gall to show his contemptible face at his father’s funeral! He was responsible for his death, not Mehrun. Mansoor felt like pulling out a pair of scissors and cutting off that hennaed beard.
Acting as if he were the next of kin, Zakir took charge of the funeral rites, a self-appointed death director, obviously enjoying his power over the dead man. Who would question his divine authority? He ordered Athanni to take Farhat away to the other room since death broke all relationships between a husband and a wife. Her nikah was now invalid, terminated, khatam-shud.
‘Viewing the body of her dead husband would be a sin,’ Zakir told Athanni, but everyone in the room heard it, a stern decree that sent chills down the hall.
Farhat resisted. So Zakir weaved his way through the crowd, inserted himself next to her and said, ‘Bhabi, you can’t see his face now. Death has annulled your marriage with him. He is now a stranger to you.’
Mansoor, shocked by this new nonsense, tapped Zakir’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, ‘If she is no longer my father’s wife, why are you still calling her bhabi? Why is this relationship still intact?’
Caught off guard, Zakir gently pushed him aside and then motioned Athanni to take Farhat away.
‘Please let me look at his face one last time! I am still married to him,’ Farhat pleaded.
‘No, you shouldn’t see his face, Farhat Khaala. It is a sin for a woman to see the face of her dead husband because after death he is no longer her husband,’ Athanni parroted his mentor.
His face red with anger, Mansoor pushed his way towards his mother and announced, ‘My mother will stay wherever she wants to. Leave her alone.
Realizing that she was creating a scene, Farhat turned her neck around to get one last glimpse of her dead husband and then told her son that she would leave the room. Her easy capitulation enraged Mansoor. Fifty years of marriage so hastily nullified, his father callously declared a stranger, all by Zakir Hassan’s revelatory rubbish. Mansoor felt nauseated by all the unctuous pietism that elevated the minutiae. Suffocating rites, Athanni taking random snapshots and the torrential rains—silly subplots to make this the most dreadful day of his life.
His father’s lifeless body lay wrapped in a white shroud in the middle of the drawing room. The odour of camphor and incense floated across the room, a pungent reminder that he was dead. Relatives offered prayers for his salvation, while uninvited mourners seeking bonus rewards in the afterlife sat there empty-eyed, reading sacred verses and performing their rhythmic acts as if participating in a choreographed performance. How his father would have suffered had he known about the excessive religious exertions displayed at his funeral. He had become irrelevant in life, and now it seemed he had become even more irrelevant in death.
Mansoor felt someone lightly tapping him on his shoulder; he turned around and saw Mehrun smiling sadly at him. Dressed in a cream-coloured silk saree, she was all elegance at that moment. He smiled back. They spoke without speaking; they felt without touching, and then he saw her walk towards his father’s body. She stood there for a while and then walked away. As she passed him, she inserted a business card in his side pocket. From the corner of his eyes, Mansoor saw Athanni quickly snapping a picture of the two of them.
With all the pre-scripted sequences performed and the last-minute rites completed, Zakir ordered the people to lift the bier. The rain had finally stopped and the clouds had disappeared, as if to let the sun catch the last glimpse of Noor’s body. When the funeral procession reached the mosque for the final prayer, Mansoor stayed outside, not sure why he had come there. His father did not believe in any of this—God or the afterlife, heaven or hell. How ironic that they would be praying for what Noor, the materialist, had called his non-existent soul going to this non-existent place. How could Mansoor participate in something that neither he nor his father believed in? After the mourners came out of the mosque, Athanni noticed Mansoor standing outside and he quickly snapped another shot, as if he were creating a portfolio of Mansoor’s offences.
*
Mansoor followed the procession to the Jannati Qabristan, walking with total strangers who, he thought, did not know him from Adam. At the graveyard, the rain started again. A man in a white beard said, ‘He must have been a good man, for heaven is also crying over his death.’ Mansoor saw Zakir and Athanni glance at each other. He noticed his grandfather’s grave nearby and went to see what was written on his tombstone. As Noor’s body was lowered into the grave, Zakir turned to Athanni and asked loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Where is Mansoor? It is the son’s duty to turn his dead father’s head towards Mecca.’
‘I haven’t seen him at all. I didn’t even see him at the funeral prayer,’ Athanni added.
‘Well, Khaleel Khan, in Noor’s son’s absence, you should take over and perform this most important responsibility. You are the next of kin; you are the heir apparent.’
Athanni smiled and replied, ‘Gladly, Uncle Zakir. I will gladly do that; what could be a greater reward than this?’
*
With the grave covered with dirt, Mansoor walked back. He knew that Athanni would be watching his every movement, taking a picture of every lapse in his actions. Snap. Snap. Snap. But Mansoor did not care. He walked, unaware of his surroundings, oblivious of the strangers around. He walked away from the funeral procession, in the opposite direction. Suddenly, Mansoor heard the honking of a car. When he turned around, he saw Mehrun in a taxi. She motioned him to get inside. Without thinking, Mansoor opened the door and sat next to her. The cab sped away towards the Palace Hotel.
Twenty-Four
Inside the luxurious room of the Mughal-style Palace Hotel, Mehrun and Mansoor went through a dizzying journey of impulsive sexual arousal. They made wild, frenzied love. After all, it was the union of a churail and a djinn, the most erotic union of all—self-revealing, transcendent, unequal in clarity and heedless to consequences. It was Agape and Eros melding together, their libidinal energies uninhibited. Mansoor and Mehrun had stumbled on freedom—anarchic and giddy at the same time.
Mansoor realized that if he were charged for a crime, it would be that he was making love to an outcast, to a woman despised, a woman whom his mother held responsible for his father’s death, and that he was making love at the most sinful of times. But why was he there? Was he in love with Mehrun? Was he expiating for his mother’s insolence? Was this his way of getting back at his community? He felt like screaming. He wanted to say to Athanni, ‘Look, you idiot, you talk about staying away from her, but here I am, in a perfect union with her!’
Mansoor felt no guilt; he experienced no fear about having sex on the day his father died. Didn’t Meursault, in Camus’s The Stranger, have sex with Maria the same day? Or was it the next day? He shrugged that coincidence off quickly. Had Mehrun planned all this as a part of her revenge? No, that couldn’t be it. No, it had been spontaneous. One minute they were drinking, and the other minute they were kissing each other hungrily. She had always been close to him, but she had also always maintained a measured distance. That day, the gap became a singularity, and they broke all taboos and shed all inhibitions.
‘You know, Mansoor ul Haq, as a child, you were forbidden to even play with me, and now, as a grown man, you have made love to me. You should not even be anywhere near me,’ she told him with a sly smile on her face.
‘Is that why you put the business card with your room number in my pocket?’
‘Yes, I wanted to make love to the man who has always been forbidden to me.’
‘Forbidden love is the best kind of love,’ he replied. After a pause, he continued, ‘At this time, I shouldn’t be near anything except my father’s freshly dug grave, exchanging banalities with perfect strangers and accepting their phoney sympathies.’
‘Are you having regrets?’
‘No, I am just wondering about the furore that must be raging because of my strange behaviour.’
As they talked, the phone rang. Mansoor picked it up and said hello, but no one answered, so he put it down and just shrugged his shoulders.
‘Don’t pick up the phone if it rings again,’ Mehrun told him.
*
Athanni had a hunch that Mansoor was with Mehrun. He smiled deviously as a plot began to form in his mind. A plot of deep revenge, one that would settle all scores, restore his pride and show Mansoor never to mess with him, Khaleel Khan. Now, what would Mister Mansoor tell the world about why he behaved so badly at his father’s funeral? Where was he when they had offered prayers of absolution for Uncle Noor? He was cavorting with that churail, that’s where he was. When his father’s head needed to be turned towards Mecca, what was the prodigal son doing? It was I, Khaleel Khan, who turned his head and threw the earth on my uncle’s body. Not Mister America-return.
The first thing that Athanni did after he returned to the Kashana from the graveyard was to search for Mansoor. But when he did not find him, he went to look for Jumman instead. On spotting him, he asked, ‘Where is Mehrun staying?’
‘Payless Hotel, Babu. Why do you ask?’ Jumman replied.
‘Oh, nothing important, I just wanted to tell her something important about the bank,’ he lied and then added, ‘and her husband, Alvi Sahib, is he there too?’
‘No, she came alone, Babu.’
‘Do you know what her roo
m number is?’
‘I don’t remember, Babu. But she wrote it for me on a piece of paper. I have it here in my pocket.’ Jumman took out the hotel’s business card and pointed to the room number written on it before handing it over to Athanni.
*
It was already quite late at night, but Athanni turned the key in the ignition of his rusted Hillman, caressed his Yashica camera and got the car started. He did not know what awaited him at the Palace Hotel, but he was sure that he was going to find something juicy. In a few minutes, he was on Drigh Road, speeding towards the hotel. The rainy night had emptied the streets, save for a few armoured vehicles that patrolled the city, reminding everyone that General Behroopia was in charge. Athanni’s heart raced with excitement; his mind bubbled with anticipation as he approached the recently refurbished colonial-era hotel, hoping to destroy his arch-enemies. Parking the car in the parking lot, he made a mad dash inside and introduced himself to the night clerk as a lieutenant colonel from the army’s intelligence unit, showing him a fake identity card. Athanni had acquired that card through his contacts at the Daily Hulchul to help him with his snooping. He always carried it in his wallet just in case he needed it.
‘Did you see the woman in Room 210 going back to her room?’ he asked in an authoritative tone.
‘Begum Alvi? Yes, I saw her.’
‘Was she with a man?’
‘Yes!’
Athanni then described Mansoor to him, and the clerk confirmed the description. He then asked for the phone number to Mehrun’s room. Hesitating a little, the clerk handed it out to him. Athanni went inside the clerk’s office, sat on the chair, stretched his legs out on the table and dialled the number to Mehrun’s room. When Mansoor picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello,’ Athanni’s hunch was confirmed. Smiling wickedly, he put the phone down and went back to the clerk.