by A. A. Jafri
‘About three weeks ago . . . I don’t think she is happy, Mansoor Babu. I could sense it in her voice.’
Mansoor, surprised at Joseph’s perspicacity and his ability to grasp the truth about Mehrun’s marital situation, said nothing. They drank for a while longer and then retired, calling it a night.
*
The bright sun dappled its rays through the openings between the curtains in their bedroom, waking Mansoor and Lisa up the next morning. Realizing that it was late, Mansoor jumped out of bed and hit the shower while Lisa, her eyes closed, rested her exhausted self on the lumpy mattress. Joseph had already left to monitor the progress at his restaurant.
Outside, somebody fired up a lawnmower, startling Lisa with its raucous roar. She was now fully awake. A little tired and homesick, she began wondering if her family would celebrate Christmas the way they used to. Before they left for Houston, she had called her mother and made up some lame excuse for not coming home that year. But Lisa knew her mother didn’t believe her.
She was still thinking about the state of things back home when the doorbell rang, its grating peal making her jump out of bed. She didn’t want to answer it, but someone kept pressing it longer and harder, as if to annoy her. Had Joseph forgotten his keys? She got up, put on her nightgown and went to the front door. Through the peephole, Lisa saw a bearded man in a black tunic. Was he Joseph’s relative? Her sigh almost audible, her fingers turning the knob with a frustrated pressure, she opened the door slightly.
The bearded man, taken aback at the sight of a woman in a nightgown, lowered his head and asked, ‘Does Yousef Suleiman live here?’
‘Who?’
‘Yousef Suleiman!’ he repeated.
‘No,’ she replied, but then hesitatingly asked, ‘Are you talking about Joseph Solomon?’
‘Yes, that was his Christian name; Yousef Suleiman is his Muslim name, which I gave him.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes.’ The man continued to look at the floor, his shifty manners puzzling Lisa.
‘Well, Joseph has already left for work.’
‘My name is Zakir Hassan and I have come from Pakistan,’ the man said.
Lisa knew right away that it must be the same Zakir Hassan that Mansoor had mentioned when discussing his parents’ marital problems. He had described his transformation in vivid detail. Making no eye contact with her, his behaviour off-balancing his manner, he made Lisa feel downright uneasy.
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘No, thank you. Are you Mrs Suleiman?’
‘No, I am a friend of Mansoor ul Haq. We are just visiting Joseph.’
As soon as she uttered Mansoor’s name, he lifted his head, his eyes passing over her face for one quick second before he averted his gaze and looked the other way. The man who had lived in the West and dated many women in his life now felt embarrassed at the mere sight of one. As he stood there dithering, Mansoor came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. Startled to see Zakir Hassan at the door, he stopped in his tracks and stared at him. A few seconds later, having regained his composure, he blurted, ‘Assalam alai kum.’
‘Wa-alaikum assalam,’ Zakir replied.
Relieved to see Mansoor, Lisa scurried back into their room, leaving the gauche visitor to her boyfriend. Mansoor invited him in. Proceeding slowly, Zakir wiped his shoes on the doormat, entered the apartment and seated himself on a chair in the living room. Mansoor excused himself to get dressed.
Alone in the room, Zakir surveyed his surroundings. The coffee table, cluttered with empty beer cans, greeted him. His lips tightening at the sinful sight, he pulled his chair away from the napaak, unclean table. When Mansoor reappeared in his Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt and Levi’s jeans, Zakir immediately ordered him to remove ‘these vile things’, pointing to the beer cans. Hiding his smile, Mansoor took the remains of the night to the kitchen. When he came back, he asked Zakir where he was staying.
‘I am staying at the Hilton,’ he replied.
‘So how are things in Pakistan?’
‘I don’t know. I have been out of the country . . . I’ve been travelling for the last two months.’ Then he bragged about his group of preachers and their success around the world.
Mansoor remembered the apt name Haider had given them, the Pyjama Dheela Topi Tight Party, and smiled. ‘How is your family?’ he asked.
‘Alhamdolillah, praise be to Allah.’
The conversation limped along awkwardly, with Zakir replying only when Mansoor asked something. It was as if he was sitting in a Civil Service interview, making sure to provide to-the-point answers, nothing more nothing less. The silent interludes cumbered the air. Zakir’s eyes kept shifting, as if he was searching for something in the room. He never asked Mansoor anything. With the conversation going nowhere, Mansoor invited him to stay for breakfast, but he refused. And when Lisa came back into the room, dressed in a white blouse and a black skirt, looking fresh and pretty, Zakir resolutely gazed at the floor again, ignoring her altogether. Mansoor thought of formally introducing her to him, but then Zakir looked at his wristwatch and abruptly decided to leave.
‘Please tell Yousef that I am staying at the Hilton and that he should get in touch with me,’ he said on his way out.
‘What a rude man!’ Lisa exclaimed after he left. ‘All this time, he never made any eye contact with me!’
Mansoor explained to her, over a cup of black coffee and buttered toast, that the new Zakir considered making eye contact with women a grievous sin, while the old Zakir entertained them on his lap.
Twenty-Six
Joseph had invited all his benefactors out of a sense of duty, but he had excluded his mother, which seemed rather odd to Mansoor. The one who sacrificed so much to raise him, who scrubbed toilets in bungalows so that her son could eat two meals a day, was altogether forgotten, banished to Lethe. To Joseph, Pyaro had committed the indefensible sin of marrying his father’s supposed enemy. And for this reason, she was not invited to what was surely the biggest day in his life. He never forgave her, and one day, in a state of double-distilled-drunkenness, he dispatched a telegram to his mother, using an assumed name, announcing his own death.
But then he felt compelled to invite Zakir, who viewed Joseph as his success story, for it was because of his prayers and blessings that the bhangi was experiencing prosperity in his life now. Zakir still believed that Joseph had actually converted to Islam. In his self-aggrandizing mind, it was he, Zakir Hassan, who had brought this man into the folds of Islam and given him his Muslim identity: Yousef Suleiman. Joseph, of course, played along, making Zakir feel like he had earned thousands of extra brownie points in heaven. When Mansoor told him about Zakir’s visit that morning, Joseph became a bit agitated. He telephoned Zakir at the Hilton and invited the preacher-slash-ex-diplomat to come and stay with him in his apartment. But after an awkward silence, Zakir turned down his invitation, without any explanations whatsoever, and then hung up the phone.
*
Two days after Christmas, Mansoor and Lisa went to a shopping mall in the city, where he impulsively bought a bracelet with a heart charm for her while she was busy trying on some dresses in the fitting room. She hugged and kissed him when he surprised her with it in the car. Back at the apartment, Lisa was still admiring the bracelet when the doorbell rang. Mansoor went to the front door and looked through the peephole. The concave lens revealed Zakir’s face. Mansoor frowned when he saw him. After he opened the door, he saw that Zakir was accompanied by an entire entourage of men, all dressed in shalwar-kameez. He knew right away that the entire born-again coalition had come to work on him, the ‘aimless, lost Muslim’.
‘We have come to talk with you, beta,’ Zakir said.
‘You didn’t have to come all this way to talk to me, Uncle Zakir. You could have telephoned me, and I would have come to your hotel,’ he replied, pretending ignorance about the purpose of their visit.
‘No, I had this yearning to come and chat with you p
ersonally.’
‘Okay, but about what?’ Mansoor continued his pretence.
Without answering him, Zakir gently pushed him aside and walked into the apartment, the rest of the entourage barging in after him. Some found a chair, some sat cross-legged on the floor and some stood, leaving one chair for Mansoor. There were eight of them. Once seated, Mansoor spotted Sher Khan, the former cricketer. Clean-shaven again and dressed smartly in a cream-coloured shalwar-kameez, he looked a little out of place amidst those scraggly bearded men. After a brief pause, Mansoor asked if he could get drinks for them.
‘No, son, thank you,’ Zakir said. ‘We are not going to waste too much of your time.’ He paused and pursed his lips. Then, suddenly switching to his posh accented English, he said, ‘Son, we get so busy in our lives, we get so embroiled in our mundane affairs that we forget our real purpose on this God-gifted earth.’
And I suppose you have come to remind me of that, Mansoor thought.
‘We have been sent by God to this earth to serve Him. We are His servants and the way to serve Him is exquisitely prescribed in our holy book. If you read it carefully, the holy Qur’an has the answers to all our problems. Those who follow the dictates of our holy book will pass through the Pull Sirat, the bridge that leads to Paradise, without any difficulty. For this bridge is thin like a needle and sharp like a sword. The righteous will have no problem walking on it, but the sinners will fall like dead flies into the deepest hell. And—’
Before he could finish, Mansoor interrupted him, ‘Excuse me, sir, with all due respect, you are not telling me anything new. I learnt about these things in the fourth grade.’ He deliberately used the word ‘sir’, realizing the need to keep a healthy distance from him.
‘Aah, yes! We all learn about our religion at an early age, but we soon forget it. Temptations, glamour and other worldly pleasures mislead us. My job as a Muslim is to remind you of your most important obligations and to guide you to the right path. When I was your age, I, too, was brash. I, too, thought that I would live forever, but my perspective changed when Allah showed me the true light.’
‘Are you saying that I have been misled by these so-called worldly pleasures, and that you are on the right path?’ Zakir’s self-righteous speech had bristled Mansoor.
‘No, please don’t misunderstand me, beta. All of us have been misled. All of us are sinners. To be honest, I am one of the greatest sinners, but I try to atone for my sins by guiding people to the right path. Do not misconstrue what I say, beta; I am not saying that you are a sinner, for that is between you and the Almighty.’
‘Let’s hear what exactly you are saying then!’ Mansoor said, his hackles rising.
‘I am just asking you to expiate for your sins every day. And the best way to do so is by praying five times and reading the holy book every day. If you remember, I told you the same thing when you came to my house several years ago, and from what I remember, you promised to do that.’
‘Well, if you are not saying that I am a sinner, then what should I expiate for?’ Mansoor, much like his attorney father, cross-examined him.
‘Let me ask you this: do you pray?’ Zakir persisted.
‘First of all, whether or not I pray is none of your business. But to answer your question, I worship my own god and in my own special way.’
Zakir had a look that said ‘don’t get cute with me,’ but he took a deep breath and with perfect equanimity, continued, ‘There is only one way to pray, my son.’
‘And I suppose that way is your way?’ Mansoor retorted.
‘It is not my way or your way. It is the Islamic way.’
‘Listen, Zakir Sahib, you don’t have a patent on how to pray, and the Kingdom of God is not your personal fiefdom that you inherited from your forefathers,’ Mansoor shot back. He remembered his dead father, and as far as he was concerned, Zakir had murdered him. And now the man had the gall to sit across from him and try to show him the righteous path.
Zakir kept his patience intact, but the others in his party fidgeted with anger. They had sat there tensely, listening to the conversation, but now they felt challenged by this neophyte. Nothing like this had ever happened to them, at least not in a Muslim household. And they regarded Mansoor as a Muslim and Joseph’s apartment as a Darul Muslimin, the house of Muslims. They had never expected such a showdown. Sher Khan, openly displaying his disgust with Mansoor and the way the conversation had unfolded, stepped in on behalf of Zakir.
‘Brother Mansoor, Brother Zakir is telling you what is good for you.’
‘I think I know better than anybody else in this world what is good for me,’ Mansoor’s burning stare and his rising voice unnerved Sher Khan. Lisa, who had quarantined herself all this time in the bedroom, got concerned and came out to check what was happening.
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked, looking at Mansoor.
Mansoor just nodded his head. Sher Khan ogled Lisa intently, while all the others bowed their heads. She remained there for a few more seconds, in all probability trying to discomfit them, and then dashed out of the apartment ‘to get some fresh air’.
‘Look, Mansoor, I don’t want to argue with you. I regard you just like my son. My only request to you is that you accompany us to the mosque and join us for the evening prayer, just for my sake.’
‘Look, if I go to the mosque, it will be because I want to go and not because you want me to go, and it will definitely not be for your sake.’
‘You forget, Mansoor, that you are in America because of me. If I had not arranged for your visa, you would still be languishing in Pakistan,’ Zakir said this in his most clipped English.
‘No, Zakir Sahib, I have not forgotten that. And I have also not forgotten that you murd . . . that you were the cause of discord between my father and my mother.’
That was the breaking point for Zakir. His eyes flashed with anger and he wrung his fingers as he thought about what to say next. But Mansoor had lost his patience by then. He got up abruptly and said, ‘And now, gentlemen, I would like to end this conversation for it has gone far beyond its limits. Besides, I have better things to do.’
‘Better things like fornicating?’ the Lion Prince disgorged the last sentence in English. Like a word from his subconscious, it had sneaked out without his realizing it.
‘Get out of here, all of you!’ Mansoor ordered the men, as if it was his apartment they were all in.
‘Well, this is not your apartment, you ungrateful son of a—’ Without finishing his sentence, Zakir got up and stormed out. All the others glared at Mansoor as they walked out, while he frowned back at them, seething with anger.
*
When Joseph came back that evening, Mansoor told him everything. He felt ashamed about Zakir’s behaviour and apologized profusely to Mansoor. As it turned out, it was Joseph who was inadvertently responsible for Zakir’s showing up with his entire entourage. He had sounded so keen for Zakir to attend his restaurant’s opening that the man had altered his proselytizing travel plan. Joseph’s big wish was to have all those who had supported him in his life cut the ribbon together. When Mansoor heard about it, he protested vehemently and told Joseph that in no way was he going to share the stage with ‘that self-righteous man and his sycophantic groupies’. To make it easy for Joseph, Mansoor decided to withdraw from the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Joseph obviously did not want that because he considered Mansoor the most important, but then he did not want to create a scene either.
*
Joseph threw a party on New Year’s Eve at his apartment, inviting some of his friends and would-be employees. Mansoor and Lisa helped him buy the drinks and all the other party accoutrements that were needed. Considering that he had planned a busy inaugural for his restaurant the next morning, it was risky to have a booze and dance party that would inevitably go on well past midnight. But Joseph was no stranger to risk. Mansoor had seen him getting totally drunk the night before, only to hear him leave for his restaurant around seven in the morning.<
br />
With everything in place, Joseph put on Ghulam Farid Sabri’s qawwali on his stereo at full volume.
‘What kind of music is this?’ Lisa asked him.
‘This is Pakistani rock and roll,’ Joseph replied.
‘What? Are you kidding me?’ she asked. Joseph just smiled in response, but Mansoor intervened and tried to explain the nuances of qawwali to her.
‘A qawwali is a sort of Sufi devotional song that used to be sung at the tombs of Muslim saints in India during the Mughal period, but now they have also become very popular in Pakistani–Indian films.’
‘Tonight is a big night for you guys because you get to meet my gori memsahib!’ Joseph interjected, changing the topic.
Lisa looked at Mansoor, a bit puzzled by the unfamiliar word Joseph had inserted.
‘What is her name?’ Mansoor asked.
‘Cheryl Hampton, but I call her my gori memsahib,’ Joseph replied.
‘What does that mean?’ Lisa asked.
‘It means my white lady!’ Joseph winked mischievously at Mansoor, and Lisa smiled.
The guests started coming in by eight in the evening. As the music became louder and the guests more raffish, Mansoor shouted in Joseph’s ear, ‘I hope you didn’t invite Zakir Hassan.’
‘No, I didn’t. But I did invite Sher Khan,’ Joseph shouted back.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Oh, yes. I asked Sher Khan, what’s a young man like you going to do on New Year’s Eve?’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said he was going to worship God at the mosque. So I told him that if he came to my party, I would introduce him to a few goddesses.’
Mansoor let out a big laugh. He hadn’t laughed like that for a long time.
‘Do you think he is going to come?’ he asked.
Joseph asked Lisa to excuse them for a moment. Then he pulled Mansoor to the side and whispered in Urdu, ‘If he still gets a hard-on, he will come.’
Mansoor laughed again, and Lisa knew Joseph had said something crude. Shaking her head, she went to the dining table and got herself a glass of pink champagne and for Mansoor, a Scotch on the rocks.