by A. A. Jafri
S.M. Abrar launched a withering attack on Athanni and his family as he opened the defence. Most of the witnesses for Athanni wilted under his cross-examination. Athanni’s lawyer, Mushtaq Ahmad, on the other hand, argued so weakly that even the judge began to fidget with boredom. His language, his mannerisms and his methods spoke volumes about the weakness of the case he was arguing. But then, in a surprise turn, Mushtaq called Mansoor on the witness stand. Although Mansoor could not be called in his own defence, the judge overruled Abrar’s objections, rejecting all conventions and manufacturing rules on the spot.
The first question Mushtaq asked was, ‘Are you a Muslim?’
‘I was born into a Muslim family.’
‘Do you consider yourself a Muslim?’
‘I am a human being first, in essence, before I am a Muslim in existence.’ Here, Mansoor flipped Sartre’s existential philosophy dictum that existence precedes essence.
‘Do you have a girlfriend in Umreeka?’
‘No, I don’t believe so.’
‘Where did you go when your father died?’
‘To the Aga Khan Hospital.’
Abrar objected to this line of questioning so much that the judge finally realized its irrelevance. He reprimanded Mushtaq and ordered the court recorder to erase all these questions from the text. When the court finally adjourned, Mushtaq went to Athanni and his family and told them that it had not been a good day for them.
The second day of the proceedings was even worse. Mushtaq introduced the video recording that Farid Kidwai was supposed to have made of Mansoor at the al-Ma?arrī Club. This was the evidence that was supposed to completely destroy Mansoor and establish him as an inveterate blasphemer. But to Mushtaq’s humiliation, the tape had been recorded over a pre-recorded pornographic tape, and he had not even bothered to check the full recording before introducing it in the court. Somewhere, somehow, Deep Throat got fused with Aristotelian logic. The judge held Mushtaq in contempt of court and adjourned the court for two months.
*
When they went back to the house that they had looted, Nawab Khan Namaqul slapped Athanni hard, as if he were still a teenager, and yelled, ‘You and your stupid attorney will send us all to jail.’
The badly humiliated Athanni took his anger to the streets of Karachi in search of Farid Kidwai. But Kidwai was back in jail, which meant that now Athanni had to come up with Plan B-2. When all plans from A to Z fail, there is always another Plan B-2.
*
Even though the al-Ma?arrī Club was officially disbanded, the obvious barbs and the cruel jibes persisted. So, with the winter vacation approaching, Mansoor decided to return to America for a few weeks to submit his PhD dissertation, which was now ready to be defended, and to tie up loose ends. He also longed to see Lisa in Connecticut. Her absence from his life had begun to torment him. After his thesis defence, he decided he would go to Connecticut to win her back.
Just as he was about to call his travel agent, the department secretary brought his day’s mail in. On the top of the pile, a packet with the grinning picture of General Behroopia mocked Mansoor. It was the conference programme for the First-Ever International Symposium on the Scientific Miracles of the Holy Scripture. Since the conference was sponsored by President’s College, every faculty member was required to attend it.
Mansoor was ready to defy the ridiculous requirement, but his interest was comically piqued when he read the titles of the papers to be presented:
A Panel Discussion on Things Known Only to the Almighty
DNA of Angels According to Some of the Revealed Verses
The Revelation of the Big Bang Theory in the Holy Scripture
The Dis-Integral Calculus of Hypocrisy in Western Society
How to Solve Pakistan’s Energy Problems: Harnessing Fiery Djinns as Nuclear Fusion
Without thinking, Mansoor drew two horns and a goatee on the picture of the general, and after crossing out the original title, wrote in his cursive handwriting, First-Ever International Symposium on Holy Crap. Just then Professor Abdul Basit, with whom he shared his office, entered the room. Noticing Mansoor’s dismissive ridicule of the symposium and his caricature of the general as the devil, he took the insult personally.
Basit, a graduate of Princeton, had recently become a devotee of Zakir Hassan and had been planning to resign his professorship to join his organization. He had also become a fervent supporter of the general. Following in Zakir’s footsteps, he too had become the most educated evangelist to his cause. To discover a ‘Purer Version of Faith’ in Pakistan, the zeal to proselytize had become acceptable and commonplace.
Snatching the programme from Mansoor’s hand, he immediately thrust himself into an argument with him. Mansoor was getting tired of these quarrels. They all had a similar pattern—circular reasoning, a constant moving of the goalpost and ad hominem attacks. Always outnumbered and generally outgunned, he had begun to avoid confrontations with these true believers.
‘You know, Mansoor, you always talk about rationality and enlightenment. You can have all that and still believe in God.’
‘I never said that you can’t.’
‘Why do you make fun of someone’s cherished beliefs?’
‘I don’t make fun of anyone’s cherished beliefs, but cartoonish views are another matter.’
‘And do you consider this scientific conference as cartoonish?’
‘It doesn’t sound like a scientific conference to me.’
‘Is that why you wrote “holy crap” on the cover?’
Exasperated, Mansoor closed his eyes and took a long deep breath before continuing, ‘Do you think these fake scholars with their pseudoscientific papers are doing any service to Islam? Do you think that any of these so-called papers are serious enough to get published in a peer-reviewed journal? You, a Princeton graduate, ought to know better.’
‘Why? Don’t you believe in miracles or in djinns? Do you even believe in religion?’
Mansoor paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts and trying to figure out a polite way to end this tedious conversation. A second later, he calmly responded, ‘No, Basit Sahib, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t. Religion, in my view, is nothing more than the forced retrieval of an imaginary memory.’
‘So you don’t agree with General Sahib’s policies of Islamization’
‘No, I don’t, especially not with the brand of religion that he is preaching! I think that he is using religion to serve himself!’ Mansoor shouted with a pagan exhilaration.
‘I know all about your al-Ma?arrī Club. Let me just tell you that it was a silly idea.’
‘Life is incomplete without its bathos and sordor, Mister Basit. You ought to try them sometime,’ Mansoor shot back.
‘Try your sordor in America. We don’t want it in Pakistan!’ Basit’s nostrils quivered as he shouted.
‘Who are we? Does your we include me? Isn’t this my country too? And why should this plural pronoun contain only you?’ Mansoor demanded.
‘I don’t think that you like belonging here, Mister Mansoor. You don’t seem to even believe in the most elemental reason for why Pakistan came into being. And if you don’t believe in that, you forfeit the right to belong to this state.’
Realizing that the discussion was just dragging on, Mansoor extricated himself by saying, ‘Mister Basit, I don’t want to argue with you any more. You have your inherited beliefs, and I have my scepticisms. But let me tell you this: if I am allowed to teach, I will continue to ask uncomfortable questions.’
Without giving Basit the chance to re-engage, Mansoor stormed out of the office. He knew that this new altercation would soon become the talk of the college, but it was too late to care. He knew he would get into trouble for this, but it felt good.
And then, a few minutes after he left, Athanni knocked on the door of Mansoor’s shared office and was let in by Abdul Basit.
Twenty-Nine
The day of the conference arrived quietly on a cold and s
ombre Friday in December. The sun shone with little warmth and no lustre. Mansoor drove his Honda Civic towards his college, taking the route that he always took. He had taken that route thousands of times before, but for the first time he became painfully aware of the teeming human bundles huddled together, sleeping on the cold, heartless, hard-edged footpaths of the city. It was a humanoid debris zone with raggedly clad bodies scattered across the walkways. For generations, these pavement dwellers had slept there, invisible to the early morning traffic, unmindful of the stumbling commuters and hidden to the city administrators. The government splurged millions of rupees organizing pseudo-conferences like the one Mansoor was required to attend, but it did not spend a single paisa on improving the looted lives of the poor. Mansoor felt tortured. He thought about the Kashana, the almost-palatial house that he had lived in growing up, and felt guilty. Perhaps when he got possession of the house again, he could convert it into a shelter for homeless people. What was the point of all this anyway? Mansoor agonized over his comfortable existence; he thought about the plastic people he’d met at a wedding party he had just attended, and he reflected on the bogus educational institutions organizing bogus conferences. General Behroopia had converted the entire country into a veritable charade, but what could Mansoor do? Falsehood, excuses and fraud—recycled each year, while the tragic human disorder on the streets remained irrevocable.
*
Mansoor was among the first ones to arrive at the auditorium where the conference was to be held. As he sat on an empty seat, doubts seeped into his mind and he began questioning his presence at the conference. By merely attending it, wasn’t he legitimizing this faux exercise? Being in attendance meant he was a party to this profane transaction. It was no longer funny. The comical had bonded with the macabre. The changing laws, the shifting narrative, they were nothing to laugh about. As his heart thumped furiously, he felt he was about to go through a tragic, unnerving tour of zombie land.
A throng of people, masquerading piety, moving effortlessly, filled the auditorium as if this were the event of the century. Professor Basit came along with some of Mansoor’s colleagues and his students from the al-Ma?arrī Club. They all ignored him. Mansoor closed his eyes, already tired. As the lights dimmed, Athanni sneaked in with a group of men and quickly slithered into a dark corner of the auditorium, away from Mansoor. He sat hidden from him, his eyes glued on Mansoor’s back, seething with anger, the memory of the disgrace he’d experienced at the court still raw, the subsequent beating by his father still hurting.
The general arrived half an hour late, inaugurated the conference with his bland, smarmy speech, thanked the participants for their scholarly endeavours and left without even hearing the first presenter. Mansoor followed his example and left the auditorium soon after. Athanni walked behind him, keeping a healthy distance from him and holding a walkie-talkie in his hand.
*
Mansoor did not want to be caught up in the buffoonery of the so-called conference. It had utterly disgusted him. He could do with some fresh air. He needed to walk to unburden himself of this feeling of revulsion, to shake off the doubts that had hazed his mind. Leaving his car in the parking area, he wandered for hours through the crowded streets of Karachi, absorbed in his own thoughts, dodging the beggars, brushing shoulders with strangers, impervious to the cold air.
And Athanni trailed him from a distance. Was this the new Plan B-2? Was some madness lurking in ambush?
Mansoor remained unaware of his pursuer as he continued reflecting on his last years in Pakistan and the time he had frittered away. He thought of his future blankly closing down before him. At that moment, Mansoor felt a grave sense of gloom, like a lost child. The ties that bound him to his native land seemed undone; he felt homeless, uprooted and alone, with doors slammed shut, no place to call his own, the country, a picture of wretchedness. He should have gone back to America. He should have married Lisa. He should have cut all ties with his homeland. His country, as his father used to call it, had deserted him. Experiencing the pangs of being an exile in his own city, the city of his birth, he even began questioning his lawsuit. The entire country had become the Theatre of the Absurd.
‘What is the point of all this?’ he shouted, but no one paid any attention to him, except Athanni.
Mansoor suddenly realized that he was truly all alone in this world. He had no family, no friends; he was a fucking orphan. He wanted to give it all up to Athanni, who was probably still plotting revenge, always conspiring villainy.
To hell with the fucking lawsuit and the fucking house. What am I going to do with the house even if I win the case? I can’t actually convert it into a homeless shelter! he thought.
He felt entropic. There was disorder in his country, but now it felt as if the disease was taking over his self. The world no longer made sense to him. What difference would it make if he got his house back tomorrow? What difference would it make if he returned to America, defended his dissertation and published a highly regarded book? Nothing mattered.
The cars were honking and people were laughing and talking, going on with their meaningless daily chores. Mansoor turned to Shaheed-e-Millat Road, Martyr of the Nation Road, named after the first prime minister who had been assassinated the day he, Mansoor, was born. He passed his old neighbourhood, insensate to everything except his brainwaves. His trance was broken when the muezzin called the faithful for the Friday prayers. In front of him stood his neighbourhood mosque, the same mosque where he used to go with his Uncle Zahid for Eid prayers, where he always felt like an abandoned orphan. Guarded by minarets on all sides, the mosque stuck out in its brilliant simplicity. Not one thing about it had changed. Mansoor stood there and gazed at the mosque for a long time. He noticed the same kerosene shop next to the mosque, still standing there defiantly despite the arrival of gas and electric stoves. The smell of kerosene still paralysed him, reminding him of that day in his distant past when Joseph and Mehrun had cremated that lizard. Joseph and Mehrun’s ghosts appeared in front of him now, their hands joined together, singing that dreadful couplet.
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab
Girgit ko marna bara sawab
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab
Girgit ko marna bara sawab
As he continued standing there, he heard the chanting get louder and clearer.
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab
Kafir ko marna bara sawab
(One-half roti, one-half kebab
Killing an infidel is the highest reward)
Mansoor turned around and saw Athanni with a large, angry mob behind him. Some of the men were brandishing sticks and some were wielding knives and machetes. There was something fantastically ominous about these faceless people.
Pointing a minatory finger at Mansoor, Athanni shouted, ‘Brothers, he is the blasphemer! He is the apostate! He has desecrated our religion and profaned our leader. He is an atheist like his father was. His punishment is death. BURN HIM! KILL HIM!’
Mansoor saw Athanni, with that chilling face, displaying the conference leaflet with his scribbles and drawing. Realizing that his cousin had incited the crowd against him, he turned around and began walking briskly, wanting to put as much distance as he could between himself and the sinister mob. And then, Mansoor heard people running behind him, chanting slogans. He turned back to check and realized that the crowd was closing in on him, preparing to attack. His heart froze and his feet jellied, but Mansoor mustered enough strength to run full speed ahead. As he picked up the pace, his breathing became laboured. He had scarcely cleared ten yards when he sensed his thighs becoming heavy and leaden. The chants of ‘kill the blasphemer’ pierced his ears. And then came the familiar couplet:
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab
Kafir ko marna bara sawab
As the angry pack closed in on him, the ground he scaled became a pointless space of confusion. Suddenly, Mansoor lost his balance, tripped over and fell flat on his face. Blood gushed out of his nose, and as he tried to get up, he
was torpedoed by a stone. Mansoor fell back to the ground. When he tried to get up again, a metal rod hit his head. He heard his punishers ranting.
‘Stone him to death!’
‘No, behead him!’ another person shouted.
He saw Athanni making his way forward from the back of the crowd with a kerosene canister in his hand.
‘No, he is an evil djinn. He would like to be cremated in a smokeless fire. Let’s honour his wishes!’ Athanni roared.
One person pulled Mansoor up from the ground and another held him from behind. The smell of kerosene hung heavy in the air as Athanni, the predator, came face-to-face with him, all his demonic wretchedness written large and clear on his face. The person who had gripped Mansoor now released him, pushing him forward. Without saying another word, Athanni splashed the kerosene on Mansoor’s clothes. And then, with pure venom in his eyes, he took out a cigarette lighter from his pocket, flicked open the flame and set Mansoor on fire. As the flames erupted, he chanted:
Aadhi roti, aadha kebab
Dahariya ko marna bara sawab
(One-half roti, One-half kebab
Killing an atheist is the highest reward)
Like a burning effigy, Mansoor became a fireball of flame—smokeless, odourless, invisible. For a moment, he stood there unruffled and unshaken, as if he cherished every moment of it, as if the fire had found the abode it was looking for, as if, much like Abraham’s fire, it had become a peaceful garden that bore no harm.
And then the crowd saw another man set ablaze. It was Athanni. Mansoor had a stranglehold on Athanni. Trying unsuccessfully to liberate himself from the firm grip of the fiery djinn, Athanni screamed for help. But no one came to his rescue. They both grappled and scuffled and performed the Danse Macabre.