When he got his first notebook and first set of pencils with attached erasers he would draw for me, pictures of the places I had never seen. Mostly tall buildings with hundreds of windows and the silhouettes of people stuck in those windows. Sometimes he would draw me oceans, with ships bobbing on the waves and ship-sized fish chasing them. One night before going to bed he wanted to show me a new picture he had drawn for me. I looked and the page in his notebook was blank, all white. But there is nothing here, I said. Look carefully, he said. This is the white country. It’s made of snow. It’s at the end of the earth. It’s like a snow desert. I pretended to look at the picture carefully and then I asked him: So what’s this country called? I looked up and he had gone to sleep, still chewing the eraser on his pencil.
He is tired now. I’ll let him sleep. I’ll sleep with him. What a stupid thing it was when I told him that you are a big boy now, go sleep in your own bed. Momo beta, don’t worry, tomorrow it’s your turn, tomorrow you can sleep with me. Right now, let me hold him, let me whisper all His names into his ear.
The most merciful, the saviour of humans and Mutts, the punisher of liars and storytellers, the shaper of beauty, the maker of order, the knower of all, the hearer of all, the bestower of honours, the forgiver and hider of faults, the nourisher, the accounter, the rewarder of thankfulness, the resurrector, the originator, the satisfier of all needs, the avenger, the forgiver, the creator of harm, the preventer of harm, the doer of good, the inheritor of all, the creator of all power, the gatherer, the expediter, the delayer, the first, the last.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Shukria to Juilen Columeau, Akbar Zaidi, Mirza Waheed and Dan Franklin for reading early drafts and giving wise counsel. Hasan Mujtaba and Arif Hasan for their inspirational lines. Alexandra Pringle and her all-star team at Bloomsbury: Angelique Tran Van Sang, Philippa Cotton, Katherine Ailes, Allegra Le Fanu, Greg Heinimann. Habib University and British Council Library Karachi, where some of this was written.
One is lucky to have Faiza Sultan Khan and Clare Alexander, the best readers, editors and collaborators any writer can hope for.
First published in Great Britain 2018
This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Mohammed Hanif, 2018
Mohammed Hanif has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4088-9718-8; TPB: 978-1-4088-9719-5; EBOOK: 978-1-4088-9721-8
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