by Ali Sethi
My mother folded the newspaper and placed it in her lap, looked at Daadi, then at Naseem, and said, “It means that you have voted for someone who wants to make himself a king of your country. That is the meaning of your bill. Your savings and your spendings, all of it has been for this.”
Naseem was amused.
Daadi said, “It is all exaggerated,” and drew her hands into her lap, and made efforts to smooth out the wrinkles in the hem of her kameez, and continued to smile and sway her head from one side to the other.
A few months after the journalists were attacked, on an afternoon in October, Daadi was woken by a lilting, steady sound that she knew to be the voice of a newsreader. At first she turned her head on the pillow in resistance. Then she sat up and saw that someone was in the room.
She left the bed and joined my mother on the sofa. The prime minister was attaching shiny medals to a man’s shoulders, a smiling army man in the army uniform. The people around them were clapping.
“What is it?” said Daadi.
“New army chief,” said my mother.
“Where is the old one?”
“On a flight.”
They watched for developments.
Then Daadi said, “To where is the flight?”
“To nowhere,” said my mother. “He’s been sacked and his plane is not allowed to land.”
Daadi thought about it and said, “So where will he go, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will they do?”
“I don’t know.”
They watched the rest of the bulletin in an uncertain silence. Naseem came in, saw their expressions and sat down on the carpet.
The TV screen was black.
Daadi said, “The wires.”
But the wires were in their places.
Now there were flowers on TV, an unmoving picture, and then an old recording of a singer with many mirrors behind her.
My mother went to the mantelpiece. She picked up the phone and dialed a number, waiting with her elbow in her palm, the phone in her other hand. “Nargis?” she said, and listened. Her mouth opened, closed and opened again, but her expression was the same. She nodded and said, “Yes, yes, I will.” She hung up the phone and said, “Change the channel, change it, change it.”
Naseem scrambled across to the TV.
“Stop,” said my mother. “Leave it there.”
Soldiers were climbing a wall.
“Say something!” said Daadi.
My mother said, “Four army jawaans and one major. Surrounded PTV headquarters. Prime minister under house arrest.”
“Allah!” cried Daadi, and placed a hand on her mouth.
Naseem said, “Should I change it?”
“PTV,” said my mother.
PTV was still showing songs.
“It’s started,” said my mother.
They watched the foreign news channels and heard the discussions about the fragile situation in Pakistan, where ordinary people, it was being said, had not shown any signs of participation in the drama that was occurring in Islamabad. The footage was the same—soldiers climbing a wall—and was combined with pictures of the empty streets. They returned to PTV but it was still showing songs. And then, from different sources, the story was made to move: the army was everywhere; their trucks were going into the streets; PTV headquarters was surrounded; the prime minister was still under house arrest; the sacked army chief had finally landed, with very little fuel in his aircraft, and was going to change his clothes and appear on PTV to address the nation.
“Martial law,” said Daadi.
“Martial law,” said my mother.
They changed the channels and Naseem went into the kitchen.
At assembly the next morning there was no mention of the takeover, except for a suggestion that occurred when Coordinator Hassan, handing out medals to the wrestling team, said that brawn too was important in life. Later in the classrooms there was talk of arrests: they were going to take in the ministers and aides who were closest to the former government; and they were setting up an accountability bureau and had begun to make lists.
At lunch break, when we were walking to the canteen, Saif laughed and said, “What a show. What a show.”
He didn’t mention his father, and I didn’t ask him.
Barkat went away that afternoon, taking the two-day leave he was allowed at the start of every month, and in the evening I took Naseem in the car to Main Market. We went first to Jalal Sons: she went into the stark white aisles inside and selected the insect-repelling Flit dispensers, the small white phenyl balls that were placed above the drains of bathrooms and came in plastic packets, a stack of Capri soaps, three small jars of Dentonic dental powder and three tubes of Medicam toothpaste; she dropped the items into the shopping cart and went into Feminine Care, selected Bio Amla shampoo and Kala Kola hair tonic, a tin of Touch Me talcum powder, a small blue bottle of Nivea face cream for Daadi and a tub of the cheaper Tibet Snow fairness cream for herself. I waited with the trolley at the till when she went upstairs to fetch the bread and eggs and milk. Then I drove her to the fruit-and-vegetable stalls outside Pioneer Store, where many cars and motorcycles were already parked, and where a slowed line of rickshas, and cars and wagons behind them, was trying to get to the other end of the street.
In the spreading dark, standing in the light of the bulbs that hung from wires above the stalls, Naseem examined the fruits and vegetables with her hand and made selections: apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, cabbages, cucumbers and a kilo of horseradish. They were weighed, placed in blue plastic bags and taken to the car. The vendor’s assistant arranged the bags in the seats at the back and stood outside my window.
“Give him money,” said Naseem.
I paid him for the fruits and vegetables we had bought.
He was still there.
“Give a tip,” said Naseem.
I gave him ten rupees.
“Give more,” said Naseem.
I gave him another ten-rupee note, and he took it and went away.
“It is good to give,” said Naseem.
We drove with difficulty through the street, between the jutting bodies of parked vehicles, then went along the roundabout and turned in toward the mosque. The azaan was sounding, and boys in skullcaps were going inside.
Naseem switched off the radio and drew her dupatta over her head. She looked outside at the boys in skullcaps and said, “It is good to pray in the mosque. At your age it is very important.”
I said, “I should.”
We left the mosque behind, and went past a butcher’s shop where pink, headless torsos were hanging from strings.
“At every age,” said Naseem, “there is a chance to repent.” She said that she had understood this only recently, at a time in her life when she no longer possessed the energies of youth. Still, she said, a man’s youth was something else, a time of determinations and will. She said her own son was like that. He was intelligent but had fought with his schoolteachers and quit the school; then he had worked as a laborer and made buildings with his bare hands, but had quit that too when the contractor, joking around one day, had called his sister a name. Naseem said she had worried then for her son. But he had reassured her; he had taken Allah’s name and said that there were many ways in the world.
He came home one day and told them that he was going to buy a car, a wagon, which he was going to fill with passengers, all paying the fare, and take them around the district. There was a route from Dipalpur to Haveli Lakha and then back to Dipalpur, and north from there to Kasur. The average ride was for fifty rupees. The total number of passengers a wagon could fit was fifteen (the one remaining seat in the front was for the driver), and there were at least ten journeys to make in a day. Adding it up, and subtracting the cost of petrol, and then multiplying it by the thirty days of the month, gave a total of more than two lakh rupees. But from this he would have to pay the car dealer, who had agreed to receive the second half of the payment in monthly i
nstallments.
“Even so,” he said, “it will leave thirty thousand rupees.”
They were eating their evening meal in the courtyard of Naseem’s house.
Her husband said, “Allah will give,” and went on eating. He was unemployed, white-haired now and had no money.
Naseem said, “Who will buy the wagon? I will buy the wagon?”
Her son was chewing slowly. He finished the food in his plate, drank water from the steel cup and splashed the rest away.
She was filled with regret.
She said, “How will you do it?”
Her husband went on chewing.
And her son said, “Allah will give,” and got up from the low stool and went to wash his hands under the tap.
She thought of selling her land and giving him the money. She had three marlas behind a railway track, a small plot in a factory workers’ colony that was surrounded by sugarcane fields. She consulted her acquaintances and they advised her against it. The land, they said, was a place to hide her head in case she had to; it was a thing to keep, a thing to sell only when the price was high. She listened to them and agreed with them. But later, alone, she sank imperceptibly into her own thoughts. He was her son; and he would have a car of his own; and a car too was a place to hide one’s head, a car had many uses, and could take them to different places. She saw herself sitting in the backseat.
He came home and she fed him, then sat them all down and made the announcement.
The wagon came. She heard about it first from Majida, her neighbor, who banged blatantly on the door and cried, “Mubarikaan! Mubarikaan!”
She hurried out to the door.
Majida stood in the doorway with her hand on the latch and said, “You never told any of us.” Her tone was admiring and reproachful.
Naseem said, “Is it here?”
“Leh,” said Majida, and took her by the hand, “what a fool you are pretending to be.”
They went out into the street, and Naseem saw the people who had come out of their homes, saw the surprise and the excitement in their faces and the way they were looking at her.
She drew the dupatta over her head and tried to walk slowly.
“Come quick,” said Majida, leading her still by the hand, “before the others start sitting on your seats.”
They went down the street and turned the corner. The wagon was standing on the main road, between the shops and the stalls, and was long and high and white and had two green stripes on its side and colorful stickers on the front and on the back.
Her son was sitting in the driver’s seat, and was talking to a boy who stood outside his window and had his hands on the felt. Others had gathered around the wagon; they were waiting for a chance to touch it. On the way to the wagon Naseem was stopped by the washerwoman and then by the cobbler, and they were gracious and gave compliments.
Naseem smiled and nodded, adjusted her dupatta and said, “Vekho ji, rab da kamal.”
They went in the wagon to the shrine of Hazrat Karman Aley. It was the shrine closest to their village. The wagon was new and needed protection, but they wanted to have it blessed right away. So they went. Naseem sat at the back, next to Majida, who had come along, and with a crowd of children in the seats behind them, the little boys and girls who were attracted by the sound of the horn and had attached themselves to the doors.
Naseem said, “There is no tape?” She meant the audiocassette player that was usually located in the front.
Her husband was sitting in the seat ahead and had his hand on the strap above his window. He said, “No, no, there is none.”
Naseem’s son said, “There is a tape.” And with his one free hand he found the buttons, and abruptly the sound burst from behind, and it was Madam Noor Jehan and she was singing: O Bangle of Gold!
The deal’s the same
Giving love, Taking love
The deal’s the same!
On the wide highway roads they went. It was early evening, and the sun hung low above the sugarcane fields. Their windows were down from before and wouldn’t go up, but they were not complaining: the wind was coming in and was tickling their faces, trembling their hairstyles and making their clothes flap.
Majida turned to the children at the back and was harsh and scolding when she said, “A mother’s prayers, a mother’s prayers, that is what gets you ahead in life.”
Naseem’s face was in the wind.
“Mother!” cried Yakub, her son, from his seat in the front.
“Yes!” she cried.
“Are the cars coming?” He was about to turn the wagon, and they saw now that the mirrors were missing.
Naseem stuck her head out, and then drew it back inside and cried, “There are no cars coming!”
Yakub cried, “Very good!”
They waited.
And they cheered and whistled when the wagon turned the corner successfully.
The shrine was like a mosque but bigger, more spacious. Naseem knew from her visits to the courtyard inside that it could accommodate more people than almost any other place she had seen. There were no times for opening or closing the doors, and this laxity, while it was in keeping with the large-hearted persona of the dead saint, had also drawn the attention of wandering types, the beggars and drug users and lunatics who came in and then rarely went away. Now their contingent passed a madwoman, dressed in her customary rags, sitting on a tattered old sheet in a corner of the white marble courtyard, and she looked at them and looked away. She had lost the urge to beg, it was said, because of the food that came here every day in pots from those whose wishes the saint had answered.
The children looked at the madwoman and prodded one another and laughed.
Majida slapped them and said, “She will come here and eat your little faces.”
They went to the chamber that contained the saint’s grave. Naseem’s son had bought a chadar from a stall outside, a long, silken sheet that had prayers written on it and glowed differently in different kinds of light. He was going to place it as an offering on the saint’s grave and say a prayer of thanks.
The men went inside the chamber. Naseem and Majida had to stay outside because of a new sign that had been nailed to the door and said that women, by decree of the shrine’s keepers and patrons, were not allowed in the chamber. They stood outside and said the prayer, not requiring the physical closeness.
Then they waited for the men to return.
Majida said, “Our prayers are more effective than theirs. It is in nature.”
She wanted agreement. She had come here all the way to bless Naseem’s new wagon and now she wanted some agreement.
Naseem said, “In this there is no doubt that God listens to women.”
Majida nodded thoughtfully. The dusk had deepened and the lights in the courtyard had come alive, and they could see the mosquitoes above their heads.
Majida said, “Keep praying, and Allah will keep giving.” It was a way of saying that she was happy for Naseem, and that she had not lost hope for herself.
And Naseem, who was privileged and could speak now from experience, said, “I have always said it, always.”
It was Majida again who brought the news.
“Open this door!” she cried, banging on it violently.
Naseem came out of her room, went through her courtyard to the door and said, “What is the matter? What has happened?” She wasn’t expecting anything.
But Majida was panting and became anguished and held her temples when she saw Naseem in the doorway, and said that the wagon had been in an accident, the people in the other car were saying it had no mirrors and that was against the law, and the matter was quickly getting out of hand and they were going to take it to the police station.
Naseem stepped out of the house without her shoes. “Where is it?”
“In the street,” said Majida, acting all frail.
Naseem said, “Who taught them the law? How do they know who has broken it?”
They reac
hed the fray and found that it was finished: Naseem’s son was standing on one side of the road with the wagon, which was full of passengers; and on the other side was a much bigger car, a white Cruiser jeep that started up now and began to drive away.
Around the wagon a crowd had gathered.
“They break the law,” Naseem’s son was saying. “And they blame it on us. It is because they think they have the authority.”
A boy was rubbing his back; another was leaning against the wagon and smoking a cigarette. The passengers inside were waiting for their journey to resume.
Naseem said, “Where did they hit it?”
Her son showed her the dent on the door.
She said, “From where are they coming? Why are they telling us to talk to them? Do they want to go to the police station? Do they want us to take them there?”
Majida said loudly, “She drives a car in the city. She has bought this one with her own money.”
The faces in the crowd were watching.
Later she was told how it had happened: the wagon was emerging from the underpass and was hit from the side by the Cruiser jeep, which had turned in without warning, without so much as a honk. After the collision they stepped out of their cars: in the wagon it was only Yakub, who had been driving; the passengers were his customers and they stayed inside. And in the other car was an old man in a hat, a sweater and a shirt and trousers, sitting with his driver and with a uniformed security guard, who stepped out with a gun. That was when the fighting started: people came from all sides to separate them, and it was being said, without consideration of right or wrong, that both sides were at fault and it was best to bury the matter and to go home with the damage.
“But there was one man,” said Yakub, his features dancing in the light of the fire around which they had gathered in the courtyard to listen, “there was one man in that crowd who knew right from wrong.” And the man was described: he was a young man, not much older than Yakub himself, and he wore white clothes and a black turban on his head, and had a beard but without a mustache. “He was the one,” said Yakub, “who saw the dent on the door, who knew right from wrong and asked to know what had happened, and took the guard’s gun from his hand and told him to get in that car and go away.”
