A Season for Martyrs

by Bina Shah

  Haroon focused the camera lens on the waiter and Ali, taking a few minutes to set up the shot. Ram held the boom above them, and Ali held up the microphone. He’d done this ten, twenty times already throughout the day. He rearranged his features into an expression that was the complete opposite of what he was feeling. “Ready, Haroon?”

  “Yes, sir.” Haroon nodded his head and Ram gave the thumbs-up.

  “Right. What is your name, please?”

  “Shahid Jokhio.”

  “And your thoughts on Benazir’s return?” Ali knew he didn’t have to be subtle, just quick. The guy was a Sindhi; he’d praise her to the skies.

  “It’s wonderful.” The waiter wagged his head from side to side, a wide smile on his face.

  “No, it’s not,” put in the doorman, unable to stop himself from participating. Haroon swiveled the camera so that they were both in the frame. It was impromptu, but it could be good.

  Ali pointed the microphone at the doorman. “Why not?”

  “She should have stayed away. What’s the point? She was sent packing before. She’s no good for the country.”

  “Your name?”

  “Ahmed Rais.”

  The waiter was starting to fume, and he quickly inserted himself again into the picture. “That’s nonsense; she had to come back. She’s the only person who can get us back to democracy. We want her, we need her.”

  “She’s not honest. She’s corrupt. She’s just going to do the same thing again!”

  “She can change our country, our lives.”

  “She won’t do anything except line her pockets and make us suffer.”

  “How dare you?”

  “How dare I what?”

  “Talk about her like that!”

  “Who’s going to stop me?”

  Suddenly they were throwing punches. This is great! crowed Ali to himself: street theater unfolding right before your eyes, folks. The waiter and the doorman scuffled for a minute, Haroon capturing it all on film, the security guard standing and watching them with a grin on his face. “These two, they’re always fighting,” he said laconically to Ali.

  “Politics, religion, economy. Barey ustaad hain. They think they’re university professors but they know nothing.”

  “And you?” Ali asked. “What do you think about her return?”

  He shrugged. It was enough of an answer for Ali, who happened to agree with him. “Thank you,” Ali said. The waiter and doorman were still shoving each other, the Sindhi’s bow tie askew, the doorman’s hair flopped forward to reveal a bald pate.

  Haroon put down the camera and called out to him, “Hey, uncle, that’s a terrible toupee. Why don’t you ask Nawaz Sharif to get you a hair transplant from his doctor?”

  The doorman looked up, his face black with murder. Seizing the opportunity, the waiter landed a punch that sent the doorman stumbling into the arms of the security guard, who dropped his rifle right onto his own foot. He roared in pain. Ali, Haroon, and Ram backed away fast, and they were soon engulfed by the sheer mass of people, so the men couldn’t come after them, even if they tried.

  Once they were at a safe distance, Ali asked Haroon, “What was that for?”

  Haroon grinned slyly. “He insulted Benazir. I couldn’t let that go, could I?”

  Ali smiled wryly and reached out to slap palms with Haroon. Okay, she was corrupt, but she was Sindhi, so … oh, how Sikandar would chuckle if he knew what Ali was thinking. Ram ducked his head, not wanting to meet their eyes, but he was grinning, too. He was shy, Ram. Ali always tried to include him in their jokes, the camaraderie that he and Haroon shared, but Ram hung back, not comfortable enough to participate. Ali was sensitive to the fact that maybe other people at work gave Ram a hard time because he was Hindu. Whenever he saw Ram hesitate like that, he always thought of Sunita being discriminated against for her faith, and he was astonished by the white heat of his sudden fury.

  The frenzy was unchecked, the crowds still going strong. There were people hanging off every bridge, crammed onto the tops of trucks and buses. In the apartment buildings that lined both sides of the road, more people crowded the balconies, watching the melee from above. The PPP had forecast that a million people would be here tonight; the government was trying to downplay it, saying you could halve that number and then halve it again. Ali calculated that there were at least seven hundred thousand people, a vast, incomprehensible number, all here for this one woman, who might carry on her strong shoulders the destiny of an entire nation.

  They could still see her truck from where they were; she kept going inside to rest, then coming out again onto the float every forty-five minutes, standing on the platform, surrounded by her aides and colleagues, both men and women of the PPP who had been supporting her in the country while she was unable to be here herself. Now she was back and their dreams were about to come true. But what dreams? Visions of power, of money, of position and influence? It was like every time, in the alphabet soup that made up Pakistani politics: PPP, PML, Q, N, F, ANP, BNP, MQM—everyone jockeying for a piece of the very valuable pie. And Benazir had helped herself to a very healthy slice the last time she was in power. It was harrowing to think of what would happen if she filled that seat again.

  “Wow, she’s got stamina,” Ali muttered to himself. No matter what else he felt about her, he had to concede that much. She had the strength of ten men, if she could stand all of this. She didn’t just seem to be able to stand it; she seemed to relish it, drawing her strength from the devotion of the crowds swelling all around her, as if she were at once some kind of saint and queen and mother. Just maybe, he thought fleetingly, he was being unfair to her, judging her so harshly because she was so tied to his memories of his father, good and bad, and the yearning for that man that ate at him like an ulcer in his stomach.

  “Should we get something to eat?” said Haroon. It was just past midnight; they were crawling along near the Karsaz overpass. Ali craned his neck but couldn’t see any restaurants in the immediate vicinity, and it would take ages to go up the road and find the barbecue place next to the ice cream parlor.

  “I’m starving, yaar,” Ali said. “But we need to find some place that serves vegetarian food.” And he indicated Ram with his raised eyebrows.

  Haroon nodded. “We’ll find something for him. Don’t worry, Ram. Come on, I know a place down this way—”

  The explosion hit them like tin drums to the chest. It lasered out Ali’s mind and shattered his eardrums. A column of fire shot into the sky, illuminating the shocked faces of everyone around them. In that split second, everyone was frozen bare-limbed like winter trees, their shadows obliterated. Then they all dropped to the ground, some seeking to protect themselves, others felled by the blast, by flying shrapnel, by motorcycles being lifted into the air and falling down on their outstretched limbs.

  Silence.

  A shrieking started up, unholy, otherworldly. Smoke curled in the air; people were picking themselves up, dazed, others still lying on the ground. Ali came to life, too, moving his arms and legs and astonished to find them still attached to his body.

  “What was that? What was that?” a man jabbered next to him. “Did a tire burst? Has a tire burst?” Nobody answered him; people were too busy screaming, crying, howling to pay him any attention.

  “Haroon!” Ali screamed. “Ram! Where are you?” He could hardly hear his own voice, the ringing in his ears was so great.

  “Here, here,” Haroon replied from somewhere behind him. Ali blinked his eyes, astonished. Haroon had been just in front of Ali—how did he turn up ten feet away? And Ram was standing next to him. Their eyes were white and staring with fear through the soot and grime that covered their skin, streaks of sweat running cracks through the dark masks of their faces.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine. We’re fine.”

  They tu
rned to look at the truck, where Benazir was supposed to be, but there was no way to see anything; it was sheer pandemonium. People milled about, confused and directionless, rushing forward to pick bodies up, trying to lift them into life. Guards and party workers surrounded the truck, but she was nowhere to be seen. Haroon said, “I think she went inside, just before it—”

  Then, suddenly, another blast, a plume of searing light and fire, like a dragon’s tongue unfurling, and this time people were running in panic away from the truck, not bothering to help their fallen brothers. Ali, too, fell to his knees with the impact. Ram sank from view.

  Haroon screamed once, then fell silent; but instead of catching his comrade in his arms and dragging him away with him, Ali scrambled to his feet, put his hands over his ears to block out the pounding sound of the bomb, and ran. He wished that he too could die, just to escape from the sounds that couldn’t possibly have come from human throats: moans and whimpers at once animalistic and raw, like the keening of scores of maddened, hysterical wolves.

  The Seven Queens

  BHIT SHAH, SINDH, 1746

  Shah Abdul Latif came home one afternoon to a sight that nearly stopped his heart: his wife, Bibi Sayedah, was sitting at the kitchen table, her head buried between her folded arms, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. She sounded as though she was keening for the dead, and this shocked Shah Latif so much that he rushed to her side and shook her. “Khanum? Khanum, what is wrong? Has someone died?”

  At first no words emerged from the quaking heap of headscarf and sleeves, for that was all he could see of her. Shah Latif went to the earthenware pot and drew out a glass of water, brought it to the table, and set it down in front of Sayedah. “Drink, o wife, and then I implore you to tell me what is wrong.”

  After a time, the weeping ceased, although Bibi Sayedah’s shoulders continued to shudder from time to time, like aftershocks after the first earthquake has turned the earth loose. Shah Latif sat down on a facing chair—there were only two in their simple house—and took out his prayer beads, whispering some of the ninety-nine names of God under his breath, slowing his breath and closing his eyes. He prayed for his wife: that Allah Saeen would restore her to her senses quickly and that no harm had befallen anyone they loved.

  Ya-Majid, Ya-Wajid, Ya-Wahid, Ya-Ahad, Ya-Samad, Ya-Qadir, Ya-Malik, Ya-Rehman, Ya-Rahim.

  Eventually his wife lifted her head and gazed at him with watery, swollen eyes. Shah Latif felt a heaviness descend upon him: she was still not much older than a girl, and he hated to see her cry. She had wept only once before: as she was leaving her parents’ house to come into his as a bride. He still remembered the heavily shrouded figure, the akhiyaan over her face, wreaths of roses weighing down her slim shoulders, as she took step after tiny step in the wedding procession. Someone had brought a Quran and held it over her head for protection, and her fingers, painted with henna but lacking jewelry, were trembling as they clung to the edge of the veil over her head—for Shah Latif came from noble people, who could well afford to put the twisting gold ver on her ring finger and the nath through her nose; but Shah Latif himself had forsworn the riches of this world and wished his wife to follow the same path. She had agreed, but when he saw the tears sliding down from under the akhiyaan and onto her delicate throat, he wondered if she was weeping out of sadness or for fear of the life that he, already a well-known ascetic, would give her.

  He owned next to nothing—a few bowls, a copy of the Quran and of Rumi’s Masnavi his most prized possessions. But he was rich in mind: he could speak five languages, including Persian and Arabic; and rich in lineage, tracing his ancestry all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which attracted the family of Bibi Sayedah, while his kindness of manner and gentleness of speech swayed Bibi Sayedah’s own affections toward him.

  When Bibi Sayedah had come to his house and they were left alone on the night of their wedding, he had brought her a cup of milk flavored with honey and rose water, and bade her drink from his own hand. After she had her fill, he drank from the same cup, looking deep into her eyes, and she had lowered her face, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. He tenderly laid his hand on her forehead and breathed a prayer over her head, then pulled her to his chest and kept her close there, wanting to imprint the very essence of her onto his heart.

  Very quickly she became the love of his life, and he hers. She was a perfect companion to him: serene and contemplative, she moved through the house with utter calm. He even admired the thoughtful way she would put on her shoes, leaning against the wall with one hand supporting her weight, lifting her feet gracefully, first the right and then the left. He was a man of few words, preferring to save them for the pages of his poetry, but he couldn’t help it if his poetry, spiritual and ethereal, became suffused with earthly love; even if his verse was meant to be an unending love song to the Beloved, he couldn’t help but believe that what he felt for his wife was the perfect metaphor for what the Sufis had always felt for God. He’d absorbed their teachings, understood the beautiful symbolism of Sufi poetry, with its yearning and despair at the separation between the Beloved and His lovers, among whom he counted himself. But he had always thought that love would transport him to the heavens; he had never realized that it also sank down deep, into bone and blood, flesh and marrow—until he had married his wife.

  And so he had written the tragic love stories of Sindh, putting down into verse the folk tales of that ancient land, inspired by the grace in his wife’s smile, the welcoming presence that gave him his center, and helped him to face the hardship of travel.

  The web of power grew in Sindh, trapping all within its silken skeins: the Pirs who were descendants of the Sufi saints and the guardians of their shrines arbitrated for the tribesmen in their conflicts large and small; the Kalhora kings recognized their power and used it to their advantage, gifting the Pirs with land and money in return for their political support and the allegiance of the tribes.

  Shah Latif ran from this juggernaut, and the jealousy of the Pirs and Mirs who feared that this man of God might approach the Kalhoras for a share of the power. Instead, he visited the four corners of Sindh and the outlying borderlands, roaming the plains, the rushing rivers, the flower-filled dales. He meditated at the Ganjo Hills, south of Hyderabad, spent days of contemplation at Hinglaj and the mountains of Lasbela in Balochistan. He visited his wife in some of his dreams, seeing her standing in the doorway of their house and waiting for him with a glass of sweetened lassi in her hands, or cooking him a simple meal infused with love.

  He did not stop there; he went on to the foothills of the Himalayas, those sweet lands of Hinglay, Lakhpat, and Nani, and Sappar Sakhi, where he communed with yogis and sanyasis; to Junagardh and Jessalmir; joining in with Hindus and Buddhists and sun-

  worshippers and fire-worshippers, all in search of the Truth. He practiced yoga with a wizened yogi and compared the similarity of the asanas to the bowing and prostration of Muslim prayer, and observed that indeed there were many paths to achieving union with God. And furthermore, that wish to be one with the Lord was a universal desire; if one practiced the correct rituals, every cell would awaken and sing the praises of the Creator.

  But no matter how far he traveled, his one secret desire was to be back in his home, under the same roof as his wife. The pious, virtuous Sayedah Begum, whose eyes remained downcast in prayer, who was hidden from the view of other men—for, like all women descended from the Prophet, peace be upon him, she practiced purdah, seclusion from the outside world—and who remained his hidden pearl, his treasure, his heart’s dearest.

  Shah Latif had always assumed that she had known how he felt about her. He thought she knew it from the way he woke in the middle of the night to cover her with their one threadbare quilt. He thought she knew it when he nursed her through her fevers and grippes. He had never thought of taking a second wife, ever, even though it was his right to take a second or
a third or even a fourth.

  So when she told him that day that he found her weeping at the kitchen table, why she was upset, he was completely stunned.

  “I was waiting for Bibi Hanifah to bring me some ghee from the market. She said that she could find a better price for me if she went to the dargah of your grandfather, Shah Abdul Karim, as the urs is beginning and the farmers are bringing their goods to the shrine every day now.

  “When she went to the shrine, she sat for a while to listen to the sacred songs, as the beating of the holy drums uplifts her a great deal on days she is tired from carrying her child. They began to sing the sur of Sassi-Pannu, in honor of the fact that you are Shah Karim’s grandson, and the composition was a particularly melodious one, so she sat entranced for some time. And then she overheard two women talking behind her. They were saying … they were saying …”

  “What were they saying?” said Shah Latif. He looked down at the floor, not wanting to reveal any emotion, but inside he was displeased that Bibi Hanifah was bringing back gossip from the urs. It was a festival meant to celebrate the saint’s death—his marriage with God—but trust people to contaminate the sacred days with the vulgar and the venial. He prayed to God for patience, and waited for his wife to continue.

  “They said …” Bibi Sayedah swallowed hard; he could see the gentle undulation in her throat. She was slim as a girl, the skin of her throat almost translucent, like fine rice paper. “They said that … that you love the Seven Queens more than you do your real wife. And that is the reason Allah has not yet blessed us with a child.” She sank her head into her hands and began to weep anew.

  Shah Latif stared at her, aghast. This was worse than he imagined: death was traumatic, but there was sweet succor in the thought that a true believer was finally achieving annihilation and would never again be parted from God. But this puerile village gossip …

  He was no stranger to it; he sometimes walked disguised in the market and heard the whispers. Shah Latif was revered by many as a man of God but he was not without enemies who disliked his popularity among the tribesmen of Sindh. They spoke in hushed tones about how his wife was barren, how he was uninterested in affairs of the world, in having children like normal people. Why did he not take a second wife? Why did he not send his wife back to her people? Could there be something wrong with him? Was he like the Pathans, who, it was said, preferred young boys to women?