Fireproof

by Raj Kamal Jha

  Of course, nothing of this happens, because Shabnam is alive, because there’s no pool, because this is a city on fire and she is running.

  SHE runs past trees, trees that don’t help, trees that cannot provide shade when the city is on fire. (For their leaves are small, razor-thin, tilted, so that during the day, their shadows are just thin black lines on the street below. And at night when you don’t need the shade, it’s then that these leaves open up, they block light from the streetlamps, they add to the darkness.) These trees watch her run.

  She runs past a giant poster for sanitary napkins, the kind with wings on either side. She used them once, borrowed from a friend, a classmate, who, at this time, must be fast asleep in her bed, safe. (Her periods, the bleeding is about one week away, she shivers at that thought, at the napkin, a white bird in her hands, a bird that instead of flying got trapped between her legs and died, drenched with her own blood.) She runs past a billboard advertising ovens, the kind Mother wanted to buy and Father said, wait, let me start paying off the auto-rickshaw loan, four or five months at the most, and then we will get that oven for Id-ul-Fitr.

  Shabnam keeps running.

  She runs past auto-rickshaws that have not been burnt, parked on either side of the road, their steel rims glinting, their owners asleep, sprawled on the seats, their heads resting in the laps of Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen and Preity Zinta, whose film-star lips smile over the sleeping faces. (Shabnam remembers the argument she had with Father: she had wanted him to put Tabu’s picture in the auto-rickshaw. On the backrest of the seat. ‘Passengers will like to look at her,’ Shabnam had said, ‘she is the most beautiful, the most intelligent of them all.’ Father had frowned: ‘No, I drive an auto-rickshaw, I don’t run a cinema hall.’ Shabnam had then gone to Mother who said: ‘Don’t be impatient. Now he is stubborn but after a few months he will agree, I am sure of that. Doesn’t he always say yes to whatever you want?’ Father had overheard this from the next room and he had smiled, without Shabnam’s knowing.)

  She runs past houses, apartment buildings named after Hindu gods and goddesses, the idols painted in cement, garlanded with marigold flowers made of plaster coloured red or orange, gods staring at her saying you are not welcome here, keep running. She runs past policemen fast asleep, policemen laughing, policemen sifting the debris with their sticks, the tips of their shoes. She runs past shops, their shutters closed, and because she’s looking straight ahead, she can’t read all their names although, once in a while, she can’t avoid looking through the corner of an eye, right or left.

  Gallery Touchwood, Imported Furniture from Italy. Intact.

  Baby Palace, your one-stop shop for baby needs, from bottles to cots, playmats to dining chairs. Intact.

  Ahmed Meat Shop. Charred, black shutters, the signboard half-melted in the heat of the fire.

  Insurance House. Intact.

  Nokia dealer, exchange offer. Intact.

  Sweet Tooth, chocolates and cakes. Intact.

  Designer Designs, women’s Western clothes. Display window broken, shards of glass, clothes half-burnt.

  Metropolitan Shoes. Burnt to the ground, shoes melted, the smell of leather.

  Patel Stockists and Sellers of Books, Class X and Class XII Boards. Intact.

  Ganesh Electronics, TV repair, rent, sale and purchase. Intact.

  Rehman Tailoring. Burnt to ash, a black hole where the shop would have been.

  After a while, Shabnam can’t even make out the names so fast she is running, she can only see what’s intact, what’s burnt, what’s intact, what’s burnt charred, what’s intact, what’s black, what’s intact, what’s shrouded with smoke, what’s intact intact intact what’s shattered, broken, what’s intact.

  In between some of the shops, she sees houses again, all windows and doors closed. In one, she sees a curtain pulled aside, the shape of someone talking on the phone. She can stop, she can scream at him or her, ‘Who are you talking to, safe inside your house, why don’t you come down and look at me?’

  ‘Look, look,’ she can say, ‘look here, here and here.’

  And she can point to the bit of flesh, her father’s flesh sticking to her shirt, just above where her heart is. She can point to the blood staining the thread in two of her buttons, no, three, even the one in her collar. Her mother’s blood. (For if she doesn’t point that out to you, you will think the tailor, while stitching her buttons, ran out of thread and so he used some red and he used some white.) And if he or she still doesn’t listen, she should stand there, right in the middle of that street, catch her breath, wait for her heart to slow down, gather all she left unsaid the whole evening, pack it into a scream until the entire neighbourhood, the block, the city wakes up and they all come out and stand at their doors and their windows, men, women and children, shivering in the cold, their blankets trailing behind them, and they all listen to her.

  And she should scream:

  ‘I am here to tell you what A, B, C and D did to Father and Mother. I am here to tell you what they did to the auto-rickshaw, to our house, I am here to tell you not to be fooled into believing that just because I am running away I am running away from it all. That I am frightened. I am not, I am not frightened, I will use magic to take revenge.

  ‘Black magic, white magic,

  Brown magic, blue.

  Whatever the colour,

  I will still get you.

  And in the very end

  It will all be the same.

  The colour you choose

  Is the colour of the flame.

  ‘Magic means I will thrust my hand into the cold winter air, through the smoke and the fog, I will pluck out a gun. An automatic, unlimited round of bullets. Not just an AK-47, but an ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ forty-seven thousand, forty-seven million, billion, trillion. And I will fire it, keep firing it, right between your eyes.

  ‘Magic means I will breathe in, I will swell my chest, rise on my toes, and you will watch me grow until I am double my size, triple, quadruple, five times, six times, seven, eight, nine, ten. Until I, Shabnam, am so big that my eyes full of tears will become as huge as water-tanks, hot and steaming, the water mixed with the fire, the heat gurgling, the vapour fierce and hot. Ready to drench all of you.

  ‘And then I will start walking towards you, I will be so large that your doors and windows will scrape my ankles, your terrace won’t even reach my knees. I will be so tall that clouds will wet my dry hair, the wind will comb it back into its place and shape, into its flowing form, the moon will make it gleam, the stars sparkle.

  ‘And I will walk all over you and yours, your loved ones, your next of kin, your house, your living rooms, the marble floors, the granite counters in the kitchen, your wind chimes in the window.

  ‘I will then do what I saw A do to Father, C and D to Mother, I will prise your mouths open, pull your tongues out, slit them, one by one, drop the tongues, pink and black and brown and yellow, drop them into the sewer pipes that overflow by the side of the street.

  ‘I will watch, like B did – he stood there and watched – I will watch your tongues slither down, with the water, through the iron grille of the drain, squeezing through the pipes until they float all the way to the river that meets the sea like they were shoals of fish with neither fins nor eyes nor scales. While, back in your homes, you will stand and sit, weep and laugh, without your tongues you won’t be able to talk, you won’t be able to tell your friends and your family what A, B, C and D did to Shabnam and her father and her mother.

  ‘How they held my head straight, forced me to look at my parents, naked. They said you haven’t seen them like this before, thank us for this. Then A pulled Father’s watch off, saying you don’t need to look at the time any more, you don’t have the tongue to speak, threw it out of the window, where the rest of them stood, around the auto-rickshaw that was burning by then, the heat and the smoke streaming inside in waves. They laughed, I saw their tongues, I saw how they ran them over their lips, I saw them
piss into Father’s and Mother’s open mouths. I heard them say their piss was yellow since they had no time to drink water that morning and look, look, they said, see what colour it becomes when it mixes with the blood. See how yellow and red turn into brown.’

  But, of course, Shabnam doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t have the words to say all this, all she has are her feet and her arms, her knees and her elbows clawing through the fire and the fog. She’s breathing short, hard, the noise echoing around the walls of the buildings on either side. Once in a while she lets out a scream (but then how can you scream when you have run so long and so hard?), more like a whimper: it only helps to clear her throat, allowing the cold air to rush in, cushioning her laboured breaths, giving her more oxygen. Letting her live.

  Keep running.

  She should rest, she has to rest, because she can’t go on like this.

  It was her father who had told her, ‘Run.’

  (Through gesture, not words, because they had taken his tongue out, because blood was flowing down his lips, his chin, drenching his stubble, falling on to his chest. Streaking his white shirt, his grey trousers that he had reached out to cover himself with, to cover his shame in front of his daughter. She saw his red half-sleeved sweater, frayed at the neck, a dying animal bleeding on the floor. When they had forced Father to undress, Shabnam in front, he kept shaking his head no no no no no no no, Shabnam can’t see this, and they kept laughing, Shabnam has to see this, Shabnam can’t ride in her father’s auto-rickshaw any more, Shabnam can’t go anywhere, Shabnam has to see this, Shabnam has to see her father and her mother naked, because wasn’t this how she was born? Or did they do it all dressed up? Shabnam has to see this. If she closes her eyes, we will kill her too.

  And Shabnam saw.

  Father kept shaking his head, telling her with his eyes run away, run away, you have a life to live, don’t let them take it. Telling her with his eyes, the fire is near, they have already set the curtains alight, the flames from the auto-rickshaw are now creeping up the window frame, they will soon reach the walls and the doors, the chairs and the table, they will enter the kitchen, make the gas cylinder explode, they will feed on the fuel, then spread to the bedroom where they will lick the sheets clean, take the cot as well. They will then travel to the door where you stand, they will enter your hair first, your beautiful hair. So, Shabnam, run.

  They just want us, it seems, so let them take us, you run, use whatever you can of the kindness of these strangers.

  And she turned to look at Father and Mother for the last time, she saw the auto-rickshaw burning, the windscreen long gone, she saw A, B, C and D turning away, their job done, she saw them locking the door from the outside so Father and Mother couldn’t get out, naked and tongueless. And then Shabnam closed her eyes, climbed on a chair, out through the window, the flames singed, she felt the skin curl, and she ran.)

  She had first run to the public phone booth down the street; she knew the man in charge, he would smile at her every day on her way to school. ‘Go ahead and make your call,’ he said. Father was right, use whatever you can of the kindness of strangers.

  All lines busy, her hands trembling, she dialled and she dialled. She got through to the father of a classmate, and he said: ‘I can’t come, the city is on fire.’

  She couldn’t reply and when he heard her cry, he said, ‘Shabnam, call me in half an hour, I will see what I can do.’ She couldn’t wait half an hour, she couldn’t let them get to her, because they don’t need eighteen hundred seconds.

  And so Shabnam ran.

  The man closed the phone booth and went home.

  SHABNAM is slowing down, she has seen a sheltered patch of black on the side of the road, a lane between two houses. There doesn’t seem to be any one there. She enters. Once in the lane, once she’s draped in the darkness, once she is sure the light from the neons on the street won’t reach her, she stops, sits down, leans her head against the wall. She can hear her heart, she has to wait for it to slow down, she is sweating in the cold, she can feel the ring of perspiration on her neck, her face. Shabnam closes her eyes, cups her palms over them to keep them closed.

  And her eyes, which had been forced open, not even blinking as they had taken in the flames and the smoke and Father and Mother and A, B, C and D, and the day and the night, the street and the city, those eyes, once closed, opened up.

  And Shabnam cries.

  Her palms still covering her face, her eyes closed, the tears flow, she feels the water on her thumbs on either cheek. The tips of her fingers, cold, on her forehead, hot. She can hear her breath, noisy, wheezing, as it tries to get out to meet and mix with the air of the city, but trapped, for now, between her hands and her face. The tears still flowing, she opens her eyes, sees in front, just beyond the fringe where the shadows of the lane end and the lights of the street begin, a divider, a narrow strip of concrete with saplings planted in a neat row, each ringed with an iron cage. Cars drive by, she moves closer against the wall, she doesn’t want to be seen.

  Where will Shabnam go,

  This girl in the lane,

  What can you tell her

  To ease her pain?

  There’s nothing, nothing,

  Nothing you can do,

  Except point to Tariq,

  Say who’s just like you.

  SO all you can say then is Shabnam, not far from where you live – in fact just down the street – there will, at some point in the night, today or tomorrow, appear from the shadows, from across the way, a child, a boy, ten or eleven years old, in a T-shirt and shorts. He will carry his mother’s slippers in his hands, it will look like he’s searching for something. Don’t draw yourself deeper into the shadows, Shabnam, don’t be afraid since he is not enemy, he is friend. (They got his mother before they got yours.) Friendship is when both of you watch the fire burn, when both of you watch the ones you love get killed, friendship is when you are both alone and afraid in the city. So watch him as he climbs onto the divider, squeezes himself through the iron railings, and stands at the foot of the lamp post. Watch him as he looks at the cars go by, count them along with him.

  And then, after this, what do you tell Shabnam? Because she will keep looking at you, she will keep listening, she has no words of her own right now, she is empty, she is like the burnt shell of her house.

  What do you tell her?

  Wait until the night clears, wait for the smoke to clear, you are intelligent, you are not six or seven, surely you can find your way home.

  The police will be there by now because while you were running, the Prime Minister spoke in New Delhi, his eyes closed in anguish, so now there is no fear, they won’t come back to kill the dead, you can’t burn what has been charred.

  Be careful, walk into your house, search for what’s left behind. There must be something there, not everything burns.

  Your neighbours will be there as well, your neighbours who closed their doors and windows and didn’t hear Father and Mother scream, your neighbours who all came to look at Father’s auto-rickshaw, ask him for a ride to the station, to the market, to the cinema hall.

  And now they will come again, now you are alone, one of them will ask you inside his house, will warm some water for you in a bucket, ask you to take a bath, give you a brand-new cake of soap, sandalwood, your favourite, the wrapping waiting for you to remove it. To wash the sweat and the tears away, the charred scales on the soles of your feet. They will give you a blue detergent soap to wash your clothes, your father’s flesh sticking to your kameez, the city’s dirt on your black salwar.

  They will spread out for you, on a freshly made bed, a soft quilt, a fresh set of clothes, smelling of warm water and soap. They will tell you to join them for lunch, you have nothing to worry about, we will take care of you. Here, take some more rice, don’t be shy, think of this as your own home. Then they will give you dinner at night.

  And then what?

  What should Shabnam do then?

  Get into
the bed, pull the quilt over herself, close her eyes and go to sleep?

  Forget Father, Mother?

  Forget Mother and Father naked?

  Forget the Friday Father got the auto-rickshaw?

  Forget the windscreen she cleaned every evening, forget Father’s watch they threw away?

  Forget the fire, forget the smoke, forget the tongues being slit?

  Forget all, the past has been burnt. So start remembering from today because you haven’t been raped, you haven’t been killed, you haven’t been burnt alive?

  Well, that’s the only way out, but who will tell her that? As Shabnam sits in the lane, her tears flowing, cooling the memory of the fire.

  Someone should tell her, sooner rather than later.

  END OF SECOND ATTACHMENT

  13. Abba

  (The Third Attachment)

  ‘YOU are like my students,’ Abba says and he keeps repeating it, this man who is seventy-six years old, our third and last eyewitness, so thin that his mere standing straight seems to be a defiance of the wind and the elements. He’s tall, unusually straight-backed for a man his age; his hair’s white, flowing, his beard too; he repeats it like a chant, he shouts, he begs, he implores, he pleads, ‘You are like my students you are like my students you are like my students you are like my students you are like my students.’