by Nadeem Aslam
Maulana Hafeez leaned his head against the back of his armchair and looked up. High up, a female spider was knitting her hammock. Maulana Hafeez removed his glasses. He smoothed the soft hairs of his beard and turned his head sideways to stare through the open door of the bedroom on to the courtyard. Bright light filled the house and Maulana Hafeez could sense the impending heat of the rising sun. The monsoon was continuing – now smooth and appeasable, now dramatic and capricious. There were colours on the washing line and a series of parallel bars of sunlight – filtered grainily through the screens – fringed the edge of the veranda.
He straightened when he saw his wife come out of her bedroom, her feet entangled in the bars of sunlight as she crossed the veranda.
‘This came earlier, Maulana-ji.’ She placed the letter in Maulana Hafeez’s lap.
She went to the other side of the room to bring a chair over to her husband’s side. Maulana Hafeez examined the letter with a furrowed brow. There was a blank moment as he realised what he held in his hands. ‘But today’s only Monday. These weren’t due till Wednesday.’
The woman was settled before him. ‘They have been delivered,’ she said. ‘They say Mujeeb Ali and his men beat up the postmaster last night. But he insisted that he didn’t have them yet.’
‘That’s what he told me.’
‘The postmaster and his wife are not in town, Maulana-ji. They must’ve delivered them during the night and fled.’
Maulana Hafeez lifted his strained features towards her. ‘But where could they have run to? That woman was … with child.’
His wife did not respond. She watched the envelope keenly. Maulana Hafeez applied vertical thumbnails to the caked shellac and snapped the seal into two half-moons. Inside the official green envelope was the original letter and four photostated sheets explaining the unusual nature of the correspondence. The train crash was described at length; there was a poorly reproduced photograph of the derailed carriages. The text seemed to Maulana Hafeez to be written by an investigative journalist for the Friday supplement. He read all eight sides. His wife sat by him, placid and calm.
At last, Maulana Hafeez picked up the envelope which, he now knew, he must himself have sealed and addressed nineteen years before. Scrawled on the paper in blue water-based ink – it had faded to a grey – were his wife’s name and the postal directions: the mosque’s name, the number of the street, the letter of the English alphabet assigned to the block. Maulana Hafeez could not recall writing the letter but he recognised his handwriting. He opened the side of the envelope with careful pinches, releasing a faint smell that was familiar to him as the smell of the cupboard in the mosque where old and torn copies of the Qur’an were kept.
When he finished reading, Maulana Hafeez refolded the page along the two creases and returned it to its envelope; he then placed the small envelope and the explanatory literature inside the larger green envelope. Then, with heavy limbs and unsteady hands, he tore the whole thing up.
There was a mass of green, pale-yellow and white squares in his lap when he looked up at his wife. ‘It was nothing,’ he said quietly. He collected the torn paper in his hands and stretched out his arms towards her, as though making an offering.
She stood up and took the scraps – each tiny square scuffed at the edges – and went into the kitchen. She threw the paper on to the fire. The flames changed colour briefly and then returned to their original yellow.
Maulana Hafeez pointed up at the spider when she came back. ‘This room needs a clean,’ he said.
The woman returned the chair to its original position against the wall. She glanced up. The spider was still working. ‘Not till the rains are over, Maulana-ji,’ she said in her usual neutral tone. ‘And you had better put on a vest, Maulana-ji. The rains are bad for you.’
Maulana Hafeez was massaging his scalp. He yawned. ‘Do you remember what Atya used to say? Seasons and governments are at their most dangerous whilst changing.’ He gave a little laugh.
She forced a smile. ‘It seems true, Maulana-ji. We’re still paying for the last elections.’
Maulana Hafeez nodded. He looked out of the room. A sparrow was perched on the brass tap, drinking water by reaching down and inserting its beak into the tarnished spout. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I missed Gul-kalam’s whistle last night.’
The barber opened the paned door of his shop and peered out into the eleven o’clock glare. The street was deserted; only the trees and their shadows stood on the verges. He closed the door and came back inside. He reached under the bench and from behind the cardboard boxes he took out his radio. Wiping the dust from the top of the radio set with his left sleeve he carried a chair to the electric socket. He put the radio on the chair, pushed home the two prongs of the plug and placed an eye to one of the holes punched into the back of the set: the glass valves were beginning to give off a saffron glow. The bakelite casing had three large cracks which had been mended with criss-crossing copper wire, like a stitched up wound, and a resinous substance resembling living eggwhite. Once whilst sweeping the floor the barber had dragged the chair with the radio aside, forgetting that the set was still plugged in. It was pulled off the chair and hit the wall. The casing was broken but the circuits still received, enabling the barber and Zafri to continue listening to their favourite programme, while three walls away Maulana Hafeez slept his after-breakfast sleep.
While the radio was warming up, the barber went along the platform to Zafri’s shop. To keep out flies and marauding cats the door to Zafri’s shop had been pulled to. By the door a cloud of flies hovered above the large drum into which chickens were thrown to die after their throats had been cut. The drum was set at ground level and reached up to touch its rim against the platform. Its lumen was coated with blood, feathers and blue faecal matter. The dying bird would thrash about inside the drum, hurling itself against the sides, as though electric shocks were being applied to its little body. Sometimes a bird, squawking with fear and pain, would rise up to the top of the drum obliging Zafri to hurriedly improvise a lid.
The barber rapped his knuckles on the door and said, ‘Time for Talkeen Shah.’ He parted the door and poked his head in.
Zafri was wrapping a headless carcass in muslin. He hung it by the hind legs from the hook attached with a rope to the ceiling. The meat dangled – the amputated front legs a foot or so above the floor – ina posture which the live animal might have adopted when jumping over a fence. Zafri then locked the door and followed his friend into the barber shop.
‘What happened in the last episode?’ Zafri asked distractedly as he sprawled himself on the bench, using a towel as pillow. The barber checked the top of the radio for warmth. The programme, Life and Opinions of Talkeen Shah, was in its eleventh year. It chronicled twice weekly the wayward fortunes of the eponymous hero – an eccentric, unfailingly charming figure; middle-aged, and bitter at having been denied wealth and status. He had somehow – the account was altered regularly by him – fetched up in a leafy suburb of Lahore, where he now spent his days brooding over his unrequited love for the lady next door, a kindly college professor – and nostalgically looking back to the days before the Partition. And everything in life – the widespread corruption, the state of the young people, the high cost of living, the latest scandal from the film world, the smuggling and the kidnappings – everything was brilliantly lampooned as Talkeen Shah worked himself into impotent rages over minor incidents around the neighbourhood. The barber reminded both Zafri and himself of the previous episode. They laughed.
The radio was taking a long time to warm up. The barber anxiously consulted his wristwatch. ‘My boy had better do well in his matriculation next June,’ he said. ‘Otherwise he goes straight to Saudi Arabia to work and send me a new radio.’
‘We’ll all have to leave for the Arab countries soon. There won’t be any young men left in the country,’ Zafri said, rearranging the pillow behind his head. ‘Mansoor’s brother is in Kuwait, earning fifteen thousand rupees a mo
nth. Mansoor orders meat almost every day now.’
‘The boy was only sixteen when he left. He’s just sent them a television and a camera.’
‘I know.’ Zafri smiled. ‘Maulana Hafeez has been round to see them about it.’
The barber smiled. The radio came on, a ballad faded in. The barber lowered the volume.
‘What annoys me is the way these maulanas never preach to the rich people. They’re always asking us to come to the mosques,’ Zafri said.
The barber settled in the large cuboid chair. He planted his feet against the wall under the shelf where grime deposited originally by customers’ feet was now in the process of being eroded by those same feet; the original colour of the paint showed up, gleaming. He said, ‘They forget the sura which says’ – and he quoted in Arabic – ‘he who amasses riches and scandalously hoards them, thinking his wealth will render him immortal, he shall be flung into the Destroying Flame.’
Zafri waved away a fly and yawned as the barber translated the verses. When the barber finished Zafri said, ‘Look what happened at the post office last night. But neither of those two will talk to Mujeeb Ali about it.’
The barber smiled. ‘But didn’t the postmaster retaliate in style!’
Zafri grinned with relish, slapping his thigh with the flat of his hand. ‘Right under the noses of Mujeeb Ali’s men who were patrolling the streets.’ And he added: ‘I myself would have gone one step further. I would have written some letters myself, one to each person in town, listing the crimes the rich have committed against us since the beginning of time.’ He was beating out the rhythm of the ballad on the bench with his fingernails.
The barber laughed loudly. ‘That would be called the opposition press, and would either be censored or banned altogether. So, my putar, we’d be back where we started.’
The announcer was reading out the names of the people who had requested the ballad just finished.
‘I wonder where they’ve run to,’ Zafri said and asked, ‘Who’s taking care of the post office today?’
The barber was following the new song with his eyes shut; the male singer whistled between lines. ‘Mujeeb Ali has posted two of his goondas outside the door.’
‘I really didn’t think anyone had cause to worry. What could a letter possibly contain? News about Auntie Nasima’s bunions, little Nani’s milk-tooth.’
The barber agreed with a nod of the head, while at the other end his feet kept time to the furious beat of the song. ‘Nothing has happened so far,’ he scoffed, ‘and they have been in people’s possession for ten hours at least.’
A faint layer of crackle developed in the reception. The chirpy song was beginning to disappear behind interference. The barber got up and altered the position of the set a few times until the reception improved, then he reiterated his intentions concerning his son’s future.
Fifteen or so minutes later, when both of them had become absorbed in the broadcast, a car drew up outside. It was a cool blue in colour. On the front door, along the length of its chromium strip, the sun was reflected in two glaring shrapnel points which merged, and then vanished, as the door was opened. The tired-looking man at the wheel got out. The passenger seat was empty but someone was stretched out in the back of the car, dozing. The driver looked about him for a few minutes. His ruffled hair and clothes told of a long journey. A broad triangle of damp pointed along the line of his spine and there were creases behind the knees on the trousers. He walked up to the barber shop and tapped with a fingernail three and a half times on the glass.
‘We’re looking for Yusuf Rao’s house,’ the man said on being invited inside. ‘He’s a lawyer.’
Zafri sat up with an irritated look: the barber was turning down the volume. The newspaper Zafri had been lying on – now corrugated from being pressed into the slats of the bench – drew the stranger’s attention. ‘I see you buy the newspaper I work for,’ he said. There was a pile of newspapers under the bench waiting for Zafri to carry them to his shop.
‘Are you a journalist?’ the barber asked, a little awed.
The stranger shook his head. ‘No. I’m just a photographer.’ He gave his name and pointed through the window at the car and said, ‘He’s a journalist.’ The man in the back seat was getting out of the car. His face, too, showed signs of fatigue.
‘We have come to cover the story of the lost letters,’ the photographer said. ‘I believe they’re being delivered on Wednesday.’
Zafri and the barber looked at each other.
The journalist came into the shop. ‘Saif Aziz,’ he introduced himself – with the city-dweller’s characteristic directness – and shook hands with Zafri and the barber. He moved to the centre of the room directly below the ceiling fan, and opened his shirt. From there, his eyes closed, he asked for some water.
The barber had been reaching under the shelf. He pulled out a large thermos flask. The inside, lined with emerald-like glass, contained lozenges of ice and also the barber’s lunch: two mangoes. The fruit was streaked with dried juice which retained the imprint, back to front and upside down, of the newspaper it had been wrapped in.
Saif Aziz drank the iced water deeply. He appeared to revive.
‘Are you friends of his?’ Zafri inquired politely. ‘Yusuf Rao’s?’
Saif Aziz nodded. ‘Since law school,’ he said. ‘I failed my exams and had to do this’ – he wrote with an invisible pen on the palm of his left hand – ‘for a living.’
Both Zafri and the barber nodded. The barber was about to speak when the photographer seemed to notice the radio in the background. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, ‘you were listening to Talkeen Shah.’ He walked over to the radio set and turned up the volume.
‘Poor Rukaya is dead,’ Saif Aziz said. Rukaya was Talkeen Shah’s secret love, the woman he longed for.
The barber looked up. ‘No, no. She has gone to live in England. She is not dead.’
Saif Aziz’s face was beginning to lose its red glow. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘The actress who was the voice of Rukaya has died,’ he explained. ‘So the scriptwriters were forced to send her abroad.’
Both Zafri and the barber wore baffled expressions. ‘Dead?’ Zafri said in a low voice. ‘But she writes regularly. Talkeen Shah waits for her letters. He fights with the postman whenever a letter is overdue.’
Saif Aziz and the photographer seemed amused by this confusion. The photographer shrugged.
Then the barber stood up. ‘There is something you should know about those lost letters.’
But Saif Aziz waved him down. ‘I know about the judge’s murder,’ he said. ‘Ours was the only newspaper that ran the story.’ And he added in mock disappointment: ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see it?’
‘We did see it,’ Zafri said. ‘But there’s something else you should know.’
And the barber cleared his throat noisily before beginning.
Azhar’s favourite dish was a kind of soup made by boiling for eight to ten hours sheep’s hooves and shinbones. The cuticle of the hooves and the hairs on the skin were first singed over naked flame and scraped off. Then the hide was scored and the cuts were spiced. As the soup simmered, gelatin from the tendons was slowly released through the pores. The dish was served with opaque globules of gelatin and small pieces of bones like knotted branches floating on the surface, and was eaten with tandoori bread. Halfway through the meal Azhar would test how successful the soup was by pressing the tips of his fingers together. If the fingers stuck he would proclaim the dish a triumph: the soup had simmered long enough to allow the right amount of gelatin and marrow to ooze out of the bones.
Azhar had developed a taste for the dish during his student days in Lahore. ‘I agree with Imran Khan,’ he had often said, ‘the best food in the world is sold on the footpaths of Lahore.’ And the best in Lahore, according to Azhar, were the stalls in the hira mundi – that crimson lily floating in the dark waters of the Punjabi nights. No one doubted him: it could easily be believed that
pimps and nykas, men and women whose business it was to gratify every desire, would only allow the best cooks to populate their streets.
Elizabeth gathered up her hair clear of her shoulders, leaving her earlobes visible, and secured it with two twists of a rubber-band. She unwrapped the five trotters tied with coarse twine and lifted them to her nose to check for freshness. The smell was that of a recent wound. Satisfied, she cut the twine and placed the bony stumps widely spaced on the grill. She lit the fire underneath. The hairs curled and were gone instantly. The stench of burnt hair saturated the small kitchen. Elizabeth held her breath and prodded the stumpy bones with the knife.
Standing outside on the portico, about to knock, Mujeeb Ali too was overwhelmed by the smell of burning protein, dense and cloying. He frowned and knocked. Elizabeth turned off the fire, put the knife on the table with the other hand, and cast around for her slippers.
When she opened the door, Mujeeb Ali pushed her aside and stepped into the house. He crossed the courtyard with an even stride; only on reaching the veranda out of the echoing sun, did he turn around.
‘Where’s Azhar?’
The reply, too, was not immediate. Elizabeth pulled the door shut but did not fasten the bolt. ‘He’s out of town,’ she said, glancing up at Mujeeb Ali as she came in out of the disabling heat.
‘But the car is parked outside.’
Elizabeth cleared her throat softly. She explained that Azhar had taken Gul-kalam to Arrubakook in the police van.
Mujeeb Ali nodded. He stood a couple of paces to Elizabeth’s left – set beside her slender form he seemed a colossus. He examined her openly from head to foot and said, ‘Are you the maid?’
There was no reply. Instead Elizabeth briefly held Mujeeb Ali’s gaze. Then she averted her eyes.
