“Do you have any worries?”
Musa put the shovel down and straightened his back. He searched for a cold cutting response.
“Fu…Fu…Fu…Fuck off!” he panted, dismayed by his lack of originality.
“Guys…Guys…don’t act like kids now. Sajid, you take over from Musa for a little while. I’ll start clearing up and getting ready to knock the wall down,” said Babarr.
“Which wall?” asked Sajid.
“The one down there,” said Babarr vaguely gesturing to the sky.
“Are you gonna get the bulldozer?”
“No. Bulldozers are for babies,” replied Babarr contemptuously. “I’ll use what Allah gave me.” He raised a fist.
“Are you the next Mr Universe?” said a cold voice.
Everybody turned around and saw the daughter looking disapprovingly at them.
“Oh…Armila. How’ya doing sweetheart?” Babarr put his arms down and smiled sheepishly at her.
“I’ll be doing a damn sight better once you start working and stop making such a racket,” said Armila, unmoved by his Neanderthal charm.
“I know, baby…I know…and I’m really sorry but to build you gotta make noise,” said Babarr apologetically.
“Yeah, but the noise is not coming from you lot doing any building it’s coming from your gobs,” replied Armila angrily.
“I’m sorry sweetheart. We’ll be out of your way soon,” said Babarr.
She shook her head with disgust: “Have you been smoking pot in the living room?” she asked, her eyes boring into Babarr’s like a laser.
“No love. We don’t do that sort of thing. It’s all tobacco, love, just like the stuff you buy in the shops.” Babarr smiled his winning smile in an attempt to charm.
“What brings you down here, love?” he asked, unperturbed by the vibes.
“I came to see what was blocking the sunlight from the window and realised it was your big ass,” snarled Armila and stormed off.
Babarr chuckled as if he had received an enormous compliment. He turned to the others and said, “Feisty little thing, ain’t she?”
“She’s got more balls than her dad, that’s for sure,” said Sajid.
Babarr shook his head, still smiling. “Musa, why don’t you go inside and take her on. Show her some of your education. You need a break.”
The mixer turned and churned implacably and its call was now heeded by Sajid who picked up the shovel and began to feed it cement and gravel, grinning like a goon all the time.
As Musa approached the house a breeze blew and combed his beard, which hung limply from his face like a grass necklace. He noticed the crimson horizon retreating with an army of clouds. The day had changed. Damp with sweat he made his way through the kitchen. The house seemed different now that it had lost its novelty. Outside the living room, remembering the heady, heavenly aromas, he placed his hand on the golden doorknob and then quickly withdrew it – the doorknob was warm which meant that Armila was either in there or had been in there moments before. He could not enter.
The door to the room which he had noticed when he first arrived was now wide open. It was the room with the photograph of Santosh Pandey proudly holding his degree. Curious, he walked in. There were no furnishings save for two heavy cushions that lay on opposite sides. The light came from a row of panelled glass tiles that spread along the top of the room. Gingerly he touched the wall, feeling the indentations of a faint, faded design on the wallpaper. On one wall hung a life-size photograph of a woman embracing a golden-haired child.
Musa examined it closely. The woman’s chin rested on the child’s head. Musa knew without knowing how he knew that the embrace was one of comfort. In the photograph he saw a line of light across the woman’s head that seemed to spread to illuminate her face and give radiance to her smile. And it was a truly beautiful smile, sad and strangely joyful at the same time. Yet it was the wisdom in the faraway eyes that mesmerised him, an awareness of hope that lay on the other side of sorrow. He had seen eyes like that before and frowned, trying to remember where.
He heard someone coming down the stairs and turned as Armila entered the room. Quickly and awkwardly he stepped away from the photograph.
“What are you doing here, Musa?” she asked quietly.
“I just saw the open door and wandered in,” he replied nervously.
Armila nodded and looked at him intently.
“Sit down,” she said and beckoned to one of the cushions.
Musa did so, noticing that she was barefoot. He found this strangely disturbing as if he was privy to a sight he should not have been exposed to. Armila sat down on the cushion on the other side of the room.
“You don’t seem the type that would hang around Babarr and his crew.”
“Well, I don’t really hang around with them. I just listen to what he says and do what he tells me to,” replied Musa.
“Why?”
“Because…because I have to learn what it is to work and be responsible and stuff,” said Musa, frowning at the sense of repetition.
Armila laughed. “You sound as if you just came from another planet.”
Musa struggled with the underlying truth. “Well, I came from a school. A madrasah. And I was there and learning stuff and I kept getting into all these rows and fights. Then all of a sudden I ended up here.” He sighed glumly.
“Were you there to be more holy?” asked Armila gently.
“No…just more religious,” said Musa, deeply troubled by the distinction.
Armila nodded again and Musa could feel the empathy of her understanding.
“So are you learning yet?”
“I’m learning—” Musa stopped and thought hard. “I’m learning that there are lots of different ways to say someone is stupid. You can say it as if it’s a joke and you can say it as if it’s serious. But each time you say it you feel a little bit special. I’m also learning you have to be stronger than I am to mix cement.”
“You learn quickly,” smiled Armila.
Musa thought very briefly about returning the smile, but decided not to.
“Um, who’s the woman in the photograph?” he asked more uncomfortably than he would have liked.
“Oh her. That’s Ammachi.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s her name. She’s a saint,” said Armila proudly.
“What’s she done?” asked Musa with interest.
Armila frowned as if displeased by the irrelevance of the question.
“She’s been known to cure lepers and people with cancer. One time she even made a bowl of water have enough rice to feed the entire village. But none of these things really matter,” she said impatiently.
“What does matter?”
“What matters is that she works twenty-two hours a day to provide homes for the poor and shelters for battered women. Every year she tries to build a thousand homes to give free of charge to poor families. That’s why she’s a saint.”
Musa nodded his abashed agreement.
“Next year I’m going to India to queue up and meet her,” said Armila.
“How long are the queues?” asked Musa.
“Miles long. She says she sees God in the face of everyone she meets. That’s why I’m going to meet her. I want her to see God in my face and then when she hugs me I want to feel what God feels like,” said Armila.
“But you know what your gods look like don’t you? They’ve got four legs and four arms and they fire lots of arrows at the other gods,” said Musa earnestly.
Armila’s expression changed to one of contempt. “For a second you sounded like Babarr there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
To avoid her gaze Musa got up and stood close to the photograph of Ammachi.
“There is definitely something about her. It’s almost like, when you look at her, she’s trying to tell you something. Like she’s trying to say…” Musa stopped as he heard Babarr grunting outside. “…trying to say…” He stoppe
d again as he heard something heavy and metallic.
“What? What’s she trying to say?” said Armila with considerable annoyance.
“Fuck,” said Musa as the combination of bricks, glass and Ammachi’s photograph exploded from the wall, hitting him right between the eyes. He fell to the floor, dimly hearing Armila screaming,” You goddamn fool! It’s not this wall you’re supposed to knock down!”
Then he felt a soft tender hand on his forehead. He breathed in deeply, savouring the perfume of care, and then passed out knowing full well that on this first ever day of work he had more than earned his daily bread.
5
As Musa lay out for the count in the back of Babarr’s speeding van, occasionally prodded by the fascinated Sajid, the course of his life was being pondered on nearly four thousand miles away.
In the dead of night, amongst people long gone, Dadaji the patriarch sat gazing at his wife’s tombstone. The earth around Afiya’s grave teemed with life: lizards busy with survival scurried about, their green coats prickling in readiness for conflict, fire-flies puffed light – microscopic shooting stars – the screech of rodents and insects alike combined with a sense of the presence of the dead and made the air hum with a hauntingly familiar note. To Dadaji their performance recalled the chorus of Quranic recitation which as a child he was made to do. Then, as now, duty was the weight that pressed so heavily against his heart. Then, as now, duty was the blood which cried through his mind and calcified the bone in his infirm back but now there were also differences. The family which he had built, nourished and sustained was altered. The unity between his sons which he had once forged was now as fickle as the wind. He was at a loss to understand how this had happened. Perhaps it was the division of wealth among his sons? Perhaps it was the wily whispers of their wives? Many were the possibilities but the ending he could foresee was one he would never want to witness: a world which no longer bore his mark. Fractious sons jarred and jolted by their greed and seduced by envy would disunite and erase the very purpose of his existence.
Yet he knew that flotsam flowed with the tide which, as it ebbed, began its journey to the sea from whence it came. He had seen the children of worthless men give worth to their fathers. He had seen the bounty written for the infant spread like a ripple and envelop the impoverished parent. So unity that would diverge amongst his sons could converge through his son’s sons: unity through a union and with that unity a burden that was meant for stalwarts, all accomplished through the vow of marriage.
Dadaji smiled at the symmetry of his reasoning. Then, as with all things of joy, it slowly faded with the onslaught of reality. His sons he could command and in their devotion he was secure but the grandchildren were beholden to no one. Those of suitable age were Itrat’s and they could not be herded with the arguments of old and the ways of their forefathers.
He took his rosary from his pocket. Ninety-nine beads for the Ninety-Nine Names of Allah. Names he had recited without fail for most of his life. His sons, when younger, had asked him why he kept on doing so so long past the duty of prayer and he had told them it was for the same reason he rubbed wood until it became fire. When Afiya had died Dadaji had recited the names as a parrot would try to mimic the song of a lark and this had helped to stave off the black depression which threatened to swamp him. And that was when he stopped conversing and his thoughts became silent chants of the Ninety-Nine Names. As the years went by his instincts led him to the truth.
Closing his eyes Dadaji recited a name as he flicked a bead. The beads clicked rapidly and a vibrato of knowledge filled his mind with a rush of dark experience. He stopped, opened his eyes and started again but this time he focused on a face. The beads clicked and intuition was heightened by the truth and he saw chaos and passion, longing and innocence, devotion and rage, intellect and ignorance, all enmeshed in the heart of Musa. The clicking stopped.
Again, his eyes closed, he clicked the beads and this time he felt the crystal in Shabnam and the stilted fire in Suleiman. He smiled sadly and returned the rosary to his pocket, seeing the conflict between fantasy and reality. He felt the whisper of evil in the promise of the unknown. Behind his eyes he saw Iram and Musa, aspirants enchained by the same innocence.
Dadaji arose, his bearing proud and erect. His fierce bright eyes lingered on the words engraved on Afiya’s tombstone,” Unto Him shall ye all return” and he realised his journey to England would be his last – he would never return from there to this place.
Lahore at night is unlike any other city in the world. Nowhere else is so completely claimed by the ebb of the working and the flow of the indolent. When darkness descends it is the bazaar that awakens from the sloth of commerce to become the den of friends and the rendezvous of the discreet and hopeful. One such is Anarkali bazaar and on this night it is indeed vibrant with occasion and poised to house the moment that will forever hold a glitter for posterity. It is perhaps for this reason that the customary melodies of the bazaar resonate the way its young long for love. The air is thick with the scent of burning wood and aromas of barbecued meat. Motorcycles roar and swerve through the crowd with reckless swagger, the riders laugh, their heads flung back, and their laughter permeates the ambience to become that thrilled flutter a child experiences when taken at night to a city with bright lights. Couples meet and talk and flash questions each time their eyes meet. Vendors, soiled by the day’s labour, talk and chortle aloud, their brown faces glowing with perspiration and shining with the nightly zest that is known both to the careworn and carefree. An old man naked but for the long flowing cloth around his belly sits on his string bed, all the time crowned by a swarm of flies, and with doleful eyes watches the procession passing by.
Outside a neon-lit restaurant, Iram sits with her three cousins Farzana, Fozia and Farrah who are wearing identical silk chiffon outfits and neat hijabs: not a single strand of hair can be seen. Iram was once amused that the sisters always dressed the same but now she viewed their custom as perfectly sensible and a sign of good taste. Fozia and Farrah are speaking about someone they know and are engrossed in each other’s opinion. Iram does not join in the conversation not because she is not curious but because Farzana, the eldest sister, does not participate. Farzana watches the bazaar without seeming to look at anything in particular even though her gaze is deep with appraisal.
Iram is much taken by Farzana, and those who know the younger girl well have noticed a slight haughtiness in her manner when the two are together but this is of little concern to her. The problem for Iram is that she lives in a village and her cousins live in the city: because she lives in the village it is considered that she might pick up village ways and that is why the cousins are rarely allowed to visit her. But Iram is stuck there and knowing this she concentrates hard on keeping herself on the same level as the three sisters. Through careful observation of her cousins she has come to know her own worth.
Tonight is a rare night for her. She has been allowed out of the village compound because Khalil the eldest, rarely-seen son of Uncle Arshad had been made a lieutenant in the army. In his honour Uncle Arshad had decided to throw a party and had booked a restaurant for the evening. Iram was glad of the welcome diversion from the family’s attention. It had been three weeks since that conversation about Musa and there had been no let up. This was something to stoke the banter of the villagers. Looks and giggles pierced her like darts and each time she went to her mother to complain, her mother would smile indulgently and do nothing. Farzana and the girls had said nothing but instead now watched her the way her father watched her brothers when they were about to take their matriculation exams.
A Pajero pulled up, a door opened and out stepped Uncle Arshad, vanity deepening the pause in his movements. He always overdressed. No matter how hard he tried he always looked like a poor man who had gone over the top when buying clothes with his newly found money. Tonight was no exception and he looked silly in his cream, double-breasted suit and white shoes with black heels. He seemed agita
ted and the girls, sensing this, immediately stopped talking and looked down, all apart from Farzana who coolly looked on while her father started to berate the waiters for the lack of food on the tables.
More guests arrived and the noise rose to such an extent that it became difficult to hear what anyone was saying. When Khalil turned up he was instantly the tallest and most popular man in the restaurant. He wore a dark suit cut in such a way that it added to his natural air of refinement and that was something Uncle Arshad craved. In the dim glow of the restaurant Iram saw that he had clean square-cut features that were neither dark nor fair. He moved and laughed with ease and Iram felt the blood tie between them quicken. At their table Khalil bent down and his sisters passed proud hands across his back. Even Farzana smiled and spoke lightly to him about something which Iram could not hear. Khalil looked directly at her then and before she could summon the correct gaze, he unnerved her with the polite welcome in his eyes. Then he laughed in sudden delight as his friends crowded round and whisked him away.
Iram saw that though his smile seemed to come and go casually, his natural gaiety did not shift. She kept her eyes on him as he moved to the buffet but then her sense of propriety, powerful since infancy, made her turn her heard sharply. The cousins were all busy talking and smiling pleasantries to women who passed by, unaware of her indiscretion.
She often had trouble with that sudden feeling that was in no way appropriate or proper. Such feelings seemed so crude and village-like and she hated herself for not being able to smother them. The cousins appeared to be completely natural in their poise and in the way they could talk and sound clever. She thought of Musa then and closed her eyes trying to stir a sense of premonition, anything upon which she could base an instinct, something with which she could prepare herself. But nothing came, only the emptiness of a foregone conclusion. She opened her eyes and found Khalil standing at the foot of their table, perplexed with concern yet once more smiling at her. She frowned and turned away, displeased by the sudden realisation of her attraction to him.
The Reluctant Mullah Page 8
