SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  The conversation became too faint to make out. After pausing long enough to make it seem he hadn’t been near the door, Sikander turned to continue along the mezzanine gangway to his own office.

  He took his seat and stroked his beard, contemplating what, if anything, all this might mean. Munir was a solid hand in the business and not one to be challenged on an empty basis. If it turned out to be an innocent matter, he might even quit, out of simple indignation at an accusation. This was, after all, Pakistan. Barely provoked indignation was in plentiful supply. Trustworthy employees were not.

  Sikander came up with a plan. He wouldn’t confront Munir on this matter until he had something concrete. He would also keep it from his father, who might get anxious at the possibility of losing Munir and maybe do something unpredictable.

  Over the next several weeks, Sikander systematically examined different kinds of transactions that in some way or other involved Munir. He began with purchases, checking the product quantities against purchase orders. Moving on to sources of supply and verifying the legitimacy of sources, he could find nothing untoward. Making sure not to arouse Munir’s suspicions, he started watching the man more carefully. Other than the occasional use of the spare office for phone calls, he couldn’t put a finger on anything in particular. By late November, having found nothing, Sikander reluctantly decided on one last step. He placed a call to Arif, who happened to be in Peshawar.

  “Arif bhai, Assalaamu ‘alaykum, it’s Sikander from Hayatabad. How are you, old friend?”

  “Wa ‘alaykum assalaam! Alhamdulillah, I’m fine and it’s nice to hear from you. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “Arif bhai, I have a favor to ask. I don’t know how to reach Junaid, but if it’s at all possible, I need to get some information that could help me solve a problem. Can you get him to contact me?”

  “Of course!” replied Arif. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, nothing serious. I just need to check something out.”

  The main business done with, they exchanged a few more pleasantries before concluding the call.

  A day later, Junaid called. “Assalaamu ‘alaykum, Sikander. How are you, mujahid? It’s been a while since we last spoke!”

  “Wa ‘alaykum assalaam, Junaid bhai. It certainly has, my friend, and I do apologize that it has to be a request for a favor after all that time—”

  “Oh, come now, Sikander, what can I do for you?”

  Sikander elaborated for Junaid, hoping his friend might use his access to do some checking on Munir Anwar and his background.

  “Hm. Should be straightforward enough, inshaAllah.”

  “JazaakAllah, Junaid! You know we should get together sometime.”

  Two days later, Junaid called, and after the customary greetings, he began with a question.

  “Sikander, what do you pay Munir?”

  “About twenty thousand a month. Why?”

  “Well, your man Munir is either stealing from you, getting another income from someone else, or is independently wealthy. Or, of course, all three!” Junaid joked. “He’s routinely banking between fifty and a hundred and twenty thousand rupees a month and paying out of that account in similarly large sums.”

  “He’s what?” Sikander was stunned. “Anything else?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” replied Junaid, smugly. “Munir appears to be a director of several companies and all of them are your suppliers. My guess is that he’s directing your purchases through his own front companies to supply Wahid Electric. You’re probably paying just a little too much for each product and he’s likely pocketing the difference at virtually no risk, since he isn’t buying anything that your company isn’t already committed to buying. Your volumes give you big enough discounts not to notice his skimming and his slightly inflated prices still leave you competitive. If you go direct to his sources—which used to be Wahid’s, I imagine—he won’t be able to skim anything.”

  “Junaid bhai, can you name his companies?”

  Junaid supplied the names as Sikander noted them down. It would now be a matter of going through the purchase transactions to confirm that those names appeared as suppliers to Wahid Electric.

  At the office the following day, Sikander initiated his detective work. Sure enough, Munir’s companies showed up among Wahid Electric’s vendors. Over a couple more days, he went through actual purchase transactions and saw the products being purchased. Scouring the historical information, he found other genuine suppliers not on Junaid’s list and saw in many cases the same products at lower prices than those paid to Munir’s front companies. The case was made.

  Sikander decided to take the proof to his father the following day. A sense of pride came over him as he imagined Javed being impressed at his unearthing Munir’s fraud, while further adding to the trust Javed would place upon him in future.

  It was December 3. That evening, Sikander and Rabia had been invited to Hamid’s home. Hamid was married to Afreen, the daughter of an electronics retail business owner, and the four of them were friends. Hamid was also now a flight lieutenant and by all accounts it seemed he would soon become a squadron leader. Throughout the evening, though polite and engaging, Sikander was not his usual self. The matter of Munir gnawed at him and he wondered how he would broach the subject with his father. Still brooding, Sikander drove home with Rabia.

  “Something wrong?” asked Rabia.

  “Hmm? Oh…no, not really. Why?”

  “You seemed distracted this evening, even now,” Rabia remarked. Sikander sighed, confessed himself to be preoccupied with a work issue, and apologized for spoiling Rabia’s evening. The couple returned home well after midnight and too late to discuss anything with Javed.

  After a fitful night, Sikander overslept, leaving his father to head off to work without him. It also blew Sikander’s chance to introduce the topic of Munir at breakfast. Rushing to get ready and quickly downing a hurriedly prepared breakfast, Sikander arrived at the office twenty minutes behind his father. He parked the car in the front lot and in nervous anticipation of the task ahead, strode through the glass entrance doors.

  He was arrested by the scene confronting him. People were milling around the office reception area. Puzzled, he stepped up to them and as he made his way through them, his heart began racing. Too many of the onlookers were mumbling for him to discern anything coherent. His anxiety received another jolt as he heard the unmistakable wail of a siren growing louder as it approached the premises. Frenzied, Sikander quickened his pace, pushing people aside to allow him to pass.

  He stopped abruptly.

  Lying on the floor was Javed, pale and motionless. His collar button had been opened and his necktie loosened. A glass of water was on the floor next to his head. Rehan was kneeling by his side. All Sikander could do was to join him and hold up his father’s head. Even as Javed failed to stir, Sikander clung to the hope of an outcome rapidly retreating from his rational mind.

  “Javed sahib greeted me coming out of his office. He was about to go into the warehouse when he…he stopped suddenly. Staggered against the wall! He just…just slid down the wall all the way to the floor! I held him in my arms until his eyes—” Rehan was unable to continue.

  As soon as they arrived the medics broke through the gathered onlookers. Sikander’s hopes rose, but as they asked him to move aside to let them work on Javed, their faces grimly echoed the absence of life in Javed’s eyes. They tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and pumping his chest to restart his heart, but to no avail. After listening closely to his chest, the lead medic stood up and heaved a sigh. With a hand on Sikander’s shoulder he said, “It’s over. I’m sorry.”

  Javed had left his body.

  “No. NO. Abbaaaa!” cried Sikander. He dropped back to the floor and held his father’s lifeless torso in his strong but useless arms. “Abbaaahaa,” came the soft, anguished cry again as he gazed upon Javed. The moment paved the way for a rushing torrent of thoughts; thoughts of all the times t
hat were, and those that might have been. Sikander recalled the pain he had caused by leaving home and the guilt that Javed would have taken upon himself, as if the intervening healing had never taken place. He pictured Javed’s hopes for the future; hopes that Javed’s soul had now casually abandoned. He pictured the way this day might have finished and how it would finish now. But most of all, he stumbled into a fascinating and terrible insight. The doors to his father’s experiences and memories that had thus far been wide open for all of Sikander’s life had now closed, in a single moment and without warning. Javed’s memories, his experiences, all of them were gone; vanished into oblivion and beyond the reach of all existence.

  While his father was placed on a gurney, Sikander sat on the polished foyer floor with his head between his knees, his paralyzed mind barely able to register what was happening. The medics waited for him. Finally standing up, his eyes streaming tears, he watched what used to be his father being prepared for removal. A thinking person that same morning with a past, a present, and aspirations for a future, had become an object, unable to process the slightest grain of thought, much less comprehend its own condition. “He” had become “it.” His father’s dead body.

  The medics covered the body and removed it into the ambulance before driving off to the Khyber Teaching Hospital on the GT Road.

  It took Sikander another minute before he could reconnect with the scene. He tried in vain to imagine something, anything that might be employed to rewind the last hour. Surely just an hour might be possible? From outside himself he could see himself reaching out to that ambulance and it being pulled back toward him in time. He could see it happening. Why couldn’t it be so?

  Reluctantly, Sikander’s quivering lips uttered the Quranic ayah appropriate to the occasion: “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raaji’un.” Except perhaps in dreams and sometimes nightmares in the coming days, there would be no rewinding. Everyone was sent home. A notice was placed on the doors indicating the business’s temporary closure and providing Rehan’s home number for emergencies.

  “Javed had a short but a good life, Sofie. Allah’s will is surely supreme. Patience, my poor dear. Have patience,” counseled Rubina.

  Sofie was in a disheveled condition. She sat listening to her friend but unable to respond, stared blankly into space. It was in sharp contrast to the bemoaning lament of earlier that day when Sikander had returned home with the tragic news.

  “Javed was surely lucky not to have been a long-term invalid or otherwise a burden on the family,” continued Rubina. “May Allah grant him jannah and you all the patience to continue without him.”

  As both their universities were on break for the holidays, Sameena and Jamil were at home. They were young to lose a parent and had a hard time handling it, alternating between uncontrollable sobbing and periods of somber interaction with the numerous extended family members and neighborhood mourners who had gathered at the family home. Many of the visitors brought food, as was the custom upon a death, so that the immediate family was spared the task of food preparation.

  The family members had earlier been to the hospital to view Javed’s body, which was wrapped up with the exception of his serene face. For all the world he looked as if he might wake up at any moment. To Rabia, Javed had been in every respect the ideal of a father-in-law, everything she might have wished for, and she too was distraught. But she was also a source of strength and comfort to Sikander and the rest of his family at this dark time. Her short life had already shown her enough death to stiffen her resistance to it, though never draining it of feeling and meaning.

  Following the custom of Islamic burials, the funeral was speedily arranged. The family had long held burial land at the Charkhana Cemetery in Peshawar’s Gulberg district. A day and a half after his passing, Javed’s body was laid to rest next to his parents, Shahnawaz and Nazeera.

  Sikander was now the head of the family. He had to come to terms with all that this implied. In front of him lay the completion of Jamil and Sameena’s educations and organizing both their marriages, naturally with Sofie’s involvement, but financially at least and in some other important social respects, Sikander had succeeded Javed. Rabia’s station in the family was thereby elevated, though she was far too thoughtful to make a point of it. Javed’s death also provided an opportunity for Rabia and Sikander to see her family again, as several days after the funeral, a delegation of Abdul Latif, Razya, Noor, Abdul Rahman, Ejaz, and Hinna, accompanied by Adam and Azhar, their two sons, came to pay their respects.

  As the mourning drew to a close, and coincidentally the new year began, life had to get back into a semblance of normality. The day came for Sikander to return to work. He had been thinking about this day ever since his father died, recalling how it was supposed to have revolved around confronting Munir about his deceits but ended up in the terrible way that it had. It was now time to finish what he had set out to do then, but this time no one needed convincing. He was the maalik of the company and could decide whatever he wanted.

  Sikander walked into the building a little later than his father would have done. He wanted to be certain the employees would be there when he arrived. Instinctively he had a different demeanor as he hesitatingly reached for the doorknob to his father’s office. Javed’s full name was still painted on the door’s glass with the word “Chairman” written underneath. Opening the door, he looked across to the far end of the office. Slowly he approached his father’s chair, caressed it, and sat in it with reverence. The faint but unmistakable fragrance of Javed’s aftershave filled the air in its immediate vicinity. Sikander sighed. His eyes moistened as they had done many times in the last week. He sighed once more, but this time with steely determination. He would show Javed’s spirit all that he, Sikander, could accomplish with his father’s legacy.

  He asked his assistant to summon Munir.

  Munir exhibited an appropriate level of remorse for Javed’s death as he had dutifully done all along in its aftermath. He remarked on how Sikander reminded him of Javed. Sikander had no interest in such sentiments now. It was different when Munir was at the house offering condolences, but this was business and Munir was a problem.

  For his part, Munir felt lucky that the man he had been defrauding for several years was gone and in his place was an inexperienced twenty-something. It would be plain sailing now. His debts would finally be taken care of and he could even look forward to pocketing some money on the side.

  “Munir bhai,” began Sikander, using the Urdu for brother as a customary mark of respect for one who was older. “I’ve been going over our purchases over several months and it seems for no obvious reason, we’ve been switching suppliers from older, more traditional sources.”

  Munir wasn’t sure what to make of such a comment. “Suppliers?”

  “Suppliers,” Sikander reiterated, nodding. “I’ve noted that we used to use Pak Industrial Motors and then about—eight?—months ago…” Sikander studied the ledger intently as he flipped through its pages, “yes, eight months ago, we appear to have selected Punjab Electrical Imports for everything below ten horsepower? Why did we do that, Munir…bhai?”

  “We…uh, we…we were given better terms, I think, Khan sahib.”

  “Really?” replied Sikander. “Well, that’s interesting. Because when I contacted Pak Industrial, they described to me their prices for this power range and even now they appear to be lower than what we began paying eight months ago to Punjab Electrical Imports. The difference isn’t very much but consistently it’s there. Same product, same brand; everything’s the same—except the price.”

  “Oh? I, uh… Really? I’ll have to check that out,” responded Munir. His dark complexion assumed the color of a beetroot as he awkwardly adjusted his posture.

  “Yes, well, Munir bhai, I must say I wonder who would be running a company like that with consistently uncompetitive pricing. I’d like to know what they were thinking to be charging us a premium when virtually every month since we’ve been do
ing business with them we’ve been growing our volume. Don’t you wonder too?”

  Munir nodded affirmatively without saying a word.

  “Why don’t you look into it, Munir bhai? And come back to me with a full report. Today.” Sikander’s eyes drilled into Munir.

  “I… I’ll see to it right away!” Munir got up to leave with a deferential nod, feeling in that moment that he might himself be literally following in Javed’s footsteps sooner than he’d ever imagined.

  “Thank you, Munir bhai.”

  Sikander was pleased with his first step. He was sure that Munir would resign by the end of the week. An hour after leaving Sikander’s office Munir left a sealed envelope at the reception desk, addressed to his new boss. He walked out of the building, never to return.

  Sikander thought about his situation. He would have to project the leadership qualities his new job required. It made him reflect upon the old days, when he was learning so much from his mentor, Abdul Latif, and his boys crossing the mountains or fighting the Russians. Somewhere in those experiences were surely lessons he might draw upon—lessons he would need as the young leader of a two-hundred-person organization spanning seven cities across Pakistan. Sikander never opened Munir’s letter.

  To the great delight of Sofie, in November 1993, Sikander and Rabia became the proud parents of a healthy baby boy, Ayub. It was almost a full year after Javed’s passing, and whether it was real or simply the emotion following Javed’s death, Sofie insisted that there was something of Javed in Ayub’s eyes and lips. Sikander and Rabia couldn’t see the resemblance, but if it brought solace, where was the harm in that?