Of Smokeless Fire A.A. Jafri (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

Mansoor received doses of religious indoctrination not just from Maulvi Nazir, but also from his mother, and sometimes even from his English tutor, S.M. Zaidi, whom Noor had hired to refine his son’s skills in the English language and to teach him literature. He had been highly recommended by Sadiq, who had told Noor about his erudition.

‘Despite his religious bent, he knows his Dickens and flaunts his Shakespeare.’

‘Where does he teach?’ Noor had asked.

‘Well, that is the problem . . . the young man teaches in one of those yellow schools,’ Sadiq had replied.

The term ‘yellow school’ was a pejorative label that the snobbish elite of Karachi used for the government schools that dotted the city map with their crumbling yellow buildings. These schools and their poorly paid teachers were eschewed by everyone except the poor dwellers of this city. After all, you don’t make the ‘right contacts’ with the ‘right people’ at a yellow school.

‘If he is so good, why is he teaching at a yellow school and not at a private school or college?’

‘Well, he used to teach at Karachi Grammar School, but he’d rather teach poor kids than rich kids.’

‘Then why would he agree to teach Mansoor, a rich kid?’

‘Well, I guess you have to make compromises somewhere . . . but to allay your fears, he was highly recommended by the principal, Mrs D’Souza, whom you know well.’

Noor wanted to select a tutor who came highly recommended, who could expose his son to the treasures of literature, and who could teach him to use the English language, the lingua franca of the educated class, not just correctly but also aesthetically. And so, after much deliberation, Noor hired Zaidi, who also became an afternoon fixture at the Kashana.

*

No one handed them any books about the rules of parenting, so Noor and Farhat made up routines for Mansoor. He would wake up at 5.30 a.m., eat his breakfast at 6.15 a.m., leave for school at 7 a.m., ride back home with his father at 1 p.m., have lunch with the family at 1:45 p.m., and have his siesta till 3 p.m. At that time, Noor went back to work and Zaidi came to tutor Mansoor. Maulvi Nazir followed discreetly around 4.30 p.m. and stayed for about an hour, filling the young boy’s head with things he didn’t really understand. By 8 p.m., Mansoor had to be in bed. And then there were all the infuriating don’ts without any dos that controlled all his hours: Don’t play with the servants; you will learn bad words from them. Don’t play in the blazing sun; you will become as dark as Kaneez. Don’t fly a kite or play marbles; these are the games of the lafangas, the scoundrels. Don’t play latoo, the spinning top; you might end up injuring your eyes. Don’t eat kulfi sold by the kulfi-wallah; he buys the milk discarded by patients in hospitals across the city. Don’t go out bareheaded in the afternoon; the Shaitan (Satan) will hit you on the head so hard that you will get a splitting headache. Don’t yawn without covering your mouth; the Shaitan will pee in your mouth. Don’t say salaam alaikum in the bathroom; evil djinns live there. If they reply, you die.

But these routines grew tiresome and Mansoor began stealing time from his siesta hour to get some respite. Of course, it wasn’t any inner rebel coercing him to break the smothering rules, it was Mehrun, the daughter of Kaneez, the churail. She enticed him to do the don’ts. Mehrun was the temptress, the siren, whom Mansoor could see from his bedroom window, cartwheeling and cavorting in the backyard near the guava tree, displaying her simian skills.

*

With Jumman’s persistent pleading and a solemn promise from Kaneez to never spread any more rumours about the family again, Farhat allowed her to get back into the folds of the Kashana some five years after Mansoor’s birth. There was a shortage of domestic help, and Farhat needed someone to do her laundry. Kaneez’s transgressions at Mansoor’s birth were neither forgiven nor forgotten; they were simply cast away in favour of expediency. And so, Kaneez started coming to the Kashana three times a week, while Jumman came every day to tend to the garden and for other errands. Mehrun turned up every day after attending school. Sometimes, she helped her mother with a job that needed to be finished or invented work for herself. Occasionally, she also helped her father. Mostly though, she felt free to spend her afternoons at her favourite hideout—the guava tree in the back garden. The idea of playing under the guava tree in the afternoon, with the mischievous Mehrun, had a seductive influence on Mansoor.

One day, while his parents were napping, Mansoor sneaked out of the house and ran towards Mehrun, who was playing in the back garden. She seemed to be having an expansive conversation with her crude dolls, all of them made from strips of rags. Two shoeboxes haphazardly painted and glued together to look like a two-storey house, complete with cut-out windows and doors, stood under the guava tree.

‘What are you doing?’ Mansoor asked Mehrun.

‘Playing.’

‘What are you playing?’

‘With my dolls.’

‘But what are you playing?’

‘Why should I tell you?’

When Mansoor persisted, she said, ‘This is my house. I have invited some guests to my house, and my servants will make tasty chicken tikkas and kebabs, and I can do anything I want to in my house. Do you understand?’

Mansoor laughed and then said, ‘Your servants are ugly, aren’t they?’

‘Your bottom is ugly. If you call my servants ugly again, I’ll slap you so hard, it will make you pee.’

A few years older than Mansoor, Mehrun had inherited none of her mother’s deformities, but she definitely had her sharp tongue. And although she was a beauty by no standards, the girl had striking features. She played games in which she was always the begum, the lady