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

glass covering of the lantern and opened the kerosene container. He then took the lizard from Mehrun, doused it with kerosene and ignited the match. With a big poof, a flame leapt up and engulfed the poor lizard. Within seconds, the blazing glow had charred the hapless creature. The lizard was cremated alive, and Mansoor, paralysed by horror and fear, witnessed the raw power of fire. The child, rumoured to be a djinn, a being created of smokeless fire, now trembled at the sight of it. Seeing Mansoor frozen with fear, Mehrun approached him.

‘Why, Mansoor Babu, you look as if you saw a djinn!’ Laughing at her own joke, she continued mockingly, ‘But why should you be afraid of yourself? You are a djinn yourself!’

‘I am not a djinn! I am not a djinn . . . don’t say that!’

Mansoor scurried back towards his house, whimpering, tears running down his cheeks. His divine duty done, Joseph danced with Mehrun, holding the partly burned branch with one hand and Mehrun’s waist with the other. They both sang the bloody doggerel repeatedly. The odour of kerosene and the stench of the burnt lizard dangling from the branch subdued the combined fragrances of all the flowers in bloom at the Kashana.

*

Mehrun excitedly recounted the whole story to her mother that night after they returned to their ramshackle one-room home that had no electricity, no running water and no bathroom. Every wall displayed patches where the paint had peeled off, while the corners of the ceiling displayed a vine-like network of cracks. In one corner, on a charpoy, Jumman rested comfortably in his undershirt and lungi, his eyes closed, his left hand on the back of his head and his right hand listlessly twirling the curlicues of his oiled moustache. Two cotton sheets, draped over a clothesline strung across opposite walls, created a rough-and-ready second room. A couple of reedy bamboo mats lay on the other side of the clothesline. The flickering wick of the kerosene lantern made Mehrun and Kaneez’s shadows dance as they squatted in front of the mud stove in one corner of their tiny home. Mehrun made chapatis while Kaneez stirred the potato curry. The deadly smoke from the burning coal and the smell of spices from the curry hung in the air in the stuffy room, making Mehrun cough as she embellished the events of the day.

‘Amma, you should have seen Mansoor Babu’s face,’ she said.

‘You should not play with him. I have told you hundreds of times not to. He has the shadow of a djinn on him,’ Kaneez reprimanded her, stirring the curry.

‘Shadow of a djinn? But you told me he was a djinn.’

Mehrun was disappointed that her mother’s memory, which had remained consistent up until then, had suddenly become faulty. But it didn’t really matter. She wanted to hear the original account again from someone who had actually been there at the scene.

‘Amma. Please, will you tell me what you saw when he was born?’

‘How many times do you want to hear it?’

‘One more time! Please, Amma! What did you see?’

In Kaneez’s mind, the retelling of what she had seen at Mansoor’s birth to as many people as possible was vital to make her hallucination seem believable. So, despite her apparent resistance, she was actually more than willing to recap the story for her daughter. As far as she was concerned, it was an irrefutable fact to which she, Kaneez, was an eyewitness.

‘Long before his birth, I had seen him in my dreams, and I kept hearing a voice that told me a djinn lived inside Farhat Begum’s kokh, her womb, and that one day he would come out of there. I also went to Malang Baba, who said the same thing. That day, when Mansoor Babu came out of Farhat Begum’s kokh, Dr Minwalla handed him to me to clean him. I held him in my arms, and I swear by God, he was hotter than this stove! He was there one minute and then he disappeared the next!’ As Kaneez paused to lick the ladle for a taste of the curry, she was hit by Jumman’s slipper.

‘Oye, churail! Stop your babbling! You will have me kicked out of the Kashana. Don’t talk bad about the Babu Sahib this way. He is not a djinn. He is a good boy and I like him!’ Jumman hollered from his cot.

But Mehrun persisted. ‘What happened to her other babies, Amma?’

‘She had eleven before him. All died in her kokh. He ate all of them.’

‘Who?’

‘Your friend, the djinn you play with. He is the one who ate them alive in her disgusting kokh. That’s why you shouldn’t play with him. He will eat you up, too.’

Suddenly, with savage ferocity, Jumman picked up his other slipper and struck Kaneez hard. She howled in pain.

‘Shut up, kutiya! One more word from your gutter mouth and I will strangle you!’

Jumman’s violent reaction had a silencing effect on both mother and daughter. After making the chapatis, Mehrun spread a food-stained white tablecloth on the floor and put the food on it. Jumman joined them, and they all ate dinner quietly. Outside, it became dark as thick patches of threatening clouds covered the full moon.

*

At dinner time that night, Noor was, once again, absent. Farhat and Mansoor quietly munched on their food. Sarwat, a frequent and unbidden guest at the Kashana, was also there. She mostly escaped to her sister’s house to be away from her miserable husband and wayward children.

It was Budhoo’s day off, so Sikander was doubling up as a driver and an attendant-in-waiting. Farhat had dispatched him to buy chicken tikka and some greasy parathas from the famous Bundoo Khan’s restaurant on Bunder Road. A sudden gust of strong wind slammed the gate outside, as if to protest Noor’s absence. Farhat gazed at his empty chair and checked the time on her wristwatch, yearning for his presence at the dinner table. Why couldn’t she have a regular relationship with her