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

‘Why? Are angels scared of dogs?’

‘No, it’s because dogs are unclean animals. The Prophet, peace be upon him, liked cats. Maybe you should get a cat.’

‘No, I don’t like cats; they make me sick. My friend Najeeb has one at his house, and whenever I go there, I start to cough.’

His mind digressed, and he started to think about djinns again. What if that lizard was a djinn? A twinge of fear leavened in his heart as he imagined hearing the rustling of approaching djinns. His face whitened and his forehead crinkled. Farhat, noticing his changed features, asked, ‘Are you okay, Mansoor?’

‘I am scared.’

‘What are you scared of?’

‘Djinns!’

‘Beta, why are you still thinking about djinns? That vile Mehrun! Just recite the kalimah.’

‘There is no God but God, and Mohammad is His prophet,’ Mansoor recited the Qur’anic verse in Arabic, squeezed his eyes shut and buried his head in his mother’s bosom. Farhat began to stroke the back of his hair. Mansoor felt better, but soon he started thinking about Mehrun again until sleep conquered him. Farhat called Sikander to put Mansoor in his bedroom. Noor came home quite late, but he was not drunk that night, much to Farhat’s relief.

Six

That night, rain pounded the salt-rich earth of Karachi with all its anger. The sky rumbled endlessly and lightning zigzagged across it with a ferocity never seen before in this city of immigrants. All night long, it felt as if someone was pelting stones at the windows, while explosions rocked the rooftops. Rising water that had nowhere to go flooded the streets, the shops and the houses. The low-lying areas were the worst-hit, but even the elevated expanses of the metropolis couldn’t escape its wrath. Less than ten inches of rain in a year was the norm for Karachi, but that night, fifteen inches fell in one go. Upheaval always accompanied the city even with modest rainfall, but fifteen inches choked up its sanitation system, and the primitive drains running all across the city vomited raw sewage non-stop. Every year the government set aside funds to build sewers, and every year, without fail, corruption sucked up the honest taxpayers’ money. There was no one to question; there was no one to answer.

Mansoor slept restlessly. He twisted and turned; he moaned and cried and dreamt strange dreams, all of which had something to do with djinns—both Muslim djinns and kafir djinns, their hands clasped together, doing the Jahanammi nautch, the danse macabre, with Joseph and Mehrun flitting in and out of these nightmarish visions. All throughout, Mehrun’s Urdu doggerel echoed in Mansoor’s nocturnal brain:

Aadhi roti, aadha kebab

Girgit ko marna bara sawab

Hearing him moan, Farhat came to Mansoor’s room and cradled his head in her arms. He woke up, a bit startled to see his mother.

‘Is Abba back home?’

‘Yes, he is. Recite the kalimah, beta, and try to sleep,’ she kissed him on his forehead and left.’

But for the longest time after his mother left his room, Mansoor couldn’t go back to sleep, and when he eventually did, the nightmares returned.

In his dream, he found himself in a room full of strangers. He saw his mother crying, and Sarwat comforting her. Strangers whispered in a bizarre language. He saw his father staggering along in a drunken stupor and ask no one in particular, ‘Why is everyone after me?’ Suddenly, he saw himself punching his father on the back and weeping uncontrollably.

And still dreaming, Mansoor felt an uncontrollable pressure on his bladder. He ran towards the bathroom, but there was none in the vicinity. Unable to control his urge, he began to urinate where he was, in the middle of an open field.

Wide awake now, he could hear his heart pounding and feel his pants clinging to his thighs. He had wet his bed. Feeling ashamed, he tried to focus. Where was he? Why was he sleeping in his pants and not in his pyjamas? The last thing he remembered was being in his mother’s room, talking about Mehrun and Joseph. Who had brought him back to his room? But he was glad he was in his space, relieved it had happened in his bed. He touched the bed. It was only slightly wet, but his pants were all soaked. It was still dark outside, and the rain continued pounding on the roof and the windows. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Mansoor got up, slipped out of his pants and shirt, and put on his sleeping suit. Rolling up his wet clothes into a bundle, he tiptoed towards his bathroom, dumped the urine-drenched clothes into the wooden hamper and quietly came back to his bed. He hoped that Kaneez wouldn’t notice the smell and tell Mehrun when she washed the clothes.

*

That same night after dinner, under the dim light of the lantern, Mehrun opened her schoolbooks and started to memorize her English lesson, mumbling softly.

‘Is this the time to study?’ Kaneez asked with a frown.

‘Amma, I have to study. I have a test tomorrow,’ she lied.

‘A girl’s hands are made by God to make rotis, not to hold a book.’

Mehrun answered her with a ready-made Urdu doggerel:

Parho gey likho gey bano gey nawab

Khelo gey koodo gey bano gey kharab

(Reading and writing will make me a nawab

Playing and jumping will make me spoilt)

‘Stop your poetry and go to sleep; we don’t have kerosene to waste on a girl’s education.’

Reluctantly, Mehrun closed her books and went towards her corner of the room, where a cold and tattered bamboo mattress awaited her. The charpoy in the room was her father’s sole property. Her mother and she slept on thin bamboo mats. Mehrun felt so tired that she went to sleep right away, but the non-stop thundering and lightning woke her up in the middle of the night. She saw the flickering of a candle through the slightly opened drapes that hung from the clothesline. Without lifting her head, she looked at her mother’s mat. It was empty. Then she