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

kids playing cricket in the park nearby, or the cacophony of snarled traffic and the competing calls of hustling pedlars. But that day, the heat muzzled the urban symphony; it swept away all memory of the floods of July and drove everyone away, except for a lone subzi-wallah, a vegetable hawker, who pushed his rickety cart to establish his monopoly in the neighbourhood.

Inside the Kashana, the ceiling fans recirculated hot air at full speed while the heavy silk curtains, drawn in every room, struggled to keep the house cool and dark. The mouth-watering aroma of tandoori meat, wafting out from the kitchen, was the only reminder that not everything had gone to hell. In the background, the radio blasted a hit song from a recently released Indian movie.

When the song ended, three loud beeps signalled the start of the midday news broadcast: ‘This is Radio Pakistan: The news, read by Mukhbir Alam. We have just received information from our weather bureau that the temperature today has already reached a 110 degrees Fahrenheit and is expected to go up to 120 degrees later in the day. There is no relief in sight. The government has promised that it will leave no stone unturned to provide assistance to the heat-ravaged needy. In other news, the prime minister will be making an important speech today about . . .’

Barrister Noor had just finished a long, relaxing shower, but he felt like returning to the bathroom again when he heard about the temperature on the radio. He had come out into his bedroom wearing a white bathrobe, monogrammed distinctively with his initials, NUH, embroidered in navy blue, his greying chest hair visible above the robe’s lapels. The room was too dark, so he turned on the bedroom light, only to be rebuked by his wife.

‘Oh ho! Why did you turn on the light?’ Farhat asked, still lying in bed in her nightclothes, her massive belly, her puffy face and the dark circles under her eyes all attesting to the full term of her difficult pregnancy. Letting out a loud sigh of irritation, she slowly turned over, carefully holding her lower abdomen as she did so.

Noor switched the light off and asked sheepishly, ‘How are you feeling?’

There was no reply, so he asked her a different question, ‘Do you want your lunch in bed?’

She snubbed him again, the silence in the bedroom shattered by the piercing call of the subzi-wallah outside: ‘Very, very cheap! So many treats: potatoes, spinach, cauliflower, beets!’

‘Don’t you want to eat anything?’ Noor persisted.

‘I’ll eat when I am hungry. I don’t need your constant nagging.’

‘I am just concerned about you, my jaanum, my life. You should be eating for two.’

‘Leave me alone and go to your dear friends.’

‘They are not here yet. Can I get you anything before I go?’

Farhat did not feel like answering such stupid questions, especially when she was so miserable. They seemed more like apologies-in-advance for the day-long neglect her husband planned to inflict on her. The mocking of the wall clock became louder as she watched Noor put on his silk kurta-pyjama.

He stooped a little to see his face in the mirrored dresser and began applying Brylcreem to his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. Then, methodically and with purpose, he combed his hair. Picking up the white bottle of Old Spice cologne, he slapped a few drops on his clean-shaven face and looked at himself in the mirror again. As he leaned towards the mirror, he noticed the bluish bump on the left side of his head—a mortifying reminder of the fall he had had at the Sindh Club two nights ago. It still hurt a little when he touched it. The memory, although a bit blurry, shamed him. He had drunk way too much that night, but then it was hard to resist a single malt Scotch whisky, especially when it was Balvenie and paid for by a client. Rumour had it that the founder of Pakistan used to drink the same expensive Scotch daily. The thought brought a proud smile to his face; he was in good company.

When he had tripped and fallen at the Sindh Club that night, it was his ever-so-loyal driver, Sikander, who had brought him home and helped him to bed. Farhat did not even want to be anywhere near him. A drunken Noor always became untouchable to her. She had left him all alone in their bedroom and moved to the zenana, the women’s quarters, for the night. Ashamed and penitent, Noor had promised her the next day that he would never come home drunk again, but most promises are made to be broken, and deep down in his heart, he knew that.

That Sunday in October, Noor had invited his friends for some tandoori venison and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. The same industrialist client who had treated him to Balvenie at the Sindh Club had sent him another gift: a haunch of venison. Wild game meat, Johnnie Walker, and cerebral gupshup, or bullshit, with his intellectual friends were what Noor lived for. It gave him some respite from the tedium of droning on and on about corporate tax laws with his wealthy clients; it also provided him with an opportunity to lash out against the religious direction that Pakistan had started to take of late.

To Farhat, however, alcohol, deer meat and irreligious conversations were all satanic pleasures, and Noor’s friends were, in her words, ‘the Shaitan or the devil’s comrades-in-arms’; she hated them with the same vengeance with which she hated his whisky breath. It repelled her whenever Noor tried to kiss or hug her after coming home drunk. Even a hint of that dreadful abomination would force her to rinse her mouth and perform the ritual ablution to purify herself again since alcohol was strictly forbidden in Islam. To Noor, however, these satanic pleasures were the best gifts that the British had given to their former subjects, not to mention their empiricism. He could fulminate against British