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

up. Between wails and laughter, she burbled out a litany of nonsense. The only word they could make out was Mansoor. Out of frustration, Jumman pulled Kaneez up and struck her on her cheek. The powerful blow staggered her and she tripped backward. But Jumman did not stop there. Bending down, he whacked her a few more times until she became senseless. Panting and recovering from the exertion of beating her, Jumman got up and stumbled towards his cot. He ordered Mehrun to bring a brown bag from the green steel trunk that lay next to Kaneez’s mattress. She quietly followed his command, still holding her torn kameez together, and handed the bag to him. Jumman took out a large bottle of medicine from the paper bag, something that Dr Minwalla had given him in exchange for pulling out a dead tree from her backyard. His back had hurt from digging and pulling out the tree, and so she had given him this medicine. Not only had he felt better, but he had also felt happier after drinking some of it. ‘This is better than money,’ she had said. ‘It is a miracle drug—ikseer-e-zindagi, the elixir of life.’

Jumman got up and went towards Kaneez. Squatting beside her, he pressed open her mouth and poured in the some of the medicine. She made a guttural sound but did not move. Jumman waited, as if expecting her to suddenly pop back into consciousness, but she didn’t.

This entire racket had attracted a group of curious neighbours outside their door, including Naseebun, a frequent visitor to the house. She announced to the crowd that Kaneez was under the influence of an evil djinn.

‘Jumman, you’ll have to call Malang Miran Shah to cast the djinn out. If you want, I can bring him tomorrow,’ she offered.

‘We’ll see about that tomorrow. Now go home,’ Jumman replied and closed the door.

Throughout that night, as Mehrun kept a close watch on her mother, she heard the whirring sound of helicopters, and each time, the sound was followed by Kaneez’s blood-curdling screams. It was the worst night of her life, far worse than when she had been thrashed by Zaidi.

*

The next morning, Kaneez woke up still delirious and incoherent. Jumman noticed that her body had begun to twitch, and that every now and again, she would have a fit of convulsions. He asked Mehrun to stay with her mother and make her sniff an old shoe after every convulsion, a traditional practice of dealing with epilepsy, popular in many parts of India and Pakistan. Jumman, in the meantime, went to fetch Dr Minwalla. The buses were still not running due to the general strike, so he took a cycle rickshaw. The rickshaw-wallah was a tattler. He talked non-stop and then asked Jumman if he had heard all those helicopters the night before.

‘No!’ Jumman said, still preoccupied with Kaneez’s condition.

‘It’s the government snooping on us. Why are they wasting all these helicopters on us? Don’t they know we are poor people who don’t even have time to earn another rupee? Could you believe they would use helicopters on us?’

Jumman did not reply, and when they reached Dr Minwalla’s clinic, he asked the rickshaw-wallah to wait for him. Although he had been to the doctor’s house before, this was the first time he was entering her clinic. More like a dingy, back-alley teahouse, the clinic had a putrefying smell of raw sewage mixed with Dettol. In the small, dark waiting room, Jumman saw a horde of burqa-clad women, sickly children and a few old men with stubbles waiting to be treated. He bounded right past them and went straight into the doctor’s office, where Dr Minwalla was busy with a patient.

‘Doctor Sahiba, your servant Kaneez . . . I don’t know . . . something bad has happened to her. Please, Doctor Sahiba, come with me or she will die,’ he said, clasping his hand together as if begging.

‘Get out! NOW!’ Dr Minwalla yelled at him. ‘Don’t you see I am busy with a patient? How dare you invade my office like this?’

‘Please, Doctor, I beg you, she is going to die,’ Jumman persisted.

‘She was the one who ran away yesterday when I strictly told her not to go. What do you want from me now?’

‘Begum Sahiba, you are her mai-baap, her mother and father. You are her mistress; give her some medicine. Make her better.’

‘Okay, okay. Stop babbling and don’t make a scene. Go to my compounder and give him this.’

She handed him a hastily scribbled prescription. There were no questions asked about Kaneez’s symptoms, no diagnostic queries made, no prognostic answers given, just a one-size-fits-all prescription ready to be handed to her compounder. Jumman took the order and went to the next room where he handed it to the compounder. Glowering at him over the rim of his glasses, the man behind the counter passed on the prescription to his assistant, who gave him a bottle containing a pink foamy mixture.

‘Give this mixture to her every four hours,’ the compounder said to Joseph. In the same breath, he added, ‘And it will be three rupees and eight annas.’

‘But she works here, Babu,’ Joseph said, clutching his hands.

‘So do I,’ the compounder replied. ‘This is not a free dispensary for all the wretched of the world. If you want free medicine, go to the beggars’ hospital.’

Jumman shook his head in disbelief as he rummaged for money in his pocket. He took out some loose coins, counted three rupees and eight annas, paid the man and then raced back to the rickshaw. Kaneez’s ear-splitting screams were still fresh in his mind.

*

It was true that Jumman had never married Kaneez and that he occasionally beat her up, but he also cared about her. Why else would he plead her case with Farhat Begum? Getting married was a luxury for them; neither had the money nor the inclination. And so, they went on living together, letting people draw their own damn conclusions. Jumman