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

colonialism and compliment them on their rationality in the same whisky breath. To him, religion and rationality did not go together. And so, as religion began to permeate the public sphere in Pakistan, Noor’s hostility towards the country increased exponentially and whisky became his nightly ritual, his closing argument.

‘I have asked Sikander to bring Sarwat over, to give you company . . . while my friends are here,’ Noor offered apologetically.

Indignant, Farhat turned around and snapped at him tearfully, ‘Should I thank you for arranging to have my sister over? Or should I thank you for being busy with your friends?’

Entertaining his friends was nothing new for Noor, but Farhat wished he would spend more time with her, especially during these last days of her pregnancy. According to her, the more care and attention she needed, the more insensitive he became.

‘Sikander will be here all day, in case you need to call Dr Minwalla,’ he said.

‘For God’s sake, just leave the room,’ Farhat snapped.

Her tough pregnancy had given her the licence to mock him, to rebuke him and to kick him out of the room. Never before had she spoken to Noor in that tone.

‘I promise that I’ll keep the party under control this time.’

Noor was acutely aware that things would not stay under control once his friends arrived and the bottle of Johnnie Walker was opened, but he blamed his drinking on the stress of his ‘rotten profession’ and the agony of living in what he called an ‘obscurantist country’. The partition of India and the consequent creation of Pakistan in 1947 had driven him out of his birthplace in India and turned him into a forced refugee and a reluctant exile. He had repeatedly declared to his wife that ‘this mullah-land’ was withering his soul, to which his wife would always reply, ‘Those who don’t have a soul can’t complain about its withering.’

He remembered the last time his friends had come over to his house. Their discussions began with the sublimity and the scepticism in Mirza Ghalib’s poetry and soon degenerated into jokes about the erotica in Wahi Wahanvi’s writings. All his friends got so drunk that they passed out after dinner and spent the whole night at the Kashana. Farhat was so cross with him the next day that she gave him the silent treatment for three full days. To remain angry for more than three days was forbidden by Allah; it would make her a partner in sin, and of course, she did not want that. Three days of living with a taciturn wife would have typically been a welcome relief for Noor, but he couldn’t take that chance now, not when he was so worried. Farhat’s eleven failed pregnancies had left him hollow inside. This time around, Noor was particularly concerned. He had this haunting feeling that something was going to go wrong again. For a man who prided himself on his rationalism, these creeping absurdities were puzzling.

‘Inshallah, soon we’ll have a child, a healthy child,’ he said, emphasizing the word ‘inshallah’ for her benefit.

Darting out of the bedroom, he wistfully stole one last glance at Farhat. This pregnancy had drained her spirit the most. Seeing her like this, he began regretting the invitation to his friends so close to her delivery date. But then the venison had to be eaten and the whisky had to be drunk. From the hallway, Noor called his servant, Budhoo, and instructed him to bring his friends to the mardana, the men’s quarters, as soon as they arrived.

‘And listen, Budhoo . . . bring me my cup of tea,’ he ordered.

He ambled to his study to look for the wooden plaques that he had recently got custom-made for his friends as an inside joke. He remembered that he had put them in one of the drawers in his mahogany desk. He opened the drawer and found the four plaques with the inscription ‘The Unholy Quartet’ inside. This should make them chuckle, he thought, smiling. Thinking about irreverent titles had become a pastime for him. As he lifted the plaques out, he noticed at the bottom of the drawer a copy of the short-lived literary magazine that he used to edit back in India, Taraqqi Pasand Aadmi, The Progressive Man.

Life had not turned out for Noor as he had thought it would. In an ideal world, he would have been a scholar of either comparative literature or philosophy, who could move seamlessly from Ghalib to Milton and from Spinoza to Ibn Rushd. He kept Ghalib’s book of poetry on his bedside table, imagining that someday he would write a bold reinterpretation of the master’s poetry for an open-minded audience. But while he could fascinate his uninitiated friends with the originality and freshness of Ghalib, to write about poetry had become challenging. The only things he could write about with any fluency now were his legal briefs. The trauma of the forced migration from India during Partition and the manic urgency to succeed financially in a country he still considered foreign had deeply affected his psyche.

He picked up the plaques and went to the elegantly furnished mardana, which was almost dark except for that single rarefied beam of sunlight piercing through a slight opening in the middle of the curtains, highlighting the dust motes swirling in the air. The table, set with four whisky glasses, a silver ice bucket and the big bottle of Johnnie Walker, waited anxiously for Noor’s friends, or so it seemed. On one end of the table lay a copy of the latest issue of Time magazine. The cover page had the picture of a burly Joseph McCarthy, his bright eyes searching for secret communists.

Noor picked up the magazine, slumped into a chair and began reading about the red-baiting senator from Wisconsin. American democracy, with all its imperfections, fascinated the recusant lawyer that he was. He thought about the nascent democracy in neighbouring India, and wondered why it eluded Pakistan. His reading was interrupted by Budhoo bringing