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

As the lecture continued, Mansoor noticed his father’s lips. They were thick and moved slowly as he spoke; their movement, he saw, but the sound, he didn’t hear. Then suddenly, there was a bark, and Mansoor looked at his father. Had he done that?

‘Look behind you, Mansoor,’ his father said.

He turned around, and there was Chaos, his dog. And then he heard his mother’s voice, ‘Get that unclean animal out of the house! He should NOT enter my room!’

Mansoor quickly picked up the terrier.

‘You should wash your hands seven times with soap and do your ablutions after you throw that creature out,’ she continued her fulminations.

Mansoor took the terrier out of the house and put him back in his doghouse in the garden. He then retired to his room. Moonlight pierced through the curtains, making the room brighter and lovelier. Pulling the curtains to one side, Mansoor lay down on his bed and watched the magical moon. He found himself thinking about Joseph and Mehrun. She had lost her mother, and Joseph had lost his dream. Mansoor must have just fallen asleep when he realized that someone was trying to wake him up.

‘Mansoor, it is time for morning prayers. Get up.’ It was his mother.

He turned to look at the clock on his bedside table. It was 4.35 a.m., and the muezzin was calling for morning prayer.

‘Prayer is better than sleep.’

‘Prayer is better than sleep.’

Mansoor did not want to pray, but he also did not want to upset his mother. So he got up, went to the bathroom and closed the door softly behind him. After he wiped his face dry, he came back to his room and pulled out the prayer rug, a gift from his grandfather, from the almirah. He sat on the mat and looked at it vacuously, unable to genuflect, unable to prostrate, powerless to pray, every word of the Qur’an seemingly erased from his memory. He forgot all the forms, he forgot every ritual, his mind turned blank. Mansoor stared at the gracefully curved minaret pattern on the prayer rug. He stayed like that for some time, then he got up, folded the mat, kept it back in the almirah and returned to his bed to confront his unfilled thoughts. This became a habit, a routine for him every morning. His mother would wake him up just before the morning azan; he would do his ablutions quietly, come back, sit on the rug and stare at the minarets printed on it. Sometimes he would bury his face in his hands and lie prostrate on the prayer rug. He had prayed secretly in the past, but now he just could not bring himself to obey his mother.

*

The political turmoil in the aftermath of the war forced the shutdown of schools and the postponement of exams. For Mehrun, the delay was a welcome relief. It gave her the time to vent, to grieve and to reflect on her mother’s death. It was Dr Minwalla who told her that Kaneez need not have died. Her death was senseless. How was Mehrun supposed to process this bit of information? Aren’t all deaths senseless? What about the family of eleven that had perished in Lasbela when the bomb fell on their house? Did that make sense? What about the worthiness of death when life is horrid? Did her neighbourhood matriarch, Bua Kareeman’s death at the age of eighty-two make sense? Her mother’s life was short and shitty, the unfairness of it didn’t make any sense to Mehrun either. And what about the beating she took from that lecherous monster, the malang? According to Naseebun, Kaneez’s death was Allah’s will and had nothing to do with the malang. If you can’t explain something, should you believe it blindly? Mehrun glanced at her father, lying on his charpoy and gazing at the ceiling.

Suddenly, a car’s horn disrupted her ruminations. She wiped her eyes with her dupatta and went out to see who it was. It was Sadiq Mirza in his white Hillman.

‘My wife sent me to see if you were doing okay,’ he said when he saw her approaching the car. ‘She sent some food for you and your father.’

From the front passenger seat, he picked up a brown bag, the spicy smell of food escaping from it.

‘Thank you, Professor Sahib.’ Mehrun took the bag from him and stood there motionless, the silence between them discomforting. She did not know whether to invite him into her shabby house or ask him to leave. Sensing her unease, Sadiq told her to put the food in the house and come back.

‘My wife wants to see you.’

‘This is too much food; it will go bad if I keep it in my house. Let me leave this food with my neighbour. She has a refrigerator.’

After leaving the food with the neighbour and telling her father that she had to go to work, she got into the back seat of the car.

Sadiq caught her reflection in the rear-view mirror as he reversed the car and drove away towards University Road.

Mehrun remembered the professor’s words, when he had said that he would teach her to see life through books. Was that what was going on whenever she thought about her mother’s death? Was she seeing life through the books she had been reading? She already knew how to read English before she met the professor, but with his help, she had quickly become more proficient. He was a great teacher, one who had the gift to not only make literature come alive but also to unearth its most submerged meanings, the hidden realities. Initially, she borrowed books from the professor, and then she began borrowing books from the 25-Paisa Library that had recently opened near her school. After her mother’s death, she had the entire pigeonholed area in the house to herself. That space became her sanctuary, her private place to read and to reflect. The disruptions the war had caused gave her more time to study and