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

Talat’s hand that had slapped her backbone, inflicting a sharp pain on her shoulder blade. It was as if someone had stabbed her with a hot knife. When Mehrun turned around and saw Talat’s livid face, it ripped her heart out. Talat pulled her away from the grips of her husband and continued with her beatings. She slapped her, hectically and hysterically. Covering her face with the back of her arms, Mehrun tried to counter the blows. Sadiq, who was shell-shocked at first, regained his composure when he heard his wife shouting: ‘Get out of my house! You churail! You ungrateful whore! Never show your filthy face here; otherwise, I am going to break every bone in your body!’

Sadiq tried to intervene, meekly, but Talat pushed him aside. Mehrun took advantage of the momentary pause in Talat’s attack and ran towards the front door, her eyes streaming with tears, her ears ringing with the slaps. She wanted to vanish from the house. Grabbing her satchel, she ran out in full speed, still hearing a salvo of imprecations behind her, only now they were directed towards Talat’s husband.

Vilification had hunted her down once again. The cycle of beatings had returned. What was she going to do now? Without a job, where would she get the money for her exam fees? What was she going to tell her father? Haunted by these questions, she raced towards the bus stop. From a distance, she saw the same British Leyland bus that had brought her to her present misery now come back a full circle to fetch her again, as if playing a crude joke on her life. She did not climb into the bus. She was in no mood to let that contemptible means of transportation wreck her life again. The bus left her, belching noxious carbon monoxide fumes in her face. She held her breath, not wanting to inhale any more poison. The questions returned to torment her again. Sadiq Mirza had disrupted her life. He had pushed her back into darkness, making her feel forlorn, frightened and fatigued. Was she so worthless that everyone had to hit her? Was it her kismet to always be humiliated? The wait for the next bus became painful. When it finally came, it was one hour late. She waved at the driver to stop the bus. As it came to a halt, she climbed up and sank behind the driver’s seat, near the window.

After she had settled, she was once again rattled, this time by her own weary reflection in the window. She tried to look outside, but she couldn’t escape it. It became an image and then a picture, and then it transmogrified into her churail-like mother. Her mottled face, her hurtful cries were all too real. The word ‘churail’ echoed from the window, from the seat Mehrun was sitting on, from the metal bar she was holding, the very word Talat had uttered, the name conferred on her mother. The heir to the churail was now crowned—Mehrunnissa née churail née harami née whore—her list of humiliating nicknames growing long and weary. When the bus stopped near her alley, she stepped out with a heavy heart, her legs like soft vermicelli, and dawdled towards that gutter that her father called home.

*

That day, when she had panicked about not having the money to pay for her exam fee, it had been a moment of helplessness. But poverty often teaches the value of frugality; Mehrun had been religiously saving money from her job at the Mirzas. So, when the time came, she paid the exam fee on her own, and then for three whole months buried herself in her books, neglecting her shattered self and blocking out whispers of the scandal at the professor’s house. On the day of the exam, she entered the hall poised and prepared. That year, all the examinations took place without any ugly incidents and disruptions. For the first time in many years, the students did not walk out of the examination halls to protest against difficult questions; they did not demonstrate when denied the opportunity to cheat, and they did not threaten the invigilators for being too vigilant. It was as if the students had finally become serious about education. The results were announced two months later, and Mehrun got the first division that she had hoped for. But getting admission into President’s College was not on the cards any more. She even sent Mansoor, secretly, to Sadiq Mirza to remind him about the promise that he had made to her, but the professor made lame excuses. And without any sifarish, any recommendations or intercessions, getting admission to the prestigious college was unthinkable. She did not have a civil servant for a father or a rich uncle. She reminded herself that she was the daughter of a lowly gardener who was slowly surrendering to the madness of perception. Mehrun released her anger by burning the newspaper that had printed the exam result. She did not even try to get admitted into any of the other prestigious colleges in the city, but instead, got herself registered at the Government College for Women, merging her destiny with a ‘yellow’ institution once more. To feed herself and her father, she found a part-time job as a clerk at the newly formed High Finance Bank Limited, all on her own, without any pull or influence, and she was proud of that.

The chairman of the bank was the legendary Ameer Abbas Alvi, also known as Triple-A, a self-made man who overcame poverty, rose to the top and, in the process, amassed a considerable fortune in a short time. Despite his own new wealth, he despised the nouveau riche and the old moneyed class equally. But that is not to say he did not suck up to them when he needed to. In the age of puffery and pretence, he saw no contradiction in loathing and slavering in the same breath. He was a man possessed