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

embracing all his friends, he accepted a glass of Scotch from Noor, and settling down, asked, ‘What is this talk about theocracy in this great land of our geniuses?’

‘Nietzsche once remarked that genius is the will to be stupid,’ Noor quipped as he handed him the remaining plaque.

Zakir looked at the plaque and laughed. ‘May we remain an unholy quartet forever!’ he said, raising his glass in a toast.

Everyone raised their glasses and said, ‘Cheers!’ Sadiq raised his glass again and said, ‘May God bless your whisky cabinet, Noor!’ The revelry had begun.

The comrades discussed politics, poetry and philosophy; they ate venison and biryani; they laughed and glugged down their liquor. Sophisticated turned into silly, and silly became sordid. The partying went on until late in the evening when it was interrupted by an excited Budhoo.

‘Sahib, Sahib! Farhat Bibi is going to be a mother,’ he informed Noor, panting. ‘She is screaming, Sahib. Sikander has gone to fetch Dr Minwalla.’

Budhoo couldn’t have said that Farhat was going to have a baby; that was not the proper way to discuss childbirth, especially when it pertained to the mistress of the house. Saying that she was going to become a mother somehow made the whole affair more sacred, adding a veneer of respectability to it. After relaying this message to his sozzled master, he left in a hurry. The air in the mardana, already filled with tobacco smoke, now thickened with a surreal silence as Noor gathered his intoxicated thoughts. He saw Haider holding his glass of whisky on his head and starting to do a slow dance. His eyes dopey, his voice heavy, he broke the stillness in the room with a silly cricket rhyme: ‘Twelfth Man . . . on the pitch . . . in he comes to serve; Zero gifts and zero knack; has a lot of . . . nerve!’

In the game of cricket, the twelfth man is a reserve player whose duty is to serve drinks to the other players and to be a substitute fielder for an injured player. Haider, in trying to be funny, had really infuriated the drunken Noor.

‘What . . . do you mean . . . twelfth man?’ Noor demanded. ‘Are you saying . . . my firstborn is a . . . a twelfth man? The server of drinks and . . . lunches? Do you think . . . my wife . . . is giving birth to a . . . bloody servant?’

The veins on Noor’s neck swelled menacingly as he staggered towards Haider, and had it not been for Sadiq and Zakir’s intervention, Noor would have definitely punched him.

‘I was just . . . joking, Noor. You know me. I am a cricket idiot,’ Haider said apologetically as the other two sat Noor down.

‘My child is never going to be a twelfth man!’ Noor shot back.

The air in the room became suffocating as the stony silence grew loud. It was late evening, and the time for serious, thoughtful discussion was long over.

Two

Farhat had been feeling rotten since the night before. Earlier that morning, she was irritable not just because Noor was having his stupid party and had taken to continually nagging her, but also because of the intermittent contractions she was having. By the time her husband’s party was in full swing, the contractions had started coming closer together. When she felt that the time had come, she told her elder sister, Sarwat Khan, to order Sikander to fetch Dr Zarina Minwalla, the only female doctor in the city at that time. Dr Minwalla, a Parsi doctor—a general practitioner to be exact—made house calls and delivered babies at home, but only for the affluent purdahnashin women of Karachi. She was not a trained obstetrician, but, by default, she became the doctor of choice for most of these women. While they waited for Dr Minwalla, Sarwat sat next to Farhat, wiping the sweat glistening on her forehead. The news of Farhat going into labour had spread like a contagion across the neighbourhood.

When Dr Minwalla entered the room a little while later, an entire retinue of anxious servants—Budhoo, Sikander, Changez and the gardener, Jumman, accompanied by his partner-slash-lover, Kaneez—tried to follow her in. The story around the neighbourhood was that Kaneez, the churail, had seduced Jumman, the faithful dowered servant of Farhat, and had given birth to a daughter, Mehrun, out of wedlock.

Sarwat immediately ordered all of them out, but Kaneez stayed put.

‘I said everybody out. Are you deaf?’

‘Kaneez can stay. I have asked her to assist me,’ Dr Minwalla said in a brisk tone.

A part-time servant at Farhat’s house, Kaneez also moonlighted at Dr Minwalla’s clinic as a midwife. She had this enormous gift of cultivating neurosis in the hearts of those around her, and so, at Dr Minwalla’s response, Sarwat’s mouth fell open and her eyebrows wrinkled with horror and anxiety. For Sarwat, Kaneez’s presence in this makeshift birthing room was a bad omen. Annoyed and scared, she stammered, ‘Sh-sh-she shouldn’t be h-h-here, Doctor Sahiba.’

‘Listen to me carefully, Sarwat Begum, she is my assistant; she will help me deliver the baby and you will keep quiet. Do you understand? If you don’t want to see her face, you should leave the room,’ Dr Minwalla minced no words. The threat silenced Sarwat.

With victory scribbled all over her dark, pockmarked face, Kaneez grinned and squinted her only good eye, while Sarwat scornfully catalogued her every churail-like feature. She blamed Kaneez for Farhat’s eleven failed pregnancies, but the midwife, in turn, remained convinced that a djinn residing inside Farhat’s womb was responsible for her misfortunes. Kaneez fully expected another disappointment for her mistress this time as well.

For both the sisters, Kaneez fitted the description of a churail perfectly. A severe bout of smallpox in her childhood had scarred her face, robbing her of one eye, and a congenital condition had given her a club foot. And as ultimate proof, someone somewhere swore that Kaneez had been either near or