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

the intelligentsia and the industrialists of the city alike. The dimly lit restaurant luxuriated in Mughal décor. The pistachio-green-coloured heavy silk drapes and the miniature Mughal paintings created an ambiance of warm elegance. In a corner, sitting on a slightly raised platform, a beautiful young woman, dressed like a courtesan from King Akbar’s court, played the sitar.

Mansoor found an empty booth in the corner, and when the white-uniformed bearer came, he ordered coffee and jam tarts for both of them.

‘So, what is bothering you?’ he asked Mehrun.

With nervous trepidation and halting speech, she told him every detail: her job as a servant in Sadiq’s house, his tutoring her, his flirtatious glances, his amorous embrace, his brusque kisses and then Talat’s beating. She talked about how her job at the bank had restored her and her father’s sanity. Then she spoke of Talat’s visit an hour ago, the money she had offered, the reference she had made to Mehrun becoming a second wife and her departing threat about killing Mehrun. The stress apparent on her face, her voice quivering, she held nothing back. Mansoor did not quite know how to react. The sadness in Mehrun’s voice jarred him. He could only shake his head slowly in utter disbelief.

‘I could never have imagined Uncle Sadiq doing what he did to you, and then he did not even dare to come to your defence!’

‘I can’t understand, Mansoor Babu . . . why did she have to insult me like this, and that too in my office? She was practically shouting at me.’

She paused for a while and then continued, ‘I tried to take good care of her house at less money than what your mother gave my mother. Sadiq Sahib taught me so much. And she too was good to me in the beginning. Why can’t she understand that it was her husband who initiated all this?’

The bearer wheeled in their coffee and jam tarts on a squeaky tea trolley. A whiff of freshly baked scones brought out for another customer made Mansoor hungry. He poured the coffee from the pot for them and then asked Mehrun if she took sugar and milk in her coffee.

‘One spoonful of sugar and plenty of milk, please,’ she replied.

He added the sugar and milk to her coffee and passed the jam tart to her before adding some milk to his own coffee. While performing his gentlemanly duties, he saw Mehrun fidgeting with her pastry fork.

‘Mansoor Babu, I am going to go crazy if this continues. Tell me, what should I do?’

‘I don’t know! I wish I could tell you.’

‘Talat Begum wants me to leave Karachi.’

‘Well, you don’t have to do that. You belong here.’

‘I don’t know where I belong. My father . . .’

Her words dissolved in the delightful atmosphere of Chandni Lounge as Mansoor’s mind focused on the word ‘belong’.

‘Mansoor Babu,’ Mehrun whispered, bringing him out of his reverie.

‘Do you remember that day when you and Joseph cremated the lizard, and then later you called me a djinn? I was so angry with you,’ Mansoor changed the subject.

‘Well, you are a djinn, and I am a churail. What difference does it make? Maybe we should team up and use our powers to destroy all those who hate us,’ Mehrun said.

Mansoor did not reply. He kept drifting into his own nether world, far from the restaurant, far from the town, far from its people. But suddenly he noticed Mehrun’s searching gaze.

‘What? What are you looking at?’ he asked her.

‘Oh nothing!’ She replied hurriedly. ‘I just realized how much you have grown.’

‘Not much, actually. I feel as if I stopped growing after I was ten.’ And then Mansoor changed the subject again. ‘You know, Mehrun, your mother was strange.’

‘Huh!’ She forced a smile, as if saying ‘tell me about it.’ And after a pause, she said, ‘You know, when I was younger, she used to beat me up quite regularly and would blame me for all her problems. I know you know this, but I was the harami who brought innumerable miseries in her life.’

The word ‘harami’ slit his heart, just as it had some years ago when Zaidi had hurled that opprobrium at her. He still carried that oppressive guilt around.

‘What did your mother say about me? My mother told me that she had spread the rumour about me being a djinn.’ Mansoor didn’t know why he asked that question.

Mehrun sighed deeply, then sipped her coffee and said, ‘My mother was a superstitious woman. She lived superstitiously and she died because of it. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I want to know what she told you about me,’ Mansoor said.

‘Your mother’s eleven miscarriages sowed the seeds of this whole thing. My mother believed that there was a djinn inside your mother’s womb and that the djinn killed every child that was conceived in there. When your mother was pregnant with you, Amma was convinced that you would end up with the same fate as the other eleven, but when you were born alive, she couldn’t believe it. What could be the reason for such an anomaly? The only way for her to sustain her deep-rooted superstition was to believe that the djinn himself had come out. And so, Mansoor Babu, there you were; you were the djinn—’

‘And so the rumour became a reality!’ Mansoor interrupted her.

‘She swore that she saw a djinn the day you were born,’ she paused. And then she said, ‘You know, she never really liked me playing with you. In fact, during her last days, before she went into a coma, my mother regained consciousness briefly, and the first and last words that came out of her mouth were your name and the word “djinn”.’

‘What? Are you serious? Why would she say my name?’

His heart began to race when he heard this. Was he, in some way, responsible for Kaneez’s death? Why would she say his name on her deathbed? When Mehrun saw the change in his face, she tried to joke about