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

belonged to the same tribe; they both struggled for the same goal. He found himself thinking about her in a new light. He renewed his offer, and she told him that leaving her father alone would be impossible, but she would think about it. Mehrun left his office feeling cold and forsaken. In the elevator, she saw Athanni standing behind a group of people. She pretended not to see him, but he moved closer to her, and when Mehrun got off on the sixth floor, Athanni followed her out.

‘Mehrun, stop! Mehrun!’ he practically shouted at her.

‘Oh, Khaleel Khan! I did not see you,’ she said as she turned around.

‘Can I talk to you, privately?’

‘Sure, come to my office.’

The words ‘my office’ resounded deeply in Athanni’s mind.

As they walked towards her office together, Mehrun noticed a gash on Athanni’s face, extending from his left sideburn to his cheek. ‘What happened? Did you get into a knife fight?’

‘Wha . . . What? Oh. No, no. I fell and hit my face on something,’ Athanni lied, covering up for the fight he had with his father trying to save his mother a few months ago.

Mehrun did not ask any more questions, and once they entered her office, she closed the door and motioned him to sit. It was difficult for Athanni to be in the office of someone who had once been a servant girl, but he knew that Mehrun could help him advance his career in the bank, and so he swallowed his pride. As he pulled up the chair, he said, shifting between Urdu and English, ‘I have heard that Mister Hashem is going to start the Islamic banking section at our bank. I want to work there. Can you . . . um . . . ask him if he . . . I mean . . . could put me in that department?’

‘I don’t think anything concrete is going to happen soon, but if it does, I’ll tell him.’

‘Thank you, that is all I ask.’

After a few more moments of awkward silence, he got up and left her office.

*

Athanni’s humiliations had piled upon him like the dirty laundry that piled up in the cavernous teak hamper outside his parents’ bathroom. That hamper had been his childhood refuge from his father, an escape from his violent temper. For long stretches of time, he would lie hidden beneath the dirty clothes, unmindful of the stale smell, unflustered by his sisters dumping their undergarments. Lately, however, he began sensing that his life had stranded him on this strange island where all his acquaintances were spreading their wings. He had heard from his mother that Joseph had left for Iran, where he would probably make more money than he earned at the bank. And then there was Mehrun, ensconced in her air-conditioned office, she had become a close confidante of Alvi, her new success contradicting her preordained destiny. Mansoor had aced his exams and would soon be leaving for higher education in a foreign country. And all this while, what was he—a gofer for nameless people in unknown departments, running around doing meaningless errands? To make matters worse, the defeat of his party in the recent elections had robbed him of any chance at higher politics.

As he sat outside on the stairs of the bank, thinking about his brief conversation with Mehrun, Athanni’s scar started to itch, but he resisted scratching it. His arms and face had received knife slashes when he had fought against his father with his bare hands, trying to protect his mother. The horrific memory still stunned him. When he was little, he remembered the shouting episodes and the continuous shoving and pushing. Later, the pummelling became more violent and came barbed with expletives and threats to kill. He was tired of his father, his constant yelling, the relentless beatings and then the attempt to kill his mother. Festering with hate towards his father, Athanni had promised his mother to always protect her. Tears rushed down his scar now, causing a burning sensation in the wound—the image of his mother crying and begging forgiveness still fresh in his memory. He thought about the G.O.D.s; he would leave the party as soon as he got into Islamic banking.

*

The shock of Pakistan’s defeat in the war had been eclipsed by a new sensation, a new hero—Sher Khan, the son of the former cricket captain. By piling up a scintillating century and bundling out the visiting Australian cricket team cheaply with his fast bowling, he made a sensational debut in test cricket. He instilled terror in the hearts of the best batsmen in the world, with his accurate yorkers. His rugged, handsome looks and his Caucasian features made him an instant heart-throb not only in Pakistan, but in every other cricketing country. Wherever he went, his fans mobbed him; whatever he did, his devotees emulated him. Even those who knew nothing about cricket knew who Sher Khan was. He became the Lion Prince.

*

The new legislative assembly wanted all traces of General Dundda obliterated. So they repealed his Constitution and created the third Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Among many new features, it guaranteed ‘the freedom of press’. Haider wrote an interesting editorial about it, asking the lawmakers to be explicit about what these words meant. To most journalists, the freedom of press was an alien concept. Obviously, it did not mean absolute freedom, for there is no country in the world where you have unqualified, unrestricted freedom of expression. Surely, you don’t have the freedom to print anything or say anything; you don’t have the freedom to publish scurrilous lies about others, and you don’t have the right to come and piss on the boundary wall of someone’s house. But of course, the right to free speech in a country that had just started to flirt with democracy was narrowly defined. You still did not have the right to condemn a bad law or criticize the dreadful government or complain