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

‘Let’s talk about it later. I just finished my master’s degree. I need time to think.’

They didn’t talk about it at all, and Noor, after staying for only ten days, left for Karachi. In his presence, Mansoor had felt stifled, but the day he left, he missed him sorely. Old age had finally defeated his father. His tall frame now slightly bent, his salt-and-pepper hair completely grey, his eyelids darkening and the sagging skin under his chin, all publicized the onset of his autumnal years.

*

It was Haider who had told Mansoor about Zakir’s new mission: reminding people to become better Muslims. Like a true evangelist, he would wake up seven people every morning for the predawn Fajr prayers and would give fragmented sermons to them. But his mission expanded from waking up people for the predawn prayers to warning them about the menace of ‘Faithian Socialism’ and creeping secularism. As he extended his base from the mosques to the corporate offices of Karachi and Lahore, Zakir’s fame spread and countless people became his devotees, including Farhat and Nawab Khan Namaqul’s family. Prestige, power and glory grazed his feet, and he moved people with his rhapsodic speeches. As a diplomat, he had learnt several foreign languages, and his ability to fluently move from Urdu to Arabic to English and French made him a unique preacher—the likes of whom people had never seen before. He enjoyed the limelight and relished the attention; it fanned his ego and sustained his mission. For him, conviction demanded certainty; there could be no doubt in religion. Faith made us human; secularism made us animals. He had been both, so he knew what he was talking about. Zakir spoke to his followers with a forbidding rigidity; the sterner his sermons became, the more following he gained.

To Noor, Zakir had transformed into a dangerous demagogue, a charlatan who was probably on the payroll of a foreign government. The founding member of The Unholy Quartet, who regularly toasted Scotch and pledged to always remain unholy and secular, had now become sanctimonious.

To Farhat, however, Zakir was the quintessential true Muslim who had found the light, who had saved himself from eternal damnation, and maybe, just maybe, he could do the same for her wayward husband. And that was how Zakir’s house became her new hang-out, and Athanni, his right-hand man, gladly drove Farhat there. It was here that Bhabi Farhat received special treatment. Zakir had always referred to her as bhabi, meaning sister-in-law, a term that is commonly used in Pakistan and India as a mark of respect for a friend’s wife.

*

Every afternoon, men and women congregated in Zakir’s magnificent drawing room and offered the midday prayer, the women behind the men, all prostrating synchronously, all supplicating earnestly. After the prayer, the women went to the zenana while the men stayed in the drawing room. From a microphone that connected both the rooms, Zakir ladled out his latest dollops of homilies with the delight of a new convert. And after the pious dramaturgy, he answered questions. One day, he talked about drinking.

‘In the dark times, known as Jahiliyyah, there were many vices. Two that were out of control were gambling and drinking. But our faith gradually outlawed them. I have lived in decadent America, my brothers and sisters, and I have survived corrupt Europe; they are the dens of debauchery. Gambling, prostitution and alcohol are their gods. I know that some of our brothers are involved in those depravities; in fact, some of my best friends still indulge in them.’

When Zakir said ‘best friends’, Farhat knew he was talking about Noor; her head went down in shame and trickles of tears coursed down her cheeks.

‘I am ashamed to say that I, too, once strayed from the path, brothers and sisters. I, too, lost my sense, my peace and my soul. I, too, acquired a taste for that forbidden drink. My head spun with pride and my heart throbbed with greed. I became the gravest sinner of all, the most serious evildoer. But one day, I had an ilham; in English, they call it an epiphany. God picked me up from that street littered with offal and put me on the true path. I gave up that life; I escaped the path of evil and left the company of sinners. And by the grace of God, I am at that stage in my life when I am at peace with myself and with God. My message to all of those who drink is this: avoid it, give it up. Break that bottle of sin, for it is the mother of all evil. Alcohol is the enemy of faith; they cannot be mixed together; they cannot live in the same heart. If you know a brother who drinks, beseech him to give it up. If you see a bottle of alcohol, drain down the poison and shatter the bottle. A house where liquor is kept is a house of shame, a house of sin; it’s a cursed house where Allah’s blessings are absent.’

That day, Farhat came back home with a firm resolve. Taking the alcohol bottles out from her husband’s liquor cabinet, she emptied them into the toilet—Royal Salute, Chivas Regal, Rémy Martin, all flushed down the gutter.

‘It looks like urine, it smells like urine and now it goes down the toilet like urine,’ she muttered to herself in her frenzy, her hands trembling, beads of sweat trickling down her cheeks.

The thought that her husband drank something that looked and stank like urine made her throw up, and with her vomit now mixed with it, she flushed thousands of rupees worth of whisky and brandy with apostolic zeal. It was as though she had drained all the family sins down the toilet.

After emptying the bottles, she ordered Budhoo to smash them to pieces and throw them away. She then went back to the bathroom, where the stench of alcohol and vomit still hung resolutely, and opened