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

mad dash inside and introduced himself to the night clerk as a lieutenant colonel from the army’s intelligence unit, showing him a fake identity card. Athanni had acquired that card through his contacts at the Daily Hulchul to help him with his snooping. He always carried it in his wallet just in case he needed it.

‘Did you see the woman in Room 210 going back to her room?’ he asked in an authoritative tone.

‘Begum Alvi? Yes, I saw her.’

‘Was she with a man?’

‘Yes!’

Athanni then described Mansoor to him, and the clerk confirmed the description. He then asked for the phone number to Mehrun’s room. Hesitating a little, the clerk handed it out to him. Athanni went inside the clerk’s office, sat on the chair, stretched his legs out on the table and dialled the number to Mehrun’s room. When Mansoor picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello,’ Athanni’s hunch was confirmed. Smiling wickedly, he put the phone down and went back to the clerk.

‘Don’t tell anyone about our conversation,’ he warned the man. ‘It is highly confidential. We are investigating these two. If you confide in anyone, we will know about it. And you will not only lose your job, but you will also be sent to jail for the rest of your life. Do you understand? This is a high-security matter.’

‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Don’t worry,’ said the clerk, shaking with fear.

Spotting a hidden corner in the lobby, Athanni went towards it and sat on a wicker chair. Then, he attached a telephoto lens to his camera and waited impatiently for his targets to emerge. When Mansoor and Mehrun came down the stairs together a little later, holding hands and basking in the afterglow of lovemaking, Athanni took shot after shot until there was none left to snap.

His mission was complete—a thumping success. He had every proof that he needed to start the demolition derby.

*

General Behroopia announced the election date, but when the time approached, he cleverly called it off. His excuse—to make the previous regime accountable for its misdeeds and to rid the country’s politics of all the ‘corrupt elements’. A campaign calling for a new direction for the country began with the arrest of The People’s Leader on trumped-up charges. All the parties that could have never secured a win in a free and fair election—such as the G.O.D.s—became part of this new charade, joining hands with the general, singing to his religious refrains.

Six months later, General Behroopia began his Islamization process by changing the penal code and exhorting the people to return to the fundamental values of religion. He instructed women to stop wearing the saree since it was the dress of the ‘infidel Hindus’.

And what about the shalwar-kameez or the Western trousers and shirts that you wear? Mansoor thought. Are they not un-Islamic attires? What exactly is the Islamic attire anyway?

The religious thugs, armed with the new licence to propagate their nasty brand of a narrow creed, formed harassment units and began roaming the streets and markets, slapping women for their uncovered heads, slashing their arms with razor blades for wearing sleeveless tops. They beat up men who appeared westernized, humiliated young unmarried couples who ventured outside together and hounded anyone else who did not parade their religiosity. Married couples enjoying an evening stroll were also asked to produce their marriage certificates. The worst to suffer were the minorities, especially the Ahmadis, who were subjected to new rounds of persecution. Acquiring a passport became a torture for them. On the passport form, they had to sign a declaration that the founder of their religion was an imposter and a crook. State-backed intimidation and discrimination gained momentum and the G.O.D.s became the willing perpetrator.

*

General Behroopia’s goal was to disorient his countrymen by imposing his constricted moral principles on them. And when his fellow travellers joined him of their own free will, their cacophonous hysteria left Mansoor cold. Protests, wars, elections and the loss of the eastern wing of the country had already made ordinary Pakistanis tired and cynical, their collective lethargy preventing them from protesting against this latest assault on liberty. Mansoor thought that the entire nation had gone into a cooperative communal coma. But what pulled them out of this stupor was Sher Khan, who had now become known far and wide as Sher-e-Mazhab, the Lion of the Faith, after he revealed his millenarian ardour. Announcing his retirement from test cricket, the thirty-seven-year-old wunderkind pledged to devote the rest of his life to his new cause, giving up his Italian suits for sets of loose kurta-pyjamas and a white skullcap, swapping whisky for Pakola and growing a long scraggly beard. Visits to the nightclubs were replaced by nightly calls to ordinary people’s houses to guide them to the ‘right path’. In ancient wisdom, he found new meanings; in traditional customs, he discovered his lost spirit. A regular speaker at Zakir Hassan’s gatherings, he lashed out against the liberals and the secularists and berated women for embracing foreign feminism. The man who grew up in a Western atmosphere, who went to elite Western schools and who enjoyed rock and roll, now began calling the Western-educated Pakistanis ‘desi coconuts’—brown on the outside, white on the inside, as if foreign coconuts were somehow different.

*

The day of Mansoor’s departure for America arrived too soon. Hesitant to leave his mother alone in a huge house, he asked Sarwat to move in with her after he left. Not needing any persuasion, she agreed instantly. Mansoor had been accepted into the PhD programme at the University of Iowa, and he figured that in a year, he could complete his coursework, take the qualifying exam and return home to write his dissertation. At first, Farhat opposed his plan vigorously, using every tool in her motherly toolbox to make him change his mind. She did not want to live alone, and she definitely did not want him to return to America; but when Mansoor told her about her sister moving in, she reluctantly agreed.