Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Joseph Bhatti has never believed in daily, mundane suffering. He has always hated their little petitions, their letters to the editor; he always leaves the room when he hears the word ‘persecution’. He doesn’t know yet that late in his life he will be forced to write a petition. But then what kind of father wouldn’t demand justice for his daughter?

He still has his tumbler and set of candles. But these days he is mostly called for stomach cancers, and that too only when patients have been sent back home from hospital to spend their last days with the family. He can still light a candle. He can still recite Sura Asar one hundred and one times without getting breathless. But life has beaten him into submission. Now he says things like “It’s Allah who cures, I only light the candle and speak his words.” And after he has done his procedure and knows in his heart that it will not work, he doesn’t stay, doesn’t accept any hospitality: “No thank you, I already ate. I don’t drink tea.”

He feels that finally they have pulled Yassoo down to their level, as if Yassoo wasn’t the saviour of all mankind but a janitor who went around cleaning their streets, then sat in a corner drinking his Choohra chai from his Choohra cup until the day he quietly died and ascended to a Choohra heaven.

“Do you know what happens to men after they get married?” Teddy Butt asks not-Abu Zar as he massages his stomach. “And do you know what happens to women after they get married? Here’s a clue: it’s not the same thing and it has nothing to do with sex.”

The Hilux roars past a huge billboard that announces Spanish villas with french windows and imported kitchens. A shiny couple with a child peer through what must be a french window. Not-Abu Zar looks up and listens with concentration, as if Teddy were giving him career advice.

“Men feel hungry, all the time. I feel an army of rats marching in my stomach and I have been married less than a week. I’ll ask them if we can stop for breakfast on our way back.”

Not-Abu Zar shakes his head enthusiastically, as if he has always worried about the connection between coupledom and hunger. The swelling on his right eye has subsided, the blood has congealed around his lips; he looks like a boy who has botched up his face paint.

“Men constantly feel hungry and women constantly feel sad. That’s what marriage does to them.”

The Hilux leaves the Super Highway and swerves on to a dirt track, and then starts taking what seem like random turns, slowing down then speeding up. In normal circumstances it might be seen as an attempt to lose a tail, but the veterans of G Squad know that at this point Inspector Malangi likes to introduce a bit of confusion in his own team. He doesn’t want them to remember where and how they reached their destination. He doesn’t want any of them to lose their mind in the future and come sniffing back to relive the memory. There are rumours of Malangi’s predecessor losing his three-year-old daughter and becoming so affected by it that he ended up digging up lots of places in Buffer Zone in an attempt to give his victims a decent funeral. It was a huge embarrassment for the department. Malangi doesn’t want any of his men to end up like that. A bit of disorientation also gives a certain edge to the proceedings. The members of G Squad become more alert, they want to do their job and get out. They have come to realise that they are not here to enjoy the scenery.

“Hunger I understand, because you know a man has to work hard every night, sometimes he has to work hard more than once at night, but why do women get sad after getting married? I mean, shouldn’t they be happy? They have found their mate, the father of their future children, the man they will force to work so hard that after his demise they’ll become much sought-after widows.” Not-Abu Zar murmurs something, but Teddy thinks it isn’t a good idea to let him talk at this stage. “Have you heard the one about why the cow looks sad? Did Abu Zar, I mean the real one, your friend in Sweden, ever used to tell you dirty jokes? Or did he think that laughter was bad for the health of the nation? So this man asks a cow, why do you always look sad? The cow replies, if someone squeezed your tits twice a day but screwed you only once a year, you’d feel sad too.”

Not-Abu Zar nods his head and speaks in a voice that is low but clear. “You have to believe me. I was the driver. Abu said you can drive my motorbike and I did. I have never touched a gun.”

Teddy suddenly feels angry at this boy’s stubbornness. By the time this hour of the night arrives, they all lose their ability to think, but this boy is determined to fool the world right to the end. And he is not even pretending to play along. Teddy has had people here who have told him heart-wrenching stories about being abused as children. Some he managed to soften up to an extent that they plotted picnics and revenge after the night was over. And when all else failed, he would tell them cricket jokes, mostly about Imran Khan and his real bat, and they would laugh till their torture wounds would start bleeding and Teddy had to calm them down. This boy seems to have no sense of humour.

Teddy leans forward and says in the boy’s ear, “So why did Abu do it? Did someone pay him? Maybe he wants to get his seventy-two virgins? Did he tell you that? But remember, all the seventy-two will become sad very soon. And does Abu’s driver not get anything? You must get something? What was your deal with him? That you could watch while he fucked those seventy-two?”

Not-Abu Zar looks at him with hurt eyes, as if he had considered Teddy a friend and hadn’t expected such a filthy suggestion from him. Not-Abu Zar manoeuvres himself into a praying position, folds his handcuffed hands into his lap and starts reciting Sura Yaseen. Teddy turns off his flashlight in despair. They are moving through a thicket of bush now, branches crunching against the sides of the Hilux.

Teddy’s knowledge about which Quranic verse should be recited at what occasion is vague, and second-hand, but even he knows this one. This is the one they recite by the deathbed to ease the passing of the soul, because when a soul leaves the body it’s like a fine silk shawl being dragged through a bush of thorns. It is recited to steady the hand of the angel of death. Sometimes it resounds in the corridors of the Sacred. Sometimes the death-row prisoners are allowed to carry nothing but a copy of the Yaseen or receive a visit from someone who can recite it.

Teddy’s knowledge of these things comes from his friend whose name is also Yaseen. He went off to Kashmir and returned to a hero’s welcome when he brought back a severed turbaned head and claimed that it had belonged to an Indian major. Teddy never saw it, but those who did said that the Indian major, even in his death, looked very scared. Yaseen went off again to Kashmir, or maybe some other place that needed to be liberated, and never returned. Nobody ever heard from him. Nobody brought back his body or his head. It was as if there was nothing left of him. Yaseen was a good friend and he had a balanced personality: not only did he know appropriate suras for every occasion, but he also knew quite a bit about stock markets, oil prices and the latest technologies developed by NASA. He had that core that this not-Abu Zar boy also seemed to have.

Like any self-respecting professional in this situation, Teddy Butt feels like a failure. This man chained to the bone, sitting on the floor of a speeding Hilux, is reciting verses that are a preamble to his own death. Teddy feels this boy has something he will never have: a core that keeps him centred, that frees him from the fear of death. Not-Abu Zar might be running rings around G Squad, but he knows where he has come from and where he is going. He might even be mistaken. Maybe he came from nowhere and is going nowhere and what he recites means nothing, but he has something that keeps him connected to the universe. Would Teddy be able to recite something if he was in a situation like this? If Teddy had so much metal on him, would he be able to manoeuvre himself into a position like this and sit still?