Mohammed Hanif: Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

The Gentlemen’s Squad is a group of like-minded police officers, not really an entity commissioned by any law-enforcing authority. The name of the unit doesn’t exist on any official register, on letterheads or websites. There are no annual audits or medals for bravery; it does not hold press conferences to unveil the criminals it catches or kills, or more often catches and then kills. It is a group of gentlemen who, not given to any flights of literary imagination, have decided to call themselves the Gentlemen’s Squad. It is a crew of reformed rapists ( I have got three grown-up daughters now, you know ), torturers ( it’s a science, not an art ), sharpshooters ( monkeys really, as we spend half our lives perched on rooftops and trees ) and generally the kind of investigators who can recognise a criminal by looking at the way he blows his nose or turns a street corner. They have survived together for such a long time because they believe in giving each other space, they come together for a good cause like they have today, and then disperse to pursue their own personal lives.

“You know I don’t like taking work home. The kids are preparing for their exams,” says Inspector Malangi. “At my age I have to sit with them and do maths revision. Why don’t you help out and get us something broken that’ll look good to the medico-legal so that we can have this hero to ourselves for a few days? And then I’ll get him to confess to Garden East and all the others that he has been planning.” Inspector Malangi pulls out a rusted Kalashnikov with a solid wooden butt, empties its magazine, then on second thoughts removes the magazine, puts it in his pocket and throws the rifle at Teddy. “Something small will do. Just get me a thumb. Let’s throw a bone to the dog and go home.”

Teddy Butt knows that this is not a suggestion, not even an order, just an expectation, how a father would expect to be addressed as father or abba or daddy by his sons.

“Here I go and here I come back.” Teddy snaps his forefinger and thumb before running off, not realising that this might be the last time he’ll be able to snap his fingers, to produce that reassuring, consider-it-done sound.

Teddy runs past some patients sleeping on the steps, curses a sweeper who is raising clouds of dust in the corridor and finds Noor where he expected to find him, at his mother Zainab’s bedside, massaging her feet gently and with dedication, as if a good foot massage was the only cure for the three types of cancer that Zainab is suffering from. Teddy gets his vitamins from Noor; sometimes before his competitions he gets a free IV drip to give his body that extra sheen that judges seem to love. Teddy believes that since Noor has learnt the art of making friends in jails, he would do anything for a friend.

Noor sees Teddy running towards him with a gun, tucks his mother’s feet under the blanket and meets him at the door. Teddy knows that Noor doesn’t like to conduct their transactions in front of his mother, so he speaks in an urgent whisper. “I need a thumb, and I need it now.” He shoves the gun into Noors hands, as if handing over a receipt for a faulty purchase and demanding a refund. They both start walking down the corridor that leads to the back of the A&E, stepping over at least three people sleeping on the floor, stirring in their dreams.

“It’s too early in the day. I am sitting in on an interview. I am on a short break, just came out to have a look at Zainab. I have to write lots of notes,” Noor mumbles, in the hope that he won’t be asked to do something time-consuming. Or nasty.

“It’s all your friend’s fault. Inspector Malangi has got this guy Abu Zar in the back of the van. Very dangerous. But he is insisting that he hasn’t done anything. You don’t know these people; it’ll take us at least a few days before we can make him talk. But your Dr Malick won’t give us a certificate saying that this man injured one of us. Imagine, Dr Malick wants proof. When he gets drunk, he becomes all principled.” Noor stops to wheel a stretcher out of the way, but Teddy keeps talking, as if giving the context, pinning the blame, underlining the flaws in the system will somehow reduce the pain, or at least justify it, make it worth his while.

“Where are his principles when he is signing blank postmortem reports? Inspector Malangi comes to ask for a piece of paper and suddenly he remembers his principles? Should we let an attacker go just because he hasn’t attacked us yet? We can nail Dr Malick for that Millennium bottle in his office. Do you even know how much a bottle of Millennium costs? We can nail him for how he gets the money for that bottle. What does he sell, a kidney for a litre bottle? We have got death certificates where he has written ‘cause of death — renal failure’ when the renal has been shot to bits, when the renal doesn’t even exist any more. It’s because of him that I need a thumb and I need it now. Because after his shift we’ll have to deal with your Auntie Hina Alvi, and she has more principles than a man has hair. We can nail her too, but right now I need a thumb.” Teddy laughs a hollow laugh. Noor stays sullen.

They reach an electricity pole and stop. They both know what to do next. Noor is in a hurry to get back to give Zainab her medication and then rush to the interview. Teddy has his family’s expectations to fulfil. They look up simultaneously towards the top of the pole, where a number of kites, perched on the electric wires, are waking up from their slumber and looking down at them suspiciously. Then both Noor and Teddy glance around to check if anyone is watching them. To their mutual dismay, nobody is.

“Will it hurt a lot?” Teddy asks, as if it has just occurred to him that what they are about to do is something that might involve some physical discomfort. Noor sighs, as if he can’t understand why people keep asking the same question. He lives in a world where people want their share of pain measured, labelled, packaged, with its ingredients identified in plain language. They want it to come with an expiry date and a guarantee that there is this and no more.

He sees people crying before pain hits them. Will it hurt, they ask, how much will it hurt? They want a scale of this pain, they want it packaged in small doses. They ask, Will it hurt this much? as they mime a scale with their forefinger and thumb, and then widen it and ask if it will hurt this much or this much. And, like a professional, Noor always lies, because he knows that the anticipation of pain is slightly worse than pain itself, always shrugs his shoulders, pats their backs and says, “Don’t worry, sir, you won’t feel a thing.”

“You won’t feel a thing,” says Noor, tapping the electricity pole. “For the first moment. Then your fuse will blow. All lights will go out. It’ll hurt like nothing has hurt before.”

“Don’t scare me, just do your job,” says Teddy, gripping the pole with his right hand. Then he changes his mind and puts his left hand around the pole, thumb pointing towards Noor, who is holding the gun by its barrel, wielding it like a cricket bat.

The electricity pole is splattered with leaflets and stickers and bits of graffiti. The Coalition for the Protection of Honour of the Mothers of the Faithful , reads the poster with a chador covering a faceless woman. Liberty or Death , demands a little sticker under a red hatchet and the proposed map of a state where liberty or death will prevail for eternity. Three slogans in different colours proclaim Dr Pereira to be a dog, a donkey and a Christian preacher.

Noor tests the rifle in the air like a batsman getting the measure of the swing he should expect.

“I used to play drums but I never made it to the band,” Teddy says mournfully, as if his thumb is about to be punished for not being an adequate drum player.