Mohammed Hanif: Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

As Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’s peacock throne began to ascend and the kites became still in the air, their wings folded in respect, the same legless wretch came down the ramp skateboarding like a demon, standing on the board with her arms spread as if she had inherited the factory that manufactures Xanax.

As mentioned earlier in this submission, in our neighbouring country a Caucasian nun starves poor people to death and is declared a saint. Here our poor Alice Bhatti cures the incurable and is declared a common criminal. Although she herself never claimed to have any miraculous powers, she always said, “It’s Him who cures. I just stitch up what has been cut open by life.”

All of the seventeen people who saw the apparition couldn’t bear to watch the face of the apparition on the throne because it was so luminous, like the sun on a very hot day. It was only the mad skater who claimed that a gust of wind blew in her direction and unveiled the face for a moment and that She looked like a ghoul. The Committee pounced on the word — some suggested that they actually inserted it in the text of the report — and concluded that a holy apparition couldn’t look like a ghoul. Does the word ghoul or its synonyms not appear in the Old Testament? Is the word forbidden? If you ask me, half our clergy look like ghouls.

The Committee also noted that if Alice Bhatti was considered so exalted at the Sacred after the miracle of the dead baby, why did she breathe her last at another, Musla hospital? First thing is, martyrs usually don’t die amongst their own. (Lots of Musla martyrs do, but that is beyond the scope of this submission.) The second explanation is that the Sacred doesn’t have an Acid Burns Unit, and it was Dr Pereira who put her in the ambulance and rushed her to another hospital, where her mortal body breathed her last. This was another one of Dr Pereira’s futile mercy missions. As far as I am concerned, she had ascended to the heavens before that first drop of acid touched her face.

So the question remains, what did people see that night? Did they see only our Holy Mother? Or did they see Alice Joseph Bhatti — it pains me to remind you, my daughter Alice Bhatti — ascend with her to the heavens?

There is only one thing left to do, and that is to tell the complete story of Alice Bhatti, her birth and suffering and marriage and miracles associated with her, and then leave it to the people to decide whether she deserves to be recognised as Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. It’s being done in the hope that common people hopefully don’t share the prejudices of those who in the name of our Holy Lord have set up bloodsucking business ventures.

And since Sister Alice Bhatti’s story can’t be told without telling the story of her time at the Sacred, why not start the story when Alice Bhatti came to the Sacred, looking for a job?

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