Nadeem Aslam - Season of the Rainbirds

A smile came to Mr Kasmi’s lips. ‘Our Alice-bibi isn’t here yet,’ he thought out loud.

Zébun read a verse, kept count by letting slide a bead along the thread, and said, ‘I don’t think she’ll come today, brother-ji. The Christians won’t let their girls out for a long while yet.’

Mr Kasmi surfaced. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely.

Zébun lowered the rosary. ‘Men are worse than animals. Janvar!’

‘It wasn’t just men who did that thing last night, sister-ji. There were women there, too. And children.’

Zébun watched Mr Kasmi anxiously, her shoulders bent forward. ‘You are unhurt, aren’t you, brother-ji?’

‘I was unhurt,’ Mr Kasmi lied.

Zébun nodded.

‘I was just knocked to the ground. But Maulana Hafeez placed himself between me and the crowd just in time.’

‘Your voice sounds different,’ Zébun said, ‘but this’ — she gestured towards the pan on the fire — ‘should stop you catching pneumonia. At our age we mustn’t let night rain on to our lungs.’

Mr Kasmi smiled in accord and looked into the pan. Even though the water was only just warming up, a microscopic imperfection in the surface of the metal was assisting the process of oxidation and a column of tiny bubbles was rising from the base of the pan to the surface.

‘You were very courageous, brother-ji.’ Zébun shook her head. ‘I would have continued walking.’

‘It wasn’t deliberate, sister-ji. It was all so very sudden. And, I must admit that afterwards I did feel a little foolish. All I remember is that on my way back from Mujeeb Ali I saw the girl being dragged through the street. And the next thing I know I’ve crossed the street and am struggling with these people. Then a section of the crowd turns on me : Get the Ahmadiya as well. Get the Ahmadiya as well.’

‘And that’s when Maulana Hafeez arrived?’

‘It must have been.’

A wisp of steam was rising and the water was beginning to boil, diminishing in volume — a ball of wool being unwound by the drawing out of the loose end.

Mr Kasmi continued: ‘The front end of the crowd kept on moving forward so eventually we were left alone in the street, Maulana Hafeez and I. Maulana Hafeez was trying to get me back on my feet. And someone near the back of the mob shouted to him: “Maulana-ji, you wouldn’t see Maulana Dawood associating so freely with an Ahmadiya.” ’

Mr Kasmi finished speaking with a little catarrhal laugh.

The sound appeared to bring Zébun out of a daydream.

Outside, the morning was calm — clouded heat and a hazy insect-ridden ten o’clock. The trees across the courtyard were bare. A solitary five-lobed leaf at the end of a branch resembled a hand thrust out of a window to test for rain.

Zébun sighed. ‘I hope Alice does come. I would like to send her to the mosque for news of Maulana Hafeez.’

The sound of the doorbell had diverted the child’s attention from the game. Now he lowered his head again and, with a suspicious finger, made certain that his opponent had pushed the counters along the board by the correct number of squares. The bell sounded again. Yusuf Rao’s youngest daughter was sitting halfway up the staircase, touching up with colouring pencils the faded cover of a story book. The other children were in one of the bedrooms, with the curtains drawn, shaking awake the fireflies they had captured and imprisoned inside bottles to make lanterns two evenings ago. They, too, ignored the bell. The lawyer’s eldest daughter lifted the lid off the yoghurt pan and smiled: the milk had taken — it rarely did during the rainy season. The girl was not allowed to answer the door. Once after a visit from a girl she had met at the Qur’anic lessons, she was severely beaten by her mother: ‘So you think you’re old enough to make friends? Who gave you permission?’ Now she stood in the kitchen, her palms pressed against the clay pot made warm by the overnight activity of the bacteria, and listened to her mother answering the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Is Yusuf Rao in, apa-ji?’

‘Who is it?’ the woman asked, from behind the door.

‘The police. The police inspector.’

The woman held her head as one deeply considering. ‘No,’ she said after a silence. ‘He’s gone to Rawalpindi.’

Through the wooden planks she heard the inspector’s sigh; and: ‘When is he coming back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He didn’t say?’

‘No.’

The inspector’s voice became ingratiating. ‘Listen, apa-ji. I just need Yusuf Rao to accompany me to the courthouse for a few minutes and answer a few questions, that’s all. You must have heard about the attempt on the General’s life. This is all tied up with that. Just a few questions …’

‘He’s away,’ Yusuf Rao’s wife said, and added, ‘brother-ji.’

‘I’ve had orders from Lahore, apa-ji. So you can tell Yusuf Rao that, if he doesn’t return from Rawalpindi by this evening, we’ll have to force our way into the house.’

The woman stood listening, biting the inside of her lip.

The police inspector was saying: ‘I respect your purdah, apa-ji. But I have my duty to do. If he doesn’t present himself at the courthouse by nightfall I’ll have to come into the house.’

Just then the eldest girl came to the kitchen door and looked with frightened eyes at the corner of the courtyard where as a little girl, ten or so years ago, she had watched her mother and father burying books and magazines that would have incriminated her father in the event of a police raid.

Yusuf Rao’s wife answered incisively, ‘You won’t find anyone in here. I’ve told you already, he’s in Rawalpindi.’

At the other side of the door the inspector sighed again, ‘I have to go.’ He tapped his stick on the wood. ‘I have dozens more calls to make before midday.’

The woman secured the door.

As she passed her daughter on the veranda, she said, ‘He says he has dozens more calls to make. All this in a town as small and as God-forsaken as this. Imagine what the situation must be like in the cities.’

‘I heard everything,’ Yusuf Rao said as his wife entered the bedroom. He was dressed for work but had collapsed in a chair. He clasped and unclasped his hands.

‘What I want to know,’ his wife said, frowning, ‘is where that police inspector was last night when they were dragging that poor girl, naked, through the streets. Where were his orders and his duty then?’

Yusuf Rao said distractedly, ‘You were against that girl yesterday. Remember?’

‘Yes. But I didn’t say that a mob should descend on her and drag her by the hair to be left on the doorstep of her parents’ house.’

Yusuf Rao breathed noisily through his mouth, from time to time compressing his fleshy lips.

‘I’ll have to force my way into the house, apa-ji,’ the woman mimicked. ‘He wouldn’t dare. If they tried to violate my purdah and enter the house I would scream and shout till the whole street came out in my defence. He’ll be sent back to his barracks like the mardood dog that he is. If people can come out against a born-last-Friday Christian harlot then they will also come out to protect a respectable Muslim woman.’

Yusuf Rao looked up sharply. His glance conveyed the tension and anger he was feeling as the rope attached to a mighty sail conveys at a touch the power of the distending wind. ‘Typical,’ he clenched his fists. ‘Typical. The deed’s done and, even though we don’t approve, let’s not waste time thinking about it, analysing it. A girl’s clothes are torn off in the street, so what? No need to think about how or why it happened. Let’s just talk about it as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. That’s your policy. That’s this whole harami country’s policy.’