Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

*

David didn’t want to retaliate against Gul Rasool — for killing Zameen, and for lying about her to his men during torture. Too sickened and exhausted, and also because it could have jeopardised Marcus’s safety.

And now Gul Rasool is a US ally, James Palantine providing him with security. James must know that Rasool had once wanted to kill his father. In the wake of the 2001 attacks, Gul Rasool was the only one who was around to help root out the Taliban from Usha, to help capture al-Qaeda terrorists, and to keep them at bay, the United States paying him handsomely for his support. The first CIA team that arrived in Afghanistan soon after the attacks, to persuade warlords and tribal leaders, had brought five million dollars with them. It was spent within forty days. Ten million more was flown in by helicopter: piles of money as high as children — four cardboard boxes kept in a corner of a safe house, with someone sleeping on them as a precaution against theft.

Originally the idea of asking Gul Rasool was resisted, Nabi Khan’s name being put forward instead. But when Gul Rasool heard of it, he put together a death squad to assassinate Nabi Khan. Khan — who, also scenting money, had dispatched his own men to kill Gul Rasool — was the first to be wounded and was therefore unable to fight with the Americans.

*

David watches as the light comes on gently in Lara’s room, can visualise the candle flame stretching itself to full height. He wonders what news James Palantine would bring for Lara. He hadn’t seen the boy for years when he contacted the family after hearing of Christopher’s death. He enters the house, going past the bird’s nest on the shelf, and walks down the dark green floor of the hallway.

THE YEAR 1798 was a disaster for Islam. Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion that year of Egypt — the very centre of the Muslim world — was the symbolic moment when the standard of leadership passed on to the West. From that point on, Western armies and Western capital overran the lands of the Muslims.

And Casa got his name from a poem about a boy who died in 1798 at the Battle of the Nile. Giocante Casabianca. The twelve-year-old son of a French admiral. He was on board the L’Orient, the principal ship of the fleet that carried Bonaparte and his army to Egypt. Cannon fire set the L’Orient ablaze and further shooting meant the blaze could not be put out, but Giocante Casabianca remained on the burning deck, unwilling to abandon the post without his father’s permission. The flames consuming the sail and shroud above him.

He call’d aloud — ‘Say, Father, say

If yet my task is done!’

The father was close to death below and did not have the strength to raise his voice. When the ship’s powder magazines eventually exploded, the blast was so large it was felt fifteen miles away in Alexandria.

One day in 1988, the six-year-old Casa, known then only by the generic ‘little boy’, had exhibited similar valour and obedience, and one of the adults around him had laughed and called him Casabianca.

Casa would meet that man again in his teens and remind him of the matter. The man would remember it well — he said he’d learned about Giocante Casabianca through a poem at school — but the man would then become angry. He had begun his education at an expensive Western-style school but, because the family circumstances had deteriorated, he was taken out of there and sent to a free Islamic one, and he now believed in the primacy and supremacy of Muslims above all. He said that even back then, only minutes after referring to the brave faithful six-year-old boy as Casabianca, he had become maddened by the thought that he had been required to learn Western history at one point in his life, along with fictional stories where the principal characters could easily be Christian or Hindu. Not minor characters, not villains — but the heroes! Regardless of his bitter fury, the name he gave the little boy had stuck, shortened to Casa.

The full story of the boy whose name had become his has slipped out of Casa’s mind. Only a few vague impressions remaining.

‘Speak, father!’ once again he cried,

‘If I may yet be gone!’

*

He rises in the perfume factory just before dawn, the thought materialising in him instantly that he should do his best not to stay here for too long. Nabi Khan and his men are coming to Usha soon.

At the lake he performs his ablutions, the water so still it is as though it has been smoothed by hand, and says his prayers on a boulder, using his blanket as a prayer mat.

He sits wrapped in it afterwards and looks around as the sky starts to brighten above him, the white vapour rising from the lake looking like airborne milk. Under his breath he reads the verses one is supposed to read at the start of day.

O Allah I ask You for whatever good this day may hold

And I take refuge in You from whatever evil it may hold

And ask you to grant me victory, but do not grant victory over me.

O Allah watch over me with Your eye that never sleeps

And accept my repentance, that I may not perish.

You are my hope. My Master, Lord of bounty and majesty,

To You I direct my face, so bring Your noble face close to me

And wash away my sins, answer my supplications, and guide my heart,

And receive me with Your deepest forgiveness and generosity,

Smiling on me and content with me in Your infinite mercy.

He gets up and walks towards David’s car. He could present the car to Nabi Khan as a token of good will, convince him of the truth of what had transpired at the hospital. Wind-loosened perfume is in the air now from the flowering branches overhead as he circles the vehicle.

The keys are in the house. But David would report the missing car to the police and they might trace it to Nabi Khan, who, in any case, might not see it as the honest gift Casa intends it to be. He doesn’t want them to inflict pain on him, though he can understand how Nabi Khan might feel perfectly within his rights to use agony in ascertaining the truth. When the rumours reached Ali about the virtue of Ayesha — the wife of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him — Ali had had Ayesha’s maidservant tortured to learn if the gossip had any basis in fact. Muhammad, peace be upon him, was aware of this.

*

The act of courageous obedience that earned him his name had occurred at a weapons warehouse situated in a heavily populated residential area near Islamabad. The United States had given about one thousand Stinger missiles to Pakistan in 1986, to be passed on to Afghan guerrillas. But one of these missiles, in October 1987, narrowly missed a United States helicopter in the Persian Gulf. And three days later, two Afghans were arrested in Pakistan for attempting to sell Stingers to representatives of the Iranian government, for one million dollars each. This led to a United States investigation and it was decided that there would be an audit of the weapons supplied to the Pakistani military. Casa cannot believe it but it is said that the ISI, its alleged corruption and duplicity about to be exposed, had set fire to the massive warehouse with the result that $100 million worth of rockets and missiles had rained down on the surrounding area, killing an estimated thousand people and maiming countless others for life.

In a mosque a block away from the warehouse, the six-year-old boy had been asked to guard the door behind which a prisoner was being kept — a Christian who had been beaten until he confessed that he was responsible for the defaced copy of the Koran found lying in a gutter outside.