Children of Dust Read online

  Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon

  inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon

  inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon

  That was also the prayer a Muslim made when someone died.

  18

  After my meeting with the angels, I wanted to escape. One hot day I resolved to run away.

  The city was hardboiled; the streets were deserted; a camel driver rested in the shade. Our cooler, the poor man’s air conditioner—a box-looking fan lined with roots and filled with water—rumbled loudly, producing a jet of damp air that felt like Paradise itself. On that terribly hot afternoon, I didn’t want to give up the company of the cooler.

  “I’m not going to the madrassa anymore,” I informed the household in a loud voice.

  Ammi and Pops reclined behind me on a charpai, nodding limply in the noontime lull. When I made my announcement they didn’t say anything, and this raised my hopes. But then, just as I turned onto my side to stretch out and sleep, Pops got up, grabbed me by the arm to yank me to my feet, and pushed me out of the room. “You aren’t welcome back until you’ve gone to the madrassa,” he said coldly.

  I stood and stared at the closed door. Then, before the sun-heated floor could burn my feet, I located an old pair of chappals and went to the bathroom to wash up. Because we got our water from a tank located on the roof—which heated up during the daytime—the water was boiling hot. With the hot afternoon loo blowing in from the dunes, the water felt even worse. Gargling with it almost made me throw up.

  As soon as I finished, I heard a trilling bicycle bell outside. Opening the door, I saw that it was Bilal, a young orderly whom Pops sometimes hired on the hottest days to give me a ride to the madrassa. Feeling resigned, I swung my leg over and positioned myself on the crossbar of his Sohrab bicycle. As he leaned forward and pushed off, I felt his chest against my back. He smelled of sweat, adolescent cologne, and talcum powder. I knew that last smell well: expert carrom board players reeked of it. I knew that Bilal spent most of the hot days, days like this one, in the back of his father’s shop playing long games of carrom. He had invited me to play with him once, and I enjoyed using his donut-shaped striker to knock the little round disks into the four-holed game board. I knew that after he dropped me off he was going to go back and play—something I wanted to do as well—and the thought filled me with a mixture of hate and despair. Part of me wanted to cry and the other part wanted to hit him.

  As we rode to the madrassa, Bilal saw something interesting and pulled up his bike at the curb.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Take a look.”

  Coming up the street toward us was a bearded Gypsy in puffy clothes, with an assortment of red, blue, and green scarves wrapped around his body. He carried a stick upon which were bells, shakers, and drums. He held a chain in his other hand, and attached to it was a large black bear. The animal’s skin and face were scarred, making it look ferocious. A withered brown dog walked behind the handler and his bear, aimlessly following scent trails. The odd trio walked past us into the dusty ground within the gol daira. There the bear sat down on its haunches underneath a tree, while the dog lapped at crusty mud, searching for water.

  I couldn’t get past the contrast between the two animals. The dog was small and meek; the bear was big and black.

  “Why are they here?” I asked.

  “There’s going to be a fight,” Bilal replied. “Bear versus dog.”

  “Isn’t such a fight unfair?”

  “You have to understand,” Bilal said. “At one point the Gypsy probably owned three dogs to fight the bear at once. But I imagine that in each fight the bear must have killed one dog, so now only this one is left. This one is probably going to get killed too. It’s supply and demand, after all.”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a measure of hope. “This dog seems different.”

  Bilal laughed. “You just think it’s different. Dogs lose; that’s just the way it is. It’s their kismet to be killed by the bear.”

  We had hoped to stick around for the fight, but then we learned that the Gypsy was putting it off till later in the evening, when it would be cooler and more people would be around to make donations. “We don’t have time to wait,” Bilal said. He picked up his bike and we hit the road to the madrassa.

  As I thought about the dog, my earlier sense of rebelliousness came rushing back to me. If that poor little dog, all alone, could stand up to a monster like the black bear, then I could stand up against Qari Jamil.

  By the time we reached the madrassa, I was so empowered that I could think of a million other things I’d rather be doing. I could sit in front of the cooler. I could go and swim with buffaloes, or watch Indian films, or drink glasses of sugarcane juice spiced with ginger and lemon, or get a case of mangoes and soften each mango until it became popla and I could suck the juice out of it.

  What I didn’t want to do was to recite the Quran in a room with no fans in the stale sleepiness of late afternoon. Nor did I want to be bent over in the rooster position and beaten. I missed the life I had before I was enrolled at the madrassa. The days of playing catch against my bedroom wall, dreaming of becoming an Iblis-fighting angel. The afternoons when I propped charpais on their side and made a fort and called myself Saladin the Liberator, spilling oil onto the Crusaders’ armies, withstanding a siege by Richard the Lion-heart, and then doing diplomacy with him during which I met with his sister and impressed her with my warrior prowess by throwing her scarf high in the air and cutting it in two perfect halves with my scimitar. I wanted to live in my imagination—not as a spindly-legged spider in the Quranic cryptograms. I didn’t want to be a droning echo, stuck chanting a book in a language I didn’t understand. I liked the Quran at night, when Ammi told me stories from it—stories about the Prophets. I didn’t like the Quran forced into my mouth on the authority of Qari Jamil’s big brown stick—a Quran to be chewed and vomited.

  “Hey, Bilal,” I said suddenly. “Do you know what time the lorry to Peshawar passes by?”

  “Before maghrib prayer,” he said as the shadow of the minaret fell across his face. “Why, babu? Are you planning on taking a trip?”

  “Yes, I am. A long one.”

  “Don’t bother,” he replied. “A lorry would never stop for a little one like you.”

  “Not even if I stood in front of it?”

  “That sounds serious!” he said, referring to my resolve. “You trying to run away or something?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Now?”

  “No. Take me home first. I want to tell my parents why I’m leaving.”

  When I got home the electricity was gone, as was often the case at midday, and so the cooler was off and everyone was in a bad mood. Pops lay in bed while Ammi fanned him. They had just finished eating mangoes; a tray of emptied plates sat near them. Two steel glasses filled with lassi, a yogurt drink, sat tilted in a clump of sheets. The fact that they had eaten mangoes without me made me think they were decadent, and that upset me even more.

  They looked up, surprised to see me at home when I should have been in school. “I’m not going to go to the madrassa anymore,” I announced, trying to sound even more definitive this time. “If you make me go, I’ll run away to Peshawar. I’ve learned where the lorry leaves.” I sat down and began drinking the leftover lassi. Even though it was warm and salty, it felt good going down. I felt in charge.

  When I’d finished and had burped loudly, a slap hit the back of my head and sent me hurtling toward the door.

  “I told you,” Pops said. “You cannot come home until you’ve been to the madrassa.” He wasn’t messing around.

  Normally I would have cried and made a scene and ended up in Ammi’s arms, but this wasn’t a time for empathy. I had to up the ante.

  “Well, that seals the deal,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to run away from home. I’m going to take the lorry that goes to Peshawar. Then I’m going to join the mujahideen an
d go into battle. That means you’ll never see me again. This is what you reap for sending me to that madrassa. Khuda hafiz,” I added in farewell.

  “Come on, Abir,” Ammi said. “There’s no reason to run away. Just be a good boy and go to the madrassa.”

  “No deal.”

  Pops stayed quiet for a while. Then he spoke up rigidly: “All right. Run away, then. We won’t stop you.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you? All right. Forget running away. Instead of getting in the lorry, I’ll just let it run me over. Do you still want me to go to the madrassa?”

  “Yes,” Pops said. “Do it.”

  “You don’t care if I die?” I shouted. “Fine! I’ll kill myself right here. In this house. So that my blood is on your hands. I’m going to suffocate myself in the bathroom.”

  I went to the bathroom and slammed the door, thinking that if the door stayed closed for some time I would run out of air. While inside I realized that the bathroom had a big window that was always open, so the chances of suffocation were zilch. I also realized that going back outside to retrieve a tool with which to kill myself would take the fire out of my revolt.

  “This bathroom will be my grave!” I shouted in a last-ditch effort.

  Much to my satisfaction, I heard Ammi right outside the door. “No, my son,” she urged. “Don’t say such things!”

  “You know what? Why should I wait till I’m suffocated to die? I’ll just drink this shampoo here and make it quick.” Just to show that I was serious I spilled some of it underneath the door.

  Now Ammi banged on the door loudly. “I know I’m a horrible mother, but even horrible mothers don’t deserve to lose their children. Come out of there, my son!”

  I was not hearing her. During the patriotic holidays, among the videos that Pakistani TV used to play to commemorate its military heroes was one about an Air Force pilot, Rashid Minhas, who flew his plane into the ground rather than let it be commandeered by an Indian. In the movie he recited the Throne Verse from the Quran before his crash. That scene was burned in my head. This, my last breath on this world, my rebellion against the institution of the madrassa, seemed like a dramatic moment just like that of Minhas’s last breath, and I began reciting the Throne Verse loudly. It made for a good soundtrack to suicide.

  “Allah,” I sang, “there is no God but He. The living. The self-subsisting. The eternal. No slumber can seize him, nor sleep. His are all the things on heaven and on earth—”

  Just as I reached the middle of the verse, Pops broke down the door and fell against me. After knocking the shampoo from my hand, he handed me off to Ammi, who wiped away my tears. Despite the rescue, Pops glared at me. “Something is wrong with him,” Pops said. “Fix him up and personally take him to the madrassa. Let’s get this matter resolved.”

  Ammi went to the closet and put on her niqab. Then she took me by the hand and led me downstairs. When she saw Bilal hanging around—he’d stayed to enjoy the showdown, I guess—she told him to ride ahead and tell the qari that she wanted to schedule an emergency meeting.

  Walking in silence, with Ammi holding my hand firmly, we went to Qari Jamil’s private quarters. As soon as we were admitted, Ammi began talking about my “depression” to Qari Jamil’s wife, of all people, as she served us iskanjwi made from stale lemons. In the background his daughter, Sameena, snickered at descriptions of me crying, cursing, and threatening death. I was embarrassed.

  When the qari finally joined us, Ammi pulled her niqab over her face and repeated the story about my depression. She wondered if there was something “the learned qari” could do to cure me. As she spoke, the qari first smirked and then laughed outright, though there was no humor in the bloodshot eyes that speared into me. The more serious Ammi made my tantrum seem, the more sardonic became his grin.

  “I will be sure not to let him take his life,” he assured Ammi. Then he draped an arm across my shoulders and took me for a walk around the grounds, massaging my neck with his thumb and forefinger. I turned to look at Ammi, but she had fluttered out of the house as soon as she was sure that I was in safe hands.

  “So, you want to go off to Peshawar, eh?” Qari Jamil said. “You’re going to get on the lorry and fight the Soviets? That is very brave of you. Are you going to feed them bottles of shampoo and kill all of them?”

  His sarcasm made me angry. “Yes,” I said, “but the ticket to Peshawar is eight rupees and I have only four. Why don’t you lend me the rest?”

  He pretended that he didn’t hear my retort. “All so you don’t have to come here? Seems like you don’t like learning Allah’s book, my young friend. That’s not a very good Muslim, is it?” He stroked my head while his other hand snaked to his pocket. “Well, you know what? You don’t have to read the Quran when you come here. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good to me!”

  He produced a set of keys, sorting through until he found an appropriate one. Then he unlocked the padlock at the storage room with the bars on the windows and pushed me inside.

  I was incarcerated.

  Hours passed. By now the courtyard of the madrassa was empty. The dusty, hot loo blowing off the desert broke its head against the bars. At a distance I could hear the noise from the people witnessing the fight between the bear and the dog.

  With each roar of the distant crowd, I grew more unsettled. I yanked ineffectually at the bars. I kicked the door. I used a little wooden stick from the rubbish in the corner to poke at the cracking cement wall. I sat back and imagined what it would be like if I could just manage to escape.

  A satisfying scene formed in my mind.

  Me outside. Everyone else still in class. A warm breeze. The jubilation of emancipation. The dusty scent of evening sand. The noise of rambunctious children. A hefty truck painted with murals rumbling past me on the highway. Me trotting like I was on an imaginary horse. The feeling that I could do anything. Me creeping to the edge of the madrassa. Me pulling down my shalwar. Me drawing out my member—with my right hand, of course. Me urinating upon the bricks. Me doing it standing up. Me peeing on the madrassa.

  It was such a fluid and well-drawn image that it left me smiling. But then I realized that in order to fulfill my vision, I actually needed to escape from the room. So ensued another round of pushing and tugging on the bars. Another round of kicking the door and boring tiny holes in the wall. Another round of frenzy.

  It was all for naught.

  As I sat, alone and lonesome, the shadows elongated further. The walls screamed and leaned over me. Standing again, I clung to the bars, not daring to look behind, thinking that at any moment a hand made of smoke might grab me by the neck and pull me into Dozakh. I looked to see if there was a lightbulb inside the room, but there wasn’t.

  Soon I could see no light outside the room either. When the call for the evening prayer went up and night descended upon the desert, I was plunged into blackness. The rest of the town fell quiet. I felt as if I hadn’t seen a human in ages. I remembered Anar Kali, a legendary courtesan who had been buried alive in a wall. I channeled the specter of her death, her futile and frivolous death, and it filled me with despair. She had been foolish for loving a prince, just as I had been foolish for rebelling against the madrassa.

  I stood back against the wall and realized that since I couldn’t hear the roaring crowd anymore, the dog must have been martyred.

  I sat down in a squat and started crying. I put my face into one corner of the room where the walls met one another and smelled the cement. I licked the salty surface to distract myself. As I tasted the rough wall, I felt a desert centipede crawl across my mouth, over my lips and toward my neck. My insides turned to mush. I stood up and maniacally beat myself with my topi, but that only made the creature drop down into my shirt. I hopped around in a frenzy, hoping it would fall to the floor. In the dark it wasn’t possible to tell whether the centipede had fallen out or not; perhaps it was just hanging on and waiting. I began to run in small circles in the room, shimmy
ing as I ran in an effort to get away from the beast and pressing my belly button with one index finger in case the vile creature tried to enter my body. Out of fear of the centipede, I urinated a little bit in my clothes.

  I felt disgusted with my own cowardice. That new emotion stopped me in my tracks, and I forgot all about the centipede.

  As I thought about it, I felt as if I deserved to feel disgusting. By my refusal to uphold the norms of the madrassa—a place where the Book of God was taught—I had behaved like the most reprehensible of people. Spurning Qari Jamil as well as Ammi and Pops, I had violated the hadith that said teachers were just like parents. What I had done with my tantrum was nothing short of sin. I had engaged in gunah. It was like what I had done with Sina, but many times worse because I had known exactly what I was doing. I was a sinner. And what was the lot of the sinner except pain, cauldrons of pus, and torture?

  Torture within the grave. Torture before Judgment Day. Torture on Judgment Day. Torture after Judgment Day. Torture for an eternity. Torture would start at the moment of death. I would be placed in my grave, and then two angels would come to ask me a series of questions about my faith and deeds. I would answer them to the best of my ability, but the entire interrogation would be rigged: Allah would have instructed my tongue to give testimony against me so that I wouldn’t be able to lie to escape the impending torture. Once I unwittingly admitted all my errors—and there were many, as I was realizing—the pain would commence. My soul would be sucked into Israfil’s trumpet in a most torturous way. Then maggots would consume my body from the left and worms would consume it from the right. All the pain of decomposition would be felt by my soul—in fact, the pain of being eaten, my flesh being consumed in the grave, would be felt all the way till the Day of Judgment. This was the recompense of sinners. This was the fate of those who declared rebellion against the things that exalted God.