“My god, how awful! How terrible!” voices round the room are saying as the shimmering blue shape in the corner once more bursts into flame. These two women, Ashraaf and Bano, they are crying, I can make out the shine of tears. Me, I don’t believe it’s real. It’s a hoax, clip from a movie, trailer of some coming multi-starrer. Has to be.
“In Amrika bombs, explosions, buildings falling, such things are normal. I’m telling you, yaar, see Fight Club.” It’s Farouq, the movie expert.
“So what are you saying?” I ask. “Normal it’s a movie, or normal it’s not a movie?”
“Arsehole, who asked you to speak?” replies Farouq. It’s like that between him and me. Arsehole? I’ve looked at Zafar, but he’s locked to the screen.
Even after the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth planes hit and all those buildings fall, Zafar maintains it is not a movie. Zafar has to be wrong. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life. Not in Amrika anyway. Here in Khaufpur it’s different. Here in Khaufpur we had that night. Nothing like that has ever happened anywhere else.
“How can it be happening right now?” I ask. “Look outside, it’s dark, it’s raining, but these buildings are in sunshine.”
“Wah, you idiot!” cries Farouq. “Don’t you know there’s a time difference between Khaufpur and Amrika? When it’s night here, it’s day there.”
“I tell you it’s a movie. Soon it will finish. Words will come, THE END.” But now I’m feeling stupid, which I hate. “Tell me what happens,” I say. “I have to get Ma’s supper.”
I’ve got down from my chair to the floor. “Let’s go,” I say to Jara. She gets up and follows me out.
“C’était un film,” I tell Ma Franci when we get home. “C’est normal.”
Says Ma, “Pauvre Jaanvar à quatre pattes, pour toi c’est quoi le normal?” Poor four-foot Animal, for you what is normal?
“I see a star fall from heaven, the abyss opens, out pours smoke like from a great furnace, the sun and the day are gone.” Thus speaks Ma. C’est quoi le normal? Fine fucking one she is to ask this of me, ever since I told her what we witnessed she’s been raving like she’s fully cracked. I am trying to describe the flames, the smoke, the falling towers, she’s interrupted with étoiles and abîmes, stars and abysses.
“It was a movie.”
“No Animal, it’s him,” cries Ma in excitement or panic I can’t tell. “This is his work, he’s up and running again, this time there’ll be no stopping him.”
“What makes you so sure it’s real?”
“He began the job right here in Khaufpur, now others are getting a taste.”
Ma starts gabbling on and on about him, what he’s done and what he’ll do next. She says that he is full of anger and is going to unleash his full fury on the world, all of us are going to catch it.
“Time for supper,” says I, reaching my hand into the hole in the wall where is the big purple onion I’ve kept aside for tonight’s meal.
“Have a care!” cries Ma. Adds with a cunning look, “Animal, dis à nos amis, soyez prêt, il vous appelera à tout moment,” it means tell our friends be ready, he’ll be wanting you any moment.
By our friends she means the scorpions that live in our wall, press your ear to the stones you’ll hear their scrapes, rustles, the clicking of tiny claws.
“What have the scorps to do with this?” I ask, removing one from the onion before extracting it from the wall.
Seems Ma has big hopes for the scorpions. “Animal, when the time comes these little beasts who live in the walls of our house, they will come creeping out and grow huge. They’ll reach the size of horses. They’ll grow stiff red wings like locusts, that rustle when they move. They’ll have faces like people and long hair like women, but their teeth will be like lions’ teeth, which they’ll gnash in the most horrifying way.”
“What will they do next, Ma?” I’ve somewhat crushed the onion with a stone, then buried it in the hot ashes of the hearth.
“They’ll wear golden crowns, when they beat their wings, it’ll sound like an army of chariots rushing to war.”
“And then?”
“Well, my little Animal, they’ll still have their tails, only much much longer, ten feet at least with a sting the size of a bull’s horn, what they’ll do is they’ll go around stabbing people, the ones who’ve done evil to others.”
“People like Fatlu Inspector and the Chief Minister? There’s a little dough left, I’ll make a chappati.”
“They’ll sting them with their tails, and those people will want to die, but won’t be able to, because the poison won’t kill them. It will fill them with agony for five months.”
“Why five months?” Five months is not enough for Fatlu Inspector. “Why not six months? Why not eighteen years?”
“It’s what Sanjo saw,” says she out of the well of her madness.
Once Ma’s eyes were bright blue, now they’re milky with coming cataracts, but when she speaks of Sanjo such a look comes into them, you’d expect their milky clouds to part and light come streaming through. Ma brings out a small black book, it’s the one written by Sanjo that tells about the end of the world, she holds it up close to her nose. “Jusques à quand, Maître saint et vrai, tarderas-tu à faire justice? à tirer vengeance de notre sang?”
Eyes, in case you don’t understand Ma’s language, this is Sanjo talking to him, he’s saying fuck’s sake how much longer will you make us wait for justice? And if you still don’t know who he is, well it’s god. Sanjo reckons that the world is full of wickedness and is going to be wiped out, this will happen in various appalling ways and is called the Apokalis.
Sanjo’s dream has a strange effect on Ma, it makes her afraid and joyful at the same time. Says she, “Don’t you see, my poor little Animal, the Apokalis has already begun? It started on that night in Khaufpur.”
Onion comes out of the embers looking like a ball of ash, break the crust it’s juicy and sweet inside, smells good. Ma does not notice the food, so caught up is she. “Listen, injustice will triumph, thousands will die in horrible ways. Well, what else happened on that night? Nous sommes le peuple de l’Apokalis.” We are the people of the Apokalis.
“Old woman,” says I giving her her share of the roti, “listen to yourself. You ask what’s normal for me, I’m mad only once in a while, you are fulltime hypped.”
Ma grumbles about the insolence of the young. “Mark my words,” she says. “It has begun again, and will not stop. Round the world it will go. Right now it’s in Amrika but it will return to Khaufpur. Terror will return to this city. It began here, here it will end.”
But Sanjo’s wrong. Fucking world didn’t end. It’s still suffering.
In the low flicker of our oil lamp, Ma’s face looks like a witch’s, onion juice is dribbling from her jaw. No teeth, with a piece of roti she scoops the soft centre into her mouth. It’s not much, a bit of salt plus a little chilli would at least make the stomach glow, but we have neither.
Later, when we have turned out the lamp she says to me in the darkness, “Animal, listen, can you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The wings of the beast, they sound just like metal shutters rattling down over the shop of Ram Nekchalan.”
Soon her snores tell me she is asleep.
I lie and think about the thing that happened in Amrika. Sleep stays far away, the rain has stopped, through holes in the roof stars are shining. During monsoon time I patch these gaps with plastic, thatch, anything, but wind must have blown it off. Through some deep abyss a star is falling, inside me wells a deep dread, such a terrible thing, who would have thought it could happen to others, to die in terror, may I never know such a death. Then it’s like someone is singing softly in my ear