But next morning, when she opens the doors, the street is still empty.
TAPE FOURTEEN
I have nine days to live, for tonight there’s no moon in the sky, it’s the first night of Muharram. The ninth night is Ashara Mubarak, the night of the fire walk, the night I will surely die.
Never have I been more scared, I’ve been dreaming of those cruel coals, the fire pit’s no fake. In past years I’ve watched men with leather bellows blow air onto the fire until the coals glow white. In my dreams I walk onto them and my hands burst into flames, I fall and I’m all burned up.
The fire is part of Muharram here in Khaufpur and will always be, because it’s the heat of the desert where the Prophet’s grandson, Hazrat Imam Hussein was martyred.
Everyone in Khaufpur knows the story of Imam Hussein. How many times have I heard it from the mouth of old Hanif Ali, he’ll rock back on his heels and close his eyes, the cataracts that stop him seeing dissolve away, he’s seeing the world of a thousand years ago. “What are these red tulips that bloom in the desert? In Karbala that dreadful place, I see Hussein, grandson of the Prophet, upon whom be peace. Tired he is and thirsty, and all around his companions lie fallen. Alone he defies Yazid the tyrant and his thirty-three thousand men, better it is to die with dignity than to live a humiliating life.”
A great hero, was Hussein, to defy such odds, to stick up for what he believed in, that kind of courage I admire, but do not share.
Even Zafar, who refuses to believe in god, says we must all be like Hussein who never gave up and refused to be cowed by the evil powers that rule this world. When he says this I know he is thinking of the Kampani and its friends who rule countries and cities, who have guns and soldiers and bombs and all the money in all the banks of the world, and that pitted against them he sees us, the people of the abyss, Ma Franci’s people of the Apokalis, he tells us that we will win, because we are armed with the invincible power of nothing.
Nine more days. I’ll never walk upright. I’ll never again hear Nisha sing, for in Somraj’s house out of respect for the neighbours the singing and sounds have stopped, for the rest of my life there’ll be silence. I’ll never marry Nisha. I’ll never marry anyone. I’ll never know what it is like to fuck.
Nine days to do everything I want to do in my life. I’ve caught Zafar aside, “Zafar brother, there’s something I must do before I die, will you help me?”
“Say, brother. What is it?” he asks kindly.
“I would like to ride on a motorbike at one hundred miles per hour.”
He strokes his beard. “Hmm, on roads like ours, could be deadly.”
“In nine days I will be dead anyway.”
“Why will you die, you fool?” he asks, laughing.
“Because of my bet with Farouq. I have to cross that fire, I swear in my mind it burns like the pit of hell itself.”
“First, there’s no such place as hell,” says he. “Second, you won’t walk.”
“That I will. I’m not backing down.”
Farouq is also counting, he comes to Chunaram’s looking for me, I’m sitting with Zafar and others.
“Eight more days, Animal, until the fire.”
“I’m ready,” says I, meaning I am ready to die.
“Better get a religion quick,” says Farouq. He says that if I reform, become a Muslim, and lead a good life, I’ll get to paradise. So I look at him and ask does his religion not forbid him to smoke and drink, plus what of his visits to those houses in the old city?
“You’re just jealous,” he says, “because no girl wants to do it with you.” But he’s scowling, so I know I’ve scored a hit.
I tell him that Ma Franci also talks of heaven to me. “Isa miyañ loves you as you are, your soul is as precious to him as anyone’s. Take him to your heart and you’ll be saved from hell.” I replied that I deserve to be more precious than anyone else because I’ve already been to hell.
“Wah wah,” says Zafar. “Sixer.”
“Heaven and hell forget, we’re stuck on this earth,” says Chunaram, who also believes in life after death, but of a different kind. Chunaram says I should be a Hindu because of all I’ve suffered in this life, I’m sure to get a better deal next time round, more than likely be a prince or politician or something. Trouble with that way of looking at things is by the same logic my situation is the result of evil things I did in my past lives, some people do look at me as if they’re wondering how many children I murdered last time round.
Whoever I talk to, seems the main reason for having a religion is to cheat death and live again, here or in heaven, wherever. Well, I don’t want another life, thanks, not if it’s anything like this one.
“You wouldn’t be crooked in paradise,” says Farouq. “You’d be whole and upright.”
Well, this is also what Ma says about heaven but I don’t believe a word. If religions were true there wouldn’t be so many of them, there’d be just one for everyone. Of course all say theirs is the only real one, fools can’t see this makes even less sense. Suppose people talked of beauty in the same way, how foolish would they sound? Times like this I feel sorry for god’s being torn to pieces like meat fought over by dogs. I, me, mine, that’s what religions are, where’s room in them for god?
I hate to praise Zafar but he is the only one who has a sensible view because not only doesn’t he believe in god, he thinks religion is a bad thing. The idea of heaven was invented by the rich and powerful to keep the poor from rebelling. Zafar will dip in his pocket for a beggar but never gives to those who ask in the name of god. He says if he believes in anything it’s humanity, that deep down all people are good. I don’t know where he gets that idea, because there’s no evidence for it in the world.
Zafar and Farouq have this in common, I should cease thinking of myself as an animal and become human again. Well, maybe if I’m cured, otherwise I’ll never do it and here’s why, if I agree to be a human being, I’ll also have to agree that I’m wrong-shaped and abnormal. But let me be a quatre pattes animal, four-footed and free, then I am whole, my own proper shape, just a different kind of animal from say Jara, or a cow, or a camel.
Farouq says if I want to end up in paradise I’ll have to turn human.
“Why so, moosh?”
“Paradise is for humans, not for animals.”
“What harm do animals do?”
“Not a question of harm. Do you expect that every ant that gets crushed under a villager’s horny heel goes to paradise?”
“Don’t see why not. If they have flowers and birds in paradise why not ants? Isn’t there room?”
“There are no insects in paradise,” says Farouq.
Zafar hearing this remarks that in that case the Kampani’s dead factory must be a kind of paradise because it too has no insects.
“Wait!” I say. “Didn’t you tell me that in paradise people will have fine couches surrounded by precious silks and carpets?”
“Surely,” says Farouq.
“And fountains and rivers will come gushing forth and there will be fruit orchards as far as the eye can see?”
Farouq nods, I have got him now.
“And wine, milk and honey will flow?”
“They will.”
“How can there be honey without bees?”
So Zafar starts laughing and says Farouq must admit I have a point.
“Leave bees out of it,” says Farouq, aggrieved as if his mother had been a bee and was being insulted here. “Animal is not a bee. What kind of animal are you, anyway?” he demands. “You’ve never said what sort you are.”