Well, Farouq thinks he has turned the tables here, because like I just said I am not a cat, or a dog like Jara, nor camel, goat, leopard, bear etc.
“I’m the only one there is of this type.”
“You look a lot like a human being to me,” Farouq says.
“Of course he’s a human being,” says Zafar.
“You pretend to be an animal so you can escape the responsibility of being human,” Farouq carries on. “No joke, yaar. You run wild, do crazy things and get away with it because you’re always whining, I’m an animal, I’m an animal.”
“And I’m an animal, why?” I retorted. “By my choice or because others named me Animal and treated me like one?”
“You’re well enough looked after now,” says Farouq. “We are your friends. Don’t we care about you? All this bitterness, it’s in your own mind. To be accepted as a human being, you must behave like one. The more human you act, the more human you’ll be.” He spoils the effect of this decent speech by adding with a smirk, “Four-foot cunt.”
At this Zafar looks down in the mouth because he’s not in favour of making a mockery of those who are otherwise. He says this discussion has gone far enough and that Farouq is a bad loser and also that we are both wrong, because there is a heaven, but in the words of the poet,
Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.
“If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!”
I daren’t tell Ma of my problem, first because she will fret, second she is already mad as a leper’s thumbnail.
Six nights to go, she leans towards me with a crafty smile and whispers, “The angels, they’re already here. They’re here among us in the Kingdom of the Poor.”
“What kind of angels?”
She gives me a look, like it’s me who’s crazy. “The usual sort, of course.”
Well, it is no good arguing, plus I don’t want to. There is little enough pleasure to be had from life, if someone is getting a kick from seeing angels, then good for them.
“These angels, you say they’re here in the Nutcracker?”
“Of course. I heard a trumpet this morning, before it was light.”
“Would be the Pushpak Express.”
“Always some facile explanation,” says she. “There was another blast not ten minutes later.”
“Hooter at Khaufpur Heavy Electricals factory.”
“Faith is evidence of the unseen.”
“No doubt, no doubt.”
“Listen Animal, I have seen the angels burning inside people’s bodies. I’ll look at someone and suddenly I’ll see the outlines of this other bright being locked inside. Angels I call them, although some may be demons, but they’re all alike trapped in this flesh, which for spirits is like being buried in mud. Only their eyes look out and they are so pitiful.”
“Is there an angel trapped inside me?”
She takes a look. “Can’t see one, but it might be sleeping, or doing some other business.”
“Very true.” At such times there is nothing to do but humour her.
“We live in hell. You realise that? This is hell.”
“Yes Ma.”
“When you look at the smoky flames that pass for lamps around here, you can understand why I say we’re living in hell.”
“Yup.”
“But that’s not why I’m saying it,” she cackles. “To be trapped in a human body, that is hell, if you happen to be an angel.”
I can sympathise with these angels. To be trapped in an animal body is hell, if you dream of being human.
I don’t want to die. Farouq says the fire can be crossed safely only by those whose hearts are true, which mine certainly isn’t, but if I back down he’ll never let me forget it. In my dreams I find amazing ways to survive the fire. I leap across in one bound. A downpour comes and puts out the flames. An angelic hand plucks the back of my kakadus and hoicks me clear.
So scared am I, next day I ask Elli doctress what can be done to protect hands against the touch of red hot things. My hands are hard and horny because they’re also feet, but I feel they will not survive pressing on coals.
“What on earth’s going on?” she demands. I end up telling her about Farouq, how we have a bet.
“Of course you are not to do it,” says she, same as everyone else. I tell her I’ve never yet seen anyone fall in the fire, or burn, plus Somraj told us that he had once done it as a young man.
“How can that be, Somraj is a Hindu?”
“And I’m an animal. So?” See, Eyes, in Khaufpur it’s the custom for people of all faiths to go to this famous Yar-yilaqi fire walk and many have also walked across the coals. “Somraj Pandit said he didn’t feel the fire, it was like walking on cool water.”
“Think I’ll have a word with that Somraj,” says Elli with a grim set to her face, and I feel sorry for the poor pandit, he has already had it in the ear from Nisha, who went cross-eyed fishguts when I told her the same thing.
Elli looks at me, “My dad risked his life near red hot metal, but he was doing it for his family, what are you doing it for?”
“I am doing it for my honour.”
But this is nonsense, because if I cared for nothing but honour, which is a kind of heart’s truth, I wouldn’t be afraid.
Eyes, the real reason’s Nisha, so jealous have I been since learning of her and Zafar’s Ratnagiri plus children plans. I want to impress her, also I want her to keep worrying about me and realise what she will miss if I am roasted.
“Animal, you are a total fool, will a doctor be there?” Seeing I don’t know the answer, she says that if I insist on going ahead, then she herself will come and wait by the fire, in case I, or anyone else, should need her.
“Elli, you can’t go, it’s impossible.” She’s a foreigner plus she’s Amrikan, how should she go to a masjid at this holy time, when her country is bombing Afghanistan which is right next door to the Yar-yilaqi homeland, plus many relatives of our own Yar-yilaqis are living there? She says nothing, but knowing Elli by now I should have realised, she’s like me, no one can stop her doing what she wants.
This conversation happens in her office where’s sitting the Khã-in-the-Jar, but today he keeps his mouths shut, just floats regarding me with a pissed-off expression.
“What? You, parapagus sahib. Have you nothing to say?”
“What can I say?” replies the Khã, crossly. “You are not going to do this. You know it, you’re just a posturing wanker. Bloody, it’s your friend the Khã who needs to burn, but do you think of him? You don’t. With you Animal, it’s all me, me, me.”
“Zafar brother, what speed is it now?”
“Sixty-seven.”
“Now, Zafar bhai? What speed?”
“Eighty-nine,” comes the reply torn away by wind.
It’s three in the morning, we are roaring from the lake up towards the CM’s house, this is the widest road in Khaufpur and the smoothest.
“What speed?”
“One hundred and two.”
The world is speeding by so fast, only time is flying faster, it is the eighth night of Muharram, tomorrow I meet the fire.
The house blurs past, already we’re at the big hotel Jehannum. On the way back down, Zafar chuckles to see lights have come on in the CM’s windows.
“What speed, Zafar brother?”
“Thirty-two,” says he. “Staying that way.”
Zafar brother, I didn’t say this, if I did not hate you I would love you, you are an unusual human being.
The night of Ashara Mubarak, I’ve gone to Somraj’s house to meet Bhoora, he’s going to take me to the masjid in the Chowk.
Out of her clinic steps Elli. She’s wearing a scarf on her head and a long-sleeved shirt, long to the knees over loose pyjamas. The outfit is dark blue, beads all over are sparkling, it sets off her dark hair. Except for her blue eyes, “like holes through which you see the sky,” this is what an old woman in the Nutcracker had told her, except for these eyes which could be hidden behind a veil, almost she looks like an Indian woman, her skin is browned by the sun almost as dark as Nisha’s, but it won’t be disguise enough.