Of Smokeless Fire by A.A. Jafri (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📕

a soldier of the true faith and we need to strengthen his hands. General Behroopia is the first ruler who doesn’t drink alcohol. He is the first ruler who prays every waking hour. He is a breath of fresh air. What is so sacred about democracy, anyway?

The English language papers put up a feeble defence using the Doctrine of Doubt. In our faith, they argued, the accused has the right to doubt. But who doubts the accused, and most of all, who read these useless English dailies? After all, they represented the colonial mindset.

Mansoor cringed when he read the shameless validations published in the newspapers. The Orwellian ‘modern past’ was something new. The idea that history is shaped by large, impersonal forces just got gutted by this grinning, grotesque theocratic figure, his name a cruel reminder of the dark reality that had swallowed the country.

When Haider returned from work that night, he invited Mansoor for a drink. Dimming the lights in the room, he took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker from his cabinet and made Mansoor a drink. As he handed him the whisky, he said, ‘The last gift from your late father. I might as well share it with you before they flog us both to death.’

At that moment, Mansoor missed his father dearly, and Haider saw his Noor in Mansoor. After a few swigs, he asked him, ‘So, what do you think of this bastard?’

Mansoor paused for a moment and repeated what his father had once told him, ‘Uncle Haider, whenever you replace any concrete reality with an abstract idea of a homogenized people, you create a passive putty to be kneaded at will by the tyrants. This is the first step towards hell.’

‘I miss your father so much, Mansoor.’ Haider took off his spectacles and began to cry uncontrollably.

*

With his life suddenly interrupted, Mansoor now had to search for a new normal. Money was hardly a problem. His father had taken care of his financial well-being while he was alive. He had opened a joint account with Mansoor at Citibank. The considerable wealth that he inherited from his father was his to spend, but he also had substantial savings of his own in the High Finance Bank. So, after staying at Haider’s house for two months, Mansoor shifted to one of the newer three-bedroom luxury apartments near Clifton Beach, one of the poshest places in Karachi.

He bought a used Honda Civic, and with Haider’s influence, got a telephone line and a temporary job teaching economics at President’s College. Once settled, he hired a young attorney, S.M. Abrar, a protégé of his father, and filed a lawsuit against Athanni and the rest of his family. Athanni had not expected Mansoor to give up his house so meekly, but he had not expected a trial so soon either. The speed with which Mansoor moved had taken him by surprise.

But Athanni had found a new purpose to his life, which did not include resting easy and letting Mansoor’s lawsuit proceed smoothly. He hired his own lawyer, Mushtaq Ahmad, who filed a counter lawsuit in the sharia court, alleging, among other things, that Mansoor was unfit to own his parents’ home because he was an atheist and a blasphemer.

‘How are you going to prove that?’ his lawyer asked, sceptical about the charges.

‘Leave it to me, I will produce the evidence.’

Mansoor had a hunch that his lawsuit would bring about a counter lawsuit from Athanni. So, when he received the court papers for the countersuit, he braced himself for a long-drawn-out battle. Realizing that his stay in Pakistan would now be protracted, Mansoor wrote another letter to Lisa, explaining this added snag. A month later, he received a four-page missive from her. She had finished her PhD and got a job at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. After considering his proposal seriously, she had reached a painful conclusion and wrote, ‘I cannot marry you and let you leave your heart behind in Pakistan. This is your Pakistan, and you need to retake it. I can’t help you with that.’

Like a dagger, the words pierced his heart. Stunned by her words, he ached with an unnerving feeling inside his gut. He had not expected his relationship to end so abruptly, that too by way of a letter. She had laid out her reasons, elaborated her explanations and written her points down logically, but the pages now became blurred, and the details lost all their meaning. He put the letter on the table, closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Another heartache had invaded his life. All his loved ones gone, he stood there all alone. Amidst all the tragedy and turmoil, Lisa had stayed by his side like an angel of love. She had been his hope, his bliss, his reason for life, but now she had parted company too.

Twenty-Eight

It was General Behroopia who introduced terrorizing despotism in the country. He started every speech in the name of God, but he might as well have started it in the name of repression, for that was his true god. To establish a political base for himself, he fraternized with the new oligarchs, hobnobbed with the lota politicians and flirted with the fundamentalists, whom the people called ‘the fundoos’. His most dangerous act was the toleration of the burgeoning Kalashnikov–heroin culture in the country. In his Pakistan, guns and heroin went hand in hand. Karachi, called the Gateway to the West, by The Great Leader, became the gateway for guns and drug traffickers.

Behroopia’s allies became the animators of his cartoonish but treacherous regime. With their ill-gotten wealth and their rotten riches, they built profane palaces. They threw nauseating parties where they openly paraded their depravity and flouted every Hudood Ordinance with impunity, giving new meaning to the word ‘untouchable’. The draconian laws were imposed only on the poor, the illiterate and the liberal enemies of the state. The obnoxiously wealthy had always had their separate set of rules, but now