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

‘No, I don’t, especially not with the brand of religion that he is preaching! I think that he is using religion to serve himself!’ Mansoor shouted with a pagan exhilaration.

‘I know all about your al-Ma?arrī Club. Let me just tell you that it was a silly idea.’

‘Life is incomplete without its bathos and sordor, Mister Basit. You ought to try them sometime,’ Mansoor shot back.

‘Try your sordor in America. We don’t want it in Pakistan!’ Basit’s nostrils quivered as he shouted.

‘Who are we? Does your we include me? Isn’t this my country too? And why should this plural pronoun contain only you?’ Mansoor demanded.

‘I don’t think that you like belonging here, Mister Mansoor. You don’t seem to even believe in the most elemental reason for why Pakistan came into being. And if you don’t believe in that, you forfeit the right to belong to this state.’

Realizing that the discussion was just dragging on, Mansoor extricated himself by saying, ‘Mister Basit, I don’t want to argue with you any more. You have your inherited beliefs, and I have my scepticisms. But let me tell you this: if I am allowed to teach, I will continue to ask uncomfortable questions.’

Without giving Basit the chance to re-engage, Mansoor stormed out of the office. He knew that this new altercation would soon become the talk of the college, but it was too late to care. He knew he would get into trouble for this, but it felt good.

And then, a few minutes after he left, Athanni knocked on the door of Mansoor’s shared office and was let in by Abdul Basit.

Twenty-Nine

The day of the conference arrived quietly on a cold and sombre Friday in December. The sun shone with little warmth and no lustre. Mansoor drove his Honda Civic towards his college, taking the route that he always took. He had taken that route thousands of times before, but for the first time he became painfully aware of the teeming human bundles huddled together, sleeping on the cold, heartless, hard-edged footpaths of the city. It was a humanoid debris zone with raggedly clad bodies scattered across the walkways. For generations, these pavement dwellers had slept there, invisible to the early morning traffic, unmindful of the stumbling commuters and hidden to the city administrators. The government splurged millions of rupees organizing pseudo-conferences like the one Mansoor was required to attend, but it did not spend a single paisa on improving the looted lives of the poor. Mansoor felt tortured. He thought about the Kashana, the almost-palatial house that he had lived in growing up, and felt guilty. Perhaps when he got possession of the house again, he could convert it into a shelter for homeless people. What was the point of all this anyway? Mansoor agonized over his comfortable existence; he thought about the plastic people he’d met at a wedding party he had just attended, and he reflected on the bogus educational institutions organizing bogus conferences. General Behroopia had converted the entire country into a veritable charade, but what could Mansoor do? Falsehood, excuses and fraud—recycled each year, while the tragic human disorder on the streets remained irrevocable.

*

Mansoor was among the first ones to arrive at the auditorium where the conference was to be held. As he sat on an empty seat, doubts seeped into his mind and he began questioning his presence at the conference. By merely attending it, wasn’t he legitimizing this faux exercise? Being in attendance meant he was a party to this profane transaction. It was no longer funny. The comical had bonded with the macabre. The changing laws, the shifting narrative, they were nothing to laugh about. As his heart thumped furiously, he felt he was about to go through a tragic, unnerving tour of zombie land.

A throng of people, masquerading piety, moving effortlessly, filled the auditorium as if this were the event of the century. Professor Basit came along with some of Mansoor’s colleagues and his students from the al-Ma?arrī Club. They all ignored him. Mansoor closed his eyes, already tired. As the lights dimmed, Athanni sneaked in with a group of men and quickly slithered into a dark corner of the auditorium, away from Mansoor. He sat hidden from him, his eyes glued on Mansoor’s back, seething with anger, the memory of the disgrace he’d experienced at the court still raw, the subsequent beating by his father still hurting.

The general arrived half an hour late, inaugurated the conference with his bland, smarmy speech, thanked the participants for their scholarly endeavours and left without even hearing the first presenter. Mansoor followed his example and left the auditorium soon after. Athanni walked behind him, keeping a healthy distance from him and holding a walkie-talkie in his hand.

*

Mansoor did not want to be caught up in the buffoonery of the so-called conference. It had utterly disgusted him. He could do with some fresh air. He needed to walk to unburden himself of this feeling of revulsion, to shake off the doubts that had hazed his mind. Leaving his car in the parking area, he wandered for hours through the crowded streets of Karachi, absorbed in his own thoughts, dodging the beggars, brushing shoulders with strangers, impervious to the cold air.

And Athanni trailed him from a distance. Was this the new Plan B-2? Was some madness lurking in ambush?

Mansoor remained unaware of his pursuer as he continued reflecting on his last years in Pakistan and the time he had frittered away. He thought of his future blankly closing down before him. At that moment, Mansoor felt a grave sense of gloom, like a lost child. The ties that bound him to his native land seemed undone; he felt homeless, uprooted and alone, with doors slammed shut, no place to call his own, the country, a picture of wretchedness. He should have gone back to America. He should have married Lisa. He should have cut all ties with his homeland. His country, as his father used to call it, had deserted