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

especially not on so miserable a day. When neither Jumman nor Kaneez showed up, she dragged herself to the kitchen and opened the big white Philips refrigerator that Noor had recently bought from London. Taking out a packet of frozen mutton, Farhat braced herself at the thought of cooking again, hoping that she still had her skills intact. But then the sobbing figure of Pyaro entered the kitchen, followed by Joseph.

‘Begum Sahiba! We lost everything, we lost everything!’ she bawled in her accented Urdu.

The rotting smell of sewage from their soaking clothes choked the kitchen air. Clamping her nose shut with her thumb and index finger, Farhat asked, ‘What happened? You two stink like gobar, like cow dung.’

Pyaro stepped back and recounted the whole story in between sobs, while Joseph stood solemnly behind her, his hands in his pockets, his face hanging down, his drenched shirt revealing his hairy chest. Noor, who had just changed into dry clothes, heard the bawling and came to the kitchen. Mansoor also came running from the library. When she saw Noor, Pyaro turned towards him, prostrated, and started to wail again.

‘Stand up, Pyaro, and tell me, slowly, what happened,’ Noor said.

Pyaro got up and narrated the whole story again, and Farhat saw her husband listening attentively. After hearing her tale, Noor asked her to calm down and added, ‘You can stay at the empty quarter near Budhoo’s till you get back on your feet.’

‘Thank you, Barrister Sahib . . . thank you. May Yesu Masih grant you a long life and happiness,’ she said, drying her tears with her damp chador.

Noor left the kitchen abruptly, but Mansoor stayed on. A sudden chill fell over the room as Farhat saw the need to re-establish her authority. She did not appreciate her husband’s hospitality. It was one thing to have given Pyaro a job as a sweeper, it was quite another to provide them with a place to stay in the servants’ quarters. These were unclean people. How could Noor make such an offer without even consulting her, as if she weren’t even there? And how dare these two impose themselves on her house, and that too without her permission? If she had her way, she would have told them to find shelter in their own community. Powerless to rescind her husband’s orders, yet desiring to assert herself, she laid fresh conditions.

‘This doesn’t mean you can live here forever; do you understand?’

‘Yes, Begum Sahiba, we are not going to stay one more day than is necessary,’ Joseph interjected.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ Farhat snapped back at him with the imperial air that she assumed whenever she was addressing the servants.

‘No, Begum Sahiba, we understand perfectly,’ Pyaro hastened to assure her.

‘And keep your lafanga son in reins.’

‘The lafanga will be reined,’ Joseph replied under his breath.

‘If you talk rubbish, I will pull your tongue out from your mouth,’ Farhat threatened Joseph.

‘Shut up, Joseph!’ his mother scolded him.

As they turned to leave, Joseph winked at Mansoor, who smiled back. Farhat saw that little exchange and gave Mansoor a dirty look.

A light breeze dispersed the insufferable smell from Pyaro and Joseph’s clothes that had lingered on in the kitchen.

*

Pyaro and Joseph became a permanent fixture at the Kashana, but to Farhat, they were more like a scandalous stain on her landscape than mere interlopers. She felt ashamed to see them living in her servants’ quarters, these low-life people. As if that churail was not enough, now there were two more who had installed themselves in her home to bring bad luck and cast an evil shadow over the Kashana. She felt like screaming at her husband. Why do you always want to torment me? The regret of having hired Pyaro in the first place permeated her mind, as her anger turned into a painful acceptance of this new reality, this new arrangement.

*

The floodwaters receded and the hot October sun began fracturing the earth again. Life returned to its ordinariness. One significant change that happened at the Kashana, at least in Farhat’s eyes, was that Noor cut down on his visits to the Sindh Club. Most nights, he returned home relatively early, and after a light supper, drank his whisky and lectured his son before going to sleep. To Farhat, this was a sign that her prayers were finally being answered, and it was only a matter of time before Noor would see the light, give up alcohol altogether and revert to piety. So, she began to pray more fervently for that auspicious day.

The reality, of course, was different. Noor had decided that he would shape his son’s mind through his nightly lectures; he believed that he could provide a liberal education that no school in Pakistan could. He thought of himself not as a scholar, but as a scholar manqué. Well-read, eclectic and with a keen analytical mind, Noor could easily dissect his opponents’ arguments in court and disarm his intellectual inferiors. Often, he would argue about contemporary literature with Sadiq and debate history with the Harvard-educated Zakir.

After asking Mansoor a few questions about the history of the subcontinent and getting woefully shocking answers, Noor decided to take his son’s education as a personal challenge. He asked Mansoor to bring his history textbook. As he read through it, Noor realized that the book was nothing more than a handful of dogmas disguised as history. To him, it was all propaganda, interwoven into chapters of lies, a curriculum that propagated hatred, especially towards India, the putative enemy. According to Mansoor’s textbook, Pakistan’s history began with the Arab invasion, centred on the Mughals and ended with the creation of Pakistan. The Hindus, whose presence in the region long predated that of the Arabs, were a mere footnote in this hagiographic narrative.

‘Beta, when invaders are portrayed as liberators and when the looters of temples become our heroes, the past ceases to exist and history becomes a pack of lies. The surest way to destroy your culture and your history is to erase