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

‘You should never enter a place where alcohol is stored or served. If they ban sharab in this country, all evil will disappear like this,’ the maulvi snapped his fingers.

The pronouncement made Mansoor so uncomfortable that he thought it best to change the subject.

‘Maulvi Sahib, are djinns real?’

‘Of course, they are real! What kind of a stupid question is that? Everyone knows they are real. If they weren’t, would they be mentioned in the Qur’an?’

‘Can you tell me more?’

‘Well, djinns were Hazrat Suleman’s slaves, who employed them to make his castles and buildings.’

‘What do they look like?’ Mansoor asked.

‘How would I know? I haven’t seen his castles!’

‘No, I mean the djinns.’

The maulvi paused, closed his eyes and drew a deep breath before starting his sermon. ‘God created men from earth, angels from light and djinns from smokeless fire. He created the djinns two thousand years before he created Adam. They are invisible creatures, but they can take the shape of animals and humans. Some djinns are Muslims, while others are infidels. The Muslim djinns pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan and perform the hajj.’ He said all this as if it were a memorized lesson from his childhood.

‘What do the infidel djinns do?’

‘How would I know? I don’t hang out with them.’

‘Who was Hazrat Suleman?’ Mansoor asked.

‘Hazrat Suleman was a prophet of God, the master of the djinns, their king.’

The maulvi took out a red handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘Do you remember that night last spring when it rained furiously?’ the maulvi continued, his voice becoming dramatic now.

‘Yes,’ Mansoor replied.

‘Do you remember the loud thunder we heard throughout the night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, all the evil djinns were having a farting competition. That’s what it was.’ He looked at Mansoor and then laughed so hard that his whole body started to shake. Just then, a muezzin called the faithful for prayers from a nearby mosque. Maulvi Nazir abruptly stopped laughing and hurriedly left for the mosque, leaving Mansoor wholly bewildered.

That night, before his father returned from work, he asked his mother, ‘Amma, the thing that father drinks . . . is that sharab?’

‘No! Absolutely not. Who told you that? Don’t you ever use that word in our house! The thing that your father drinks . . . that’s his medicine.’

But Mansoor was not stupid; he knew of his mother’s attempts to cover up his father’s addiction. And he knew that his father had no medical problem whatsoever. Mansoor couldn’t remember ever seeing him sick. But even though his doubts didn’t go away, he did not pursue this line of questioning any further. As it happened, Noor came home that night while Farhat was praying, and although it was a bit late, he was surprisingly sober. Farhat looked at the ceiling, smiled and thanked God. Her prayers were working. If you beseech Allah humbly and earnestly, He answers all prayers.

*

Weeks passed by. When winter came, it swiftly clipped the autumnal drag, and what remained of the year whizzed past. For Farhat, the new year brought no respite from what she called ‘a donkey load of problems’ for her. First, there were Pyaro and Joseph, who continued to live in her premises for what seemed to be forever now. When Farhat prodded Pyaro for the millionth time, the woman told her that the new hut that Joseph and his uncle were building was almost ready. After a long pause, she said, ‘We will move back as soon as it is done, Begum Sahiba.’

‘This constantly hearing the word “soon”, it has infected my ears,’ Farhat told her.

And then there was Mehrun, who became a little too visible around the Kashana for Farhat’s comfort. Since schools were closed for the winter break and Kaneez was mostly occupied at Dr Minwalla’s clinic (the doctor’s business had suddenly boomed; rumours were rife that the general was going to launch a forced sterilization drive in the country as part of a family planning programme, so families had begun to try having as many children as possible before the men became namard, impotent), Mehrun showed up at the Kashana with Jumman every day, staying from morning till late evening and eating all her meals there. To make matters worse for Farhat, Noor conveniently left for the capital city to argue a case at the Supreme Court.

The presence of all these undesirable lodgers at the Kashana forced Farhat to visit her father on that frigid January day. Mansoor, feeling a little sick, had stayed back in his room and was whiling time away by fiddling with his Meccano set. He was always clumsy with all the nuts and bolts the set had. According to his mother, ‘the boy has never successfully constructed anything from the set ever since his father bought it from England.’ Getting frustrated now, Mansoor put all the green pieces back in the box and pushed it under his bed. He picked up Gulliver’s Travels from his desk and began reading it, but soon got distracted by Mehrun, whom he could see from his bedroom window, sitting under the guava tree with a book in her hand. Usually, the girl’s mere presence would have been enough of a gravitational pull to get him out of his bedroom. But with a book in her hand, it was simply too much to resist. So, despite being down in the dumps, Mansoor decided to go out and see what she was up to. With neither of his parents around, this was the perfect opportunity to fraternize with that ‘lowly outcast’ freely.

The dry, brownish grass of the lawn and the absence of any flowers made the backyard look dead. The only thing that coloured the landscape was Mehrun in her pink shalwar-kameez and a bright red sweater with a gaping hole at the elbow. Unperturbed by the bone-chilling wind and undisturbed by the dark winter cloud in the sky, she remained glued to her book.

‘What are you doing?’ Mansoor asked, walking up to her. ‘It’s so cold out