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

When Mehrun got this part-time job, she did not have to worry about finding work as a domestic servant any longer. The new fount of income made Jumman quit his job at the Kashana and become a full-time schizophrenic. The only annoyance that re-entered Mehrun’s life was Khaleel Khan, alias Athanni, who, despite failing his school exams, also found a position in this new bank.

*

Reza Dabiran came through for Joseph, finding him work at the National Iranian Petroleum Company, and even sending him money for airfare and other expenses. Pyaro pleaded, cajoled and emotionally blackmailed Joseph, even threatening suicide, but nothing worked. Joseph’s mind was made up. Anxious and ready to depart, he promised his mother that he would send her enough money so that she wouldn’t need to do the ‘shitty’ job again. Feeling helpless, she hugged him and prayed to God for her son’s health, all the while hoping he would not get his passport.

Her prayers went unanswered and Joseph got his first passport. It surprised him that the government had made it so easy that he was able to get it without paying any bribe and in good time. Was the reason for this to encourage its nationals to work overseas and send foreign exchange remittances to boost the country’s dwindling reserves? After he bought his plane ticket, he went to the Kashana to bid the Haq family goodbye. Mansoor had mixed feelings when Joseph told him about his impending departure the following week. Happy that he had found a better-paying job, but sad that he may never see him again, he controlled his tears. Much to Joseph’s surprise, Farhat gave him two hundred and fifty rupees and told him to buy some clothes. Noor asked him, ‘What will your mother do?’

‘Sahib, she says that she will go back to her family in Punjab.’

Noor asked him to wait and went to his bedroom. When he returned, he had an envelope in his hand. He gave it to Joseph and said, ‘This has money for your mother; not for you. Give it to her.’

Joseph started to weep at the generosity of his employers. He wanted to hug them, but societal barriers prevented him from doing so. Mansoor followed him to the gate. As he was about to sit on his bicycle, Joseph said to his friend with a smile, ‘Tell Mehrun, my marriage proposal is still valid.’ Mansoor laughed and said, ‘You will have to tell her that when you become an idiot millionaire.’

*

Meanwhile, Mansoor’s imperious father forced him to study economics and political science in his senior year. Literature, philosophy and religion—Mansoor’s newest passions—could wait until his career was established. When he had argued about this, his father had replied with his usual sarcasm, ‘Sahibzadey, do you want to sell peanuts after you graduate, or do you want to teach in a mosque? Or maybe you can do both.’

Mansoor had slowly begun to feel that religion was that part of his culture which was sorely missing in his life. Except for Maulvi Sahib’s wishy-washy, one-dimensional limited knowledge and his mother’s odd chunks of dogma, he knew little else. At that juncture in Pakistan’s history, for all practical purposes, religion remained a mostly private matter. But that cavity, a gift from his father, suddenly needed filling. Unable to explain to Noor his love of the liberal arts and his want of religion, Mansoor struggled within. With Joseph gone and Mehrun busy with her new job, he felt lonely. So, Mansoor immersed himself in books and read everything from the trashy to the transcendent, from James Hadley Chase to Albert Camus, from Harold Robbins to Bertrand Russell. He also pored over Urdu literature and read Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Saadat Hassan Manto and Qurratulain Hyder. Manto stirred his sexual consciousness, while Camus, Russell and Haider stoked his philosophical interest. And then there was Faiz, who made him fall in love with the poetry of dissent. The beliefs that had been hanging in his embrace, like dangling participles, came under fresh scrutiny. Vague religious convictions, which had been seeded here and there and had begun to take root, withered under reflection. Purveyors of religion, on his shortwave radio and the new television in the house, appeared as charlatans. And when the newly formed religious party, the Guardians of Divinity (G.O.D.) offered frayed certitudes wrapped in glossy packages, Mansoor’s doubts hardened.

*

General Dundda sacked his brilliant foreign minister, who, with a blasted ego and a determination fed by anger, began plotting retaliation. He first tried to join different political parties, and when that failed, he formed his own—The Party of Oppressed People. Some people abbreviated it as P.O.P., while others went with P.O.O.P. Noor preferred the latter. And so, the P.O.O.P.s clashed with the G.O.D.s, and they both fought with the police. And when things did not calm down, the general imposed a curfew and arrested his brilliant foreign minister on trumped-up charges and made him a star. To divert the nation’s attention, the general then ordered his sycophantic advisers to prepare for the ‘Decade of Development’, which was to be launched on the tenth anniversary of his coup d’état. Noor called it the ‘Delusion of Development’ and wrote an op-ed page for the Morning Gazette, but Haider vetoed it. It was too inflammatory.

Fifteen

The ‘Decade of Development’ was celebrated with pageantry and parades as General Dundda officially inaugurated the first television station in Karachi and gave his first and last televised speech. The cities shimmered with decorative lights, while the newspapers published special supplements paying glowing tributes to the President. Poets and writers wrote painful panegyrics, their barbarous expressions mocking human intelligence. And the flagrant contradiction of the last ten years stood there in all its nakedness as a farcical tragedy. Who prospered, who suffered, who won and who lost was no longer a mystery. A handful of the wealthiest families had amassed more wealth than the rest of the