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

‘He is treating the province like a giant slaughterhouse! And the government-controlled media keeps vomiting lies to the people,’ Noor thundered.

‘Stop listening to the BBC and the Voice of America. They are enemies of our country, of our religion; they are the real liars,’ Farhat retorted.

Noor could not understand Farhat’s inability to accept the truth. The context of her reality had an altered meaning, a different direction. The denial of reality, according to Noor, was the product of a chaotic mind.

‘Shut your eyes, clog your ears and pretend that the genocide against your brothers and sisters is not happening!’ Noor literally shouted.

Mansoor had never seen him so emotional. This was a different Noor, and that was a defiant Farhat.

Sixteen

War broke out again between India and Pakistan, in early December 1971, and like a broken record, they both accused each other of starting it. The Indian prime minister declared that she could not shake hands with a clenched fist. The barbaric lust for war and the urge to inflict sadistic cruelty on each other’s people were seen as the best solutions. Following the Malthusian nostrum to periodically tackle overpopulation, they willingly sacrificed their people to Ares, the god of war.

While the propaganda machine played jingoistic war songs on the radio waves, the revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz lamented:

Sajaey to kaisaey sajaey qatl-e-aam ka mela

Kisey lubhai ga mere lahoo ka wa waila?

Mere nizar badan mein lahoo hi kitna hai?

Charaagh ho koi raushan na koi jam bharey

Na is se aag hi bharkey na is sey pyas bujhey

Mere figar badan mein lahoo hi kitna hai?

Magar woh zehar-e-halahal bhara ha nas nas mein

(How to adorn the carnival of this massacre

Who will be fascinated by my blood-curdling cries?

How much blood remains in my shrivelled body?

To light up the candles or fill up the wine glasses

To stoke the fire or quench the thirst

How much blood remains in my wounded body?

As the deadly poison streams across my veins)

*

The war in 1971 was much shorter than the previous war. Operation Chengiz Khan lasted a mere thirteen days, four days less than Operation Grand Slam of 1965. But the bombs were more destructive, the noise more deafening, the annihilation more pervasive and the humiliation more complete. The morning after, the nation was stunned. The people of Pakistan woke up to a truncated land. The eastern wing of the country became the independent nation of Bangladesh, and Bangabandhu became its first prime minister. As a parting gift to the people of a torn country, Rangeelay Shah handed over power quietly to The People’s Leader. The Daily Jadal published an almost-blank front page with a single line from a couplet by the philosopher–poet Mohammad Iqbal:

Khamoshi guftugu hai, bezabani hai zubaan meri

(Silence is my speech, speechlessness is my tongue)

It was a Day of Silence, almost as though the entire nation had duct-taped its mouth. Sadiq published a poem in the Morning Gazette, entitled ‘The Rape of the Nation’, and asked, ‘Who should she go to demand justice?/ Who is there to grant justice?/ Who is going to pass judgment?/ Who will be the hangman?’

Noor, the talkative barrister, became reticent, his tongue slashed by hysterical events. He had told his son that this war would destroy the country; he had argued with his wife about her naiveté; chastised Zakir about his blinders, but now he could say no more. Mansoor saw the pain writ large and clear on his father’s face. He also mourned with the nation.

*

Several months after the war, Noor invited his highbrow friends for a late lunch to vent his muffled thoughts and to resurrect the life of pleasure that had died out in this defeated country. He had asked Mansoor to join them now that he had attained the level of intellectual sophistication that Noor had often demanded of him in the past.

When the friends arrived and settled down in the mardana, Mansoor joined them quietly. Opening a bottle of Johnnie Walker, he began pouring the whisky into the crystal glasses that had stood idly on the mahogany side table for a while. As he got ready to pour some for Zakir, he exclaimed, ‘None for me, Mansoor! I will have chai. I have stopped drinking alcohol.’

The other three friends raised their eyebrows at the heresy, especially as it came from a devotee of fine liquor. Mansoor ordered Budhoo to bring two cups of chai, one for Zakir and one for himself.

The ex-diplomat had undergone quite a profound conversion—no to alcohol, no to any ‘profane’ discussions and yes to the ‘true’ faith—his brand-new personality was the most telling souvenir of another lost war. Noor was stunned. Zakir’s new set of orthodox beliefs meant that from now on he had to regard Sadiq, who was Ahmadi, and Haider, who was Shia, as belonging to heretical faiths. The ultraconservative Sunni religious parties had been trying to declare the Ahmadis as non-Muslim since before the Partition. They also considered Shias as renegades.

‘Can you tell me what is the true faith?’ Noor asked Zakir. ‘There are seventy-two different sects, each ready to call the others kafir, ready to slit their throats at the first chance. Your true believers will be the first ones to declare our agnostic Ahmadi friend, Sadiq, a kafir.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Noor. I have already been declared a kafir by my Ahmadi co-religionists,’ Sadiq replied.

Mansoor’s eyes abruptly went to the professor’s girth, which seemed to have doubled since the last time he had seen him at Chandni Lounge. Apparently, neither shame nor guilt had affected this man who wrote poetry about the rape of the nation while sitting oblivious to his dastardly role in Mehrun’s humiliation.

That night, after his friends left, Noor drank more and spoke emotively with Mansoor about his friend’s conversion. Zakir’s oration about true believers had unbuttoned him entirely.

‘Maybe he’s just going through a phase,’ Mansoor suggested.

‘Grown men don’t just go through a phase,’ Noor replied. ‘War twists us all, but a warped war coils us differently.’ Noor looked at