Muzaffar Tunio walked back to his desk even more confused than he had left it. He had waited in the corridor for 2 hours to express a total cluelessness about why the weather was so cold and during the two hours he had waited, the cold wave seemed to have dissipated entirely.
Even worse, his boss had chewed him out about failing to put together a plausible explanation for the goings on at the Karachi University campus – and he was totally unaware that there had been anything unusual going on at the Karachi University campus...
....and how it could possibly be related to anything that a meteorologist was supposed to be aware of. He sent the peon out to get him a bottle of RC Cola and a couple of samosas and picked up the phone.
Professor Mir Mashooq Ali Talpur sat with his feet pulled up on the chair. This was not his preferred posture but sometimes you don’t want your feet on the ground.
The Professor was proud of his house that he had been allotted on the Karachi University grounds in accordance with his position as the Head of the Department of Social Work. It was a quiet job in the sense that semesters could go by without a student enrolling for a degree...
...and he could stay at his house in the university campus, tending to his flower garden or take a break and head to his family home in Khairpur without anyone knowing and tend to his date palms over there.
Professor Talpur was a man of the soil. His little garden boasted 83 different types of flowers and each and every one of them was beautiful. He would mulch and plant and prune throughout the year, totally comfortable with getting his hands dirty.
Professor Talpur was unfazed by the insects and reptiles and rodents and other pests a man creating a horticultural paradise faces over the course of his life.
But now he sat with his feet on the chair feeling a ripple of fear down as his spine as hundreds of tiny frogs swarmed through his drawing room.
Frogs do not swarm in January. Late spring, fine. After the monsoon, totally understandable. But during the dry months of a coastal Sindh winter? No. Frogs do not swarm in January. And they definitely do not swarm in drawing rooms.
Professor Talpur took a deep breath, jumped from his chair and ran out, grabbing the cordless phone that had been ringing off the hook on the way.
While Muzaffar Tunio was driving to the KU campus to see what his brother in law had gotten so riled up about, Amjad Qureshi was driving to his shop in Sarafa Bazaar, the jewelers’ market, between Bolton Market and Jodia Bazaar.
Amjad Qureshi, or Amjad Bhai as he was known to all and sundry, was president of the Karachi Saraf and Jewelers Association. His family had been in the gold and jewelry business for generations and as the shop attendants in his employ were trained to say,...
...more of Amjad Bhai’s family’s works had graced the necks of Delhi royalty than even the British could steal for their Museum in London.
In the heavily locked and boarded basement accessible only from Amjad Bhai’s office were stored gold bars and ingots and coins and several unfinished commissioned pieces for his clientele.
Amjad Bhai no longer had the eyesight or the dexterity to work on the pieces himself but he was a hard taskmaster and kept a close eye on what was being produced and ensured nothing but pieces depicting the highest quality of craftsmanship possible ever made it out of the store.
There was one more thing that never made it out of the store. In a small velvet box hidden behind old receipts in a drawer was a simple gold ring of unknown provenance that his father had brought with him from Delhi.
Amjad Bhai knew this was a ring that neither his staff nor his ancestors could have ever made. His late father had never pretended otherwise and had only instructed him to never sell it or wear it in public.
The Qureshi family men never wore gold themselves anyway so it stayed safely ensconced in the back of his drawer. And normally Amjad Bhai wouldn’t have even remembered it existed.
But he’d woken up cold and shivering that morning with an inexplicable urge to reorganize his office and clean out his drawers. That would mean hiding the small velvet box somewhere else.
When he walked into his shop, Amjad Bhai knew something was wrong. One of the younger attendants was dealing with a customer clad in a black burqa and wearing a niqab. Not entirely unusual. But the lady was tall. At least 6 feet tall.
And while that may be unusual it’s not normally alarming. And Amjad Bhai could feel he had seen her before. She had been there at his father’s soyem a decade ago. And earlier still when his grandfather had passed. As she turned around to look at him, Amjad Bhai remembered more.
She had been at his wedding and he’d seen her at the maternity home the day his son was born. She had been at his bedside at the hospital when he had cholera in 1964.
He had a flashback of a memory he couldn’t possibly have, his father holding him in his arms as a baby as the barber shaved his head at his aqeeqa and he saw the woman standing behind his grandmother staring at him.
And in an instant longer than an eternity Amjad Bhai’s whole life passed before his eyes; every important memory that he had ever had and the burqa clad woman he had never really noticed present in every scene.
Hovering in the backdrop, lurking in the shadows, walking ahead on a pavement, standing behind in a queue, sitting on a table next to his at a restaurant, passing by in a rickshaw, sitting ahead of him in a train, ...
...in happiness and in grief and in success and in failure she had always been there and not quite there.
But now she was here. Right in front of him. Looking at him. Straight at him.
The young shop attendant greeted him. “This is Mrs. Qareen. She wants a ring.”
The young shop attendant greeted him. “This is Mrs. Qareen. She wants a ring.”
Faizan Qadri was a young man with what could best be described as a mediocre education. He had done his B.Com. before joining the police force and received the smattering of religious education from the neighborhood madrassa...
...that any child of religious parents might expect. He was not, however, totally uninitiated in the lore of the Jinn. When children in Karachi meet their cousins for sleepovers during summer breaks, they, like children anywhere, tell each other stories.
They read journals and digests and novels and watch movies and TV too. They know, as do most people, that when a possession event occurs there will be period of altered consciousness, gibberish spoken, changes in voice patterns, hallucinations,...
...loss of space and time awareness, possible incontinence, unkempt hair and un-ironed clothes and screams and erratic behaviour, a propensity for self harm and violence and all manner of things that make for a scary story when the lights are off.
Those possessed can sometimes not move and sometimes move with unusual speed and sometimes not sleep and sometimes sleep the sleep of the dead.
They may eat nothing for days or eat like they’ve not eaten for years and the only thing they’re sure to do is unnerve those around them with what feels like a presence and a half. They are, after all, not just themselves any more.
Faizan felt none of this. When he shot off the padlocks on the casket the chanting had stopped. And since then there had been only euphoria.
He had walked back to the hut with something of a swagger, singing his favourite song, Papa Kehte Hein, feeling like the king of the world. He showered, shaved and combed his hair and then came out to sit on the porch in a clean white shirt and a pair of jeans.
As he lit up a cigarette he noticed a solitary frog jump up on his knee. Faizan gently picked up the frog in his hand and for the first time felt himself say something he thought he would not normally have said.
“Go. And multiply.”
The frog hopped of his hand and the porch and headed towards the city. Faizan puffed on his cigarette.
The frog hopped of his hand and the porch and headed towards the city. Faizan puffed on his cigarette.
Majid Ajmeri turned around to face the shadow in the darkest corner of the room. He knew the legend of the chained king in the casket but so did everyone else. He needed to know a lot more to know how to deal with it.
Turab’s eyes glowed like embers. They stared at each other in silence, man and Marid, plotting the battles ahead.
***to be continued***
A lot can happen in seven years. Seven years ago, when she had married him, Javed had been a young man full of promise and possibilities.
He’d brought her to their small house in Pak Colony after the wedding and despite the scandalized oohs and aahs of the assembled relatives lifted her up and carried her in the house laughing as she shrieked in a mix of humor and embarrassment.
Mehjabeen looked across the room at the shell of the man that Javed had been. Gone were the days of him bringing her gajras every day on his way back from work and the dinner dates they had at Silver Spoon and Kundan Broast and Burger Time.
There were no more bangles on Eid, no more late night kulfis or renting VHS tapes of cheesy Bollywood romances from Gulzar Video down the street.
The diaries Javed used to write horrendous bawdy poetry to her in with his yellow Piano ballpoints now gathered dust in the loft. Javed hadn’t touched a pen in ages.
She watched him take another puff on his hash laden cigarette and stare with his glassy eyes at the clouds of smoke above his head. A lot can happen in seven years. Plans can be made, futures can be plotted, successes can be enjoyed, failures can be mourned.
A city of dreams can descend into civil war. The Javeds of this world can go from busting dance moves like Salman Khan from Mein Ne Pyaar Kiya to busting their wives’ faces in fits of drugged up fury.
Hope can give way to despair, joy can give way to bitterness, love can bloom like the chambelis on the creeper on the boundary wall of the house in Pak Colony or it can wither away and die.
A lot can happen in seven years. But sometimes children can’t.
Mehjabeen picked up her purse and keys and headed out. Someone had to earn a living and if it wasn’t going to be Javed, it had to be her. Mehjabeen’s business cards read simply:
Mrs. Mehjabeen Javed
Lady Driving Instructor
Ph: 626080
Mrs. Mehjabeen Javed
Lady Driving Instructor
Ph: 626080
It wasn’t a dream but what it was was a living. Her clientele was mostly based in PECHS and the Society area where there were enough people with enough cars to spare the odd one for the lady of the house. And most new clients were referrals. Like the one today.
Mehjabeen pulled up to the gate of the house in her battered beige Suzuki FX and honked the horn twice. She didn’t like ringing doorbells and waiting like an idiot for people who sometimes took 15 minutes to come out after promising their mothers-in-law...
...they would be home soon, instructing their maids not to add too much salt to the curry, yelling at the kids to do their homework and then modeling their driving sunglasses in a mirror before heading out.
This new client, however, didn’t take more than a few seconds. As if she had been waiting behind the gate for Mehjabeen to honk her horn.
Mehjabeen was not used to punctual people. It was Karachi after all. And this client didn’t behave like a Karachiite either. She got in the car, handed over the 300 rupees and said, “Drive.”. This was an interesting situation for Mehjabeen.
On the one hand, the woman had paid and was an entitled to an hour of her time. On the other she was a driving instructor not some sort of taxi service. But 300 rupees was 300 rupees. Mehjabeen put the car into gear.
Bilqis Naveed was not an idiot. She knew something was bothering her normally chatty husband.
He had been aloof since he’d come back from his butcher’s shop and though it wasn’t remotely as cold as it had been in the morning, he was huddled up in a blanket on his side of the bed.
. Bilqis was not an idiot but she was also not the type to seek drama. Naveed would talk when he was ready. She switched off the light and went to sleep.
In his blanket on his side of the bed, Naveed listened to his wife’s breathing.
In his blanket on his side of the bed, Naveed listened to his wife’s breathing.
He waited for it to even out into the unmistakable rhythm of her deep sleep before he quietly got up and headed to the bathroom. There was, of course, an urge to look down at the icicles on his foot that had ceased to hurt once the unnatural cold wave broke...
...but Naveed knew there was something more going on with him. He pulled off his kurta and looked into the mirror. Everything seemed normal. He looked down at the foot.
The icicles were gone but Naveed could have sworn he felt the missing toes and completeness of balance a foot with five toes gives a man. What then was wrong?
His hair was as it had always been, no blemishes or scars on his skin, no popping veins, no aches or pains. Only the nagging feeling at the back of his head that something wasn’t normal.
And then it hit him. His chest wasn’t heaving as it should have with his breaths. The slight wheezy whistle an overweight man with a deviated septum normally has, was conspicuous only by its absence. Because, Naveed realized, he wasn’t breathing.
Panicked, he grabbed at his wrist and as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he didn’t have a pulse, the eyes of his reflection in the mirror turned blue.
The client was weird. She had made Mehjabeen drive to the PECHS Cemetery on Tariq Road and asked her to wait outside. This was no driving lesson. Mehjabeen had never seen a woman go alone into a graveyard before. But who cares? 300 rupees is 300 rupees.
She bought some salt roasted corn kernels from a passing pushcart and sat in her FX and munched away. She wouldn’t have minded standing outside and leaning against her car but there were some frogs hopping around on the road and that was unnerving.
But unnerving as they are, frogs are quickly forgotten when your passenger returns to the car from a cemetery brushing dirt off her now crumpled kurta. “Could it be…” wondered Mehjabeen. Not a rich woman like this. And in a graveyard in the afternoon?
That would be the least safe place to meet a paramour in Karachi. Maybe she’d just tripped over a tree root or old grave or something. Though why that would need her to shift the rearview mirror to herself and fix her lipstick was beyond Mehjabeen.
Years of living with a spouse with a good left jab had taught Mehjabeen not to ask questions she didn’t want answers to. She drove back towards the house she had picked her client from and pulled up at the gate. Silently. No questions asked. She was usually very good at that.
And then, just as the client got out of the car, she made two mistakes. First, she noticed the fangs. And then she made eye contact.
The Suzuki FX, at peak performance, could generate the power of 40 horses from it’s 800 cc engine. This, Mehjabeen remembered Javed telling her in better days, while not a lot, is usually enough for any situation one can encounter in Karachi.
Javed and Mehjabeen had never discussed the possibility of encountering a ghoul. And though Mehjabeen raced away as fast as she could from PECHS to Gurumandir to Lasbela to Rizvia and finally to her home in Pak Colony,...
...every time she looked at the smudged mirror she could have sworn she saw a woman with a slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick just behind her. Sometimes on a motorbike. Sometimes in a car. Sometimes in a rickshaw. Sometimes seeking alms at the signal with a bowl.
And though there was no one in her street except a few kids rolling a tyre by hitting it with a stick, as her jittery hands unlocked the gate she saw an ad for cooking oil pasted on her boundary wall.
Cooking oil. A nice spread of kababs and biryani and qorma on the table with a smiling Fazila Qazi standing next to it.
Fazila Qazi. In a slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick.
Fazila Qazi. In a slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick.
Faizan could feel the music. The drumbeats were in rhythm with the waves of euphoria that splashed up on the beach. The ancient horns were heralding what felt like the announcement of his being crowned the king of the world.
He had gotten up off his porch and was half walking, half floating in the direction of town and he was happy. He had no idea why he was heading to town but he wasn’t bothered by that at all. It felt good.
The chants were not scary in the slightest and though he didn’t understand a word, he knew the chanters wanted him to walk towards wherever he was headed. As he passed the paan and cigarette shop that he bought his daily stock from every day he realized for the first time..
...that the signboard read Amjad Bhai Paan Shop. That’s funny, he thought. The parchyoon guy and the tandoor next to the mosque he had just crossed were also named after some Amjad Bhai. And then he noticed the chants.
“Amjad Bhai” said the voices, in the rich timbre of Reshma singing a ballad. “Amjad Bhai” said the voices, in the soulful melody of Abida searching for god. “Amjad Bhai” said the voices, in the high pitched soprano of Lata calling a lover.
“Amjad Bhai” said the voices in the gong like depth of Shamshad longing for a reunion. “Amjad Bhai, Amjad Bhai, Amjad Bhai” said the voices, in the tones of old women and young women and the unborn and the undead.
Faizan knew he had to find this Amjad Bhai, whoever he might be. Amjad Bhai had his ring.
Rajab Affendi looked at his hands. The arthritic swelling had disappeared and his rings were glowing in the dark. He smiled. It was time to meet her again.
***to be continued***
Jerusalem was young in 945 BCE. Only around 500 years old. And young cities have a buzz around them. The hubbub of commerce, the chaos of markets, the music of romance, the cadence of worship and the rhythm of life.
The trial of Habaqeeq though had added a dimension the likes of which the city had never seen before. Fishermen and blacksmiths, carpenters and shepherds, innkeepers and brothel managers;...
...all thronged the streets and city squares hoping for a glimpse of the judges and jurists and noblemen streaming in and out of the palace on the mount, a snippet of the news, a hint of the gossip. There had never been such a trial before. There would never be one again.
Or so they thought.
In the dungeons, the 3,000 year old Habaqeeq heard it all. And Habaqeeq was unmoved. He had lost to the humans before and he would lose to them again but the interludes of his dominance were what Habaqeeq lived for.
In the dungeons, the 3,000 year old Habaqeeq heard it all. And Habaqeeq was unmoved. He had lost to the humans before and he would lose to them again but the interludes of his dominance were what Habaqeeq lived for.
The dungeons had never housed anything like him before. Habaqeeq was the Prince of Demons. The Tempter. The Corruptor. If he so desired, he could make the guards open the gates and escort him to safety with just a flick of his silver tongue.
A muttered incantation and the city would erupt in revelry and chaos, an orgy of prayer, a rapture of sin. Habaqeeq knew the magic that could mould the will of man. But Habaqeeq was tired.
The forty days of rule he had enjoyed wearing the King’s ring had felt like four hundred years. The only fun had been in taking the ring away in the first place.
Habaqeeq. He rolled the name on his tongue. He had enjoyed it. He had enjoyed all his names. In Persia he was Aeshma Daeva. To the Jews he was Ashmedai. The Greeks called him Asmodeus. The Slavs knew him as Kitovras. Now he was Habaqeeq. But not for long.
Habaqeeq could not see the future but he could hear the whispers of the winds, the murmurs of the waves and the rumblings from the hells beneath the soil. The King had made his decision and he was to be bound in iron and stone.
And long before he rose again those stones would give him a new name. The rogue stones. Sakhr Al Madhard. Sakhr. The world would fear the name and forget the name and then he would return to remind them of his might.
In the dying light, Sakhr looked at the narrow band of slightly paler skin where the ring had been. He promised himself the ring would be back on it before the paleness merged with the dark.
In the morning the sentence was carried out. A padlocked casket with a chained Habaqeeq inside was carried out of the city by great elephants to be cast in the Caspian Sea weighted down with stones from the mighty Mount Damavand.
The crowds roared in delight and the horns blew from the palace on the mount. Feasts were held, the pious organized prayers of thanks, the sinners drank the forbidden spirits and it was late night before the revelry died down.
And it was in the night when the cicadas chirped and the nightingales sang and the fires cackled in the hearths that the children of Israel heard the voices. “Sakhr Al Madhard” called the voices, in the ululating tones of the desert ifrits.
“Sakhr Al Madhard” called the voices, in the deep sonorous chants of the fire demons of Persia. “Sakhr Al Madhard” called the voices, in the stony growls of the Deos of the Karakoram.
“Sakhr Al Madhard” called the voices, in the high pitched shrieks of fallen angels. “Sakhr, Sakhr, Sakhr” in the tones of old jinn and young jinn and the unborn and the undead.
What is justice but the victory of a narrative? What is punishment other than a glorified revenge? There is no reparation that doesn’t leave another person aggrieved. No sentence without unintended consequences.
No tyrant who has not been a messiah, no criminal who has not himself been wronged, no innocent who is not guilty. Everything else is a farce that has been played out since man walked the earth pretending he knew what was best for it.
But there are those who walked the earth before man did and they remember. Ravaged by time and fate, deformed from mercy to horror, they sneer at man’s justice and plot their revenge.
In the borderlands between Helmand and Kandahar is the desert with no name. Known only as Registan, it is the most arid place on the plateau, spurned even by the clouds of God’s mercy. And as all places with the baggage of lifelessness, the stories are myriad
Stories of the hyena who lures you to the caves you don’t get out of. Of the men who kidnap unaccompanied women to ravish and devour, of women who seduce gullible men only to gnaw on their bones.
And as all stories, these ones too contain within the embellishments of their narrators and the spice of transmission a burning ember at their core of the horrific truth.
The truth that for all the terrors man has unleashed on earth, the wars, the pillaging, the rapes, the slavery and the bloodlust – there are terrors unimaginable that other beings are capable of. Terrors that they are compelled by. Terrors that they are.
The Ghouleh e Bayabaan who lived in Registan hadn’t lived there forever. Or maybe she had. No one knows. The History Department at Kabul University’s first record of her existence comes from a report dating back to 1211 AD.
The Nizammiya in Isfahan has records of sightings of a red lipped woman with soiled clothes after funerals from 1156-1172 AD.
The oldest mention of something resembling her comes from the memoirs of Al Biruni who died in Ghazni in 1048 though he doesn’t refer to her by that name.
As well he shouldn’t.
As well he shouldn’t.
Her name was Khawla. And Afarnah. And Saydanah. To her beloved Habaqeeq she was simply Mandana. The everlasting. She had sworn her vengeance on man the day the casket had been cast into the sea, feasting on his flesh whenever he strayed into her lifeless Registan.
And there she stayed, red lipped and a little dirty, waiting for the call.
And the call had come. On the whisper of the breeze. In the slow shuffle of the sand dunes. The scuttle of the scorpions in the sand. From Damavand in the west and the Karakoram in the east.
And the call had come. On the whisper of the breeze. In the slow shuffle of the sand dunes. The scuttle of the scorpions in the sand. From Damavand in the west and the Karakoram in the east.
It was in the glimmer of Venus herself in the clear night sky. “Manadana” called the voices, in the fearful pleas of mothers for their children. “Mandana” called the voices, in the terrified whimpers of men about to die
“Mandana” called the voices in the gurgles of jugulars cut and the crunch of bones mashed. “Mandana, Mandana, Mandana” in the tones of old prey and young prey and the unborn and the undead.
The Ghouleh rode the cold wind that had baffled Muzaffar Tunio to the coast that spat out the casket of the damned.
On the 18th of July 1784, the town of Erzincan in Anatolia collapsed. Earthquakes have a way of ripping apart the fabric of calm that the denizens of this planet try to wrap themselves in it. Recip Effendi was a huge fan of calm.
He craved it, cultivated it, willed it into existence. This is not in itself a very unusual trait among people. But there are people and there are people. Recip Effendi was one of the latter.
Every human is born with a Qareen, a Humzaad, - a parallel existence, mostly malignant, sometimes benign, almost always ignored and unnoticed. Recip Effendi was a Humzaad without a Hum. Born along with a stillbirth, meant to die, destined to live into eternity.
When the earthquake brought down the town of Erzincan it created not only a rupture 150 KM long in the land of Anatolia; it ripped apart the fabric of space and time itself.
An instant before, Recip had been about to knock on the door of Ceyda, a mysterious tall beautiful lady who had recently taken up residence in a well appointed villa near the town hall. Ceyda had taken the town by the storm.
Clearly a woman of wealth, with several slaves and attendants in tow, she had been seen often in the market buying jewelry and trinkets. Necklaces and bracelets and earrings. And rings.
No jewel merchant had a ring that Ceyda wouldn’t see. No jewel merchant had a ring that Ceyda would be satisfied with. And the gossip spread. From her attendants to the bakers to the butchers to the servants to the Effendis and the Beys.
Ceyda had moved from town to town all over Anatolia with a seemingly endless supply of wealth, acquiring enough jewelry to put the Sultan’s harem to shame.
Recip heard the chatter. He knew the gossip. He could tell from one’s inflection how much of what was heard was being repeated and how much was being embellished. But most of all, Recip could see. He noticed things that others did not as he watched from the distance.
He noticed, for instance, that Ceyda seemed unencumbered by a shadow. That the summer warmth didn’t faze her. That her eyes sought out his through the crowds and glistened as if in recognition, as if in challenge
Recip knew what Ceyda was and he was about to knock on her door.
And then the earth shook and Erzincan collapsed. Recip Effendi was sucked into a vortex and everything went black. When he woke up, Rajab Affendi was in Ajmer, 400 KM from Delhi.
And then the earth shook and Erzincan collapsed. Recip Effendi was sucked into a vortex and everything went black. When he woke up, Rajab Affendi was in Ajmer, 400 KM from Delhi.
Amjad Bhai looked at the tall veiled woman who had been shadowing him his entire life. Her eyes glistened as if in recognition, as if in challenge. He was about to say something when the door of the shop opened and a man in a threadbare white shalwar kameez walked in
He wore a skull cap on his head and the fingers on his hands were adorned by rings set with several glass stones.
“Slamlaikum”, said Rajab Affendi.
“Slamlaikum”, said Rajab Affendi.
***to be continued***
Majid Ajmeri was sitting at Café De Khan when it began. He had always enjoyed chicken tikkas washed down with glass of Teem and the home of the modern chicken tikka was his favourite place to have one.
He had just finished his meal and watched the waiter pop the cap of his bottle of Teem before serving it to him. The scientist in him appreciated the spectacle. A bottle of Teem was a chemistry class in itself.
The bottling company had forced carbon dioxide in the sweetened water at pressures of around 1,100 pounds per square inch.
And the “fzzzt” sound when the bottle was opened was the euphoric screams of millions of CO2 molecules as they rushed out of their watery prisons where they’d been held against their will.
It was then that the lights went out. Majid froze, as echoed in the fzzzt from the bottle of Teem he heard the gleeful shrieks of countless demons as they set upon the city.
It started when the lights went out.
Haideri Begum, or Bajjo as she was known to all and sundry, was sitting on her takht and peeling potatoes.
Haideri Begum, or Bajjo as she was known to all and sundry, was sitting on her takht and peeling potatoes.
The veranda of her house in Rizvia Colony wasn’t particularly airy but the cool weather made it a nice place to sit in the evening waiting for her grandsons to come home from work. And the recent outbreak of frogs had meant the mosquitoes weren’t as bad as they usually were.
Not that any frogs had come into her house. How would they, she had put to her neighbour. This was a Syed household. Bajjo put a lot of stock in her lineage.
She was a firm believer that all the tragedy that she had been spared was a boon granted because of her noble birth and that all the tragedy that she had survived was confirmation of it.
She had been seventeen when she had migrated to her new home in Karachi with her husband in 1949 and though the years had robbed her of her husband and only son, she had a couple of loving grandsons who took care of her every need ...
...and would, she fervently prayed, carry forward the family name and give her great grandchildren to hold in her arms. Bajjo’s prayers were always answered. She was a Syed after all.
All prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is no. Even for Syeds.
All prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is no. Even for Syeds.
At forty five minutes past seven the lights went out. There was an instant hush as there always is when there’s a power cut. The unnoticed hums of water pumps and fridges, the buzz of the fluorescent tube lights, the steady whoosh of ceiling and pedestal fans...
...and the thrumming of the Syed Bhais electricity meters KESC installed on the switch boards of every home all came to a sudden stop. There was the momentary buzz of tinnitus that accompanies a sudden withdrawal of sensory stimulus.
In an instant it was replaced with a heightened consciousness of bugs chirping and wind rustling dust and leaves and polythene bags and the general detritus of humanity in the streets outside.
And then the firing began and the dark sky lit up with orange tracers as was its wont every other evening in the Karachi of the 90s.
Bajjo looked uneasily in the dark towards the gate. The boys should have been home by now. She got off her takht to check if she had unlocked it. She didn’t want the boys to have to stay outside too long in these violent times.
The bullet that entered her neck had enough force to throw her to the ground. Even in the dark she sensed her Syed blood pooling on the mosaic tiles as her visions of laughing great grandchildren in her arms faded away with her life.
Her prayers had been answered. But this time was the answer was no.
Just over a kilometer away, in her little home in Pak Colony, Mehjabeen Javed huddled in a shawl in a corner of the room. It wasn’t just the dark or the cold that was bothering her. It wasn’t even the thunder of the firing that she had never quite gotten used to.
Or the haunting image of the woman with the slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick. The candle she had lit and placed on the coffee table was throwing up enough light on the wall for it to host the shadows of whatever Javed was doing in the bedroom.
It wasn’t pleasant viewing.
The cold air felt like it was biting through the shawl right to her bones. The flame on the candle, though well out of the way of any draft, was dancing and flickering as if beset on all sides by some invisible enemies.
The cold air felt like it was biting through the shawl right to her bones. The flame on the candle, though well out of the way of any draft, was dancing and flickering as if beset on all sides by some invisible enemies.
The Quetta wind outside was rattling the window panes and the staccato bursts of gunfire were sending vibrations through the springs of the sofa Mehjabeen was sitting on.
And yet the only noise she could focus on was the steady scrape of Javed sharpening a knife she didn’t know he had on a leather strop that should have been in the kitchen.
It’s generally a mild and somewhat satisfying noise. More so when you are the one sharpening the knife before you wield it on carrots or potatoes or mangoes or apples or whatever you plan to cook after a long day of earning your living.
But there are times when the otherwise pleasant becomes extremely unnerving. One scrape brought back a memory of a pleasant day at the beach, eating corn on the cob and riding camels with Javed’s best friend’s young daughters, songs and laughter and smiles.
The next scrape rekindled the burn in her cheeks caused by the biting bitterness of his words on the way back on her not giving him a child of his own.
A third scrape reminded her of him playfully poking ballpoints in her topknot as she watched Sitara aur Mehrunnissa on TV and a fourth scrape brought back visions of being dragged across the drawing room floor by her hair in one of his drugged up frenzies.
And then the scrapes stopped. Javed got up and walked out the door into the darkness, the sharpened knife still in his hand.
In the last glimpse she had of him in the candlelight before he headed out, Mehjabeen registered that he was wearing a slightly crumpled kurta and that his lips looked unnaturally red.
A relatively long distance away, Aslam Nagori had just parked his motorbike and locked up the doors. The ride from Quaidabad to Bhains colony is not a particularly long one but any ride is long when the lights are off and the skies are lit by tracer fire.
Aslam had navigated his way through police barricades and smoldering remains of vehicles set on fire by rioters. He had ridden past Edhi ambulances carting off the dead from some skirmish and the blood on the road had splashed up and stained the cuffs of his trousers.
And yet the reason the adrenalin was pumping and his heart was throbbing was that throughout the ride he could have sworn he heard the insane cackling laughter of demented men echoing through the streets of Karachi.
Aslam Nagori double checked the locks on his door and went in to give his children a hug.
Karachi had a violent evening that winter Wednesday. And this was not unusual. Men, everywhere, are capable of spilling some blood at the best of times. And these were not the best of times.
The newspapers the next day carried news of bodies found stuffed in in gunny bags in various neighborhoods. They mentioned reports of skirmishes between “unknown assailants” and the law enforcement agencies...
...and the casualties of people on both sides and of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. The more daring ones did not shy away from mentioning the killings of people presumed to be in police custody in “encounters”.
There were also reports of unclaimed bodies showing up at Edhi’s morgues which did not state any cause of death. And there were the somehow more disturbing reports of 387 disappearances of young men which no one could account for.
What no newspaper managed to cover in the aftermath of the very visible violence was the tremors felt in the Khasa Hills that lie between Orangi and North Nazimabad.
The hills, especially to a country blessed with the Himalayas and the Hindukush in the north are less than an afterthought. A peak elevation of 500 odd meters doesn’t really invite attention anyway and especially not when the hills are barren and dry and dusty.
A local tour guide or beat reporter may be able to tell you that they are an offshoot of the Sulaiman Kirthar Range which extend across Balochistan and the Iranian plateau and ultimately connect to the mighty Hindukush themselves.
And a geologist might casually mention that the most famous peak of the range lies in Dera Ismail Khan and is known as Takht e Sulaiman or Solomon’s Seat.
What never comes up in a casual conversation is why a random peak far from his capital in Jerusalem bears his name thousands of years later.
Legend has it that this was the farthest reach of his dominion and that when the mighty king Solomon climbed it all he saw beyond it was darkness and despair and so he turned back. The legends don’t tell the whole story.
Most legends of heroes and villains are embellished and romanticized as time passes. Protagonists get taller and better looking. Villains get uglier and eviler.
Context to conflict is shaved away and eventually everything is a contest between good and evil, right and wrong and love and hate.
Parents name their sons Afrasiab and Rustam and Aladdin and Ameer Hamza and as generations fade away the lights of these characters only burn brighter in the common consciousness.
Because these are the stories of men. What men cannot fathom is what they choose to forget. And this is why nobody who tells you of the geological fault line that created the Sulaiman range tells you what lies beneath.
The deepest pits of Hell have no name. Or at least no name that men agree on. The Greeks spoke of a place far below Hades known as Tartaros. The Buddhists know Niraya as the Jains know Naraka.
The Mesopotamians mentioned Irkalla and the Egyptians spoke of Neter Khertet. But when the voices that moved with Sakhr sang that night, they sang to the inmates of Sijjeen. The prison. The pits. The depths.
And when the demons answered his call they spilled out of the Khalsa Hills between Orangi and North Nazimabad like the carbon dioxide from Majid Ajmeri’s bottle of Teem. To the Jann and the Hinn sang the voices, in the tones of shaking earth and volcanic eruptions.
To the Silat and the Kawabees sang the voices, in the sound of waterfalls and waves. To the Taghoots and the Ghilan sang the voices, in the cackle of fire and the whistling of wind.
To the damned and the cursed and the chained and the bound sang the voices, in the tones of earth and the heavens and the unborn and the undead.
And the call was answered as the demons swept across the city, feeding in a frenzy of blood and fire and bullets and blades until suddenly the body that was previously just Faizan Qadri found himself outside a shop in the Sarafa Bazaar between Bolton Market and Jodia Bazar.
“Amjad Qureshi Jewellers” read the signboard.
Faizan Qadri saw his reflection in the glass window raise his hand as if to gather the attention of an unseen crowd. And then he felt the wind drop and an emptiness develop as if that unseen crowd had suddenly vanished.
Faizan Qadri saw his reflection in the glass window raise his hand as if to gather the attention of an unseen crowd. And then he felt the wind drop and an emptiness develop as if that unseen crowd had suddenly vanished.
Dust seemed to settle Faizan heard the uneasy squawk of a crow that has been disturbed in the dark. In the distance a stray dog took up a mournful howl as the firing stopped.
Faizan sat down on the footpath and waited for the next command from the being within.
Faizan sat down on the footpath and waited for the next command from the being within.
***to be continued***
Quality dental care, worldwide, is hard to get even in the age this story is being read. In the South Asian subcontinent it is still a myth to all but the most privileged. Today. In the late 1700s though, it wasn’t even heard of.
So much so that even the greatest ruler of the greatest city civilization has ever known, Nawab Asaf ud Daula of Lucknow, lost his teeth in his mid forties.
For a rule as illustrious as his, this fact would have been a mere footnote hidden away in countless biographies but for the fact that he loved eating meat. And cooking meat for a toothless monarch requires some skill.
Abul Fazl, one of his court historians, has written about how this particular situation led to the invention of that ever-present darling of the desi tea trolley, the shami kabab.
The shami kabab is spicy and it is delicious and it goes with practically anything but most importantly it is soft.
And that meant that the toothless Nawab could end a busy day of doing whatever great leaders do with a stomach full of meat despite having no teeth to chew it with.
Such is the legacy of this soft kabab that it made currency of a proverb “kabab mein haddi” – bone in a kabab – that is used to refer to someone or something unwanted; a third wheel, so to speak.
A few hours before the lights went out, Amjad Qureshi was feeling very much like the proverbial kabab mein haddi. No words had been spoken since the man in the threadbare white kurta shalwar kameez and many rings on his fingers had said “Slamlaikum”...
...and yet Amjad Bhai could have sworn he had been uninvitedly listening in on a century long dialogue as the man and woman stared at each other, smolder to smolder, gaze to gaze, unblinking, unflinching.
Rajab and Ceyda had a lot to talk about.
If you, dear reader, have ever been young, in any age, in any place, you will know how it goes. The eyes meet across the street in a medieval market. She is in her palanquin, sampling jewels and silks and furs, entourage in tow.
If you, dear reader, have ever been young, in any age, in any place, you will know how it goes. The eyes meet across the street in a medieval market. She is in her palanquin, sampling jewels and silks and furs, entourage in tow.
You across the street at the blacksmith for a new dagger. The eyes meet and there is so much that is said but not articulated, expressed but not communicated.
Or she is with her family walking into the wedding where you are lined up in reception for the guests. The eyes meet and lifetimes are blinked away, the stars plotting inevitable new futures.
Or she is with her cousins, seated on the stairs, trying to listen in on the conversation in the drawing room and you pass by glancing upwards, trying to get an idea of what the family is like based on their taste in interior décor.
The eyes meet and new art is created, new tapestries woven, new mandalas and mosaics and miniatures appearing out of nowhere to beautify the universe.
Or you are serving coffee at the counter and call the name that looks misspelled and she looks over. The eyes meet and poetry happens, ghazals and rubayis and ballads forming out of nothingness as all words known to man suddenly acquire new deeper meanings.
Rajab and Ceyda had a lot to talk about. But sometimes even centuries pass and there’s still no time to have that discussion. There are beings who have returned and caskets that have been opened and missing rings that need to stay missing if the world is to remain.
By the time Faizan Qadri reached the shop in the Sarafa Bazaar between Bolton Market and Jodia Bazar, Amjad Qureshi, the tall woman in the black burqa and the old man in the white threadbare shalwar kameez and several rings on his fingers were gone.
And so was that other ring in the black velvet box hidden away behind the receipts in Amjad Bhai’s desk drawer.
Faizan looked at the slightly paler band of skin on his finger where some ring must have been. He didn’t know why but he knew it had to come back on before the paleness merged with the dark.
He shook his head as he tried to figure out what the being inside wanted from him but shaking your head doesn’t always shake off the feeling that someone is laughing at you in the distance.
All over the world there are mountains with stories. Some are true, some are not, some straddle the invisible boundary between these two absolutes. The Neelam Valley in Kashmir is home to many mountains with stories.
One of the lesser known ones is of the story of the mountain without a soul.
In the ages lost to time, long before Adam’s progeny took the world for their own, the peaks and troughs of Kashmir were the domain of the Rantas.
In the ages lost to time, long before Adam’s progeny took the world for their own, the peaks and troughs of Kashmir were the domain of the Rantas.
These tall giantesses used to roam the valley, taking care of all creatures that lived within, forcefully expelling all who dared trespass in their territory.
Impossibly tall, shrouded in shadow and with talons that put the tigers to shame; the Rantas kept out all who tried to invade – the Yetis of the Himalayas, the snow lions from Tibet and even the mighty Deos who lived in the Hindu Kush.
And then came the men. What happened exactly is not known. All we know for sure is that while humans live and breathe and fight and die in what was once their paradise, no trace of that civilization left that men remember, the Rantas is all but forgotten –
except in the cold winter days of Chillai Kalaan when the days are short and the shadows are long and children can hear screams that others cannot and weary travelers in the snow feel the hills around them moving and murmuring and mumbling in the dark.
All the hills. Except for the one without a soul.
Those who know their stone will tell you how the mountain without a soul does not seem like it belongs in Neelam Valley.
Those who know their stone will tell you how the mountain without a soul does not seem like it belongs in Neelam Valley.
It’s not because of the face carved in the rock. It’s not because of the green shrubbery that clings to that face. It’s simply because when you walk around it, it feels foreign and laden with a despair that only an absence of soul can create.
The villagers call it Dyad Mouji, or Old Mother. The tour guides call it the cut face mountain. Photographers have sold pictures of it claiming it’s known as Sleeping Beauty.
Her name was Shuhul.
Her name was Shuhul.
Shuhul was the Queen of the Rantas from the Shamshabari Mountains. When the first apocalypse happened and men invaded Kashmir, it was Shuhul who led her forces to defend her piece of paradise.
And for every soldier she lost in that war, she sent a thousand souls screaming into the netherworld. She would have won too, if Damavand and Koh e Qaaf had answered her calls. But they had shut their gates and the men had multitudes.
Defeated, destroyed, decimated, Shuhul had come down to the Neelam Valley and just given up. She sank to her neck in the ground, only her face above land, and as the ages passed the world she fought for took over her.
The shrubbery took root all over her visage, trees grew from her pores, birds and beasts nested and burrowed on her and the winds and the rain and the snow caressed and kissed her as she slept.
Until one day a few thousand years ago when the voices called.
Until one day a few thousand years ago when the voices called.
“Shuhul”, they murmured, in the whisper of the spring breeze. “Shuhul”, they thundered, in the voice of the summer monsoon. “Shuhul”, they roared, in the language of the crashing avalanche.
“Shuhul, Shuhul, Shuhul” in the tones of the mountains and the glaciers and the unborn and the undead.
And Shuhul had felt her soul pulled out of her rocky body as she soared over valleys and mountains to the shores of the Caspian Sea to receive her missive.
And Shuhul had felt her soul pulled out of her rocky body as she soared over valleys and mountains to the shores of the Caspian Sea to receive her missive.
Mandana was fuming.
When the lights had gone out she had received license, for the first time in centuries, to satiate her thirst. And how the city had bled.
When the lights had gone out she had received license, for the first time in centuries, to satiate her thirst. And how the city had bled.
It was never hard to whip men into a frenzy of blood. A whisper here, a murmur there and the swords and the knives and the shooting sticks come out. They had killed in the dozens.
And Mandana had feasted on 387 young, fresh, bags of flesh and blood. Sons and fathers and brothers and husbands, lost forever to a register of “missing persons”. But then, too, too soon Sakhr had raised his hand and stopped them.
Which meant that the woman who had dared to look her in the eye was still breathing air in that little house in Pak Colony. Mandana ran her hands over her lap, trying to smooth the wrinkles in her crumpled kurta, her blood red lips glistening in the rising sunlight.
Shuhul’s task was simple. She had to shadow the Arab ringbearer. And she had. Following him and his sons and his sons’ sons over the generations. From the deserts of Arabia to the plains of Persia to the riversides of Sindh and the city walls of Delhi.
Wherever the forbears of Amjad Qureshi had gone, the soul of Shuhul had followed. No one had been able to sway her from the mission and the Qureshis had never lost the ring.
Shuhul was forever there, always in the shadows, watching. And being watched. By whom or what she could not tell. Her faculties would have been stronger if she could only rest within her stone frame once more.
But the Qureshis never strayed close to Neelam. And the useless weak bodies of humans, though pretty to look at, stank of blood. But they were pretty. As the ages passed, Shuhul’s attention had begun to waver.
She would flit by the Qureshis once a day, then once a week, then once every year or so. Nobody had bothered them. Nobody, she thought, would. The ring lay in a black velvet box in a drawer in the shop in the Sarafa Bazaar between Bolton Market and Jodia Bazar.
She had been there last in 1987. Now she had other things to focus on as well. Some humans, she had found, smelled more like home. The body she now occupied was called Sabahat Kitchloo.
Sabahat spent her days teaching one of the many tongues of man to young humans in a building of stone. And she spent her evenings preening in front of a mirror in her house in Bath Island, Karachi, brushing her hair and thinking of home.
In Sabahat’s memories of the home she hadn’t visited in a decade, Shuhul saw the city called Muzaffarabad. And though it wasn’t anything like the Kashmir she had ruled, Shuhul could feel the scent of the wind blowing from the Shamshabari Mountains...
...down to the valley of Neelam and on to the city of Muzaffarabad in the fragrance of Sabahat’s perfume. In the face she saw in the mirror where Sabahat spent hours, Shuhul could see the lakes and valleys and mountains she reigned.
Shuhul was lost in Sabahat, drawing strength from and giving strength to her homesickness hoping for a chance that the soulbearer would take her close to her paradise, her Kashmir. But as much as she was lost in Sabahat, Sabahat was drowning in Shuhul.
The hate Shuhul had for humans overpowered every sensibility Sabahat had ever had and she would spend hours staring at herself in the mirror having imaginary battles with everyone she had ever known, dreaming of severed limbs and heads tossed down from mountain tops.
No word she heard was not a slight, no glance at her was not a provocation, no thought another person had not a challenge.
Sabahat Kitchloo lived in disdain of humanity.
Sabahat Kitchloo lived in disdain of humanity.
And Shuhul’s dream of return to home remained a dream, even if it was one she spent every second thinking about as the memory of the reason she had been called out of her stony body in the first place began to fade.
And then, that fateful night, the lights went out. Shuhul had flown out of Sabahat, speeding towards the shop in the Sarafa Bazaar between Bolton Market and Jodia Bazar but it was too late.
When she got there, the only thing she saw was a man shaking his head to get the sound of distant laughter out of it.
Naveed Alam was on his motorbike, his eyes blue, his heartbeat absent. He headed towards the PECHS cemetery on Tariq Road.
***to be continued***
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It was snowing in Siberia. It was snowing in Quetta. It was snowing in most parts in between. Senior Meteorologist Muzaffar Tunio, even without any meteorological credentials could have told you it was going to be a cold few days in Karachi.
It had been inevitable, he thought as he leaned back on his towel-cowered leather chair in his office in Natha Khan. Normally being right about the weather at least uncreased the furrows on Muzaffar Tunio’s forehead if it didn’t bring an outright smile to his face.
That hadn’t happened today. He still had to face his boss about the frog outbreak in the city, which, despite the cold weather, showed no signs of dissipating.
The people at the Sindh Wildlife Department hadn’t been any help and no book he could find at Urdu Bazaar nor any pearls of wisdom from his friends and colleagues could shed any light on the causes of the sudden amphibian population boom. Muzaffar Tunio felt hard done by.
His boss really had no locus standi in coming to him, a meteorologist, for answers. He let out a loud sigh, cursed the bureaucracy under his breath and picked up the newspaper. When there is nothing else anyone can do, he reasoned, there is nothing else one should attempt.
The headlines were all about the violence of the night before and Muzaffar Tunio was so engrossed that he completely missed the announcement on the back page of the rescheduling of the Sheedi Melo.
Naveed Alam had never felt as alive as he had since he realized he was dead.
For you or me, feeling cold is akin to feeling dead.
For you or me, feeling cold is akin to feeling dead.
We sleep deeper, waking up is hard, the healthiest parts of us feel numb, forgotten wounds throb and thrum as familiar aches force us to think of dreams unachieved and relationships unfulfilled and goals unmet and wills unwritten.
And the colder it gets, the more these feelings attack us, to the point that it is only adrenaline that gets us to our destinations and the warmth of a life still to live. Not so for Naveed Alam.
He rode his bike into the wind with the abandon of a man unbothered by the chill, his fingers not getting any colder, his chest unbothered by biting cold, his ears the same temperature they had been when he set out to ride.
All his senses felt heightened. He could see clearer than he ever had, his newly blue eyes discerning the different shades of pink on the billboard advertising Medora lipsticks – something his wife would have sworn he was incapable of.
He could smell better too, his nose picking up not only the scents of diesel smoke from the few buses on the street, the flowers on the stalls at Teen Hatti and the open sewage flowing into the Gujjar Naala;...
...but also the traces the wind had gathered on the way from Siberia – the smell of wolves and bears and pine cones and borscht and salt and lakes and rivers and deserts and life and death.
For most people, a sensory overload of this sort would have been enough to cause a mental breakdown, but Naveed was barely cognizant of it, because more than anything else, he could hear better.
The thrum of the motorcycle engine did little to drown out the calls of the birds and the buzzing of the insects and the hubbub of a city of nine million souls.
He heard children shouting as they played a game of cricket in the schoolyard, bosses yelling at staff at workplaces, the laughter of women from a balcony, sipping tea; and the bargaining of street hawkers with their clients.
But above it all he heard the voices that weren’t even there, the voices that mapped the direction his motorbike took as he sped from FC Area towards the cemetery on Tariq Road.
“Go to Mandana,” called the voices, in the silence of a heart that didn’t beat. “Go to Mandana,” called the voices, in the hollowness of a chest that didn’t heave. “Go to Mandana,” called the voices, in the emptiness of a pulse that didn’t throb.
“Mandana, Mandana, Mandana” called the voices, in the timbre of death and decay and the unborn and the undead.
Naveed Alam slipped the bike up a gear and accelerated towards the cemetery.
Naveed Alam slipped the bike up a gear and accelerated towards the cemetery.
In Manghopir, at the shrine of Sheikh Hafiz Haji Hasan Al Maroof Sultan, popularly known as Pir Mangho; Qasim Qambrani was shouting in rather colorful language at the laborers putting up the festive tents for the Sheedi Melo.
The laborers were chuckling at his choice expletives as they worked, at speed, to make the arrangements for the first iteration of the festival that anyone of them could remember being held in winter.
It hadn’t been planned as such, but Qasim Qambrani and the other elders of the community had taken a snap decision to have it soon after two things happened a couple of Fridays before.
The first thing to happen was an unexpected phone call a few days before a certain casket washed up on the beach. Qasim had been having his morning tea at his modest home in Lyari when his son came running to him saying there was a call for him from “Hazrat Sahib”.
Qasim didn’t really believe him but he rushed to take the call. Hazrat Sahib was what he addressed the gaddi nasheen of Pir Mangho’s shrine as and it was beyond him how Hazrat Sahib even knew his name, let alone his phone number.
Nonetheless, he hurried to the small drawing room where the phone was kept.
The call wasn’t long.
The call wasn’t long.
Hazrat Sahib had something to tell him and Qasim Qambrani wasn’t the type to question his Pir, no matter how much he was surprised that he of all people had been chosen to carry the message.
Hazrat Sahib told him that he had seen his illustrious forbear, Pir Mangho himself, in a dream the night before. Pir Mangho was upset the Sheedis hadn’t been seen in full force at his shrine throughout the year.
Hazrat Sahib said he had mumbled something to his ancestor about an uneasy law and order situation, urban flooding inclement weather but Pir Mangho was not impressed. He wanted the Sheedis at his shrine and he wanted them soon.
“Tell Qasim to see to it,” was the command and that was why Hazrat Sahib had called him.
Qasim was shaken. He wasn’t a community elder. He wasn’t even a rising star.
Qasim was shaken. He wasn’t a community elder. He wasn’t even a rising star.
He was a moderately successful mechanic with his own workshop near Lea Market where he was known as an expert on Honda motorbikes.
While this is good enough to make a living, feed one’s family and send one’s kids to school, it is not normally enough to be an influence in any way on the community one belongs to. Qasim did what he always did when presented with a conundrum.
He finished his cup of tea and went to see his aunt.
Nafisa Qambrani could have been a great professor or philosopher. At least that is what most people who knew her said about her. Except that she had never gone to school and barely knew the 52 letters of the Sindhi alphabet.
Nafisa Qambrani could have been a great professor or philosopher. At least that is what most people who knew her said about her. Except that she had never gone to school and barely knew the 52 letters of the Sindhi alphabet.
She was fluent in Sindhi though. And Balochi and Urdu. And Arabic and Farsi. She could quote Bhittai and Rumi at will and had famously once confronted the famous Sindhi poet, Shaikh Ayaz, at a wedding where he had misquoted his own poetry to a fan asking him to recite a couplet.
How she had managed to do this while struggling to read a newspaper had never ceased to amaze Qasim. But she was his aunt and she was a font of wisdom far beyond what Qasim himself could ever dream to acquire, and, most importantly, Qasim trusted her.
So he went to her and asked her what to do.
Nafisa heard Qasim out patiently. Then she told him to wait. She picked up her phone and dialed a few numbers from memory.
Nafisa heard Qasim out patiently. Then she told him to wait. She picked up her phone and dialed a few numbers from memory.
In an hour her two room apartment was filled with elders from the entire Sheedi community representing all four tribes, Kharadar Makan, Hyderabad Makan, Lassi Makan and Belaro Makan.
And they listened to her with the same reverence that Qasim had listened to Hazrat Sahib with. She told them that the Sheedi Melo would have to be held much earlier than they were planning. This was not something that they had expected to hear.
But Nafisa Qambrani was not an ordinary woman and she couldn’t be refused outright. The elders decided to visit Manghopir and meet Hazrat Sahib themselves. Out of deference to both the Pir and Nafisa, they asked Qasim to join them.
While Naveed Alam was heading towards the PECHS Cemetery on Tariq Road, Rajab Affendi was serving tea to Amjad Qureshi and Majid Ajmeri. Amjad Bhai was sitting with an expression that was part shock, part fear and part bewilderment on his face.
The tall burqa clad woman and the man he now knew was called Affendi were apparently not a threat to him. And the young man with the spiritual air was decidedly “normal” as far as he could make out.
What was worrying though was how all the chairs on what seemed to be a classroom in this house in Mehmoodabad, were pointed towards the darkest corner of the room.
And even more worrying was the fact that there seemed to be a presence in that dark corner. Not physical but not quite abstract, both there and not there at the same time.
Amjad Bhai glanced at Majid who was calmly sipping his tea, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was something not quite ordinary about being whisked through the winds from the Sarafa Bazaar to Mehmoodabad by a tall woman and a senior citizen.
He looked around the room as Rajab Affendi closed the door and it became a little darker. The woman in the burqa seemed to settle down in the chair next to him without actually moving
The old man sat down in the chair behind Majid and the silence seemed to grow deeper as it settled over the group.
From the darkest corner in the room, Amjad Bhai heard a sound and then felt a brief but palpable movement of air towards his face as if some great bird had flapped its wings before settling down.
Chills ran down his spine as, for the first time, he realized that the two glowing embers he thought he was imagining were eyes. He stifled a scream as he almost jumped out of the chair but then the burqa clad woman laid her hand on his arm and a great calmness settled over him..
...as if every danger he had ever faced, every fear he had ever had didn’t matter anymore. When the darkness in the corner spoke, Amjad Bhai settled into his chair and listened.
In his pocket, the ring in the black velvet box seemed to grow lighter.
In his pocket, the ring in the black velvet box seemed to grow lighter.
The shrine of Pir Mangho, like most shrines from the 13the century, is built on a small hill. What makes it special are the several Sulphur springs of both cold and hot water in the area, all of which are rumored to have medicinal qualities.
That’s what makes the shrine special, not unique.
What makes the shrine unique is the crocodile pond.
What makes the shrine unique is the crocodile pond.
The mugger crocodile is not the largest crocodile you’ll ever see but it does have the largest snout. For decades it has been recognized as a threatened species, practically on the verge of extinction.
No visitor to the shrine in Manghopir would get that impression from looking at the pond. There are hundreds of crocodiles in there. And they have been there for centuries.
The locals tell stories of how, centuries ago, Pir Mangho ran a comb through his hair after bathing in the pond and the lice that fell out grew up to be crocodiles.
Others tell stories of how Pir Mangho actually chose the hill near the pond to live in because he felt he had to care for the crocodiles he saw swimming in it.
Archaeologists have found crocodile bones and pottery at the site dating back to the Bronze Age when the crocodiles of Manghopir were worshipped as deities.
In any case there are countless crocodiles always in the pond, and the largest, a hundred-year-old male mugger respectfully referred to as Mor Sahib, is garlanded and honoured every year at the Sheedi Melo by the gaddi nasheen of the shrine himself.
Qasim Qambrani had always felt there must have been a divine purpose for the crocodiles to be there.
He was not particularly fond of reptiles even though the Manghopir muggers had never been known to have taken a bite out of human flesh, so he liked to keep his distance and watch from afar.
There was also something not quite right, in his opinion, about a species of crocodile that ate cooked food and sweetmeats along with the normal crocodilian diet of fish and snakes and other live animals.
His aunt had told him that generations of acolytes at the shrine sharing their food with them had made them docile and almost human in nature, and while Qasim accepted her wisdom, the image of a mugger eating human food was still unsettling for him.
But the crocs had not been on his mind when he accompanied the elders to the shrine. Hazrat Sahib had apparently been expecting them.
Naveed Alam parked his bike and entered the graveyard. Perhaps it was the coldness of the day that had kept the people away. Or maybe it was just that no one likes to visit a cemetery early in the day. Whatever the reason, the place was as empty as it could be.
There were no gravediggers working in some corner, none of the urchins loitering about who sold flowers and incense sticks, not even the obligatory heroin addicts shooting it up their arms under the shade of some tree.
Just the dust and dried up rose petals and plastic wrappers from the agarbatti boxes getting tossed around by the Quetta wind.
And, seated on what seemed like a freshly dug grave, a woman in a slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick.
And, seated on what seemed like a freshly dug grave, a woman in a slightly crumpled kurta and neatly applied lipstick.
Naveed Alam approached quietly and squatted by her feet. He looked at her, and as a smile seemed to flicker on her face, Naveed felt the earth around him rumble and groan as all over the cemetery the graves burst open and spat out their dead.
The second thing that happened a couple of weeks before had happened as Qasim and the elders were about to leave the shrine after meeting Hazrat Sahib. The discussion had not gone the way Qasim had thought it would.
The elders had told Hazrat Sahib that they would speak to their people and encourage them to visit the shrine to pay respect to Pir Mangho, but an early Melo was out of the question. The Melo was, in any case, not really a religious occasion.
It was a festival to celebrate the Sheedi culture and, well, being Sheedi. It took time to organize and arrange everything. Hazrat Sahib was not pleased.
As they passed by the pond, they changed their minds.
As they passed by the pond, they changed their minds.
Mor Sahib was sunning himself on a flat piece of land by the pond. Behind him, it seemed as if an army was emerging from the water.
Qasim and the elders were used to seeing dozens of crocodiles at any given time by the pond but this was more than any of them had ever seen. There were hundreds.
Climbing out of their burrows and the pond, walking out from behind the trees nearby, big ones and small ones, young ones and old ones, they lined up in ranks behind Mor Sahib.
The fact that the regular attendants were all backing away from them was enough of a message to the delegation that this was not a safe situation.
Mor Sahib crawled forward directly towards them. Qasim Qambrani could’ve sworn he was looking directly at him.
Mor Sahib crawled forward directly towards them. Qasim Qambrani could’ve sworn he was looking directly at him.
And then Mor Sahib opened his snout and roared. The army of crocodiles behind him called back in bellows and squawks and hisses. Qasim shuddered as he saw startled birds fly away from trees all around.
Behind him, he heard the elders quickly agree to a date a couple of weeks away and then rush back towards Hazrat Sahib to inform him.
Mor Sahib looked at Qasim Qambrani and then turned and crawled back to the pond as his army dispersed behind him.
Mor Sahib looked at Qasim Qambrani and then turned and crawled back to the pond as his army dispersed behind him.
***to be continued***
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