Stories

Book One

Place

I

August 22, 1991

No, it is not the darkness gnawing her - the blindness of the dark color does not scare Zaina. Her fear resides not in the shades, not in the apparent look of the darkness, it is in the grim essence of it, in the silent nature of it that expands into the silence of the air. Silence - getting more and more powerful every moment; powerful enough to keep haunting her mind night after night. It’s in the dark when the ears for the first time listen to the whispers of the mute and the speechless things.

"What a dearth! Just a silent, dark void filling the space," she ponders.

The distant stars, the shining moon --  a vision stretching across the infinity: everything drowning deep into the dark shadows. These forlorn skies - the deep, sullen, and dead-asleep skies - are so disturbingly quiet, like a centuries-old silence embedded in the ruins. Why don’t they speak?

These shadows of the universe have tremendous power in them –  they have a kind of hope in them. Like, at any moment, this huge curtain will lift up and unravel the all-loving God from behind.

She can see the white twinkling stars up there. The stars have her constant attention. She cannot move her eyeballs off the sky. The whole sight is beautiful – it’s sublime; as if the black tresses of a bride are being sprinkled upon with white shiny stones.

There is something that she does not appreciate much, and that is the air. She abhors the warm dampness of the unmoving air; it disturbs her. She doesn't like the stillness of things. Her moist forehead can be seen under this white moonlight that was falling straight on her face and lighting up the roof in parts with shadows.

Her son is standing at a door that joins the room with the roof, “Jee papa jee… jee… jee jee” a faint conversation is echoing off on the roof. He is on the phone with his father. His hands and feet are cold; standing alarmed as if his father has actually conjured up before him. Standing beside the phone table near the door, he did not even try to lean against the table.

‘Papa, Mama sent me to another school,’ in a toneless voice.

From the chair comes the stifled voice of his outrageous mother, ‘I have never sent you to another school. You yourself did not go to the school! He is lying.” cries she, in angst, trying to tell something that Usman must know.

- Give that phone to me!

- Hello, yes. Usman, he is lying! He is not the same sweet little child you left here. He now retaliates when I force him to go the school. This happens every morning!

- Brutal? Do you think that I am trying to victimize him? I… listen!.. I always first try to convince him logically -  I am telling you naa - he is lying to you to save himself, and nothing else.

- Do you think I am lying then? No, it is about Lying! It is about lying and it is about trust.

After a short silence, “Here, talk to your father, you lying scoundrel!” she thrusts the telephone's handset into Abdul-Rehman’s arms.

The boy stands unmoved; terror waves jiggling inside him; head numb, hands numb, ears focused, eyes on her mother; foreseeing the signs of an impending punishment waiting for him.

After a yell, she sits back in her chair and tries to comfort herself. Why should she destroy her fetus for an uncaring man? She relaxes herself.

Little cracks across the wall remain blurred under her tear-filled eyes. Her eyes see the cracks, but do not notice; but her mind surely catches the imprints of the cracky vision, unknowingly. She sees her life like the little cracks that lay patiently on the walls. She feels something crushing inside her throat. There is something stuck in her throat. It is struggling to get out of her existence, but it’s not that easy. You are not desperate enough until you start seeing yourself where no one else can.

He should have been here with her or have taken her with him. These are the only two options she can think of; these options, after nine lonely years, have well niched in her mental construction. Things can happen only in two ways; either this or that. Nothing else is there. Either there is a life or no life, a job or no job, a car or no car. Years ago, there was only one option - the future one - she would go to America and she would be with her husband there. Now, things can work only in polarity.

The call ends after a few short exchanges and goodbyes. And then the dark evening quietly fades into the sweet fragrance of the relation they had before their marriage: that sparkling crackle of their childish games, that passionate vigor to surpass anything, any moment, those eyes that shed tears with hers. Memories, memories, memories -- a heart-kneading torment!

‘Oy ladki, come down! What are you doing upstairs?’ the voice changes into grumbles, ‘throwing his responsibility upon my shoulders, he himself left for luxury in Amreeka. Come down at once! Are your angels going to come from the heavens to cook?”  

This is her elderly mother-in-law, called by all the family members as “Umee-ji” - a distorted form of Amee-ji, which means respected mother. She is always found screaming and abusing the rest of the others, sometimes even the spoons and plates.

Swinging an oily steel tray over the marble counter, she utters her favorite invective word with a rhyming rise-and-fall of her tone, “Haraamzaday! made a mess of my house.”

Loud thrashing sounds of dishes come by and Zaina’s little fragile heart starts striking hammers against her chest. Quickly she stands up, goes downstairs, and enters the lounge. From the lounge, she could see Ummiji standing in the small kitchen filled with the yellow light of the 100-watt bulb.

The boy comes following her with his big red cotton-bear. She enters the kitchen.

“Were you lying dead on the roof, had-haraam orat (lazy woman)?!”

Such hateful comments are quite often bedecked on Umeeji’s round-shaped mouth, which is consuming betel. And she is a hard thing to tolerate; even her own sons cannot help but summon a storm of silence when confronting such scornful pronouncements. But Zaina - she never spoke a word or gave a frown at her speech. Her couth, prominent contours always look humble. Actually, a long time ago, her lips drank a chalice of silence when her husband warned her, “Do not return a word back, if you spoke you are on your own then”. He told her all this on the very first night of their marriage. “I know everyone in my family, who is what and when. So, should you have any problem with anyone, just come up to me.” She continued this practice for many years.

A queer thing is that her silence has never been appreciated. It is always followed by a hateful remark given by Samman Taufeeq, “What a dheet (stubborn)!”. Only God knows the stretch of her silence. In these 10 years of her marriage, she has always prayed for one thing in her life: “to live with Usman".

Listening to the remarks, she quietly starts making the dinner for Umeeji, while keeping an eye on her son, while pretending nothing has really happened on the phone call, while thinking of the question of trust she has asked Usman, and while listening to the scolds of her mother in law – ‘Hey ladki! Lesser salt, put lesser salt! It’s been years now and you do not know how much salt we take in our food?’

“Zaina, even yesterday you made it too salty.”

This was, of course, Samman Yaseen. Poisoned honey! She always used to say the truth, but at the wrong time and in the wrong tone.

“Get lost Summi and do your work! Always doing choo choo chaayn chaayn in the house!” Slapping lightly on Samman’s shoulder, Umeeji sends her out.

These benevolent compliments for Zaina continue until all the tongues lay sound with their owners in their beds, and she still continues to do the kitchen chores.

Under the night sky, the houses in the vicinity could listen to the crying babies, dialogues of the drama called "Dasht" on the televisions, and the dishwashing.

It is eleven of the night and everybody has gone in the lounge to sleep on the mattresses spreading like a collage all around the place.

"Bhabhi, after the dishes, also prepare my mithu's milk in the feeder", Javeria politely requests Zaira in a whispering tone. She has a shrill open vocal voice texture, that quite matches Latha Mangheshkar's; however, Javeria lacks all the melody there could be in a voice like that. Javeria is Usman's cousin and married to his elder brother Shahid. All the women of this family have shrill, open vocal voices including Usman's sisters and cousins.

"Gee bhabhi gee", Zaina responds freshly while standing alone in the kitchen doing dishes. Her son is in the upper room.

Zaina and his son do not sleep on a mattress like others in the house. Usman has bestowed upon Zaina a worn-out but musical bedstead. This bedstead, with its squeaks and cracking sounds, complements the person who sits on it and applauds when they get up.

A few months ago, Usman asked Zaina to give away her dowry bed to his "bichari (unfortunate)" sister Annie because she has a husband who is a useless joker, does no job, and has no money. Usman has promised Zaina that he will purchase her a new one. “And a better one.”

Let’s wait for the new bed Usman has promised.

Right in the middle of the lounge is their kitchen, the only place where Zaina can be found if not in her room. She cooks food for eight adults and seven children of the family.

Suddenly!

Roars and Roars, and heavy stomping sounds!

They are getting louder.

Zaina quickly closes the water tap and gets out of her kitchen. Hands dripping water, face dripping bewilderment. Eyes wide-open staring at the staircase on her right. "Ya Allah Khair, what’s happening upstairs?" her heart screaming loudly and throbbing against her chest.

“Why are they screaming?!”

Twists back into the kitchen, turns off the stove, and rushes upstairs with her lithe body making thin tip-top, tip-topping sounds of slippers; praying: "Ya Allah, save Abdul-Rehman – he must be alright up there"! Praying and climbing, she now stands on the threshold of the first-floor lounge that is big enough for five people to stand with a little ease.

She stands watching the scene.

All of her three brothers-in-law engaged in a scuffle!  

“Lo! Welcome, welcome Zaina madam -- have you come to enjoy the show?” Standing at the center of the lounge strikes a silver beetle pot on the wall – Zaina sharply blinks her eyes - Samman continues, "Today, I would get go totally crazy".

From the inside of a room speaks Javeria, “Why are you silent now, Shahid? Can't you see how Samman spoke with even bhabhi gee? When it comes to my behaviour, you become a ruthless animal, and when your own sister misbehaves you stand silently. Ruthless! In fact, this entire family is ruthless. Trying to kill me and my child... and...”

"You shouldn't have said this Summi", suggests Shahid to Samman standing on his right.

On one side of the lounge stands Usman's younger brother Aayan, and on the other end of the lounge stands his elder brother Shahid right on the doorstep of his bedroom with his slouched shoulders and in his grey dress pants pockets.

"Just listen to his soft, calm and mild tone while speaking to his own blood", Javeria murmurs with anguish.

Shahid takes out his hands to point in the direction of the person he is talking about. The gesture that shows Shahid is feeling both helpless and rage. “You empty-headed woman, what do you want? Do you want me to just kill her?"

In her deep voice, with wet eyes and cheeks, Javeria utters each word carefully like she means it, "The moment Samman said 'your kid won't die, bhabhi, from these scissors on the bed', that was the moment I wanted to just kill her."

"Then why did you leave the scissors lying on the bed madam?" Shahid stares right into Javeria's eyes.

"I just got up from the bed and forgot to pick up the scissors and that very moment I asked Samman to pick them up lest my Guddu gets hurt, and she replied to me with such filth! Tuu marja kutti! Mairay bachay kiyu murrain?"

“Shut up you there!” Shahid goes treading heavily towards the room – his voice like that of the barking dogs, “Leave my house at once, go back to your home, and stay there until you learn some lessons of living a life.”

“Yes, there is only one person in this house who is pert, and the rest of you are the gods!” raising her hand high up in the air, Javeria cries louder.

Shahid is one of those persons who have the finest observations – people of their sort can notice the smallest of the variations in your voice and behavior and extract the information they want, but they still need clear and straight answers – a sort of every-question-must-be-answered person. And mind that, such people are really unsteady at holding their temper – a small spark here, and the other minute, a terrible scene of things igniting into embers and ashes!

From the charpoy in the left corner of the lounge comes a feeble yet authoritative voice from his father, “Shahaaiiid!”, And here stands Zaina horror-struck watching the scene– her body, as if maimed with hooks.

“This woman, who came leaving her house, her parents, family, everything, that woman with whom you are talking like rascals, is your wife!” Shahid’s lips quiver slightly as if going to speak something. “Listen! Just listen. Whatever she has done can also be handled with love and patience.”

“What the hell are you both miyan and biwi creating here, turning my little house into a ghetto with your – your barking and biting!” cries her mother, “Is it a house? Can we call this a house! This is a brothel, which you are trying to create.” Joining her hands before her forehead, "Come on, quick, do me a favor, either kill me or leave this house -- all of you – made a hell of my life!”

“Definitely, it is I who have made a hell of everybody’s life” speaks Javeria from her room.

Zaina thinks of going into Javeria's room and console her. But she looks at Shahid's face she turns towards the staircase.

Another heavy and deep sound of a door smashing runs across the thin walls of the house, “Shahid! Leave her, Shahid!!” and these sounds get a little damped as she moves far towards her room. Her cold body trembling hard. Slam opens the door and picks up the wonderstruck Abdul-Rehman on her hip. She does not know why she picked her son up; he has a well-built form and is quite heavier for a woman who is conceiving a six-month baby.

She proceeds towards the telephone and calls her husband. Her thin white trembling hand struggled hard to dial the number correctly.

The bell rings. No one picks up the call.

“Why isn’t he picking up the phone!?”

Her eyes look at the room as if searching for something, while the big receiver hides her sweet, worried, sculpted face.

“Hello? Hello! Usman.”

“They ah-are fighting with eh-each other.” She exploded crying.

“Javeria, Aayan, Abu, Ami, Shahid, everyone is in the house.”

“Samman yelled at me also - without a reason!”

“Why did she yell at me like that?”

“No Usman, I do not deserve that - I am not a servant! No - I didn’t say a word – I was just standing right there and she…”

“I cannot wait that long. You will return next year and then everything will be forgotten.”

And the phone call continues till the house is asleep dead silent; Abdul-Rehman in his bed, other children of the house in their places with their parents in the lounge, husbands, and wives murmuring, planning, gossiping; and the grand ones – well, no one knows about them after the door of their room is closed. Their routine depends more on their old, tired bodies rather than their wants and wishes.

The boy keeps waiting for his mother to get into the bed and then she would fondle him to sleep. But she is on the phone with his papa and she has yet to offer Isha prayer.

Until then, Abdul-Rahman starts imagining things and situations. Situations of war and destruction – situations bringing change at the greatest scale possible. The evil behind the destruction does not interest him so much as the grand scale of change interests him. He is not even interested in thinking about the nature of change – whether good or bad. The idea of complete annihilation and then rebirth is all that he wants to enjoy. Forests wiping out on lands, oceans vaporizing in the hot air, humans changing into dust, and he is the only being left -- the last hope of the entire universe.

“OK, take care. And keep writing.”

“Yes, definitely. He is right in front of me – feigning asleep.”

“Ok. Allah Hafiz.”

His face to the wall. She stands beside him.

“Chalo, get asleep, beta. You have to go to the school in the morning.”

She turns back – Abdul-Rehman squints at her without turning his head much and watches her walking behind the bathroom door – the door gently eats away its gaps, and finally shuts. He languidly turns his head back to the wall. Looking for something interesting to watch – his mind is blank -- eyes following the designs on the cemented wall, and his heart fostering fear through the ugly faces he sees on there. Wherever he looks, he sees a pair of eyes – with no balls. At the top of the wall is a spider’s web. Well, it does not look much like a perfect web – it is more dirt clustered on the threads. What if that spider in the web gets bigger – a lot bigger, bigger than a Ferris Wheel of Joy Land! With its legs patched with thick green acid, big black round belly filled with even stronger acid – what massacre it would create if it fires its hot smelly acid on the buildings – everything would be melted – fumed in air. Towns and cities melting away under the sweltering heat of its acid – and people running away, screaming, bowing, begging for life!

Squeaking, the bathroom door opens.

Zaina comes out with her shoulders and neck slouched, hands raised in front of her - to avoid her clothes being touched by dripping water; her forearms, face and feet are watered– she reaches for the towel hung at the back of the room’s door. Dries herself and covers her head, shoulders and chest with a fragrant lawn dupata. Spreading the prayer mat slightly inclined, she stands straight. Then raising her hands near her ear they land straight on her chest near the neck.

Abdul-Rehman can hear her mouth reading verses in low aspirated whispers.

This whispering sound has some magic in it for him; it brings peace to his mind. The hissing – something soft and numbing gets into his head and now his eyes are quite heavy.

Within a few heavy minutes, Zaina arrives - and so does sleep. Forests are back on lands, spider has gone somewhere behind the mountains. He with his mother, in the bedstead, goes to sleep to wake up early in the morning. He has to go to school.

School has never been Abdul-Rehman’s prime interest. Gadgets, wires, computers, video consoles - these are the things that mainly activate his creative genius. He more likes to do an open heart surgery of his toys rather playing with them.

Where is Abdul-Rehman? Abdul-Rehman! Oh, there he is in the drawing room with his tool kit, and all the wires sprinkled around.

R.I.P. tape-recorder!

And now a good thrashing is the next obvious sequel of this episode.

He has a taste for operating electronics - connecting things with wires, with capacitors, with anything that he has already seen fitted in gadgets. He loves doing that – any electronic device that catches his attention immediately puts a question mark on his mind, “how is it made?” So, he would try to recreate it in his own way. And in doing that he would be most of the time successful – he would create an entirely new thing, which obviously serves no purpose.

He does not like books – they lack wires and technical complexity. Books are all words!

This hatred continues until he is eligible for grade seven, and then something happens – hate for words is now love for words. And this loving isn’t invoked because he really feels a need to learn things – well, he gets into a sort of affection with his cousin who is elegant and fluent in English, and one year younger to him.

So, now he has to create a good impression upon her, and he cannot do that without good English.

He picks up a voluminous dictionary, starts memorizing words from the first entry, marks the words having direct involvement in a normal conversation, and then tries to use them frequently in his routine. He does not realize that this activity is adding much to his small repertoire of words – which in later years help him in academic areas.

Abdul-Rehman and Zaina sleep upstairs in the room that opens out on the rooftop. A large air cooler, a breezy fan from the USA, a velvety carpet beneath their feet, a shiny heavy dining table, a television with “5 more channels”, and a new queen bed; their room is beautifully furnished with these hopes, wishes, future-plannings, dreams, and futile table-talks.

Normally, Zaina doesn’t get out of her room, but only if she has to do the chores downstairs. Her son dearly enjoys skulking around the house, doing things quietly. But on the streets he is a completely different creature: he shouts, he laughs (like scaring someone), he plays, he fights; the streets have something full of verve to offer him. He considers the streets a part of the house because he never needs permission from his elders to go out. He simply goes out to the street just like he would move from one room to the other. The very last house on this street, the corner house, is a very special one for Abdul-Rehman and his mother; it is the house of his Nanabu, a distortion of “Nana Abu”, which means maternal grandfather. It is not just a house for him, it is “Nanabu’s House”; and the street where the door of this house opens is “Nanabu’s Street”.

He likes going out every other part of the day – for the charming streets never cease to amuse him. Playing in the vicinage streets is very much like playing in an orchid - everything is disconnected in isolation from his static house world. But the pathway isn’t that disgusting.

The pathway that leads his room to the street outside makes him feel like a part of the atmosphere of the street - makes him ready for something really exciting. It has an air of queer gravity – an air that is all-pervading in the atmosphere; floating, settling, ponderously absorbing everything and anything felt, heard, seen, and thought by him. There is an odor filling the air (there is so much of it) - the smell of compassion, contempt, love, and desires. Everything is such an unnoticeable amalgamation that it hardly catches anyone’s attention except Abdul-Rehman’s.

He has to pass through the unswept, arid, brick-made staircase leading into a dim lounge; the lounge into a claustrophobic corridor; the corridor into a matchbox-sized garage, and the garage then to a clumsy street outside. These streets are not clumsy for him -- a street is a place where he plays with other boys in the evening. He does not care whether it has crates and cracks, because this is how the streets are – this is how he always has seen them. The thing that delights him is the redolence of food slowly spreading out of the few of the innumerable windows on the street. He loves to sniff things – something perfectly stamps on his mind, as if now his all senses are satiated.

The smell of the house; the recrudescence of patched sunlight penetrating tightly on the garage floor and corridor through the tree leaves outside the gate; the slow, loud mottos of the street hawkers passing by the small gate; the dull sounds of the motor vehicles; a sudden roar of laughter, then the faint sounds of song playing in the nearby house, swishing sounds of broom on watery slopes -- everything swoons up the air into a ubiquitous whole, with his mind unconsciously registering to it. Sometimes, he passes running across the corridor, sometimes walks lost, and sometimes dashes with full verve to show the boys outside his new Eid clothes. So much entrapped in one little five-meter corridor! The corridor joins with a lounge.

II

Three years after...
June 3, 1994

7:45 AM - just another morning.

A broad shouldered, smart, sinewy figure silently cycling against the footpath with his head dangling down and he is wearing a satchel like that of military men. He is gazing at his sharp shadow beneath on the road. It is blurry.

While his head down, he can see things swiftly passing by the black and yellow bricks at the right corner of his eye: a grey worn out cloth and a decrepit beggar spreading on the earth, shoe polisher fumbling for something in an old wooden box, a main-whole with a blackish hill of littering giving off pungent smell, and then comes a gleaming white color of a car, and then another thing, and then another - and things continue to pass.

He was supposed to finish a home assignment last night, but he didn’t. He doesn’t want to go to the school today, miss Uzma won’t spear him. She is a man-like woman with a plastic brown face, and uff! that thick metallic hand she fires on the backs of the students who do not do the homework.

He enters the school gate and it seems like miss Uzma is everywhere. Putting a lock on his cycle, he goes into the classroom and sits there for a moment. He is not particularly thinking about Miss Uzma, but her presence is nailed in his mind. It is 7:55 AM – five minutes for the assembly to begin. Other boys talking, playing, cracking jokes, jumping across the chairs- the joyful commotion chisels his attention from abstract to concrete; from the worry of the unseen future to the joy of the present. His pals share a few invectives and casual manly embraces for no obvious reason, and then he starts roaming around the room.

What’s that boy doing at the back? He sees Arslan writing something.

“O, Butt, oye! What’s up?” He looks up to see who called him. He, a sort of, prevaricate, “well, nothing.”

Abdul-Rehman gets the meaning very well, he jumps out of his seat and goes politely and lovingly to him, “I was thinking if we could have burgers in the break.”

“Give me your copy, scoundrel, I will write it for you but never bribe me!”

Abdul-Rehman hands over the copy, “Tu to jigger hai apna!” Roughly means, “You are the man!”

His job is done now. He can go out and attend the morning assembly without any worries.

It is off time now, he has played a lot the whole day, made pranks with other fellows, got punished by his teacher, and now it is time to go home. But how can he go home without doing some mischief?

He is standing besides the main gate. The floor is cemented, and at one corner an old big tree sits there like an old man of the village spreading blessings all over the settlement. Nature’s powerful play can be seen at work in this corner of the school -- standing here makes the rest of the school look lifeless. Why not ask a little help from nature to consummate this prank?

He reconnoiters the area -- slightly presses the thick, eroded, loosened, greened cement of the wall behind the tree, just to check if something crawls out it.

Oh, he will urgently need something to trap if a roach comes in sight – he should probably look for the bottle first.

In a half-squatted position he turns his head around for something perfect for entrapping roaches. There it is. Under the bench. A plastic bottle will suffice the need -- he gets the bottle and a thin transparent plastic bag along with it --  and then again his eyes, like a mini robot,  start scanning the small muddy patch around that tree. He is unable to find any roaches, but other tiny insects aren’t that bad for the prank. Within a few minutes Abdul-Rehman gets six to seven creepy looking insects entrapped. He seals the bottle with the shopping bag and takes it home to fill it with water and freeze them! The idea is so exciting, so enthralling. The idea that the very next day he will throw this packet on someone and the poor guy will freak out.

He nearly forgets about managing the secrecy of the packet in the freezer.

III

Five in the morning, “Muqtadir, get up my beta. You have to go to school. Chalo Chalo shabaash, wake up, now,” his mother speaks fondling his hair. Umm, he moans in sleep and puts his head on his mother’s lap and leg on a big soft white pillow.

Muqtadir is a responsible child. He knows he has to do the things without his mother repeating the instructions every day. Numbing his desire to sleep more, he woke up slouching on bed’s side– eyes swollen, face red, body languorous. He could have slept more, but the ruthless slaughtering of the thought of sleep gave birth to the thought – ‘I am not sleepy, anymore. Get up Muqtadir.’

Stumbling he went towards the bath; slam opened the door and stood before the basin gazing into the mirror with his hazel blue eyes. ‘Be careful with the door, beta,’ swished into his ears her mother’s soft voice, ‘or your Daado will break my head right in the morning.’

Opening the tap, he rubbed his eyes and nearly spoke, ‘Alright.’

Muqtadir had been trained not only by words but by action, practice and habit. His mother stood him on a heightened stool before the mirror when he was three. And asked him to mimic her whilst brushing his teeth and performing wudu. She used to recite Quran in his ears whilst he was sleeping; she thought that would cement the divine verses into his unconscious forever and would help him memorize them easily later on. And it worked. By the time he turned nine, he had those special rhythms of the entire Surah Yaseen and Waqiyah in his mind.

Washing his hands, then mouth and then performing wudu as his Qarri Sahab taught him in the evening, he took his breakfast. Quickly he hung his bag on his shoulder, hugged and kissed his mama and flew down the stairs into the garage and wore his black shoes, which he already polished last night before going into his bed.

‘Khuda Hafiz, mama.’ He waved his hands to his mother. She was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Allah Hafiz kehte hain, beta.’

‘Allah Hafiz,’ and he left the house for his school at five thirty.

Abdul-Rehman’s younger brother, Muqtadir -  the quiet little soul with a stout bearing, hanging a satchel on his back, moved along the canal making rugged sounds on the road pebbles. Fixing his eyes down on the road he went fancying the wildest adventures he could meet on his way to school. The commonest one that often clicked his mind was what if some rogue on bike speedily approached him to hit with an iron rod or something?

He would quickly bend down on his knees to dodge the hit, and turning around rap his bag around the rod and jolt him down with a pull. Astriding on the belly of the knock-downed biker he would do this and do that - a punch on the face, a chop on the neck - and the fanciful adventures would continue until he would reach his school gate…

It was five forty-five when Muqtadir reached his school. His gaze still fixed at his feet, gait – smooth and slow. His feet always had followed their path just like a guided missile would follow its target – inexorable and focused.

Walking towards the gate, there used to sit one pathan guard in blue uniform at the gate. He had a thin, smart body and a face, white and spotty, having prominent shiny nose, big eyes and thin lips hiding under his thick moustache. He always had something in his head to say to the kids passing that door.

‘Agar tum jaldi ayega roz to tumko jaldi school lagwa dega mai,’ Pathan’s voice had a grudge in his voice. Of course, the management would never change the time table of the whole school for one kid, but the purpose was to tease him. And he did not like that kind of teasing at all. He had an aversion for all those who would ask from his the questions of which they, if ponder for a while, can answer themselves, and people who would talk about things not of immediate concern would be of greatest unease for him.

He would rather have loved to pass through the small doorlet at the back of the school than this Pathan’s gate.

Silently, little Muqtadir passed by the tall guard and sat alone on one of the several swings erected in the playground. He could see the quiet and still leaves of a thick small tree, in front of him, besides the gate. Their silence added meanings into his silence. Muqtadir could connect himself to the voiceless sky, the lonely playground, the motionless swings, the unitary leaves of grass. He smiled to them and they smiley back to him - quickly he made a unique relation with his surroundings – and he loved that. He would love to live in blissful life-long silence rather than cutting momentary cheers and roars. He swung the swing back and forth, back and forth. After a while, he started feeling a growth in his body – an ever growing storm of power. He felt like jumping high into the skies and breaking through the walls and drilling the earth inside out. Instantly, with the forthward motion of the swing he flew high into the air flailing out of it and thudded straight over the ground. Muqtadir knew he landed with great force, and must have created a crate on earth, the way Hulk used to do on TV. He stepped aside, and saw a boxy-box design on the mud. With his head down, he pierced his gaze through his eye-lashes and stared the guard sitting there. What a heroic pose he made – he thought. But for the guard, the pose made him look more of a possessed child than heroic.

Terrified of the child standing alone in the ground the guard stood up and started walking outside the school in front of the main gate, and fifteen minutes later, blithely entered back with a group of other students. He might have stayed outside for another fifteen minutes unless someone would have arrived.

In a few moments a vox wagon came with its loud motors and parked outside the school gate, and then, in a while, entered another small group of students like the previous one, into the school. Their legs, like a millipede, silently moving towards their classes. Then another group entered, and then two students and then another group– all dressed in a blue and white school uniform. Despite the uniformity to which the conformed they held their unique features with them (and that were too, too, commonly unique): bags; some sticking on the backs, some being dragged behind, faces; some sleepy, others just could not smile, hair-styles; some parted from between, others double ponied, and some spiked.

He could see all the students different yet same, same yet unique.

Within no time the number of the students increased around him, and so did the clamour of voices and screams. He walked away from the ground and chose for himself a silent corner of the wide space of the school, and stood watching everyone playing Pakran-pakrai, king-king and discussing things and laughing. One thing he could never understand, why on earth did the two boys laugh while talking? What could be so funny on which would make the two people laugh aloud? Why did not he laugh like that? He never did that nor he would. It did not make sense to him.

At eight the class started. Sitting at the last bench of the class, he would keep thinking what his teachers were teaching. His teachers often kept on speaking for thirty minutes, and he understood nothing. He could hear but not understand, could see but not decipher. Surrendering his courage to know, will to understand, he then started thinking about his adventurous life he spent while travelling on streets. Sometimes, he would take out his copy and start drawing cartoon sketches of his class-fellows and teachers. Sometimes, he would just stare outside the window, or in the carved designs of the wooden table in front of him. Most of the time he thought about his father.

Arranging for himself a tidy leaf of his copy he began moving his pen in circles, round and round and round, then protruding the rounded line upwards and bringing it back, forming mazes somewhere, and somewhere shaded void whiteness. An arcane connection get drawn between his mind and lines: for the classmates sitting next to him the lines were all mess and he a psycho, but the lines for him were a state of trance, a pattern, a map to his mind and a mirror to his thoughts. The whiteness of the page was a place for his mind to travel, and the blackness of the lines a mystery to discover. This black of his mind completed the white of the place – a union of space and mind - destined to be sundered. His hands busy in a thick slow motion, but his mind – it was fast and culling in its move. His mind, drowning silent to its darkest reach, numbed quieter and quitter - until the sounds of pen hissing on the white space became the voice of his mind. He could hear something distant calling him, coercing him, pulling his mind towards itself. The voice is loud, but not loud enough. It was s getting nearer now.

‘Muqtadir! Where are you?’ His teacher’s voice swish entered into his ears like a lightning bolt.

Muqtadir stunned with shock, as if teacher somehow read the thoughts of his mind.

‘Right here, teacher.’

‘No, you aren’t. You are somewhere else. Just pay attention to the blackboard.’ Dotting the board with the chalk in her hand, she spoke, ‘The angle at ‘c’ is 45. To confirm this take out your protectors, - all of you.

Like a rooster in fields she searched around in the class for a boy not ready with his protector, “quick, quick, quick!’

He already had the protector on the white space of the shiny book – he didn’t like the way it was placed there – it was like a dense vision of messed up alignments. He was trying to calculate angles. The protector had two numberings running opposite in direction. Tucking out his tongue, rotating the protector left and right he measured the angle. And it was quite successfully measured from the side from which even the greatest Mathematician, Omar Al-Khayyam, could not have calculated with such a great precision and artistic inaccuracy. Oh, I mean - accuracy.

In his heart, he knew, Maths could never be his friend, and would keep on bullying him all these years of study.

In this class, he always had a drawing pencil with him. He would bring all of the pertinences of his entertainment kit in his big sweetly smelling blue pencil box. He would draw the dull walls of the classroom on his paper. The room had two old yellowish fans feebly spinning on students head. No fan on teacher’s side. A chair was there for the teacher to sit, and no table for documents to place. Students sitting packed in the classroom.

All these minor details could be found in his childish sketches.

Whenever the teacher would come at the back seats, which he would never come, Muqtadir would quickly and deftly hide his sketches under his book. For him, to cram multiplication tables was as an abstract and empty activity as cramming some philosophical epigrams. For a very long time - not until his matriculation he could understand why multiplication sign of ‘x’ was pronounced as ‘zaar’:

Two two zaar four

Two three zaar six

It was more of a rhythm for him which he had to follow.

One day, he quite suddenly drowned into a brief and deep thought while his friend was explaining him the solution to a mathematical problem. His loud thoughts continued in him like drum beats, from one rhythm to another. He could hear just the tone and voice of his friend sitting next to him… His voice could swish into Muqtadir’s ears whenever he stressed his conclusions and answers.

“So, when you multiply the remainder with the value given in the equation, two two zaar four and four into eight… we get thirty six… oh, thirty two. Not thirty six”

Two two zaar four. Why Mrs. Shazia never told him that it was not two two zaar four, but two twos are four? It was more like four entities coming together of in pairs…

“Now, let’s see the answer key…”

“Hmm.” Unknowingly Muqtadir hummed in unpresent attention.

But she never told him like that… She just told two two zaar four… If he was a teacher and was supposed to tell that how it becomes four when four things come together, he would rather have shown four pencils in two pairs in his hands and have put together side by side – and there he is – with two pairs of four pencils. It was nothing but simple addition! Multiplication does not exist in itself… it has its roots in the process of addition.

“So, did you get it now?

“Hmm.” He nodded smilingly.

Teach them the way of growing the seeds and roots into the earth, the rest of the tree they would grow themselves.

“Are you not listening to me?”

He nodded again with a smile.

“Muqtadir?”

“Yes?”

“You are not here. Did you follow what I just explained?”

“Yes, of course, yar.”

“Oh, really? Tell me how did we get the solution to the problem? Ok leave that… just tell me what have I just said a minute ago?”

“You see Mathematics is all philosophy down to the roots.”

“Oh, stop it! Your booby-radio is always spitting out something and…” Cheema’s sombre voices simmered down, “Oh, forget it. I am leaving for my break. I have already wasted my fifteen minutes after you,” Muqtadir could vividly hear him saying in his low disgusting voice: “Saien!”

Saying this he left the room

Had Cheema looked back before leaving he would definitely have seen hurt in his face. But his great concern with the time he gave to Muqtadir could not allow him to feel the intensity of the impact his words created on his feeble heart. And he left.

Perturbed and hurt scratching his light eyebrow with a pencil, he wondered how exciting it would have been only if he had a secret friend with whom he could talk and play. He could come and meet him whenever he wished and no one could see him playing with him. Ah, such foolish things happen only in fantasy movies – imaginary friends and tales – they are all imaginations.

In his liquid motion, taking out a fresh white paper from his rough copy, he began writing. For a moment he appeared to be a satisfied little being silently sitting in his chair– neither happy nor sad. Just calm and fulfilled.

‘Saien,’ he spoke.

Upright big letters began to appear on the paper as his pencil moved. He again wrote the same word. This time, a little bigger, more focused.

S A I E N

And then for almost fifteen minutes smoothly he kept drawing some convoluted patterns on the page.

His hand was quite focused – that was for sure – but his mind, it was like a lost traveller with a snake in a desert. Struggling for finding his way, battling for his survival. His snake, leaving its trails behind so that others, when find these trails, would know that there passed a traveller who, at least struggled, no matter, whatever the consequences turned out to be.

These prints left behind by the traveller’s snake were the track of his mind. The trails at the centre, the spirals- these leafless bending bows spreading like the guardian snakes of a treasure cave.

The straight repeated lines like a process of self-destruction and self-creation, like a red burning bird dying every other second and being born into a new Muqtadir, grew coarsely above the spirals – as if standing in negation to the spirals. Criticizing himself, asking several questions as to why he always speaks out the things which others can never digest, he made denser repeated lines and turned them into a gyre of eternity.

It was 11:30AM by then, and the bell rang for the next class. Boys began rushing into the class, shouting and talking. He silently folded the paper inside his book, and waited for some other free time to write. Until, then he must keep silent, and should talk to none to maintain the sanctity of his emotive thoughts.

A massive teacher entered the room. White beard around his face, and bid spectacles around his eyes. He appeared to him like a mighty wolverine who fought crusades and battles and conquered the lands with his might. His physique inspired him. He was his Biology teacher.

-------- (missing)-------

It is a philosophy of language, not of ideas. One and one are two – how two? Why not three? And what is this one? In his real life he never talked like, ‘give me a one. Or I am wearing a three.’ There must be a reference for such unreal numbers. A reference makes the numbers real… substantial… and not abstract. Yes… abstract. He had seen somewhere such kind of substantialisation of numbers in some good course books, which he didn’t remember at that time. In those books, along with the numbers there were figures and shapes given. Those shapes gave an image to the numbers. Though an image of too far connections, yet it was given – at least some kind of it. Another problem was that this addition process was told to the students like a secret trick: “If you feel difficulty in remembering the tables with sequence, just add the previous answer into the next question, you will get the unknown answer.” Mathematics does not require a trick… it just requires a demonstration and real life examples for proper cementing of concepts into the minds of the students. She did not tell them the right way to consider things. Rather she just created a rhythmic pattern before them… and presented it in a way that this was just the thing they should do in order to study mathematics… If he was to … The idea must require a demonstration. After all… numbers do not have any existence in themselves. Two is nothing without its referent… What two? Two pencils… What four? Four pencils… And in reality who knows when four objects would interact they would result into a one whole four; they might engage in totally different patterns, one could never guess. The three objects might stick together at one side and the forth would be left alone – apparently they would be four, but in reality they would be a three and a one. Mathematics was so unreal to him – it never posited probabilities from its very beginning. It just told what appeared. The subject for him was inapt for studying the complexities involved in the real life interaction between two objects. How come a mathematician be so sure that when four singular objects would meet together they would definitely make a one whole four without any alterations or modifications? Such a kind of study would make its students tethered thinkers. They would know presume that one interaction would result into a particular kind of result… and all the results would be predetermined… Mathematics is just another predeterminism… It is this Mathematics that has created a gap between theory and practice.

All of this went through his mind in a couple of seconds- thoughts jumping from one to another, form another to the other, thinking everything collectively and getting charged with impatience as his thoughts got piled over each other.

“Stop!” he burst.

He quickly took out four pencils and held them before Saif, his friend.  

“What are these?”

“Pencils.”

“How many pencils?”

“Four, obviously.”

“ Yes. Four in pairs. Which means two on each side.”

“So? What are you doing, yar? Stop this game. And let’s study.”

“What is two-two zaar?”

“Four, of course.”

Muqtadir realized Said was not getting the point that he had in his point. He thought of explaining the ambiguity of language in a different way – there must be a non-static demonstration. He again held pencils before Saif.

“Ok. Again.”

“ What are you up to Muqtadir?” Saif interrupted annoyingly.

“Here is a magic I want to show you.”

“how many pencils can you see?”

“two.”

From behind the two pencils he withdrew two more pencils, as if they have budded from the previous two pencils.

“and now?”

“four.”

He again showed the two pencils, “So, these were two pencils. So we would say two… no… these two… sorry,” he paused and murmured and repeated in his mouth. He was looking for an appropriate expression that could instantly relate the sounds of the wrong and abstract expression, two two zaar four, with the real image of four pencils.

“Yaar, what are you trying to do, I can’t get a bit of it. I am going”

“Wait… wait... I got it. These pencils… these are two pencils. Alright?” he further stressed his last sentence while jerking them hard, “These… are... two pencils. Now, if you for a while consider that we do not call pencil a pencil but we call them one. Then it would be…”

“What?! Muqtadir, you are going nuts. You are wasting my break time by doing these silly lunatic pranks. I am leaving for my break. I have already wasted my fifteen minutes after you.”

Saying this he left the room. Muqtadir could not understand the situation.

The thing which he thought so quickly and easily in his mind was just impossible to say in words. He knew that he knew what he knew but could not say that he knew a new thing! That was a complex thing to say.

That day he found himself a great failure. Going back to home after the school was off, he could think of no adventurous stuff, no super cool stunts and bad guys on bikes coming to beat him. Nothing like that attracted his mind. There was just one thing haunting his mind. How to explain the thing in easy words? He finally reached home with a decision in his mind; he would ask his teacher tomorrow, perhaps he would give an easy answer and help him out.

The next day…

Saif turned around and told others this new information, and to his surprise, they were amazed not in the least. Disappointedly he informed Muqtadir about the class’ response, and he again baffled him with his answer, “Amazement is the first step to learning, and they lack it.”

Before this Saif knew a bogus kind of a Muqtadir who never participated in the Maths class, and now he could not understand what happened to Muhammad Muqtadir just sitting there before him. He was the boy, who knew nothing about Mathematics, and a few minutes ago just told him something which even teachers never told him. He was not able to decide whether to thank him or to question him about his newly gained knowledge about Mathematics.