A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (18 page)

And along with all the eminent faces, in the chair of the convener of the conference sat a boy. Not just any boy—the same fifteen-year-old that Turab Ali Shah had seen at Larkana, sitting next to Makhdoom Moenuddin!

Both Turab Ali Shah and Jan Mohammed watched with dropped jaws and bulging eyes as the young boy clambered up onto the table and began to address the audience. To a burst of applause he modestly lowered his head, while Hakim Sehwani held his hands up to stop them, and then, failing that, banged his baton on the table.

“Let him speak! Please, let our esteemed Sayed Ghulam Murtaza Shah speak!”

Turab Ali Shah and Jan Mohammed were paralyzed. So this was Ghulam Murtaza Shah! They had expected a young man and instead they’d found a child—a pup! And this pup had dared to organize this meeting under the mighty auspices of the Khilafat Conference!

“It’s an outrage!” hissed Jan Mohammed, through clenched teeth.

“Hmph,” grunted Turab Ali Shah. “What’s he doing on that table?”

“He’s too short to be seen otherwise!”

The youngster, who’d recovered some of his color since the meeting in Larkana, stood straight and proud in front of them and began to speak, in a high, excited tone. “Bismillah hir Rahman ur Rahim. My fellow Sindhis, my older brothers, Saeens
…” Turab Ali Shah groaned to himself. The boy’s voice hadn’t even broken! Why, he wasn’t even old enough to shave his whiskers! Turab Ali Shah considered walking up to the table and telling Hakim Sehwani that this was highly out of order. But then the boy continued, and reluctantly Turab Ali Shah forced himself to listen.

“You must know, my brothers, that two days ago, the commissioner in Sindh summoned me to Kotri and warned me that the Khilafat Movement is an anti-British campaign …” Boos filled the courtyard. “He told me that if I did not end my participation, they would halt the monthly income that has been given to me by the Court of Wards; and the commissioner requested that I cancel this conference. But I told him that all the arrangements had been finalized and that there was no stopping the conference now. And I say to you that, indeed, there is no stopping this movement now!”

“Wah, wah, wah!” cheered the audience.

“My great ancestor, Sayed Hyder Shah, came to me in a dream. He told me that no one could be allowed in his court without prior preparation. I asked him what that preparation was. He said, ‘He who keeps on serving his homeland Sindh and its people without any discrimination shall be instructed further with the passage of time.’ My brothers, I offer myself to Sindh in her service forever!”

“Jeay Sindh!” came a cry from someone’s lips. Jan Mohammed turned sharply to stare at Turab Ali Shah, who was himself surprised to find that his mouth was the offender. Finding that he liked the taste of the words on his tongue, he shouted it again. “Jeay Sindh!”

The crowd took it up and carried it on.
Jeay Sindh! Jeay Sindh! Jeay Sindh!
Long live Sindh! Forever and ever!

“The welfare and security of Sindh and her people is dependent upon our taking care of those sublime souls and the places where they reside: Shah Hyder in Sann, Sayed Khairuddin at Sukkur, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif, Shah Abdul Latif at Bhit Shah … the list goes on. We must protect them until we die.”

“Jeay Sindh!”

“I have decided to serve Sindh by choosing the paths of political and social welfare of my people. Therefore I have called upon men far greater than I to speak at this conference, and for its success and the success of the Khilafat Movement, I appeal to Almighty Allah for his help and blessings and guidance.”

“Ameen!” shouted the Maulanas from the stage.

“And so I say to you, we must put our faith in the Khilafat Movement. For it is only when the Muslim world is free, and the British have quit India, that Sindh will reap the benefits for a thousand years or more. I know too well that some of our compatriots hate independence and love enslavement. But it is a trap that we must avoid at all costs. We must never accept oppression in our beloved Sindh, no matter who the oppressors are or where they come from.”

People murmured to each other, naming those Pirs who everyone knew supported the British and had refused to take part in the Khilafat Movement, remaining loyal to the government instead. Ghulam Murtaza Shah paused for a moment as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I would like to quote the lines of our beloved Shah Abdul Latif, whose shrine I visit every month with willing devotion:

Oh God! May ever You on Sindh

bestow abundance rare;

Beloved! All the world let share

Thy grace, and fruitful be.

“I thank you, my brothers, I thank you, Saeens, I thank you for coming here today and giving me your support. May Allah Saeen bestow upon us not just abundance, but victory!”

“Jeay Sindh!”

The boy quickly climbed off the table and sank back into his seat, his chest heaving with effort and emotion.

Turab Ali Shah couldn’t wait until there was a break, at which he heaved himself out of his chair and shot off toward the stage as fast as his legs could carry him. Jan Mohammed clutched at his sleeve, but Turab Ali Shah charged the table like an overexcited bull and went up to Ghulam Murtaza Shah, his hands outstretched.

“Well done, by God, well done!”

Ghulam Murtaza rose from the table, glowing at the praise. He bent downward to touch Pir Turab Ali Shah’s feet, then they
salaamed
each other with the
namaste
and embraced. Turab Ali Shah clapped the boy on the back so hard that he coughed and his glasses almost flew off his head.

“Do you really think it was good?” Ghulam Murtaza said shyly, and it was only at that moment that Turab Ali Shah realized how young the boy really was.

“Saeen,” said Turab Ali Shah. And that one word was enough.

Ghulam Murtaza flushed again. “Do you know,” he said, in a hoarse voice, so low that Pir Turab Ali Shah had to strain forward to hear him, “I have been an orphan since I was sixteen months old. I always thought I was unlucky to never have known my father. But I see today that it is not true.”

“How do you mean, Saeen?”

“Just look …” The boy gazed in wonder at the rows of men that had come here from all corners of Sindh, Pirs,
waderas
, zamindars, men of learning, men of the lands, men of menial work, and men of intellect. “Sindh may be my mother, but it seems today that I have many fathers. And if they are half as proud of me as you are, then my Baba, may God rest his soul, does not have to worry.”

Then Turab Ali Shah turned away so that Ghulam Murtaza would not see the tears glistening in his eyes.

November 23, 2007

KARACHI

Ali put down the phone and stared at it as if it were a loathsome creature: a cockroach or a rat, instead of a combination of plastic and computer chips. He had been calling Sunita every day for the past week, but her phone was always switched off.
The number you have dialed is not responding at the moment: please try again later.
That meant she’d changed her number—it was easy enough to do in Karachi, with cheap SIMs available at every corner shop and market in the city. Her inaccessibility made him panicky; he found himself without appetite, lacking in confidence. He couldn’t even bring himself to entertain his many sexual fantasies; at night, instead of lying on his back and thinking about her in bed with him, he just slipped into unconsciousness.

He had a recurring dream during these nights: he was standing at a shrine somewhere in the interior of Sindh—he couldn’t tell which one—while worshippers and pilgrims passed by, ringing the bell at the doorway before stepping across the threshold and going to the saint’s tomb to offer prayers and make their promises to him:
Grant my prayer, O blessed Saeen, o offspring of the Prophet, peace be upon him, intercede with God on my behalf and I will feed sixty poor people every Friday for the rest of my life.

…
Get my daughters married …

… Cure my father’s illness …

… Please let me have a child …

But instead of joining them in their adoration, he stood paralyzed on the fringes of worship. He tried to raise his hands in prayer, and found he could not remember the words. And then Sunita suddenly marched past him, dressed in a sari with a
bindi
on her forehead, carrying a tray of little pots with spices and a small blazing
diya
. She went up to the saint’s bier, which was covered with a green cloth and heaped with roses, set her tray on the floor, then put her hands together in
namaste
and bowed her head, praying softly. He would wake from these dreams and quickly check his phone to see if she’d texted him, but no message ever waited for him.

Ali still saw her in class, but she refused to look at him or respond to his attempts to speak with her. She surrounded herself with girlfriends and pretended she couldn’t hear him when he called out to her. She was blanking him as effectively as if she’d disappeared. Every time he saw her, his heart jumped to his mouth with the hope that today might be the day she ended the ostracism. But when she turned away from him, dashing his hopes, he grew more and more dejected, leaving him with the realization that he simply didn’t know how to fix the gap that had opened up between them.

Still, he emailed her every morning. At first he wrote her the story of what happened at the embassy, how he’d left just as his name was being called, how he’d thought the moment would have terrified him but all he could feel was an exhilaration and the strange confidence that he was doing exactly the right thing. Then he worried that she would find him still selfishly centered only on his own life, so he wrote to tell her something that would make her soften her heart toward him: nothing pleading or apologetic, just the little details of his day in the hopes that some phrase or memory would resonate with her, and draw her back to him.

He told her about how the channel had been shut down and while they were still going to work, the station was like a graveyard, with little to do except look at each other’s strained faces and play solitaire endlessly on the computer. He told her how he’d arranged a small fund for Haroon at the office, one of the accomplishments he was most proud of at City24. He wrote about how the electioneering was making him sick with the sight of all the banners going up with politicians’ faces sneering down at him from every lamppost and wall. He didn’t bother to mention that Haris and his mother were barely talking to him after the US visa debacle. He’d explained to them again and again that he hadn’t gone through with the interview, that he’d changed his mind about going to America—but it seemed that his desire to go in the first place was betrayal enough to them.

Ali accepted their wrath meekly after a time, finding himself too exhausted to explain his motivations or actions any further. In his more contemplative moments, he wondered if they weren’t substituting him for his father, punishing him for Sikandar’s abandonment all those years before. It seemed as if years of pent-up wrath were being released now, as if Ali had torn the skin off wounds that had seemed to heal but were in fact still raw under the surface.

The only person who gave him any affection these days was Jeandi, too young to understand why her eldest brother had done such a bad thing by wanting to go and study in America.

“Adda, when you go to America, will you take me with you?” Jeandi asked Ali one day when they were having breakfast together. He was chewing on a piece of toast and watching a cricket match on television while she played with a bowl of chocolate-
flavored cereal that was turning the milk brown as she stirred the soggy flakes over and over with her spoon.

Ali almost began to tell her that he wasn’t going, but the look on Jeandi’s face, hesitantly hopeful, touched something soft inside his heart and he decided to indulge her in the fantasy. “Of course I’ll take you with me.”

Jeandi did a double take, as if she hadn’t been expecting him to agree. “Will you take me to the mall there? I’ve heard they’re really big and they have everything in them!” She spoke quickly, worried that the offer might be rescinded if she didn’t secure it fast enough.

“Yes, of course.”

“And will you teach me how to drive?”

“I can do that here, Jeandi.”

“No, Adda, Amma says it’s too dangerous for girls to drive. She says they can get kidnapped or worse. What’s worse than being kidnapped, Adda? I don’t want to have that happen to me. I’ll wait until we get to America and then I’ll learn there.”

Ali’s eyes watered suddenly. “That sounds great. And I’ll buy you a car, too.”

“Really, Adda?” She pulled the spoon out of the chocolatey mess and sucked on it happily.

“Yes, anything you like.”

“Thanks, Adda!” She jumped up from her seat and came around to give him a hug. He patted her arms as she wound them around his neck and rubbed her cheek against his. She’d been so young when their father had gone; people always said that it was difficult for boys to grow up without their fathers, but Ali suspected that Jeandi was suffering the loss of her father in her own way. It was up to him to take his father’s place, to show this child that there was still a man whom she could turn to under any circumstances, who would love her even when she believed that she was unlovable. It was the only gift he wished his father had given him when he’d been that young.

After breakfast he sat down at the computer to write Sunita his daily email.
I’m going to a meeting of the People’s Resistance Movement tonight at nine. It’s at the Second Floor. I met them when I was at the lawyers’ protest last week; they’re just ordinary citizens, not politicians or anything, and they’re organizing ways that we can get involved. I just thought I should check it out. Maybe it’s something we could do a story on. If—I mean when—we come back on the air!
He paused, then added,
Maybe you could come, too. It sounds really interesting
.