And the World Changed (30 page)

• • •

It is the tenth of Ashura in the Christian year 1997, the day the frenzied mourning of Hussain's martyrdom fourteen centuries ago reaches its annual peak for Shia Muslims the world over. I am visiting “home”—Lahore—on a research trip funded by my adoptive land, the United States. In the middle of Shalmi, the working-class inner sanctum of Lahori Shiadom, I find myself swept along a tide of sweat, blood, and tears at four in the morning. “
Behen-chod, madar-chod
—
arrey, arrey
—don't you have mothers and sisters, you fucking sons-of-bitches—
hai, hai
,” even the counter curses are couched in antifemale rhetoric. But tonight, or should I say early morning, as the city pulsates under cover of darkness, throbbing in passionate movement as if awaiting climax at the moment when the sun's first rays rend its black shroud, melting into the shrieks and moans and moans and shrieks emitted at hoarse intervals from the crowds of mourners, men receiving the sacrament, letting the blood flow freely between their gashes, in a strange reversal of roles . . . so it is that this morning Aunty and I are objects of veneration, Zainabs to their Hussain. “Let the women pass—
araam-say, bhai, yeh hamari behenain hain
. . .” the clanging of knives-on-chains hook and tear manly flesh punctuated with hypnotic dirges sung in honor of
Bibi
Zainab. . . .

Santa Maria, the Black Madonna, Holy Mother of Christ, Jesus, Jesus,
Ya
Ali!
Ya
Ali!
Ya
Hussain,
Ya
Hussain. . . .

July 5, 1999, crossing the border back into Spain—Pays Basque, to be exact—is an adventure. Zeba and I are stopped by the guards in a performance of power which we counter with the actors' power of performance—turning on female charm full throttle, keep the motor running,
behen-chod, ma di . . . yaar
, why are you cursing so much, fuck it,
meri jaan
, it's your bad influence of yesteryear . . . yours and Soori's—all his fucking and swearing, Holy Mother of Jesus, how many women did he hump at UVA . . . fucking asshole, he's still at it, tits and asses await him at every port, while the wife-who-won't-give-him-any raises their kids back home in Lahore.

So then, finally, the guards are apologetic, all that show of male authority comes to nought. . . .
Amusez-vous bien avec
Aymeeng-way . . . clever man-in-blue, at least he'd heard of the great man. . . . I nod and wink and off we go, still in possession of our packets of Paki
charas
(courtesy of Soori) as our victory charms.

First stop, San Sebastian. As Hania drives around looking for the P sign, I am looking for signs of my own—the cathedral, for one. I head straight for it once we've emerged from the subterranean depths of the parking lot—it amazes me how efficiently Hania is able to figure out the parking protocol in foreign cities, never mind navigating the always menacing traffic. Anyhow, while she smokes her sixth Marlboro Light of the day, having expressed her distaste for cathedrals and bullfights in the same raspy breath—I enter the hallowed hall, its cool darkness a welcome shroud in which to lay at rest a spirit in constant, exhausting flight. . . . Minutes later that thought, too, goes the way of all other delusional fancies, spiraling up with the smoke of the Marlboro Lights, and after downing, rather speedily, the ubiquitous
café con leche
available at every Spanish street corner—we take some obligatory snaps and are on our way to the high point of my pilgrimage: Pamplona, where the sun is setting on the eve of Hemingway's centennial and the start of seven days of unabashed libidinal energy unleashed in honor of the fiesta of San Fermin, that ever-so-saintly bishop of Pamplona.

Na ro Zainab, na ro
. . . don't cry for your brother, martyred in the cause of a just faith—always just, of course, but no, there is no room for the questioning impulse—justly silenced when confronted with the sheer magic of the Sanfermines, where popular religion and bullfighting have come together, conjoined for centuries. I want to feel the madness, lose myself running the e
ncierra
, wear white at the bullfights and drink till I don't know my name, chanting,
Ya
Ali!
Ya
Fatima!
Ya
Abbas! Beat that breast, baby, skin on skin.

       
You have become exotic

       
to yourself

       
grinned the professor in the ponytail

       
peeking through the lenses

       
the diamond in my nose

       
glittered in the sun

       
my blond streak

       
fittingly flamboyant

       
she's become

       
a damned liberal

       
living among them so long

       
his rage

       
foams on his lips

       
spewing forth

       
frightening

       
venom

       
those freaks those shias

       
shiites to your friends

       
he sneers

       
wallowing in their blood

       
i was entranced

       
by the beautiful boys

       
singing their songs

       
moving me to frenzy

       
in that climactic moment

       
between life and death

       
when all I could hear was the

       
clanging of the chains

       
before the blood burst forth

       
splattering my white
kameez

       
and i thought

       
so this is ecstasy

       
remembering the dead

       
remembering the martyred

       
excess of memory

       
surfeit of pain

       
camera in hand

       
i beat my breast

       
so this is what it means

       
to be a stranger to my s/kin

Sylvie, our Spanish hostess married to a rich sheikh of Abu Dhabi with a keen interest in falcon-hunting—at whose stunning villa atop a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean we spend our first two nights in royal splendor—is horrified at my obsession with the Corrida. Do you know they make young boys run in front of the bulls, and so many die each year? And what about the bulls? Such cruelty to animals! I am campaigning to ban this primitive custom . . . this, to the cheers of the other women, Hania, her two cousins Bari Apa and Billi, and the freshyoungthing, Aliya Merchant (no relation to Ismail Merchant). I guess I'm lucky Hania has agreed to drive me to Pamplona at all—1500 miles, no less—to honor an old friendship and mock my literary fetishism, she says. But don't dare talk to me about bulls, okay?? Meanwhile, grateful though I am to have her road skills at my disposal, I can't help thinking, what a bunch of—well, women, excuse me—I'm surrounded with, now that I've discovered the machismo upon which my feminism is built. . . .

My mother is horrified when I announce my intention of spending the night running with the mourners in the inner city on the Shia holy night of Ashura. Do you realize how dangerous this is? People are killed every year! How can you be so enamored of something as uncivilized as self-mutilation in the name of religion? You can't go! Tell your husband (spitting venom in my face) to take responsibility for your behavior—what will we do with your kids if you're killed in those mobs? Are you mad? The hysterical reproach from mother's Ava Gardner eyes is almost too much of a cross to bear, especially when she confides
to me in what has suddenly become a very pragmatic, no-nonsense tone of voice, that Shia Muslims (
if they can even be called Muslims!!
) are known to pollute the town's water supply following this primitive ritual with blood from their bodies. . . . What is a poor, rational Sunni to do??

       
Na ro, Zainab, na ro . . .

       
bleeding

       
something awful

       
This is a pragmatic poem

       
about a pragmatic woman

       
my mother

       
she teaches me

       
never to be free

       
of surfaces

       
smooth

       
sailing

       
like a pumice stone

       
on my sole

       
rough skin sloughs off

       
as it appears

       
the seams mustn't show

       
this is Morrison's art

       
and mummy lives a/part

       
so well

       
down syndrome baby and all

       
never upset her

       
nor daddy's tumor

       
and subsequent disfigurement

       
You came, then You left

       
accuses the supplicant

       
Look at my passport

       
no entries no departures

       
i was home

       
tending to my babies

       
it is common to

       
hallucinate

       
after a major operation

       
I had bad dreams

       
as a child

       
bad men

       
rough-bearded

       
breaking open our

       
house

       
my heart led away

       
Beautiful and Elegant

       
in a white cotton

       
sari

       
jasmine in her hair

       
She looks over her

       
shoulder

       
with those Ava Gardner

       
Eyes

       
as if to say

       
it's okay

       
II

       
So I see her

       
with that man

       
purring sleekly like a cat

       
his whiskers dipped

       
in mother's milk

       
it seems ages

       
have gone by

       
then I hear her

       
banging on the door

       
hysteria masked

       
practically

       
underground

       
you didn't see anything

       
there was nothing

       
to see

       
now i must go and

       
pick up your

       
da-ddy

The night is young at 10:30 p.m. The big ball of fire had barely disappeared as my girlfriend and I stepped lively out of our hotel, confronted immediately with the variegated odors of human and canine flesh all mixed up, with the pretence of perfume unable to mask the peculiar aroma of rich, raw sex . . . sex was definitely, unmistakeably in the air, pungent as an onion. . . . Without warning the crowd gave way and the choked-up lane that couldn't possibly go anywhere opened into the mise-en-scene of a passion play. My eyes locked into handsome uncle-by-default, intensely focussed in his stiff white kurta pajama, and reassured, I slipped into the trance of the men, elbowing my way into their wavelength, banging, hammering, wanting to be let into the magical performance (for my husband the engineer, the hinted orgasmic state in hindsight is yet another in an endless series of betrayals, deserving only a venomous spit I must accept both outside and in) fair flesh, dark flesh, thin flesh, fat flesh, young flesh, old flesh, hairy flesh, smooth flesh, taut flesh, sagging bellies, pounds and pounds of masculine meat so near and yet so far, I want to put my hands down under the skin beaten raw and red so the haze spreads all across the broad manly chests and the boyish ones, I want to take I want to take I want to take my fingers and dip them deep inside the redhot liquid and sign my name in blood, Fawzia was here. . . .