No Country: A Novel (45 page)

Inside, Qadir Chacha’s hut smelt like the cool earth, but woody too, for he puffed his hookah here. The small lamp in his room would bounce off the single picture on its special ledge, so that it became a luminous mirror. One afternoon, I took it down to peer at the square building draped in soft black fabric on which was flowing calligraphy. Around it appeared swirls of light. Looking closer, I realized that these were not waves of light, but a flow of people—so small next to the vast dark cube of the building that they were like innumerable bright spots.

Qadir Chacha took the picture carefully from my hands, even before Laub finished looking at it. He kissed the glass pane before putting the picture back.

“That’s the Ka’aba,” he said to me, “the house built by Ibrahim and his first son, Ishmail.”

“First son?” I asked.

“Yes,” he nodded, the shadow of his short beard wagging on the wall behind him. “Ibrahim, God’s beloved, had another son, Ishaaq. But these two hated each other, all their lives.” I could sense that Laub was troubled.

“Why?” I said, preparing myself for whatever was to come.

“Kush, where are you, naughty boy?” I could hear Sushma screeching from the verandah, peering, with an ineffectual hurricane lamp raised at face level, “Kush?”

“Why?” I urged Qadir, ignoring Sushma’s calls. “Why did they hate?”

“I do not know,” fumbled Qadir. Then he said, “Run along today. I will tell you other stories tomorrow.” I nodded. Qadir Chacha’s stories were fine, but he never knew
why
the stories were the way they were.

I knew I would have to go elsewhere for answers.

•  •  •

S
OON
L
AUB AND
I ventured far beyond the backyard, past the hedges of dhundul, past brambly woods thick with fireflies, into the edgy tangles of bamboos. You couldn’t run through bamboo-woods. I discovered why. One afternoon when I was running in it, a twig almost entered my eye, hitting me just under my eyebrow. Blood dripped into my left eyeball. When I looked up, one eye smeared and the other just startled, everything appeared disjointed. My brother Laub was frightened, saying,
Sit down, sit down, shut your eyes
, and I did. I heard the words in my head where my brother speaks.

When I blinked open my eyes, to my astonishment, I spied the broken walls and the low, moss-ravaged dome of the lost mosque under dreadlocked banyans. Right behind it whispered the powerful river. Thrilled, I called Laub, “Let us go in!” Indigo shadows were drifting down like birds. Laub was scared. Under the sagging roof was a cloth-covered mazhar-shrine where the miracle-working holy man had lain, for years and years, dead in
his tomb. I peeped in through the cobwebbed window. In the corner, in a great heart-thumping moment, I saw someone. He raised his hand. In it, he held a pair of black tongs. He clicked it twice, in greeting.

Then he said, “Come in, enter, both of you.

In the shadow that hung around him like his rags, the only things visible were his forehead, his eyes, and his hands. The tongs he held in his left hand were now pointing at his heart. He was tall, we could tell, even though he was squatting on the far side of the mazhar For an anguished instant, the thought that
he
was the dead pir himself crossed my mind. Was he sitting out here because he was tired of lying in his tomb-bed?

Under the green spread of wild vines, the ruined mosque lay in shadow. If ever darkness had echoes, they moved here. The man tapped the tongs on the ground and pointed. We sat down, Laub and I.

“Is it true what they say about you?” I asked. I could sense that Laub was pulling back, still afraid.

“You can tell what is truth?” He had two teeth missing. His beard was straggly and his hair lay matted below bony shoulders. His black djellaba was torn in places where his ribbed chest showed through, behind beads and amulets wrapped in black and brown rags.

“Tomago ki naam?”
he asked in a strong East Bengali accent.

“Kush. My brother is Laub.”

“Yes,” he said simply, but he did not tell me his own name. In my head, I made up a name for him.
Kalo Pir
, the black faqir.

“You can call me that,” he said, “although the one who lies buried here, my Ustad, was the real pir, blessed by the Nabi, may his name be praised.”

How does he know what I have named him?
I thought indignantly. How can he read my thoughts? I was defiant, but curious. I wanted to learn what others thought: Then I could get home before Baba returned from his office; I would know what my mother thinks all day; I could even try to figure out if Laub has thoughts that are hidden from me.

“Do not be alarmed,” he said, sensing Laub retreat. The man seemed to shift about on the broken floor. His eyes were like two pieces of glass. “Maybe the djinns tell me.”

“Djinns!”
I said, taken aback.

•  •  •

I
COULD NOT
wait to get back to the lost mosque, and would slip away every other day, whenever I could evade Sushma’s beady eyes. I had so many questions for Kalo Pir, because there seemed to be so many stories.

The shadows cast by the swaying trees overhead made the broken tiles of the courtyard seem to move. My brother and I drank in stories of other worlds. With his tongs, Kalo Pir would stir the embers, tossing in shining pieces of some substance that smoked and sputtered blue perfumed wisps.

“Tell me the real truth about Ishmail,” I said bravely to Kalo Pir a week after our first visit. I knew Laub did not like me to poke around the story which Qadir Chacha had started, but I had to know. Besides, it was just a story.

“You think it is just a story?” chuckled Kalo Pir. “Aaah,” he breathed out long and slow. “But you also want the real truth, eh? Not just the truth, no?”

Why did grown-ups always end up teasing us, sooner or later?
Is it because they knew more stories? Did they think they knew what everything means?

“No, no,” said Kalo Pir, clicking his tongs. “Only Allah knows the meaning of all the stories.”

“Tell me about Ishmail,” I insisted.

“God summoned the boy’s father, Ibrahim, and wanted proof of his love.”

“Whether he loved Ishmail?”

“No,” said Kalo Pir. He was no longer smiling. There was an odd glitter in his eye. “Allah wanted to know if Ibrahim loved God.”

“You said He knows everything.”

“He does. But He wanted Ibrahim to discover it for himself.”

“How?”

“He asked Ibrahim to prove his love by slashing his son Ishmail’s throat.”

“That would prove his love?”

“Allah thought so,” said Kalo Pir. I held my breath, unable to ask the next question.

“Ibrahim took his knife and was about to do the qurbani, but Allah had his proof now. He is merciful.” My chest hurt from holding my breath.

“Allah had turned Ibrahim’s knife blunt. He had his proof. An angel stayed Ibrahim’s hand.”

“What happened then?” I knew Laub was restless too.

“Nothing. There is nothing else in the story.”

“No, no, Kalo Pir,
no
,” I said. “Did the knife become sharp again after the test was over? Tell me. Was the knife safely taken away?”

“The story ends there,” said Kalo Pir.

“It cannot end there!” I said in frustration. “If the knife remained, if it became sharp again, what could stop someone else from coming, using the knife to slash Ishmail’s throat? To prove something else?”

Kalo Pir stirred the last embers with his tongs. “The Christian padres—and also Jews, the sons of Ishaaq, tell an earlier story.”

“That is different?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean?” I was confused.

“In their story, it is Ishaaq whose neck is under Ibrahim’s knife.”

“That’s no better.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, yes, Kalo Pir,” I said, for it was obvious to me. “The knife remains. It is one brother or another.”

“Yes, Kush, it is always one brother or another,” whispered Kalo Pir, “and the knife is sharp when finally it is time.” His face had an inky tint. After a while, he brightened. “But there are other stories.”

I don’t like his stories
, Laub was whispering in my ear, but I pretended I did not hear him. “Yes, tell me,” I said to Kalo Pir.

•  •  •

“T
HERE HAVE BEEN
all kinds of troubles,” Qadir Chacha told me after Baba came back from work the next day. Someone had derailed a train by tampering with the track. Hindus were blaming Muslims, and the Muslims were furious and blamed the infidels.

“So who do you think did this?” I asked Qadir Chacha.

“Bad people.”

“Hindu bad people or Muslim bad people?” I persisted.

“What does good or bad have to do with religion?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

While Sushma kept a vigilant eye on me, I could not get away to see Kalo Pir, but I needed to talk to him about good and bad people.

The next day there was more trouble in town, Qadir Chacha was stuck waiting for Baba, and Sushma was tending to Ma’s headache and demanded absolute silence. I reasoned that I could not be quieter than when I was away, and slipped away immediately to ask Kalo Pir my question. And he told me, in a very roundabout way, which I was beginning to see was the way of grown-ups.

•  •  •

K
ALO
P
IR TOLD
us about the Abdal, the one godly man, whose identity is known only to God. “That person is crucially important,” said Kalo Pir, “because it is only for him that God perpetuates this world.”

“And when he dies?” I asked, anxious but skeptical.

“Why then, God chooses another in his place.”

“And what happens in between his death and the next Abdal?” I persisted.

“Even if there were an instant,” smiled Kalo Pir, rearranging his ragged djellaba, “it is an instant when God makes Time stand still, while He chooses the next Abdal. The smoke above the embers remains motionless; the clouds, the birds in flight, even the gills of the breathing fish stop; the falling fruit is suspended in air, its shadow unmoving in its spot. Then God’s choice is made: the fruit can fall, the fish breathes, the wisp of smoke and the rest of the universe moves.”

“How do you know?” I whisper urgently.

“I don’t have to know, as long as He does,” chuckled Kalo Pir. Then Kalo Pir told us about paradise, which he called Firdaus, of the unspoilt trees of the Garden of Adn before Adham sinned and Haiwa our common mother erred, when their hearts were pure, and they had been full of
ilham
of the soul. And he went on to tell us of the celestial mosque called the Zurah, where seventy thousand newly created angels prayed. He spoke dreamily of the four rivers of Firdaus and of Sidrat-al-Muntaaha, one of the many celestial trees, a great one bearing innumerable leaves. Each leaf has a person’s name written on it. The leaves fall, new leaves grow. When a leaf falls, before it touches the soil of Firdaus, an angel of death catches it and races towards the earth to do his errand.

My brother, Laub, listens intently.

“The angel puts on the face of the person to be taken, so that he will not be terrified. The Almighty is merciful.”

“How do these angels come?” I ask.

“Angels come to this earth all the time. On the night of Al Qadr during the month of Ramadan, angels in untold numbers descend, jostling and laughing in silent merriment. The paths of their comings and goings are similar to Al Sirat.”

“Which is?” we ask impatiently.

“Al Sirat? That is the path, narrower than a spider’s thread, sharper than the sharpest sword. The good pass unharmed over it.”

“And the bad?”

“They have their own ways. They always do. There is Iblis himself, of course. Then there is Dasim, the son of Shaitan Iblis, who causes quarrels between husbands and wives. There are many others. To keep all of them at bay, one can simply say,
‘Audhu Billah,
’
or the sura of al-Baqarah—and all the evil ones will flee one horizon away, at least.”

“Is it true?” I ask.

“Will your not believing make it untrue?” Kalo Pir smiles. “Or my saying it make it more true?”

“Why do you always answer with a question?” I snap.

“Why not?” he replies, clicking his tongs.

The evening breeze smells of the river. It is time to go home. Did Laub’s angel come inside the womb, or meet him at its door? Did the angel know I was just a span away?
Could the angel tell Laub and me apart?

“When it is that time for you, Kush,” whispered Kalo Pir from the darkness, “will
you
be able to tell the angel of death from your brother Laub? Even in the night?” His eyes were glittering.

I did not know what to say and went out of the mosque and waited for my brother.
Laub
, I whispered,
Is that you, Laub?
I felt a shiver down my spine, afraid of my brother for the first time.

He must have slipped away, unnoticed.

•  •  •

M
Y FATHER WAS
waiting for me, pacing the courtyard when I returned very late.

By this time in the evening, he would usually be in his study, in his slippers, picking absently at his court wig and poring over long dossiers he brought back from work. But today, he was pacing outside, his boots very muddy. I could tell he had just walked home, not come by the rickety gharry Qadir took such absurd pride in.

“There you are, b-boy!” he said in relief. “Where d-did you go?”

I had no intention of telling him about my adventures and thought to use Kalo Pir’s method of talk. “Why did you walk back? Where is Qadir Chacha?” I asked.

“Oh, you know about th-that?” he said, easily distracted. “P-poor Qadir is upset. His horse has b-bolted. He th-thinks that it will c-come back by itself for its evening feed.” He sounded distressed. “They’ve b-been setting fires and f-fighting in town.” I knew he must be nervous, because that’s when he stuttered most. The town with its court was just fifteen minutes by the gharry, a different world of dusty offices, a red post office with betel-juice spit-marks on the walls, and a market full of angry people pushing one another. Qadir Chacha had told me of different groups of people waving green, red, or saffron flags and fighting each other—and the police. It did not make sense to me and I had not paid attention.