The sound of birds chirping outside the window is constant. Lush grass and small plants cover the muddy brown landscape around me. The wind is still but every now and then it picks up and a small breeze enters the room through the iron mesh of the window. Many dark green trees dot the horizon. Some pigeons are jumping and running on the awnings outside Serene and peaceful glorious scene of beauty. A few children come around the corner shouting and running playfully – sometimes laughing and sometimes wrestling with each other. Most of them are poorly dressed shoes covered with mud. Faces brown as a berry. Some cows and sheep can be seen ambling around in the background grazing on the lush green grass, which has grown quite tall due to the recent heavy rains. It is so strange to see the two worlds of the rich and the poor collide in Pakistan almost everywhere. Technically these poor children and goats and sheep are my neighbours. There is only a narrow five-foot dirt road separating their village from the posh houses of the housing society. But I will never talk to these neighbours or know anything about their life or problems because a big iron fence and guards all along the fence divide this world of rich and poor. These poor children will never be able to drink cold water from my fridge or lounge in the coolness of my AC or ever be offered the several lavish dishes the cook prepares every day .I can only look at them from a distance as if looking at a painting or a picture as if they are part of the beautiful natural background and nothing more.

We have been battling with wave after wave of COVID for months even years now. Most festivities felt subdued. Even Eid was different. No Chand Raat no mehndi no chooriyan. No more one wheeling No rushing to the mosque in nice new Eid clothes. I remembered the movie the children watched in their childhood  ‘’The Grinch’’ in which an evil angry man takes away all the happiness from  people over the festive season  and leaves only misery and sadness behind. It felt a bit like that. We must have angered some grinch somewhere. And the merriment, the happiness and joy all were gone. I used to wonder how much worse it must be for my neighbors on the other side of the fence. Sometimes I was behind a steel fence protected by uniformed guards, sometimes I was behind the high walls of houses that looked like palaces, sometimes I was in a fancy garden protected by trees and neatly trimmed hedges. The physical manifestations of the mental separation between the rich and the poor?  The poor sitting on the other side of that wall with one plate of curry and one dry roti’ and me on the other side with a table full of food enough for several hungry mouths.  The wind outside is getting warmer and smells like the grass, trees, and the occasional whiff of cow dung. I It is so much easier to talk about equality and human rights in the west, up  here you could get into serious trouble for challenging the class divide. You can talk about helping the poor from your posh comfortable sitting room and I learned the hard way that crossing the steel fence and  trying to make friends with the  with the poor on the other side doesn’t always bring about much change – it just gets you into a lot of trouble for rebelling against the class system. Democracy and freedom is a beautiful fruit laden tree that grows and prospers very well in the first world but try breaking a branch of that tree or getting some seeds off its fruit and plant it in the sandy harsh soil of the third world and the branch withers and dies within a few months.  . Outside an ice cream van is playing a cheerful beach tune again and again to attract children. Some transsexuals dressed in gaudy colorful clothes surround the ice cream van and demand free ice cream. The ice cream guy complains and shouts loudly that he too has children to feed, but the transsexuals persist and in the end the ice cream guys gives in muttering and complaining under his breath.

The house was spotlessly clean. Aneesa’s mother had laid out her best china on the small table in the sitting room. The kitchen was full of the warm smell of onion bhaji and samosas. Aneesa’s sister had put the  gulab jamans in a silver tray in neat little patterns.. Aneesa was on the roof  staring out into the  street  through narrow slits in the wall.  Another week same  drill . Making tea and savories for yet another family coming to ‘’see’’ Aneesa. It was always the same. The boring matchmaking game. Aneesa  had rejected the prospective  groom in her mind already. She hated all those strange looking men the ‘’Rishta’’ aunty was hooking in for large sums of money . She was hoping eventually her mother and father would get tired and abandon this lost cause and go on to looking for grooms for her younger  sister Sadia. Aneesa wanted freedom happiness and romance outside the claustrophobic walls of her house. Not more of the same with another boring  orthodox family.  She had found her own secret world of romance in the Urdu version of  Mills and Boons romantic stories where the hero was always tall dark and handsome and the heroine always a shy budding beauty of remarkable talents. The hero was always madly in love with the heroine and never put a foot wrong. He would leave all his worldly chores and office duties at the heroines one command and send her secret love messages and texts and pictures of hearts and roses. That was the hero she was waiting for. The one she could share all her dark deep secrets with , who would white wash all the dismal grey spaces in her life and  would love her regardless of her average features.  She smiled to herself and a shiver went down her spine as her imaginary tall dark and handsome hero put his arms around her. She hid the Urdu mills and boon quickly as she heard someone coming

Sadia was shuffling up the stairs looking all red and puffy in the face from all the cooking and cleaning she had to do since morning. ‘’Ami is calling you downstairs ,  those people have arrived’’ she looked at her older sister up and down ‘’ why haven’t you changed yet, Ami will be so angry’’ she complained wiping the sweat off her brow. Aneesa went down slowly covering herself properly. They were a very orthodox family and the prospective bridegroom was never allowed to see her – only she could see him through the slits of the silk curtains opening into the sitting room. The mother and sisters of the prospective groom got up to hug her as she came in. She had seven brothers , the older three doing well in business , all seven still unmarried. Both combinations  attracted  many families to her home. Until they found out that both Aneesa and Sadia had never been to school and had been home schooled by their mother in very basic Islamic education rudimentary Maths and Urdu. Enough to read Urdu version of mills and boons but nothing more than that. That put a lot of people off and the forced smiles and small talk ended with the drinking of tea and savories. There were plenty of forced smiles but the family never came back. Some however had young daughters of their own and were hoping to catch one of her brothers and  thought ‘’ she doesn’t look very old , we can send her to school ourselves’’ . Aneesa tried hard to feel attracted to this stranger she could see faintly through the curtains.  Mostly they looked  uncomfortable and nervous. No one looked like her tall dark and handsome hero who would understand all her thoughts and feelings in one glance.Mainly she felt nothing just emptiness. This is not how her new life was supposed to start. He was supposed to be there for her not for her brother’s ‘money or his own sisters ‘’rishta’’. ”So what do you think” the mum asked. Aneesa made a face and went back to the roof to her secret world of mills and boon.

The father Nizam who spent most of his time in a room on the first floor smoking a Hookah was getting annoyed with the endless waste of time and money and at Aneesa’s refusal to make a practical decision. The eldest sister Zeenat  suffered from asthma and stayed mostly in the room on the top of the house out of sight of others either reading the Quran or sewing clothes as a hobby to fill in the long tedious hours of day time. She would have to stay in bed several days whenever she got an asthma attack and so her parents had given up on the idea of getting her married as her health wouldn’t allow her to perform house hold duties. Zeenat specially kept away when the ‘’rishta’’ aunty was around .  Today she came downstairs after hearing the row in the sitting room.  The  dad was shouting at Aneesa to make up her mind quickly or he would make it for her. Zeenat had huge dark circles under her eyes from her illness and her skin looked pale and shrivelled. She held Aneesa’s hand and took her upstairs to her own room , out of line of fire of the dad’s wrath. Aneesa’s mum and sister started clearing the table slowly a look of resignation and sorrow in their eyes. In Aneesa’s household women were never allowed to speak up or have an opinion. Never allowed to leave the house even for shopping. The brothers did it for them. Men were always in control and had the ultimate say. Right now Aneesa’s behavior was being seen as a mild form of rebellion. Who knew better than Zeenat , in this family rebellion had  painful consequences and no one stood up for females – not even the mother who doted on all her sons and always gave them VIP treatment.

The row went on and on all evening with the father blaming the mum and her family for all his problems. The maternal uncle Ali lived across the street and  was generally disliked by her family. The uncle was clean shaven had allowed his wife to work – sent all his children to posh English medium schools. Ali’s oldest daughter Memoona nearly ten was still running around streets playing with her brother and his friends. Aneesa had to cover herself at the age of six and couldn’t even go out to the front porch ever since. The dark rooms of the house were the only habitat the three sisters had known and going on the roof was the biggest freedom they ever got. They were never allowed near the wall that looked out on the street unless it was dark and no one could see them. The dad usually blamed uncle Ali for most problems in the world and was now calling the uncle a ‘kafir’ and ‘mulhid’ a disgrace to society and Islam and the root cause of all the reasons why Aneesa’s family was dysfunctional – why the girls couldn’t find proper grooms and why the boys all hated coming home and spent the best part of the day out doors with or without proper reason. The younger two sons spent long periods of time hanging around the uncle’s house and Nizam hated that. Aneesa’s mum never answered Nizam back ,even the idea was like committing a sin. She spent most of her day light hours in the kitchen cooking for the family of 13 children. She had barely finished breakfast when it was time for lunch. Between saying her five time prayer and teaching the girls some Maths and Urdu – it was usually past midnight when her chores were over and it was time for bed.

Aneesa’s mother could smell the tobacco and hear the faint gurgling sound of the Hookah as she stood in the dark courtyard trying to gear up enough courage to go and talk to her husband. Blaming the mum’s  family and brother for all his problems was normal for Nizam and the anger she had to bear for this was uncomfortable. She knew Nizam’s attitude was hurting her children but she didn’t have the courage to stand up to Nizam. She warmed up some  milk and went up to Nizam’s room  placing the cup gently on the side table.  She spoke softly ‘’ Don’t be angry with Aneesa , she is just a child , I will talk to her tomorrow‘’ Nizam said nothing and just glared at his wife. ‘’ Why don’t we start looking for wives for our older sons ‘’she said ‘’ other girls in the house will help our daughters situation, don’t you think’’ she sat not looking at Nizam but facing the door instead. That way she could avoid his angry glares that usually sent her heart racing and gave her chest constrictions that felt very uncomfortable. Nizam said nothing and kept puffing at the Hookah in anger. The house was silent  Zeenat was coughing in her upstairs room and a few dogs howling on the street were making a big racket.

Days changed to weeks months and years and still nothing changed in Aneesa’s house hold. The three sisters were still unmarried. The sons were wifeless and Nizam sat most of the day and night puffing at  his Hookah and Aneesa’s mum seemed wedded to the kitchen hardly having time for anything else.

Then one evening Aneesa too had a severe asthma attack. She was gasping for air and going pale and sweaty in the face. Nizam came down but refused to take her to a doctor saying ‘’ Allah is punishing Aneesa for her rebellion against Islam , serves her right ‘’ The mum ran to her brother’s house and soon all three of them were on their way to the doctor. Uncle Ali took Aneesa to his house on the way home and he looked with sadness at the anti- depressants and anti- anxiety pills that the doctor had prescribed apart from the medicine for asthma. Aneesa’s mum was crying softly sniffling into her Burqah every now and then. ‘’ I will talk to your husband ‘’ Ali said with concern ‘’ You don’t have to be a doctor to figure out what is causing depression, anxiety and illness to these girls’’ Aneesa’s mum continued sniffling ‘’ there’s no point brother, that man’s heart has turned stone cold’’ she wiped her eyes with the side of her dupatta. ‘’ He has been angry for the last 30 years ever since we came to Pakistan’’ Ali told Aneesa to lie down on the Sofa bed and make herself comfortable. Soon the younger cousins came trooping in and started talking and playing with Aneesa. ‘’ Aneesa Appi look I have made you a Get well card  ‘’ the young boy said. Aneesa laughed at the crooked cartoon drawing and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. Ali was looking on helplessly unable to help his sister’s family . ‘’ But what exactly is Nizam’s problem’’ he asked ‘’tell me what I can do’’ Aneesa’s mother sighed heavily ‘’ Nizam is angry for having to leave his business and home in Delhi behind, he blames you for it, so he is always taking it out on me and the children.’’ Aneesa’s mum brought the woes of her life to her lips with great difficulty. Ali rolled his eyes in disbelief ‘’That was three decades ago’’ he said pouring out a cold drink for the children and Aneesa. ‘’Why cant he get over it ?What is he waiting for’’? Aneesa’s mum looked at the ice bobbing in the cold drink and felt just as helpless , floating in circumstances beyond her control ‘ ‘’Waiting to take revenge on us that’s what he is waiting for ,so forget about the girls’’ she said ‘’ he won’t even let the boys get married, he doesn’t want any normalcy in that house, while he is still miserable’’ Ali moved away from the children and went out on the porch. The sun was bright filtering through the dark green leaves of the grape vine and Deodar trees. Bees were humming around the heavily loaded rose bushes ‘’Ali was in deep thought’’ he realized there was a deeper problem here than his niece’s apparent depression and frequent asthma attacks. He decided to investigate and brought the girls over most evenings to have dinner with his family. He was pleased to note that the older two girls asthma attacks were becoming much less frequent and the younger girl had stopped her binge eating. They almost looked like normal healthy girls enjoying time with their cousins.

Aneesa’s mother felt relieved with the situation and decided to start on her quest for finding prospective grooms again. she was sure if Aneesa and Sadia left the depressing atmosphere of her home the quality of their lives would improve immensely. She asked her older daughter Zeenat to convince her younger siblings to accept whoever would still be willing to take them as wives. Zeenat decided to try her luck with Aneesa. They were curled up on the bed having a heart to heart. Finally Zeenat brought up the impending ‘’rishta’’ situation. Aneesa looked away as tears rolled down her cheeks like heavy rain. At last she said between heavy sobs ‘’ You know I can’t get married for the same reason you couldn’t when you started getting asthma attacks’’ Zeenat sat up and looked at Aneesa carefully – she got up and paced up and down the room a couple of times . A dark shadow appeared in her eyes and her breathing became labored as if she was going towards another asthma attack. She drank some water , opened the window to get in more air and held Aneesa’s hand ‘’ Why are you afraid, your Asthma is very mild compared to mine’’ she said stroking Aneesa’s hair softly ‘’ But the reason for the asthma is the same’’ Aneesa said her eyes blazing with suppressed anger and hostility. Zeenat gasped and was taken aback. Now it was her turn to cry tears like rain. Aneesa wiped her sister’s tears with her hand ‘’ It’s OK I already know it isn’t your fault” Zeenat closed her eyes in agony Aneesa said in a tense whisper ”I saw you take dinner to burey bhaijan Zahoor’s  room many times, most times I was still awake  when you came out at dawn before others woke up’’ Zeenat leaned against the wall like a dead person  and stared at her sister with gaunt hollow eyes ‘’ Did he …….’’ she said pointing to Aneesa not having the courage to form the words. ‘’ No Aneesa’’ said ‘’ it was chotey bhaijan Wahid’’ Zeenat hugged her sister like she was a small hurt child ‘’ why didn’t you tell me, I thought my sacrifice would keep my sisters safe ……’’ she sat up  with a jerk ‘’ Do you think Sadia ………’’ she left the words hanging ‘’ I don’t know, I didn’t have the courage to ask her that would have killed me ‘’ Zeenat got up pacing up and down the room trying to focus her thoughts ‘’ We have to tell someone’’ she said at last ‘’ No point in telling Ami ‘’ Aneesa said ‘’ she will kill all of us rather than hear a bad word about her darling sons or even Abba’’ it was getting dark outside but neither sister felt like turning the light on, too afraid to see the despair, shame and guilt on the other’s face. ‘’ Then let us tell Uncle Ali, at least  that will save Sadia’’

Uncle Ali heard the whole story – went into the store where his late brothers war time rifle was stored at the bottom of the big steel duvet box. He loaded it with some old bullets and marched up to his sister’s house. Aneesa’s mother saw her brother rushing towards her house like a raging bull rifle in hand. She ran and bolted the front door. Uncle Ali banged at the door furiously. Uncle Ali’s wife ran after him and pleaded with him to come back home and not do something rash in anger. The neighbors came out to see what the racket was about and Uncle Ali went back home to avoid a scene. He wrote a long letter to his sister and threw it into her house through the post box. He paced up and down his front yard waiting for a response to his letter all night. No response came in the next twelve hours until late at night next day there was fierce banging at Uncle Ali’s door. Nizam along with his brother, his three young nephews and his own five or six sons invaded Uncles Ali’s home but refused to come in or sit down. They stood at the foot of the inner entrance and threatened to kill and beat up Uncle Ali for the false rumors lies and allegations against Nizam’s older sons. Uncle Ali stood his ground and threatened to report the whole matter to the police. Uncle Ali’s wife ran to get Col Shujat their next door neighbor and Uncle Ali’s childhood friend. He came brandishing his service pistol and dispersed the whole crowd with some aerial shooting.

Soon after that Nizam took his entire family to a different city, all communication channels with Uncle Ali were shut down and no one knew what happened to Nizam’s family for a long time.

Many summers later Uncle Ali  Nizam and his wife all passed away. Nizam’s sons all emigrated to USA  and were dotted around California, Florida and New York. The older two daughters died  at a young age and the youngest sister was married to a much older widower with several grown up children from the first wife.

All of Nizam’s sons and nephews had done extra ordinarily well at business and were leading comfortable lives, even dabbling into US politics and some married to American white women. All cousins and brothers would get together at special occasions and discuss business details over endless glasses of whisky and loaded tables of kebab. Everything was perfect in the Nizam house hold except for a few glitches. Most of Nizams sons and their children suffered from eating disorders. A couple were in therapy and had found out that it had something to do with their dad issues of hostility against father and anger at a passive mother who let the dad get away with his abusive behaviour towards the sons. But what none ever mentioned out loud and that stayed like a heavy burden around their neck was the feeling of shame that had accompanied their exit from Pakistan. Two of the younger Nizam sons had been convicted in Pakistan one for fraud and forgery and another for embezzling official funds. The glamour the glitz the big money that always surrounded the Nizam family always felt barbed and flawed for these moral low points hanging over them from way back. So it suited the sons and nephews of the Nizam family to surround themselves with people whose main loyalty was to money and people were never judged on good or bad character. Still the glossing over of their lives through artificial means disturbed Zahoor the oldest Nizam son occasionally.

Until he had a brainwave while strolling along the boulevard with his wife and teenage children. He had just watched a movie where revenge becomes the ultimate passion in the hero’s life. That hit a cord with Zahoor, the  theme of revenge had long been indoctrinated into his psyche by his angry embittered father who had never adjusted to moving away from his home in India. He just never figured out until now how to take revenge from Uncle Ali’s family, clear his own family’s name and put all the blame for all his misdeeds onto them. 

Memoona Uncle Ali’s only daughter often visited NY with her husband Zawar, a business tycoon running a hotel chain with a lot of influence among the local community. Zahoor spent the next few days weeks figuring out how best to approach Zawar. He decided to go incognito and approach the catering firm that supplied food to most of Zawar’s hotels through a third party. They were paid a lot of money to cancel their contract with Zawar and Zahoor’s own catering firm got in easily. Zahoor felt a deep sense of satisfaction after a long time, destroying the remains of uncle Ali’s family would now be really easy. .He sat in his pent house office looking at the picture of his late father on his office wall. He wondered why he kept it there. The man clearly hated him and he was never sure what he felt for him – fear and respect? Or just fear nothing more!! Images of the last time he had been in Uncle Ali’s home when Memoona was just a child flashed across his mind. The darkness of that evening, allegations, anger, yelling and shouting. Being banished from his father’s house. His face went dark at the memory, the trauma of that evening had lived long in his soul. Now it was pay back time. He had hated and envied Memoona as long as he could remember. ‘’The little princess born with a silver spoon, loved by everyone around her, what did she know what emotional pain and suppression was ? What did she know what it was like to live with your worst enemy under the same roof? ”His own father Nizam. Who tried to break him and humiliate him and his brothers all his life. All the bitterness welled up in Zahoor’s throat. He got up and removed Nizam’s photo frame from the wall. A pang of guilt and fear ran through him as if he had done something wrong and Nizam was still there watching him. He shoved the frame in the last drawer of the cupboard behind the giant mirrors on the wall. He looked at his reflection as if for the first time. The port belly all the weight , the look of anger on the face. All this got so much worse whenever he saw Memoona face to face. She always touched a painful cord in him just by being there. He always seemed to go down in size and feel six inches tall. All the hatred, the shallow empty spaces of his soul would come to the surface. He would feel like a broken toy that someone had trampled upon. None of the billions he now owned took this feeling away. Now he would make that feeling go away whatever it took. He got on the phone and asked his secretary to get a list of all of Zawar’s friends and business partners.

Memoona had flown back to Lahore in a huff after having several rows with Zawar in NY. She got up the next morning with a splitting headache, dark circles under her eyes from crying the night before. She looked at her mobile, her son had called her from university several times and there was a message from her daughter but nothing from Zawar. She just didn’t know what to tell her children. She didn’t even know why Zawar was behaving the way he was. She knew he was having business problems. Some complaints had been received about the food standards in his hotels and the food authority had shut down several of them. How was this her fault? She fiddled around the chest of drawers looking for some headache pills. The next several days felt like a nightmare. Zawar contacted her through a lawyer and wanted possession of the house back and refused to talk to her or answer any of her calls. She was sure this was more than business problems, Zawar was acting as if she had done something terrible to destroy his entire life. It was almost as if hurting her and seeing her in pain was giving him satisfaction. What had she done to make him so angry? This was the same man who would call her during business meetings just to hear her voice. ‘’ Why do you act like such a baby – where am I going? I will still be here when you return back to Lahore’’ she would laugh at him. ‘’ My meetings go much better when I talk to you, you are my good luck charm’’ he would say with a big smile. Memoona loved it when she could see Zawar’s white pearly teeth and the twinkle in his eyes on the mobile screen. Now the mobile was silent only her children were giving her missed calls. ‘’Asking her to leave the house that was going a bit too far.’’ Depression and sadness was giving way to anger and she decided to wait until Zawar felt normal and  told her what was wrong. She didn’t have to wait for long. She got a letter from Zawar’s solicitor cutting her out of most of the company’s shares and asking her to sign a letter giving Zawar permission for a second marriage in NY. For several weeks she couldn’t believe what had happened to her. Both her children were in NY for Zawar’s new wedding and were not answering her calls. She spent the next few months in her friend’s house unable to move around or figure out why her world had crashed around her? When the fever left her after several months of being in bed, she felt like a shadow of who she used to be. Her beautiful hazel eyes were dark with pain. All color had left her rosy cheeks. Most importantly it was the change in her broken heart and embittered soul that was the most horrifying. She felt she was never going to trust or love another human being ever again. That anger gave her the will to fight back for her life again. ‘’No man is worth destroying my life like this’’ she thought ‘’ I haven’t done anything wrong,why am I the one suffering’’?

The years of pain and loneliness slowly subsided in Memoona’s life. She learned to live by shutting out her feelings and keeping the hurt away by doing a lot of charity  work, working for war orphans and displaced families. They were her family now. Her children came to see her once or twice a year but a curtain had come between them. She felt like the bad guy in their lives . She could see how they struggled to be polite and not have a go at her for causing massive problems in their lives just by being there. She recognised that mental and emotional attitude from somewhere – she just couldn’t remember clearly where from or when. That attitude of shutting yourself out and blaming everything on some outside factor or person. She figured out that piece of the puzzle in a painful way. Marian her friend’s charity where Memoona worked and lived was to be shut down as complaints about mistreatment of the orphans had been received by several authorities. Marian was devasted and decided to go back to Malta her home country and leave Lahore for good. That was when the penny dropped. Someone was behind shutting down and destroying everything that brought normalcy to Memoona’s life. Then she remembered the pattern from her childhood – this had to be her cousins from NY and Florida and not Zawar and his new wife as she had suspected so far. Both her brothers had died in mysterious circumstances and she slowly remembered a similar hounding of both her parents before they died.

Zawar felt like a broken soul most days when he got up to go to his office for work. His head hurt , his shoulders ached a perpetual sadness seemed to sit in and around his chest. His long hours of work were his only friends now. He had stopped looking at people for love or companionship a long time ago. What did it matter anyway. All positivity and normalcy had left his life the day he thought Memoona had played him for the fool and betrayed him and his trust. His ego his manhood the love in his heart everything had shattered. ‘’wasn’t I good enough for her ‘’ he had thought over and over again until the thought bore a dark deep hole in his spirit that would never be filled. Memoona had not only broken his heart she had left him bankrupt and he would probably be on the streets of NY if Zahoor hadn’t come to his help. Zahoor had vouched for food safety in all of Zawar’s  hotels through his powerful connections with NY mayor and senators and helped him to cover the losses and slowly get back on his feet. Zawar had been moderately happy after his second marriage and bringing the children over to NY but the hole in his soul never filled up. Every time the anger in his soul welled up , the need to run away from himself  became an obsession. When he felt like that he would get on a plane  and make needless business trips all over the world setting up new hotel chains in country after country. His evenings were spent with beautiful young women whose names he couldn’t remember when he got up in bed with them the next morning.

He had a meeting with Zahoor and his brothers that morning. They were thinking of taking over a super store chain in SE Asia and merge it with the small one’s they owned. They wanted to know if Zawar was interested in becoming a partner. They would all travel to Taiwan to finalize the deal. ‘’ The food and the sex is incredible. You have no idea what those Taiwanese beauties are like’’ Zahoor had said winking at him.

The trip to Taiwan didn’t go as planned. The Taiwanese played hard ball  and wanted more money for the merger than Zahoor’s company was willing to pay. Zahoor was a bit annoyed and irritated and dragged Zawar to the hotel bar. He was completely drunk by midnight and talking all kinds of nonsense  embarrassing Zawar who had considerable difficulty in dragging Zahoor through the  lobby back to the   hotel room. Zahoor started singing loudly as Zawar tried to tuck him into bed and was soon fast asleep.  Just then his mobile started ringing . Zawar answered thinking it might be important. Zahoor’s brother from Lahore was at the other end ‘’ Delete all the pictures you sent to Zawar ‘’ he was saying ‘’ Memoona is going round to our relatives houses trying to find out why Zawar doesn’t talk to her and how you  business partner..’’ Zawar made some incoherent noises on the mobile and switched it off. He didn’t want Zahoor’s brother to figure out he had spoken to. . Zawar went back to his room quietly and went through Zahoor’s mobile.

He couldn’t remember how long he had been walking and drifting on roads and streets of Taipei. His shirt was smelling his hair was flying all over and his red eyes over his unshaven face made him look like a monster as he looked at himself in the rear view mirror of the cab. Twenty years of his life had been eaten up by a lie. ‘’ So Memoona didn’t betray me sleeping with other men , this was all a trap to end my relationship’’ He felt like the worst fool ever. He was married now to a woman he didn’t love, most nights he had random one night stands with women whose names he couldn’t remember  and he hadn’t spoken a civil word to his children for several years.  What kind of a loser had he become ‘’

Zahoor took his children and went back to Lahore putting a  divorce settlement for his second wife in the post and allowing her to keep his flat in NY. His heart was pounding as he rang the bell of Memoona’s small house in a Lahore Suburb. ‘’ What does she look like now,’’ he wondered ‘’ I haven’t seen her for years and years’’ He rang the bell again but no response came. He went round the back to peer through the windows. The house seemed quite and Zawar was  disappointed. Now that he was finally ready to see her why wasn’t she there. Memoona had seen Zawar’s car pulling up in the drive – even before she saw him she knew from her heartbeat who was at the door. There was only one man who made her heart beat like that. She turned off the light and pretended not to be home. He rand the bell a third time. Tears were rolling down Memoona’s face. This was too much to handle, there was too much pain and hurt between them. She looked at the wreck of her body and soul in the window pane. ‘’ Bauhat der kurdi Zawar’’(You left it too long). ‘’At least I saw him once again, My spirit will be at peace now’’ she thought as she got into the cab for her flight to Malta. She stopped in the way to hand over the keys of her home to Sadia who had been widowed being thrown out by her grown up children and abandoned by her rich brothers in NY. ‘’ Come with me to Malta ‘’ Memoona said to her ‘’ together we will find a reason to live again’’  Sadia smiled mysteriously  and said.‘’ You already have a reason to live again ‘’ Memoona watched in disbelief as her children and Zawar came trooping out of the front door. ‘’ I told them you were coming ‘’ Sadia said with a glint in her eye.

Memoona couldn’t see clearly for the tears in her eyes. Her heart was hurting, she felt like she was going to faint but the pull of the earth and the out stretched  arms of her family told her she was going to miss her flight to Malta after all.

Are you a place or a state of mind?

Why are those old bricks so important to me?

Is it that they take me back in time

When I was not a beggar on the street

Or does it make me feel whole

Takes away the hole in my soul

Takes away the memory of tired eyes crying over graves

The memory of all happiness gone

Staring at walls through tears of pain

Walls of lies deceit broken promises

Memories of books and libraries burning

The screams of Baghdad that shake the sky

But no one comes

Just emptiness and confusion

No one holds my hand

No one tells me to run away from the falling walls

Has Allah fled the lands of Muslims?

Without Allah hearts have turned to stone

All truth becomes lies and lies becomes truth

Cruel oppressors pose as victims

Victims become invisible

No one can hear or see them

As they are trampled upon

Does anyone want to live in this land of despair?

As I cling to you warm walls of Yaroshlam

My heart is beating again to the sound of love

I can hear my mother father brothers laughing from the other side

They are holding my hand and taking me away from crying over graves

I found you Yaroshlam right here in my heart

And you made me whole

The night outside was dark and cold, the wind howling and rattling windows, every now and then an angry gust would shake the doors as if trying to break them. The whole family was gathered around the warm stove. Dad was telling them the story of ‘Myan Putro’ an old woman who lived in the valley long ago. Her sons had been picked up by the authorities and she had become very upset and mentally disturbed. On cold frozen nights such as this one when everyone was fast asleep or resting before a warm fire she would wander the cold streets of Srinagar looking for her sons, looking through every window and door to see if they were there. Calling out Myan Putro (my children where are you).Zeena had heard the story of Myan Putro  many times but every time it felt new and would send a shiver down her spine. She buttoned up her warm cardigan all the way to her neck and pulled her socks up. She never wanted to ask her dad what the end of the story was, did Myan Putro find her children? Did her soul become peaceful as a result? Somewhere in her heart Zeena knew that stories such as these never have a good ending. Most of the time people without resources become living tragedies that no one cares about or the people who care don’t have the power to undo such injustices. She was thinking all this and much more about the suffering of the people around her as she walked slowly with two of her friends towards her University, all three were in the last year of their honours degree in IT. The young women were was shocked to see several armed soldiers standing near the University iron  gate that was locked and students were being told to go back home.

As the young women started running home there was confusion and chaos all around several boys were being rounded up tied  and blind folded and hurled into vans. A few children came around the corner and tried to hurl stones at the soldiers. Immediately the rat tat tat of machine guns filled the air. Several sprays of pellets came towards the children who ran into side streets, a little boy about seven fell to the ground in all the commotion and cried loudly. Zeena ran and picked him up, running back towards her home all the while. The blood from the whimpering child’s face went all over her white  shirt. When she got home the door was wide open, her mother was screaming loudly and her brothers and dad’s hands were tied up , soldiers were beating them up and pushing them towards a truck waiting on the side street. She ran to the back of the house and hid in the empty hen coop dragging the little boy with her ,both huddled in a corner like two scared and shivering animals. They were  in the stinky hen coop for a long time their eyes wide with fear  their ears picking up every sound not part of normal life. Eventually the screaming and shouting  died down. The heavy engines of the trucks came to life and roared as they drove off up hill. Only the sound of her mother’s wailing remained. Zeena came out of the hen coop still holding on to the child who had either fainted or gone to sleep. She put the child on the floor gently and ran to her mother, who started crying as loudly as ever when she saw her’’ Everything is finished child, everything is gone’’  she hugged her mother as hard as she could , her own tears blinding her and the sobs shaking her body uncontrollably. She couldn’t calm her mother no matter how hard she tried. The mother wouldn’t drink water or put on the warm shawl she was trying to wrap around her. Is my mother going to become Myan Putro she thought, what if she does. How will I live in this house alone. She looked at the still form of the little boy lying on the floor not sure if he was alive or not. More soldiers were marching up the street, she ran and closed the door and made sure the house looked dead.

The next morning before light she led her mother and the child who had recovered during the night through the fields to her uncle’s house on the other side of the hill. The house was dark and the door locked. She knocked at the side window, after a long while a scared voice was heard ..’’ Who is it ?’’ she put her head through the window ‘’ Its me Zeena, please open the door’’ The Aunt was sobbing as she came to the door. She hugged Zeena’s mother who was walking and moving around like a robot, not crying or wailing anymore. The little boy Bilal was looking around for food. ‘’ Are you hungry’’ the Aunt asked Zeena, ‘’ She shook her head ‘’ give something to my mother, she hasn’t even sipped water since yesterday’’ She looked around at the empty house ‘’ Did they take my uncle and cousin’’ she asked already knowing the answer. The cousin’s wife came out of the next room carrying a baby  swollen eyed and still whimpering from shock. Zeena  turned on the stove to make some food, the warmth reminded her of her home two days ago when they were all huddled around it listening to her  dad telling them the story of Myan Putro.In the coming days  her mother got worse and worse, not eating not sleeping ,constantly looking at the pictures of her sons and husband on the mobile and crying. Finally Zeena couldn’t take it any more, she crept back to her own home and got all the money and jewellery hidden around the house and declared to her mother that she was going to creep out of SriNagar somehow and go to Delhi where they had taken her brothers and dad and go find them. Everyone thought she had gone mad and would be caught by the soldiers and killed before she crossed over to the bus station. ‘’ I will not go to the bus or train station mother, you know I am trained to trek these mountains’’. The Aunt was shaking her head .. ‘’ You are a girl my dear, who will protect you in the big city’’ Zeena sighed and shrugged her shoulders ‘’ I will take Bilal with me’’ she looked at Bilal who perked up at the mention of his name ‘’ A seven year old boy?, he will protect you’’  Zeena looked at her mother ‘’ Aunt do you want her to die like this’’ she asked ‘’at least give her some hope so she will get out of her present state..’’  the Aunt was still shaking her head ‘’I don’t know this is still a very dangerous thing for a girl to do’’ Zeena smiled she knew the Aunt had given in.

It took Zeena and Bilal several days to trek across the mountains and get into the first rickety bus going towards the city. Once in the dust and smoke of Delhi Zeena checked the address of the Human Rights Charity organisation someone in the village had given her.

The women at the desk seemed a bit amused when Zeena told her story and showed a picture of her brothers and father. ‘’ Bibi this is a big city, they may or may not be here’’ she said in a matter of fact tone ‘’ Have you contacted a lawyer’’ she said going back to the paper work on her desk. Zeena looked dismayed ‘’ I can’t afford a lawyer and everyone said you would help me’’ the woman took her glasses off ‘’would you be interested in doing some ads for us’’ she said eyeing the fresh rose complexion and dark big doe eyes of the young women in front of her ‘’ Sorry, I don’t understand ‘’ Zeena looked perplexed. ‘’Then you can afford a lawyer, here go to this women – she is a very influential Muslim celebrity, she will help you’’ and with that  the charity worker dismissed Zeena and went back to her phone call.

Zeena looked sad as they made their way to the home of some far off relative who lived in a congested part of the city. The relative looked sympathetic but kept pointing subtly that they had their own eight children to feed and an old mother and father to look after. The distant relative was not too well off, he was part owner of a small pan khoka (beetle leaf shop) , some days business was good and sometimes it was not. He was hoping their guests would leave soon. Zeena uncomfortable with this situation decided to contact the influential celebrity. She had no intention of doing any ads but was hoping the celebrity might help them on human sympathy grounds. The distant relative seemed a bit concerned when he heard where Zeena and Bilal were going ‘’ We have heard many strange stories about that women’’ he said , ‘’she is not very sympathetic to Kashmir or Muslim Indians and has close connections with Indian Army generals and anti -Muslim show biz people’’ Zeena had also heard all those stories but decided to try her luck any way. She didn’t want to go home empty handed. She remembered the spark of life on her mother’s face when she  told her ‘’  I will find my brothers and father and bring good news for you’’

Zeena and Bilal had to sit in the back veranda of Maheen’s house waiting for her. Some of the servants eyed Zeena curiously up and down as they went about their chores. Then they would see Bilal and think she probably has a husband and just some poor women looking for a job she doesn’t look like any of madam Sahiba’s models.

When they finally got an audience with Maheen, a smart looking women in her late forty’s, or early fifties ,she was having her make up done in what looked like a make shift fashion studio. ‘’ Have you come for an audition’’ Maheen asked without turning to look at the girl and the young child ‘’ No Aunty , someone told me that you help Muslim girls if they have a problem’’ Maheen swirled around on the stool  looking really annoyed ‘’ My name is Maheen, ‘’ she said pouting childishly ‘’don’t call me Aunty’’ Zeena felt embarrassed, she thought that is how you show respect ‘’ yes yes …….madam I will remember that’’ Maheen looked at herself in the giant mirror on the other side. ‘’Perfect ‘’ she said out loud ‘’what do you want ‘’ she asked Zeena still with her back towards her. Zeena felt like she was telling the same story ten times over and her brothers and father didn’t seem like the victims anymore but the bad guys in the story. She herself felt like she was doing something wrong intruding into the lives of these important people.  She wasn’t sure if anyone was actually even listening  ……At last Maheen turned around to face Zeena  ‘’I can’t help you with your brothers and father ‘’she  said putting her high heels on and towering over Zeena as if to intimidate her. ‘’But I have another job for you to do, it will earn you a lot of money and a lawyer’’ Zeena was about to say something when Maheen dismissed her with a wave of her hand ‘’ Give them something to eat’’ Maheen said with a superior air ‘’ I will talk to you when I come back from my function tonight’’ Maheen said as she got into the lavish company car sent to pick her up. Maheen was not comfortable in her extra tight top and jeans but she had to look hot and sexy. In her line of work that was merchandise and would bring her more work and contracts in the future. She had learned very early in life the benefits of being slutty and hot opened doors that took much longer any other way. Sometimes her insecurity would surface when she realised she was getting old but she would push the  down just as quickly , act half her age , put on  a big act whenever she had to be host to a celebrity event or a big party. People would lap it up, they liked her to be coy and vamp like. She prided herself on being a bad girl, ruthlessly ambitious a go getter ,trampling everything in her path.

The popularity of her present life was exhilarating. She was in massive demand and very few days went when she wasn’t present at top celeb parties or wasn’t hosting a top event. There was no lack of men who would take her back to their lavish homes and hotels or sometimes accompany her back to her own place. Life looked like a never ending party but there was also a nagging  feeling of bitterness in the pit of her soul when she realised none of these men actually ever proposed to her or thought she was anything more than a glamor model that looked good standing next to them in pics and social media videos.

She remembered the other home she had in Peshawar and a famous man who had married her for this same beauty and good looks that now felt dirt cheap. Why did she hate her ex so much , why did she want to tear him to shreds, why did the news of his love affair and marriage to another woman drive her crazy. She remembered the hazy afternoons running around in his massive back yard feeding the pigeons that would fly down from the dargah at the foot of the hill. She loved the publicity that came with being Iman’s wife. It was as if she had landed in seventh heaven in a world she never knew existed. All doors would open for her automatically, people would give her way and stand aside respectfully every time she appeared in public. It was as if she had become the queen of some unknown realm and could control the whole world if she wanted to.

Iman would drive out to the countryside with a whole cavalcade of servants and assistants.  They would spend days roaming around the country side staying in the lavish mansions of one rich land owner or the other. Iman and his friends hunting for quail and Maheen huddled up with other rich wives gossiping their hearts out. She never had to cook clean or live another humdrum moment in her life ever again. It was like being in fairyland only better, the world was her oyster and she was in love with this feeling of being in total control and superior to all the other woman around her.  Her life in a small flat in Paris that her first husband had given to her as alimony payment, was a story she had long forgotten. In Paris she had gone through her alimony payments very quickly, her fetish for modern clothes and modern living was mostly to blame. She had tried to send her two teenage daughters back to her first husband to resume her acting and modelling career. But he didn’t want to know, himself busy with his own career and his new wife. Finding work in Maheen’s field with an aging body and two young children was hard. She remembered the sad dark evenings in Paris, driving through the rain and slush, coming home to find both girls slumped in front of the TV with bags of chips and empty pizza boxes all over the floor. A shouting match would begin with her daughters always slamming the door in her face telling her she was a bad mother and a bad influence and they would have learned to cook if she had taught them. From that miserable life to have found Iman the rich husband from Peshawar was like finding a gold mine. That he had chosen her over and above the dozens of other women who ran after him was even luckier than she could believe. Her fairy tale was going perfectly, Iman had even agreed to pay boarding fees in an expensive Paris school for her daughters. Their trips to European capitals were covered by international media and became the talk of the town. She was always the prettiest the new fashion icon, to keep this up her appetite for new clothes  jewellery   beauty shops and hair do’s became insatiable until one day Iman just took out his credit card and  handed it to her ‘’ here my dear, not better than you’’ From her small lower middle class background being handed a credit card with a limit less amount was like being put on the first step of heaven. She felt like a queen every time the media came to interview her and she made sure camera’s followed her in functions and not Iman. She wanted to make sure Iman knew who wore the pants in that marriage – what better way than to use the media for limitless exposure.

Maheen had stopped seeing most of her friends and relatives  as they were not quite her level and made her feel cheap. She was going to set up her own boutique chain very soon, and needed chic and posh friends for that. However getting money out of  Iman  was going to be a problem – he was already complaining of her over spending and credit card bills. So she went behind Iman’s back and got his rich friend to finance her boutique chain,  And just when she was inviting the media for that opening and was sure her boutiques would become the hottest commodity on the market , it all started coming apart. She came home one day to find the rich friend who had financed the boutique chain sitting with Iman who was looking very serious. And  Iman’s cashier standing with a stack  of Maheen’s unpaid bills  running into crores.  Iman wanted his credit card back – Maheen felt humiliated for being apprehended rudely while others were present. She did what she knew how to do best. Put on a tantrum, scream and shout loudly – that scared most men but Iman wasn’t budging and stood his ground.  This felt like stand off and a punishment. She lashed out at the rich friend .the cashier and all other staff for being liars ‘ You are the liar not them ‘’ Iman said calmly that made her so angry all her blood rushed to her head, she ran at Iman and  slapped him smack on the face. No one was calling her a liar. Iman stalked off and talked of divorce the same day . When Maheen realised the danger she was in she called all her powerful friends and asked them to  intervene and ask Iman to give her another chance , ‘’she was emotional and had made a mistake.’’ Iman relented as he didn’t want  another media scandal at his doorstep. Maheen was on her best behaviour for a while being extra loving and kind to Iman but something in him had changed and she was constantly on edge and watchful of his behaviour. They were watching TV in their bedroom sitting arm in arm, when Iman went out of the room to take a phone call. Normally Iman took his business phone calls out and Maheen thought nothing of it. That day she heard Iman laughing and talking very softly. She got up to listen and within a few moments was convinced he was talking to another women.he said nothing and waited for him to go to sleep and went through all his mobile messages, pictures on Instagram and twitter. She woke Iman up middle of the night and demanded an explanation of who the woman in the pics was, why was she sending him pics and what was the messaging about. There was a shouting match – Iman threw the mobile at the wall and it smashed  into pieces. He kept telling Maheen the woman was a business colleague and the pics were  fabric designs from a modelling company. But Maheen wouldn’t have it. She went to the other bedroom and locked the door. She was so angry , she would make Iman suffer, beg and plead before she forgave him. The bitch in her had woken up, he was not going to treat a modern smart woman from Paris like any of his illiterate cowardly women from Pakistan who would take all kinds of bad behaviour from a man just to stay in his home.

She went off to Paris next morning waiting for Iman begging her to return. He was too well known rich and famous to afford this kind of scandal. Maheen knew exactly what buttons to push. Days went  bye with no phone call at all. She called the servants in her home in Peshawar but they didn’t know much. Then she started calling his business partners and one of them told her what to do to get even with Iman. Maheen was back home on the next flight and pretended as if nothing had happened. She was trying to be all loving doting wife  but Iman seemed distant and cold. Maheen tried her best to thaw the ice but something wasn’t right between them anymore. Maheen didn’t want to go back to her miserable life in a Paris flat and realised that she hadn’t gained any major material benefit from being in Iman’s life. The credit card she had wasted on her fancy new life style  and the money for the boutique chain had to be returned . Apart from that her fall from grace would leave her with nothing. At first her outings with Iman’s business partner seemed like an accident, they had met at a party when Iman was on a foreign trip. The next evening the business partner just dropped by for a curtesy call. Maheen was lonely and sad and liked the flirtatious attention the business partner was giving her. Soon it was one curtesy call after another or business lunches  to which the business partner invited her  until they ended up in a hotel room alone.

Maheen sighed heavily in her tight clothes sitting in the luxury car, this seemed like a sad dream from not so long ago but she had to come back to the present  , she was almost at the grand hotel where she was hosting a program for the evening. She went through the program with her best acting skills – the gorgeous glamourous host with beautiful smiles without an ounce of sincerity in them. She had forgotten all about the beautiful sad looking Kashmiri young woman and boy who were still waiting for her in the veranda as she came home ‘’ I am too tired ‘’ Maheen said ‘’ Can you come back tomorrow’’ she went in and was cleaning off the make up and putting on her moisturiser  when she heard the news on TV. She had a habit of turning the TV off if Iman or his new wife ever appeared on some program, but this time she listened carefully , Iman was championing the Kashmir cause and uttering his usual rhetoric about saving the world’s poor until something evil clicked in her mind and she smiled. She called her secretary ‘’ Has that Kashmiri girl left yet’’she asked the secretary ‘’ No madam, they are still standing near the main door waiting for a rickshaw’’  the secretary said politely ‘’ Call them back ‘’ Maheen said ‘’and give them a room in the servant quarters for tonight.’’ Maheen was ready for her final revenge on Iman and shut his mouth with all the BS about saving the world’s poor for all times to come.

Maheen was on the phone late at night with Iman’s now ex business partner, they both laughed and joked about the old days. How the business partner had saved Maheen from going back to her miserable life in a Paris flat and provided her with the opportunity of another glamorous career in India’s posh capital Delhi. They were both ready for the next phase of revenge against Iman, who must be sleeping like a baby after saving the world’s poor, Maheen thought with an evil bitter smirk on her face.

The next few days turned into a nightmare for Iman. His statements on Kashmir had angered the Indian establishment and Maheen used all her contacts to show them how to punish Iman and bring him down. Soon money was pouring to all the workers in Iman’s constituency and within days they were all out on the streets burning tires protesting against low wages, rising prices and doing a forced shutter down of all shopping areas. Food was free for all protesting workers and no one knew who was footing the bill. Everyday the fire of revenge burning in Maheen was soaring to new heights as she tasted success of an unprecedented nature. ‘’ Do you still want to call me a liar, you mean measly pathetic bastard’’ she thought with satisfaction. I destroyed him and his reputation all by myself and destroyed his career with the help of my favourite Indian tycoons and generals. How good am I she thought to herself strutting around doing her morning walk on the well watered lawn of her lavish Delhi Bungalow also a present from one of her doting admirers. There was just one last thing left to do. She had to push Iman’s doting wife of his out of his life. All her tricks in the past towards that goal hadn’t worked but this Kashmiri girl and the child would be the perfect recipe.

Zeena was restless all night and didn’t sleep at all. She was a strong young woman and normally took whatever life threw at her with a lot of courage and resilience. But all that was failing her now. She was uncomfortable and scared in Maheen’s servant quarters. She could see that no one in Delhi cared about her woeful story. It was as if they blocked their ears when it came to how hurt her community was or what they were actually going through. She had a weird feeling they thought she was making all this up and they didn’t want to know. Her pillow was wet with tears she was not accustomed to. She was wondering what to do next if Maheen was just after her own agenda and just wasting her time. She missed hearing the clear sound of the Azan while the stars were still out. But here she could not see the stars through the small window, only dust smog and smoke and the incessant noise of traffic going on and on. She missed the home of her far off relative that smelled of pan and iliachi most of the time and felt a lot safer than where she was now. She got up to say her Fajr prayer and wondered if even Allah was listening to her prayers and was He even aware of the pain in her heart. She had never felt so small and powerless in a world where only money seemed to matter and no one seemed to care about people’s suffering. She woke up Bilal and helped him to change into the last clean clothes he had left. Zeena was amazed at the bravery and resilience of this tiny little boy. All through their difficult journey never had he cried once or complained or remembered his mother and father – who they both knew were not in this world anymore. She tried to give him the bigger share of whatever food was available but he would shake his head and only eat half of it. They both went back to their place of waiting in the veranda hoping for an early audience with Maheen. But today Zeena and Bilal were surprised to find a grand breakfast waiting for them on the kitchen dining table. Then the secretary took them to Maheen’s bedroom where she was sprawled on her bed in a black see through nighty. Her influential visitor for the night was smoking a cigar and sitting on the Diwan talking to someone on the mobile tying up his shoe laces getting ready to leave. Zeena pulled her chaddar over her head and around her tightly as if to protect herself from the uncomfortable scene of Maheen’s bedroom. She held Bilal’s hand tightly as Maheen’s night guest eyed her up and down lustily and asked Maheen ‘’ Who is this rose, where have you been hiding her, wont I get a taste’’ Maheen threw a pillow at him play fully ‘’ Go away you lecherous man ‘’ she said laughing loudly. Bilal stood in front of Zeena puffing out all of his 4 foot body as if he would knock down anyone who came close to Zeena. But the man left without noticing Bilal’s cute little face snarling at him. Maheen closed the door as soon as they were alone and told Zeena to come sit on the sofa with her. ‘’ I have a very important job for you that will make you very rich’’ she said in a hushed conspirator tone. Most of Maheen’s body was showing through her see through nighty making Zeena uncomfortable who was staring at the floor avoiding  eye contact. ‘’ you will become enormously rich if you do this correctly ‘’ Maheen said sipping her morning coffee ‘’ then you can hire any lawyer you want to and they will find your father and brothers.’’  Zeena didn’t want to do any modelling and thought that was what the woman was offering her ‘’But that will take a long time madam’’ she said – ‘’what if my father and brothers are moved or executed during that time’’ she said softly trying not to sound agitated. Maheen gave a chirpy little laugh  ‘’ it won’t be long at all . Just half an hour of your time.’’ Bilal held Zeena’s hand tightly ‘’ What will I have to do’’ Zeena asked with apprehension. ‘’ We are going to arrange a Pakistani passport for you and this boy – and a press conference’’ Maheen looked at Zeena carefully to gauge her reaction before she spit out the rest of the plan. She was satisfied to see Zeena’s face was blank‘’You will just have to give a statement before the media , pretend to be a Pakistani who was raped by Iman my ex and this child was the product.’’ Maheen stood up and started pacing the room excited and nervous at the ingenuity of the last revenge she would have on Iman and his new wife. She would like to see her face when the news would go viral and the new wife would be packing her bags to leave Iman.

Zeena’s face went pale , she had a sinking feeling in her chest but life had taught her not be over awed by strange circumstances. She stayed calm and said ‘’madam can you give me tonight to think about it – this is a very big decision to make’’ Maheen kept pacing the floor gone a bit hyper with the excitement of the kill she was about to make. Zeena and Bilal left the room quietly and went back to their place in the veranda. Both didn’t say a word  as  they both knew what they had to do – they waited until Maheen had left for the day in her luxurious company car – crept back to the servant quarters and packed their few belongings as quickly as they could. A guard stopped them as they were making their way out of the main gate and told them ‘’ Madam has asked you to stay here’’ Bilal bent down and bit the guard on his leg as hard as he could. The man yelped in pain and let go of the main gate. Zeena and Bilal rushed out of it and ran down the street as top speed rushing through the smog and smoke.

 Tears were rolling down Zeena’s face as they traveled back home empty handed and with no news of the brothers or father. As they neared home the smell of pine and Chinar trees touched the pain in her soul and she looked at the clear blue sky and the beautiful morning light. How could so much beauty cover up so much pain and darkness. She cleaned her face of tears as Bilal started waking up on the rickety bus seat next to her. She didn’t want him to see her getting weak – she was not going to waste a university education on doing nothing. As the first streaks of sunshine  bathed her face she smiled at Bilal and hugged him close ‘’ We will find another way little brother ‘’ she said with a sparkle in her eye ‘’ we are the survivors little one – the cruel Maheen’s and their friends  are the one’s coming apart’’ Bilal smiled at her and took out the last rusk biscuit he had been saving to share with her.

He walked through the fields of wheat dry brown grass crunching under his feet, broke a few sheaves  to check the size of the grain and sighed to see how small and unhealthy it appeared. He turned his head towards the sky squinting to avoid the blazing sun – the wheat crop always suffered when there wasn’t enough rain. His servants were keeping a respectful distance and let Shan wander in and out of the wheat fields – almost ready for harvesting any day. He walked on to where the cows and goats were grazing close to a mud hut – where the person on night duty always slept.

Shan looked at the Charpai(local wooden bed) under the tree and was about to sit down when one of the servants ran to cover it with a clean bed sheet. ‘’Its OK’’ Shan gestured with his hand and sat down on the bare charpai ‘’My clothes are full of dust anyway ‘’ he said smiling and attempting to clean off the dust his clothes had gathered in the wheat fields. ‘’How much milk are the cows giving now’’ he asked the keeper of the cows. ‘’Depends on the rain and grass saab jee, if we have a good season then go to 5 or 6 KG otherwise just 4 or a little more.’’  An old man brought him some Lassi in a metal glass. The Lassi was fresh and sweet and felt good going down his parched throat. Many children mostly barefoot and dressed poorly stood around in a circle watching with curiosity at what this ‘’bara sahib’’ from the big city was doing in their poor little village. ‘’Shan eyed the children and asked the old man ‘’why are these children not at school ‘’ ? The old man turned around filling Shan’s Lassi glass from a shiny metal jug , he waved at the children ‘’go home you brats’’ he shouted at the children ‘’why are you standing here’’? The children moved away a few feet but did not leave , their dark eyes watching every detail of the interaction carefully. The old man sat on the ground near Shan’s feet ‘’ Saab Jee What to do – we used to have two primary and one secondary school but now we have no school for twenty miles. The education department closed them down as they didn’t have enough money to pay teachers and maintain the buildings. ‘’ Shan looked at the children standing around and a look of sadness came into his eyes. ‘’So What do these children do all day long?’’ he asked handing the metal glass back to the old man ‘’ Saab jee, Those who can afford to , send their children to another village – and the rest you can see here’’ he said with a sheepish grin. ‘’ Did you like the Lassi saab ji’’ he asked trying to change the topic. 

All the way back to the city Shan’s heart was heavy with the image of dusty barefoot children gawking at him with curious dark eyes. He was calculating how to raise enough money to repair their school or build a new one. Harsh reality took over as he neared the city – with all the expenses for his political party , he was barely coping there was no way he could afford to pay for a new school . He made a note on his phone to call some of the rich land owners around the village  about the matter, it won’t hurt to try he thought to himself.

Several people were waiting in his small office next to the sitting room at his home in the posh suburbs of the city. – as he started looking at the papers and applications they were holding – a servant came in to tell him his wife was waiting for him at the dinner table. He looked at the people apologetically running his fingers through his thick wavy hair ‘’Can you take these applications and put them in a file ‘’ he asked the servant standing behind him ‘’Sorry guys if it’s really urgent come back tomorrow morning’’ He went  to the bathroom to wash his hands and feet still covered with a fine layer of dust from walking in the wheat fields. His wife followed him to the bathroom and stood in the door rocking the baby as she stood there looking at his back ‘’Why do these people have to follow you home, when you are out all day?’’ She asked in a shrill shrieky voice. ‘’Are you never going to have any time for me – for this baby?’’ He turned round mopping his face with a towel – he smiled and put his arms out to pick the baby up. The baby cooed happily and nearly fell out of the mother’s arms trying to jump towards his dad. ‘’You can’t hide behind playing with the baby and not answer my question’’? She said sullenly her pretty face looking pinched and bitter .‘’Lets have dinner then we can talk about it ‘’Shan said playing and cuddling  his son.

In the rally the crowds were huge, All you could see was a sea of heads and colourful flags. The people were cheering and chanting to the sound of the national songs. The mood was upbeat. The heat of the summer sun was nearly gone and the cool of the summer night put everyone in a cheery mood. Shan’s critics were always jealous of the huge crowds he pulled and blamed him for turning something serious like a political rally into a rock concert. But Shan knew better – This generation of youngsters had grown up with video games and the internet , words had to be wrapped in several layers of things relevant to their lives. Upbeat music  was relevant and the youth loved it. The air was electric with anticipation followed by wild euphoria as the crowds saw him on the stage and the huge screens all around the ground. The crowd went wild cheering for him and not a word could be heard over the din for at least 10 minutes. He stood there smiling waving at the crowd telling them to calm down and let him speak. But the crowd wouldn’t have it – all their pent up frustration of the past two decades had broken loose and they were in reality celebrating their own sense of freedom from the shackles. Sadly the euphoria didn’t last  long – As everyone made their way home still happy -still chanting to the beat of the national songs, several police cars followed Shan’s four by four and stopped it at a dark secluded road. They arrested him for breaking the law creating public disorder and inciting the crowds to violence. Shan and his political party people were furious ‘’but we had permission from authorities, none of what you say happened’’ Iman the second man in charge kept insisting. ‘’Sorry sir we have our orders’’ the police chief was straight faced and serious and didn’t want to see the papers Iman was waving at the policeman.

The length and breadth of the prison cell was filled with sad lonely looking poor people who sat against the walls staring out of the small vents near the ceiling. Everything seemed dark and dismal. A few people were talking to each other about the heat and the absence of a proper functioning generator. The only change in their day came when they were served their half plate of dal or vegetable curry with one or two Roti’s. Some days they were allowed out in the scruffy compound of the prison for exercise depending on how  generous the prison warden was feeling and how many gifts he  had received   from visiting relatives. The heat was mind numbing – the cells were smelling of sweat and dry dust coming in through the vents. Everyone looked with anticipation at the door whenever they heard footsteps going down the corridors – but no one stopped at their cell and the prisoners went back to their half awake half asleep reverie. After a while one of the prisoners started singing ‘Heer Waris Shah’ in a deep sad voice. Most inmates sat up to listen and went to their places of freedom for a few moments. Some went to their fields where the grass was green , the white cotton bud was in full bloom , moving back and forth with the wind. Some went to the village well where it was cool under the trees and the sound of the birds came mixed with the rhythmic turning of the wheat grinder. of the A man in the corner started sobbing uncontrollably looking up at the roof complaining to Allah in Sarieki about his plight and why was his life going down such a cycle of misery. Shan had been half lying half sitting on his bed next to the wall. The other prisoners had given him the best spot and the best bed cover in the room knowing that he was some famous celebrity leader and loved by the people of his country. Every now and then one of the prisoners would come up to him trying to touch his feet in respect. He stopped them holding their hand and feeling embarrassed.  ‘’Saab Ji we are poor people and have no backing but Saab Ji why are you here ‘’ One of the prisoners asked at last ‘’ What do you think ‘’ Shan asked them with a smile. ‘’Don’t know Saab ji you must have annoyed the rulers’’ they were all looking at him carefully to hear his answer. ‘’I was in a Jalsa (political meeting )asking for equal rights for poor people – and they brought me here ‘’ Shan said in a calm voice. He was  angry and annoyed at being jailed over something so small – without breaking any law. But since he had been in Jail the stories of the other men had humbled him and taught him many valuable lessons. Deen Mohammed  the tall  boy who was barely sixteen had allegedly stolen his boss’s bike. They found no evidence and no bike – but the gate keeper of the small factory where Deen Mohammed  worked was sure he was the culprit. Deen’s dad had passed away and his mother didn’t have enough money for bail. The mother collected corn from the fields and roasted it for the children for a meagre amount. Deen was the sole breadwinner of the family. Without him his family was facing starvation. Shan had seen the bent and broken form of the mother whenever she came to see Deen  – lines of worry and suffering etched across her sun browned face. Every other man and boy in Shan’s cell had a similar story to tell. One was there for stealing five kilos of his neighbour’s milk that was left unattended.  Two brothers  were blamed for poisoning the Chawdry’s prize bull. The brothers both in their twenties swore that they had never even seen the prize bull, leave alone poison it. This was a strange new world for Shan – born to money fame and privilege , he had never seen the actual short comings of his country’s criminal justice system at such short range. The one constant in all these stories that Shan picked up was the factor that most of the prisoners were poor and had no back up.  The few who left within a few hours of being in Jail were the one’s who had connections with the area Head Policeman or Head Putwari. A gang of rough looking men would greet the freed prisoner and do a victory dance and even aerial firing as soon as they were outside the prison compound. Shan was in deep thought  as he was trying to go off to sleep in the hot humid cell. Innocence and criminality had nothing to do with this system as long as people had enough bribery money to cover the truth  and bail out relatives. The innocent one’s would stay locked for months and years as they could not afford an expensive solicitor to prove them not guilty.  This state of affairs saddened  Shan – he had been on the road up and down his country – canvassing  for justice and equal rights for the poor and oppressed and an end to this system of injustice. Now he could see that same system in full bloom all around him. A decade and half of his life had gone past without making a single dent. Would he give up now? No he thought I will fight even harder – I have seen first hand proof of everything I was fighting against.  Shan’s party people, his best friend Iman and the expensive solicitor  finally managed to bail him out and were waiting outside next to his four by four. Shan said a sad goodbye to all his inmate friends and promised to help them as much as he could once he was back home. The clear light of the sun felt strange to Shan’s eyes after the dismal half light of the prison cell. His hooded eyes looked troubled as he got into the jeep – his cousin handed him a water bottle and Shan looked at it and said to his cousin ‘’I never realised that for some people of my country even this clean water is a luxury – they cannot afford’’ Then he noticed his wife in the back seat looking angry and sullen. ‘’ Can we leave this carrying the whole world on your shoulder for a bit’’ she said in an irritated voice ‘’that’s how you got into this trouble to begin with’’ Shan felt embarrassed and  a bit defensive and the cousin  looked positively uncomfortable. The family knew about their marital problems – but Shan’s wife had never argued in public before. He  was quite and said nothing more until they drove into their front yard. An armed guard ran to open the door and saluted Shan as he got out. Many of his party people were waiting with garlands and flowers. There was wild euphoria for a while as the workers chanted loud slogans for their leader. That picked up Shan’s spirit and he forgot all about the angry wife in the back seat. It was nearly two in the morning when he came indoors after all the wild celebrating that went on for several hours.

His wife turned around as he tried to lie down in bed as quietly as possible. ‘’ Do you know what time it is’’ Shan pretended to be asleep and said nothing ‘’ Why do these stinky people have to follow you home when you are spending so much money hiring an office. ‘’ Shan had a slight headache and was hoping she would be quite in a bit – but she was angry and her voice went up and up when she realised she was not  getting a response. ‘’Am I talking to the wall’’ now she was shouting – her sons in the next room were startled and one child started crying. She picked up the child and continued with her loud complaining. ‘’Isnt it enough I had to go through the humiliation of having to answer my relatives  why my husband was in jail‘’ Shan was disturbed by where the conversation was going – this was all that mattered to Rebecca that she shouldn’t go down in her social scale in comparison to her rich relatives in the states. He decided to let it go , no point in arguing with an angry woman he thought.  ‘’I don’t want to see these Yahoos in my home again’’ Rebecca  said in her clipped foreign accent. Shan sat up – his anger and his blood stream suddenly going to his head. ‘’ Those yahoos are my country people’’ he said angrily ‘’and this is my home, they will come whenever they want to’’ The child picked up his head from the mother’s shoulder looking all around with tearful eyes. ‘’Then find us another house ‘’ she said getting up and pacing the floor ‘’these people stink and disturb my home I cant stand it .’’ I cant afford to ‘’ he said ‘’ all my money is going into organising the party’’ She made scornful noises, huffed and puffed and sat down on the bed with a loud thud. The child whimpered in his sleep again. ‘’What do you mean by huh Amir asked ‘’I am sorry I don’t run the East India company to buy you another house or stay glued to you 24/7 – Politics demands odd hours that’s all  .’’ Then leave the politics’’ she said in an empty voice or leave me‘’ An image of Deen Mohammed and his mother ran through Shan’s head and several other con current images of people in suffering and poverty, People he did not know existed, people who had looked at him with hopeful eyes, not saying a word but the pain in the eyes telling the whole sad story of their life in a few seconds. ‘’I can’t do that ‘’ he said ‘’Are these people more important than your family’’ she said with an angry face blazing with fury’’ she thought her final blackmail card of leaving him would make him crumble – Shan thought for a long moment  Would he have to pay such a heavy price to keep his soul alive  –  ‘’yes they are ‘’ he finally said  ‘’the people of my country are more important to me than everything else –  You would understand that if you really loved me’’ he wasn’t angry anymore just sad – that the wrong woman was in his life for the wrong reasons – the distance between them felt endless and unsurmountable. He looked at her with sadness in his eyes. This tug of war was wearing him out and he didn’t know how to end it.  She just rolled her eyes and went to the other room putting the child down and glaring at the walls and furniture around her ‘’why did I come to this God forsaken place to begin with she thought . ‘’He doesn’t love me he doesn’t want me I am just in the way of something much bigger that I can’t fight. He is in love with the millions of starving rats in his country and thinks he is Jesus and can feed them all – that is my enemy – his insane idealism. My enemy is inside him – how will I fight that thing so much bigger and powerful than me.’’ Both lay awake as night was ending and the first sounds of the day wafted in through the windows. Shan got up to do his wudu for the morning salah – his head heavy and eyes burning with the tension of the night before – still no closer to any solution to the friction between the call of his soul and his wife’s antagonism to that call.

Shan had not been in the habit of leaving conflicts unresolved, talking through them was a good technique and had worked many times in the past. He cancelled all meetings and office activities for the day – he had to sort out the mess in his own life. Shan and his wife had been driving around aimlessly for hours, both silent ,both angry . Shan;s wife was bunched up  in the furthest corner of the front seat constantly looking out of the window . It felt like neither had anything to say to the other. At last the wife broke the silence ‘’ Book us a flight  home ‘’she said in a final tone‘’ I thought this was home ‘’ Shan quipped ‘’ You know what I mean’’ the wife sounded irritated. There life felt like a perpetual tug of war – with neither winning the battle. The wife was secretly convinced annoying her gave some kind of secret pleasure to Shan. He had found a new passion ‘politics’ and nothing about her attracted him anymore. She had lost the battle to an unseen enemy – Shan was not good at words and even worse at expressing deep feelings and emotions. Sensing her despair he tried to explain to his her – how he felt deeply about his mission and if she really loved him why couldn’t she share his passion and not make it her rival. ‘’Why are you not happy for me’’ That was precisely the point she thought. He is happy and I am not, he has elevated himself to a superior point where she could not reach – the only way to keep him under her control was to bring him down from his  elevated plane , this he  was resisting knowingly or unknowlingly.

For the first time in his life Shan had felt a sense of wholeness and calmness in his soul that had nothing to do with anyone on the outside. Women  girl friends , friends – nothing to do with getting satisfaction from being part of the  posh jet set. That life seemed empty and bizarre from where he stood.  He had been searching for this moment of truth when his soul would attach to something bigger than himself and give him a sense of direction. Working with the poor people of his country, listening to their problems, trying to give them hope everyday. Trying to forge a new political identity for his movement , that’s what finally felt like home. . He felt like he had  started down this road too late and every minute  mattered. Most of the time he forgot what time it was until he came home to find her and the children and other family members fast asleep. He was always exhausted but never unhappy. Then they would have the same old argument every morning over breakfast – in her mind all his fantasy was  escapism from the real world where he could miraculously cure the ills of his backward country. She was convinced he would invent a mission to run away from real life because real life was boring.  Those were harsh words and causing too much pain to Shan for simply trying to be himself. Their journey of  becoming strangers to each other had begun Shan did not know what troubles lay ahead if he was to rough it out on his own but he was ready.  Rebecca still insisted only way their feud would end was if all of them pack up and go back to the States where their huge mansion several businesses and factories were waiting for them. The thought of going back to that life again gave Shan a choking feeling. He didn’t know how to explain to Rebecca  if he was running away from anything at all that was precisely what he was running away from.

The tourist spots around the mountains were busy. The lake was shining in the afternoon sun like a beautiful mirror. Its waters a deep azure , the air was cool and fresh. Shan had been walking up and down the hills for several miles – his two friends Iman and Israr and their wives were a little out of breath. Shan and his two young sons were the only ones still enjoying the hike and wanted to go on. However the wives had discovered a little khoka hotel and refused to go any further and flopped on the chairs unceremoniously panting and out of  breath. Shan smiled at how ill equipped city people were to the beautiful outdoors and couldn’t wait to go back to their cooped up closed in spaces. Shan sat on the fresh green grass a few feet away from them and watched the road trailing around the mountains like a giant serpent. The occasional glint of car windscreens catching sunlight. Shan lay down on the soft green grass and watched the clouds floating across the dazzling blue sky. His young son lay down next to him placing his head on his shoulder. Shan felt a deep sense of peace entering his soul as if he had become one with the sky, the clouds the wind blowing softly across the mountains. Nothing mattered anymore nothing was important. The world seemed to dissolve away into nothingness. His soul was at peace and he felt a happiness beyond words. So this is what the infinite feels like he thought. You need nothing you want nothing you are complete on your own. He had been to this mountain trek and this valley many times before. Today it felt different. There was sadness in his heart – sadness of loss – sadness of a broken home. When everyone else was with their family he was here alone with just his sons who would leave in a few short days. But that place where the emptiness was – was also the place where the light of the infinite was entering his heart taking him away and beyond from humdrum mundane ordinary life.

Her story

When you are facing a huge crowd and the lights on the stage are shining in your face it is very hard to see who is in the audience – all you see is a sea of heads all looking more or less the same. This was a strange experience. She had come home to say goodbye to him one last time. Would she  be able to do it – will he be able to see me from across all those lights. Had he changed – what did he look like now? Her heart was pounding with anticipation – sweat running down her face in the humid murky evening heat with the crowd chanting his name all around her. Then she saw his tall dark silhouette against the lights – the tanned handsome face still the same , the look of serios concentration still the same ,then everything stopped- the voices around her, the lights the cheering crowds there was nothing left ,  just him and her – the heartbeat  and time standing  still in a frozen moment of time. What just happened here she thought? ‘’It is as if I never left ‘’ How can he feel so gutted and full of emotion after years and years standing between us like a wall . Those emotions just hurt and hurt – She was  crying all the way home  – His pain was swirling all around her through dark memories. He looked so vulnerable and alone behind the façade of an angry strong face. No one could see the lost boy that was hurting but she could – she had known that boy all her life. How was she going to walk away now? All that pain had entered her heart as her own – She looked around at the people of her country – all injured in their souls from a sad serial of tragedies going on and on. What was this strange whirlpool of evil events? How can I walk away from this she thought – even the soft breeze felt mournful ‘’don’t leave me’’ it seemed to be saying . She felt like  his arms were still around her and every time that emotion touched her heart the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.

Many strange days passed in this haze – this grey land where she wasn’t alive and she wasn’t dead. Just living on auto mode – one day to the next. Then there  was a woman with a high pitched voice and beady eyes on TV saying strange  things about him. They said this was his ex wife . She woke out of her lost world with a painful feeling. She  did not recognise who the woman with the sharp beady eyes and pinched cruel expression was talking about. Why was she so angry with him – why was she washing dirty laundry in public.  Who was she talking about? Someone she did not recognise at all.  How will he cope with this cruel woman she thought . I have to be with him, he was already in so much pain – how will more scratching of his wounds help?  – this can’t be happening again . 

She wanted to tell that strange woman with the beady eyes about the real him but no words came. Someone has to fight back for him she thought – someone has to tell the truth. I can’t sit silent because I am too scared of facing my own pain. Whenever I look at him I see the healer – the helper – the one who had picked up the thousand pieces of my broken soul and put them together again. painstakingly bit by bit – never losing patience – never letting anyone hurt me until I was whole . This man who had half the female population of the country running after him was wasting his time with a broken woman who had nothing to offer him in return. ‘’Why do you bother with a half crazy woman ‘’she used to ask him? ‘’ Do you have nothing better to do?’’ ‘’Look at all those beautiful girls out there – go and find a whole woman – why do you bother with my broken pieces’’ He would be silent and say nothing for a long while –  then say in a matter of fact voice ‘’ If I want  dead meat , I will go to a butchers shop’’ She  had to laugh through her tears at the horrible symillies. Then as suddenly as he came he would be gone. The stars in the sky would twinkle the same  but the light felt dim – the wind would be silent – everything would go into slow motion – all the hope life will to fight back he had pumped into her slowly ebbing out with each empty day .and then just when  she thought the fight was going out of her again, suddenly the wind would pick up   trees  swaying with delight  the heart playing to a  beautiful melody that had no words.  She would know from the change in the heartbeat and the whispering of the wind that he was back. She saw  him sitting with little children with bald heads holding them in his lap – mothering them as if to heal away the terrible cancer eating up their body. He had heled the scars of her soul with that same healing touch. Then who was his ex – wife talking about? And she had only come to say goodbye – No there was going to be no good bye anymore – she was going to fight back for him and against the people who had given him the scars. Her people had all become pygmies and didn’t seem to remember her anymore . ‘’I will fight back she thought if that is the last thing I do and take off the mud and dead leaves and rotten filth that his ex wife was trying to paint on his beautiful moon like face again. I will fight for my pygmies and pull them up again to full height where they can see the sun and the moon and shine like stars again. ‘’

Her life had taken such a strange twist – Just when she thought she would be in a small cottage in Sussex – living in a leafy lane enjoying doing nothing – just watching the grass grow , watering the daffodils, playing with Mibo the dog , watching her  baby grandson drool  while tickling him . Instead she was standing at the crossroads of hot smoke filled noisy road, her face covered with a chadar wondering where the last twenty five years had gone? Why did this road feel like a still picture – same heat – same smoke spewing  car engines, same people with same sad attires – lines of hard work and worry all across their brown sun drenched faces? She had started fighting for these very people decades ago and here they were decades later exactly the same like a still painting  that never changes when the wind blows when the wind stops when it is blistering cold ,when its scalding hot nothing in the painting changes. A deep sadness a feeling of hopelessness a feeling of despair  gripped her chest. She fixed her dark glasses and fiddled with the chaddar. Still self conscious   – she couldn’t cry in public but the tears wouldn’t stop. The still picture of her people’s misery scratching at her like steel nails inside her system.

 Inside Maya’s house nothing had changed either – time  had kept  the super rich elite like  a still picture as well with several added perks like private jets and helicopters several more factories  and villas abroad. The life style exactly the same ,same old carpets ,same old mahogany furniture same old expensive chandeliers and cars.  Maya still angry with her – still thinking she was a freak and stupid emotional unrealistic woman. Maya didn’t understand things like fighting for the poor and all that. It had taken Maya years to establish the little kingdom based on money around her – she didn’t want anyone  rocking her boat. Maya was quite angry that her home that her cost millions to buy and more millions to furnish was being shown so much disrespect by this strange woman from Sussex, not caring about or noticing her expensive surroundings. Maya always believed Zainab talked about class war and bringing Pakistan into the 2i^1st century to get attention and feel important. Maya was also angry with him and talked of the ruin he had brought to the country. Zainab sighed and thought Maya sounds like his ex wife – what are we up against? Why are angry woman attacking him for trying to help those people I saw everywhere – the people with empty hollow eyes, hunger starvation and despair on their faces. How could these woman not notice these people, did they live in a different land?

She wondered if it was the closeness to poor people that was disturbing them. Zainab remembered  Shah Kamal all those years ago when the first time she  saw him and her heart sank. He looked like a mix of a pop / Hollywood star with nearly the same air of arrogance. With her leftist hat on  it was decoded  as ‘’itna khoobsoorat admi – yeqeenan bheja kahali hai’’(Anyone this handsome has to be dumb) She knew from moving around her society that the  rich and the super  celebs rarely ever got to use their brain – their money and good looks opened all doors for them. ‘’How will this upper class snob know about the suffering of the poor – how will she explain to him about the killer culture of  Pakistan’s political legacy? ‘’ She had thought in despair. How will she ask for help – he seemed so intimidating and angry all the time. She smiled at the memory of the day she had told him that she needed his help for farmers in Sindh as their lands were being eroded by the ‘’seem and thor’’ (salt )coming up. He had listened carefully – there was no snob in evidence and some of her fear left her. Just around then her world had crashed all around her – the memory of the pain and being healed was not clear but the healers face Zainab had never forgotten.

His story again

The night was humid and sultry , the monsoon air was heavy and hard to breath in. Shan had to do the last minute rush of doing seven or eight election meetings before the deadline of midnight and the election  next day. He was exhausted and drenched with sweat as his workers rushed him from one meeting to the other. The crowds were out in record numbers the lights all over the city had made it feel like day light. All streets were a blaze of colours of different political parties. Workers were making last minute preparations going from door to door checking voter lists. Shan felt strangely elated and optimistic as he went to his last meeting. The lights on the stage were bright the crowds went wild as he stood there saying what he had to say. Then he saw her in the middle of the crowd – waving a flag – still the same – the same cheerful face with a broad smile – the same eyes sparkling with hope – the emptiness of years and years lifted from his heart – his people were cheering – the lights were blazing – he had done what he had to do – his people had woken up – his soul mate was before him at last. The wind picked up as his wildly cheering motorcade went home. He looked around and smiled at her. ‘’don’t leave me again’’ he said’’ this night without you was long and dark and very hard to live’’ She smiled back and said nothing. It was nearly morning as they drove home. His soul had chosen a sad lonely road full of pain and conflict and he had never turned back. ‘’Hiya alal falah hiya alal salah ‘’ (come towards goodness come towards prayer) the clear crystal voice of the Moazin wafted on  the crisp morning air. The pain and conflict in Shan’s heart lifted. He felt light as a feather and knew his soul was taking him in the right direction – he splashed his face with cold water while doing wudu and smiled to himself knowing that he was home at last.

.

A little girl

at the foot of the hill

mother asked her

pick up some wood and broken branches

the house is cold

the babies are shivering

need some warmth

the little girl hid behind trees

eyes wide with fear

 making sure

no one saw her

the tall fat men with big guns

and shoes that made squeaky sounds

she was in luck

broken branches everywhere

lots of wood

from the storm last night

she was happy she smiled

babies will be warm

she turned around to face home

stopped in her tracks

heart missed several beats

Where was home?

She ran and she ran

Couldn’t stop black smoke billowing

flames eating away at life

stack of broken branches fell down

leaves and brambles stuck in her hair

smoke stung her eyes

she fell into a heap

next to the tree

The big man with squeaky shoes

was walking towards her

she wasn’t afraid anymore

he prodded her with the rifle

she stared at the dying embers

she wasn’t afraid anymore

he pushed her with his big boot

‘’go home’’ he shouted

she looked at him and the dying embers

‘’home’’? she thought

she pushed away the rifle and stared him straight in the eye Not afraid anymore

 

                                                                 The soul collector

A beautiful girl was dancing in the middle of the hall. She was an expert of Kathak dancing.  The chandelier was brightly lit, the whirling reflection of the girls multi coloured clothes was creating a rainbow effect in the giant mirrors along the walls. The jingly bits around her feet making a harmonious sound in time with the Tabla (little drum) playing to a dull thumping beat. Men sprawled on the luxurious sofa’s were drinking heavily and singing discordantly in time with the music. A young girl and a teenage boy were filling up the empty alcohol glasses. A man with bloodshot eyes and a huge moustache lurched from the corner of the hall and threw a wad of thousand rupee paper money notes on the dancing girl. Helpers of the dancing girl dashed  across the room  grabbing all the paper money stuffing it in their pockets hurriedly. Nawazish the owner of the mansion was staring at the dancing girl fascinated by her feet. They were silky smooth and had hina patterns going all around them.

A chef dressed in snowy white and golden uniform came in to announce dinner. The owner of the mansion was too drunk to move to the dining hall and gestured for the food to be brought to him. He filled his plate to the brim with biryani, nihari and many kinds of kebabs. The rich aroma of food was making the little helpers mouth water. They looked with hungry eyes at one dish of rich food after another carried past them. They all sat in a huddle in the corner not invited to dinner, their stomach rumbling with hunger pangs. The dancing girl was sitting in the lap of the mansion owner Nawazish giggling away hysterically.

An official walked in mobile in hand and stood by respectfully as the mansion owner frowned at the interruption to his evening. Some opposition leader had called his workers and was protesting outside the mansion, demanding an inquiry into the mysterious deaths in factory’s Nawazish owned. 

He called someone on the same mobile and said ‘’why haven’t you sorted this son of a bitch’’? He seemed angry and pushed the dancing girl out of his lap. ‘’ How many times have I told you not to bring these small matters to me, call the DIG police and have them arrested, find whatever you can on this opposition guy and send it to the media ’’ He said the veins on his temples standing out his face gone crimson with anger. He asked the assistant to help him off the sofa as he dragged his feet towards the part of the mansion where his family lived.

The wife in expensive clothes and in her mid fifties looked distraught. The fancy gold jewellery and bright lights made the worry lines on her face stand out. She looked at Nawazish with pleading eyes trying to say something ,. Before she could open her mouth he shut her down with his sour tone  ‘’What do you want now’’ he said ‘’I am really tired, go to sleep’’   He sank down on the bed and used the remote to turn the lights off.  He could hear the wife sniffling and sobbing in the dark but he couldn’t care less. He was bored with this old woman, she didn’t interest him anymore. ‘’I have to find a way to get rid of her’’ he thought sleepily  adjusting his head on the soft pillow.

He found himself in a strange place,his mind drifting off to sleep. It was a dark and powerful place. He had accumulated everything he had ever dreamt off. Nawazish the richest man of the country, biggest land holder, owner of factories in twenty countries around the world. With his limited education he had managed to defeat all his political rivals with his version of politics. No one could bypass him. Yet he was bored. The money the power the women the destruction of all rivals. Nothing seemed enough, something was missing. He got up in the middle of the night, breaking out in sweat. He slid open the French window and stepped out into the heavy humid monsoon air. The strong sweet smell of orchids and the night queen made him sick. Of course that was it. Suddenly  the reason for his unhappiness struck him like a thunder bolt. Everything good and wholesome made him feel sick bringing out the darkness in his soul, it made him feel like the bad guy. ‘’Why can’t I feel like that stupid opposition guy sleeping on the street’’ he could see the dark forms of the protesters sprawled on the grass without a care in the world. ‘’Why can’t I feel the euphoria of being the good guy’’ The tic in his forehead and temples pulsing again. He wanted to strangle all saviours of humanity. Snatch the soul inside them, suck it out and fill it with the rage he experienced day and night. That nagging feeling of inferiority and guilt that wouldn’t go away with all the luxury money could buy. That was it, he had to pull everyone down to where no one remembered what it was like to be good. He would suck that thing out of them that made him feel bad. When all memory of good was gone, who would remind him of how many people he had killed and destroyed to get where he was. He had to find a way to suck out souls and use the bodies as his robot slaves always obedient always repeating what he wanted to hear. That’s it he smiled inwardly, ‘’I have to find a way to do all this, end of nagging righteous voices’’ He shut the French windows turned the AC to max pushing away the sweet strong aroma of orchids and the night queen.

 The workers in another factory had gone on strike. They were all sitting in groups outside the front door, the union leader was standing on a makeshift stage made from a few wooden tables put together. The workers were demanding a pay rise as it had been frozen since they  joined the factory. They were also demanding free medical as some of them were frequently ill working close to the heat of the electric arc furnace. The overseer of the factories came in his shiny black Mercedes and parked it a few meters away from the striking workers. The windows were tinted and no one could see who was in the car. He called Nawazish and explained the situation.‘’ How many workers are  on strike?’’ the boss asked  ‘’ About five hundred  sir ‘’ the overseer said in his best subservient tone . ‘’ How many of them can we replace by tomorrow’’ Nawazish asked breathing heavily into the phone. ‘’ Not many ‘’ the overseer sounded sheepish ‘’ most of them are skilled labour and training new one’s will take time.’’  Nawazish thought silently for a moment and said ‘’ tell the workers that all their demands have been accepted and arrange a separate meeting with the union leader after the factory shuts down at eight. Next morning the police were called into the factory to report an unfortunate accident. The union leader had slipped and fallen into the factory furnace. No witnesses could be found as the workers had all gone home while the union leader was still in the office chatting with the overseer, who claimed he had left him well and alive. The workers stood around the front entrance for a while, discussing what to do. The DIG of police drove by and police were told to arrest anyone who wanted to go on strike again on suspicion of murdering the union leader. The workers looked broken as they trooped back into the factory heads lowered shoulders sagging. Accepting the same old pay and conditions wasn’t easy but now they knew the alternative was the furnace or jail on framed charges.

Nawazish was fed up of all the bad news and problems surrounding his factories. A close friend  recommended contacting a peer sahib in the countryside. This is a good time to escape the city thought Nawazish as his fleet of cars drove towards the countryside loaded with fruit baskets and expensive jewellery for the peer sahib’s wife.  The palatial house in the countryside was surrounded by green wheat fields, Amultas and Kicker trees. White female peacocks were strutting around the grass, beautiful green male peacocks were roosting on the roof and making loud cooing sounds every now and then. Two gardeners were moving between flower beds picking out weeds and cutting excess grass with a sharp sickle. Nawazish was impressed with the grand looking haveli and wondered how much it was worth.?

The peer Sahibs sitting room looked like a mini palace with wall to wall carpets and hand painted calligraphy paintings that looked hundreds of years old. The sitting room doors opened up on a big fruit garden full of mango and apricot trees. Nawazish was trying to make a mental estimate of how much the Peer sahibs surrounding land where wheat farming was going would be worth, excluding the house. The peer sahib came in dressed in a starched white kurta shalwar and flowing white head gear. He had an expensive Kuwaiti hand woven shawl around his shoulders that had the faint aroma of incense and musk. They made themselves comfortable on the diwans. Servants brought in small Qehva cups with fruits and nuts on the side. Nawazish ordered all his assistants and ministers out of the room. Then he told  the peer sahib a woeful story of problems in his factories, in his govt and people claiming he had defrauded them of land that was rightfully his. How he couldn’t sleep at night with all this worry. The peer sahib looked at him affectionately and put an arm around his shoulder. He smiled and said ‘’ all will be well from now, you have come to the right place’’ Nawazish looked unsure. The peer Sahib continued ‘’I knew from the moment I saw you that someone whose name begins with ‘Jeem’ has done some bad black magic on you, I will remove all that. No worries.’’

The peer sahib did a long Amal (chanting ) on Nawazish and soon he was feeling light as a feather. All  anxiety had left him. He knew now what to do and who had done bad black magic on him. It was Jalil the opposition leader whose name began with a Jeem. He was in a strange daze as he left the palatial house in the countryside. All of a sudden everything looked so simple and easy. He was the victim so why should he feel guilty, no more fear of accountability . That is how simple it was. Shutting out all negative feeling, never having to admit any wrongdoing. This new power surging through his body and mind made him feel like a god. That was it this was what he wanted . Feeling of being whole and free through absolute sheer belief in his own innocence. Why carry the little nagging voices of guilt that made him weak. He smiled happily and felt very generous. He asked his secretary to place an order of sheep head and foot (Asian meat dish) biryani and nan for all his staff and cabinet ministers.

 Next morning Nawazish was on a flight to London. The lavish hall of the New Savoy was full of his friends from all over Europe. His cabinet ministers and party members were also there in big numbers. This was a meet the press and electronic media function. Nawazish wanted to hire new speech writers from this crowd. He had arranged for their stay on the govt’s expense showing it as Foreign Relation building trip. His ministers and political party had been busy arranging small presents for all the media people attending the FR tour. Some were given flats in NY and Dubai. Some others had lucrative contracts added to their media companies. Others got luxury cars and any cases of misappropriation wiped off their records. A fleet of luxury cars had been hired to take all the media people and their families around London for sightseeing and shopping all being paid by Nawazish and his associates through the govt treasury. Images and videos of Nawazish attending PR dinners and lunches in posh hotels were flashed all over the tabloids and social media of his home country. Nawazish and his party people were in high spirits. The trip had gone well. Nawazish wasn’t bothered with the criticism or the loud mouth opposition leader Jalil anymore. The media people were building Nawazish up as a mini god and the most sincere leader the nation had in decades.Two weeks later  the media people were flown back home. Soon after the tabloids and TV channels started reporting terrible scandals associated with the opposition leader Jalil. Crowds at his meetings became thin. People threw rubbish and garbage outside his home. Graffiti discoloured all his outer walls. His party offices in the city were broken into and vandalised. His wife and children fled the house and moved to an undisclosed location fearing for their life. The courts were full of 20year old cases opened up against the opposition leader. 

This new found power through the media had made Nawazish’s life much easier. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder all the time.  He could live his life more freely and carelessly. He rarely ever went home to his wife anymore. Most of his time was now spent in the hills  with his beautiful mistress or in the male quarters of his mansion with his friends and the dancing girls. A usual he was enjoying a drink with his friends in the mansion hall when his PA walked in looking somewhat nervous ‘’ Begum Sahiba is unwell and wants to see you. A dark shadow appeared in his eyes ,his brow furrowed. ‘’when will this woman leave me alone ‘’ he thought in annoyance . She was sitting on the prayer mat as he came in to see her . ‘’ Why don’t you come home anymore ‘’? the wife asked tearfully ‘’ because I am busy with govt stuff ‘’ he said rudely making no attempt to sit ‘’ I will send a doctor to see you tomorrow ‘’ he said walking back to the door. The wife got up from the prayer mat ‘’I have heard many bad things about you, I am worried’’ she stood next to him trying to look him in the eyes, she held his hand trying to get him to sit down. Nawazish jerked his hand away ‘’ I am busy with things , can’t stay’’ he said rudely. ‘’Who is Zari Gul, why are people talking about her’’ the wife sounded choked with emotion. ‘’ I am successful and powerful people are jealous, that’s all’’ he patted her on the shoulder in a patronising manner and left the room with a bad taste in his mouth.

 Next evening Nawazish was annoyed to see the protestors and the opposition leader  in front of his mansion again. He had made them disappear for a few weeks with pressure from the media.  Now they were back again blocking his front entrance shouting at him ,waving  flags and banners as he drove past. Some even threw stones at his bullet proof car and were shooed away by elite armed police who ran after them guns at the ready. Nawazish told the driver ‘’stop the car’’ he rolled down the window looking really annoyed. ‘’ Why are these people still here, damaging my property’’ he asked the police guard in an angry voice. ‘’ Get them out of here by tomorrow if you don’t want to lose your job‘’ he barked at the police officer in charge ‘’Sorry sir, I will try my best’’ the police officer sounded scared and apologetic.

 Late at night a mob of Nawazish’s political party and a lot of policemen dressed in plain clothes raided the makeshift tents of the opposition leader and his followers inundating them with water. Many of the protesters left in the morning as they had caught a chill during the night. Some sat it out on dry plastic sheets. The women among the protestors had just started preparing breakfast and were having difficulty trying to light up the soggy wood. Suddenly there was smashing of glass and screaming. The policemen in plain clothes and people from Nawazish’s political party were back with guns . They smashed car windows kicked the tents down and broke all pots pans and furniture in the tents using heavy wooden sticks. The women screamed and huddled together in a tight knot.  The men picked up chairs and tried fighting the attackers. One of the attackers picked up a mega phone and shouted into it ‘’All of you have 5 minutes to leave or you will be arrested for destroying private property, creating disorder and inciting violence.’’ The small crowd stayed and did not move for several hours. Other protestors joined them and by evening the crowd had increased by several dozens. Shortly before sundown Nawazish ordered to shoot the protesters point blank if they were still refusing to leave. ‘’ Make an example of these bastards’’ he shouted at the police head ‘’showing weakness is not an option’’ Twenty five people died in the shooting including seven women and three children and dozens were injured. Nawazish heard the news with a cold cruel glint in his eyes. His political party and ministers however went into pandemonium.  They were worried this incident would give them bad press and they could lose seats in the elections. The cabinet was all gathered around Nawazish trying to make sense of what had just happened. ‘’ Nothing will happen and we won’t lose the election  ‘’ Nawazish said fixing his tie in the mirror. ‘’ I have sorted everything’’ he said with a smile ‘’ I have to teach you people the use of four strategies  of using fear and terror to control human behaviour , no problems after that’’ he smiled defiantly. The party people were looking at him stupidly ‘’what are the four strategies of fear ’’ they were thinking ? Will they help  silence the social media that was showing images of people lying in pools of blood.

Nawazish went straight to Zari Gul’s house in the hills , annoyed with the lack of faith his party  and cabinet were showing in him and their lack of belief in peer sahibs ability to get him out of every mess. Zari Gul was dressed in a white Kamiz Shalwar feeding the parakeets in her front garden. . She smiled as Nawazish drove in and took him to the bedroom. ‘’ you seem very upset today ‘’ she said looking at him with her huge black beautiful eyes ‘’ Has something gone wrong’’ Nawazish looked around  the bedroom which was decorated like an oriental harem. There were carpets and diwans of all colours and shapes. Lace curtains flowing with the wind opening towards the beautiful garden of  rose bushes from many lands .  A small water fountain just outside the door and a soft sitar playing on her video recorder hidden behind the antique sandalwood cupboards on the walls. Nawazish sat on the diwan half lying down. Zari Gul sat on the swinging sofa rocking back and forth gently. She played with her dupatta and fed Nawazish some grapes out of a fruit bowl, gently caressing his hand. ‘’ You worry too much’’ she said laughing softly’’ You already know so many ways to control people’’ her tone became hushed purring like a dark panther ‘’why don’t you use them’’

‘’It isn’t so easy,’’ Nawazish said in an annoyed tone ‘’We offered money to that stupid man Jalil and even blackmailed his family’’ he said ‘’nothing seems to work on him’’  Nawazish was lying flat on the Diwan gobbling up the grapes Zari Gul was feeding him ‘’Then get him killed’’ Zari said with a flowery gesture of her delicate hand. Her bangles jingled like bells and reminded Nawazish vaguely of his wife at home ‘’ He pushed the image out as quickly as he could. The grapes were not filling him up. He realised that he was very hungry , he always felt hungry when he was stressed  ‘’Lets go out to eat‘’ he said ‘’ I will take you to a place that has the best Haleem nan, sheep brain and korma in the whole world ’’

The driver went several miles up in the hills to another town where they could eat in peace. The hotel’s restaurant was surrounded with dark green pine trees. Soft wind flowing through the pine needles brought the faint aroma of pine wood with it. Someone was cooking something on firewood down in the valley, the occasional crow came down from the trees cawing loudly. Zari Gul was trying her best to lift his spirits.‘’ Lets go for a walk in the hills’’ she said to Nawazish ’’putting her arms around his thick waist. ‘’ Don’t feel like it today ‘’ he said his brow still furrowed with worry lines. ‘’ I haven’t figured out what to do with this whole mess in the city’’ Zari Gul laughed  her bangles jingled again ’’ She made a slashing gesture against his throat. ‘’ Get rid of them and disappear somewhere for a few weeks ‘’Nawazish was startled , for a woman she was quite hard hearted ‘’ No one will find anything, the peer sahib  can cover up everything for you’’ she said running down the hill , bangles jingling her dark  brown hair splashed all around her rosy face .

The entire cabinet was still sitting in the bright hall waiting for Nawazish to return from the hills. The Tabla master and his assistants were on the floor near the entrance. Dancing girls were moving around the hall aimlessly wondering when the evening would kick off. The ministers looked worried, they were not as powerful or resourceful as Nawazish, some didn’t want to put their careers online.  Two of them were considering a resignation but were also afraid. Most people who crossed Nawazish ended up having strange unexplained accidents or became bankrupt overnight. Those thoughts were troubling everyone. Most members secretly thought Nawazish had gone too far ordering the shooting of protestors. But no one would have the courage to say anything to his face. They all lived in deep fear of him. Several hours of discussion later the cabinet members were no closer to a solution.  Uniformed chefs had brought in tea and coffee several times with cream cakes, samosas and sandwiches. The cabinet members liked to eat and the master’s pantry was always full. Nawazish had ordered the cabinet members to wait for him , no one could leave until further orders. The dancing girls and Tabla masters had gone home. Most cabinet members tired of smoking and drinking tea and coffee were lying on the sofas yawning nearly  half asleep.

Sometime past midnight Nawazish’s brother and two sons came in all smartly dressed in dark suits and colourful ties .The cabinet members were  all to join the family in a trip to Palm Beach Florida. Nawazish didn’t want to face the critics at home after the shootings outside his mansion so he decided to book an entire floor of an expensive hotel in Palm Beach for a month all paid by the govt. He had also booked a private jet for himself and his cabinet members also paid by the govt . They would do some more Foreign Relation building exercises until everything cooled down back home.  

Nawazish liked walking on the beach bare foot in his shorts and T shirt. His Hungarian escort clinging onto his arm. Nawazish never wore swimming trunks or went into the water. He was very self conscious and didn’t want  people to laugh at his fat figure. The Hungarian girl asked him ‘’ you are so powerful strong and rich Nawazish, how did you get here ?’’ she laughed coquettishly ‘’ teach me also’’  ‘’Ahaa’’ Nawazish made an arrogant noise in his throat ‘’ you have to suck the soul out of people and turn them into your slaves’’ he looked into the blue eyes of the Hungarian girl ‘’ do you know how to do that ……he asked puffing out his chest in joy. ‘’ No I don’t’’ the Hungarian found this strange rich fat man extremely funny and stupid. She wasn’t sure if he was saying these things to make her laugh or if he was actually serious. Either way acting impressed with him would get her a bigger cheque  so she didn’t care.  ‘’So how do you do that big man ‘’ she asked falling all over him batting her long eye lashes in his face ‘’ I scare them , I scare them real good ‘’ Nawazish said putting on his scary face trying to score some points with the pretty blond girl. The Hungarian laughed hysterically. ‘’ You are so sweet, you fat bald man’’ Nawazish puffed up to look more macho ‘’Sometimes I just have them killed’’ he said showing off . The Hungarian continued laughing as she ran back towards the sea front getting tired of Nawazish’s childish need to impress her. He walked into the hotel lobby to find his two sons and sons in law having a conference with several businessmen from all over the continent. They were busy making deals for their own business companies and offering lucrative govt deals in exchange for a commission paid to them personally. One of his sons and some assistants followed Nawazish into the lift. ‘’ Aba ji one of these companies wanted a contract for the gold drilling  I gave it to them, Is that OK? ’ he asked quizzically ‘’What have they offered in return’’ Nawazish asked in a matter of fact tone. The son waited until they were in the room and ordered the assistants to open the briefcases they were carrying. Two brief cases were full of dollars and the third had several gold bars laid out neatly and evenly. Nawazish had a proud and satisfied look in his eyes. ‘’ His sons had learnt well’’ He patted his son’s shoulder proudly. ‘’Just make sure to load all this on a launch to Dubai when we send the other cash and gold, you know the process don’t you’’ he was still smiling broadly at his son. ‘’Yes Aba JI I know perfectly’’ the son said elated with the father’s praise.  

Jalil hadn’t slept for the past several nights tending to the wounded that had been brought into the hospitals after the fatal shooting outside the mansion. Some had no money for medicines. Others had no family in the city. The children who had been injured were too young and crying constantly with the pain. Jalil’s entire family his sisters and brother were lending a hand, pitching in for medicines, bringing in fresh clothes and food for the patients. Sitting with the children throughout the night. Jalil’s home had been turned into a mini hospital for all who couldn’t get admission in the hospitals due to bed shortage. Jalil’s wife had returned from hiding and was cooking for all 30 to 40 people three times a day. Jalil was tired and exhausted from having no sleep but he wasn’t going to abandon the people who had believed in him and his struggle for a better future. He was resting on one of the hospital beds with his back to the wall. A few tears ran down his cheeks when he was alone. He looked at the darkening sky through the dull window pane and thought ‘’ Allah are the people of my country never to have a normal life or any peace ’’?  The first star of the evening appeared in the ink blue sky twinkling  away silver light. That lone star made Jalil happy and brought his hope back ‘’ No one should have to go through this for speaking the truth’’ he looked at the tiny shapes of bandaged children lying on the beds around him. A strange powerful energy came into him and he was more determined than ever to go on fighting for these children and against Nawazish and his inhuman cruelty to his people.

Back home someone had spotted Nawazish and Zari Gul in the hills. taken a few pictures on the mobile. They were now circulating all over the tabloids, mainstream media and social media. There was a small rebellion going on in his political party and cabinet. One bad news after another was hurting the image of the party and govt. Nawazish was sick and tired of all these weak people unaware of the power of money.  He had come to Palm Beach to escape the stress back home and now people for whom his govt was footing expensive bills were doing his head in again. The secretaries from the govt press department were calling him constantly. They wanted him to issue some statement denying the whole thing. His wife had left at least twenty messages.  Zari Gul’s daughter’s and estranged husband were in NY on the evening news condemning Nawazish for irresponsible behaviour.. Everything felt in meltdown, the peer sahib was in Mecca and wouldn’t pick up the phone.  Nawazish decided to sit out the heat in the media until it all blew over. He instructed his chief cashier back home to double the pay packets for media people and invite them to as many banquets and evening parties as possible until his return.  ‘’How do I pay for all this sir’’ the cashier asked politely ‘’ the govt press department, they are media people, aren’t they?’’ Nawazish said haughtily, annoyed that the cashier was still so green to how his govt functioned.

The Hungarian was trying her best to attract his attention. Dressed in a skimpy black bikini her tanned slim figure was glowing in the sun. Nawazish looked at her with empty eyes. The torment of bad news from home was getting too much. He decided to go for a walk on the beach alone. For a while he tried to be philosophical about life and bring back the feeling the peer sahib had given him , about being the victim and all that but it just wasn’t working anymore. His heart felt heavy as he dragged tired footsteps back to the hotel lobby. His assistant ran to him with a message from his sons. They had all flown back home as their mother had attempted suicide over the Zari Gul  affair and was in hospital in life threatening condition.

Nawazish hated hospitals, the starchy smell of clean linen mixed with bathroom bleach and medicines nauseated him. His wife was in OT being operated on. Nawazish was so angry with her for making such a spectacle of herself and becoming an international embarrassment for him. The entire hospital floor had been vacated due to security concerns. Nawazish was sitting outside in the VIP waiting room alone wondering when he could go home to his own comfortable bed. His wife would probably be in OT several hours, why should he get a headache in this stinky hospital. His secretaries and security guard were pacing up and down the corridor trying to keep the media out. ‘’Maybe I should hang around a bit more ‘’ Nawazish thought remembering the angry faces of his sons and daughters who were not saying anything but clearly blamed him for their mother’s present state.

Jalil used his security pass to get into the  hospital and went up to  OT where his surgeon brother was working. He was surprised to see so much security dotted in and around the OT and all over the hospital. Then he saw Nawazish huddled in an armchair in the VIP area looking shrivelled and old.Jalil was transfixed in the moment. The man who had caused him and his people so much pain was sitting in an ordinary hospital like an ordinary loser looking more lost than ever. ‘’So this is the great Goliath’’ Jalil thought with disdain. He looks so ordinary and pathetic up close. At that moment Jalil’s brother came out of the OT saw Jalil  smiled at him and said  ‘’ good news bro , the three children you brought in from the shooting scene all successfully operated on yesterday and recovering beautifully’’  Jalil was overwhelmed with emotion ‘’thanks be to Allah’’ he said in a choked voice. The children had been in so much pain with the bullets lodged in their legs, arms and stomach and looked so ill everyone thought they wouldn’t make it. ‘’Can I see them’’? Jalil asked excitedly ‘’ in a minute’’ the brother went into the VIP waiting room where Nawazish was sitting huddled up on the sofa.‘’I am sorry sir, your wife didn’t make it, we tried very hard……but …Allah’s will‘’ he  said sympathetically . Nawazish looked broken, his face ashen from shock ‘’Allah has punished me for killing those children’’ he felt pain in his heart. Tears came to the brim of his eyes but he stopped them there. ‘’I have never shown weakness no not going to show any now ’’   he clenched his fists hard ‘’Just going to find the man who hurt me and destroy him’’ he frowned  looking around  bitterly as if the entire world was out to get him. He took big strides going out of the hospital. Ignoring his family and assistants coming up the stairs. Muttering rude abuse under his breath he shouted at the driver to drive him home from the shortest route possible.

There had been a terrible accident at an overhead crossing, the newly built overhead had collapsed and crashed into oncoming traffic killing more than thirty people and injuring several others. The chief officials of the department responsible were gathered around a table in heated discussion how best to deal with the media and police. The police investigation had to start soon as the media had gone crazy pointing fingers of blame at the highest officials of the Public works department. Most of the officials were adamant whatever the findings of the inquiry, all efforts be made to shift blame to outside factors. In the last few years this was the sixth or seventh incident of bridges buildings and underpasses collapsing ending in fatalities. Things were not looking good for the department People were angry and a little army of media reporters was at the front door of the building baying for blood.

Rayhan the chief engineer of the department was sweating and wiping his forehead every few minutes. He had been in this post just two years and the contracts for the overhead had been given out before his time. But he had been in the department long enough to know that someone would become the scape goat. The incident would be pinned to their negligence, that person would be transferred to some remote area or be suspended for an indefinite period. He was hoping he wouldn’t become that scape goat tonight. 

Rayhan had topped the CSS exam, that had landed him in the middle of the elite ruling bureaucracy that was also the aristocracy of Punjab. They owned most big businesses, factories and land holdings. But it didn’t matter how clever or intelligent Rayhan was. The hierarchy functioned around money and class. Rayhan with his middleclass background was on the last rung of the ladder. He was preparing himself mentally to pack his bags and had stopped concentrating on the discussion around the table. His boss Jahan was waving his hand at Rayhan .‘’Where are you lost man, pay attention’’ Rayhan looked at them absently wondering how he had ended up in the middle of this. His thesis in his exam had been about Allama iqbal’s idea of self. He also knew why the buildings were collapsing. Only 30 % of the money paid to govt contractors was spent on the projects, that meant third rate low quality materials and even lower workmanship. The other 70% was returned by the contractor to the department people and duly divided according to rank. The people at the top getting the top share. ‘’ All of you, just do what you have to do, nothing should be found in your homes or businesses or any other place you own.’’ The boss said in a final tone as he adjourned the meeting.

 Rayhan slumped in the back seat of his Honda Civic as the driver wound his way through heavy home bound traffic. The car was airconditioned and cool, a world away from the heat and petrol fumes outside its window. Rayhan had to find a new hiding place for the cash from bribes and his share from contractors. How would he convince Zareen, his wife to part with the cash in the cellar. Every time they went through this routine there was a massive argument between them. But he had no choice, he had to move fast before the police raided their properties, which was standard procedure when accident inquiries started.

In the way he stopped at his brother Zain’s house. Zain and Zainab had just returned from Canada with their children. Rayhan found spending time with them a welcome relief from the tension of his own life. He didn’t know how to tell his brother about his cash stash or accepting bribe money. Both Zain and his wife had spent most of their time abroad and were great fans of hard work, honesty and clean living. Rayhan used to smile at their naivety and think ‘’one day you guys will realise that Punjab has moved on, we don’t live in that innocent world anymore.‘’ But for now he wanted some cheering up before he went home to the distasteful chore weighing on his mind.

Zareen was fuming as she the driver took her towards the Hilton sliding along the mall in the dark Porsche. Where had Rayhan disappeared, he knew it was Mr and Mrs Jahan’s anniversary dinner and today of all days he decided to be late and why was he not answering his mobile. ‘’I am sure he is with his brother Zain complaining about me’’ she thought. Zareen was convinced Rayhan was becoming more and more distant from her ever since this wretched couple had returned from Canada. She must put a stop to this new escape route Rayhan had found, she thought as the car came to a stop outside the Hilton. An attendant ran to open the door, she got out with regal grace, dressed in an expensive embroidered suit she had bought that afternoon. Zareen was a beautiful woman and the dark green and gold brought out the greyish green of her eyes. Small diamond earrings and a delicate gold chain with a big diamond in the middle was around her neck. Her slim figure with a flowing golden dupatta made her look stunningly beautiful. She walked quickly through the lobby her high heels playing a staccato as she went towards the main hall. The driver was trying to keep up with her carrying the huge bouquet of flowers and the boxes of presents for the host.

Zareen  felt a pang of  nervousness  as she came face to face with begums and their husbands gathered  in  the main hall. Most of these people had been into money for a long time. The rich ruling elite of Punjab . She would try her best to hide her middleclass background with designer clothes and expensive jewellery but she had nouveau riche written all over her. There were no factory owner uncles in her assets to show off so she would give out expensive presents that Rayhan couldn’t afford . Still a vague feeling of inferiority and being worthless would haunt her as long as she was with the begums.  

‘’So why is Rayhan not with you’’ begum Jahan asked  Zareen staring at the diamond around her neck.  Zareen was glad to get her sob story off her chest . How the brother and sister in law back from Canada jealous of Rayhan’s money and position were enticing him away from Zareen. Begum Jahan played with the ten tola bracelet on her wrist , arched her thin eyebrows‘’ Oh these poor people from poor homes’’ she said taking a delicate sip of coffee ‘’ this is their low mentality they are always jealous of people like us, why do you let Rayhan see them anyway?’’ Zareen sighed ‘’ The wife is a kiss ass, she puts oil in my mother in laws hair and massages that old bat’s  legs for hours every night.’’  begum Jahan laughed ‘’oh is she one of those  susral ki chamchi’’ (bootlicker) ‘’Rayhan has made my life hell because of her’’ Zareen said playing with the food in her plate ‘’ He is constantly comparing me to her, effing pillar of perfection  and  why I am not like her’’ Zareen’s  face was red and angry with pent up rage. ‘’I hate that woman so much, I’d sort her out if I could get Zain Bhai out of the way ’’ Begum Jahan smiled and walked towards the  hotel foyer out of ear shot of others. ‘’Get rid of this woman before she makes your life any worse’’ Zareen was listening carefully’’ But how’’? she asked with interest ‘’ Tell your in laws  Rayhan has a thing for Zainab, that will bring her crashing down’’ Zareen laughed in delight , why hadn’t  she think of that . Mrs Jahan’s eyes were gleaming ‘’The whole family will be enraged including Zain, see where she stands after that’’ Begum Jahan chuckled hilariously as if she were weaving out the story of some comedy drama. Zareen was smiling all the way home. She had found the perfect strategy to bring Zainab and the in laws down and keeping Rayhan under her thumb. It was good to have powerful friends like Mrs Jahan she thought happily.

Zareen was surprised as she recognised the old bat’s car in the drive way. She huffed in frustration’’ Will probably have to put my plan on hold’’ she thought, taking off her jewellery and hiding it in her purse before going into the bedroom. The mother in law was always scolding her for being wasteful.

 ‘’I need the keys to the cellar’’ Rayhan said as soon as Zareen stepped into the bed room. Zareen looked around at her mother and father in law and  knew she was outnumbered. ‘’ let me take the money to my mother’s house ‘’ Zareen persisted in a low voice. ‘’ No Zain Bhai can put it in his business account and show it as sales profit’’ Rayhan said in a final tone.

Zain was on the computer when Rayhan came to see him in his factory office. The two business partners were sitting around the table comparing notes and checking new samples of tiles that had just come in. Zain had bought a small ceramics factory and modified it to produce fancy marble tiles for bathrooms and kitchens. With so much new construction going on they were doing quite well. The atmosphere in Zain’s office was always jovial, the three men laughing and joking as they worked, there was no stress as they were all their own bosses. Zain had replicated his work ethics from Canada, hard work, democracy between partners, transparency and clean accounts. So far it had worked and everyone was happy. Rayhan waited around until the business partners had gone to their rooms. Zain looked horrified after hearing Rayhan’s story. He had no idea any one in his family was into dirty money and would ask him to protect them being caught. ‘’Give me some time to think’’ he said staring out of the window with his back to Rayhan’’this is too sudden for me’’.

In the meantime Zareen had put her revenge plan into action. She had sent several text messages to mutual friends that would eventually end up with Rayhan and the in laws. The text messages alleged that Rayhan had a thing for Zainab and that is why he was neglecting Zareen and spending so much time with his brother.

As Zareen got home from her shopping spree, the driver walking behind her loaded with bags she was amused to see so many cars in the drive way. No surprise here then she thought that was a quick reaction. Sure enough the two sisters, brother and parents all sprawled around the double bed and sofa’s looking dead serious. Rayhan was pacing up and down the room his face puffed and heavy with bags showing under his eyes.

The in laws didn’t give her much time. All started speaking at once. Rayhan wanted a divorce , father in law  reading out a list of allegations asking for an explanation. Sister’s in law defending Zainab. It was what Begum Jahan had said would happen and she had to stay strong. They were not her class anymore she didn’t have to listen to them. Lower middleclass people expecting her to act like them. Wait on the husband and in laws hand and foot when she had twelve servants in the house provided by the govt to do her housework. Blaming her for neglecting Rayhan and the children , saying it had nothing to do with Zainab.

‘’ I want all of you out of the house this minute’’ she said to her in laws in a stern voice.’’ As for the divorce, go ahead and do what you want’’ she looked at Rayhan with contempt in her voice ‘’ I can always call the police and tell them about the crores you have hidden in the cupboards of the basement. ‘’ Everyone in the room was stunned Rayhan exhaled sharply and said in an angry voice ‘’Has all this money gone to your head that you have forgotten who you are’’ Zareen looked at her husband in contempt. ‘’ who am I Reyhan ? Bad mother, bad wife?’’ Rayhan shook his head in disbelief. Was this the same nervous wreck of a woman that he had slowly coached to fit in with his elite circles. ‘’Beti, this is not the way to speak to your husband’’ the mother in law put on a pacifying tone. ‘’Why not’’ she spat out he words ,’You middle class people, same backward mentality, know your place be a good wife? Be a good mother? ‘’ Zareen was on a roll ‘’ Why do I have twelve servants in the house if I still have to wait on you lot like  a low class woman trying to be a good mother and good wife, why do I have all this money if I can’t spend it with my friends having a good time’’ Rayhan got up agitated  with his wife’s attitude , started pacing the room in anger ‘’ Your friends?’’ He sneered ‘’they are all high society wives of my colleagues, the biggest mistake of my life introducing them to you,’’ Zareen shrugged her shoulders and pretended not to hear ‘’ that’s it then, Rayhan said in a serious tone ‘’today onwards you will stay home and I ban you from seeing all the begums.’’ Zareen walked up to Rayhan, looked at him in the eye and scoffed at him as he was some animal trapped in a cage. ‘’ ‘’Do you think you can do that?’’ she laughed ‘’ You poor deluded man, do you know who Begum Jahan is? The chief’s wife!!My best friend. I can get you sacked in a second if you keep this on and on’’ Rayhan turned around in anger to answer her, but the father caught his hand ‘’stay silent son’’ he was saying with his eyes ‘’ you have lost this round’’. The in laws got up and went out of the room one by one. Sensing her success Zareen played her last card ‘’ From now on all of you will do exactly as I say, if you still want to be in your son’s life’’ she said taking the towel out of the bedroom cupboard. ‘’I will not get a divorce but Zainab will ‘’ she said with cruel finality  ‘’Why do you keep attacking Zainab’‘the father in law said in an exhausted tone ‘’ your family problems are nothing to do with her’’ Zareen was  still on a high she spun around on her heel ‘’that’s fine then just  find him a new job and a new wife’’ She laughed bitterly pointing to Rayhan. The father in law had used up all his words and knew she had suddenly become top dog because of the cash stash in the cellar that could send Rayhan to jail. They had to play nice , she still had the key to the cellar and with Begum Jahan on her side, the son could easily lose his job as well. Silence was a better option.

Zareen went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Feeling like Sikander after conquering India. At last she had put the backward middle class  family in their place. All the newfound power surging through her body, she felt good, she felt really good as the cool water touched her face.  Next morning she called her brother, stashed most of the cash in pillow and duvet covers that went into his boot and back seat as he drove back to her mothers house.  

Zainab was packing her suitcases putting in clothes books and other things  children had accumulated. She was deep in thought and was wondering what was going on. Zain and in laws had been in heated discussion over something for several weeks. Every time she entered the room they fell silent and she didn’t have a clue what the arguments were about. She trusted Zain and thought he will tell me when the time is right. Everything was confusing and wrapped in mystery. Zain had asked her to take the kids and go back to Canada for a while. They had an unspoken rule to give each other space over their maternal family matters and wait until the other person was ready to discuss the matter. Should she break this rule and ask Zain what was going on she wondered.  That same afternoon Zain got a call from Rayhan to get the wives together in a last effort to sort out problems. ‘’ Seeing as Zainab bhabi is causing Zareen so much stress’’ Zain was angry at the allegation but said nothing. He couldn’t get his head around how people back home were never objective, their opinions based on fleeting emotional reactions.

The covered bazar wasn’t busy. It was the middle of the day and a thin crowd of women was going in and out of the brightly lit shops.  Party and wedding wear displayed all over the showcases. The shopkeepers trying to woo every woman who passed by shouting offers of the best materials for low prices. The pan (beetle leaf) and fruit chat vendors trying to make a sale by offering free  tasters. The bazar was stuffy with little air around, the strong smell of incense sticks from shops drifted on the humid air making it heavier. Tiny beads of perspiration appeared on the faces of Zainab and Zareen walking through the bazar looking for bargains. It was a relief getting out of the hot humid air and go into the air conditioned cool of clothing shops. The shopkeeper pulled out beautiful embroidered materials. Zareen didn’t like the look  of the clothes lying on the counter. ‘’ What do you think Bhabi’’ she asked Zainab ‘’ Will any of these colours suit me’’  Zainab moved from side to side uncomfortably. ‘’ I don’t know Zareen, you are pretty everything will suit you’’ she said trying to encourage Zareen to buy something as the heat was exhausting and she wanted to go home. Why am I even here, she was thinking when my husband is having problems because of you lot.  Zareen on the other hand was quite keen on the shopping trip to probe the dirty in Zainab’s life. So far her revenge attack had shown no results. Rayhan still idealised the couple from Canada, this she had to put an end to. In Zain’s house it was business as usual and talking to Zainab had given her no clue. They were out in the heavy humid air of the bazar going from shop to shop again. Finally something caught Zareen’s fancy. Soon the driver was loaded with several heavy bags struggling to keep up as he couldn’t see where he was going . Getting loads of good bargains had perked up Zareen at last, it was an afternoon well spent.  Zainab looked drained as she got into the car. The effort to play happy families with Zareen was exhausting her. It was a constant struggle to fight off Zareen’s materialistic approach to life trying to bring Zainab to her own level of manipulation against the in laws and Zain. In Zareen’s world the husband and in laws were the main enemy in every woman’s life and had to tortured and tamed. Overspending the husbands money was part of his punishment.  Zareen had just spent a small fortune on clothes bags and shoes and Zainab had been conned into buying suits for herself that she didn’t want or need. Zainab always bought clothes for her children and husband before she ever got anything for herself. This was the first time in her life she had bought them nothing.

She didn’t want to go to Rayhan’s home as the two brothers had been avoiding each other for a while. Zareen insisted Zainab have some lunch with her before leaving.  She entered the palatial dining room of Zareen’s home with some dread. . French chandeliers covering half the ceiling were shining brightly on gold gilded tables and dining chairs. Zainab sat on the edge of the chair staring at her reflection in the dining room table. Her feet sinking into the heavy Persian carpet. A wall in the dining room had been turned into a crockery and silver display unit. Curtains of plush velvet were muffling outside sounds. The aircon was on full and the cool breeze was a relief from the weather outside.  Rayhan’s car stopped in the front porch, Zainab could hear the children running to greet him. He picked up his youngest child and came in looking a bit stressed. He was never sure what his wife’s mood was like, his relaxation schedule depended on that.  The children trooped into the dining room and took their places on the dining table noisily. They had to start lunch without the hosts as Zareen was on the phone and some guy from the office had come in to see  Rayhan.‘’ Tai ma, tell him to stop, he is kicking me under the table’’ One of the nieces was complaining. Zainab picked up the girl and made some space on her own chair ‘’ Why don’t you beat him up Tai ma, he is so naughty’’ the little girl was still complaining. Zainab laughed ‘’ I won’t let him kick you’’ she said putting some food in the little girl’s plate. They were busy eating when the faint noise of heated voices in argument drifted towards the dining room over the clatter of plates and spoons. The children fell silent. Rayhan and Zareen were arguing about something again. Zainab looked at the faces of the children, shut the sliding doors and turned on the TV to a cartoon channel.

Zareen stormed into the dining room and looked at Zainab with ferocious eyes ignoring the children completely ‘’What did you say to my husband’’ ? She demanded? Zainab was taken aback ‘’ What are you talking about ‘’? She said, ‘’I hardly saw him for 30 seconds as he came in.’’ The children left their food uneaten and were standing in front of the TV in a huddle.  Pretending to watch cartoons, annoyed and upset at their mother’s shouting fit. ‘’ I tried making up with you for my husband’s sake but you will never change will you ‘’ Zareen looked like she would kill Zainab with her words if she could ‘’This is my home, this is my husband’s money, this is my life’’ Zareen continued in a high pitch ‘’ ‘’Why is it that every time you step here Rayhan starts counting every Rupee I spend and calls me an empty headed  spendthrift’’ Zainab looked at Zareen and didn’t know what to say . Everyone in the family knew of the other couple’s marital problems. Why was she always being dragged into the middle of all this. Why did everything that went wrong in Zareen’s life land at her door. Why was she the ultimate scape goat for this couple who never wanted to examine the real reasons of their marital breakdown.

Zainab sighed picked up her bag, put on her chaddar, went to the porch looking for the driver and got into the car silently, feeling helpless and tearful. This wasn’t the first time she had been at the receiving end of Zareen’s wrath. She had asked Zain so many times to find a way to avoid sending her to visit the younger brother’s home or inviting them over so often. Zain himself had no solution. Recently there had been a short period of respite , looked like that was over. ‘’ Ignore her’’ was all Zain said ‘’ why are you taking an illiterate woman like Zareen so seriously’’ and that would be the end of the conversation.

Zareen was on the phone the moment Zainab left and threatened the in laws with dire consequences from Mrs Jahan if they didn’t keep to their side of the agreement. That same evening Zainab and the children were on an Air Canada flight on their way to Toronto. The airplane window was misting over. Zainab’s   eyes were stinging and blurred with tears she had never felt more helpless or small in her life. The children had turned on the airplanes entertainment channels and were busy watching their favourite films unaware of the tragedy that had crept into their life without making a sound.

Zain’s family had surrounded him convincing him he had done the right thing sending Zainab back and putting Rayhan’s bribe money in his own business account.  He couldn’t have done that if Zainab had stayed around. She would have blabbed to the whole world and Rayhan would have been caught putting his life in danger. ‘’How will his life be in danger ‘’ Zain was thinking helplessly,’’ what about my life? ‘’ Zain’s sisters were pleading with him ‘’You know he is so sensitive, had a protected life,  harsh life of jail will kill him’’ all this sounded like emotional blackmail to Zain who sat quietly with his head in his hands and said nothing. It was too late anyway, he had already lost everything. The family had saved Rayhan’s corruption at his cost because of Rayhan’s money going into their own bank accounts. Money had defeated humanity and decency, what was new? Same old story he thought. The tea on his table was going cold. He could still hear his youngest’s child’s voice ringing in his ears. ‘’Baba don’t take long coming to Canada, I will be very cross with you if you do’’

A week later several raids were made on all the high officials of the works department and their families. Nothing was found in any official’s home. The police were wondering whether to close the inquiry.

The bank reported a large cash remittance in Zain’s accounts as a matter of routine. The person recording remittances noted that the source hadn’t been provided as per law and flagged the account. The company was contacted but could not provide any answers and the fraud hotline got involved. Zain and his two partners were arrested. The partners families bailed them out but no one came to bail out Zain. He just received a note from some big official in the works department telling him to keep quiet if he didn’t want his children  in danger. The strain got too much for Zain, ultimately he broke down under pressure and named his brother Rayhan as the source of the large stash of cash. Rayhan was arrested and tried ,the two partners  freed without charge and both Rayhan and Zain sentenced to 15 years jail for money laundering, fraud and corruption.

Zain’s youngest child still sits on his window sill looking into the maple filled streets orange, red and yellow leaves wondering why his Baba broke his promise to him. His Baba had never broken a promise to him before. Zainab picks up his sleepy head and takes him to bed singing him a soft lullaby that helps him forget his Baba till morning

Life at an oil rig can be quite lonely. Nothing but mounds of yellow sand swirling all the way to the horizon.  No trees vegetation or shrubs to break the monotony of the landscape.  Grey steel masts and appliances of the rig with just the blue and grey cabins dotted around. A metal platform shinning in the blazing sun and the low hum of the rig turning round and round. Men in orange protective gear seldom speaking, working silently just using hand gestures for communication.  This particular oil rig was South West of Ubari and very small. It had less than a dozen workers. Jamal one of the technicians was walking around with a clipboard in his hand. Jamal’s work was to keep an eye on the oil gauge readings and fill out the paperwork before the oil was loaded and sent by freight train onto Fezzan oil refinery.

 The highlight of the oil rig workers life in an otherwise monotonous job was going into Ubari once a week . Mobile reception at the rig was very poor and Jamal waited impatiently to get into Ubari town to call his family. Listening to  child babble and his wife’s calm voice made Jamal both sad and happy. Sometimes he wished he could just fly back home and never be away from them. But the money kept him tied to the oil rig.

The company that owned the oil rig gave Jamal and his colleagues subsidised food vouchers for restaurants in the city. All these were built following a standard American model. There was a long steel counter with bored waiters on the other side. The tables and chairs were all steel and looked exactly the same . The menu was quite westernised and didn’t have much variety. It was usually western and Asian workers on a budget who came in. Jamal preferred Libyan and Arab restaurants that had a local feel . The Arab style low sofas and bright coloured cushions, potted plants , rugs and huge pictures of Arab Africans on the walls had a relaxing ambience. Like islands of tranquillity in the blazing heat of the African sun. Most days Jamal could only dream about going into these expensive places unless it was the birthday or promotion party of an American boss from regional headquarters. Then they would all have their fill of Libyan Bazeen and rice.

As they drove back to the rig something didn’t seem right. The rotating rig was silent. There were no oil tankers waiting around instead they spotted several army jeeps, a tank and army people stationed around the installation. Some walking around talking on phones and some on top of trucks at a vantage lookout point. Everyone looked tense and worried. The oil rig workers gathered around in a circle, some went into the office to find what was going on and why the rig had been shut down. No one seemed to have any clear information except that an attack on oil installations was expected from hostile forces. Those hostile forces would either takeover the installations or burn them. Fighting was going on in other parts pf the country that only foreign media was reporting.

It was a tense night hardly anyone slept. Around dawn they heard gun fire and shooting. The workers peered cautiously through the windows  and found that  army soldiers were far outnumbered by  hundreds of armed people that had descended all around the rig. It looked like a rag tag army of civilians of all shapes and sizes mostly carrying AK 74 rifles.  Some carrying rocket launchers and others waving and cheering loudly out of armoured trucks. The govt soldiers didn’t put up much of a fight and were seen retreating  in great haste.

Jamal assumed the rag tag army must be the rebels that the govt soldiers were talking about. The hostile forces supported by UN and America trying to overthrow the Arab govt and take control of oil installations. A short fat man with an oversized soldier hat seemed to be in command, he ordered the office door to be broken down.  Jamal and the other workers had barricaded  themselves inside. The short fat man and his deputies banged and pounded the door with rods and sticks, then opened fire indiscriminately. The bullets hitting the door made a loud rattling sound, still the workers made no move. Then shouting in Arabic became more intense and someone outside their door ordered  ‘’ If these bastards don’t come out in 30 seconds bring in the gasoline  and put them on fire.’’  Jamal and the others panicked, removed the barricades and came out one by one hands in the air. They were taken to an armoured car at gun point, blindfolded with some rough material , hands tied with pieces of nylon string and loaded onto the vehicle unceremoniously like animals. Jamal’s lips were parched , his throat was dry and his hands were shaking with fear. Were they taking them to the desert to shoot them? No one knew what to expect.  The rebels were going round with guns stolen from govt ammunition dumps and it was likely the govt in Tripoli had fallen. If  no one was in charge they would probably be killed like goat or sheep. Jamal started praying silently in his heart and asking Allah to look after his wife and child and his parents after he was gone. He asked Allah to help all of them on the off chance that the rebels would let them go. As they drove into the desert dust and sand from the roadside went into Jamal’s mouth making him cough violently every now and then. The rebels drove for what seemed like hours braked suddenly and shouted at them to get off the truck. They removed the blindfolds and left Jamal and the other workers standing in the middle of the road feeling a little bewildered.

For a few moments no one said a word. All had been expecting to get a bullet . They all started talking and laughing at the same time  in sheer nervousness, everyone was exhausted from  the emotion and drama. They dragged their tired feet through the desert road, after a few miles they found a petrol station where they got food and water. The petrol station guy sold them his old Toyota truck. As they arrived in Sebha, the nearest town streets were littered with dead bodies lying in strange poses. Fires were burning around the town. The sound of gunfire could be heard every now and then. People were looting the few shops that still had food items left in them. Some people were filling up cannisters and buckets from the petrol stations. Windows and doors of houses were smashed and furniture clothes and empty suitcases littered the streets. The stench of corpses was everywhere. Every now and then some Muslim volunteers would come with a stretcher and pick up a dead body reciting the Qalima loudly cover the dead body with a white shroud and march towards the graveyard.

 Being close to death in the desert didn’t disturb Jamal as much as the scenes  in Sebha. The idea of staying in a hotel seemed absurd, Most had been looted and empty. They had no choice but to do what every one else was doing. Hide  in empty houses around the city and go foraging for food in stores that were still left standing. It was too dangerous to travel and they survived like hunted animals and rats on stale food and stolen canned beans for a long time. Finally they found someone who was ready to take them to Ben Ghazi for an exorbitant price. They had to part with the old Toyota and their watches to get out of Sebha.

The consulate in Ben Ghazi looked clean and a  world away from the stench of dead bodies, burning houses and smoke filled Sebha. As Jamal boarded the special plane that the consulate had arranged for its citizens he felt as if a part of him had died in Ubari and Sebha and would never come back.

Back home Jamal’s entire family and half the neighbourhood was waiting at the airport. His living room was crammed full of people who bought boxes of mithai (sweetmeats) for the parents. Thanking Allah that the son who had been reported missing for several months had returned home safe and sound. Jamal was dressed in a clean white Kamiz Shalwar after a long time, very different from the orange protective gear at the rig and soiled stinky clothes in Sebha. But Jamal wasn’t feeling clean inside. His mind wasn’t adjusting to the peace and calm in the house. The sound of birds chirping outside, the smell of fresh tea from the kitchen, people laughing and joking happily ,all seemed wrong to him. He was getting annoyed with the people coming in with boxes of mithai . He wanted to shout at them. Why are you celebrating ,what are you celebrating? That I have come back alive but have I? 

The next weeks and months saw a strange change in Jamal. He was silent and  self absorbed . No longer taking any interest in his child or wife. Spending long hours sitting on the roof staring into space. The big Bohar tree providing him shade when it became warm. No one took much notice and thought he was just trying to get over whatever horrors he saw in Sebha and Ubari.

But as time went on and nothing changed , the dad tried talking to him ‘’ Putar’’ he said to Jamal ’’ House can’t run on one person’s pay.’’ Jamal looked up absently  ‘’So  what happened to the money I sent you from Ubari’’ the dad looked sheepish ‘’Your uncle’s borrowed most of it , and  how long will the rest of it last last’’ Jamal looked  really angry , his eyes became slits and looked blood shot. Does my father know anything about the hell I am going through he thought, do my feelings not matter? ‘’ Am I just a body to you that earns money?’’ He said out loud, looked at his father as if he was a stranger. Got up and rushed out of the house not waiting to hear the father’s reply.

A few days later the family was sitting in the courtyard having their evening meal. The house smelled of fresh Roti. The father was feeding the grandson from his own plate. Halfway through the meal Jamal said to his father ‘’ Abba I have joined a Tablighi Jamaat (preachers group) and will be going on tours with them’’. The father looked at him strangely and asked ‘’are they going to pay you‘’ Jamal sighed ’’ Is everything about money for you Abba ‘’The  mother sensing an argument tried to intervene ‘’then how are you going to pay for your family’s daily needs’’ she asked ‘’I don’t know and I don’t care ‘’ Jamal’s tone was becoming angry as he left his food half eaten and got up to go out of the house again. ‘’ Get me back all the money from my uncle’s’’ He shouted banging the door in a huff. Half an later he was on the phone to his wife ‘’ I am going on a tour with the Tablighi Jamat.’’ Jamal said casually. The wife looked sad. She could only pray that he would return from whatever she had lost him to.

Nazneen Jamal’s wife tried her best to keep busy when he was not around.  As the evening cooled she went out to water the plants in the little garden on the side of the house. Feyzan her son, snatched the water hose from her laughing loudly, soaking her from head to foot. The silver jet of water splashing all over Nazneen she forgot all about her troubles for a while. At that moment Jamal entered the house to see the mother and son doubled up with laughter. He bellowed at his son in a loud voice ‘’ Why are you laughing like an idiot , I could hear you all the way down the street. go inside and sit there quietly’’ Then  he turned to his wife and glared at her ‘’ why are you standing next to the street where men can see you’’ the wife looked shocked and scared , what had she done wrong ? Why was she being made to feel like a criminal ‘’ Go inside I never want you out here again, cant you hear me  ‘’ he continued shouting as Nazneen dragged her confused feet to the room ‘’I will have to teach you  manners and Islamic rules myself’’, Jamal said to her as he was picking up the hose and putting it away. Nazneen was tired of the arguments and said nothing. Next day he brought home a burqa several pairs of gloves and socks and told Nazneen ‘’you have to put these on whenever you pick Feyzan from school’’. Nazneen was angry and threw everything on the ban Charpai  (jute bed )  in the courtyard. 

She went in and turned  on the TV , Jamal’s mother made some hot Pakora’s .All three were enjoying the funny drama serial that Fayzan loved. The mother made some tea that they were having with the pakora’s. Jamal was sulking around in the courtyard, no one taking any notice of him anymore. Every now and then Fayzan would get up and start jumping around the room excited with the TV play. The sound of the family’s outbursts of laughter and loud cheering  irritated Jamal. In the end he went in and turned the TV off. ‘’What is so funny’’ he queried ‘’ why are you wasting your time with these vulgar plays’’ the mother tried to turn the TV back on but was no match for Jamal’s strength. ‘’You women are not training my son to be a good Muslim’’ Jamal said and  dragged the TV all the way to the store and locked it in there.

 Fayzan looked like he was going to cry. Jamal dragged him to the room and took out some religious literature from his brief case‘’ read this’’ he ordered ‘’ this is not waste of time’’  Nazneen went in and sat  with her son trying to console him. Tears fell from Nazneen’s eyes onto Fayzan’s hair and Fayzan’s tears fell into the pillow.

Jamal’s mother was very angry at his behaviour and the complaint went to the dad as soon as he came home. The dad decided to take things in his hand and confronted Jamal ‘’ why are you behaving like an animal and causing everyone so much stress’’ ? he sounded really angry ‘’ Leave the house if your Islam doesn’t allow people to enjoy themselves ,laugh or be happy’’ The dad stood over Jamal in an intimidating pose trying to scare him. Jamal said nothing  to the father and stormed into the kitchen where his mother was kneading the dough for the evening meal. Jamal picked up the dough tray and threw it on the floor with a loud crash. ‘’ Who pays for this dough’’ he yelled ‘’ who pays for this chicken you are cooking ‘’Who paid for this house, I did’’ he was yelling like a mad man The mother was really scared and thought Jamal was  having some kind of a fit. ‘’ She tried to calm him holding him by the arm and thinking ‘’i must find someone to do ‘’dum’’ on Jamal , surely some evil spirit is on his head’’. ‘’ Now you people are telling me to leave my own house’’? Jamal was still yelling in anger.

The father came in and was upset to see the dough all over the kitchen floor.  ‘’Does your Islam also tell you to destroy rizk? ‘’(edible food) the father asked? Jamal said nothing glared at his father and left the house again. This was now normal routine for Jamal after every argument.

 This time round he was gone for several months and everyone breathed a sigh of relief not having him around. They forgot all about the argument over locking up the TV and went back to their routine life.

Jamal looked like different person on his return home. He had grown a long beard was wearing a white hat, had put on a lot of weight and his shalwar was tied way up on his stomach showing his bare ankles. He seemed calm and went about the house quietly until his father returned. ‘’ I want you and Ami to leave my house Abba’’ he said to his father as soon as the father stepped into the living room. The father sighed and decided not to argue with him again. Next morning Jamal repeated his threat again ‘’ where do you want us to go putar,’’(son) the father asked in a tired voice ‘’ every family has arguments, do they throw old parents on the street?’’ Jamal seemed calm ‘’ you can go to my Uncle’s house , seeing as he owes you all that money’’ There was a cruel glint in Jamal’s eyes who was no longer using anger as his tool but had found something stronger to hurt his father. ‘’ Putar what will the people say’’ the mother was close to tears ‘’People will say nothing ‘’ he bent and took out a coke can and some meat curry from the fridge. ‘’it is my duty to teach my family Islamic values and you are interfering with that’’ he motioned to Nazneen to heat the food for him. ‘’ Why are you eating all the time’’ the father seemed annoyed ‘’Is this part of your Islam as well’’ Jamal didn’t answer and just glared ‘’ I want you gone by the time I return’’ he said ‘’ don’t make me call in the lawyers.’’

There were tearful departures, everyone felt helpless and unable to control the stranger that Jamal had become. The parents decided to move away to give him some space, hoping their absence would calm his anger.

Jamal found work in a small printing company that printed and published Tablighi literature. He left the house at dawn and come home past midnight. Both Nazneen and Fayzan had to obey the new rules set out for them, more out of fear than anything else. With the mother and father out of the way. Jamal would pick up the stick if Nazneen and Fayzan resisted his orders. Fayzan left normal school and was living at a Madrisah. Nazneen spent most of her time inside a dark room reading the Quran or religious literature. She was not allowed out of the house even to the roof or near the open windows of the front room She looked like a ghost of her former self, had lost weight, dark circles under her eyes, she always looked pale and undernourished. Moving about the house like a lost spirt doing one chore after another soundlessly. Always covered from head to foot in a thick chaddar regardless whether it was cool or hot.

As Jamal parked his Jeep in the front entrance, he was a bit surprised to see the house all dark.  Nazneen never left the house without his permission, ‘’ has the woman gone mad ‘’ he thought to himself ‘going off on a walk about not telling me a thing’’ He stormed into the neighbour’s house thinking she might be there. The neighbour women stood behind her door looking scared of Jamal ‘’ Bhai sahib ‘’ she spoke in a stammering voice ‘’ Nazneen has been in hospital since last night, sorry we didn’t know where to contact you’’ and then she quickly disappeared behind the door.

All the blood went to Jamal’s head. His head felt like it was spinning out of control. ‘’In the hospital’’ he thought. They had an argument the night before and he had gotten very angry and hit her. But he had hit her so many times before. She was used to it. Had he hit her too hard? He tried to recall the incidents from the previous night. the spinach and potato’s Nazneen had cooked were tasteless he had emptied his bowl in the sink in anger and asked her to cook some more food for him. He wasn’t sure what had gotten into the woman. For the first time in years she shouted back at him’’ I am not your slave ‘’ she had yelled ‘’go and get your food from the hotel if you don’t like what I cooked’’  He just lost it and did not wait for her to finish the sentence  picked up a wooden rod  lying in corner and hit her with full force. Nazneen fell to the floor and started yelling and calling him names. She couldn’t have been that ill if she could still yell insults at him and call him names. He had gone off to the hotel to have his food and slept in the mosque to teach her a lesson.

He was feeling a bit sheepish now, not sure if he should turn up at the hospital or just wait for her at home. His mind was buzzing with a lot of disturbing thoughts. In the end he decided to go to the hospital in case she was seriously injured. He didn’t want her blabbing to the doctor about what had really happened.

 The police was already in the ward when he went in to see Nazneen. The doctor at the hospital insisted that Nazneen file a charge. Nazneen looked terrible. He couldn’t remember having beaten her that much. The doctor informed him ‘’She has cuts all over her body, a concussion on her head, her kidney is bleeding internally and her right ear drum is ruptured.’’ Jamal felt a pang of fear, not for Nazneen but himself ‘’ is she going to make it’’ he asked avoiding the doctor’s eyes. ‘’I don’t know’’ the doctor sounded unsure ‘’We have to wait for the result of MRI scan’’

Jamal sat there quietly feeling somewhat guilty. He was not sure how to handle the situation anymore. He had gotten so used to becoming violent with Nazneen, it never occurred to him that someday this could end up in tragedy. He wanted to hang around to make sure Nazneen didn’t name him in the police report. She could blame it all on a fall. The ward shut down for the night and Jamal came home to an empty house and disturbing dreams.

In the afternoon a police jeep stopped outside the office of the printing house and stared asking the workers where they could find Mohamad Jamal who was wanted for assault and attempted murder of his wife. Jamal didn’t wait to hear what his fellow workers were saying. He opened the back door, fled to the mosque and asked the Maulvi Sahib of his Tablighi Jamaat to hide him until he could figure out what to do.

‘’ Do you have any friends outside Pakistan’’ the Maulvi Sahib asked him. Jamal thought for a while ‘’ some of my friends have gone back to work in an oil refinery in Ras Lanuf ’’ he said slowly ‘’ Will they help you to get work  ‘’ the Maulvi asked again ‘’ ‘’they might do if I could somehow get out and get to Libya’’.

The maulvi sahib was most helpful. Jamal was transported to some unknown destination and provided a passport. He crossed over into Libya from the Egyptian border and handed over to the next lot of Maulvi’s sahib’s associates who kept him in an old house for a few days.

Jamal was getting restless ‘’I have to go to go Ras Lanuf‘’he said to the dark man who was guarding the building ‘’ I will get a job there’’ the man smiled and said ‘’ you have to wait my friend’’ Next morning he was loaded into a military truck with 20 other men and boys some as young as 12 or 13. The truck travelled for a long time. Before they got out of the truck they were blindfolded again. He got off to find himself in a town that looked like hells angels had blitzed it themselves. The buildings were black scraggy ruins from Arial bombings. Streets were littered with rubble and twisted metal piles of broken burnt out furniture was everywhere. Every few feet the carcass of burnt vehicles was visible. There were no inhabitants except the fighters with guns strapped around them. The wind whistled mournfully through holes in the walls , the eerie silence made it seem like a ghost town from a horror movie. This was a hundred times the destruction he had seen in Sebha. ‘’What has happened to Libya in these few years’’ he was thinking.’’ Have I made a mistake coming here?’’

They were locked up in rooms of the ruined building. He had to sit on his ramshackle bed most of the day as there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. There were guards outside, he wasn’t sure why?  ‘’ Your training begins tomorrow’’ finally he was told by the burly man in command. ‘’ Training for what ‘’ he tried to ask one of the other men locked in the next room. The answer left him weak in the knees and he nearly crashed into the wall.

He was not going to Ras Lanuf to work in the oil refinery. He had been sold to the Islamic State as a slave soldier by  Maulvi Sahib’s associates and that is where he was now. Among the ruins and destruction of Sirte, in an ISIS prison, waiting to be trained or be killed. He sat with his hands around his head for a long time. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t go through this nightmare. ‘’I have to escape come what may’’ he thought in desperation.

At night he asked the guard on duty if he would let him out of the room for a few moments. The guard hesitated ,Jamal had been hiding some cash ,with a heavy heart he pushed it under the door. ‘’ five minutes only’’ the guard said looking all around stealthily. Jamal was glad to be out of his stale smelling cell and breathed heavily in the night air , then turned around  ambushed the guard and tried to snatch his gun. The other guards were on him in seconds.  A volley of gunfire exploded in his ear drums. He screamed like an animal from the pain as he fell to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Somewhere in the distance the rattle of machine guns hitting metal surfaces was still alive. As consciousness drifted away and the a dark veil numbed his senses, he could feel his wife’s spirit hovering over him from where she had died in pain and agony on a hospital bed. ‘’ I am sorry………’’ he was trying to form the words that froze in his mouth as he travelled into total darkness.

The African sun was high in the sky but it was cool under the shade of the Eucalyptus trees. The house was quiet, all the morning chores were done. Nyah had washed all the pots and pans, fed her baby brother some gruel, cleaned the rooms and washed all the clothes. It was time to rest. She mostly took the afternoon break in a hammock under the trees. The sound of birds singing and crickets chirping was like a lullaby as she drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes she liked singing to the soft rhythm of the hammock rocking gently in the wind.

 Nyah’s voice was thick and melodious and carried all the way across to the river, which was on the other side of the maize fields. Her singing would make passers by smile and remind them of home and sitting around in circles in moonlight with the soft glow of dying embers in the middle, laughing and joking and having a good time.

The sun was going down, she woke up with a start when she heard the baby crying. The wind had stopped, the baby was covered in sweat. She quickly took him to where the water was stored. Pouring a few cans of water over him. Soon the baby was cooing and laughing and ready for his evening meal. She lit the fire, boiled some sweet potatoes, mashed one for the baby had two herself and kept the rest for her father.

Her father was a vegetable farmer and had his own patch near the maize fields. Today was market day for him, she was hoping he would bring back some nice candy and clothes for the baby. The baby had outgrown most of his old clothes.

She was eleven years old. Her mother had died a few years earlier, when the baby was born. The father had trained her well and now she was doing a good job of looking after the baby and goats and chicken they had.

Sometimes she missed not going to school.  The dad asked the Belgian nuns to help her. They would come over twice a week to teach her to read and write and do some maths. The Belgian nuns lived in a convent on the hill which could be seen from quite far away as all the walls were whitewashed and glowed when the sun was up. 

In the evenings when it was much cooler, all her friends would run down to the river. They loved splashing about in the water, making funny faces in the sand with sticks and playing hide and seek behind the trees. Her friends would bring her pictures from magazines and cards they had made at school. She stored all of these in her school bag which she kept under the bed.

Her friends started going home one by one as the smell of the evening meal drifted in with the wind. She went to pick up her little brother where he had been playing in the sand and then she heard the faint sound of her father’s motorbike in the distance. 

She ran back as fast as she could, her father was talking to the neighbour and taking off all the plastic carrier bags he had tied around the bike. He was offering the neighbour some of the candy he got from the market. Nyah was annoyed, she wanted to get her hands on the candy before anyone else. The father smiled when he saw her frowning and handed the brown paper bag with the rest of the candy to her. He picked up the baby and started playing with him throwing him high up in the air. The baby loved this game and came down with torrents of laughter and giggling.

The house was made of big slabs of stone and a thatched roof. Nyah and the dad would cover it with a coat of mud every six months so it wouldn’t heat up in the hot summer sun. The father threw some water over the mud walls to cool them down and the aroma of wet earth filled Nyah’s lungs. She loved that smell of wet earth. It always reminded her of her mother, the faint smell of her body next to hers, her voice singing her to sleep. Most nights she didn’t miss that voice and was too tired to remember anything, but some nights the mother’s memory would creep up all on its own and then she would lie awake staring at the stars or the shadows of the trees moving on the wall for a long time.

She couldn’t remember what time it was when her father came into pick up the baby and motioned her with his finger to be silent. She seemed confused for a while. The lantern had gone out and everything seemed dark. Then she heard the terrible screaming and gun shots and machine gun fire in the background. The baby started crying, the father quickly put a milk bottle in his mouth to silence him. Her heart was pounding, she didn’t know what was happening except that she could feel waves of fear in the air around her.

 As the three of them crept out of the house, they tried staying near walls and hedges to creep out of the village streets unseen. Nyah wondered where they were going? As they crossed the maize  fields she realised her father was headed for the whitewashed church on the hill. It had high walls and strong doors and was safer than any other building in the village. It was difficult to say if it took half an hour to get there or several hours. Time seemed to be going really slow. Every now and then the gun shots and machine gun fire would erupt again startling Nyah and the baby.  Some other people hiding behind a clump of trees joined them as they reached the foot of the hill.

They all looked scared, eyes wide with fear, all senses alert, listening for the smallest of sounds. The next part 0f the journey was the most difficult, they had lost the cover of trees and  the  small shrubs and bushes  were not enough to hide them. They doubled up and crawled next to the ground and finally made it to the back wall of the church compound. The big wooden door that usually remained shut was slightly open and all seven eight of them slunk in as quietly as they could.

The nuns took the baby away and the rest of them climbed a winding staircase up to the rafters to a small room where a lot of other people were sitting hunched next to a wall. At some point one of the nuns brought some water in a small can and they all had a few sips each.

They sound of machine guns had stopped. All seemed silent for several hours. Nyah relaxed and stretched her legs out straight. All her senses had been frozen with fear. Now some sensation was coming back and she realised how wonderful the normal sounds of the night sounded. A chorus of crickets of different sizes and shapes chirping away, the occasional hooting of an owl. The constant sound of the river swirling around rocks. She must have dozed off at some point , when she woke up with a start her mind still disoriented from sleep, people around her were screaming. She saw the glint of machete’s , men dressed in uniforms and bandana’s on their faces dragging people downstairs. She tried to hide behind the big earthen jars in the corner but was soon found. The man held her by the arm and kicked her with his boots to make her stand up straight.  Poked the machete in her back and made a rough movement with his head telling her to walk ahead. Three other girls were also being dragged into the woods by the men with machete’s. As they stripped her of her clothes and threw her on the ground , she screamed in pain , the  girl next to her also screamed and  the glint of a machete’s blue steel silenced her. She passed out from the pain and didn’t know how long she had been lying in the clump of trees at the foot of the hills. The other girls lying around her weren’t breathing at all . She had several machete cuts on her arms legs and shoulders. When she tried to move, another scream of pain erupted from her mouth as her shoulder seemed dislocated. 

She passed out again before the vans with white peace keepers found her lying in a heap. They were going round the village looking for survivors, they didn’t find any. They would have left her dead but her dislocated shoulder saved her life as the pain was making her groan. The next few days or weeks were all a daze to her. She had no clear re collection of time. She was in a hospital with a lot of white people. Her arms and legs were bandaged and she felt terrible pain every time she tried to move. How long had she been there, was it days, weeks or months, time had lost all relevance.

Eventually they shifted her to another building where a lot of French nuns and pretty French volunteers looked after her. Her wounds had mostly healed. The pretty French volunteers told her that she was the lucky one . Out of several African girls a rich French gentleman had chosen her and agreed to take her back to France with him. Nyah looked at her bulging tummy where the baby from the machete night was growing. ‘’Its OK,’’ the pretty volunteer laughed ‘’We will keep the baby when he comes’’.

The French gentleman would come often and bring her presents. The nuns would arrange for both of them to sit in the back veranda. The kind French gentleman looked quite old and Nyah didn’t know how to address him. The flowery dress or new slippers he brought her were nice but Nyah was not sure what she was supposed to do in return. The small packets of dark chocolate he brought tasted bitter and Nyah didn’t like them but was too scared to refuse anything he brought. Then one day he told her she had been chosen to become his wife. She stayed silent, there was no feeling of either happiness or sadness inside her. It would just be another place she will move to. That is all she thought.

She had gotten used to the kindness and care of the volunteers. After her mother they were the first women she felt safe with. The  thought of leaving them made her cry , the haze started lifting  and with it came the pain, she would go into the garden to hide  the tears that wouldn’t stop even when she tried really hard. The pretty French volunteers would scold her ‘’ This is very bad for baby, very bad ’’

Finally she was ready to depart with the kind French gentleman. She looked at the tiny brown baby that was her’s but she couldn’t feel anything for him. He didn’t feel a part of her just as all the events since the night of the machete attacks didn’t feel real. She had blocked all pain on the other side and the little brown baby seemed a part of the world she had blocked.  She was married to the kind French man in the little chapel before she left. She was dressed in a beautiful white dress and had flowers in her hair. The pretty French volunteers gave her a lot of presents for her new home in France.

As they landed at Charles de Gaulle everything felt different . The airport was bigger than any building she had ever seen before. There were walls made entirely of glass and the marble floor was so shiny she could almost see her face in it. She held on to the rail as they went up the escalator. It was all a bit dizzying but after a long time, she felt a faint ripple of life surfacing from the gloom of the past three years.

 Their house in the suburbs took her breath away.It was a large rambling house surrounded on three sides by maple , beech and oak trees . The cream coloured outer walls were covered with Wisteria and Calcifer vines going up and down . The tiles on the roof were blueish grey. The grounds around the house were full of feathery light green grass. Jacques her husband , the rich French gentleman  escorted her inside to a low hall with dark brown rafters and light brown tables and chairs. She had already fallen in love with the house as soon as her feet touched the wooden floor.

To her the next few days felt like living in fairyland. She loved cooking in the modern kitchen and baking bread in the oven which came out smelling like heaven in just a few minutes. This was a big improvement to the coal powered oven in Rwanda which took ages to bake bread, along with all the smoke that went into people’s eyes. Jacques had taught her to use the grill and she was proud of how she prepared the fish to exact perfection just as Jacques liked it.

Jacques was an art dealer and had to travel to other cities to get good deals. Then her periods of isolation began. She would sit by the large box sash windows looking out in the garden where leaves were turning yellow and falling off trees.

The days felt very long. It took 30 minutes to clean the house and less than 20 minutes to prepare her food and then she had nothing to do. In the emptiness fears and shadows of the past began creeping up. Jacques had forbidden her to leave the house when he was not around as her French was not very good and she didn’t know her way around. The house she had fallen in love with now started feeling like a prison. She was wondering if she was feeling  exceptionally low and often dizzy because of Jacques’s long absences or because she was actually ill.

She had to see the doctor as soon as Jacques came home, she decided. She had felt nauseated and had dizzy spells once too often. She didn’t feel safe on her own.

Jacques looked tired when he came back and wasn’t too happy about her nagging him to see a doctor. ‘’I have to know’’ she said excitedly ‘’ what if I am pregnant, it felt like this ………..’’ she left the sentence trailing, not wanting to remember the other time.

The doctor took a long time examining her and looked a bit confused and concerned. ‘’ I will have to take a blood test and vaginal discharge samples ‘’ she said in the end. ‘’I will also have to test your husband’’ The following weeks were like a nightmare. The doctor informed her that she had acquired an STD from her husband, who seemed at a more advanced and severe stage. 

‘’But’’ ……..’’how can that be ‘’ he only knows me and I did not have an STD before coming to France ‘’ Nyah said her voice cracking. The doctor looked at her from behind her reading glasses. ‘’ Girl I’ve known Jacques since he was a young man…….’’ She smiled at Nyah as if recalling some colourful past ‘’ don’t be fooled by him, the kind of women he loves most ………no strings attached kind,’’ She made a wild gesture of tossing her blond hair around. Whatever the doctor was implying was loud and clear. Nyah felt a cold sweat breaking out on her neck. ‘’Am I going to die’’ ? she asked in a trembling voice. ‘’The women in Africa who got this disease usually died’’ she said getting up to leave. ‘’you won’t die but won’t have any kids and may feel generally ill for a while’’ Nyah seemed in deep thought as she took the prescription. ‘’ Will it help if I left Jacques’’ she asked the doctor. ‘’No,’’ the doctor said firmly ‘’the medicine will help’’

She went home and packed all her clothes in the suitcase that the French volunteers had given her in Rwanda as a present. She didn’t want to touch or take anything belonging to Jacques. She could feel germs crawling all over the house and everything made her feel sick.

Jacques was quite drunk when he came home and couldn’t care less what torment Nyah was going through.

‘’ I need some money’’ she said trying not to raise her voice ‘’

‘’ Why ‘’ he said still at the bottle and flipping through TV channels’’. She stayed silent which made him angry  ‘’where is my dinner bitch’’ he threw the empty bottle on the floor. The sound of crashing glass scared her ‘’ I …. I have to go’’ she said stammering ‘’I can’t live here anymore, you have made me ill …….and I might die’’

He got up swaying a little ‘’ How do you know it wasn’t those Yahoos who raped you’’ he was coming closer as if to hit her. She ran to the door ‘’ That’s right run away, do that you African scum’’ he picked another alcohol bottle from the kitchen cabinet. ‘’ Let’s see who  wants a useless whore like you’’.

She walked to the bus station and went to a pawn shop in the city. Sold all the small gold bits and pieces she had. Her mother’s gold chain. Her wedding ring, the earing’s that were a present from the French volunteers. She still didn’t have enough money even halfway to Rwanda.

She sat at the bus station all night staring at the other people coming in and out wondering what to do. Two African men with scruffy faces came and sat next to her’’ she could smell weed on their breath and tried to get up. One of the two men put his foot on her suitcase ‘’Where are you going sister’’ he winked at her ‘’ I have a place for you to stay‘’ the other one said ‘’ you’ve been here all night , I’ve been watching you’’.

She dragged her suitcase outside and got on the first bus that stopped  at the terminal without seeing where it was going.

It was nearly daybreak when she dragged her footsteps back to Jacques’s house. He was lying sprawled on the sofa when she came in. His vomit from excessive drinking all over the living room carpet.

He opened his eyes ‘’ Why have you returned bitch’’ he snarled at her ‘’ you are not welcome here, go back to your stinking Africans’’

She took off her coat ‘’ I am sorry Jacques’’ she said slowly. ‘’I have nowhere to go’’

She put on her work apron and knelt down to clean the vomit from the carpet. Jacques held her by the hair and pulled her head back

‘’Will you run away again bitch’’ he asked her in an angry voice.

‘’No sir ‘’ she said slowly ‘’ it will never happen again’’. Her tears  falling onto the carpet and making dark stains where they fell. Jacques had gone off into another drunken stupor and noticed nothing.