Moazzam Sheikh

The early showers of the monsoon had struck the night before with full rage. Soon, the streets of Lahore would become rivers in August, carrying mud and filth. The frightening thunder was heard up till the end of the night, and the single wooden door in the room, which opened to the balcony, seemed already wet and swollen. Masud paced back and forth in his room, impatiently and nervously, like a caged cat. His face was dark and haggard. Eyes small but deep, restive, and shoulders bent as if an invisible weight rested on them. If one looked harder, one saw a little cut under his pointed chin which he was in the habit of rubbing occasionally. He stopped for a second next to the table and lit another cigarette, staring at Imroz, the Urdu newspaper folded on the table. The desire to read the paper had deserted him. She was usually very punctual, he reasoned, for her survival depended on it, but now, as it continued to pour buckets outside, she was more than an hour late.

    He stopped pacing and, looking out towards the balcony, saw the dark, vicious clouds which filled the frame of his balcony door. The wind caused the rain to fall at an angle, away from it ─ the rain water was running aslant on the balcony floor to a hole in one corner, falling on the muddy sidewalk like a waterfall. He went out to the balcony and stood under the tin roof. Resting his hand on the metal grille, he looked out to the back of her house―the pale, yellow wall being whipped by the merciless rain. From four stories up, he could look at her window which opened into the back alley, but now was shut tight. It would remain so throughout the monsoon. The rain fell on the tin roof like an unpleasant, out-of-tune melody of a sitar, and, feeling irritated, he stepped back in.

    He sat down on a chair, jumpy, his legs shifting positions, his feet shaking slightly, and every time he moved, the chair squeaked because of its loose joints. Now, he was aware of the emptiness that suddenly gripped him.

    Smoke rings drifted from his lips while his eyes raced all over the wall and its cracked surface. He needed her―the monsoon, the smell of the earth in the air, the subdued noises of the human beings out on the street, soaked and hurrying, the howling of the wandering dogs, and the solitude within him made him ache for her company. The comfort of her flesh, the odor of skin. Was he addicted to her? He could not answer. She had never skipped a work day, he reflected, as he paused again, even when she’d had a light fever three weeks ago.

    He decided on impulse to walk to her house and inquire what stopped her today. Or perhaps it was the crying rain that called him out to see her naked misery. He grabbed his umbrella and, putting on his rain coat, walked down the dirty stairway, which stank with such severity that it reminded him of rotten flesh every time he came to it. He could arrange for someone else, he thought as he descended, but, no, he enjoyed her presence. Was she on her way? He might even run into her on the street. The thought pleased him momentarily.

    Masud Sheikh lived in a decrepit building, one of the remains of British rule, a red, thin-tiled building with the Victorian façade. The landlord rented out the small rooms to bachelors or married men, and some women too, who came to Lahore from other places to find work. But Masud had lived all his life in this city, in the old city encased behind thirteen decaying gates and, unlike others, rented this place in order to forget the past.

    At the foot of the building were five shops―a bakery, a laundromat, a grocery store, a hardware store, and a barber shop. At the barber shop people sat gossiping all day long, listening to the radio tuned to Noor Jahan, or to Ashfaq Ahmed’s Hidayat Allah every evening at seven. In the morning to the Radio Pakistan, Lahore and in the afternoon to Akashwani (All India Radio). The men played cards, drank tea, and discussed political matters.

    Jumma Khan, the barber, was the fulcrum of information and subject matter to these gossips―he was how the stories really spread.

    It was Jumma who, one afternoon, out of consideration, had suggested that Masud hire a cleaner, one of the Christian women from the nearby slums.

    “Arrey, Masud sahib, you should get a sweeper for your room. It keeps the place clean,” Jumma had said, looking at him in the stained, warped mirror, his scissors dancing clip, clap.

    “Do you know any, Jumma, whom you can trust?” Masud had asked with the same subtlety.

    “Not at the moment,” Jumma had said, gripping Masud’s hair between his fingers and pulling it up, “but I will certainly keep my eyes open and let you know.” And Jumma had smiled into the mirror, becoming a secret sharer. Later, Jumma had added, “Even Allah doesn’t prescribe loneliness, Masud bhai!”

    Masud remembered the conversation now as he climbed down the last steps out to the street, into the rain, breathing hard. Having come out in the open, he felt a nakedness creep into him as he faced Jumma, who knew every terra incognito a heart could know and every truth hidden behind a pair of eyes, light or dark. The news of his desperation, he feared, would spread now among the card players, the indolent tea sippers, and then the other neighbors. Masud saw Jumma Khan from the corners of his eyes and hurried his steps.

    “Ah-ha! Masud bira . . . ader, where to, in this rain?” Jumma’s voice replaced the thunders of the monsoon. Mostly to annoy Masud, he liked to enunciate the word biraader by breaking it into its paused syllables.

    Masud stopped under the umbrella, the rain beating as hard as possible to subdue any sound. “To the post office, Jumma. How have you been?” waving his hand.

    He moved on without waiting for Jumma’s answer, but he had hardly gone a few steps when he heard Jumma exclaim, “Alhamd-o-lillah! followed by a spiteful laugh. And it was then he remembered, irritated by the laughter, that the post office was in fact in the other direction. He felt a shrinking sensation as he walked away from the building, and a sense of panic on the street.

    He had become deaf to every other sound except that of the rain. Turning right from the Pakki Thatti sherbet shop to the Choora basti, he walked three streets south, along the meat market, and faced the wall with the hole―there were advertisements painted on the wall on each side of the hole. People went through this hole instead of going half a mile farther to the iron gate installed by the city municipal corporation. He ducked his head down and came out the other side, having closed and reopened his umbrella. He stood in the neighborhood of the servant class, mostly the dark Christians who were, as some believed, the crop of British seed and fertilizer.

    After the masters had vanished, the leftovers from the British domain had become the rags of this society, a society which claimed human equality its basic pillar. At the corner of the two extremely narrow alleys to his left he saw a small paan shop―a small boy squatted behind a glass box and a few empty cold drink bottles. A tin shade jutted out from above giving shelter to two skinny men, standing, drinking their tea. The men gave Masud a curious look, then laughed and went back to their conversation.

    It was windier on this side of the street―he tightened his grip on the umbrella. He noticed as he walked on the children of different ages, though mostly boys―some naked and some in shorts, running in various directions playing the rain games―accepting the gift from heavens. Sheltered underneath his umbrella, he examined the houses to the right and left, registering the paleness of the walls and the doors which hung askew even though they were chained and locked. It was a long row of small, one room houses, huddled together as if scared, often without an alley between their walls or a verandah on the front. No tree grew on this street.

    Here, the rain water in the middle of the earthen street was already a few inches deep. He walked on the narrow sidewalk, slippery with mud. He made out her house and halted in front of its soaked, uneven wooden door, from which a lizard-like chain dangled. As he decided to strike his knuckles against the door, an unknown fear surrounded his innards and checked his hand. He felt weak in the knees, his fist remained suspended in the air. The frost of his breath appeared in rapid compressions. Closing his eyes, he jangles the chain, weakly, as if in a dream. He looked to the street where the weak, lean children played with an old tennis ball, throwing it to each other with loud, shrieking sounds, jumping up and down, sinking their dark legs into the brown water. Though he could hear their sounds, it seemed that the yelling and shrieking did not reach his ears but his heart, piercing to the middle. Suddenly he reacted, as if caught off guard to the creaking door and its rusted hinges, and turned his head with a start to see a gaunt face emerging from the lightless room, grimacing at him without teeth.

    Two alarmed eyes flickered in the old man’s deep sockets. But then his face softened, his gaze moving from scared, to perplexed, to barely concealed contempt. His stare penetrated Masud’s and Masud felt guilty of some inexplicable crime, as thought that he had something, even if vaguely, to do with this man’s fate.

    After an awkward silence, the host, moving aside, motioned Masud to step inside, having guessed who he might be.

    “Come in from the rain, bau-ji,” he said. “Nasima is home.”

    Masud stepped in with hesitation, folding his wet umbrella and shaking the drops of water onto the dried mud floor. The man’s hospitality was already beginning to oppress Masud. He tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the room. A stove made the room smell of kerosene oil. He made out the figures of a woman and two children standing next to the stove to stay warm; the flame cast a faint, dancing light on them. The woman’s face was stricken with surprise, or fear―one could not tell. The man closed the door. On the wall Masud noticed a cheap calendar with Hazrat Jesus―arms stretched benevolently above the months of the year.

    “Salaam-alaikam,” the woman mumbled.

    “I thought you might have hurt yourself,” he said to Nasima, though not meeting her eyes.

    The water dripped at equal intervals from the ceiling into a tin bucket, tip, tip, tip, in the middle of the room, splashing onto the mud. The sound of the leak inside, somehow, seemed louder with each silent second like an explosion.

    Coming a little closer to him, to the centre of the room beside the bucket, she said, “It’s been hell here, Masud saab, the leak and the children . . .” but her voice trailed off when she saw his uninterested face, and the subjugated desire in his eyes. His prolonged silence made her uneasy―however she managed to speak again: “I thought you wouldn’t mind my not coming in the rain today, and…” Her voice sank into the sound of the water dripping.

    Masud saw her lips moving, but did not hear what she said. His mind was somewhere else. In his mind he was back in his room, Nasima’s naked body on the bed beside his. Then suddenly he saw the same bed empty, and was reminded of his loneliness. He remembered the first time he’d seen her dark, naked back, as if made of sandal wood, and her hair like a black river. Vexed, he looked at her husband, who stood crossing his arms to hide his naked, hairless chest, except for the grayish patch around the navel, and the old man smiled faintly upon meeting Masud’s eyes. Masud wondered briefly how such a broken old man had acquired such a lovely young wife, but the subject did not really interest him. Masud looked away to the flame in the stove, and cleared his throat.

“I have invited,” surprised at hearing his own sound, and at the ability to lie with confidence, Masud began slowly, his voice deep and needy, glancing back to Nasima, “some friends tonight for tea. If you could, please, come for a short while?” His eyes rested, briefly, on her breasts, obscured behind the shirt she wore of thin material, before moving his stare back to her lips.

    “Yes, yes. Why not, ji? Yes, Nasimay!” the old man’s voice startled Masud. “Go, go and do a quick sweeping I mean why not…” and at the end of his words he coughed, pushing his chest against his arms and bending forward, as if in obedience. A child stepped forward to the old man and grabbed his dhoti cloth.

    Nasima moved to leave, staring at her chidlren, and leaned to pick up her dupatta from the string bed. Masud thought of Jumma Khan and his cunning laughter, and halted at the door, the old man freezing behind him. “You don’t have to come with me. I have to run an errand on my way home, so it’d be better to wait about half an hour and then come.” Masud opened the door.

    Holding her dupatta, Nasima nodded and then looked at her husband, who was looking at the rain falling on the brown bed of water.

    Opening his umbrella over his head, Masud hurried out into the rain as though his body was burning. Walking down the street, he felt his insides filling with rage, and as he approached his house, sneaking through the hole, he didn’t avoid the puddles, his shoes becoming drenched and muddy. He took quick steps and his heart beat faster. He spotted Jumma, from a block’s distance, sitting under the tin shade that jutted out from the building facade.

    “Wah! Allah’s blessing is this rain, Masud saheb, the crops are thirsty and waiting, and here Allah is ever merciful. Arrey, Masud bhai, I wonder what happened to our Nasima today?” Jumma took a deep puff from his Kashmiri hookah; the water in the bottom of the hookah gurgled angrily. But before Masud could answer, or ignore the question, Jumma cackled, “Those lazy Christians. Ya Allah! those damn Farangees should have taken their filth back to Inglistan I say.” He shook his head as if with disgust, but Masud knew it was more with malice and mockery.

    “Jumma ji,” Masud snapped, “who would clean our Muslim toilets then? Who would wash our arses?” Leaving Jumma stunned with the tip of the hookah’s mouthpiece hanging in his grip, Masud walked inside, folding his umbrella.

***

    With his head encased in his palms, leaning, he sat motionless, feeling nauseated, weightless. He tried to clear his mind of thoughts, but they kept crowding his head. He should not have gone, he reflected with bitter embarrassment; a man could lose all his decency faster than any other thing he possessed: money, health, love.

    He came out of his doldrums, on the verge of having drowned, on hearing the door creak; he looked up and Nasima was halfway in the room.

    She stood staring at him, the rain drops sliding from her face, her clothes, her hands.

    “So when are those guests of yours coming? In this rain? She asked, smiling, a bit teasing, a bit sarcastic.

    He just stared at her.

    She shivered with cold and squeezed the wetness on her arms with her hands. It took a while to register, but then he got up quickly, grabbed a towel, and extended it to her. He then changed his mind and began wiping her hair, shoulders, arms, and then the rest of her body himself. She stood there, staring at the ceiling, later at the lizard that stared back at her. He suddenly kissed her lifeless lips with the ferocity of the monsoon rains, escorted her to his takht-e-shahi to his Taj Mahal.

***

    Soon he crumbled to the side, breathing heavily, eyes closed, relieved. She kept her eyes open, but covered then with her right elbow, perhaps, to shade them from light. Perhaps. He felt he was slowly sinking, like a stone, into the depths of an immense ocean. The numbness in his body made him alienated to his surroundings. The constant fall of the rain and the unvarying sound of it seemed to dull the sense of desire now. The silence started to cut in his heart. He knew he had to speak or else he would become a reef.

    “Who was he?”

    “Who? My husband, who else!”

    “Yes, the old man. Does he know?” he asked, feeling bitter at the taste of his words, acknowledging his own defeat.

    “Yes, he knows. They all know…” she whispered.

    He wanted to know who they all were, but he did not. He longed for a trace of emotion in her voice, an inkling of compassion, sympathy, or even pity, but her tone fell flat. Suddenly he remembered the man’s sickly stare, glowing beneath the ashes of his life. The burning, coal-like eyes of the old man now moved closer and closer, thrusting inward, pushing against his own eyes, his brains. It felt as if two red hot suns had gotten inside his skull and his face would melt any moment. A scream came to his throat, but got stuck inside his mouth. Then he heard Nasima’s husband crack with laughter, “Yes, yes, why not, sahib. Why not!? Ha ha ha!”

    The anger rose inside him and he wanted to break something, smash something, a pot, a picture, a memory; he wanted to scream aloud, ‘pimp, rascal, bhaenchod, coward,’ but deep down he grew angrier at himself, feeling an urge to curse his own loneliness.

    She raised her elbow and turned to look at his face. He looked at her, his anger dissipating. “You should get married,” she said. “Even when you are with me, you remain sad. Even when you are caressing me, your eyes remain sorrow-soaked. That is not good.” They both smiled an unexpected smile, their dark-rimmed, lifeless eyes becoming alive for a moment, glowing like dying cinders.

    He began kissing her, and then his hand caressed the inviting curves of her body. He felt the lack of the same feeling on the other side. He thought of asking her to respond the way she would to her husband, but then he forcibly stitched his lips. Perhaps, she doesn’t love him either. To his surprise, she squeezed him with renewed aggression, wrapping her arms around him.

    “Nasima,” he hissed.

    “Wha…..,” she hissed back.

    “Marry me.”

    “Silly man. I am married,” she answered, laughing.

    “Then run away with me,” and hated his words as soon as they left his mouth.

    “I have children.” She looked into his eyes and her grip around him relaxed. After a very short silence, she held him tighter, and with some unknown cruelty, dug her nails into his shoulders.

    “Nasima…your husband…..is too weak…sick”

    She moaned, as if in response.

    “He’s a guest of a few more days,” he whispered, as he introduced his hardness inside her.

    Her body stiffened. “What? What did you mean?” Her voice grew in fear. “Why do you talk like that? What right…because you can pay me?”

    She trembled with emotion, pushing him away with her palms, and started to sob, shaking with sudden jerks. He felt angry, miserable, and heavily rolled over to his side, feeling impotency settle in him, his own existence disappearing into a dark cloud.

    He wrapped a white sheet around his waist, like a dhoti, and pulled another over her. She had, however, stopped sobbing and was still.

    “I…I am sorry, Nasima,” he said, failing to meet her eyes.

    “Don’t say such things again please,” she murmured, as though talking to herself. She did not look to him either. He stared at her naked feet.

    She sat up on the takht, her legs dangling, and put on her brassiere. He grabbed his wallet and took out three ten rupee bills. She had already gotten dressed, and now turned to say farewell, seeing his extended hand with money.

    “But this is too much, and you―” she said.

    “That’s okay,…please… I mean…” he replied with wandering eyes. “And…take two or three days off. I’ll be all right. You know Ramzan is approaching too.” He forced a smile.

    She seemed to be lost in thought, then snapped out of it and said, “Shukria,” gratefully, and rushed out, shutting the door behind her. His hand reached for his cigarettes. He thought he could finish a whole packet, and maybe smoke two more tonight and die in his sleep. A spider slowly began to crawl around his heart.

***

    Three days later the rains still had not relented, and the streets were like rivers. The wheels of the horse carriages turned in the water slowly, scooping up water on their wooden spokes and pouring it back on the street; occasionally the wind blew, angling the rain this way or that way, at times rocking the windows and doors fitfully.

    Here and there a wall collapsed or a roof caved in. Masud remained inside his room, going out only to buy milk for tea or chappatis at the tandoor. He tried not to think too much of Nasima, of her not being here with him, or her husband. Or his voice. But once in a while the old man’s ghost appeared before him, mocking slyly, “So, sahib ji, am I going to die soon? Am I? As you put it to my wife, a guest of how many days? So soon?” He tried to dismiss the ghost as fast as possible, but sometimes it returned. “Ha ha ha! Well, if you say so…I am going to die, and you can have Nasima all to yourself. But do not forget my children, Masud saheb! Hee hee hee!”

    One day as he sat in his chair, smoking a cigarette and reading the Akhbar e Jahanweekly, a sudden knock at the door jolted him. He felt a tinge of uncertainty and, nervously, stood up and opened the door, imagining it to be Nasima. With that conjecture, his longing for her exploded. But, to his surprise, a young woman of no more than eighteen, with big impatient eyes, stood at the door, and then as he lowered his eyes fleetingly he noticed her firm and inviting breasts.

    “Yes? Bolo!” he asked.

    “Salaam, babu ji,” the girl’s voice trembled, as she tried to smile.

    “Wa-alyekum…,” he nodded.

    “Ji, Nasima will not be able to come for a few days,” her voice was beginning to gather strength, “I thought you might need… a sweeper.”

    He immediately wanted to tell her to go away, but ended up saying, “Huh…Oh! Yes, come in, yes. I…”

    Perhaps he felt a wave of pity rising inside him. A young beautiful Christian woman fresh as a flower. Poverty and the need to prostitute her body, he thought, would turn her into a skeleton of tired bones in less than ten years. He noticed the broom in her hand. She walked in after him and placed it against the wall, closing the door behind her.

    He discreetly observed her small but firm breasts. Then, he sat down and lit another cigarette. Putting out the match, he inhaled the smoke and, as he shook the match-stick, breathed out a huge silvery cloud. His eyes fell, through the obscurity of the smoke, on her feet, and the sight perplexed him. Her shalwar had slipped from her waist to the ground, covering her feet. He lifted his head, registering her naked legs, and found her absorbed in unbuttoning her shirt. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, the smoke distorting his vision, his sense of reality, but then a sudden rage overpowered his calm.

    “What do you think you are doing?”

    “Sahib ji,” she shuddered, like a scared child.

    “Yes, I asked you what you are doing!”

    “She spoke reluctantly: “Sahib ji, that Jumma Khan has sent me here, he said…” They looked at each other, speechless, as if two statues placed behind glass in a museum.

    Masud saw her naked legs, smooth and innocent, like running water―then her half-revealed breasts, offering solace; then dark eyes. Masud felt his anger being subdued by a familiar sense of weakness. Desire began to burn inside his veins, his limbs trembled and ached.

    The woman was nervous at first, but she regained her composure. “The other sahib,” she spoke with a soft voice, “who lived at the end of the hall paid me five rupees…every time I came to clean.”

    The smoke clouds had dissolved into the air. Freeing her legs from her shalwar, holding the open collar of kurta, she took a step closer.

    He lay on his takht, next to her. Looking at her, he tried to catch the disappearing warmth of her young breath. His thoughts flashed to Nasima and back, and he realized, without much sadness, that anyone could replace the sense of comfort Nasima brought. He felt happy and light. And yet sad. Somewhere down on the street a radio played a ghazal, the sound of Farida Khanum’s voice, rising to his balcony like smoke.

    He stood in the balcony door, and she, now sitting up on the takht, hooked up her brassiere, bringing her hands behind her back. He looked at her back, shiny and smooth like a bathed neem leaf, stretching and contracting, the bones of her young spine stacked neatly on top of each other. On her waist he looked for his finger prints.

    She got up and put on her shalwar and shirt, rolling her shoulders and adjusting the cups of her brassiere. She caught him looking, and smiled at him.

    “You have a sick husband?”.

    She stopped smiling, unsure of his words, “Naa, sahib ji, I am not married,” she answered with a short giggle.

    “A sick brother?”

    “Naa, sahib ji, but I have an sick father with T.B. and my mother lost her legs years ago,” she said quickly, without emotion.

    He took two ten rupee bills out. Giving them to her, he said, “Come back tomorrow, if you can.” She took the bills and carefully tucked them inside the elastic of her bra. But as she put the money away, she stopped, remembering.

    “Oh, my God! I almost forgot to tell you, my bad memory…” she said, putting the top of her finger to her lips.

    He stared at her, at her girl-like innocence.

    “I forgot to tell you that Nasima’s husband, Chacha John, died last night…too much cough and fever.”

    Masud knitted his brows, relaxed them. It became difficult for him to breathe. He felt dizzy and held on to the back of the chair. The old man’s face appeared and disappeared from his sight.

    She grabbed her broom and said, smiling, “Shukria, sahib ji, I will see you tomorrow,” and left the room.

    The cigarette in Masud’s hand was shaking. He walked to the balcony, and looked at Nasima’s home. He slammed the door shut and chained it. But the dark clouds hung on the outskirts, threatening to come back and drown the city with their rage.