The Scatter Here Is Too Great (16 page)

“I had my shop's shutter down—I have my lunch and siesta during that hour—when the entire place shook and I thought something has happened and the building was about to fall. I woke up and tried to get out but when I pulled up the shutter it was stuck—look.” He pointed at a hammered edge of the shutter. “It was such a powerful explosion that the shutter slipped out of its groove. Thank god I don't shut it down completely. I crawled out from this much space and the first thing I saw were these two men in pink cloaks. They were bald men, with dark faces. . . .”

He too found it strange that nobody noticed them. He said there was something strange about the way they walked. “They were like rats, to be honest. They roamed the entire area and nobody was noticing them.” His forehead was tense. “They had bags and they were picking something up from the rubble. I didn't dare go close to them but I watched them carefully. At one point, I felt one of them pause and look straight at me over the crowd, and even from this distance I felt they radiated the blackest energy.”

As he spoke, I felt a coldness overtake me. He said he didn't stay there and rushed home. “But you know the really funny thing,” he said gravely, “I saw them again the next day, and then again the day after. I followed them and found out they live in an apartment just two lanes behind ours.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “But obviously I never had the courage to go and see what they were all about. To be honest, I am just scared.” Then he paused and said, “If you go to see them, I will go with you.”

We made inquiries and found out that those two strange “creatures” in pink clothes (that's how people referred to them)—their heads identically shrunk and deformed, and their tongues hanging out from their mouths—lived with a freak who was a painter and did palmistry for a living. “All of them are into this shady business; nobody knows what they do,” the man who fried samosas below the apartment building told us. “They get some interesting visitors though.” He winked and laughed. We did not know what he meant.

The apartment staircase smelled of urine. It was dimly lit by the light coming through the air vent. On the fifth floor, we rang the bell and waited. A few moments later, we heard a clank of metal followed by a man's feeble voice. “Is that you? Why so late? The door's open.”

The PCO boy turned the knob, and in front of us, stood a middle-aged man with a large birdcage in front of him. He looked at us for a moment and instead of showing any surprise, he turned away. “Give me two minutes,” he said, and inserted his hand into the cage.

From inside the cage, he pulled out a large kite that screeched as it hopped on his arm; he petted it on the head and brought his face near its head and whispered something. “This one needs a lot of attention.” He smiled. “She's wild, but okay, really. If I don't attend to her, she will scream and not let us speak,” he said as he caressed the back of the kite's ferocious head. The air in the room was saturated with the stench of the bird. We watched him as he kept whispering to the bird, petting it, smiling all the time. He then put it back inside the cage and from his shirt pocket pulled out a pair of dark glasses and put them on. We were still standing at the door.

He took us inside a room filled with painting canvases. I sat facing the canvas on the easel. I was immediately drawn in by the almost-finished painting, which showed a bunch of demons running around toward a naked woman who was smirking at the audience. “She's a sorceress,” he said to me. “They are all running crazy because she is so beautiful. Ah, look at her. Isn't she just
beautiful
?” He smiled and admiringly looked at the woman. “Yes, she knows it too. But nobody can touch her because she is more powerful than all of them. But her problem is that if she makes love to them, she loses her invincibility and they are going to tear her apart. Everybody's miserable here.” He laughed. “You understand?”

I nodded, not sure what was going on.

“Now tell me, are you looking for any specific information about your future? You know my rates? Five hundred for the first session where I only read your hand. A thousand for the second session I'll get to know you better and we'll do some astrology too. Third session I charge two thousand and we use palmistry, astrology, and numerology. All information would be correct. Guaranteed. Now who wants to go first, you?” He pointed to the PCO boy.

I explained to him the situation. I told him that my brother and the PCO boy had seen the two men at the sight of the blast and we were looking for them. Did he know them?

“Ah, those two. I don't know them. I don't. But they were living here until last week, but now they have left. I do not know anything about them, actually. I saw them rummaging through garbage at four
A
.
M
. last week—you know, I go out to feed meat to kites of this city, and it is unusual to find garbage collectors at that time—I understood immediately that they weren't garbage collectors, so I thought they must be looking for food, so I brought them home and gave them food, and they stayed here for some days. But then they started getting in the way of my work and I told them to get the hell out of here. They were strange, yes,” he said as his voice wandered around in lower tones, and he began speaking to himself. “You know I bring such people home, because it keeps prying eyes away from this place. But Gog Magog, you say, end of the world you mean, strange you bring that up, very strange.”

He then took off his glasses and wiped the glasses. His eyelids fluttering rapidly.

“You see,” he said, “I cannot see anything more than a few feet; my eyes are bad. I stay in this place most of the time; I go out early in the morning to give meat to kites and in the afternoon I feed pigeons in my balcony. That day, not one pigeon came down. Strange you say, yes? That day I was wondering about the birds—why were they in a frenzy, screeching madly and circling the skies nonstop. I sat there and felt their cacophony was rising, but nobody was paying any attention. Just around the time of the bomb blast, I started feeling that I would go mad. And when that blast happened, I truly felt the world had come to an end. I stood in my balcony, smelling a dark unforgiving burning smell and understood what it must be like in Hell where everything evil burns together.” He sighed. “And then I realized from the smell that there must be birds burning down there too. Although my eyes are bad but I could sense that the birds had collapsed and had fallen into that acid mix of things on the ground. That's when I rushed in and told those two boys to run down and fill their sacks with all the birds they could find so that I could bury them properly.” Here his tone became graver. “You know, I cannot see animals suffer. It's terrible.

“I stood in my balcony after the blast—for how long I don't know, maybe an hour, maybe two hours—for a long time—and then I started hearing sounds. I heard sea waves crashing, squeals of creatures of the sea that I am sure nobody has heard or seen before. I wasn't the only person who heard them. A lot of people hear these things but they ignore them because that's not how they understand things. That entire day and next, I heard a loud cranelike sound coming from the sea. I knew monsters were heading this way. The sound was so overwhelming my eyes watered and hands trembled with fear and I couldn't even talk. And what happens the next day? They found that forty-foot whale dead on the beach. I don't know why you say they were Gog and Magog, but I can tell you that this city is dying. Look around yourself: do you see anything that might tell you it is living? All the birds are leaving this city. Soon we will only have crows and rats left in this city.”

Just then we heard the door open and heard the ruffling of dress. He called out, “Is that you? I can smell you. Come here.”

A woman in a burqa with strikingly beautiful eyes peeked into the room. She was about to take off her veil and head scarf. She paused when she saw us. “You have guests? You should have told me.” She sounded irritated.

“Don't be a nuisance, come here, they are nice people. Not like those . . . Come here, see I have finished making your painting, come, have a look.”

“Is it done?” Her tone changed as she moved closer to the painting and started examining the nude figure. “What! My eyes aren't that big!”

“Sorry for that, but is the rest OK?” he said and laughed impishly.

“Hmm. I am in the other room.” She turned around and walked past us, leaving a strong whiff of perfume behind.

The man laughed again.

What appears strange and complex becomes even stranger and more complicated once you begin to investigate it. That's the true nature of the world.

That encounter with that palmist/painter left me with no desire to work or do anything else. For days, I could not concentrate on my work. I began seeing what he meant: this city was dying, this world was ending. All the signs were there for me to see. He was right. I could see it. I began looking around myself, and everything was indicating death.

I could not concentrate on my work anymore, and my business began to falter. I sold it off before it sank completely. I also lost interest in the baker's daughter. Initially she was puzzled but her enthusiasm also waned, and when another marriage proposal came her way, she got married quickly. It was all for the best, thank God.

With the money that was left, I started a little general store in our lane, which now provides our family with enough money to live without any luxuries. Akbar doesn't take interest in the work; he simply sits on his chair behind the store counter, letting the neighborhood kids steal things from the store. He's also unable to do any serious mental work, and I have to manage everything in the store on my own.

This string of events I have recounted have left me with a belief that we are indeed at the end of the world. I am only waiting for it to happen now; indeed, preparing for it. Normally, one would imagine that such a conviction would lead to despair, but strangely enough, instead of despair, I feel liberated. I feel lighter since I have resigned myself to live this way—without ambition or greed of money or anything. I think a lot about my life now, something I had never done, I realize, because earlier my ambition did not allow me to be honest to myself about what I was doing and what it was doing to me. Now I feel free to admit to everything I have done in my life and see things with a clear eye. I feel free to repent without needing to cover up anything. Every day I feel gratitude that God has created ways for us to repent; told us how to make up for our wrongdoings. I give alms, I pray, and try hardest to live my life honestly as much as possible. It's not easy to live this way because every day I find my memory throws more vile things I have done in the past. Each day there is a new guilt for me to deal with. I spend my life making up for everything I have done wrong.

What weighs on me still, however, is the condition of my brother. I still find it difficult to look at him. My only prayer to God is for his revival; I want him to live life with the same zest that he had before that fateful day, no matter if it is the end of the world.

L
ook again at the bullet-smashed windscreen: the bullet hole is a new territory. It cracks new paths, new boundaries.

These are maps of an uncharted city. They tell different stories.

Listen.

 

 

 

I
was editing an obscure story on unexplored copper reserves somewhere in Balochistan when I caught snatches of unwanted dialogue volleying across the newsroom (“Cantt Station!” “platform? platform?” “how many people?” “the intersection?” “in the railway carriage? platform?” “no, no, outside” “yes, yes,” “outside the station, on the
chowk
!” “at the intersection!” “how many people?”). I did not pay attention. I wanted nothing more than to finish editing the story and then have my tea before leaving the office.

My final cup of tea is my daily salvation. I have it alone in the empty conference room, staring into the wall in front of me with my back toward the office. It's a kind of daily meditation. My mind goes headlong into a freefall that lasts approximately for the duration of my cup of tea. Those few vacant minutes are the most gratifying of my entire workday. They settle the heat and dust of the day, and by the time I reach the sugar at the bottom of the cup (I don't stir my tea) I am feeling a glorious emptiness.

That day I took leave early, and found myself in the conference room a couple of hours earlier. It was still afternoon and I was looping the string of the steaming tea bag around the teaspoon when the phone started to ring. I ignored it. But it rang again.

And again.

Finally, I picked it up. It was for me (somebody must have told the operator I am in the conference room). They wanted to know if I knew somebody called Sadeq because he had had a bad accident and they had found my number in his wallet.

“Is he okay?” I asked, staring into my tea.

“Come to Jinnah Hospital immediately. He was in a car when the blast happened.”

Pause.

“Are you coming?”

“Yes.” I stood up.

I waited for a few seconds then sat down. I picked up the teaspoon strapped with the tea bag and dripped it over a bunch of ants walking on the table.

For the next fifty seconds I stared at the wall. I sat down again and watched the dead ants floating on the smoking brown liquid.

The security wardens at the hospital were busy pushing people as politely as they could to keep them from crowding the hospital gate. Ambulances racked up behind one another, and the ambulance drivers were plugged into the megaphones:
Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Make way for the ambulance! Get out of the way!
Some drivers were more specific:
You, red shirt! Make way! Amma ji, don't walk in front of the ambulance! Get out of the way!