Firecrackers
BY BASMAH SAKRANI
Aziz did not believe in fortune tellers. So, when his cousin Haider told him about a haath parne waala who sat at Abdullah Shah Ghazi ka mazaar, who knew your future before you approached him, before you even set foot on the hill of the mausoleum, Aziz scoffed and told Haider to focus more on his studies and less on these silly tales.
“But, it’s true yaar. I’ll show you,” Haider said.
The two sat kneeling with their arms raised, right outside Father Stephen Raymond’s door. They had been caught, yet again, setting off firecrackers in the bathroom.
“Keep me out of your schemes. They all end up here anyway.” Aziz angled his head towards the door marked PRINCIPAL.
“This is unreal, Aziz. This guy, you’ll see him and you’ll understand…” Haider trailed off. Behind Aziz, their English and Geography instructor was turning into the hallway. “Oh! Here comes de Souza.”
“Abay yaar, you failed again?” Aziz shook his head at Haider. “Beta, tum tou gaye. You’re going to get kicked out.” This would be the third time Haider failed the Intermediary exams. He was nineteen, three years older than Aziz, and yet to graduate from St Patrick’s High School, run by the Archdiocese of Karachi.
“Abay, chal. They won’t kick me out. They love me too much to do that,” Haider said.
It was true, Aziz knew. Despite Haider’s penchant for trouble, he was charming and well-liked by everyone. He knew what to say to anyone no matter the circumstance. Aziz had seen this first-hand in his own home, the way Abu chuckled at Haider’s comical retelling of Aziz losing a game of carom, and in the softness of Ami’s wrist when she ladled extra potatoes from the biryani pot on to Haider’s plate. Even the Fathers at school, who could be strict disciplinarians, took a gentler approach with Haider. Aziz knew why everyone behaved this way with his cousin: it’s because Haider was orphaned by Partition only two years ago.
“Young man!” Father de Souza called out. He walked swiftly towards them, white robes sweeping the ground. He stopped in front of Haider and frowned. “What have you done this time?”
“Nothing, Father, I’m just here to wish the principal a blessed day.” Haider said, smiling innocently at the Father. Next to him, Aziz groaned. His arms ached. But dropping them even an inch would swiftly result in a caning that left welts on your shoulder for at least seven days, eleven if you were unfortunate enough to be caned on the buttocks.
“Haider, my boy, you may jest all you want but when will you think about your future? Your fate at this school? We have seen the seasons of kinnoos come and go. So much of our world changed when 1948 became 1949 and now we are nearing the start of another summer. Graduation is a mere two months away. Thirty educated, young men will cross the St Patrick gates and step out into the world. Yet still, young man, you remain.” Father de Souza peered at Haider over the silver-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He sighed deeply and crossed his arms. “You have failed again, Haider.”
Haider didn’t smile this time. He kept his gaze lowered and remained quiet. He knew de Souza expected him to show some remorse, view this repeated failure as a grave disappointment. But it wasn’t, really, not to him. After all he had lost, missing out on some points in a standardized exam meant nothing.
“Have you no shame, young man? Look at Aziz, your own kin, and learn from him. He topped his class in the matriculation exams.”
Though the boys couldn’t see each other, Aziz felt something shift in Haider. It was as if the air around them became heavier, like it was pressing against them. People often compared them. Haider was the friendly one, the jovial jester who, despite losing his parents so very recently and tragically, always lightened up the room. His rebellious streak was tut-tutted but adored. Aziz was the one with a future, with parents and good grades that foretold stable employment, maybe even a job at the Foreign Service with its notoriously difficult entry exams. When people talked about them, Aziz smiled along, and Haider pretended not to listen. It was too much for him, these passed remarks at school, at home, even at the mosque after Jummah Namaz, all these people reminding Haider of what he couldn’t be.
“Sorry, Father,” muttered Haider.
“You have to do better, Haider. This is unacceptable.”
“Yes, Father.”
Father de Souza knocked on the Principal’s office door. “The boys are ready for you, sir.” Then, he lifted his robes and walked away and the boys remained kneeling, arms still up over their heads.
Haider looked at Aziz. “So, you’ll come with me tonight, won’t you?”
***
It was Thursday night in Karachi, and devotees of Abdullah Shah Ghazi were gathered at the Sufi saint’s mausoleum in Clifton to celebrate and pray as they did every Thursday. The mausoleum was a modest mud-and-brick structure, sat atop a hill. In decades to come, it would transform into a large building with: a green dome, beautified with white and blue marble, a stairway decorated with flags and buntings, and a central courtyard to house flower and food stalls.
Outside the hut encasing the mystic’s tomb, Haider and Aziz stood at the edge of the crowd. Aziz was winded after the climb up. He was irritated at himself for indulging Haider’s whims yet again.
“He must be here somewhere,” said Haider. He scanned the crowd for the palm reader who was said to be dressed in a red kurta and sporting a meter-long orange beard. How reliable this description was, Haider couldn’t say, since its source was Dawood, the shakar-kandi hawker who slept on his cart outside St Patts and didn’t know the difference between chaat masala and kaala namak and overused both in the smoked sweet potato snack he sold for 20 annas during breaktime.
“Let’s go soon, Haider bhai,” Aziz said. He didn’t want to be here, but back home instead where his parents were asleep. It was nearly midnight.
“We’ll find him. Just wait, yaar.”
“I don’t want my future told. You just do yours then we’ll go.”
“Acha, theek hai,” Haider replied.
Though he agreed to leave soon, Haider wasn’t prepared to go. Not until he met the palm-reading fortune-teller. He was determined to understand, once and for all, if there was anything in his future that was worth working hard for. And despite his no-nos and chalo-chalos, Aziz too was curious about the fortune-teller. But he didn’t know what to expect, and that unsettled him. The thought of someone else knowing how his life would unfold made his stomach somersault up into his throat so he decided, as he typically did in situations that asked for a shred of bravery, to simply observe.
A group of men stood outside the marigold-laden shrine doors. They were waiting for their turn to go inside and pay their respects to the Sufi saint, to tie a piece of thread in the interior latticed windows – a way to express a deep desire or a dire dilemma for the late mystic to manifest or resolve. None of these men looked like Haider’s fortune-teller.
In the foreground of the shrine doors, families sat in pockets on the hilly ground. There were women praying, eating, talking, chanting; draped in flowery dupattas, head covered, some rocking back and forth, looking up at the shrine. Children ran around barefoot, their eyes rimmed with kajal and bellies full and sated from the biryani that was distributed here every week. The air carried a layer of smells that settled on the skin: chicken qorma, jasmine, feet and incense. In the distance, a white billboard for Tibet Snow Cream glowed like a beacon in the dark, cloudless sky. They weren’t close enough to the sea to hear its waves, but Aziz could taste its saltiness on his tongue. Flies buzzed around, and though the night had cooled somewhat, Aziz was sweating through his shalwar. Just as he was about to tap his cousin on the shoulder, Haider spotted the fortune-teller and announced, “Mil gaya! Haath parne wala mil gaya! Chalo chalo.”
Haider lunged ahead. He snaked around a picnicking family, dodged a woman in a burka reaching an arm out for help as she climbed the hill, and made his way towards the other side of the slope. His baggy, black kurta ballooned behind him as he ran and Aziz, who was in step behind Haider, watched his cousin’s shoulders whip side to side as he pushed passed devotees to reach the fortune-teller.
The haath parne wala sat on a rock on the side of the hill occupied by only men. There were no signs calling out this distinction, just a cultural understanding, an unsaid awareness, that this was where the malangs sat, the extreme devotees who swung in a trance induced by ultimate piety, hashish, or both. This wasn’t a place for women and children.
The first thing Aziz noticed about the man was his nose. A chana-sized wart sat on its tip. His long beard (Dawood was right about that) wasn’t orange but more a burnt brass. It reached past his crossed ankles and dangled against the rock. His red kurta flared out like an angarkha.
“Kya kaam hai?” asked the fortune-teller, looking directly at Aziz. It was a gaze that made you want to shirk it; questioning, dark.
“Haath parh wana hai,” replied Haider. He pointed at his palm and took a step closer to the fortune-teller.
“Baitho,” said the man. He waved at them to sit on the ground.
They knelt down, Aziz not quite next to Haider, but behind him. When Haider turned around and said, “Chup rehna,” Aziz caught a shadow shuttering his face. He had no intention of speaking and was hurt at the harshness of Haider’s command.
“Haath do,” the man instructed. Haider raised his palm out towards him. He shivered as the man stroked his rough thumb across its fleshy curves, again and again, in a rubbing motion. “Aag hai yahan.”
“Kya?” It was Aziz who asked the question. He couldn’t help it. What the man said made no sense. There is fire here.
The man continued in Urdu, his Pashto accent tracing him to the North-West Frontier Province. “I see fire. Burning, scorching, destroying everything it touches. It’s you, inside.” The man tapped at Haider’s palm. Without raising his head, he lifted his eyes to Haider’s face and peered at him like someone of poor sight trying to read a faraway sign. “I see you trying and trying to hold it. But you fail. Again and again, you fail at this. It appears to me like a burden, this fire.” He fisted his hand and shook it. “You know this fire?”
“Yes,” said Haider. His voice was low. And though he couldn’t see the expression on his cousin’s face, Aziz knew Haider was taking all this very seriously. Haider’s voice was small, just above a whisper, and Aziz had never heard his cousin sound so meek.
“Yes, I see that you know it. It’s like a sister, yes? Familiar, close, part of you. But you must kill it. Let it burn. Let it burn. Let it burn.”
The fortune-teller’s tone shifted from urgent to meditative. It was like a chant. Jalne do. Jalne do. Jalne do.
Aziz shifted. His knees hurt and his discomfort at the situation, the fortune-teller’s obvious nonsense that Haider absorbed so keenly, and the realization that Haider didn’t need him here at all, exacerbated the nerves tap-dancing in his stomach. The man’s scraggly hair made Aziz want to vomit, and his beard, which shot out of his face and covered his ears, made it look like he had no mouth so that when he spoke, it was not entirely clear to Aziz where the voice originated. Somehow, none of this bothered Haider, who continued asking the man many questions. Most of them were about if and when he would be rich.
“Paisa aayega? Mujhe paise chahiye. Will that happen?” Haider’s question came across as a plea.
“Yes.”
“Tell me more,” Haider demanded.
The fortune-teller traced a dirty fingernail across Haider’s palm in a circle.
“There is money, yes. I see a big life. Little animals made of crystal. The newest transistor radio. A gleaming, gold gramophone. You will have grandeur, but only after the fire. The end. Then, life. Somewhere else, not Karachi –“
“Outside Karachi? How? Where will I go? I have no one.” Haider spoke before the man completed his thought. Aziz, who remained a silent spectator after his initial outburst, thought for sure the man would thrust Haider’s hand away. But the interruption didn’t faze him.
“Karachi is the poor man’s mother. If you stay here, you will have nothing. To have wealth, you will have to leave her grasp. Remember always. You have no mother. No father. Don’t mistake his parents –“ at this, the man gestured at Aziz with his head, “– for your own. You will have money, and the power I see you desire. But not here. This is not your home.”
“Can you tell me where to go?”
“No. That is not shown to me. You have come to Shehenshah’s home,” said the man, gesturing to the mausoleum, calling Abdullah Shah Ghazi a term used exclusively by his truest devotees. The King of Kings. “Ask him.”
“I want to be a King too. How will your Shehenshah make that happen?”
“Ask him.”
“I am asking you.”
The challenge in Haider’s voice scared Aziz. The man ran his thumb over Haider’s fingers and sighed deeply.
“It will happen.” Again, the fortune-teller cocked his head in Aziz’ direction. “But keep him close. He will be with you always. And he will also dig your grave.” Then, he dropped Haider’s hand and gestured at him to move away.
Aziz was struck by the last statement. Why was the man saying he would dig Haider’s grave? He was confused, but also ashamed. Like he had been found out. But Aziz loved Haider, he’d been following him around since the day he first arrived from Delhi two years ago. And Aziz was loyal too, he knew that about himself. His Ami called him weak whenever she caught him lying for his older cousin. Even Father de Souza had said to him once, my boy such fidelity may one day harm you. But for Aziz, this was a distinguishing factor. Something to be proud of. All he wanted was to be someone Haider could count on. Someone he could trust and turn to, like family that would never leave. But the man’s ending note – yeh tumhari kabar khode ga – felt ambivalent and ominous. Was it the aura around them – the swaying men and their chanting, the dark night at the shrine – that lent those words an easy menace? Perhaps, thought Aziz, it was a metaphor. Perhaps, all it meant was that Aziz would be with Haider till his last dying breath. Certainly, that’s how Haider understood it.
The palm reading now over, Haider thanked the man profusely and left some rupees in his lap. He didn’t try to help Aziz up, but simply grinned at him and said, “Chalo yaar, ghar chalein.” He appeared to have gotten what he had come for.
“Theek hai,” Aziz said, standing up.
As he brushed off his kurta, Aziz looked at the palm reader. He wanted to catch something, anything he could glean from the long-beared man’s demeanor that would betray his legitimacy as a reader of fortunes and reveal him as a quack. Karachi ghareeb bande ki maa hai. Those were his words, after all. How was anyone to know whether he wasn’t just another poor man in this city by the sea, a charlatan fibbing to make some money? The man remained seated on the rock, eyes closed. It sounded faintly like he was humming.
Around then, men swayed, chanting Jeevay Shah Ghazi, Jeevay Jeevay Shah Ghazi, eyes half shut. It smelled of sweat and damp earth. Through this movement of bodies, Haider led the way within the crowd as Aziz held on his forearm. When they neared the bottom of the hill, Aziz felt a sharp pain in his knee like he had been kicked. Then, a voice. The fortune-teller’s broken Urdu delivering a message, booming and clear like an imam’s azaan but audible only to Aziz. “Mat karna.” Don’t do it. “Karoge, tou maro ge.” If you do it, you will die.
Aziz looked around, wide-eyed, scared. There was no one else near him, just Haider who he clung to, all the way home.
***
On Saturday mornings, Aziz had Karachi all to himself. Or at least, that’s what it felt like when he exited the house early in the morning, right as the sun began its ascent. He was headed to Bohri Bazaar, a weekly Saturday ritual that he looked forward to. Ami, Abu and Haider were asleep, and would remain so until nearly noon, and by then Aziz would already be back with halwa-puri for everyone to enjoy a leisurely brunch. For now, he was careful to close the creaking gate exactly how Haider had shown him, by swinging it swiftly twice, then forcefully driving it into the latch; the movement rapid, noiseless.
The walk from his house to Jamshed Road took nearly ten minutes and was punctuated by the kaaen kaaen of crows overhead. On the way, he passed the Dinshaw Institute of Typing and Shorthand, a family-run business operated by Mr Dinshaw who distributed heart-shaped barfi around the neighborhood every year on Nowruz; a group of four carts being loaded by hawkers with Alphonso mangoes and guavas, each with a donkey laying on its side and resting before another day of laboring began; Dr Xavier’s vet clinic which stood alongside an imposing Grecian-style mansion where, it was rumored, the owner of Hindustan Construction Company lived in hiding during the riots of 1946 before escaping to Delhi; three different doodhwallas on their morning route, delivering fresh cow milk to residents; the now-shuttered district headquarters of the Imperial Bank of India that bore, in red Urdu script scribbled all over the building’s front facade, anti-Hindu slogans like PAKISTAN ZINDABAD, HINDUSTAN MURDABAD and BURN THE COW-WORSHIPPERS. Two years since Partition, but the graffiti remained.
Rounding the corner of Soldier Bazaar, Aziz stopped in front of Abdullah Bakers. The bakery wasn’t open yet, but there were workers inside and he peered through its glass windows to watch them stack steel shelves with rows upon rows of nan khatai. His mouth watered for the buttery biscuit and he considered waiting for the bakery to open so he could purchase a snack, but he had only Rs 2 to spend today.
At the tram terminus – once run by the East India Tramway Company, it had shifted ownership only recently to a local, Pakistani firm – Aziz boarded a petrol-powered tram that could seat up to forty-six passengers. Its covered roof sported an ad for Taj Amla Hair Oil, and the open-air windows brought a light breeze as the tram headed east towards Saddar, crossing Elphinstone Street. Today, Aziz started his trip as the sole rider but by the time he got off at the stop in Bohri Bazaar, all the seats were occupied and the driver’s nasally broadcast of the tram’s schedule and fare could barely be heard over the communal chatter. Soldier Bazaar se Bohri Bazaar, ek rupay, ek rupay.
Bohri Bazaar announced itself to Aziz not through its colonial building facades but by the lingering fragrance of attar on Daud Pota Road. Beneath the protruding balconies with its swinging clotheslines, musky sandalwood and sweet rose scents of perfume oils wafted outside the handful of attar merchants lined up at the mouth of the bazaar. It was early still, and many shopkeepers were out having a cup of tea, exchanging stories of their children and wives in the lull before the midday shopping rush. One man, donning a black and red block-printed circular cap with a cut in the middle, waved at Aziz. It was Shah Chacha, the ajrak salesman who tried every week, without fail, to sell Aziz a shawl by serving a fantastical story of its origin.
Though he knew the stories were all fiction, Aziz enjoyed hearing each one because they all had, at their core, an animal protagonist that fought against and defended an evil force. Somewhere along the way, an ajrak would appear in the narrative, and it would happen to be the one Shah Chacha was holding out. It was like a game they played, Shah Chacha fabricating a tale that became more incredulous each week – sometimes featuring an eagle in the Thar desert, or a markhor from the mountains of Khyber Pass – Aziz nodding along to humor the portly, mustached shopkeeper who he’d been visiting since he was four years old.
Though Aziz wasn’t fluent in the Indo Aryan language of the southeastern province of Pakistan, he understood Sindhi well enough colloquially.
“Aziz chokro, chaa thiyo? You are here earlier than usual,” said Shah Chacha. He swigged back the remaining chai from the stainless steel cup, and set it on the floor next to his shop’s entrance. The local chai wallah would collect it within the hour to wash, dry and refill with piping hot tea in time to distribute after Zuhr prayer.
“Bas, Chacha, woke up early,” said Aziz in Urdu. “I felt restless so I got dressed and left. Even the tram was empty today when I got on it.”
“That’s a sign of a great man. He wakes early, before the sun, and is out the door before it rises.” Chacha’s voice was gruff but kind, like someone with a sore throat who kept apologizing for coughing incessantly.
“Look at us, two great men on another great Saturday.”
Shah Chacha chuckled. “Yes, Aziz Saeen and Shah Saeen. Now tell me, saeen, what has your mother sent you to buy today? Whatever it is, I guarantee it will not make her as happy as this shawl,” he said, picking up the top-most shawl from a stack that reached the bulge of his belly straining against his brown kurta.
“Today’s list is small but I am certain there is no shawl on it. It’s summer, Chacha, you should save your story for when it gets colder outside.”
“No, no, chokro. These shawls are made of cooling material, top quality; they are for the summer itself. They came from far away just now only, maybe five-ten minute before the chai-wallah. Come, come sit.”
Aziz pulled out the stool that Shah Chacha stored behind the cloth stacks. His mother’s handwritten note crumpled in his pocket as he sat down. He knew his mother’s shopping list by heart because Ami asked for the same 3 things each week. A tin of ghee for the week’s meals. A tray, as cheap as possible, to give food to the Hindu beggars because reusing just one meant washing it, which could contaminate the rest of the utensils at home. A 3-pack of envelopes to write to her uncles in Hindustan and ask, again, if there was any news of what happened in 1947 to her sister and brother-in-law, Haider’s parents.
Today’s ajrak shawl story, Aziz quickly realized, was about a kite bird in distress. He nodded along to Chacha’s words but his mind wandered. When Chacha said, “Phir cheel ne aisi awaaz nikali,” and imitated the high-pitched skee-skee of the kite bird, Aziz thought about the sound he had heard on Thursday night as they left the mazaar. The voice of the fortune-teller, the cryptic warning. Don’t do it. If you do, you will die. What was it cautioning against?
Aziz had not told Haider about the voice. What could he really even say? If he told Haider that he heard the haath parhne wala’s voice in the crowd as they left the mazaar and shared the actual words of the creepy premonition, Haider would just hoot and laugh and write it off as Aziz fibbing because he hadn’t gotten his turn. Worse still, he might mimic Aziz and make an act out of it, like the carom incident. Aziz couldn’t speak of this to his parents either; they would chastise him for going to the mazaar in the first place. It was easy to imagine what his Abu would say. That is no place for true Muslim, it is all shirk. We pray to Allah, not a dead man. His Ami too, would shake her head in disappointment and call him weak again.
“Aur phir, cheel ne aise shawl ko uthayi, ke saari aag zabt hogayi!”
“Aag?” asked Aziz. He hadn’t noticed the mention of fire earlier in Chacha’s story, and was caught off by hearing the word now and recalling, again, the start of Haider’s palm reading. There is fire here.
“Chokro, charyo aahin chha, kya?” Chacha looked irritated. It was unlike Aziz to be so disconnected from their Saturday morning rendezvous.
“Sorry, Chacha, maaf kijo, dimaagh nahi chalraha hai.”
“Theek aahe, chokro.”
Chacha folded the shawl and set it back on top of the stack he had pulled it from. Aziz felt remorse at not engaging with Chacha’s story, but he could not bring himself to feign interest at a foolish kite bird tale just now. His stomach, which had been grumbling for nan-khatai earlier, was knotted like one of those balloon animals sold at Clifton Beach.
“Chalta hoon, Chacha,” Aziz stood up to leave. “Apna khyaal rakhna.”
Chacha took the stool and bent down to store it back in its place. As he did, Aziz spotted a matchbox. Red like the fortune-teller’s shirt, it was tucked between two ajraks. Without thinking, Aziz took it and slipped it into his kurta pocket. He straightened his kurta to make sure the box wasn’t evident. The fortune-teller’s predictions rang in his ears: Mat karna. Karoge, tou maroge. Then the oddly soothing chant: Jalne do. Jalne do. Jalne do. Let it burn.
“Khuda hafiz, Chacha.”
“Meherbani, chokro, Allah wahi.” Chacha bid Aziz farewell, in time to welcome forth a pair of women carrying empty shopping bags that they would soon fill with household items from Bohri Bazaar’s winding lanes.
***
MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM AFTER ENGLISH.
The note from Haider was brief. Aziz found it in his English copybook and quickly scrunched it up before anyone else saw it. Not that anyone else paid much attention to Aziz. Sure he had other friends like Charlie and Shahrukh who waved to him in break and asked about his weekend, but that was the extent of how much he socialized with his peers. He spent his break times with Haider, who was in a different section of the school altogether. That was the way it had been ever since Haider migrated to Karachi to live with Aziz and his parents.
As instructed, Aziz headed to the bathroom after class, wondering how Haider had managed to procure firecrackers again so soon. It had not even been a week since the last caning. As he crossed the school grounds to reach Haider’s section, Aziz fingered the matchbox in his pocket. He carried it with him because leaving it at home was too risky. His Ami went through his things routinely, and a matchbox was sure to arouse questions he was not prepared to answer. It thrilled him to have this secret.
“Mr Aziz! A word, please.” Father de Souza’s voice booming voice filled the corridor, and Aziz stopped mid-step. He turned around.
“Good afternoon, Father,” said Aziz.
“I hope you are well. Staying out of trouble this week?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good, good. You have a bright future ahead of you and I would caution you to steer clear of, uh, any bad influence. Do you understand what I mean?”
The way Father de Souza emphasized bad influence made it clear to Aziz he was referring to Haider. It bothered him. What was this double game Father was playing at, humoring Haider when he was around, and then speaking about him this way when he wasn’t?
“I understand, Father,” said Aziz.
“Good, good. You are a smart and capable young man. It would be a shame to see your potential wasted. You’ve aced your matriculation tests but now, tell me, have you given any thought to what you might do after your intermediary exams?”
“No, Father,” replied Aziz. He kept his answers curt and his gaze lowered. This was not the time to prophesize what we wanted to do after leaving St Patts, not when Haider was waiting for him in the bathroom at the end of this corridor. Aziz was in a hurry to get there, to listen to another one of his cousin’s schemes and tell him all the ways it was a bad idea, and then to help him. Haider coming to him for help filled up all the empty space Aziz had in his life, and that was worth more to Aziz than any amount of caning they would get later.
“Well, when you do, come speak to me. I would be delighted to counsel you.”
“Thank you, Father.”
With de Souza gone, Aziz marched purposefully towards the bathroom. He pushed the door open and called out for his cousin.
“Haider Bhai!”
“Yahan hoon,” replied Haider from inside the last of four squatting toilet stalls.
“Kya scene hai, bhai?” asked Aziz.
“Ek second.”
Aziz tapped his foot as he waited. The tiled floor was patterned with shoe-sized splotches of brown dirt. It was slick and slippery, and stank perpetually of feet and unclean underwear. A half-open window looked out into the courtyard where the school lined up for assembly each morning.
The smell of petrol accompanied Haider as he emerged from the stall. In one hand, he held a glass bottle filled with a dark liquid and in another, a rag that Aziz recognized as the one Ami used to wipe the kitchen counter clean after rolling out chapatis.
“What is all this?” asked Aziz.
Haider smiled. “This is our ticket out of here, brother.”
“What do you mean, Haider bhai?”
“It’s a petrol bomb. All we have to do is light this rag. Then, we’ll throw it out of the window and boom!”
Aziz was scared. Lighting a petrol bomb in school could mean big, big trouble. But Haider’s excitement was palpable, infectious. Aziz didn’t want to disappoint his cousin. The fortune-teller’s voice filled his ears and he nodded quickly, agreeing to the plan. Let it burn. Jalne do.
“When should we do it?”
“Tomorrow. Before assembly.”
“But how? We have to be present in assembly. How can we miss assembly?”
Haider looked at Aziz closely. When he spoke, his voice was measured. “If I miss assembly, de Souza and the rest will notice and get after me like an itch in my ass. But you’re not on their radar. You’re easy to miss. So it must be you who does it, haina?”
Again, Aziz nodded. Haider bhai needs me, he realized, but he needs the fire too. That’s what the fortune-teller said, after all. The fire would manifest the fortune-teller’s predictions.
Aziz considered how all of this would go. He imagined slipping away in the morning to come here, to this bathroom where the acrid odor of floor cleaner crept into your collar. He pictured himself at the window, watching the rows upon rows of boys lined up by grade level, poised to sing the school song. First, he would have to wait out the silence as the barely two-year-old Pakistani flag was hoisted; talking and laughing during the assembly were strictly prohibited. Then, with the white star and crescent rippling in the air, sound would follow. The walls, the ground, and seemingly too the open sky; all roaring with the chorus of a song that remained unchanged for over a century.
St Patrick’s, St Patrick’s
Rise up with faith ablaze
With hopes pure light
Disperse the night
And guide our separate ways
Somewhere in between the lines, a fire. What would it burn? Not the past Haider wanted to erase. The Partition, the death of his parents, the reupholstering of life as he had known it. Nor still would it scorch the truth Aziz wanted to deny: that his devotion to Haider was boundless now but maybe later he would question the line between right and wrong.
“Good plan, right?” asked Haider.
“Yes, Haider Bhai,” said Aziz.
He excused himself into one the latrines. He unzipped his pants and squatted down, humming the school song. The red matchbox fell out of his pocket to the side. He picked it up and tucked it back into his pocket, still humming.
