A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (15 page)

Ali reached the university in the evening with a few minutes to spare, an unusual event he took as a sign he was on the right path. Now that he’d dumped his plans to go to America, he’d have to take his studies more seriously, but he was ready for that, too.

Sunita was sitting on a bench under a banyan tree in the university garden. The tree had been hit by a bolt of lightning in a thunderstorm that sent it smashing straight through a classroom window. To everyone’s astonishment, the tree hadn’t died after the impact, but continued to grow sideways along the wall of the building instead of toward the sky. It was as much an institution in the university as the terrible canteen food and the draconian attendance rules. Countless romances had been conducted under its hunchbacked shade, and Ali had known he loved Sunita when they first sat together on that very bench where she was now waiting.

His heart contracted with pleasure to see her there, her long hair gently moving in the evening breeze, her stack of books set neatly to one side. She was eating an impossibly large samosa, stuffing it into her mouth; she had a small mouth that could open wide: when she was talking, laughing, kissing him. He wanted to laugh with joy at her enjoyment of such simple pleasure, and tell her that he loved every inch of her, seen and unseen, hidden or revealed. Did every pair of lovers in the world feel they were the only two who spoke the same language? No need for conventional greetings between them, just the truth, delivered with sincerity and a pure heart.

“You look beautiful.” His smile faded as he realized she did not look up to meet his eyes. And the memory that he hadn’t spoken to her since Saturday night—more than that, hadn’t told her he was going to Islamabad—resurfaced in his mind, a corpse released from a watery grave that slowly bobbed into view.

Sunita swallowed down the samosa, then turned her eyes to him. “Where have you been?”

His options flicked through his mind.
Think, think. Think of something good. No, wait. Don’t lie. That’ll just make it worse. Tell her the truth.
“I … uh … look, I’m sorry. I was in Islamabad. And my phone was off for most of the time.” He spread his hands out in front of her, palms up, in what he hoped was a conciliatory gesture.

“I know that. But why?”

“Because I couldn’t have it on in the plane,” he said lamely.

“That’s not what I meant. Why were you in Islamabad?”

“Okay, Sunita, I don’t want to argue about this, can we just discuss this in private?” Other students were milling around in the garden, not far from them, so they kept their voices down, their expressions neutral. So much of their relationship had to be conducted in public that they’d grown artful in protecting it under an umbrella of calm. But right now Sunita looked like she wanted to get up and stand on the bench, start screaming, maybe slap him, like the Bollywood movies his mother watched on cable television in the long, lonely nights after his father had gone.

“Why were you in Islamabad?” she repeated.

“Can I sit down?”

“No. Why were you in Islamabad?”

“Look, we’re getting late for class—”

“Shut up and tell me right now or I swear to God I’ll never talk to you again.”

“I went to Islamabad so I could get a US visa.”

Sunita’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“Why do people get visas, Sunita, now can we please …” The patches of sweat were blossoming under his arms and on his back. He had a morbid fear of being like some men in his class who reeked of body odor and sweat, unaware that nobody wanted to sit next to them. He glanced around to see if anyone was already turning away from the guilty stink emanating from his body.

“Are you going to America?”

“Yes … I mean no …”

“Which is it?”

“I was going to, but then I changed my mind.”

“For a holiday?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Everyone had gone now: class had begun. If they weren’t in their seats in another five minutes, they would be marked absent in the class register. Three absences meant a failing grade: Ali already had two absences in the class, Business Communications. He took a deep breath and said, “I wanted to go study in America. I got into a university there, I needed the visa. That’s why I went. But—”

Before he could tell her that he hadn’t gotten the visa, that he had turned around and left, Sunita put up her hand in front of his mouth to stop him from talking more. Her face was naked with pain, as if someone had peeled back the topmost layer of her skin and exposed it to the sun. “When were you going to tell me about this?”

“I knew I would have to, if it all worked out. But I didn’t know if it ever would.”

“Really? Or would you have just gone off to America and told me once you were already there?”

“Sunita. I can explain. Please listen to me!”

“It’s too late.” She got up, swaying unsteadily, her hand pressed to her mouth.

“Are you all right?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” She pushed away Ali’s arm and ran to the bathroom. He followed her, stood outside the bathroom, listening to the sounds of her retching, regrets and unformed apologies now joining his father’s imaginary corpse floating in the rivers of his conscience.

The terrible sounds stopped, but minutes passed and no Sunita emerged. Ali began to worry. What if she’d fainted? He was afraid to check on her: anyone could get the wrong impression if they saw him going into the girls’ bathroom. He could be in serious trouble, be accused of molesting someone. The guards would pull him out and beat him up in the street; the administration would inform his mother, and he might be suspended or even expelled.

His dilemma was solved when a girl came down the hall. He moved out of the way so that she could enter the bathroom, but as she was going in, he whispered, “Excuse me. My friend is in there. Could you just see if she’s okay?” The girl studied him for a minute with suspicious eyes, then nodded her assent and went inside.

Ali leaned against the wall until the door opened again. The girl put her head around the door, her eyes filled with a mixture of pity and weariness. She looked as though this wasn’t the first time she’d been asked to mediate a lovers’ tiff on the campus grounds.

“She’s okay. But she doesn’t want to see you.”

Ali nodded his thanks to her, and she returned to her class, her high heels tapping on the hard floor, ricocheting like gunshots in the empty hall. The fluorescent lights hummed eerily, one of them buzzing on and off, a fault somewhere in the wiring. Ali waited for Sunita to come out, and hoped that she would listen to him if he organized his thoughts more clearly, made his arguments more convincing, his entreaties more pathetic. But twenty minutes passed with no sign of her, and he finally realized that she would stay in the bathroom until he went away. He loved her, so he had to oblige. He climbed the stairs to his class but she never followed suit. Ali left the university at 11 p.m., knowing that Business Communications was not the only thing he had failed that night.

They were standing outside the Sindh High Court, a colonial building made of pink sandstone with graceful gardens and a stately driveway stretching out in front. Its long columns, sweeping staircase, and high windows spoke of the high hopes for justice in a time and place completely different from the battered city in which it stood today.

The gates to the court were locked in preparation for the protests, which had been taking place on an almost daily basis since November 3. Ali was there with the new cameraman, Arif, and another sound technician, Hassan. Ram had quit last month, too upset to deal with going back to work after what he’d witnessed on that humid October night. Ali didn’t know the new men, but it was too serious a day to joke around and establish any kind of relationship beyond the professional.

Behind the gates, everything seemed tranquil, but in front hundreds of men and women gathered in the road that led to the court, marching around in large circles to show their displeasure with what had been happening all year. It wasn’t just about November 3. That was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, the final nail in the coffin—all the clichés that people used when they discussed the “state of the nation” on the current affairs programs, in the newspapers, in drawing rooms at fancy dinner parties. Only on the street had the clichés been put away and rhetoric channeled into action; nobody had witnessed anything like this in Pakistan ever before.

Most of the protestors were lawyers clad in black coats: some carried billboards with antigovernment slogans; others were shouting with their fists raised to the sky, “Go, Musharraf, go! Go, Musharraf, go!” as people clapped their hands and punched the air in time to the beat. Someone had even brought a drum, while others blew whistles in short, sharp bursts, creating a musical din that rose above the traffic from the busy downtown area. The sea of black coats, the grimness of their eyes made it look as though one large funeral were filling up the street.

Policemen and Rangers were lined up in rows, their mouths twisted into fierce scowls. The police carried
lathis
and riot gear, their bodies bulky in their bulletproof vests. The Rangers pointed automatic weapons at the demonstrators, who clutched handkerchiefs ready to wet with bottles of mineral water and tie on their faces in case the police decided to use tear gas.

Other citizens had come to support the lawyers: journalists, NGO workers, human rights activists, teachers, doctors. Ali had been interviewing some of them, recording their thoughts for the camera. A doctor agreed to speak to him, a young, handsome man wearing a black armband and carrying a placard that read
Democracy Now!
“We started our campaign for the restoration of the judges after the emergency was declared and the judges deposed, but really, our protests have been going on since May 12 all over the country, you know. Lahore, Pindi, Islamabad, all over Sindh …”

“Yes,” Ali said. “The day the chief justice came to Karachi.” The events of that horrible day were still fresh in everyone’s minds: the chief justice was to participate in the anniversary celebrations of the Sindh High Court supported by the PPP and ANP, but threatened by the chief justice’s power and popularity, the president instructed his own political party, the PML-Q, to hold a rally in Karachi at the same time to distract from the chief justice’s arrival. Then, the MQM, also Musharraf’s supporters in Karachi, decided to hold their own rally on that day, to show their loyalty to the president. What ensued was that first, bloody power struggle between the two factions, as MQM workers illegally blocked Karachi’s main roads to prevent anyone from getting to the airport to meet the chief justice.

They’d held the city hostage: fifty people dead, bodies lying on the street, armed men shooting anyone who dared go to the airport. Both activists and ordinary people had to hide in their houses as if it were a siege, psychopathic teenagers taking shots at anyone passing underneath the bridges on Shahrae Faisal, the road that let to the airport. They called the people who’d died on that day the martyrs of May 12 …

“The government should hang its head in shame.”

“So what do you hope to accomplish by these protests today?”

“We want the judges restored. We want those who were responsible for the violence on May twelfth to be brought to justice. And we want Musharraf to go.”

“Do you think he’ll listen?”

“He has to. It’s what we want.”

When the doctor rejoined the crowd, Ali watched him for a little while, chanting and walking with the others, until he lost sight of him among the black-coated lawyers. He calculated at least five hundred people were here. The tension weighed the air down, like humidity, making it hard to breathe and think. The day had its own momentum, barreling toward a conclusion that nobody seemed strong enough to prevent. The protestors were edging dangerously close to the police, shouting at them, insulting them. The police remained impassive, although Ali could see some of the Rangers’ hands tightening on the barrels of their guns.

The politicians had been supporting these street protests; Benazir made statements every day that the people wanted democracy, that they wanted her, and that the demonstrations were proof of how desired she was. How convenient, Ali thought to himself, to fuse the two. Or confuse them. Who decided that she knew what the people wanted—and why should it be her? That was the problem here in Pakistan; everyone thought they knew what was good for the people of this country: a nuclear bomb; or Islamic law; or to join the War on Terror, because if they didn’t, Pakistan would get bombed into the Stone Age.

Then the superpowers were telling them what was good for them: America told them they needed democracy. China said they needed military cooperation and warm-water ports. India said they needed to leave Kashmir alone. Afghanistan wanted Pakistan to leave them alone but take in all their refugees. Was it any wonder that the nation had become completely schizophrenic?

When was the last time someone actually cared about what the people wanted? Benazir’s father, Zulfikar, thought he had it figured out:
roti, kapra, aur makan
. Food, clothing, housing. A socialist’s dream, but the world was more complex than that, and so were people’s desires. Back when Jinnah was alive, it was so simple: the people wanted their own country. And he gave it to them. But after that, what next? The leaders who came after him had their own vision about where the country should go. And their visions drove it straight to hell.

Ali’s skull ached thinking about all of this, in the heat of the afternoon, seeing all those angry people, the barrels of all those guns. Benazir, Nawaz, Musharraf, Imran, the army: each one proclaiming himself the savior of this nation. Instead of having the answers, they thought they
were
the answer. And when you asked people to put their faith in a leader instead of in the institutions he or she was supposed to lead, you ended up with the country that they had today: Pakistan, going up in flames, falling apart at the cracks and the seams.

The shouting was getting louder, building into a crescendo that had lost its edges: instead of words, there was one long howl of fury, the sound of a people utterly frustrated, utterly betrayed. It made Ali want to cry. He didn’t know where to go. Twenty-five years of age, and his father was dead to him, his love was gone, his dreams defeated.