A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (29 page)

“What?”

“I’m in the Aapbara Police Station. The SHO let me call you.” Ali spoke in Sindhi but he knew the SHO could understand every word he was saying.

“You’re in Islamabad?”

“Yes, Baba.” Ali’s voice caught on his name. “I was … I was in a march.”

“A march?” It was to his father’s credit that he didn’t sound shocked, but Pir Sikandar had not always been a man who could stay in control of his reactions.

“For the judges.”

A long pause this time, a deep exhale and inhale. “I saw that on the news. It looked bad. Are you all right?”

“I’m all right. A little bumped about, but …”

“Let me talk to him.”

Ali handed the phone over to the SHO. Ali was on autopilot now, relieved to have two grown-ups to whom he could turn the situation over. They spoke to each other, but Ali wasn’t listening to the SHO’s responses. He closed his eyes, wishing he could sink down into the chair, even though its seat was torn and one leg was shorter than all the others.

At last the conversation ended, and the SHO handed his phone back to Ali. Ali pressed his ear to it, enjoying the warmth against his bruised skin. “Ali? Just stay there. I’m coming on the seven o’clock flight. Don’t worry.”

Ali nodded even though his father couldn’t see him doing it. Then he switched off the phone and handed it back to the SHO. The man pocketed it, then pulled out the chair and told him to sit.

“You can stay in here until he comes for you.”

“Thank you.”

Ali was so tired he could have fallen asleep for a thousand years. He lowered himself down gingerly; no position felt good with aching ribs and fingers, and an assortment of bumps and bruises that ran all the way up and down his spine. He had never been in this much pain in his life.

His head was starting to fill with fog, and although he was wondering why the SHO was giving him special treatment, instead of leaving Ali to rot in the cells with the others, he knew that it was because of Pir Sikandar Hussein Shah of Sukkur. That was the way it always went in Pakistan: you could get into any kind of trouble—you could even kill a man—and as long as your father knew the right people, you’d never have to pay the price. Maybe Pir Sikandar promised the SHO a nice little sum of fifty thousand rupees to make sure that his son didn’t have to endure the ignominy of jail, shaming him and bringing him down from the treetops, onto the ground where the ordinary people had to live and survive.

The SHO glanced toward the door to make sure it was shut, and then he sat down at the desk, opposite Ali. He leaned forward and started talking in a soft voice, and Ali realized he wasn’t hearing Urdu or even Punjabi, but Seraiki, that sweet language spoken by people from the lands on the border of Sindh and Punjab. If an artist drew a map of Pakistan not in solid inks but in watercolor, you’d see a soft melting line between the provinces, blurred and seeping onto the page, and that was the way Seraiki people lived, between the spaces where Punjab and Sindh knock into each other.

“My village is in southern Punjab,” the SHO was telling Ali, who understood him perfectly, as all Sindhi speakers could. “We’ve been devotees of Khwaja Khizr for six generations. We’ve been many times to his shrine, where your village is. The Sufi poetry written in his honor is sung in our village. Some in my family are followers of Pir Sikandar Hussein. I cannot have his son in my jail, even for a single day. It would be a matter of great shame for me.”

He got up, left Ali alone with his thoughts. Ali closed his eyes. Would it be too hypocritical to offer a prayer of thanks to the saint, who saved Ali’s neck, even though he never asked for the favor? Ali had been maybe five times in his life to the shrine. He said it anyway, hoping that the saint wouldn’t think him a hypocrite. And then he drifted away.

The last flight from Islamabad to Karachi left at one in the morning, and it was a rush to get out of the jail and into the airport in time to make the plane. Somehow they managed it, though. The SHO offered them dinner but Pir Sikandar refused, saying that he didn’t want to put the man through any more trouble. Father and son ate, instead, at a little roadside restaurant on the way to the airport that served fresh barbecued food. Ali was ravenous, but when he tried to eat the chicken tikka his jaw throbbed and he was forced to mouth down the food half chewed. It saved him from having to say anything to the man sitting across from him at the table, who, despite all the DNA they shared, was a stranger to him.

It was not until they were both sitting in the plane, strapped into their seats, that Ali was able to relax. Everything was swirling through his mind like a parade of scenes from a movie montage, but he was just too drained to do anything more than watch them and then let them go. He wanted to worry for Imran, Ferzana, Bilal, and most of all Salma, but the relief that he was not in jail was much greater in comparison. These were days in which thousands of people had disappeared, or been arrested by the government for engaging in “terrorist” activities. The army had practically been waging war against the people of the Frontier and Balochistan, thanks to George Bush’s influence on Musharraf. Ali knew he had come close to becoming one of its victims. He was not ready to die for his country yet, but if he’d been one of those nameless victims, shot or bombed or jailed or simply disappeared, nobody would call him a
shaheed,
or put him in a martyr’s grave.

He leaned his head back in the seat, although any way in which he tried to twist his body caused more pain. The lights in the cabin were dimmed and the plane began to taxi down the runway. His father was sitting with his eyes closed, his hands resting on his knees. He was whispering a small prayer under his breath; Ali suddenly remembered that Pir Sikandar had always been afraid of flying.

With a bump and a thrust, they were airborne, and Ali looked out at the lights of Islamabad dropping away beneath them, the darkened line of the Margalla Hills standing guard over the city. The plane tilted sharply and pointed one wing toward earth, pivoting to make the turn southward to Karachi. Sikandar gripped his knees a little bit tighter, and Ali could see his knuckles start to grow white. He patted his father’s hand awkwardly. “It’s all right, Baba. We’re in the air, look, we’re practically home already.”

Sikandar squinted one eye open, then quickly shut it again. He murmured, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to sleep.”

Ali resisted smiling. His father was too proud to admit that he was terrified of going down in a great big fireball of death. Ali had no such fears; planes relaxed him, put him to sleep. His eyelids were being tugged downward, so he leaned back in his seat, trying to find a comfortable place for his arms to rest, and thought about Sunita.

Suddenly, Ali was shaken awake by a pocket of turbulence. The whole cabin began to rattle, dishes in the galley clattering in their trays, the luggage in the overhead bins banging around against the doors of the compartments. The flight was not full, and some people still slept through the racket, but Sikandar sat bolt upright, his eyes open wide, glimmering with fear. He looked around from side to side, trying to see what was going on. The seat belt sign flicked on, and Ali glanced down to make sure his father was wearing his, then gazed back up at his face and tried to breathe slowly for him. Sikandar’s teeth were clenched, his jaw tense.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, Baba,” Ali said softly.

The shaking got worse and Sikandar grimaced. “Where’s the air hostess? Why isn’t anyone telling us what’s going on?”

“It’s just turbulence. An air pocket. Don’t worry. It’s like bumps on a road, when you’re in a car.” Ali’s first instinct was to soothe him, to reach out and grip his arm, give him some sort of comfort. It confused him; he’d hated him for so long that he felt he should be enjoying watching him frightened and uncomfortable. He hadn’t even talked to Ali about the march, or what he was doing there. Yes, he’d dropped everything to come up and get Ali out of jail, but wasn’t that more out of a need to save face than it was to save his son? Appearances had always been more important to Pir Sikandar Hussein than anything else.

But maybe it was up to Ali to talk.

The prospect of having this conversation with his father made him recoil in fear. It was scarier than facing the police in the march, seeing their faces with their teeth bared and their batons lifted in the air, ready to bring them down on the protestors’ heads. The last time Ali was this scared was in the moments after the explosion at the rally for Benazir, when he raised his head and realized he was still alive, but others around him were dead. It was his only chance, though. They were no longer in Karachi, where normal rules applied. On the ground, Sikandar was strong and Ali weak. In this metal tube going at six hundred miles an hour, twenty thousand feet in the air, Ali could dare to take the first step, freed from gravity and of the pain of the last five years.

He took a breath, swallowed hard. “It was terrible, today, at the march. They teargassed us. They were beating up girls. I never saw anything like that before.” He spoke slowly, his voice low, trying hard to control his nerves.

“What were you doing up there?” Sikandar muttered through clenched teeth.

“I joined the People’s Resistance Movement. We made a plan to go together and show our support for the judges.”

Sikandar let out a snort. “Those corrupt bastards? They’re not coming back. Don’t waste your time.”

He was not telling Ali directly that he didn’t want him involved, but Ali could sense it. He replied, “I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I want to be a part of it; I want to make a difference. We’re all tired of the way this country’s leaders have been plundering the nation. We want a change.”

Sikandar turned his head to stare at Ali, who tried to meet his father’s eyes, although turning his neck sent a spasm of pain all the way down his spine and into his hips. He felt braver, though. And he came out with what he’d been dying to say since the beginning of all of this. Or maybe even further back: for all of his adult life.

“Baba, every government since Bhutto has been corrupt down to the core. Bhutto talked about socialism and equality but he acted like the worst kind of dictator when he was in power. General Zia turned the whole country into a bunch of raving fundos. Nawaz Sharif made a fortune out of selling every state asset off to his cronies …”

Dare he say it? Dare he talk about his father’s beloved Benazir? Another bump hit the plane, sending them up and then down in a sickening lurch, and Sikandar flinched. Ali could stop now, turn back down this path, and subside into sullen indifference, but something had been cut loose inside him and he went on, his words gaining momentum. “And Bibi? Marrying Asif Zardari? Look at what they’ve done. Mansions in Surrey, the South of France. She lives like a queen in Dubai. Every taxi driver in Dubai knows about her palace in Emirates Hills. What has she done for this country?”

“You don’t understand—”

“You’re right, I don’t understand how you just sat there and went along with all of them, even when you knew they were wrong. How? Why?” His voice still cracked on the last word.

Even in the dimmed lights of the cabin Ali could see the familiar angry flush creeping across his father’s cheeks, although there was no whiskey in his hand to help it along. Sikandar started to push himself out of his seat, but the seat belt clamped over his stomach kept him trapped in the chair. The veins in his neck bulged and for one second Ali feared he would have a heart attack and die right there next to him. Then he realized that this man who had endured the last fifty years, associated with political goons and racketeers of the worst kind, been married three times and buried a wife and child, was strong enough to deal with his son, even in the midst of the turbulence that was his worst fear.

“We had to. I had to. It was a matter of our survival. You can’t be a zamindar and make enemies out of people in power. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s the way it’s always been done. Your grandfather, your great-grandfather, do you think they could fight people who could cut off their water, seize their lands?” Sikandar glared straight ahead, one wary eye still looking for trouble, a wing on fire, an exploding engine; he still couldn’t face Ali. But at least he hadn’t lapsed into stinging silence, which always made Ali feel foolish and small. At least this time he was trying to explain. “The British, the Talpurs—they would have crushed us. They only cared about power. We had to play the game that way. At least we zamindars care about Sindh.”

“I care about Sindh!”

“No, you don’t. If you did, you’d take interest in the lands, in politics. You’d work with me to make sure that we’re strong, you’d be by my side. But you don’t want to be a feudal like me. I can see it. You haven’t wanted anything to do with me for the last five years. I’ve lost you.”

“Everyone hates the feudals,” Ali began. “They always say it’s our fault Pakistan is the way it is.”

Sikandar shook his head. “They’re wrong. The feudals are a dying breed. We died years ago. We killed ourselves with our own stupidity.”

He sank back and pressed his forehead against his fist. For the first time, Ali realized his father was old. And sad. And tired. His day, for all intents and purposes, was over. Ali’s had just begun.

“You do what you like,” Sikandar said. “You’re old enough to know your own mind. I can’t stop you from doing what you want to do. Just don’t forget about where you came from. Don’t forget about your history.”

Ali couldn’t understand what had just happened. He was so lightheaded that he could float away like a balloon released into the air, the hand that was holding on to it so tightly letting go and allowing the string to slip through its fingers. A terrible sadness flooded through him. He sat back in his seat, breathing deeply, tasting a bittersweet liberty mixed in with the stale air-conditioning and scents of frying food from the galley. Not exactly freedom, but a turning point between him and his father. But where would he and Sikandar go from here?

And then, just like that, the turbulence stopped. A moment later, the pilot’s voice crackled through the loudspeaker, telling them that they had started the descent to Karachi.