Shame (36 page)

O reluctance of a father to accept his daughter's Beastliness! Up
in smoke: certainty, obligation, responsibility. Raza Hyder con-
sidered the option of forgetting the whole thing . . . that night,
however, he was visited by a dream of Maulana Dawood, and the
dead divine yelled at him that it was about time he started
believing that a devil had got inside his daughter, because the
whole business was a test of his faith devised by God, and he had
better choose what he really cared about, his daughter's life or the
eternal love of the Deity. Maulana Dawood, who had apparently
gone on ageing after death and was more decrepit-looking than
ever, added unkindly that if it was any help he could assure Hyder
that Sufiya Zinobia's antics would get worse rather than better,
and in the end they would certainly terminate Raza's career. Raza
Hyder woke up and burst into tears, because the dream had
shown him his true nature, which was that of a man who was pre-
pared to sacrifice everything, even his child, to God. 'Remember
Abraham,' he told himself as he mopped his eyes.

So Hyder and Shakil were both distressed, that morning, by the
sense of being out of control of their lives - by the stifling pres-
ence of Fate . . . Raza realized that he had no option but to talk to
Sufiya Zinobia's husband. Never mind that foolishness with the
ayah; this was serious, and the fellow had a right to know.

Shame ? 246

When the General's ADC presented himself to Omar Khayyam
Shakil and said sadly and in some puzzlement that the C-in-C
required the doctor's presence on a little fishing expedition, Omar
began to quake in his boots. What could be so important as to
make Hyder spend the day with him while the city was exploding
with post-electoral fireworks? 'This is it,' he thought, 'that ayah
has done for me.' On the drive into the Bagheeragali hills he was
too afraid to open his mouth.

Raza Hyder told him that they were going to a stream that was
famous both for the beauty of the surrounding wooded slopes and
for the legend that its waters were haunted by a fish-hating ghost
of such ferocity that the many plump mahaseer trout who passed
that way preferred to leap on to the hooks of any anglers who
fished there, no matter how incompetent they were. That day,
however, neither Raza nor Omar Khayyam would succeed in
landing a single fish.

Rejection by mahaseer trout: why did the fish not bite? What
made the two distinguished gentlemen less appealing than the
ghostfish? Being unable to enter into the imagination of a trout, I
offer my own (fishy enough) explanation. A fish seeks, in a
fishook, a kind of confidence, the hook communicating its
inevitability to fishlips. Angling is a battle of wits; the thoughts of
the fishermen pass down rods and lines, and are divined by finny
creatures. Who, on this occasion, found haunted waters easier to
stomach than the ugly descending thoughts . . . well, accept don't
accept, but facts are facts. A day in wading boots and empty bas-
kets at the end of it. The fish delivered their verdict on the men.

Two men in water discussed impossible things. While all
around them koels, pine-trees, butterflies added a fantastic
improbability to their words . . . Raza Hyder, unable to get
revenge-plots out of his mind, found himself thinking that he was
placing his fate in the hands of a man whose brother he had exter-
minated. O suspect sons-in-law! Doubt and gloom hung over
Hyder's head and scared away the fish.

But � even though Iskander Harappa in his death-cell believed

In the Fifteenth Century ? 247

that men would wait a lifetime for revenge - even though I am
going to have to reopen this blasted possibility, because Hyder has
got it into his head - I simply cannot bring myself to see our hero
as a brooding, biding-his-time menace out of a revenge tragedy. I
have conceded that his obsession with Sufiya Zinobia might have
been genuine; beyond that, or even because of that, I stick to
my guns. Too much time has passed without any hint from Omar
Khayyam that some terrible deed of retribution was in the off-
ing; it seems to me that he has made his choice, choosing
Hyders, rejecting family; that Omar-the-husband, Omar-the-son-
in-law, has long since disposed of the shade of Omar-the-brother,
mourning for the sibling he never knew, darkest of horses, waiting
for his chance. - It is tiresome when one's characters see less
clearly than oneself; but I have his three mothers on my side. -
And Raza can't have taken his own worries too seriously, because
he ended up telling Omar Khayyam everything, the headless boys,
the semen traces, the veil. - And if he didn't, well, then, nor
shall we.

Two men in a fast-flowing stream, and over their heads
thunderclouds, invisible to human eyes but alarming to fishy ones.
Omar Khayyam's bladder had begun to ache with fear, the fear of
Sufiya Zinobia replacing his fear of Raza Hyder, now that he had
realized that Raza was turning a blind eye to the Shahbanou affair;
and a third fear, too, the fear of what Raza Hyder was proposing.

The sacrifice of Abraham was mentioned. The painless, fatal
injection. Tears streamed from Hyder's eyes, plopped into water,
their saltiness further discouraging the already scornful fish. 'You
are a doctor,' Hyder said, 'and a husband. I leave it up to you.'

The action of mind over matter. In a hypnotic trance the sub-
ject can acquire what seems like superhuman strength. Pain is not
felt, arms become as strong as iron bars, feet run like the wind.
Extraordinary things. Sufiya Zinobia could enter such a state, it
seemed, without external help. Perhaps, under hypnosis, a cure
could be effected? The wellsprings of the rage located, burned
away, drained . . . the source of her anger discovered, and
made still. Let us recall that Omar Khayyam Shakil was an illus-

Shame � 248

trious medical man, and the professional excitement had led him
to Sufiya Zinobia years ago. That old challenge had been
renewed. Raza and Omar Khayyam: both men felt themselves
being tested, the one by God, the other by his science. And it is
common for males of the species to be incapable of resisting the
idea of a test ... 'I shall watch her closely,' Omar Khayyam said.
'There is a possible treatment.'

Nobody does anything for just one reason. It is not possible
that Omar Khayyam, for so long shameless, was made brave by a
twinge of shame? That his guilt over the Shahbanou business
made him say, 'There is a treatment,' and so face the worst danger
of his life? - But what is undeniable, what I do not attempt to
deny, is that courage was shown. And courage is a rarer thing than
evil, after all. Credit where it's due.

But what confusion swept over Raza Hyder! A man who has
decided to do away with his daughter for religious reasons does
not relish being told he has been too hasty.

'You're a fool,' General Hyder told his son-in-law. 'If the devil
comes out again she will tear off your stupid head.'

To come to the point: for some days Omar Khayyam watched
Sufiya at home, playing with the numberless children, skipping for
them and shelling pine-kernels, and he could see that she was get-
ting worse, because this was the first time that the violence
bursting from her had left no after-effects, no immune-disorder,
no comatose trance; she was becoming habituated to it, he
thought in fright, it could happen again at any time, the children.
Yes, he saw the danger, now that he was looking for it he caught
the flickers in her eyes, the coming and going of little pricks of
yellow light. He was watching her carefully so he saw what casual
eyes would have missed, which was that the edges of Sufiya
Zinobia were beginning to become uncertain, as if there were
two beings occupying that air-space, competing for it, two entities
of identical shape but of tragically opposed natures. From the
flickering points of light he began to learn that science was not

In the Fifteenth Century ? 249

enough, that even though he rejected possession-by-devils as a
way of denying human responsibility for human actions, even
though God had never meant much to him, still his reason could
not erase the evidence of those eyes, could not blind him to that
unearthly glow, the smouldering fire of the Beast. And around
Sufiya Zinobia her nephews and nieces played.

'It's now or never,' he thought, and spoke to her in the fashion
of an old-fashioned husband: 'Wife, kindly accompany me to my
quarters.' She rose and followed him without a word, because
the Beast was not in charge; but once they were there he made
the mistake of commanding her to lie down on the bed, without
explaining that he had no intention of forcing her to, of
demanding his marital, so of course she misunderstood his purpose
and at once the thing began, the yellow fire burning from her
eyes, and she leapt from the bed and came at him with her hands
stuck out like hooks.

He opened his mouth to scream but the sight of her sucked the
breath from his lungs; he stared into those eyes of Hell with his
mouth open like asphyxiating fishlips. Then she fell to the floor
and began to �writhe and to gag, and purple bubbles formed on her
protruding tongue. It was impossible not to believe that a struggle
was taking place, Sufiya Zinobia against the Beast, that what was
left of that poor girl had hurled itself against the creature, that the
wife was protecting her husband against herself. This was how it
came about that Omar Khayyam Shakil looked into the eyes of
the Beast of shame and survived, because although he had been
paralysed by that basilisk flame she had snuffed it out long enough
to break the spell, and he managed to shake himself free of its
power. She was flinging herself around the floor so violently that
she splintered the frame of his bed when she collided with it, and
while she thrashed about he managed to reach his medicine bag,
his fingers managed to reach the hypodermic and the sedative, and
in the very last instant of Sufiya Zinobia's struggle, when for a
fraction of a second she acquired the serene air of a slumbrous
infant, just before the final assault of the Beast, which would have

Shame ? 250

destroyed Sufiya Zinobia Shakil for ever, Omar Khayyam stuck
the needle, without benefit of local anaesthetic, deep into her
rump and pushed the plunger, and she subsided into unconscious-
ness with a sigh.

There was an attic room. (It was a house designed by Angrez
architects.) At night, when the servants were asleep, Raza Hyder
and Omar Khayyam carried the drugged form of Sufiya Zinobia
up attic stairs. It is even possible (difficult to see in the dark) that
they wrapped her in a carpet.

Omar Khayyam had refused to administer the final, painless
injection. I will not kill her. Because she saved my life. And because,
once, I saved hers. But he no longer believed treatment was pos-
sible; he had seen the golden eyes of the most powerful mesmerist
on earth. Neither kill nor cure . . . Hyder and Shakil agreed that
Sufiya Zinobia was to be kept unconscious until further notice.
She was to enter a state of suspended animation; Hyder brought
long chains and they padlocked her to the attic beams; in the
nights that followed they bricked up the attic window and fas-
tened huge bolts to the door; and twice in every twenty-four
hours, Omar Khayyam would go unobserved into that darkened
room, that echo of other death-cells, to inject into the tiny body
lying on its thin carpet the fluids of nourishment and of uncon-
sciousness, to administer the drugs that turned her from one
fairy-tale into another, into sleeping-beauty instead of beauty-
and-beast. 'What else to do?' Hyder said helplessly. 'Because I
cannot kill her either, don't you see.'

The family had to be told; nobody's hands were clean. They
were all accomplices in the matter of Sufiya Zinobia; and the
secret was kept. The 'wrong miracle' . . . she disappeared from
sight. Poof! Like so.

When it was announced that the Supreme Court had upheld the
death sentence by a split decision, four to three, Iskander
Harappa's lawyers told him that a pardon was assured. 'Impossible
to hang a man on such a split,' they said. 'Relax.' One of the

In the Fifteenth Century ? 251

judges who had voted for acquittal had said, 'All's well that ends
well.' Legal precedent, Iskander was told, obliged the Head of
State to exercise clemency after a vote of this type. Iskander
Harappa told his lawyers: 'We shall see.' Six months later he was
still in the death-cell when he was visited by the unchangingly
glum-faced Colonel Shuja. 'I have brought you a cigar,' the ADC
said, 'Romeo y Juliettas, your favourite, I think.' Iskander
Harappa guessed as he lit up that he was going to die, and began
to say his prayers in beautiful Arabic; but Shuja interrupted, 'Some
mistake, beg for pardon, sir.' He insisted that he had come for
quite a different reason, that Harappa was required to sign a full
confession, and after that the question of clemency would receive
favourable consideration. On hearing this Isky Harappa sum-
moned the last of his strength and began to swear at the mournful
Pathan officer. It was a kind of suicide. His words had never been
sharper. The obscenity of his language inflicted stinging blows,
Shuja felt them piercing his skin, and understood what Raza
Hyder had suffered in Bagheeragali two years earlier; he felt the
rage rising within him, he was unable to undergo such humilia-
tion without giving way to the anger, and when Iskander yelled,
'Fuck me in the mouth, pimp, go suck your grandson's cock,' that
was it, it didn't matter that Shuja was not old enough to have a
grandchild, he stood up very slowly and then shot the former
Prime Minister through the heart.

The Beast has many faces. Some are always sad.

A hanging in the courtyard of the District Jail at dead of night.
Prisoners howling, banging cups, sang Isky's requiem. And the
hangman was never seen again. Don't ask me what became of
him; I can't be expected to know everything. He vanished: poof!
- And after the body was cut down, the flight to Mohenjo, Rani
tearing the death-sheet from the face. But she never saw the chest.
And then blind men seeing, the lame walking, lepers cured when
they touched the martyr's tomb. It was also said that this tomb-
touching was a particularly efficacious remedy for disorders of
the teeth.