Pious Woman’s Reward

They came, all the relatives and friends and some enemies too, to pay their

respects, in ones and twos and threes, or bunches comprised of generations, to

mourn the death of the pious woman.

Men, middle aged, going paunchy and balding with worry lines around their

eyes and a sour turn to their mouths, some sporting the special cut of the beard,

their ticket to a seat in heaven. In spite of that ticket they look tired and bothered,

for by now life in this Islamic Republic of Pakistan has gotten to them.

The lying, the dying, the filth and the shattered limbs- not to mention severed

heads –sometimes of animals too, splattered all over in towns and villages. The cost

of things----food, water, transport, medicines, schools, hookers-even the bloody

hookers! Gone are the carefree days of youth when they felt they could amount to

something, go somewhere, preferably to a house in Defense or to Dubai... now it is

just the daily grind of attempting to make ends meet. The running around during the

day chasing water, electricity and flour, in between stopovers to the mosque, and

the nagging at night from wives grown fat and old before their time like wine

fermented in less than standard conditions.

The wives looking anywhere from thirty to sixty years old, are also tired. Of

unintended pregnancies, or hoped-for-and-not-happening pregnancies, of scrawny

babies shitting their guts at night and dying by the morning; or coughing to make

their eyes pop; of always borrowing money, of letting the milk –man squeeze their

bottoms in exchange for a delayed bill; of fighting over each paisa; of foul-smelling

fathers-in-law who want freshly cooked rotis, and mothers-in-laws who resent even

a rare tender moment with their husbands, however warped and stunted the

moment in the overcrowded room, of having no where to go, no one to turn to...
Except Allah, says the Mullah. Yes Allah will reward them for they are pious women.

Then there are skinny teenaged girls already ensconced in the hijab, covering

their heads, leaving just the faces open to public view. More committed ones cover

the face leaving eyes round and black as little plastic buttons. Eyes, instead of

peeping at the world with curiosity and the anticipation of things to come, are

already turned inwards to... something else, for the eyes of the young seek

something. Toddling on cheap, glittery high-heeled open sandals, the only open

thing allowed them; they look at the world and find much that is denied them. Such

as being able to go to the university to study physics because the chaotic motion of

the mad atoms excites them. As does that dark-haired young man, who plays jaunty

tunes on his cheap flute, or the beat of the tabla that sends their feet dancing and

their perpetually anemic blood, surging strangely. So they too learn to block out the

world and its seductions and keep their inner eye on... Allah, Allah says the Mullah.

From behind the ostentatious hijabs, they look carefully, their eyes intent with envy,

at the young mothers, burdened with joys and sorrows of married lives.

With toddlers in tow they came, the proud mothers--fat, pale and sweaty;

dressed in cheap polyester shalwar-kameezes and reeking of fried onions –for

where is the water to wash eh? And one has to go places whether one has washed or

not. The children straining at their hands, uncomfortable in the unwashed and too-

big polyester suits they have been hastily stuffed into on this hot and humid day and

brought to this house in this neighborhood close to the military airport in this city,

Islamabad: the land where Islam resides. Though now many other things do too.

The neighborhood, a collection of hastily put together clap-board houses

lining both sides of narrow unpaved streets bordered by open sewers, sprang up
over the past years, when after the planes crashed in buildings far away there was a

frantic demand for services by all who had come to town to help fight the terror that

had gripped the world. The city, filled with sleepy government offices run by sleepy

little officers, who came to Islamabad only in transit to a better posting, till then had

been lying happily asleep at the foot of the Margalla Hills. It was after the burning

planes it found itself in the thick of things (for or against?) unprepared for the task

it was expected to perform – but willing, ah so willing to help.

Once word got round that white people have come with bags of green money,

better than the red one they were used to, these people, different shades of brown,

came. From dusky brown to “wheatish” and others off-white and light –white, and

almost-white. They came in droves, extended families, dragging undernourished

animals, children and wives, doddering parents; many collapsing on the road falling

in the road- side ditches, where fresh earth mounds and the green flag mark their

heroic ends. They came from down country, from up-country, from in country from

little villages, from parched fields and from the mountains. The same mountains that

in another couple of years would heave a mighty sigh and topple over each other to

bring in more green money and more white people to the infinite delight of the

brown ones and the crowded city.

Cooks, dhobis, malis, sweepers, shopkeepers, cobblers, fruit sellers, imams,

drivers---of vehicles and of shady schemes, security guards and general gofers, and

real generals, all to serve and to make a better life for themselves, as did the pious

woman. Allah had looked on them kindly at last, for they are pious people in this

land of the pure. Did Allah not say that He watches out for his own?

Her son, a young man in search of a decent life like the rest of them had
brought her here. She did not wish to leave her own place in Sambrial, the little

border town famous for its sugarcane fields, the plants growing tall to hide those in

need of relief-, of all kinds. Alone or in pairs. To leave the house with a courtyard

where chickens rooted through the garbage and where she gave Quran lessons to

local girls, teaching them to become pious women. She came for she had no choice.

The house is crowded already. With one room reserved for men and the

other for washing the corpse, the women squat in the corridor separating the two

rooms, spilling over onto the broken tiles of the narrow verandah. With the

afternoon sun beating down mercilessly, the flies buzzing incessantly and the smell

from the open sewer hovering like a drone over it all, the atmosphere is stifling.

There is the sound of whimpering interspersed with a howls. O my dear

sister why did you go... what will I do? She was not even old enough to die, lamented

someone. When is a woman old enough to die? 55, as this pious woman did. Or is

one old enough when one is done. With what? Raising children, burying children,

imparting piety or battling disease? For she did that too---lugged her steadily failing

kidneys around for years on swollen feet. Did she die because her kidneys failed her

–or she them?

In this day and age of advanced medical science one wonders. It is God's will they

said, marveling at the mystery of His ways. Given her pious ways and the good she

did, she should have lived to be a hundred. God in His infinite wisdom calls back

sooner those he loves most. And who could have been dearer to Him than she? Does

the fact of her son’s or her own inability to afford medical care figure into her death?

It is God's will they insist quickly lest some disturbing thought take root in their

minds.
 The men sit outside, after formally offering their condolences to the red-eyed

son. His uncle, mother's brother, who had recently found the love of God when that

of His people – especially that of his fair wife and have his dusky mistress, was

denied him. The latter got tired of his promises and turned to the bearded Colonel

who brought her gold bracelets– one after each of his trips to FATA where he was

fighting the good fight. The wife just got tired. A pious man with free-flowing beard

and the “gatta” mark of the devout on his forehead, giving him gravitas of sorts,

Uncle presides over the proceedings. While reciting Surat Fateha, immersed in

thoughts ecclesiastical he thinks also of practical earthy matters related to such

situations. He is worried. Most of the city roads are closed today, because of the

high-level American Visitor. “Very high, the highest”, says Mr. Fahim, a driver at US

Embassy, with a smug look. Mr. Fahim was briefed along with all other Embassy

staff about the arrival of the high level Visitor to Islamabad, coming to boost the

morale of US troops. As happens in these circumstances when officials move, and if

they are that high, as is this one, this little earth’s magnetic field can be altered with

who knows what effect?

The city is locked down; hell the whole country is locked down. Only this

road or that is open to essential traffic. Baton –wielding policemen, their wiggly

abdomen hanging over their belts, decide whether your move is essential or not, and

how it can be made one from the other .The brother is worried about getting the

corpse to the graveyard. They say the road to the graveyard will open after Asr

prayers but one never knows. What if there is a demonstration? The roads would be

impassable. He looks heaven-wards for direction.

After the formal commiseration the men congregate around Mr. Fahim, who
was to be on duty at the embassy. There was to be a meet and greet with the Visitor

in Raphael Garden, introduced by the US Ambassador—just as Ambassador Raphael

had introduced another high –level official, a Pakistani, in his dress uniform, shiny

middle parting, toothy grin and thick glasses to Embassy staff years ago. Those two

–standing so smartly shoulder –to –shoulder, and then leaving the world together

too, in the ill-fated plane, leaving behind only the glasses and the Rafael garden.

Where are they now? Those for whom the city had then stopped? All shake their

head in wonder at the mysterious working of Allah’s will.

A cotton sheet is spread in the center of the room. The women sit there, some

reading the Quran and some running prayer beads. Some younger women huddle in

the corner, ostentatiously avoiding contact with the Quran or the prayer beads or

the sheet on which these "pure" things are laid out, so that no part of their impure

bodies – they are menstruating – should touch that purity. They sit by themselves,

proud in the reassuring evidence of their fertility, gossiping, and giggling into

dupattas held to their mouths. The other women middle-aged and menopausal with

that dry, no-nonsense look, relieved of the duties and the mess connected with the

reproductive period, view the huddle in the corner with self-righteous disdain. “My

poor sister”, says one, “just last Friday she was sitting out on the veranda fanning

herself... she looked all right to me...”

“Yes but did you see her feet they were swollen as big as a double- roti... “

“May Allah bless us all. That is the son, is it not”? Says one as the distraught

young man, stocky and spreading, in crumpled clothes and uncombed hair goes into

the little kitchen looking for his wife, who with her Mongolian features and calm

demeanor is creating quite an excitement.

“Sad? I am sure she is more glad than sad”.

“Look at her she is not even crying! That is so unseemly...”

“Why should she cry, it was not her mother who died, and Lord knows there are

some of us who do not cry even then” says one with fire in her eyes and calluses on

her hands. The group turns to contemplate her, settling in to hear more.

“These foreigners are different from us, they do not feel the same things we do,” says

a wise one defusing the situation, to the disappointment of the fertile crowd.

There is commotion in the overcrowded corridor. The women crouching

there stand up to avoid the soapy water running out from under the bedroom door

beyond which the corpse of the pious women is being washed. One fat lady is not

able to maintain her balance, slips and crashes into the huddle of fertile ones. But all

take in stride, after all these things happen; she sits ostentatiously rubbing her foot

between bouts of the required whimpering. The children run underfoot slipping and

sliding in the cool soapy water, slithering like little fish enjoying the distraction of

their mothers, who look on, lamenting the mangling of the new clothes.

The bedroom door opens again and a woman comes to get a copy of the

Quran. All conversation stops, there is a hush as all eyes follow her with respect and

awe as she, oozing piety from every pore, picks her way gingerly across the slippery

floor. Another woman brings out the discarded clothes of the pious woman, the ones

she died in, and to be given away to the local sweeper for they have come off a

corpse. A wailing woman jumps up from a huddle on the floor and snatching the

clothes clutches them to her heart, buries her head in them and bursts into loud
sobs. This is the pious woman's sister. Soon others, pure as well as impure ones,

surround her and there is a general crescendo of wild wailing which makes the men

stop their awed interrogation of Mr. Fahim to focus for a minute on the affair at

hand.

The lady returns to the room with a copy of the Quran held aloft and now the

corpse, washed and readied with the Quran laid beside it, is ready to come out.

There is not much time, for the Friday prayers have already been offered and the

body has to be buried before Magreb prayers, even though the woman’s daughter

who lives with her husband in Texas has unfortunately not arrived yet. The girl has

reached Karachi, but because of the Visitor’s arrival and the closing of the airspace

around Islamabad, the schedule of all the airlines has gone haywire. So the daughter,

pregnant with the third baby, with the two older ones accompanying her, is in a

Pakistan International Airlines plane stalled on the tarmac of Karachi Airport. What

can one do? It is God's will. There is some wisdom in Him not allowing the daughter

to see her mother's face for the last time. It is to prevent her water bag bursting,

because of shock, is the consensus opinion.

Make way, they are bringing out the body. Some start loud Quranic recitation.

The women stand against the wall to give space to the charpoy on which the body is

being brought out. There is a bit of struggle in the doorway, the charpoy is an inch

too broad and cannot come through the door. Stop. Freeze. It is being twisted this

way and that while keeping it flat. Lady with the Quran has to stay in the doorway as

well. But we can turn the charpoy around. No the body has to come out with the

head pointing towards Mecca, it cannot come out feet first that would be sacrilege...

so the struggle goes on. They twist this way and that. One bright young thing offers a
scientific fact, since the earth is round it does not matter, her head will eventually

point to Mecca. Quiet you brazen thing her mother admonishes, was it for this

insolence that you were educated? Let your elders sort this out. And then the string

charpoy with the body in its white cotton shroud is given one twist too much, and

one shake too energetic and the body slides off the charpoy, and to the horror of the

congregation goes calmly sliding down the corridor. Sliding on the soapy water,

thudding against the walls as it slips out on the verandah where the men are

congregated, all looking up as the Chinook helicopter carrying the Visitor from the

Military airport makes its way across the clear afternoon sky towards the

Diplomatic Enclave and the US Embassy. They miss the glissade of the corpse of the

pious woman, as it negotiating its way between their feet comes to rest, poised

delicately on the edge of the open sewer, see-sawing gently in the still air of the

humid afternoon.

There is a hush...all one hears is the chug chug of the Chinook. Women peer

from behind the door, wondering if there is a prayer to recite on such an occasion.

Men look on stunned some still following the disappearing Chinook tail. Even the

children freeze mid-action. No one dares breathe let alone sneeze lest the body

topple over to the other side. Did we not say that once the magnetic field is

disturbed, anything could happen?

Then under the instructions of the mullah who is to lead the funeral prayers

for the pious woman, men move forward to pick the body and lay it on the charpoy

that has been brought out quite easily. No harm done, the mullah pointed out,

because through all the sliding and the slipping the slithering and the dipping, as the

corpse traversed the room, the head continued to point to Mecca. And this, says the
Mullah, is the reward for being a pious woman. Allah watches out for the pious

ones—high-level visitors not withstanding.

Copyright © Samia Altaf 2019. All rights reserved.