Auras of the Jinn: A Pakistani Story

Haider Warraich

Description

Imran is a boy growing up in present-day Pakistan. His family is one amongst many in Mohajir Colony: his sisters work as maids, his father runs a motorcycle repair shop and his mother stays at home. Things change when there is a new visitor in the house - emerging from the dust of the railroad graveyard - as much a disease, a jinn, a drug, as a spiritual voice. The order of things is broken and everyone around Imran is hurled onto a trajectory of thought and action. The novel rests on the frail shoulders of ordinary people. Imran's eyes portray an unreal take on his society and the myriad people brushing past him. It is a living/breathing/kicking palette of Pakistan - a kaleidoscope with all the different characters serving as mirrors in the maze. Beneath the layers, a new subconscious state is revealed, which plays with real and imagined love, the experience of growing up in Pakistan and the detrimental, often absurd, ideals that form the basis of fundamentalism.

Sujets

• Literary
• Genio
• Pakistán
• Literature
• Contemporary history
• Contemporary
• Pakistan
• Jinn
• Saga
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9789351940036
• Langue: English

Extrait

About the Book
Imran is a boy growing up in present-day Pakistan. His family is one amongst many in Mohajir Colony: his sisters work as maids, his father runs a motorcycle repair shop and his mother stays at home. Things change when there is a new visitor in the house - emerging from the dust of the railroad graveyard - as much a disease, a jinn, a drug, as a spiritual voice. The order of things is broken and everyone around Imran is hurled onto a trajectory of thought and action. The novel rests on the frail shoulders of ordinary people. Imran's eyes portray an unreal take on his society and the myriad people brushing past him. It is a living/breathing/kicking palette of Pakistan - a kaleidoscope with all the different characters serving as mirrors in the maze. Beneath the layers, a new subconscious state is revealed, which plays with real and imagined love, the experience of growing up in Pakistan and the detrimental, often absurd, ideals that form the basis of fundamentalism.
About the Author
Haider Warraich was a medical student at the Aga Khan University, Karachi, when he wrote this book - the first of many of his unpublished works of fiction. A regular political and literary contributor to various English newspapers in Pakistan such as Dawn and The News , he has also been published in several international medical journals and is currently a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Warraich is also an avid photographer and public speaker, and writes poetry on the side.

To Ammi and Abu, who showed me the way. And Rabail Baig, who carried me through.
© Haider Warraich, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real characters, living or dead is purely coincidental.
First published in 2010 IndiaInk An imprint of Roli Books Pvt Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 4068 2000 Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail]; Website: rolibooks.com
Also at Bangalore, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, & Mumbai
Cover picture: Haider Warraich Cover design: Massand-Zimmermann Studio
ISBN: 978-93-5194-003-6
Typeset in Centaur MT by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd and printed at Rakmo Press, New Delhi.
AURAS OF THE JINN
Contents
Acknowledgements
Pieces
Tales from Mohajir Colony
Bed 19
Shimmering, Flickering Lights
Lines
Acknowledgements
THERE was a time when I couldn’t fathom how people could read entire books let alone write them. Writing was a lifelong passion and writing a novel was the pinnacle of achievement to me. However, as soon as I completed the manuscript of this book in the summer of 2006, I took out a printout and solemnly kept it in an obscure crevice of my room. About three people read the book in as many years. Everything changed when by chance my path crossed with that of Rabail Baig, a sub editor in Dawn , and the one person singularly responsible for turning this book from an insect-repelling paperweight to a copyrighted entity in the public domain. She infused in me all of the belief she had in the manuscript and helped find it a great publisher. A constant and shining inspiration, for the very first time, the story of my own life was far more fascinating than any I could conjure.
By any standards, I had a conventional childhood, though I never had conventional toys. My world revolved around pens, plugs, toothbrushes and all sorts of inane things. It was with my siblings, Ammo and Gogo – my eternal playmates – that the tradition of storytelling came to be in my life, filling the void between my world and reality. My first piece of fiction was a comic book I drew for a friend when I was pushing nine, moving onto a notebook I filled with short stories that ranged from snakes in the Amazon to mountaineers in the Himalayas. Spurred on by my father, who made sure books (and wisdom) were always accessible, my byline appeared in the newspaper for the very first time in May, 1998. My first editor, Asfiya Aziz, helped me as two eight-issue pieces of fiction were printed in The News , called ‘Brighter Pastures’ and ‘War of the Worlds’.
Imran was proud of being a goody-two-shoes, for not listening to the Shaitaan-fellow – much. He had tried a cigarette once and had choked until his eyes were redder than the dying sun. To repeat the aforementioned stunt would risk putting himself into a situation but would it not be more embarrassing than admitting he had never had a smoke before. At this point he decided to do the first thing that would cross his mind. He took the cigarette, put it to his lips, drew in a long hard puff. His head exploded.
He bent over and coughed and coughed until he could feel his lungs in his mouth. He expected more laughter, but instead, got a pat on the back.
So, between the commercial breaks of this particular lunch break, Imran became one of the Soota Boyz.
Pieces



LINES run across his face. Red runs through the lines, crisscrossing his reflection, trapping it in a web of blood. A few moments pass before the pain surges through him. His lips tremble, a scream yearns for freedom. It stays locked inside. Solemnly, parts of his face fall, fall onto the ground, giving birth to smaller pieces.
His arm remains at the spot where it shattered the looking glass. Chinks of glass are buried in his knuckles and his fingers. There is a splattering of red and maroon. His reflection falls off to reveal a patch of grey cement, unpainted and ugly.
His arm could have been a sword stabbing him.
But there is no comfort here; the pain that he yearns for is epic in its scope and sublime in the anarchy it causes. It’s dignified, not dramatic, like a sharp, chiselled upturned nose, rounded off by a golden nose ring – proud, pretty and fulfilled by the painful piercing.
Imran sees himself missing some pieces, which probably dropped off along the way. It’s like a dream he woke abruptly from, missing out on the tantalising conclusion. He knows where the pieces are – but picking them up and putting them back into place will be an even more painful experience.
Slowly, he retracts his arm from the mirror, and a few more pieces fall to the ground.
The greatest surprises in life are those that leave you dazed, unable to elicit even the slightest response to whatever passed you by.
The entire mirror comes crashing to his feet…
Not a minute passes and he finds himself being wrestled by men and women in white, who drag him back to his bed one limb at a time. He feels his joints stretch and overstretch. The pain continues to amplify like a series of sirens before the Ramazan fast breaks.
In his bed, he looks up at the fan spinning on the ceiling. Or is it him spinning, the fan still?
When Imran was in school, a time that seemed inexorably removed from his present state, he remembered his headmaster, Sir Qudoos, always yelling, ‘Why are you kids so noisy! I want pin-drop silence ! This is a classroom, not a bloody fish market !’ There were two things in that tirade that Imran never understood at that time, until now.
Now, Imran had been places. He had seen what there was to be seen in Pakistan, heard and smelled too. But he had never seen an entire market where fish alone were sold. Every kid in Pakistan had heard of it, all of them had been told so in their classrooms by an irate teacher.
So it was funny that the ward was to remind him of a fish market. The buzzers and beepers went off in a disorganised cacophony of phoney activity. There were heartbeat monitors that sometimes jumped; there were others that only went up in a blare. And then there were alarms that echoed around the ward like the news of a big catch. It infused a weird, agitated, yet amusing hustle amongst the dealers and the wheelers, as the fish-hungry lay transfixed, expecting the unexpected. There were distasteful smells to accompany the discordant tunes of the fish-ward. The disinfectant was so strong, it made Imran wonder whether it was supposed to choke the germs to death. The patients rose up in lurches, coughed like dinosaurs, in the hope of catching the attention of the hawkers competing for a better bargain. Sometimes, when jacked on morphine, they would let their beepers do the talking. But sometimes, when there was the awkward monotone from the heartbeat monitor, Imran would understand the other inconceivable thing Sir Qudoos used to shout out – pin-drop silence .
Imran bent over to look at the sunlight piercing through the steel bars. He thought he could hear the river flow, but surely, he knew that was not possible. Even though there was no watch close by, he felt he could hear time tick. He looked at Kaloo who was looking at him anxiously from his bed across the room. Yes, it must have been Kaloo’s watch – stopwatch – for though it didn’t tell him what the time was, it most certainly informed him of how much was left.
Kaloo didn’t have much time, and so Imran knew he had to start soon. Time waited for no one, and who knew it better than the occupant of Bed 19, now occupied by the shaggy, dark, and weathered Kaloo. Bed 19 had never entertained a guest for more than three days and Kaloo was already half way through.


BED 18 was the best Imran had ever slept on in his life. The four restraints were a bit of a downer, the leather buckles were worn with use; their edges dug deep into his ankles and wrist, leaving purple abrasions. Nevertheless, it was a fine arrangement.
It was the buckle tugging him towards Kaloo, however, that really hurt. Kaloo’s neck was constantly bent towards Imran’s side as if he had already rolled over and was playing dead. Imran liked Kaloo, so he couldn’t really wish him better dead, even though the vigil, the expectation of a story, Imran’s story, wobbled in Kaloo’s eyes like a tear enslaved.
Imran could feel a grumble in his stomach, so without m