The Entrails


  Muhammad Ashfaq  
Since an extra one hundred thousand bucks was by way of a sheer windfall and had
never been a factor in the decision-making equation, they reckoned they were fully justified
in celebrating it.

She dressed up both of the boys to the kill i.e. the best available clothing, but herself had to
be put up with the common attire; she had none else. Hardly any debate was required as to
what would be the merriment like; both Ali and Wali had been clamoring to go to McDonalds
for a long time for a full meal, that is, something beyond morsels and left-over drops of Coca
Cola. Allah Ditta could never – despite his best efforts – manage enough to fulfil their
cherished dream; necessities always availed primacy over the luxuries.

Today they could afford it; Allah Ditta was no more though.  

“Hey, you can’t enter the hall!” The doorman standing by McDonalds probably recognized
them.

Wali – the younger of the two – in his excitement, was already behind the glass-door. One of
the guards rushed to get him off his neck.

“You don’t dare put your hands on my child!” Wali’s mother, in her feeble and pitiable voice
growled at the guard. She looked scruffy in her mid-thirties; the ruins revealed that the
edifice must have been splendid.

Before both sides could get into act, the people around intervened and controlled the
situation. They returned with a shattered dream pining and whining. Although their hearts
were all into it, yet the forces of nature were conspiring to defeat their valued dream. On the
way back she bought them Nan Pakora from a roadside cart, and they were home again.
The same night second tragedy befell the family within a fortnight.


Allah Ditta, like his sons, had too been orphaned at a young age. His mother had died when
he was twelve, and father, a village drummer by profession, left him at fourteen. By that time,
he had dropped out of the school having been consistently beaten by the village
schoolteacher. A paternal uncle, upon his father’s death, rightfully assumed the
responsibility, and deposited him in a close-by Maktab – the ultimate abode of orphans and
near-orphans.

Maktab had sprung only a few years ago just a couple of miles from the village, but made a
pacey progress. From outside, it did not look like a school but a mini fort – a huge complex in
the midst of agri-fields with a two hundred meter kacha access to the pucca road that led to
the border town. Crudely cemented brick walls on all four sides gave the complex a
mysterious and unpleasant look. The gate was iron-plated with razor-sharp spikes fixed on
top of it, and was guarded round the clock by the turban-wearing stick-bearing youth. Inside,
it had long straight halls cut into sections for different grades. Level one was fully reserved
for residence purposes with no windows opening outside but inside the compound. There
was a mess too – operated under the supervision of one of the two deputies to Maktab Chief.
The other deputy looked after the accounts, charity and other funds.

Allah Ditta was kept and fed well at Maktab; his good looks further galvanized. He was taught
Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and the basics of religion. He was also trained in piety and made to
offer his prayers regularly. His heart was not much into it but felt his life here was better
than that before when he was most of the times hungry. He made friends with Haq Nawaz – a
stout and sombre-looking senior student-cum-faculty member. Haq Nawaz himself was
under-training in oration, law, and other advanced disciplines; but also taught basic Tradition
and elementary grammar to junior grades. They remained together for long hours studying,
reading, tickling each other, and playing in leisure time; which used to be in short supply
though.

Otherwise, Haq Nawaz being the chief-whip was an awe-inspiring creature within the
environs of Maktab. He could ruthlessly beat the chained pupils with bamboo rods. It was an
ordinary norm that the students who ran away and brought back by their parents or heirs
were fettered with iron chains. The mere spectre of Haq Nawaz letting loose on deviants and
absconders was quite a deterrent against nurturing of any notions of a life beyond Maktab
boundary walls. Haq Nawaz was also in-charge of the workshop in the cellar of Maktab. He
would go there in routine to oversee the work after punishing the delinquents. A couple of
times, Allah Ditta was also favoured with a sneak into that otherwise out-of-bound section.
He learned that in the cellar fireworks were prepared for the pupils. Shab-e-Barat came and
passed, but neither he nor anyone else got firecrackers to enjoy.  

Maktab Chief – though gave his class no regular lessons, yet it was common knowledge that
he had written over hundred treatises on waging holy war. This was his area of specialization
and his natural eloquence and oration went well with the explosive and fiery subject. During
Friday sermons he would engender awe in the hearts of his enemies – none could guess who
they were, but some invisible and ethereal enemy was omni-present in the very ambience of
Maktab. The brutalities being committed against the brethren across the globe were the main
butt of his verbal attacks. He would extensively dilate upon the enormous need, the
uncountable bounties associated with, and the superiority of this particular article of faith.
It was dreary for Allah Ditta that Maktab Chief would repeatedly perform the same particular
Verses, and then delve deep into their hair-splitting interpretations. He would recapitulate
with his favorite punchline: “Murder has been made obligatory upon you, Brothers!” Allah
Ditta had seen deaths of his parents in tender age and the sermons of death and destruction
would send shivers down his backbone.

This was potent and pervasive indoctrination – although against an equally rough and
unabsorbing terrain.  Allah Ditta felt increasing repulsion and dissonance deep down in his
heart. He was afraid. He wanted to live.

Many a times he felt like talking it out with Haq Nawaz, but he really was not sure how he
would react. Their bond was yet to be put to a test. He thought, he planned, he chickened out
many a times over. He was not afraid of escaping; he was afraid of getting caught and
brought back all fours tied.


One day, however, Allah Ditta escaped from Maktab – for good – leaving behind a note for
Haq Nawaz.

He did not return to the village; none there awaited him. He went to the city. He roamed
around for days searching food, shelter, and job, but did not dare go to a mosque – was
afraid of getting spotted. He nurtured notions to become a helper, a conductor, a cleaner, a
mason, or a waiter at a hotel, but since none knew him, none trusted him, none hired him. So
he could never manage for the next day.

During the initial few months, he slept on the footpath, but then he found his accommodation
under the bridge of now shrivelled river Ravi. Soon he also covered one of the two open
sides of the compartment, and transformed it into a room by putting a door on it.


In leisure hours, it became his favorite pastime to stand up the bridge and observe trucks,
cars, carts, and pedestrians cross the Ravi Bridge. He had a keen eye, and he would love
watching vultures hovering over the river in clear blue skies. These vultures had gathered
slowly as the rich people crossing the bridge in their expensive cars would throw them meat
as charity of their bounties. Looking at the starved and stunted children of his under-the-
bridge community, he would ponder long and hard about these vulture-feeding people.

Many a times he wished he were a vulture.

Thinking it was inconvenient for the rich people to go and buy meat for the vultures, he
ended up inventing a new profitable vocation for himself.  One morning, he went to the near-
by butcher shop and collected the entrails thrown out of the shop in a polythene bag, stood
on the Ravi Bridge, and sold them. Next day the butcher also gratefully cooperated. It then
became his routine. In the morning, he would diligently collect innards from all butcher
shops in the outer city area, stand up the bridge to sell them for good money by the mid-day.
He loved the sight of waiting vultures plucking the falling shards of meat mid-air. It was both
pleasure and profession for him. At sundown, he sat on the hut-hotel by the roadside, read
newspaper, and leisurely sipped tea.


Life was not supposed to be that simple and dull for him. One day he met up Rani – a stray
woman – who had eloped with her paramour from a far off village. The man ditched her in
Lahore, and ran with her jewellery and money that she had fetched with from her parents’
home. As she was scared of going back to her home and getting killed, Allah Ditta purposely
chaperoned her to his under-the-bridge home. Haq Nawaz was on the call of duty to
solemnize their marriage a week later.  

Rani gave birth to two beautiful sons before falling prey to breast cancer to keep it eventful.


The government hospital recommended chemotherapy for which they had no money.
Initially they managed it through painkillers, but then Cancer started living in the home like
fifth member of the family; most of the times the most important one.

Allah Ditta realized that the profession he innovated was now turning into an industry as
more and more people surfaced on the scene with entrails bags. The butchers now also
started to sell their previously useless by-product. A serious dent in his revenues was the
result.

On the other hand, Rani’s health started deteriorating symptomized by extreme pain, lack of
appetite, and sleeplessness. Reduced income coupled with increased expenditure, the boys
now eight and six started feeling the pinch of starvation. Sometimes, he would send them to
deputize for him and sell the entrails bags, but they were too young and tender, and the
competition was fierce.  

Things were getting slowly out of his control. He could not even get his haircut and shave
done for a few months, about which he had been quite particular ever since escaping from
Maktab. More painful, of course, was Rani’s condition; chemotherapy was required and
quickly.


One Tuesday morning (cutting of animals was banned on Tuesdays and Wednesdays), he
took Rani and the boys to the main public transport junction, found an eventful nook, wrote
and displayed the placard: “Save mother of two flower-like sons!” The accounts revealed a
total return of seventeen rupees for the day. While rolling back their old rug that the family
owned for an asset, he muttered unto himself: “Who the hell thought beggars were rich
fellows, and earned more than the daily labourers!” The entire earnings went into purchase
of cough syrup for Ali, bread for the family to be eaten with onions, and painkillers for Rani.

They tried their luck by visiting the government hospital again. The doctor while prescribing
on a piece of paper an expensive painkiller to be bought from a druggist, advised them to
start chemotherapy without any further delay.

Sitting on the hut-hotel, a sea of thoughts went through his mind. Suddenly, there was a
glimmer in his eyes. The newspaper in his hands carried a story that a distraught man had
put his kids for sale and because of the hype created by the media, the President, the Prime
Minister, and the Governor had scrambled to help him; he was offered the job of a sweeper
in the municipality. He went running down the bridge to share it with Rani.

Next morning leaving ailing Rani back home, he took both of the boys to another busy
roadside point, and displayed the banner: “Sons for Sale”. To his utter surprise, nobody
noticed the placard; nobody took him seriously. A few times, looking at his merchandize he
broke into tears.

About mid-day, the area police inspector Khushi Muhammad conducted raid, and stuffed all
of them into the back-cabin of police van along with their rug and the placard, and sped
away. “I am sick of you paupers, and your antics”, said Khushi Muhammad while nudging him
in the midsection with his bamboo hand-stick at the police station.  After receiving both
verbal and physical thrashing from Khushi Muhammad, when they reached back home late
that night they found their woman in agonizing pain. They had no money that night to buy
her painkillers.

This was a terrible night; terrible enough to make terrible decisions.

When the boys were gone to sleep after having one-half bread each with onion, the man and
wife without much deliberation on the matter decided to go into the fold of eternal peace
collectively. They loved their sons and did not want to leave them behind to die of hunger.
“What could be the easiest method?” Rani asked distractedly.

“I don’t know. It’s my first attempt!” He replied curtly. “But I think poison should be the least
painful.”

“Ok, then tomorrow?” She asked emerging from an excruciatingly painful condition.

“Are you finally decided?” He enquired expectantly.

“Yes.” Clarity of head had been her hall-mark all life.

“Do we have money to get it?” Allah Ditta questioned unwantingly.

“I have five rupees, and you?” She said without budging an inch, and forcefully
communicating her resolve.

“May be the same amount.” He started crying and kissing Wali who was sleeping beside him.

“They are a blessing of Allah. Let’s not be thankless while returning His blessings back to
Him…” She kissed Ali, and started coughing which was to go on for a while. Apart from Rani’s
sporadic coughing and trucking sound over the bridge, a sinisterly silence prevailed in the
darkness; none knew who went to sleep when.


The next afternoon when Allah Ditta returned, instead of rat-kill pills, he carried newspaper
in his hands – again.

“I have an idea – a real good one.” He said rather soberly.







To read the rest of this story please download the full text
from the 2010 Anthology for £1.99/$3.10 HERE



© Muhammad Ashfaq


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