I LOOKED UP AT WALI. Oblivious to his surroundings, he was standing on his seat, absorbed in the game again. Afro-kid was jumping up and down on his chair along with everybody else. His head was flailing back and forth like a head-banger lost in the music. The shouts of ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ had now been replaced with a deafening wail of whistling and yelling.
I was convinced that surviving this blasted insane asylum of a game would be a matter of pure luck. Grudgingly, I took my seat. I grabbed the hem of Afro-kid’s robe and gave it a couple of tugs.
‘Sit down,’ I said, patting his seat. ‘Come on brother, sit down.’
‘Are you from America?’ he asked, looking down at me with a big grin.
‘If you sit down, I’ll be happy to tell you where I’m from.’
He dropped into his seat and offered me his hand. He was dark-skinned, around twenty years old and skinny as a twig. His hair was sticking out of his white headband like Medusa’s snakes and he looked more than a little crazed.
‘Pleasure to meet you!’ I grabbed his hand and gave it a single shake.
‘Yo, ma maan!’ he cried, trying to sound like some urban homeboy and almost succeeding.
He just sat there grinning at me and rocking from side-to-side. I looked around for Tarzan, but he had disappeared.
Then it happened; my worst fear materialized. About twenty rows below us a huge fireball rose in the air and was followed by a deafening sound. A gust of hot wind hit my face and I ducked forward without thinking, tucking my head between my knees.
I heard screams all around me. When I finally looked up, I saw Afro-kid stretched out on the ground face down in front of me. There was a pool of blood around his head on the concrete beneath my feet. Yet the game carried on.
Below us, the site of the explosion was in chaos with people swarming over each other like ants as they scrambled toward the aisles. The screaming became unbearable; overhead the loudspeakers blared and the air reeked of gunpowder.
I reached over and grabbed Afro-kid’s wrist in my trembling hand. He had a pulse and was bleeding from an ugly gash over his right brow, but he was alive. His friend was nowhere to be found. I peeled off the kid’s white headband and reapplied it over his laceration as tightly as I could. Next I got the accursed vest off him and shoved it out of the way. I had no way of knowing if it was real or just a ‘fashion statement’ as Wali described.
‘Wali,’ I shouted, ‘enough of this damn game. I’ll see you at the car.’
Hoisting Afro-kid’s limp body over my right shoulder, I made my way down the stands and hurried toward the gate. Before I could reach the exit, a blast ripped through the air behind me. I kept moving without looking back. A smoking shoe hit the pavement about four feet in front of me. It was a military boot, its sole filled with holes.
‘Sirji, wait.’ Wali’s voice bellowed from behind. ‘The game was just beginning to heat up.’
I turned around and stared at him. He was out of breath from chasing me through the stands and I was intensely relieved to hear his voice.
‘Wali, I hope you have money to buy the tickets. I’ll pay you back the whole amount. If we ever get to Faisal Town that is.’
‘I’ve got some money, but it might not be enough for all three of us.’
As we stepped up to the ticket booth, another explosion rocked the stadium.
‘Looks like the VIP stand, sirji. Look over there.’ He pointed toward the far pavilion. A bluish gray cloud of smoke hung over the crowd.
‘How many?’ a man demanded from inside a ticket booth.
‘Two,’ Wali said.
‘And the one on his shoulder?’ the man asked, shooting me a curious look.
‘This one has crossed over,’ Wali said. ‘Alhamdolillah!’ he added, sliding his hand across his throat.
‘Yes. He’s dead.’ I was pleased with Wali’s quick thinking. I was never any good at lying.
The ticket agent gave me a piercing look. Then he shot up from his seat and marched out of his booth. Standing beside me he put his hand on the side of Afro-boy’s neck. Shaking his head he went back into his booth.
‘Two hundred and fifty Dirhams,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Without a word, Wali counted the money and we made it out of the stadium without any further mishaps.
‘Sirji, if you had kept quiet, we wouldn’t have had to pay the extra fifty.’
‘Why fifty for him? And not one hundred?’
‘The injured pay half the price.’
‘Great! So they don’t charge for the dead.’
‘He got suspicious when you chimed in,’ Wali said.
This game had shattered all my previous understanding of this land I once called home. It was a terrifying place, to put it mildly. But what mystified me the most was the palpable, absolute fearlessness that pervaded the air. People had developed a complete disconnect with the fear of dying, not just in the stadium but everywhere in Pakistan. They had embraced death as a way of life ‘Wali, we have to take this guy to the nearest hospital.’ It seemed like the only course of action to take. Where the hell was Pir Pul Siraat? When was he going to show up, if ever, and pull me out of this nightmare?
Wali didn’t say a word as we walked to the car. My shoulder ached under the weight of Afro-kid and I needed to set him down soon.
‘Sirji, we should have left him behind in the hands of Allah,’ Wali said.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ I screamed at him. I was sick of all this shit: that freaky game of cricket, lunatics wearing Martyr vests like they were the latest fashion trend from Paris and most of all, I was sick of this asshole Wali. I was furious with myself to be in this impossibly insane place. Was I really on some Path to High Knowledge? Or was I just plain high?
Spreading its tentacles, a deep doubt entangled my brain. Whatever happened to my mysterious mission, details of which were supposed to be revealed to me at the proper time? So far I had been a rousing example of failure. And now I would have to deal with this complete loser until we got home.
‘You’re taking me to the nearest hospital. You got that?’ I roared, slapping Wali’s back with my hand.
‘Sirji, who told you to pick him up in the first place?’
‘Allah!’
‘That tells me that you really don’t trust Him, sirji.’
‘Are you crazy?’ I was gritting my teeth. ‘How can you say that?’ It was impossible to explain anything to him.
‘Because you didn’t trust Him enough to take care of this boy without any interference from you,’ Wali said, taking long, hurried strides toward the car.
‘He needs stitches and a CT scan of his head,’ I stopped next to the car. My throat was parched and felt like sandpaper; I was horribly dehydrated.
‘Wali, can you just get me some water?’ I asked, feeling the weight of Afro-boy on my shoulder. I couldn’t wait to put him down.
‘Water’s hard to get these days, sirji, as I’ve explained already.’ He opened the rear door of the car.
I laid Afro-boy on the rear seat and shut the door.
‘You mean you can’t even get bottled water?’ I asked.
‘Oh, the Paradise Water is in short supply as well because the demand is so high, sirji,’ Wali said.
‘What about some sodas, cola, whatever. Right now almost anything will do.’
‘Sirji, we’ve only got one kind of cola, Hoor Afza. It’s nothing like the Rooh Afza we used to get in the old days, but it does have its own unique flavour and effect.’
‘Would you please get me one? And keep a tab on the money you’re spending. I’ll ask Abba to pay you back once we get home.’ Having to ask for money from this asshole must be a test of some kind. I was seething inside.
‘Sirji, money is just a piece of paper. Don’t worry about it,’ Wali said, shaking his head. ‘Although I wouldn’t waste my money on a bottle of Hoor Afza. I always carry water with me in the car,’ Wali said. ‘You can have some from my bottle.’
He opened the rear trunk, revealing a pair of gas cylinders lying side-by-side. They took up most of the trunk except for a foot of space in the middle. They had begun to rust and looked really old. One of the tanks had ‘Allah’ painted along its side in red and the other had the word ‘Akbar’ in yellow. Wali stuck his hand between the tanks and pulled out a bottle half filled with water. The label read ‘Paradise Water, Khalifa Inc.’
‘Big tanks you’ve got in there, Wali?’ I asked, taking a swig from the bottle. At the sight of these massive tanks my anger dissipated like mist at sunrise. The water had a strange metallic taste and smelled of diesel.
‘Yes, you’re looking at a pair of custom-made martyr tanks, sirji,’ Wali said, beaming with pride. ‘Those silly vests are for kids who just wear them to show off.’
‘Martyr tanks?’ The feeling of alarm returned as I took another swig from the bottle.
‘Relax sirji. They’re just CNG tanks,’ he said, staring at me amusingly.
‘Oh, compressed natural gas,’ I said, exhaling a sigh of relief. CNG had been used as a kind of car fuel for ages in this part of the world.
‘Sirji, there’s a two-month waiting period to have your car fitted with these rockets to heaven.’
‘Rockets to heaven?’ I asked. Clearly I had missed something.
‘I’ll show you. Come,’ he said excitedly as he opened the driver’s door and pointed.
‘See these two buttons?’ he asked, touching two red ones located next to the headlight knob. One was inscribed with ‘Allah’ and the other with ‘Akbar’. ‘Press these two together at the same time and you’re gone, sirji.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Vapourized! The West may be advanced in technology—but we know the secret of a direct flight to man’s eternal dream: Paradise.’
‘A two-month waiting period!’ In a flash I realized the logic of having an additional trunk on each car’s roof. They needed the trunk for the CNG tanks and a two-month waiting period meant that most of them were fitted with martyr tanks.
‘Sirji, the man who designed these special modifications is a superb mechanic,’ Wali explained with great admiration.
‘You can be one hundred per cent sure that if you hit a pothole or bump into another car, or even get into a serious accident, the device won’t blow,’ he assured me. ‘You must press both buttons together for five seconds to get the desired effect and begin your journey to Al-Jannah.’
‘Great security feature, for sure but you can explain the rest while we drive? We have to move. This guy’s going to die if we don’t get him to the hospital soon.’
I took my seat in the rear next to Afro-boy who was mumbling something, his head pressed against the window and his knees rammed up against the back of the front seat. Wali started the engine.
‘Don’t worry, we’re taking you to the hospital,’ I said, placing my hand on his shoulder.
Wali gave me a glaring look and I had no choice but to stare back. Obviously he wasn’t pleased at the prospect of having to take a detour just to help a stranger. As he put the car into gear, I spotted Tarzan sprinting out of the stadium’s gate, a burlap sack bouncing up and down on his shoulder. He halted for a second and looked around, as if deciding which direction to take off in.
‘Tarzan!’ I yelled, getting out of the car and waving at him. I wasn’t sure if he had seen us.
As soon as he spotted me, he started running toward the car. Two other men in white robes were chasing him. Tarzan darted across the tarmac like a gazelle. Transfixed, I stepped away from the open car door. He tossed the sack into the back seat then jumped into the front seat next to Wali. I climbed back in next to Afro-boy and pulled the door shut.
‘Wali, let’s go.’ I shouted. ‘Come on. Go, go, go!’
Wali grabbed his head with his hands for a moment and then we were speeding down the road out of the stadium. I looked out of the rear window and saw the white-robed guys piling into a blue pickup truck.
‘Sirji, if you keep picking up whoever crosses your path, we’ll never get to Faisal Town.’
‘How far is the nearest hospital?’
‘Sir, the nearest one is KUH.’ Tarzan answered as Wali turned onto the main road. There was a bridge about half-a-mile up ahead.
‘Khidamat-e-Ummah Hospital, sirji,’ Wali said.
‘It used be Services Hospital, sir,’ Tarzan jumped in.
‘Why are we going that far?’ I asked. ‘What about all the private hospitals around Fortress Stadium?’
‘Sirji, they’ve all been shut down,’ Wali replied.
‘Why?’
‘Because there were no doctors to run them. They’ve all left,’ Tarzan replied.
‘Where’d they go?’
‘Some ran away to foreign countries,’ Tarzan said bitterly. ‘And some—’
‘Went to next world,’ Wali interjected.
‘Sir, you can drop me once we’re out of here’ Tarzan said. He was trying to look relaxed, but his eyes kept darting back and forth between the mumbling Afro-boy and the rearview mirror.