AN EXCRUCIATING PAIN SHOT through my chest. When I opened my eyes I saw two owl-faced beings staring down at me. Standing on either side of my head, they folded their trembling black wings against their shoulders. The dank grave that had held me was now a four-walled cell. My decrepit body lay on an inclined bench a few feet off the ground. The slope put my head a foot or two lower than my feet.
The angel standing to my right jabbed his knuckles into my ribs, causing a fresh round of unbearable pain. Devoid of any white, their eyes looked like black marble and their bodies were covered with fine shiny black feathers like a crow’s, but their limbs were of a human.
‘Hey, man! That hurts,’ I said. ‘I’m up! I’m up!’ As I tried to sit up, an elbow slammed against my chest and forced me back down, knocking the wind out of me.
‘Not so fast,’ One of them said.
‘Look,’ throwing my right hand in the air, forcing a smile I said, ‘My name is—’
‘American?’ Removing his arm from my chest, the angel shook my hand, giving it a squeeze that nearly snapped the bones in my fingers. I let out an inarticulate wail.
‘I’m Munkar.’ His voice had a fluttering quality, as if he spoke through an electric fan. He grabbed my balls and squeezed them tightly. I let out another scream. ‘Welcome!’ he said.
It took me a while before I was able to speak.
‘Easy, easy!’ I said, moaning and raising my hands in the air. ‘Let me get oriented to this damn place first. Okay?’
Without warning, Munkar put his hand around my throat and squeezed until my eyes bulged and I started coughing violently.
‘First question: who is your Lord?’ The other angel, Nakir, demanded as flames flew out of his tongue and singed my cheek. His thundering voice was so loud that dirt and a few pebbles dropped from the ceiling and landed on Munkar’s wings.
‘My Lord is the same as yours,’ I sputtered through my teeth.
‘No! You are lying. Tell us the truth!’ Munkar bellowed.
The two angels looked at each other, their brows raised and their eyes roving within their sockets. Before I could protest, they had my wrists and ankles manacled to heavy iron rings built into the bench I was lying on. Nakir stood behind my head and laid a damp cloth over my face. Then Munkar poured water over my covered nose and mouth. I choked and gagged as water trickled into my bruised windpipe. Just before I passed out, they stopped and uncovered my face.
‘What is your religion? Say it!’ Munkar roared.
I coughed and spit out the last of the water. ‘I want to talk to your superior!’ I gasped, then coughed some more and struggled to catch my breath.
‘Superior?’ Nakir said, giving me a puzzled look.
‘The head angel who makes the policy around here,’ I demanded.
‘Policy?’ Munkar asked, furrowing his brows and rubbing his forehead. He then looked at Nakir. ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’
‘I think I do,’ Nakir answered, staring at me, his hand absent-mindedly stroking the feathers where his waist would have been were he a man. ‘Policy! Hmm. Would you like that hot, cold, orally or rectally? It’s your pick.’
Before I could answer, my body began to shiver, filling the cell with a low hum that soon became a tremulous twittering. Panicking, I lifted my head and looked around. The sound originated from my fingers, toes, lips, nose, even my eyes and earlobes. The loudest of the noise poured out from the area below my navel and above my genitals.
Oh shit! I thought, figuring I was really done for now as Fukraeel’s explicit warnings reverberated in my head.
Both angels now held quills and notebooks in their hands; black leather-bound volumes in which they furiously scribbled all the details of my past deeds, concentrating on different parts of my body. They began with my upper torso, rapidly moving to the lower and more offending regions. When they reached my groin, their pens became a blur and their eyes bulged with excitement.
Standing on either side of my hips, they scribbled at a dizzying pace until they ran out of pages. For a brief moment they looked at each other, their eyes darting back and forth, before they extracted a fresh set of notebooks from under the bench. These also proved woefully inadequate to fully contain the breadth and depravity of my escapades in the Dump. Throwing their quills and notebooks away, they stared at my penis that still buzzed loudly. The two just shook their heads in disbelief.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it before?’ Munkar asked Nakir.
Nakir rubbed his chin, gritted his teeth and shot me a fiery glance.
Realizing that I was in serious trouble, I shouted in desperation. ‘I’m a friend of Fukraeel! He asked me to say hello to you. He told me all about you.’
‘How the fuck do you know Fukraeel?’ Nakir shouted at me.
‘What’s your name, brother?’ Munkar asked, a sudden hint of gentleness creeping into his trembling voice.
‘Ismael.’
‘Profession?’
‘It’s complicated,’ I replied, my eyes following his movements behind my head, noticing he opened a scroll before his face. The light in the room brightened and Munkar came and stood next to Nakir.
Putting their heads together they stared at the parchment, Nakir’s fingertip sliding over the text from top to bottom.
‘His name isn’t on our exit control list,’ Nakir announced to his partner. ‘And he knows Fukraeel. That’s very strange!’
‘Yes, very strange indeed.’ Munkar agreed, nodding.
‘I told you. I’m not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, dead guy. Now can I talk to your supervisor, please?’
Instead of replying, they disappeared from the room with a whoosh, leaving a trail of smoke that smelled of something long dead. They weren’t gone long when my cell started filling up with rats. These rats materialized by the hundreds out of the dirt walls and dropped from the ceiling, some landing on my chest and skittering away. Soon the ground was a black undulating carpet of screeching rats, their numbers swelling by the minute.
Still shackled to the bench, I watched in horror as their mass surged like a wave. Soon their jagged yellow teeth and razor-sharp claws would be ripping into my flesh. I closed my eyes and prepared for the most hideous death imaginable. I doubted this would be the last amusement Munkar and Nakir would draw from their legendary storehouse of horror. I wondered how many deaths of unspeakable agony and torment I would have to endure before I be deemed fit to proceed to the next stage of purification.
With another swoosh of feathers and flap of ebony wings, Munkar and Nakir reappeared and surveyed the room that was now bursting at the seams with the deafening squeal of the rats. Hovering over my head, their wings a blur, the feathered duo removed the manacles and pulled me to my feet.
‘Congratulations, my friend! It seems you’re on your way to Paradise after all,’ Munkar said warmly, his eyes surprisingly tearing up with emotion.
‘I’m extremely sorry for any pain or discomfort we may have caused you, sir,’ Nakir said crisply. ‘You know how it is; we must do what is part of our job.’
‘Paradise?’ I asked, looking at Munkar in utter shock.
‘We’ve been told that you’ve passed all the necessary steps to gain entry into Paradise,’ Munkar said, now sporting a kind and affectionate look. ‘And that included a little taste of torture in the grave.’
I was speechless and couldn’t trust what I heard. It had to be a mistake or something, I thought, while having trouble processing this information.
‘Lucky bastard, I’d say!’ Munkar said, wiping his tears.
‘Now close your eyes—we’re leaving,’ added Nakir.
Before I even had the chance to react, I exploded into a million tiny particles of dust.
I awoke to the sound of a pleasing female voice—speaking in English—over a telecom system.
‘Welcome to the VIP salon of the Intiqaal Lounge,’ the voice was saying. ‘Your orientation will begin shortly. We’ll make every effort to ensure that your stay with us is as enjoyable as possible. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.’
Covered in dirt, my decrepit, worn out body lay on a white marble floor beside a rectangular pool of clear blue water under the compassionate gaze of seven ravishing, black-eyed beauties. They kneeled over me, their skin shining through their gauzy diaphanous robes as if lit from within.
A number of white-winged angels flew about overhead. They carried all sorts of things: chairs, chaises, bedposts, mattresses, pillows and cushions, trays with food and drink, towels and robes, shoes and many strange looking objects.
‘My lord, welcome,’ one of the women said, massaging my hand and smiling, showing a beautiful set of white teeth. She had very long jet-black hair, eyes that glittered like polished onyx and moist red lips which curled in a charming coquettish smile.
‘I’m Veena,’ she said, and introduced me to the rest of the pack. They bowed their heads and smiled when their names were mentioned. Veena continued, ‘We’re here to help you turn back into a young man again.’
‘How is that possible?’ I asked, feebly raising myself up onto my elbows and looking down at my horrid self.
‘My lord, you leave that to us,’ a woman chimed in; it was a voice that sounded like the tinkle of a tiny crystal bell.
‘You must be a very special man—a saint perhaps. We’ve never seen Munkar and Nakir fast track someone in here with such urgency,’ Another woman added. ‘Special men deserve special treatment,’ she whispered in my ear.
‘The procedure we employ to make you young again is completely lust-free,’ Veena pronounced in her sweet voice, softly rubbing my chest with her fingertips. ‘Just relax, sir. Let us do our scared duty.’
They carried my tired old body to a pool. The water was warm and oily and smelled of sweet herbs. The girls took turns scrubbing my dirt-clogged skin using an abrasive sponge made of some plant material. After the bath, they dried me with perfumed towels and rubbed fragrant oil into my hair.
I was made to lie down on a divan draped with crimson silk and piled with colourful pillows. Forming a circle, the women kneeled on the floor beside me and told me to close my eyes. They then applied a blindfold over my eyes. I felt their hands, and later tips of their tongues, lapping gently at my withered flesh. Soon my entire body was vibrating with vitality and I was drenched with their saliva.
My blindfold was removed and I was taken into the pool a second time. But instead of water it was now filled with cardamom-scented milk. My skin glowed with youthful radiance and as the girls washed the saliva off of me, I could feel my bones growing stronger, more substantial.
I was brought back to the same divan, blindfolded once more, and guided, without any effort on my part, through seven orgasms without once losing my erection, the pleasure only heightening with each successive act. The last one, by far the longest and most stunning, didn’t produce any semen from my body.
‘In Al-Jannah one doesn’t produce any waste,’ Veena spoke quietly in my ear, as if telling me a secret.
‘But what happens to the food one eats?’
‘It changes into musk,’ she replied. ‘Your body will ooze it in place of sweat—it drives the virgins crazy.’
I emerged from the pool feeling buoyant. A pair of handsome young male angels landed beside me. They carried fresh garments folded over their arms: a blue silk robe, its neck and cuffs studded with diamonds and rubies, a gold turban speckled with thousands of tiny iridescent five pointed stars, a pair of leather sandals and a finger-sized glass vial of perfume that smelled of moist earth.
I was then served a thick green beverage in a white china cup. It tasted like cough syrup and made me groggy. I lay down once again on the divan and closed my eyes and immediately memories of my past flooded in. They were vivid but fragmented, like the pieces of a moving three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Slowly these fragments started to coalesce.
‘What the hell did you put in my drink?’ I asked one of the angels as my speech began to slur, but pleased at the same time.
‘My lord, it’s restoring your memory,’ Veena said. ‘You may feel a little tipsy during this phase of your restoration. Take a nap if you like.’
Then it all came rushing back to me. So intense was the complete and sudden recall that I bolted upright, my palms on my temple and my eyes blinking uncontrollably. A gentle fragrant musk exuded from my forehead.
It had all happened only a moment ago; the ruined bathroom in the hospital, the book bound in black leather, the red Nike headband, Pir’s instructions for my journey. I was supposed to meet with him in Paradise, to hand over the book. But where was the book now? I panicked until I remembered the monkey. What if he had chewed it up and ripped it apart? How was I going to face Pir after all that had transpired? Laila! Whatever happened to her? She had my headband. Abba! He must be returning home from Islamabad today.
Had I died for real? Suddenly, the last seven years spent in that celestial dump—the place never visited by night, the retirement outpost of Fuqraeel whose dream of attaining manhood with the help of the smuggled nectar was shattered by my arrival—felt like a fleeting moment in that vast span of my now eternal life.
My brooding came to an end with the arrival of my escort, a middle-aged dark-skinned angel with a graying beard and stiff smile who wore a green turban and a plain yellow robe. His wings were dull gray and his name was Braqeel. The women bade me farewell while he took my hand.
‘First stop, Hauz-e-Kauser,’ he said, his powerful wings bristling with a nervous energy.