Shahzad and Sabeena, 2014 to 2015
“The heart is like a bird: love as its head, and its two wings are hope and fear.”
—Scholar Ibn al-Qayyim
It was May, and Mumbai’s savannah climate did not disappoint. The air in the city was hot and sticky as Narendra Modi, from the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, assumed power as prime minister, and as Shahzad went to see the doctor again. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had failed to prevent, and possibly encouraged, days of communal violence and rioting in the state, which had left close to eight hundred Muslims dead. Since then, his whispered nickname had been “the Butcher of Gujarat.” But Modi had also turned around the state’s economy, the kind of turnaround many thought India needed. Especially after the country had not leapfrogged China the way economists had predicted it would. And so Modi was elected in a landslide, with the help of the RSS, the group whose march to the Babri Masjid had led to the mosque’s demolition, which led to the riots in Mumbai. India’s Muslims, who, though they were growing in number, represented only 13 percent of the population, saw once again that they had little say. Shahzad arrived at the doctor’s office feeling fearful and angry.
“Doctor, you are doing nothing for me,” Shahzad said. He was tired of showing up and leaving empty-handed. “What can I do for you?” said the doctor. “Nobody in the world can do what you want.” But Shahzad reminded him he did not want pills to have children anymore. “At least I can have proper sex with my wife. At least that.” “All right,” the doctor said, and gave him pills for performance, to be taken twice a day. Shahzad decided to double the dose.
The tablets made Shahzad sweaty and fuzzy-headed and upset his stomach—though perhaps some of that had to do with the election. His performance barely improved, but he permitted himself to believe that the heavy sensation in his testicles meant he was getting better.
“Something is happening,” Shahzad told the doctor, breathlessly, on a second visit. The doctor indulged his delusion and prescribed him another round.
After Modi’s election, Shahzad and Sabeena’s friends and family and neighbours began to worry that steps would be taken against them on a grander scale. In the run-up to the election, Modi had made anti-Muslim statements, which leaders of the Indian National Congress, the party previously in power, would not do. The Congress party had its own problems, of course; since its glory days of helping lead the independence fight against the British, the party had become riddled with nepotism and corruption. It had also failed to root out poverty or deliver enough economic growth or reforms. And it had looted the country of thousands of crores, which was its own kind of murder. So it was no surprise that Congress had been voted out, even in favor of the Butcher of Gujarat.
Shahzad and Sabeena felt fearful in a way they hadn’t in years. Even if Modi didn’t institute anti-Muslim initiatives, they knew his legions of bhakts, or devotees, would do his work for him.
Achhe din aane waale hain. “The good days are coming.” This was Modi’s campaign slogan. But Shahzad and his friends did not believe it applied to them.
In June, the month after Modi’s win, Ramadan approached, along with Shahzad and Sabeena’s two favorite holidays. Sabeena loved the Night of Forgiveness best, the evening on which Allah decided the fortunes of all people: who would live, who would die, and what would or wouldn’t happen during the year. On this night, Muslims prayed for good days ahead and for all their sins to be forgiven. Those who prayed hard and lamented their failings would be forgiven.
Shahzad preferred the Night of Power, which marked the day that the Prophet Muhammad went to meet Allah, the Quran was revealed, and the angels descended, bringing heaven to Earth. From this meeting the Prophet also brought namaaz to men. It was said that the Night of Power was better than one thousand nights combined, and that any man who prayed on this evening received the power of praying on all one thousand. Shahzad often prayed until morning, despite his exhaustion from Ramadan fasting. It made him feel close to God. This year, he decided he would ask Allah for good luck in Dharavi and to help him perform for Sabeena.
But when Ramadan started, Shahzad had to stop taking his pills. If I continue to take them and also fast, I will become mad, he thought. He promised himself he’d resume when the holiday was over.
Sabeena, meanwhile, devoted herself to her holiday cooking, preparing gulab jamun, firni, pudding, custard, halwa, and other sweet dishes for the family, which she loved to do. She put on her special salwar kameez and best gold. While Nadine complained that Farhan did not give her anything, Shahzad had begun to surprise Sabeena with expensive gifts. When she wore the jewelry, the gold shimmering on her neck, ears, and wrists, it made her feel as if everything in their marriage was all right.
***
Ever since Modi had assumed office, many Muslims held tighter to their faith. Shahzad prayed harder to Allah than before and placed more faith in the Quran, which he had started questioning after he learned it prevented adoption. But Sabeena had never doubted that Islam was the superior religion. For her, the first evidence of this came in the Neil Armstrong story, which she had heard when she was young. The story went that when Armstrong landed on the moon, he heard a sound like music. It was a haunting, beautiful, and somehow familiar sound, so he taped it to listen to later. When Armstrong went to Cairo, he heard the exact same sound. It was the azaan—the Muslim call to prayer. That very day, Armstrong converted to Islam.
It did not matter that there was no evidence for the Neil Armstrong story or that sound could not be heard on the moon. In her bones Sabeena felt the story was true. The moon was a powerful force in Islam; without it there would be no calendar or way to measure time. Islamic months always began with the sighting of the moon. When Ramadan began, Sabeena sometimes went up to their rooftop to view the moon’s sliver, a gleaming crescent in the polluted night sky.
For Shahzad, better proof of Islam’s superiority came from the scholars of religious texts who read the Bible, Vedas, and Quran and decided the Quran was the most lucid among them. These scholars included firangis like the British novelist Marmaduke Pickthall, who converted to Islam from Christianity and later translated the Quran into English. They also came from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
In recent years, though, there had been some troubling events. There was news of increasing incidents of Islamic terrorism. Shahzad had been startled by the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and then the nightmare continued with Muslim extremist groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and the terrorist attacks on India, supposedly from Pakistan. These attacks only bolstered leaders like Modi. But these terrorists weren’t real Muslims. Sabeena saw them as cowards who killed innocents, which Islam never instructed anyone to do. Shahzad thought they’d misinterpreted the Quran’s meaning of jihad as being a physical struggle for believers. To him, jihad meant the simple duty a man had to spread the religion.
Shahzad despised the terrorists for what they were doing to Islam, transforming it from a religion of beauty to one of violence. In the Quran, heaven was described as more gorgeous than the human mind could fathom: with flowing milk, gardens, and angels everywhere. Everyone was young and happy. If you drank the water, you could see it flow through your body, because in heaven your skin was translucent. Shahzad thought that when it came time to die, it was better to die a Muslim.
But Shahzad did not want to feel old. He wanted to feel young—and he still wanted to be a father. At the very least, he wanted to be able to perform so he could feel some measure of strength and dignity. As a Muslim in Modi’s India, having power seemed more important than ever. And in many ways, the land in Dharavi felt like his last hope.
That winter, several of Shahzad’s aunts and cousins threw a wrench in Shahzad’s plans for Dharavi by accepting checks for the land from the local goon. He was furious. Some money in hand now always seems better than more money later, he thought.
Afterward, the goon called Farhan, who had begun helping Shahzad protect Dharavi, and said, “Don’t go to Dharavi now. If you do I’ll break your legs.”
Shahzad knew this was an important moment and that they could not back down. He told Farhan that it would be better to make a show of force than retreat, and Farhan agreed. And so the two men broke open a lock the tannery owner had placed on their property’s entrance, which took almost two hours, plus some greasing oil, and the help of a stocky builder friend. They were surprised to find that no one bothered them, not even the baby-faced security guard.
Shahzad thought that perhaps it was because of the appearance of his builder friend, who was very fat, with a hard, dark face and thick mustache. The builder wore tight jeans, floral shirts, and gold rings and rode a Royal Enfield motorcycle. He carried a glitter-encrusted phone. In short, he looked like a Bollywood gangster.
After they finished building a new door, for which they would have the only key, Shahzad and the builder went to go get lunch, ordering plates piled high with chicken, mutton, and gravy. Mid-meal, Shahzad got a call.
“What are you doing in that property?” a voice said. It took him a minute to realize it was the police.
“This is our property,” Shahzad said. “That’s why we are here.”
“You’re making a riot there. You’ve punched the security guard of the tannery and forcibly gone in.”
“No we haven’t,” said Shahzad. “That is a false story.”
“Come to the police station right now.”
Shahzad covered the receiver and told the builder what the police officer had said. “Let the police come here,” the builder said, chewing his meat. “I am eating.”
But they’ve made a false complaint, Shahzad worried, and hung up the phone. It’s a criminal case now. We are in trouble.
Shahzad next got a call from Farhan, who had stayed back at the property. “Come quick, the police are coming.” The tannery owner and his men had arrived too. The builder, annoyed, agreed to accompany Shahzad back to the property. In Shahzad’s memory, when they arrived, the police pushed them into the back of a police van, along with the tannery owner and his men. At the station, the police said it was a riot case and charged them all with section 149 of the Indian Penal Code: unlawful assembly. For six hours, they were held in the detention room.
“We are not goondas, we are builders,” the builder said. “And it’s our property,” Shahzad added. It didn’t matter. Lawyers would have to be hired. Money would have to be spent. Palms would have to be greased. And Shahzad knew who was behind the scenes, pulling all the strings: the local goon.
But several weeks later, the local goon quit his political party. It came on the evening news. The line was that he resigned because he was unhappy with how the party, which supported Modi, had begun treating Muslims. Shahzad knew better than to believe this. The goon was pushed out. There were many maneuverings within political parties, and even big men sometimes had to fall. This meant the tannery owner no longer had protection. Though they would still have to go to court, Shahzad knew that now fate was on his side.
***
In April, it was announced on the news that Yakub Memon, an alleged participant in the 1993 bomb blasts, and a Muslim, was to be hanged. Shahzad, and many other Muslims in the city, thought he did not deserve it. Shahzad knew he should have expected this news under Modi. But the excitement over Dharavi must have clouded his vision.
The story went that Memon had seen the worst of the riots. It was said he had witnessed rape, killings, looting and burning of shops and houses, and that this experience had motivated his involvement in the bombings.
Shahzad had seen firsthand what happened to men who were on hand for the worst of the riots. They went insane, or killed themselves, or perpetrated other acts of violence. But Memon was different. He was an accountant whose role in the blasts had been only financial, or so he said. He insisted he had masterminded nothing. He had also already served two decades in prison, cooperated with authorities, and surrendered himself to police. How could they hang such a man? Shahzad thought.
The year before, a prominent former Hindu politician, a woman convicted of an active role in another city’s riots, which killed nearly one hundred Muslims, had been let out of jail without a murmur of protest. But Shahzad knew consequences were different for Muslims, and especially for Muslims without power.
A report commissioned by the previous prime minister had confirmed that Muslims were at the bottom of the heap in everything: in literacy, schooling, jobs, earnings, and political power. Shahzad had always known this. He remembered the childhood taunts, and the saying he had learned in adulthood when Muslim groups around the world had begun committing so many acts of terror: All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. Yakub Memon, Muslim accountant, was as good as a dead man.
After it was announced that Memon would hang, Shahzad felt that there was a kind of invisible gallows hanging over his own neck. For the first time since his father’s death, and since inheriting the Dharavi land, he felt diminished. He was not a big man after all. He was just another powerless Muslim.
The country heatedly debated Memon’s hanging. There was a final plea to stay the sentence. But the Supreme Court rejected it in the end. When Yakub Memon was hanged, Shahzad sat alone in his room and cried.
Sabeena tried to comfort her husband. These larger forces could not be controlled, she said. Allah determines everything. She reminded him that he still had Dharavi, and her, and Mahala and Taheem. He had a good family and a good home. And in fact, after decades in the dingy and overcrowded joint family home, they were moving soon, to a bigger and better apartment. Muslims still held land in Mumbai; Modi had not taken that away. And in Mumbai, land was a kind of power.
A month or so later, Shahzad began talking about buying a big new office space in Colaba, in the tony part of downtown. He would conduct his brokerage business from there and use it to meet with big Dharavi builders. Colaba was at the very tip of Mumbai, on a little finger of the island that curled out into the sea. It was close to the city’s main government buildings, courts, and the Bombay Stock Exchange. It was filled with European-style restaurants, cafés, and bars. It was where all the firangis came to stay. A man who owned land or operated an office there was a man of power and prestige. But Colaba was also prohibitively expensive.
Shahzad was certain that with the Dharavi money he could someday pay off the office. Sabeena urged him not to be rash and to think of their future. If he bought the office, they’d have very little savings left. Shahzad said she didn’t understand.
On the day Shahzad was to make a down payment, Sabeena stood, arms crossed, in front of their home safe. “You’re not taking the money,” she said, and told him she’d hidden the key. “Then I’ll just break the cupboard and take everything inside,” Shahzad said, his voice rising. “You go and do that,” said Sabeena. “But nothing is there.”
Earlier that day, Sabeena had removed all the money, five lakhs of it, along with their gold. Shahzad left the room, stewing, and, when he came back, saw Sabeena was gone. He called her again and again on her cell phone, to no answer.
As Sabeena sat inside her family apartment in Bhendi Bazaar, she felt calm about her act of sedition. She spent the whole day playing with her brother’s children. Her little niece reminded Sabeena of herself. The girl was not allowed to roam outside, and her father never took her to the movies. She lived a cloistered life, though fewer girls in Mumbai lived like this now. Sabeena tried to keep her entertained by telling her all about her childhood, and what her grandfather had been like.
Sabeena knew she would not have stolen from the safe years ago. But the world had changed, and women were different now. They were mazboot; they were strong. They left the house when they wanted. They ate first instead of second. They challenged men when they needed to be challenged—about money, food, in-laws, even sex.
But after a day, Sabeena was ready to go home. She knew Shahzad would need her for his meals and chai, as would his mother. It was her duty to be there, and she could not abandon them. She wanted Shahzad to learn a lesson so that their future would be secure.
At home, Shahzad hadn’t been able to sleep without Sabeena. All night, he had been up whispering to himself, “What to do, what to do, what to do?” In the morning, he could not eat. He felt more anxious than he had in a long time and decided not to buy the office in Colaba. What a foolish idea, he thought. There was no way he could afford it. He decided not to act bimar anymore. He told himself that any illness, even madness, could be cured. After a day had passed, he called Sabeena again, and this time she answered.
“Come home, baba,” he said, “and see that everything is right.”
***
On a blistering hot day in June, Shahzad, Sabeena, and the entire joint family moved into their new flat, leaving behind the old apartment that three generations had inhabited.
They were all relieved to leave the apartment, which over the years had become dingy. The paint on all the walls was peeling. The shelves in the bedrooms were cluttered with old medicines, used beauty products, and broken electronics. And the furniture was tattered and worn. All twelve people had shared one Indian-style toilet.
The move, though, had not been their idea. A developer had approached them, asking if they would be willing to leave their home for a new luxury tower around the corner. The terms were favorable: they’d pay two lakhs for a property expected to be worth five crore soon. Because Shahzad was a broker, he knew deals like this were happening all over Mumbai. Developers were moving rent-controlled tenants in low-rise, British-era buildings into new luxury towers, razing the beautiful old buildings—many of which were up for a heritage designation—and building more luxury towers in their place. Both the tenants and developers walked away happy.
The new apartment promised a new life. The luxury tower, with its ornamental moldings and accents, signaled wealth and prestige. Inside, the apartment had shiny white floors, granite countertops, and fresh plumbing. They purchased all new furniture and threw away the shabby beds, tables, and chairs of their past. They bought elaborate wall hangings—including a few of the six kalimas, reminding them of the fundamentals of Islam—to decorate the smoothly painted walls. The toilets were all Western. One family member even bought an AC.
Moving was an ordeal for Sabeena, who spent an entire twenty-four hours packing. She kept their clothes, their wedding album, and some essentials, but she threw away much of what they owned. It was also difficult for Shahzad’s mother, who had not left the apartment in years. After moving, she spent an entire day in the hospital recovering from the stress. Once all twelve members stood inside the new apartments—they had not one but two flats in the new building—they agreed it had been worth it.
The evening of the move, the family called several boys from a nearby madrasa to read verses from the Quran to bless their new home. Shahzad and Sabeena distributed sweets to everyone who came. As they did, it felt a little like the day they had agreed to marry.
The new house also shifted certain feelings in them. Maybe it was the new furniture, which was clean and plush. Maybe it was the clear sound of namaaz that they could hear from their window. Or maybe it was just the change in scenery, to an apartment that did not carry memories of the hurt that came before.
Sabeena liked one part of the new house best: the bedroom window, which served as kind of a gallery to the city. In the distance, she could see the railway tracks that led to the train station, the nearby chawls where people hung clothes on the line, and the cranes lined up behind them for new construction. She still had a view of the Haj House, where pilgrims stayed en route to Mecca, with its shiny marble terrace where crows liked to land. Close to her window, she could see a cluster of trees that bent toward the earth. On one branch two green parrots often came to sit and sing or talk to each other, urgent hums followed by softer ones.
To Sabeena, the window contained the whole city in one shot: humans, animals, traffic, trains, industry, and religion. And she almost always spotted something new as she sat in her favorite peacock blue salwar kameez, letting her hair down and taking in the view. As the sun dropped in the sky, she loved watching the city go dark.
Now, Sabeena went out as she pleased, because Shahzad’s mother was bedridden and could not stop her. In the new house, Sabeena no longer spoke of marriage as a laddoo or heavy sweet but instead of the sweet dish she was excited to make for the family. She tried to look her best, trading her faded brown kurtas for her best salwar kameez, even when it wasn’t a holiday. She dyed her hair with henna, so often that she caught cold. She applied French cream beneath her eyes to get rid of her dark circles and wore gold heart-shaped earrings every day. And she became obsessed with Pakistani serials, especially one called Humsafar, which meant “soul mate”, about the life of a young married couple.
One night after moving in, Sabeena surprised Shahzad by climbing on top of him. They were lying side by side in their new twenty-thousand-rupee bed, with fresh sheets printed with bright flowers. She spent most nights in the new apartment sleeping on a mat on the floor, despite the expensive new bed, saying it was cooler underneath the fan. But tonight she got into bed, straddled Shahzad, and took her pleasure, or so he remembered it. In the new house it was like they were newlyweds or reacquainting after a long time. To Sabeena, it did not feel like the same old thing. Shahzad, who could not finish, did not know whether to be surprised and grateful at the change in his wife or embarrassed at how he, as usual, fell short.
***
In the new home, the two apartments were divided this way: one for Sabeena, Shahzad, his mother, and his brother, for when he came to visit from Qatar; and one for Farhan, Nadine, Mahala, Taheem, and a few other family members. There were also two maids, one for each apartment, both of whom were good-natured and hardworking. One maid was pale-skinned and one was dark; this was sometimes how they were distinguished, instead of by name. The pale maid worked in Sabeena’s home, and as she worked she told Sabeena all about her home life. She said she had been forced to marry a mute and deaf man, with whom she had six children, and that she had to work doubly hard because he couldn’t get a job. The darker maid told Nadine about how her two sons were at home in a faraway village, because blue films were shot in her neighbourhood in Mumbai—not a suitable place to bring up children. She said her husband had come from the village and secured a job but quit because he said he didn’t like to travel in the city. Now that he had gone back home to their village, she was living here alone.
It was a truism in Mumbai that all maids had their sob stories, working hard to support big families and degenerate husbands. Still, their stories had an impact on Sabeena. Listening to them, she felt a kind of pride in Shahzad she hadn’t felt before. She knew that he never stopped working. Instead he ran from Dharavi to court to neighbourhoods across the city to show flats, and back to Dharavi again.
Like the old apartment, the new flat was near Crawford Market, which Sabeena could now visit regularly. If she wanted, she could also stock up for the month ahead, buying chicken, mutton, bitter gourd, and okra, because the new apartment had a big fridge and fancy elevator. Today Crawford Market offered far more variety than when Shahzad’s mother had shopped there, and it had a new emphasis on presentation: pomegranates were lined up like pool balls, peaches stacked in perfect pyramids, and apples lined up in rectangular boxes padded in soft foam. The market now was also filled with the fruits of economic liberalization and what came after: German chocolates, American diapers, French shampoos, fake designer perfumes, Kashmiri walnuts, imitation purses made in China, even foreign lingerie.
But vestiges remained of the old Crawford Market: the “shee shee shee” of a man trying to push his cart through, the shopkeeper shouting “aao, aao” as he called the stray cats for crabs and shaggy dogs for leftover chicken legs, the vendor yelling “gandu” at another man unloading his wares incorrectly, the many women in burqas shouting to negotiate for bras and hankies, and the dirt-stained children juggling rocks until they were shooed from the market. There was still the pungent smell of body odour, raw chicken, curry, and must. And there were still birds for sale, and not just pigeons. Now, the market sold owls, peacocks, parakeets, weaverbirds, and starlings.
Mahala and Taheem did not usually go inside Crawford Market, but since moving into the new apartment they loved to frequent the lane beside it, where cars and motorcycles rarely drove. After school, the neighbourhood children gathered in the lane to ride bikes, play cricket, and talk in clusters: girls on one side, boys on the other. They’d play for hours, until it was dinnertime, and then they’d run upstairs, stopping at Shahzad and Sabeena’s apartment first to call out: “Hi, badi baba.badi ma, what are you having for dinner?”
***
The bill passed in March of that year, but it wasn’t until the summer that the impact of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation amendment became clear. Effectively, a ban on beef. Far-right Hindus had been trying to pass the bill for years, and now, under Modi, it became a reality. Shahzad knew that many Muslims who sold beef would lose their jobs. Muslims who ate beef because it was inexpensive would have to find something else to eat. Perhaps they’d eat mutton, but then the prices of mutton would rise. Some Muslims might actively protest the ban, but that would inspire Hindus to fight back. If the city was unlucky, it would lead to violence.
Through the beef ban, Shahzad saw how Modi, or at least his bhakts, intended to hurt Muslims: by hitting their purses and stoking communal tensions. As always, it was the big people who started the problems and the small people who felt the effects. And yet Shahzad was surprised to find he did not fear Modi anymore, because Modi had begun to disappoint the country. Both Muslims and Hindus were asking why food prices were rising and when the good days were going to come. They were asking when Modi’s magical economic turnaround would take effect. And they were making fun of his many international trips; he had already gone on twenty this year. Now, when Shahzad or his friends or neighbours watched the news, they called Modi the “tourist-in-chief,” who was “always in flight mode.” They joked that he was going to change his name from Modi to “achhe din,” so that when he arrived anywhere, the people would say: “Look: the good days have come.”
People in the city had always talked about the differences between Hindus and Muslims. There wasn’t a time that anyone—even the hunched old men and women in the market with their canes and lathis—could remember when that hadn’t been the case. This had been true even centuries ago, under the early Hindu and Muslim kings. But while there had been battles, there had also been intermarriage. The peak of the violence was undoubtedly Partition; nothing before or after was so bad, though there had been eruptions of violence since.
Now, after the beef ban, journalists warned the country could erupt again. Conversations took on a different quality; people said hateful things aloud they would have only thought privately before, and said them louder. They no longer seemed ashamed of their prejudice.
It wasn’t like that with Christians. Hindus mostly found Christians unobjectionable, and Muslims like Shahzad and Sabeena saw Christianity and Islam as close cousins. After all, both faiths descended from Abraham, believed in one God, and saw Jesus as a prophet.
But, like many Muslims, neither Shahzad nor Sabeena could wrap their mind around Hinduism, with its earsplitting holidays and many gods, though they knew that Hindus and Muslims shared some practices and beliefs. Among them was the idea of the nazar, or the evil eye. To get rid of the nazar, Hindus burned chiles, while Muslims read the Quran. But Sabeena warned Shahzad that the nazar was far more important to Hindus. She reminded him that they had received a fatwa from the leadership in Saudi Arabia instructing them not to worry about superstitions anymore. Putting the right foot in front of the left, for example, which was said to be a tradition of the Prophet, was no longer compulsory. What was important was to attend to namaaz five times a day.
But Shahzad had always been unable to resist the pull of superstitions. He had always worried about some black mark on his life and felt that the many healers and hakims in the city could help him. For years, he had gone to see a black magic priest at Khar Station named Mamoo, who had studied in the jungle for thirty-six years, and who was said to have special powers. Years ago, Shahzad was certain Mamoo had cured his sister of stomach cancer with water he’d blessed. Next month, for the first time, Shahzad was going to see the old priest at his home, to talk about Dharavi and his performance problems. The home of a priest. He could hardly believe his good fortune. But since he’d moved into the fancy new apartment, he had almost begun to expect the extraordinary.
When Shahzad arrived at Mamoo’s apartment, he was amazed at the humble surroundings. The old priest lived in two small, bare rooms in a neighbourhood not far from the market. If he took money for his services, he would be rich, thought Shahzad. Instead, the priest worked as a tomato seller by day, not caring that few people knew of his powers.
Though he was older now and a little bent, Mamoo still wore his trademark beard without a mustache, a black topi, and white kurta pyjamas. And though he was unwell, his calm, warm demeanor had not changed. Only his teeth had drastically altered since Shahzad first met him. They had become darkly stained by paan.
Shahzad had come to ask Mamoo for good luck before a final meeting with the builder in Dharavi. It looked as if the deal would be finalized, but still Shahzad wanted the priest to bless and give him water, from which he could draw power. But the old man had other plans.
Sitting on his bed, Mamoo motioned for Shahzad to sit across from him. He took out a stack of tiny pieces of paper, each covered in Arabic script. For several minutes, he wordlessly shuffled through them.
“Kya hai?” Shahzad finally asked, impatient.
Mamoo did not look up. The papers, he said, had writing on them from a djinn.
“From a genie?” Shahzad asked. Djinns had extraordinary powers; the Quran said they were supernatural creatures created “from the fire of a scorching wind.” It was also said that djinns, which were born good or evil, could alter the course of human lives. Though they were invisible and lived far away, sometimes men could contact them. Shahzad assumed Mamoo had learned to reach the otherworldly while studying in the jungle.
Finally, Mamoo chose a slip of paper. He studied it for a long moment and, shutting his eyes, blew on it. After a beat, he handed it to Shahzad.
“What does it say?” Shahzad asked.
“Hold it in your hand,” Mamoo said, “and close your fist.”
Shahzad obeyed. A minute passed in silence, and then another. Mamoo got up from his bed, spit some paan juice out the window, and came back. He watched Shahzad until suddenly Shahzad’s whole body shook. His eyes opened wide. “I felt it.” Shahzad’s voice cracked with elation. “A burst of energy. It was trying to move upwards in my palm.”
Mamoo nodded in approval.
“Now will my property be a success?” Shahzad asked.
The priest shook his head noncommittally. “I’m praying that everything goes all right.” He got up again and spit more paan juice out the window. He slapped Shahzad on the head, twice, and ushered him toward the door. Shahzad held the paper tight.
“Thank you,” he said, pressing a pile of rupees into Mamoo’s hand. The old man nodded, took them, and shut the door.
That afternoon, Shahzad took a taxi to Bhendi Bazaar to buy a pouch for the paper. He wanted to wear it around his neck like a tawiz. Among dozens of drabber styles of pouches, he chose a gold, glittery one. This is a magical blessing, Shahzad thought, and deserving of a beautiful vessel. He thought even Sabeena would approve.
***
It was pouring the night of Mahala’s ninth birthday, the kind of slanting rain that rendered umbrellas useless and sent the city’s stray cats hiding, mewing, under the tarps of shanties all night. Farhan and Nadine prepared for a big turnout anyway, putting up streamers, strings of glitter, and a Barbie-themed “Happy Birthday” sign. Mahala danced around the room in excitement, wearing a tulle dress, heavy earrings, and a little makeup she’d begged her mother to let her put on. Her head was uncovered, because she hadn’t reached puberty yet. But at school, even some of the older Muslim girls were choosing to go without headscarves.
As the last decorations were hung, Shahzad and Sabeena arrived, and then Mahala’s cousins, the neighbourhood children, and her school friends. Despite the rain, everyone had dressed in their best kurta pyjamas and salwar kameez. The girls told Mahala she looked just like a princess.
Farhan put on old Hindi music, and the adults murmured in appreciation. But the kids soon shouted, “Turn it off, this is bakwaas music.” Farhan distracted them with party masks, hats, chips, candy, and cake. “Happy Birthday Mahala,” the cake read in curving letters, thick white icing on milk chocolate.
After cake, the kids commandeered the computer. Mahala changed the music to Honey Singh, a Punjabi rapper whose lyrics many parents disapproved of but whose music every child in Mumbai seemed to know. The children tried out the latest gyrations from Bollywood and looked to Mahala for approval. Taheem sprayed Silly String on his sister, and the girls giggled with delight. Farhan soon changed the music to “Ring Around the Rosie.”
Some of the adults joined the children in dancing, but not Shahzad, who had been tasked with videotaping the party, and stood smiling shyly in the corner. And not Sabeena, who sat on the couch silently watching. When Mahala tried to get her to dance, she only shook her head. Women were not supposed to dance in front of men.
“Come on, badi ma.”
“No, no,” said Sabeena, smiling, and folded her arms across her chest.
Sabeena had never understood celebrating birthdays. Every person has a limited time on Earth, given by God, she thought. Why celebrate one year reduced? Sabeena believed that people should celebrate only weddings and births and engagements—the beginnings of things, not the endings. But she couldn’t help smiling at her niece’s antics.
When the party finally wound down and most of the guests left, Mahala was not ready to stop dancing. “Come, come,” her father said, gently. He turned the music off and cleared his throat. Only the immediate family was left.
“Actually, as you know, celebrating birthdays is a Christian tradition,” Farhan said. “And some hard-liner Muslims said we shouldn’t do it.”
“Here he goes, giving gyaan,” said Nadine.
Farhan continued, “But they’re just trying to ruin things. Our family is liberal. Why not provide fun for the kids?”
He added that when he was young his father would bring home a small cake and watermelon juice for his birthday. Now, birthday celebrations were much larger. But that was okay. “Actually, there used to be many more guests at these parties, before our property dispute.”
“Bas, bas,” said Nadine, hushing him.
For months, Farhan had been upset about the situation in Dharavi and the divisions in the family. That afternoon, though, a check from the builder had cleared. The deal had gone through. It was an advance on the money, not a life-changing amount, but enough to feel like celebrating.
And there was much to celebrate in their beautiful new flat, on Mahala’s birthday, surrounded by family. Even Shahzad’s mother had come to the party and clapped her hands to the music from her wheelchair. Everyone had seemed in good humor: Farhan’s wife, Nadine, who put aside her usual criticisms for the day; Shahzad, holding the camera like a shy new father; and Sabeena, who didn’t approve of these celebrations but was smiling as she left the party.
Sabeena had begun to notice the many changes taking place among Muslim women in the city—that women were choosing to work and not to wear the veil, that some were even choosing not to marry. She thought they must be getting their ideas from TV and online. Maybe even Mahala wouldn’t marry. Shahzad’s niece in Qatar, a successful doctor, had no interest in a husband. And a client of Shahzad’s named Zora, who was fair and beautiful and ran a successful hair salon downtown, was forty and still unmarried.
Zora was modern in other ways. She wore T-shirts and jeans and kept her head uncovered, with a dyed streak of purple in her hair. Her salon was unisex, which meant men came there for treatments and were also employed as beauticians. Sabeena did not know what to make of this. Zora’s landlady, a Wahhabi, or fundamentalist Muslim, had a stronger opinion. When she visited Zora at her flat, she liked to comment on her wayward lifestyle, saying, “Men should not touch or see women’s hair,” or “Going without the hijab is like germs getting into uncovered fruit. This is like how men pollute women by looking at them.” When the landlady visited, she wanted Zora’s TV switched to the Islamic televangelists from the Gulf.
Zora would listen politely to this criticism but then say, in an even tone: “This is my business and I cannot pick and choose.”
Shahzad was helping her find a new flat for her and her mother. Her and her mother, Sabeena thought, with some measure of pity. Zora was going to be an old maid. Sabeena thought any husband was preferable to living and dying alone. Even a husband who was bimar in the head and the heart. The Quran told her: “And of everything We have created pairs.” To Sabeena, an unmarried life was not a life at all.
And though Shahzad still made silly mistakes, like pressing the up button on the elevator to go down or leaving his medical documents on the floor like trash, he was much better than he used to be. People commented about him less. He spent less time washing his hands. Sabeena saw clearly now that life went up, went down, and came up again. The key was to accept this. And since moving into the new apartment, it seemed that their fortunes were picking up. There was an Arabic proverb that went: Contentment is an inexhaustible treasure. Now, she thought she understood what it meant.
And soon it was Bakri Eid, and all the excitement that came with it, the holiday that celebrated Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son.
As the story went, God had asked Abraham to offer up his most beloved possession. Though it pained him greatly, Abraham agreed to give up his son for sacrifice. At the last minute, the boy had vanished, and a goat appeared in his place. It had been a test of Abraham’s love for God, who never intended to take his son away.
Shahzad loved the Bakri Eid story, in part because Abraham’s wife had reportedly given birth to her son when Abraham was eighty years old. Eighty! Shahzad thought. Incredible. It gave Shahzad hope he could still be a father, perhaps after all the Dharavi money came through. After all, he was only fifty-five.
He also loved the holiday because of the sacrifice of the goats. Killing the goat was difficult, especially if the children of the family had grown attached in the weeks they cared for and fattened the animal. Last year, Taheem had sobbed for a whole day after the cutting. Shahzad thought this was why the slaughter was important. It was what true sacrifice felt like.
This year, they received their goats only a few days before Bakri Eid. Their new apartment building, which was populated almost entirely by Muslims, had set up a dedicated space in the courtyard for cutting. In India, a Hindu-dominated country, a country of many vegetarians, it was important that the slaughter not take place outside. It was even more important this year, when Bakri Eid happened to coincide with one of the immersion days of the Ganpati festival. The same week that thousands of Hindus would walk toward the sea with their Ganesh idols, thousands of Muslims would slaughter goats as a sacrifice and distribute the meat to family and friends. To both faiths, it was a time of great religiosity. And with tensions growing under Modi, there were fears that violence would break out.
Before Bakri Eid, the priest at Shahzad’s mosque told the congregation, “When you cut the animal, and Ganpati is also there, don’t go showing everybody, saying, ‘We have cut the animal, and here is blood.’ Don’t go showing, and saying, ‘We are Muslims, we have cut the goat, today is our Eid.’ We are not in a Muslim state. We are in the power of another state. So we should respect them also.”
The night before the cutting, the goats bleated and cried so loudly that they could be heard upstairs. They stomped their hooves. They swiveled their heads back and forth nervously in the wind. There were more than a dozen goats tied up in the courtyard, all with different-patterned coats: splotched tan and white, black with white spots, white with black spots, or the color of café au lait. They had straight horns and curled ones, big eyes and small ones, thick beards or no beards at all. They were almost all a little fat. As they cried through the night, Shahzad thought it was as if the goats knew what was going to happen. He was glad they lived in a Muslim neighbourhood, so that the Hindus could not hear. Their crying lasted all the way until morning.
The next day, everyone in the joint family rose early. The men went to the mosque for prayer, and the women prepared a light breakfast of toast and butter and jam. Taheem and the other children in the building grew boisterous, jangly with anticipation.
It was the first year Shahzad’s family could afford to get two goats, each for a hefty twenty-one thousand rupees, plus three thousand more to pay the butcher. Some families did the butchering themselves, but Shahzad and Farhan both thought that was not right. The slaughter must be done swiftly and properly so that it did not hurt the animal. The man wielding the knife also had to be careful with the intestines. One wrong cut and it could ruin all the meat. Only a butcher knew the proper way.
Outside in the courtyard after prayer, Shahzad and Farhan waited with the other men for their butcher and their goats’ turn. Some were kind to their goats, petting them soothingly, while others were rough, pulling them hard by the ear. Several children tried to bring their goats inside, but an adult tsked them, saying, “Saf nahi, jao.” It’s not clean, go away. There were three sections in the courtyard: a tarp-covered area at the back to cut the goats, a roped-off section to skin them, and an open area at the centre where the men could stand and watch. Taheem, who had come down after breakfast, walked nervously from one section to the next.
As they waited, a fat, sweating man announced that he wanted to kill his own goat. He had only a dull knife. As he started, he cut the wrong part of the neck. It was clear he did not know what he was doing. Farhan, who stood nearby, admonished him: “Cut the heart.” When the man did not, Farhan took the knife to finish. The goat died slowly, making a bleating sound that turned into a squawk and, after much gasping, into nothing at all. “The whole point is that the animal should not feel any pain,” Farhan said later, his voice tinged with regret. “That’s the way the cut should be done.”
Shahzad was also disappointed in the man. It seemed to him that there were an unfortunate number of Muslim men like this who didn’t understand religion. At Mecca the day before, hundreds of people had been killed in a stampede. It had been a hot day, and many people had pushed and shoved to throw the stones that hit Jamarat—pillars that represented the devil. After that, the stampede had begun. Shahzad thought that people sometimes became excited because they wanted to be seen as the most religious. That was not the way to show your love to Allah, he thought. When he read about extremist Muslims, he thought their problem was much the same. But perhaps these people had not had the benefit of growing up the way he did.
Many extremists, he knew, were not raised in a multicultural, multireligious country like India, a democracy with a free media that showed ads with Hindus and Muslims eating side by side. Most did not grow up in a mostly tolerant, cosmopolitan city like Mumbai either. And it was unlikely their priests were becoming more liberal or flexible the way his were. For all his concerns about being Muslim in India, he was often grateful he lived there instead of the Gulf. He was especially glad he did not live in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, where he had heard rich men paid huge sums to take young girls as their wives. He heard that after they fulfilled their lust and desire with them, they said talaq three times and moved on.
At last, it was their turn to cut the goats. Farhan’s was first. It was agreed that Farhan would make the initial quick slice and then pray from the Quran as the butcher finished. Taheem stood anxiously beside Shahzad as his father made the cut. Then Farhan began praying, and Shahzad and Taheem held the goat down, their knees on the animal’s chest. The thin, wiry butcher cut the goat’s neck as it writhed. Blood streamed onto Shahzad’s sandals and Taheem’s shorts, and then down an open drain. The killing was done quickly. Taheem allowed himself to look at the goat’s eyes, which were rolled back in its head, its neck turned out at an unnatural angle. And then he quickly looked away. On one side, an already-cut and skinned goat’s body parts were being divided into buckets. On the other, a goat was bleating as he was led to the tarp. Taheem did not allow himself to cry.
Upstairs, Mahala watched from a window. She could see only a sliver of what was happening: a hoof, a tarp. But she knew. After their goat was cut, she cried in her bedroom. She took out her father’s cell phone, on which she’d taken a picture of the goat, and kissed the photo. “I love you, I love you,” she told the goat, clutching the cell phone tight.
While Mahala thought of the goat, Shahzad thought of his father, who used to eat the goat’s eyeballs every Bakri Eid. He said it gave him better eyesight. Shahzad laughed at the memory as he walked upstairs with the butcher. Shahzad had never liked the taste of eyeballs, with their long, thin tissue of retina the consistency of chewing gum. But the memory made him miss his father. Meanwhile Sabeena, who was sitting on her haunches before a spit in the apartment, preparing to cook the first pieces of liver, thought of her own father. Out of all the people she distributed meat to, she had always enjoyed bringing it to her father most. These days, she only gave it to her sister and brother and his children. Bakri Eid had never felt the same.
Taheem had changed clothes after the cutting. Now, he wore a T-shirt with American-brand motorcycles on it and acid-washed pants, free of blood. He ran up to Shahzad and said, “Hey, baba, I held the feet,” though Shahzad had been there to see it. “Ah, very good,” Shahzad said, and patted him on the shoulder.
It was a few minutes before anyone noticed the young street girl standing at the door, looking around nervously. The women were busy making packages of meat in the kitchen to distribute to family, neighbours, and the poor. “Is auntie here?” the girl finally called into the living room, her voice high and tentative. She had a sad, round face and a purple and pink–colored veil over her burqa.
“Andar,” Shahzad said and pointed to the kitchen. The girl tiptoed inside. After a minute, she came out, grasping a few rupees and a package of meat. She tiptoed back toward the door. “Hey,” Shahzad said in a friendly voice. “I think I saw you before in the mosque. No?” The girl giggled and nodded. Her nervousness disappeared. “Very good,” Shahzad said, and smiled at her. The little girl skipped out, bag swinging, the first of many street children who would visit them that day.
***
In the days after Bakri Eid and the Ganpati festival, a thick smoke descended over the city, a by-product of the pollution and festival fires. The weather forecast did not say “rainy” or “foggy” or “clear,” just “smoke.” It often rained so hard during Ganpati that the streets began to flood—what some in Mumbai called “haathi baarish,” or “elephant rainfall.” But this year, there had been no thud of rain on roofs. In the late September heat, the taxi and bus drivers began to fight with customers over rigged prices and where they would or would not go. Or they fought with each other. “Madarchod,” motherfucker, “bhenchod,” sisterfucker, they called back and forth, Hindu driver to Muslim driver, or one religion against itself, while the high-pitched playback singers on their radios wailed in the background. Anger did not always discriminate. Not always. On the television, there was news of a Muslim man who had been lynched by a Hindu mob in northern India after rumors spread that he had eaten beef. Afterward, journalists, artists, actors, and even politicians spoke out about the growing intolerance in the country. Modi himself said nothing for a week, until he finally made a speech saying the lynching was dukhad. But though it was sad, he said, he was not to blame. “What is the role of the central government in these incidents?” he asked. When Modi talked like this, Shahzad switched off the TV.
September yielded to October, and Sabeena’s birthday came. She was turning fifty-two. At her request, they didn’t celebrate much, but as a birthday gift Shahzad gave her seventy-five thousand rupees, a large sum, to get new gold bangles made. It was money he would have spent on the new Colaba office.
People said that Mumbai was at its worst this time of year, after several of the major holidays were over but before winter and its festivals came, including Diwali and the Prophet’s birthday. It was the time when the city felt heaviest. Even the new apartment felt stuffy. And that month a poor Muslim man in their building—a man with ten children and little money to feed them but who all his neighbours said was doing “so well”—announced to Shahzad that his wife was pregnant again.
With the holidays over, Shahzad went to visit the family doctor, who knew him almost better than anyone. Recently, Shahzad had begun seeing a sexologist, who had put him on another medication. He now took five different pills every day—pills he had begun to worry weren’t actually helping. He still washed his hands too much, still felt anxious at night, and still sometimes thought obsessively about having a child. He hoped the family doctor would give him some kind of conclusive answer as to why the medications weren’t working.
Shahzad spent a long time in the waiting room of the private hospital, amid people with broken legs and boils. When the doctor finally let him in, Shahzad was surprised to find the man had white-gray hair, just like Shahzad did beneath his henna. They had grown old together, though it seemed no time had passed since that first visit, when Shahzad had just gotten married.
“Oy, don’t come and see me when you are healthy,” the doctor said, as Shahzad walked in. “But, Doctor, I’m not,” Shahzad said. The doctor peered at Shahzad over his glasses and waited for him to continue.
Shahzad told the doctor what he already knew: that he was still childless, and that he could not perform, despite all the medications. But he also told him he was worried about all the pills he was on. He asked for a list of them, which the doctor wrote down carefully, from memory: one pill for blood pressure, one antidepressant, one to help him sleep, two for anxiety, plus the pill for erectile dysfunction. It was a lot, the doctor said, but they were not to blame for his problems.
“Then?” Shahzad asked.
The doctor was quiet. He looked Shahzad in the eye. “Just . . . try to relax. You have so much anxiety,” he said. “It is common in joint families.”
More people, more stress. He had seen this in many of his patients.
Shahzad was not satisfied. “But—”
“Sabeena, she is still very cool about everything, yes?”
“Yes,” said Shahzad.
“Then?”
Shahzad nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. He looked down at the list of medications, which seemed like evidence of all his problems, and put it in his bag.
On the rickshaw ride back to the train, Shahzad thought about what the family doctor said. Sabeena was cool, Sabeena was kind, Sabeena never judged him. It wasn’t about the pills or his inability to have a child. It was about him and his anxiety and bimari, just like his father, and perhaps his grandfather before that. It was about the domino effect of pain and hurt in families, until someone made it stop. Until someone stood up straight.
In the weeks after the visit to the family doctor, Shahzad’s father came to him in his dreams. They were vague dreams, hard to pin down or remember. Shahzad was unsettled and told his mother about them. “What to do?” he asked.
“Pray for him,” she said, and also urged him to go feed the poor, the way his father used to do when no one was looking. Shahzad remembered how his father would always feed the beggar, street boy, or madman on the road. “Feed on his behalf, and then God will be happy,” she said.
Shahzad nodded, and walked down the road to a cheap hotel. Out front, he found many hungry people. Some were sitting on their haunches begging, hands outstretched. Others had that gauntness in their cheeks or vacant look in their eyes. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed them before; he knew half the country was hungry. He gave them each fifty rupees. And for the first time, as he thought of his father, he felt good.
***
At the end of the month, Shahzad went to Chor Bazaar, the so-called “thieves market” downtown, to find a DVD of Mughal-e-Azam. It had been a long time since he’d seen it, and he wanted to watch it now. On his way he stopped at the old market, where most of the shopkeepers were still the same. “Where have you been all this time?” they asked. Shahzad told them about Dharavi, and they clapped him on the back, saying to one another, “See what has come of the landlord’s son?”
Shahzad continued on, feeling energized as he entered the inner bylanes of Chor Bazaar. He passed the skinny bidi-wallahs, hacking up a lung, and the old men selling broken shortwave radios. He passed the fake-antique sellers hawking what passed as old British snuffboxes, chalices, lanterns, ship relics, clocks, coins, and rotary phones. He passed the shops with the windup gramophones, printed with the image of the dog listening to His Master’s Voice. After this came the clusters of sitting Buddhas, standing Krishnas, rose petal rosaries, and imitation Mughal vases. Then came the rows and rows of rusty car parts and tailors with signs in bad English. He passed several women, who never used to come to Chor Bazaar, at least not dressed in clothes like that. Finally, he came upon the movie sellers. There, at a makeshift wooden stall, beside a motorcycle with a baby goat standing with wobbly legs on top, was a copy of Mughal-e-Azam.
After Shahzad got home, he asked to borrow Farhan’s speakers so that he could watch the movie in their bedroom on his laptop. He could recall every scene, song, and line of dialogue of the film, but still he looked forward to the moment that dinner was over and his mother had gone to bed.
The movie opened, as Shahzad remembered well, with Emperor Akbar walking through the desert to the tomb of a saint to beg for a son. Still, Shahzad leaned forward, entranced as if for the first time. “I have everything in life, but I don’t have a son,” the king said. Before long, the saint granted his wish, and the queen gave birth to a naughty but good-looking baby boy.
After a little while, Sabeena, who was in the living room watching her Pakistani serial, turned off the television. She came into the bedroom just as the court dancer, Anarkali—played by Madhubala—came on screen. “Oy, Madhubala,” Shahzad said to her, looking up from his spot on the bed. “Mmmm,” Sabeena said, without taking her eyes off the screen. This was the part where Anarkali appeared as a statue and came to life after the prince almost shot her with an arrow. Moving closer, Sabeena leaned on Shahzad’s shoulder and then drew up a chair beside him.
Almost three hours later, after the emperor had gone to war with the prince over his love of Anarkali, Shahzad and Sabeena watched as father and son confronted each other. It was the film’s most quoted scene. “I am bound by my empire,” the emperor told his son. “And I am bound by my love,” the prince responded. Shahzad inhaled sharply. Sabeena leaned in close. Neither of them spoke. The emperor would let Anarkali live, but she and the prince could never be together.
As the credits rolled, Sabeena lay down in bed, where she didn’t often sleep. Through the window, she could see the railway tracks, the Haj House, and the nearby trees where the two parrots sang to each other, as if they were in love. After a minute, Shahzad switched off the light and sat down close beside her in the dark.