Their son arrived on a Wednesday in June, the bhut a few days later. It came in a large refrigerated box, blinding white and covered in handwritten numbers and astrological symbols. Mrs Salman privately thought the writing looked like a child’s scribbles; she could not make out any real words at all. She didn’t dare voice this thought to her son or husband.
Inside the box was the dead body of a twenty-something year old. The skin was pallid and cold to the touch, a little moist from condensation. Razi saw the scepticism on her face and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘It needs to warm up.’
He removed the bhut from its box and wrestled it into one of the dining room chairs. ‘It’ll take a few hours to come out of stasis,’ Razi said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll place the taawiz and it’ll be ready to go.’ He took out a plastic-wrapped amulet and placed it on the side table beside the corpse.
Mrs Salman looked uneasily at the dark little bundle. The Pir sahib who had prepared it was known to be an educated and pious man, but she couldn’t help remembering all the stories about wise religious men who summoned spirits which wreaked unintended havoc.
By the time dinner was cleared away and sliced mangoes brought out, the corpse had warmed enough that it hung more naturally in its chair, like a sleeping drunk rather than a mannequin.
Thank God Razi was here to help lift his father in and out of his wheelchair, though even the fit thirty-five-year-old huffed at the bulk. Then Razi called the night attendant and together the two young men took Salman sahib to prepare for bed. Mrs Salman, who was also large, watched them wheel her husband away with a sense of relief and picked up her tablet.
The next morning the corpse was fully defrosted and Razi ceremoniously tied the fat taawiz around its neck. He had already arranged for a black goat to be killed in the garden and the blood collected, and he now held the still-warm cup to the corpse’s lips.
Because of this, or because of changes in the night, the corpse’s features seemed more familiar: the nose was fleshier, the chin had a distinct cleft. When Razi stepped back after adjusting the taawiz, Mrs Salman gasped at the resemblance between the two.
‘His name is Karim,’ Salman sahib said from his sofa. ‘I’ll call him Karim.’
Karim opened its eyes. They were large and a warm golden-brown, the same colour as its hair, both startling against pale skin. The blood-stained lips curled in a smile.
‘Assalam alaykum, sahib,’ said Karim. Its voice was soft and the tone respectful, the accent from Jhelum where Pir sahib was based.
‘Hai Allah,’ said Mrs Salman. ‘A Muslim bhut. It will eat our souls.’
Karim’s head swivelled. ‘Assalam alaykum, begum sahib,’ it said.
Razi looked at it proudly. ‘Pir sahib is amazing, his research is revolutionising modern social care,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry Ammi, the bhut is perfectly secure. It also has all of Abu and your medical records so it will always know what to do. Just make sure you take it with you to any doctor appointments so it stays up to date.’
‘Will it say its prayers?’ Mrs Salman asked, still feeling her way.
‘I will not say prayers as I am already damned,’ Karim said. ‘However, I’m trained in qirat by Allama Basit Bukhari.’
‘Pir sahib provided a certificate,’ Razi added. ‘Lubna suggested it.’
Mrs Salman would never admit it, but listening to Quranic recitation gave her a headache, and any suggestion at all from her daughter-in-law was instantly suspect. Nevertheless, it would be nice not to have to pay a maulvi to recite a few verses at the weekly prayers she had hosted in her drawing room for the past three decades. Snivelling maulvis were even more suspect than her daughter-in-law, and she wouldn’t give them an anna if she could avoid it.
In any case, she excused herself to collect a handful of earth from the garden. She whispered the Verse of the Throne over it and secreted it in a little Ziploc bag to keep with her at all times, just in case.
Razi left for the airport soon after, leaving the bhut with Salman sahib and Mrs Salman. Salman sahib’s bladder was weak and though he wore an adult diaper when leaving the house, Mrs Salman knew how he resented it. She eyed the bhut, wondering how to address it — the formal aap she used for the attendants from the agency, or the tumm appropriate for a servant?
One could never go wrong with aap. ‘Karim, please could you help Salman sahib visit the washroom?’ she said.
‘What? I don’t need to go!’ Salman sahib protested.
‘You never think you need to go and then your attendants and I have to clean you up,’ she said firmly.
‘But — ’
‘Sahib, you know best if you need to go,’ Karim interjected. ‘I hope you will call me when you are ready.’
Mrs Salman frowned. Not even the attendants would refuse her direct instruction. Perhaps she should have addressed him as tu, which she only used for the garbage collector’s son. ‘Karim, take sahib to the toilet,’ she said.
‘When sahib is ready we will go,’ Karim said imperturbably.
Mrs Salman looked crossly at the wide grin on her husband’s face. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘My bladder my choice.’
There were five minutes of silence and then the inevitable occurred. Drops of liquid fell from the Rexine surface of the wheelchair onto the floor. Mrs Salman met her husband’s eyes squarely until he dropped his gaze. Shame, anger, triumph all flitted across his face.
Karim finally moved. Mrs Salman watched its smooth gait in fascination: the reversed feet typical of its kind did not seem to hamper it, though the cushion of air formed by the ground’s natural repulsion to bhut-kind probably helped it walk easily.
Karim went to the wheelchair and bent down with an unnatural fluidity to whisper something in Salman sahib’s ear. The old man nodded and the two left the room. As they passed Mrs Salman, she heard a final muttered ‘My bladder, my choice.’ Then she was left alone with the puddle of piss where her husband had been.
#
The next day, Mrs Salman dismissed the day attendant. She was relieved that Salman sahib had taken to the bhut, but also a little irate that her long years of caring for the fat, difficult man chosen by her parents when she was still sitting her Senior Cambridge exams counted for nothing now.
‘I wish you’d married again,’ she said to her husband. ‘Then I could have spent my life’s hate on her, not you.’
‘I should have,’ he agreed. ‘You would have had fewer sleepless nights in recent years.’
‘Two women to serve you!’ she snorted. ‘Anyway, Karim is like your wife. A young pale-skinned wife who doesn’t mind cleaning your shit and doesn’t ask for more sex than you can give.’
She repeated the thought, edited, to Razi when he rang later that day. ‘Why didn’t you get your father a female bhut?’ she said. ‘He could have taken it as your second mother.’
‘Lubna and I thought you’d be comfortable with a male, like the day and night attendants. Have you dismissed them yet? It’ll be quite a saving. The bhut will pay for itself. Remember it only needs the blood of a black goat once a quarter and you can eat the meat afterwards.’
‘You and Lubna think too much,’ she replied. ‘The night attendant is still here. He’s a nice boy, cares for your father like a son. How can I trust a bloodsucking bhut alone with your father?’
She heard a sigh, echoed by a second softer one (was she on speakerphone? Was her daughter-in-law listening in?).
After lunch Mrs Salman took a nap in the library which she used as a bedroom these days. During the afternoon she dreamt of her early childhood in Ormara where her father had been posted. She dreamt of a day she hadn’t thought of in years, of people screaming and weeping, of fishermen coming in from the sea to find their families dead and homes destroyed and an island forming in a bubbling sea. Of a saint’s hand cupping those who made it to his shrine, and of wandering down to the creek days later to find a woman’s body suspended in the mangroves, swollen beyond recognition, with her braids and bridal necklaces caught in the muddy branches.
She woke from the dream with a start to the sound of glass panes vibrating in the window frames and a distant thunder. With difficulty she got off the sofa, only one thought in her mind — Salman sahib was alone, he would not be able to get out, alone with that thing, no human attendant to recognise one of Islamabad’s frequent tremors or know to get him out — or was the earth protesting the bhut itself, trying to cough it away?
She staggered to the door, heart thumping, and there was Karim carrying Salman sahib’s bulk lightly in its arms, sprinting towards the back door. It disappeared and returned within seconds. Without saying a word or asking permission, it braced her under her armpits and helped her out. Her feet waved futilely beneath her in the laughable pretence that she was able to support herself. Then they were outside, and Karim stopped with unnatural abruptness, and let her gently down onto one of the garden chairs. She caught her breath and stared across at Salman sahib’s confused, sleep-filled eyes. The driver and his wife who did the cooking stood in the far corner of the garden with their children, staring and whispering.
The tremors ended. Karim went over to the cook’s family and said something to them, then went inside. Five minutes later it came outside with a tray of tea and biscuits for everyone save itself. It had taken out the Spode but Mrs Salman was pleased enough to see her best tea set had survived that she did not immediately think to object to it being used for the servants. Nevertheless, later she said a sharp word to Karim and locked the china cabinet.
Salman sahib finished his tea and beckoned Karim over. ‘I would like to go to the washroom, I think,’ he said. As gently as a mother with a newborn, Karim lifted him in its arms and took him inside.
#
‘Earthquake trained,’ Razi told her on the phone proudly that afternoon. ‘I put in a special request. It takes great effort to enchant such a bhut as they are very afraid of the earth. Pir sahib was very thorough.’
‘This was a small one, alhamdolillah,’ Mrs Salman said.
‘Yes but you never know in Islamabad,’ he said. ‘The construction just isn’t safe and it’s overdue for a big one, Lubna read that online.’
#
A few days later there was a small crisis. The night attendant arrived as Salman sahib and Mrs Salman were finishing dinner, and complained that there was no sugar for tea.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Salman, for the driver and his family had taken the night off to attend a wedding in their home village. ‘Could you go down to the markaz on your motorbike and buy some? I’ll pay you for the petrol.’
The night attendant bridled. He was not, he intimated, an errand boy.
‘Well I can’t drive, and Sarwar won’t be back till the morning. I’ll text him to buy sugar on his way back to the city.’
This, the night attendant felt, would make it difficult to do his duty. He didn’t think he could stay awake without tea.
Mrs Salman, who loved her tea and was conscious of the miserable tasks attendants from the agency were called upon to perform, found this reasonable.
‘Begum sahib, I can cycle to the markaz,’ said Karim. It had been standing silently behind Salman sahib’s chair, as still as the china cabinet.
A vision came to her of a pallid corpse floating into Shahji General Store on backward-turned feet to buy a bag of sugar. It was an appealing thought. Nevertheless she hesitated. Did a bhut without human needs even understand how money worked? Had Pir sahib trained him to know if he was being cheated?
‘Or, if you prefer, begum sahib, I can drive you there.’
That settled it.
#
Karim was a careful driver, seemingly unfazed by Islamabad’s traffic. As it squeezed the Honda into a narrow parking spot, Mrs Salman nodded approval. ‘I’ll be just a minute,’ she said. Instantly, silently, the bhut was there to open the car door and hold out an un-insistent hand in case she should need it. She didn’t.
It was certainly a polite bhut, Mrs Salman mused as she paid for a half kilo of sugar and added to it a bottle of the egg shampoo which was the only thing which could wash out her hair oil.
She stepped out of the shop carefully, wary of the loose brick that she always feared would trip her. But the care itself put her off-balance and her ankle twisted. She dropped the bag and fell heavily.
The shop boys in Shahji General Store ran to the entrance, the fruit seller leapt up from his stall, and a handful of loiterers looked up. She gaped, the air knocked out of her, and waved a hand for help.
No one moved. They were all respectful young men, hesitant to touch a woman even to help her. A couple drew closer and one man tentatively began to reach out a hand but stayed just beyond reach.
Then she was enfolded in a soft clasp, and helped to her feet. She sagged back, dizzy and relieved, against a broad, silent chest, cool as a slab of unliving meat.
She took a ragged breath and said, ‘Don’t touch me, how dare you!’
‘Begum sahib?’ the bhut said, sounding worried.
‘No, I’m fine, it’s fine. Thank you,’ she said. She looked around: the young men looked worried but, still respectful of an elderly woman, kept their gaze directed at the floor.
The bhut hesitated. Its eyes glowed red as it scanned her body. ‘You are fine,’ it confirmed, and one by one the young men turned back to their own business.
The aches and bruises would last, but she was fine. She leaned her head against the car window, feeling the blood throb in her temples, thinking of the young men who respected her too much to meet her eyes but not enough to accept her own assessment of her wellbeing. ‘You feel like a dead fish,’ she said to Karim as they reached home.
She went to the library and rummaged through a cupboard till she found a small travel clock from the days before mobile phones. She inserted a new cell and found it as good as new.
‘Here,’ she said to Karim. ‘This is what your heart should sound like. Your silence is offensive.’
Karim nodded. He didn’t seem to do anything, but when she placed her hand against his chest she felt the heartbeat, strong and steady, as unwavering as a metronome.
Early next morning, when she woke up for the Fajr prayer, she went into the bedroom where Salman sahib slept, his breathing stertorous. The night attendant was asleep on the sofa with a cooled mug of tea next to him. Karim stood in the corner, watchful.
When the night attendant woke, she told him that his services were no longer required. The following night she moved back into the bedroom.
#
Life became easier in Karim’s unsleeping care. Mrs Salman found herself addressing him as aap after all, and even caught herself thinking of treats she could cook for him, as though he were one of Razi’s friends. She bought a beautiful unmarked black goat for the next bloodletting and tended it herself. But Salman sahib grew ever feebler and, one night, took a turn for the worse.
‘Begum sahib, I think we should take sahib to the hospital,’ Karim said.
‘Do you think so?’ she said distractedly. Her rosary slid through her fingers but it was an automatic gesture, she could not remember the words. Her husband was very still under his sheet and she kept glancing at his chest to make sure it was moving.
Karim laid a hand on Salman sahib’s brow and caressed the hair into order. ‘Yes, begum sahib,’ he replied.
The driver, Sarwar, was roused, and Salman sahib manoeuvred into the backseat, his head on Karim’s lap. She sat in the front, the rosary beads clicking nervously between her fingers.
The hospital admitted him at once. Fortunately one of the junior oncologists was present, the one who was Razi’s age and who knew Salman sahib’s case well. He immediately ordered bags of medicines and needles and cannulas and drips which Sarwar was sent to purchase from the hospital pharmacy. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
There was no one else in the waiting area. Mrs Salman sat bolt upright, wondering how many beads of her rosary she had missed, or even which of Allah’s names she was on. She decided to start again from the beginning.
Karim appeared next to her. ‘Begum sahib, go home and rest. I’m here,’ he said.
‘I won’t,’ she said flatly.
Instead of arguing, he sat down beside her.
Salman sahib was allowed to go home in the early morning. The doctor on duty wrote out a few more prescriptions, warned Mrs Salman that her husband would likely be nauseous and then nodded dismissal.
She was bone tired, but stayed on her feet, helping Karim put Salman sahib to bed and administer some medicines. She went into the bathroom, with its invalid’s smell of excrement and bleach, and splashed her face with water. Then her worry-heightened hearing caught a sound and she dashed out to see Salman sahib on his back, emitting a soft, hideous choking sound and with black streaked bile running out of his mouth.
The door opened and Karim walked in with a water jug. With inhuman speed he laid the tray down (not a drop spilled, Mrs Salman thought, frozen), and shoved Salman sahib, turning him onto his side. The dark liquid flowed over the pillow, Salman sahib took a great gasping breath, and then threw up again.
At last the retching stopped. Karim cleaned the patient and lifted him while Mrs Salman changed the pillows and sheets and wiped down the plastic sheeting underneath. Salman sahib fell instantly asleep, his breathing becoming deeper and more regular than it had been in days.
It looked like the worst was over. Mrs Salman lay down facing her husband and drifted off into a light sleep.
#
Then it was another day, and another. Salman sahib improved, but as after every such episode, the pendulum of his health never swung back as far as it had once been. He returned to life gentler and less quarrelsome. Mrs Salman called off her weekly khatam, preferring instead to spend her time with him. The Ziploc bag of earth she scattered on a flowerbed.
‘Jani,’ said Salman sahib one morning. His voice was faint and breathy, as though it came out of a dream. ‘Jani, when I die…’
‘Hush,’ said Mrs Salman and reached out to find his hand. She slept now in their shared bedroom and ate there as well, unwilling to leave Salman sahib for even a minute.
She wrapped her fingers around the wrist, feeling the gentle throbbing under the skin. Alive, for now still alive, she thought fiercely.
‘When I die I want Karim to wash my body for burial.’
‘Razi and Karim will do it together.’
‘I don’t want a rough-handed maulvi to touch me. And Razi is just a boy.’
‘Hush, hush,’ she said again. ‘I promise you.’
‘I wish we had a daughter for when your time comes,’ he said.
She didn’t reply and Salman sahib drifted back to sleep. After a while, she got out of bed. Her body felt small and light, her limbs flexible and free of the aches she had become used to over the decades.
She padded out to the large room where the family slept in the cool Ormara winter. It was night time but the rope beds were unoccupied, blankets flung away as though sleepers had risen in a panic.
She went on into the courtyard overlooking the sea and looked up, up, at a silent wave, taller than the palm leaf huts, taller than the minaret of the Ormara mosque, sweeping inland. The houses disappeared, and the minaret, and there were things in the water which could have been boats or debris or cattle or people. The water rose to the very edge of the cliff her home stood on, and then swirled back to the sea, leaving behind wreckage. She wrenched her gaze away and looked around, wondering why no one else was watching, and saw a silent cluster of people at the far end of the courtyard, looking inland towards the hills. There was a red glow on the slope, and flames shot up once, twice, four times, and then all was still again.
Sixty years later and in Islamabad Mrs Salman woke.
A deep groan from the earth brought her to full wakefulness.
Once again Karim was there to lift Salman sahib, and this time Mrs Salman rose herself and hurried out into the garden to join the servants and their children. The tremors seemed to last longer this time and she fancied that she could see the strain in the concrete walls.
#
When they were finally able to go back inside, there were seventeen missed calls from Razi on Mrs Salman’s phone. She rang him back.
He answered at once. ‘Ammi, thank god. Is Abu all right? I saw it on twitter and the TV news is reporting devastation…’
‘Abu is fine,’ she said. ‘We’re all fine and the house is fine. Though my teapot has broken. That is the only devastation, the TV is exaggerating as usual.’
Razi asked again how Salman sahib was and how she was. It was clear the boy was shaken. His father’s illness had worn on him, she thought to herself. She reassured him again and wished he would let her be.
‘We’ll come to visit you, me and Lubna,’ he finally said. ‘After Abu’s illness… we’re coming next Thursday. We’ll stay for the weekend.’
‘How nice that will be,’ she said.
If anything, Razi and Lubna’s impending arrival caused her more worry over the coming days than Salman sahib’s health or the new crack in the drawing room wall. While Salman sahib slept one afternoon, she said to Karim: ‘You won’t understand this but amongst us human beings we say that our daughters go away when they marry. Actually, I think it’s sons who go away and start new families.’
Karim said nothing, only listened.
‘Mothers don’t always understand that,’ she continued. ‘Salman’s mother didn’t. She tried to hold on to him until her Alzheimer’s. I promised I’d never do to Razi’s wife what my mother-in-law did to me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s difficult. But those two are now one family. This fact must be accepted.’
She put her hand on Karim’s fish-pale wrist, marvelling again at how soft the skin was, and its coolness. And always, always underneath, the strong pulse, more human than human.
#
Razi and Lubna came and went. Mrs Salman cooked for them with her own hands, making Razi’s favourites and Salman sahib’s favourites and even, diffidently, asking what she could cook for Lubna. When Razi told her that Lubna thought her yakhni pilau was the best she’d ever had, Mrs Salman was delighted and made it again. She wrote out the recipe as well as she could remember it, and Razi promised to pass it on to his wife. He also promised to look on the internet for a teapot to complete the Spode set.
Nevertheless, it was a relief when they left for Dubai.
#
It was late afternoon and there had been no electricity since the early morning. Even the UPS had run out of charge and the ceiling fans had slowed, then died. The couple sat in the dining room, the coolest room in the house and the darkest. Karim stood by them, swinging a large handfan.
Mrs Salman was occupied with the pieces of her broken teapot. She had seen on the internet that in Japan broken china was sometimes mended with an attractive gold glue, and she thought that if she could reassemble all the pieces Razi could order the special glue for her. From time to time she glanced over at Salman sahib. He was reading the newspaper by the light of a kerosene lamp. She hoped the news would not enrage him, whatever it was.
The tea tray arrived and Karim rose to take it from the cook. As he turned in the doorway he seemed to say something, but was drowned out by a huge sound like the cracking of a whip. He stumbled and the tea tray fell from his hands. Tea and milk sloshed over the marble floor.
‘Earthquake!’ Karim shouted and lunged towards Salman sahib. Mrs Salman sprang to her feet, and the shaking began.
The floor cracked open and blood boiled out as it had in Ormara, no it was tea and burning kerosene, and the floor was marble here, not mud. The ground shook so violently that Mrs Salman fell to her knees. The bride in the mangrove trees, waves engulfing a seaside village, the mud floor breaking under her feet. Karim was struggling to make his way to Salman sahib. She began to crawl towards her husband and, with a sound that obliterated all others, the roof fell. There was a fire in the earth, a fire to devour all life. A dream, she thought. May this also be a dream.
#
When consciousness returned, the first thing she saw was the shattered china cabinet. None of the Spode would have survived, she thought. Not even the Japanese would be able to fix it. Next came an awareness that there was something wrong in her left leg, something so profound that she knew she should not investigate further, only stay as still as she could. This was actually quite easy, as she was pinned down by rubble from the fallen ceiling.
The next thing she saw was a small creature. A rat? she thought fuzzily. But a dead rat, it was perfectly still and its entrails spilled wetly out of its stomach.
Then she saw that it wasn’t a rat or an animal at all, but a large taawiz with slips of close-written paper leaking out. The ink was smeared, the paper singed from the falling lamp, all potency gone. Next to it was a crushed human body which she recognised as Karim. Earthquake trained, she thought. How could we think a bhut could withstand the earth?
With some difficulty she turned her head and saw her husband, also pinned under concrete. And with that sight, she suddenly felt as though she had been sucked back into her own body, and that it was full of pain and the house was gone and all the rest of the Spode but it didn’t matter because Salman lay beside her and he was surely too weak to have survived, men were always weak but most of all when they had a terminal cancer.
‘Zeenat?’
His voice was weak but it was his voice. She opened her mouth wide as though screaming in relief, but no sound came out. She mastered herself.
‘Jani, I’m here,’ she said. ‘Are you hurt?’
There was a pause. ‘I don’t know. I can’t move, but I couldn’t move much before either, except with Karim’s help.’
‘Karim is dead,’ she said. ‘I can’t move either, we’ll have to wait for help. It shouldn’t be too long.’
‘He was a good boy, a good boy,’ Salman said. ‘He would have saved us if he could.’
‘Razi will come to us as well,’ she said. ‘He and Lubna. I’m sure they’ll stay longer this time.’
Salman didn’t reply so she added ‘Lubna is expecting, you know. She told me when they visited.’
‘That’s nice, they’ll be a family,’ he said, but sounded distracted. ‘But now it’s just us. It’s the end, and it’s just us.’
‘It’s not the end,’ she said. ‘Here, hold my hand. I’m still alive, you’re still alive, you see? Hold my hand. Maybe we can pull ourselves out.’
They reached towards each other, hands grasping vainly in a way which reminded Mrs Salman horribly of the last time they’d attempted sexual intercourse. She reached out again and finally caught hold of Salman’s hand. She held it hard, ignoring the winces as her nails pierced the thinned skin. His pulse fluttered under her fingers, and gradually came to regularity as he calmed. Her own blood thrummed loudly in her ears, counting out the moments as they waited for help to arrive.
-END-
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