“Another one goes to hell,” murmurs the young khattib, throwing a crumpled scrap of paper away. He has just done his duty of informing the people in the Jama’at about the death that had happened barely an hour ago. Though he does not know the deceased person, he knows he would not make it to heaven. Men who don’t come to mosques or respect the clergy won’t pass the Judgement test, and they won’t survive the narrow bridge either. These are certainties, and not lies like science, the khattib knows it for sure.
Turning the saliva-reeking mike away, he runs his slender fingers through his unhealthy beard, pondering for a minute over the dangers of science and logic, and how hundreds of men fall into that trap, like ephemera insects slamming into flames. Barefoot, with the white mundu tugging well above his ankles, he walks across the oval hall of the mosque, treading gently on the palm mats laid out for prayers. On reaching the door, he lets out a suppressed burp, loud and long, reliving the taste of the tuna curry and beans thoran he had for lunch.
The crumpled ball of paper falls on the grass outside the mosque, and an inquisitive crow darts down from a nearby mango tree and pecks at it. Having found out that a name scribbled on a piece of paper in nearly illegible handwriting is not as exciting as fish bones or crumbs of banana fry, it takes off, cawing, and settles back in the tree.
It’s afternoon – like every afternoon in the backwater village, slow and lethargic – and it’s time for the muezzin’s call. The khattib walks towards the ablution area and washes his hands and face with running water from a tap. He pokes his fingers into his ears, wipes the back of the earlobes, rinses the inside of his nostrils and mouth, and sprinkles water on the edge of his forehead where the hairline begins. He makes sure he doesn’t break wind, lest he has to repeat the entire ritual of cleansing.
Even before the call for prayer begins, people who live within the earshot of the mosque have heard the thuds of gravedigging – an ominous sound that keeps them silent and sombre and turns some of them philosophical. For others, they are the footfalls of death – a reminder to wake them up, like the small alarm clock that goes off on the windowsill.
By the time men emerge from the mosque after the Azh’ar prayers, the sky has become overcast, but the sun, without any sense of occasion, continues to shine through the slate-grey clouds. If it rains in sunlight, it is wedding time for foxes. That’s what everyone in the village tells the children. Over the years, across generations, children have imagined foxes walking happily, garlanded, rubbing their bushy tails in nuptial excitement. Wedding of foxes is a rare occasion, like the moon turns a valley into a breathtaking stretch of bluish-purple once in twelve years. Rare like rains in January, it catches people unaware. Like death in the family, it makes people stand in a corner, weighed down with memories.
It is raining in bright evening sunlight, etching an arc of rainbow across a surprised sky. But today no one in Kayaloram village thinks about foxes getting married since they have heard the thuds and grunts of the gravedigger heaving his hoe and pickaxe into the wet, red earth, and the khattib announcing the death through two loudspeakers fixed atop the minarets.
“Mohammed Jamal of Kayaloram House passed away at noon…” the khattib announced with sacerdotal indifference, reading from the scrap of paper the secretary of the Jama’at has tucked into his hands. It stopped many late-lunchers mid-meal to listen, causing red coconut fish curry to drip through their fingers. The khattib is new to the Kayaloram Jama’at – the Waqf Board transferred him last month from a small mohalla in the eastern upper parts of the district to the quaint, backwater village. So, he has never seen Mohammed Jamal, who had never been to the mosque; not even for Eid prayers, when every male in the village turned up, bathed and dressed in new clothes but with a conspicuous odour of raw mutton they had cut and chopped late the night before still emanating from their hands. When they placed their palms together to pray, they themselves breathed in the yucky smell of innards they had cleaned, and the gooey, thick odour of the curly fat they had plucked from the crevices in meat folds.
By the time the funeral procession reaches the mosque, the half-naked gravedigger, caked in mud, has finished digging, and is smoking a beedi sitting by the edge of the grave beside his hoe and pickaxe. A nostalgic whiff of first rain eddies up from the dark-brown mounds of soil around the grave.
Crystal droplets pucker the faces taut with grief; bigger drops patter on plantain and teak leaves, and drip down the eaves and awnings of the mosque, and the mossy cheeks of its twin minarets. The golden four o’clock light gleams liquid from the wet foliage around the cemetery, below a pale and prompt rainbow with rugged edges. In the surrealistic yellow of the tropical afternoon, blood-red hibiscus, lilac willows and white wild jasmines gnaw at the sullen, wet air from nondescript corners and insignificant hedges. Restless crows, with no sense of occasion, probe deep into fleshy red-and-yellow cashew fruits and leave them half-eaten and oozing fermented juice, which keeps the tiny, zigzagging flies woozy, and in drunken stupor.
The muezzin’s call begins on a low note but soon segues into a baritone with a nasal timbre. It sounds impersonal and irrelevant to me at the stroke of burying Pa, who has never been to a mosque. If he were alive, he would have pursed his lips and laughed away the ritualistic reverence of the religious.
I don’t pray though I attend the prayers inside the mosque. I just sit there, thinking of the relief of death and the futility of praying beside a lifeless body, even if it is one’s own father’s. How can prayers help a dead body? Or, the soul that has left the body? When Pa was in the hospital – more correctly, when he was diagnosed with cancer and when the biopsy result said there was a malignant growth tucked somewhere in his lungs – we prayed. We prayed because we were afraid the disease would take him away. In the years preceding the four days when he was taken to a private hospital to wait for his death, Ma prayed, sitting in a cane chair next to his bed. In between, she would doze off but wake up with a start, making sure he was sleeping well. She would gently stroke his forehead, which had by then become soft like a piece of wet sponge, and then go back to praying. Soon she would doze off again. Neither trained nor conditioned to pray, I didn’t pray any religious prayer for Pa. I just closed my eyes and called out to God to relieve him of the unbearable pain, especially when we ran out of morphine tablets.
Excerpted with permission from Tales from Qabristan, Sabin Iqbal, Penguin India.
