The bus service to Pachigam started running again five days after these events. When Abdullah Noman arrived at his front door Firdaus could not prevent herself from weeping copiously for joy. Abdullah fell to his knees in the doorway and asked for her forgiveness. “If you can still love me,” he said, “then please help me find the courage to face the coming storm.” She raised him up and kissed him. “You are the only great man I have ever known,” she said, “and I will be proud to stand beside you and beat back death, the devil, the Indian army or whatever other trouble’s on its way.”
Bombur Yambarzal had done a brave thing once, when he faced down the rabble-rousing iron mullah Maulana Bulbul Fakh at the door of the Shirmal mosque, but now that life was asking difficult questions again in his great old age, his fear for the safety of his beloved wife led him astray. He was no longer the big-bellied vasta waza of yore. The years had withered him, palsied his hands, dotted him with liver spots and put cataracts in his eyes, and he cut a skinny, unimpressive figure as he wondered with some trepidation whether he would live to see the dawn of his eightieth year. This enfeebled Bombur expressed the view that the Lashkar-e-Pak would look more favorably on Shirmal and be less likely to attempt any “funny business” if people responded to the radicals’ poster campaign in a spirit of compromise, not confrontation. “We should agree to at least one thing they propose, Harud,” he said, “or we’ll be the ones who look unreasonable and hard line.”
Hasina Yambarzal, that powerfully built lady whom age had not weakened in the slightest and who continued to henna her hair in order to justify the rubicund nickname “Harud,” was preparing the television tent for the evening’s viewing. “What do you suggest?” she said in an uncompromising voice. “I told you my views about the burqa and if you try to stop the women coming in here there will be hell to pay.” The waza of Shirmal accepted her argument. “In that case,” he said, “can’t we just just tell our Hindu brothers and sisters that in response to the LeP intervention, and having regard to the gravity of the regional situation, and having weighed the available options, and only for the time being, and in this dangerous climate, and until things blow over, and for their own good as well as ours, and purely as a precautionary measure, and without meaning anything bad by it, and taking everything into consideration, and in spite of our deep reluctance, and with a heavy heart, and while fully appreciating their very understandable feelings of disappointment, and hoping earnestly for better days to come soon, and with the intention of reversing the decision at the earliest feasible opportunity, it might be better for all concerned if.” He stopped talking because he could not say the final words aloud. Hasina Yambarzal nodded judiciously. “There are a few pandit families over in Pachigam who won’t like it, of course,” she said, “but here in Shirmal there’s no need for anyone to get upset.”
When news reached Pachigam that the television tent was now for viewing by Muslims only, Firdaus could not restrain herself. “That Hasina, excuse me if I mention,” she told Abdullah, “people say she’s a very pragmatical lady but I’d put it another way. In my opinion she’d sleep with the devil if it was in her business interest to do so, and she’s got that dope Bombur so twisted up that he’d think it was his good idea.”
Two nights later the Yambarzal tent was full of Muslim-only TV watchers enjoying an episode of a fantasy serial in which the legendary prince of Yemen Hatim Tai, during his quest to solve the mysterious riddles posed by the evil Dajjal, found himself in the land of Kopatopa on the occasion of their new year celebrations. The Kopatopan phrase meaning “happy new year”-tingi mingi took took-so delighted the enthralled viewers that most of them leapt to their feet and started bowing to one another and repeating it over and over again: “Tingi mingi took took! Tingi mingi took took!” They were so busy wishing one another a happy Kopatopan new year that they didn’t instantly notice that some person or persons had set fire to the tent.
It was fortunate indeed that nobody was burned to death in the blaze. After a period of screaming, panic, jostling, terror, trampling, anger, running, bewilderment, crawling, cowardice, tears and heroism, in short all the usual phenomena that may be observed whenever and wherever people find themselves trapped in a burning tent, the congregation of the faithful all escaped, in better or worse condition, suffering from burns or not suffering from them, wheezing and gasping on account of the effects of smoke inhalation, or else by good luck neither gasping nor wheezing, bruised or not bruised, lying around on the ground some distance from the now-incandescent tent, or else (and more usefully) fetching water to ensure that the fire, which had by that time taken hold of the tent too powerfully to be extinguished before it had consumed its prey, at least did not spread to the rest of the village, but burned itself out on the spot.
As a result everybody missed the scene in which Hatim Tai met the immortal princess Nazarébaddoor whose touch could turn away not only the evil eye but also death itself. At the precise instant when Nazarébaddoor attempted to kiss Prince Hatim-he valiantly refused her advances, reminding her that he loved another “more than his very life”-the television set of the Yambarzal family exploded loudly and died, taking with it a major source of the family’s income, but, as against that, a significant cause of communal discord as well.
The next morning the three Gegroo brothers, Aurangzeb, Alauddin and Abulkalam, rode back into Shirmal on small mountain ponies, bristling with guns and festooned in cartridge belts. It was a beautiful spring day. Early moisture glistened on the corrugated metal roofs of the little wooden houses and flowers sprouted by every doorstep. The loveliness of the day only served to heighten the ugliness of the black circle of charred grass and earth that marked the spot where the fire had consumed the Yambarzals’ place and means of entertainment, and the Gegroos halted by the still-smoking spot and fired pistols into the air. Such villagers as were able to do so came out of their homes and saw three phantoms from their past, older, but still giggling and unshaven. Their old home was still standing, locked up and empty like a ghost house, but the brothers didn’t appear to care. They had just stopped by to say hello on behalf of their present employers, the LeP. “Did you do this to us?” Hasina Yambarzal demanded. They giggled at that. “If the LeP had laid the fire,” screamed Aurangzeb Gegroo at the top of his thin voice, “then every soul in that tent would have met his or her maker by now.” This was either true or not true. It was getting to be a characteristic of the times that people never knew who had hit them or why.
Alauddin Gegroo rode right up to Hasina Yambarzal, dismounted and shrieked into her face. “Don’t you know, you stupid disobedient woman flaunting before me the shamelessness of your uncovered features, that it’s only on account of us that the Lashkar hasn’t punished you people yet? Don’t you know that we’ve been protecting our own home village from the Lashkar’s holy wrath? Why don’t you wretched ignorant people understand who your real friends are?” But an alternative explanation was that it was only on account of the Gegroo brothers’ desire for vengeance that the LeP had taken the risk of sending a team as far afield as Shirmal. However, this was plainly not the time for a debate.
Abulkalam Gegroo completed his brother’s harangue at some length, baring a set of decayed teeth in an exaggerated snarl that marked him out as the very worst kind of weak man, the type who might very well kill you to prove his strength. “You are the same damn-fool villagers who sent away the great Maulana Bulbul Fakh. The same damn-fool villagers that won’t observe the simplest Islamic decencies as politely requested and who nevertheless expect to be protected from the consequences of your refusal. The same damn-fool villagers who thought we were dust, us, the worthless Gegroo brothers whom you were ready to starve to death in a mosque, whose lives weren’t worth two paisas to you, the pathetic Gegroos who couldn’t count on their own people to save them from the murderous Hindus-the same people who are only alive today because those same Gegroo brothers keep interceding for them. Arré, how stupid can even stupid people be? Because even these useless dead Gegroos whom you were prepared to throw away like the corpses of dead dogs can work out that the people who burned your tent must be the same people you threw out of it, your Hindu brothers and sisters, whom you love so much you feel bad about what you did to them even though you didn’t give a damn about what you thought you did to us, and you still don’t get it, you don’t see that the Hindus who set the fire, your pandit pals, would have been happy to see the whole lot of you laid out in the street here, burned to a crisp like so many overcooked sikh kababs.”