Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [126]
“I can contribute more financially,” I offered. “You drive me around but I rarely pay for gas.”
“Our gas is subsidized,” he replied. “Gas is cheaper than air in this country. Besides, you’re the starving activist and I’m the established professional. There’s nothing for you to contribute.”
“This is weird,” I said. “But I guess I’ll just say it.”
“What?”
“I know I sound like a wife here, but I feel like there’s this distance between us.”
I expected Ziad to change the subject. Instead, he confronted the matter directly.
“Of course there’s a distance,” he said, sitting up. “You’re a reformist and I’m not. The things you’re seeking to accomplish are different from the things I know. That doesn’t mean I don’t value what you do. It just means there will always be space between us.”
“In other words, you’re not particularly interested in what I’m doing,” I said somberly.
“Right.”
The realization made me a little sad. Not because I wanted him to think Islamic reform was the greatest thing in the world, but because for all the loftiness I associated with my work, that work was keeping me distant from the only person in the world who was helping me.
Remembering that communication is a two-way street, I set about trying to get to know what Ziad found interesting, given that all I’d done thus far was use him as an encyclopedia and a companion.
“Tell me,” I said. “What’s your orientation?”
He looked at me askance. “I see that you’re still trying to get me executed.”
I laughed. “Not like that. I meant Islamically. You read my work and enjoyed it. You oppose the theocrats and terrorists. You don’t believe in requiring hijabs or beards. Yet you say you aren’t a reformist. I haven’t heard you say what you are, though: Shia or Ismaili or orthodox Sunni—whatever. It’s a big mystery to me—you know, your theological orientation, stuff like that.”
“It’s too simplistic to be worth getting into.”
“I’m interested,” I said, pulling up a chair.
Ziad shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I keep rolling along. Why don’t you update me, though? What’s happening with the shaykh and the sculptor? And has Ali Ahab landed his rich Moby Dick?”
I waved my hand to dismiss his questions. I didn’t want to talk about myself any more than Ziad did.
We sat companionably in the dark and silent room. The only noise was the faint pulse of music coming out of the headphones.
“What are you listening to there?” I asked.
“Your people’s music.”
“Really? I don’t associate you with hip-hop.”
“Your other people,” Ziad said. “Punjabis.”
“Let me hear.”
Ziad handed me the iPod. “The Indian guy at the parking lot who washes my windshield told me about the CD that this song is from. Said his siblings loved the music and I reminded him of one of them. I don’t understand it, but it’s beautiful.”
I put in one earpiece and began listening. I immediately recognized the heavy female voice. It was Abida Parveen, Pakistan’s leading singer of folk and Sufi music. Most of her songs were from the tradition of Punjabi kalam poetry and mysticism that had been popular among Muslim saints, Hindu yogis, and Sikh gurus for hundreds of years, but was now ignored by most people, largely because ethnic literature no longer received patronage. The particular work that Abida Parveen was singing into my earpiece had been written by Baba Bulleh Shah, a famous Sufi saint born in Kasur, who had been the student of the spiritual master Shah Inayat. Bulleh Shah lived several hundred years ago in a period of great spiritual beauty in India. His life overlapped with that of the poet Waris Shah, who penned the greatest lyric poem in Punjabi, “Heer.” The prominent Sindhi Sufi Sachal Sarmast was also a contemporary of Bulleh Shah.
I knew the history of Punjab’s mystics because I had long kept track of the work of these poets, using their lyrics to rebuke orthodox and extremist Muslims. It was something that was part of the “reformist arsenal” that we activists relied upon. The mystics’ abandon, and their denigration of orthodoxy, was especially useful when reformists were