Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [128]
Khuda Kay Liye is the story of two brothers, named Mansoor and Sarmad, from Lahore, Pakistan. They both work in the music industry. Mansoor, a modern Muslim, goes off to school in Chicago, where he falls in love with one of his classmates. After 9/11 he gets wrongly apprehended in the predictable security dragnet and put under custody by a shadowy American agency which engages in mental and physical torture that results in his being paralyzed.
Sarmad, meanwhile, begins following a fanatical mullah. He stops playing music and accuses his own family of being apostates and infidels. One day Sarmad’s uncle from England arrives with his young daughter Maryam. The uncle is upset that she’s planning on marrying a non-Muslim from London and convinces Sarmad to marry her. At first Sarmad is reluctant, but when he asks his mullah for advice he’s given the go-ahead. Sarmad embraces the conspiracy and, after forcibly marrying Maryam, moves with her to a tribal area of Pakistan, where no one will find them. He eventually rapes her.
Once Maryam is able to escape to Lahore, she files a motion to annul the marriage. A dramatic trial ensues. Sarmad calls in his sinister mullah to have him testify that Sarmad was simply following Islam and therefore did nothing wrong. Maryam, meanwhile, desperate for help, goes in search of a reclusive reformist shaykh and begs him to testify on her behalf. The shaykh, played by the Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah, stands up in court, demonstrating with both eloquence and scripture that Sarmad’s mullah’s testimony was utterly fraudulent and bankrupt. Beyond simply affirming the rights of women, the shaykh decries the mullah’s disregard for music, maligns him for the militancy he promotes, and attacks him for misleading impressionable Muslim youth. His testimony is so potent that it leads to a verdict in Maryam’s favor—and leads Sarmad to dump his mullah and his extremist teachings. At the end of the film Sarmad is found using his musical skills to perform an azan. It was a perfect reformist resolution. Good Islam beating bad Islam.
By the time the twists and turns of the film were over and done with, the atmosphere in the room had changed. Ziad and I began talking in familiar ways again.
“Wow. That was intense,” Ziad said, watching the final credits. “I feel like we should hug or something.”
“Why don’t you make some of that mint tea and we can say that we hugged.”
“Only if you make a hooka,” he countered.
It was late at night and cool outside, so I pulled two chairs onto the balcony and lit up the tobacco as I once did with my grandfather. Ziad brought out the steaming cups and we clinked them. Then we slurped noisily as we commented on the progress the laborers had made on the nearby building. We passed the hooka back and forth and made rings with the smoke. The O’s rippled out of our mouths, hung in the air, and for a moment became necklaces for the stars.
I interrupted the reverie to talk about the film. “Didn’t that movie really just cut to the heart of the civil war in Islam?” I said. “On one hand, you’ve got impressionable young men, who represent the strong, handing over the reins of their power to scheming mullahs. On the other hand, you’ve got smart women, who represent the weak, subjugated in the name of religion, looking for help from those who know the humane side of Islam.”
“There seems to be something common to both sides,” Ziad observed.
“Impossible. They’re as different as night and day.”
“No. They’re alike. They both seem to believe that Islam is the solution. They’re just arguing over whose Islam should be dominant.”
“Authoritarian Islam and tolerant Islam aren’t the same thing. The former is not Islam. They’re two different things. Which side are you on?”
“What if I said neither?”
“There is no neither. You’re either with us or against us.”
“All things boil down to dominance to