Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [17]
“What about Dajjal?”
“Isa will battle him and kill him with his sword,” Ammi said somberly. “Then Isa will die a natural death and finally be buried as a Muslim, and the mahdi will continue liberating the world. His reign will be forty years.”
“What will that world be like?”
By this time, Ammi had become tired, so she sped up the narrative. “In those forty years Muslims will thrive, but then they will lose all their gains and face utter humiliation, bringing a forty-year reign by their enemies. That’s when the Day of Judgment will finally come. The mountains will blow away like puffs of wool. Humanity will be gathered naked underneath the Great Throne for the Day of Reckoning.”
Then, shivering from fear and guilt, Ammi asked Allah for forgiveness and announced that it was time for prayer. I hastened to make wazu.
Prayer was the only protection against the apocalypse that was already here.
Upon hearing Ammi’s story, I began to train myself to go to the mosque more faithfully. I prayed all five prayers there most days, and my preparations for attending each prayer were meticulous.
I took Ammi’s heavy iron, applied gobs of kalaf, and starched my clothes until they were cardboard-hard. I found in Pops’s closet a checkered red-and-white kafiya that I learned to tie as a turban, though most of the time I simply draped it on my shoulders with the corners hanging forward on my chest, as the Quran reciters did on TV. I also had a hand-stitched topi, snow-white and delicate as gossamer, to grace my head.
There were many old men at the mosque, all of whom were regulars, and they loved to hobnob with me. One of them told me to give up using a toothbrush and opt for a wooden miswak like the one the Holy Prophet had used. Another one saw me using the pads on my fingers to count the zikr and gave me a wooden tasbih to use instead. “Now instead of counting in fifteens,” he said, “you can count in hundreds.”
I noticed that many worshippers had calluses on their foreheads and ankles from a lifetime of prostration and sitting on folded feet. Those were marks of piety that I wanted to develop as well. Thus, instead of praying on the carpet inside, I took to praying in the courtyard of the mosque, on straw matting that was hot and rough. During prostration I rubbed my forehead on the mat until it became raw.
I figured that if Yajuj and Majuj came and saw that I had marks of piety, they would know not to lay a hand on me.
9
The mysterious Balochi neighbors who owned the Land Rover blocking the alley, as well as the largest house and compound in the mohalla, inspired a lot of curiosity. Unlike everyone else, they kept their door closed. Their children never played outside. They didn’t try to initiate conversation with anyone. They didn’t send anyone to the mosque.
They were arms traders, as it turned out.
One early morning Ammi saw various men come out of the house and unload a fruit truck full of crated weapons. When she went and told Pops, he praised them for “being able to fabricate any weapon without ever going to school.” He also commended their business plan, explaining that the Afghan War had produced a surplus of weapons that now got sold all around the country. The Balochis were “just like sugarcane juicers,” according to Pops, “except they sell bullets and bandooks.”
Occasionally my cousins and I went to our roof and tried to peer across through their windows. We wanted to see a Stinger missile or a stash of Kalashnikovs. Sometimes late at night, while we were sleeping on the rooftop, I heard the Land Rover roar to life and drive out of the alley, rattling bricks and causing propped-up charpais to fall. By the time I woke up again the next morning, the Jeep would have returned, dusty and muddy.
For all their secrecy, the Balochis had a mole: the matriarch. She came regularly to sit with Dadi Ma, who attracted all the beleaguered housewives from nearby mohallas. They came to sit at her feet and complain about their husbands, and in turn she handed them lentils to sift.
The Balochi wife