Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [31]
14
The red brick madrassa where I was enrolled sat on a muddy canal where buffaloes and bare-backed boys swam. The juicer up the street broke sugarcane spines and pushed them through his eight-armed machine, secreting juice into a glass, which he mixed with salt, ginger, and lemon. Nearby, a billiards hall and a restaurant catered to truck drivers passing through the desert town. Behind the madrassa was an open field used for Eid prayer, though it was infested with scorpions. On the other side of the field was an abandoned mental hospital.
Wearing a light-blue shalwar kameez and topi, during my first day of class I found myself sitting in front of my new teacher, Qari Jamil. A heavyset man with fleshy pink hands and black skin, he wore an undershirt called a bunyan with a lungi that reached past mid-calf. A tan stick was propped close to him. The expression on his face—bemused irritation—suggested that he wouldn’t be averse to using the stick. We sat face-to-face in the center of the room as all the other students rocked in front of their Qurans. He appraised me with a supercilious look that asserted the totality of his authority.
“What’s your name?”
“Abir ul Islam.”
“Incorrect.”
I looked at him in confusion, frightened by the way he’d dismissed my name.
“But it is Abir ul Islam. It means—”
“That’s not how you say your name.”
“Then how?” I asked.
“You are pronouncing it as if it begins with an alif. In fact, your name begins with an ein. It is an Arabic word, and thus you must pronounce it in the Arabic way. Harden the ein. From your throat. Not from the front of your mouth like a housewife. Now say it again.”
“Abir.”
He reached forward with his stick and jabbed its blunt end into the small of my neck. “Pull it out from here,” he commanded.
“Abir.”
“No.” He jabbed harder. “Say it again.”
“Abir.”
He lifted up his stick and crashed it on the bench between us. “Wrong!” he exclaimed. “Say it again. Say it correctly this time—from the back of your throat like a man.”
I tried. I added a guttural growl to the first letter, but it came out sounding feeble and meek. I looked down in shame. Apparently reflecting on one’s failure was not permitted, because he thumped the bench again.
“Say it again. Say it loudly. Let everyone hear.”
“Abir,” I said. “Abir, Abir, Abir, Abir…” until my voice became hoarse. Incrementally the class moved to laughter, and eventually Qari Jamil joined them.
“We’ll work on it,” he said. Then he turned to a short boy with oiled and parted hair. “Jugnu. You, Jugnu. Come here for a minute.”
“Yes, Qari Saab?” said the boy in a voice so obedient that it made me pity him.
“Show Abir ul Islam here how to sit.”
“Like this, Qari Saab,” Jugnu said, adjusting himself. I couldn’t get past how deeply reverent Jugnu was toward Qari Jamil. It was intimidating. Ammi and Pops had always told me that in Islam teachers were like parents—there was a hadith that said so—but I didn’t treat even my parents with such submission.
Qari Jamil looked at me. “Do you see how Jugnu is sitting? Copy him. His back is erect. Both of his feet are tucked under him. His left ankle is turned under his seat and is parallel to the floor. His right foot is propped on the ground. This is how you must sit.”
With a couple of false starts, I did my best to mimic Jugnu.
“Good,” said Qari Jamil. “Just like that. This is how you will sit when reading the Quran. Do you understand?”
I nodded yes even as a sharp pain shot through the arch of one foot. Pops had always told me that I had flat feet and couldn’t bend them the same way other people could. However, telling that to the qari didn’t seem like a particularly good idea.
“Now take out your qaida,” he said. “Let’s start.”
I produced the instruction manual, placed it on the bench, and opened it to the first page, where the alphabet was written. Meanwhile, my ankle stiffened and hurt.
“The reason that you cannot pronounce your own name is because you know only the Urdu alphabet,