Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [38]
The existence of the demonic madrassa that was recruiting boys all over the country was big news for a little while. But after making a striking impression, it was just as quickly forgotten. No one in Sehra Kush could conceive of industrial madrassas like that.
I couldn’t forget about it, though. I stayed awake many nights wondering what I would have done had I ended up at a place like that. Would I have been able to run away? I knew the answer was no. I would have been too afraid to try to leave. I then imagined all the pain that Ittefaq had put up with while he was there, and it made me sad. I stared at the sky and wondered why Allah wasn’t nice to some people. I wondered if perhaps it was the case that Allah singled out some people for happiness and some people for suffering.
At night on the rooftop of the house, I stared at the stars. They were little specks, scattered like gravel across the sky. Where there was a cluster of stars, I imagined that it was an angel, resting. Where there was a shooting star, I imagined that it was the angels firing at Iblis, trying to keep him from coming too close to heaven. I imagined the angels looking at me. Did they see me and think, “Look, there’s a speck of dust?” What about Allah? Why couldn’t I penetrate this blackness He kept between Him and me? What would He say when I asked Him why he was so willing to let people be beaten?
Eventually I turned over and went to sleep. Allah was Light. What did little specks of dust matter to Him?
The angels must have heard my doubts, because they soon paid me a visit.
17
When he was a child, the Holy Prophet once found himself alone with a number of angels. They took him out into the desert one night, cut open his chest, drew forth his heart, and then—with a bottle full of milk from Paradise—washed all the blackness from it, and that is why Muhammad was the most pious and honest human being ever.
I wasn’t the Prophet, so my angels were punitive.
Some afternoons I used to sneak out to a house near the madrassa where some of the students and older kids from other neighborhoods went to hang out. The owners, whose son was a ringleader in the group, tended to go off and visit their neighbors, leaving the whole house to us. It felt like a sort of playground. We sailed paper boats into the nali, shot buntaz with precise finger strikes, played games of seven stones, and even sometimes went to the roof and flew kites.
One day I noticed that there was a room in the back of the house whose shutters were closed. It looked as if it was locked from the inside, but there was a strange glow coming from within that drew me to the room. I went over and started banging against the door.
“What do you want?” said a voice.
“Let me in.”
“No!”
“Let me in or I’ll get everyone else and we’ll break down the door.”
“Everyone can’t play this game!”
“Then just let me in. I won’t tell anyone about it.”
The door opened and I passed through. Once inside, I locked the door. Except for a sliver of light that slipped through the top window, the room was dark. A copy of the Quran wrapped in pink cloth was sitting atop a dresser. There was a prayer rug, a corner of it rumpled as if someone had slipped on it. The room smelled musty, of feathers and wet dust.
As my eyes adjusted, I noticed an area of intense brightness in the center of the room. I rubbed my eyes with my palms and then