Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [4]
“Why are the angels so scary?” I asked Ammi.
“Sometimes Allah sends them out to punish the people that follow Iblis,” Ammi said. “But you see, the angels are just doing their job. Most of the time they’re very nice; they just stand around and sing Allah’s praises. It’s Iblis who is the scary one.”
“Who is Iblis?”
“The worst: Shaytan. Mankind’s mortal enemy.”
Iblis was a jinn that, before the creation of mankind, had been raised up to heaven because he was pious, but then he disobeyed Allah and was cast out of the Garden and now sought revenge against mankind by leading people to falsehood. He did many evil things:
If you yawned and didn’t cover your mouth, he slept under your tongue for the whole night and defecated in your throat, which gave you bad breath. If you didn’t recite bismillah—“in the name of God”—before eating your food, he ate all of it so you remained hungry. He was the one who told you not to take a walk around the block after dinner so you would have gas in your stomach and break your wazu, your ablutions, by farting. He was the one who was responsible for pulling a donkey’s tail and making it heehaw during prayers. He was the one who caused those scary shooting stars, because at night he tried to sneak into Paradise to topple the kursi—Allah’s throne—and the angels fended him off by throwing meteorites at him.
“You must never follow Iblis,” Ammi said. “You are Abir ul Islam, and Iblis wants to deceive Muslims.”
“I won’t. I promise. I am Abir ul Islam, and Iblis is my enemy.”
I resolved to one day join the angels that fought Iblis, and in preparation for hurling meteorites I threw my tennis ball against the wall.
3
One day when he wasn’t working, Pops took me for a long walk alongside the canal and told me the history of Islam and Pakistan.
He told me about the British taking over Mughal India; the fall of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924, which took away the protector of the Muslims; the circumstances around the creation of Pakistan, a state for Muslims who sought to avoid being dominated by the Hindus; the emergence of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party; the breakup of East and West Pakistan; the rise of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his eventual hanging at the hands of General Zia ul Haq.
“I support him,” Pops said about the general. “Because he’s a pious Muslim and because he gives unwavering support to the mujahideen in Afghanistan attacked by the Soviets.”
“Why did the Soviets attack Afghanistan?” I asked as we crossed a street full of sputtering blue and green motorized rickshaws.
“There are two reasons,” Pops said, giving me his pinky to hold. “First, the Soviets persecute people who follow Islam. In their country Muslims have to hide their Qurans and pretend that they are non-Muslim. Second, the Soviet Union wants to capture Afghanistan so that it can then capture a part of Pakistan and gain our warm-water port at Gwadar. They need this to attack America by sea.”
“And Zia ul Haq is helping the mujahideen fight the Soviet Union?”
“Yes. The mujahideen fight in the name of Islam, and even the world’s greatest army cannot defeat them.”
The mujahideen immediately inspired me. When Pops wasn’t around I’d try to talk about them with Ammi, but she didn’t listen to news and didn’t have much to say about them. However, because I insisted on hearing about jihad, she told me stories about the famous battles waged by the Prophet and his Companions. There was the Battle of Badr, where the Prophet and his 313 Companions held off a polytheistic army far greater in number because the Muslims were joined by scimitar-wielding angels; there was the Battle of Uhud, where the Prophet suffered a wound in his side because of the treachery of the Hypocrites; and there was the Battle of Khandaq, where the Prophet dug a trench around Medina on the advice of his Persian