Chapter Text
'And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink
at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.'
-Snake [D.H. Lawrence]
Jaskirat has killed many men, so many he can often smell the phantom blood on his hands, a ghost looming over his shoulders, like a butcher with a knife.
Jaskirat has killed many men, but the one he has killed in the most brutal way imaginable is Hamza Ali Mazari.
Often these days, in the comfort of his house in Canada, he looks at the mirror in search of who he is supposed to be. He has lived so many lives, he has been so much, yet so little. He misses India so much that the peninsula-shaped hole in his heart has become a part of his identity, and that is one thing he is not very sure about. Identity.
And although he misses India, Lyari has a way of branding your skin, like a blanket of shame that overwhelms all your senses. He had been bred for Lyari, he was designed for it, like an asset, as Sanyal often liked to call him. And you can take the man out of the land that flows in every vein leading up to the centre of his chest, but can you take the land out of the man?
Jaskirat—no, Hamza. Hamza thinks not.
Canada is alien in a way Pakistan was not. After all, this is the land of men with tongues that feel so far from home, but Pakistan was much like the land that raised him, because one has to admit, there once was a time when the East and the West were wings of the same bird, two brothers victim to circumstance.
Speaking of brothers, Hamza thinks of Uzair often.
At first, the dreams came like soft rain, gentle, cold, leaving so much to be desired. He would see Uzair, like a king at the dawning of a new kingdom, looking back at him through the dust and the sand of Noshki as it encircles him like a bad omen. But gradually, the dreams get worse. He sees Uzair behind the rusted metal of the prison bars, crying Hamza’s name, like a child, like a wounded puppy. But as his body shakes with the weight of sobs, the name falling from his lips starts sounding an awful lot like Jaskirat.
Jaskirat wakes up screaming.
—
These days, when Jameel calls, Jaskirat feels relieved, although a lot of what that man says is hard to decipher.
“My boy, yes, uh… yes, no, I’m talking to the newspaper boy. Can a man have some privacy? Fuck! Yes, uh, ahem… yes, my boy, how are you?”
“Good.”
“Zayan has learnt to drive around that bike of yours.”
Hamza does not know what Zayan looks like now. Sometimes, only sometimes, he likes to press hard on the scars that cover his torso, as is deserving of a man who left behind a son. He remembers how he felt when they had killed his father. He remembers how that pain eats you from the inside. So he presses, harder, harder. This must be some kind of penance, he tells himself. But what god was there to hear his prayers? He seemed to have let down two versions of him.
What god would look at him with forgiveness in his eyes? What man would look at him with forgiveness in his eyes?
Oh, but there once was someone.
There was, there was someone who blurred the line between man and god when it came to Hamza Ali Mazari.
But he rots now. He rots in the hell of Hamza’s making.
“That’s great. How is Yalina?”
“Not married to her cousin, if that is what you’re curious about.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Don’t worry about her, she quite loves her new husband.”
Jaskirat can’t recall if Hamza loved Yalina. Often, he had convinced himself, when she sat, pliant and soft in his arms, that this could scratch the terrible itch that seemed to follow him like a shadow. He had felt a great sense of familiarity with her. He was gentle, and she took everything he had to give her. But most nights, when his legs finally began to give out, and the one minute of salvation was just out of reach, he would shut his eyes and hope. He would clench his fists and imagine that she is—
“Uzair Baloch will be freed this month. He has served his sentence.”
Hamza feels his heart drop.
“Is that why you called me? His sentence was 50 years long, no? It’s only been 10.”
“Yes, well, they had this whole civil war with Balochistan after the Kashmir terrorist attack last year, so the centre is attempting to negotiate with the Baloch in an attempt to prevent some kind of partisan struggle, you know?”
“Stop fucking with me.”
“My boy, why would I lie to you? Well, the Baloch demanded some autonomy here and there, resources and whatnot. But plenty of Rehman loyalists still there, they demanded for Uzair to be freed. They firmly believe that it matters not that he was working for India, because according to them, India would have their backs much more than any bastard from Karachi. Not just him, a few other Baloch convicts were freed too.”
Jaskirat looks towards the mirror. Hamza stares back.
How long can you run from your mess till it breaks down the door of your house, guns blazing?
Ironic.
Rhetoric.
Jaskirat swallows. Hamza grins.
--
Uzair Baloch walks the streets of Lyari a free man.
Free, as if that word meant a thing to him.
He remembers doing lines off the dirty prison floor. He remembers his bones aching with a grief so vague and abstract. Rehman Bhai would tell him stories, when he was little, about how the prison is no place for a Baloch, how men would fall into the clutches of addiction worse than death in those concrete walls.
He always found it funny, the man that watches blood flow like rivulets down his hands, advising him against addictions. How old was he? Twelve? Eleven? He does not remember. He only remembers vaguely, the smell of gunpowder and the “Visca Barca” written in crayon on his wall, they didn't sell posters in Lyari back then, but do they now? He doesn't know, he hasn't seen the sun in 10 years.
He misses Rehman. The pain kills him, especially when he is coming down from the high. He wishes it had been him, and not his brother.
Uzair Baloch walks the streets of Lyari a free man.
He remembers the warden that would sneak him the drugs. He would never look at Uzair with contempt. He always used to say that Hamza Bhai had paid him enough to send his son to the US, and that was all the reason he needed.
Uzair had thought, for ten years, that Hamza had died.
Uzair had never taken a lover. The only lover he ever had was death. At first, he would beg and beg Ulfat Behen and Jameel to let him see Hamza. He would cry and cry and sob till his ribs hurt.
“He is not dead, he’s alive. He would tell me, he would tell me. He’s alive. Why do you hide him from me? He would not leave me here, he would not. He will come back for me, he will, won’t he? My Hamza will come.”
Ulfat Behen seemed as rooted to the ground as the bars of the cell, her eyes red-rimmed with tears. But Jameel wore a look on his face Uzair could not read. Something about his frown, something about the lack of words made Uzair hurt like a motherfucker.
In those days, the cocaine would make him see Rehman, then Hamza, till the two bled into each other, and the warden would find him, overdosed and convulsing in the dead of the night.
But eventually, silence became his best friend. He no longer budged, no longer rolled his agony into joints. He only sat. He sat with the silence.
--
When Yalina tells him the truth, Uzair feels what he felt when he held the innards of Arshad Pappu in his hands like a king holding a sceptre.
“What is done is done,” she says, looking out the window as Zayan revs the engine of the bike.
Uzair remembers sitting on it, remembers the wind in his hair, remembers how it felt to wrap his arms around the shaitan. He remembers how holding the shaitan felt like being served the earth on a platter. So he understands what Yalina says, and he understands what drove Yalina to tell him. He understands why only Yalina understands the nameless feeling in his chest.
There is a silent understanding between fools who occupy the same cage. He sees it in her eyes, he knows it in his heart. He knows she understands the sin that makes Uzair Baloch what he is.
Lyari tears at your skin. It unclothes you completely till the shame chokes you. But Lyari also houses angels, with hearts big enough for loving the macabre, with hearts big enough to overlook haram in the name of kinship.
Yalina is crying, and Uzair is hugging her. His fingers shake with an emotion he does not know the root of anymore.
Between the sobs, Uzair can only make out a few words Yalina tells him.
“Allah ki khwaish ki manzar bari ajeeb hai na?”
--
Over the next 2 months, Uzair applies for a visa, Yalina snuck around her father's office, she gave him a vague idea of the place in Canada where Hamza is. When Yalina bids him goodbye at the airport she is with her husband, he thinks Uzair wants to see the snow in Canada, but he sees it in Yalina's eyes, that painful testament, that acknowledgement, that understanding, because why else would an ex-convict go through all these formalities for a visa.
Fools who occupy the same cage.
The jokes write themselves.
When Uzair lands in Canada, it does not take him long to find Hamza, for he would know that face blind. Even in death, he could map out those features with the precision of an artist.
When he corners Hamza in the alleyway behind the Asian convenience store, the two men look at each other like two sacrifices who think the other is the executioner.
“Motherfucker,” Uzair sneers.
“Uzair…” Hamza tries. It works. It always works. Uzair was easy. It only took that tone, and maybe a hand on his nape, for him to give in, to be tamed.
Uzair Baloch was no lion, he was a wolf, and wolves are dogs too.
Uzair Baloch was a mutt for Hamza Ali Mazari.
His knees give out. His hands cannot seem to reach for the knife in the pocket of his kurta. Hamza walks over to him, and Uzair is looking up. A whimper escapes his throat.
“You fucking jinn.”
Hamza says nothing, just grabs the hair on the back of his head, his grip tight.
“SPEAK, GODDAMN IT!”
Hamza wonders how it would feel to pin him against the pavement, shut him up till his guilt bleeds into Uzair, till they are so disgustingly intertwined he would not be able to tell where he ends and Uzair begins.
“I cannot kill you. Leave. Go back.”
“You little bitch, kill me? Did you not get enough when you killed my brother?! You piece of fucking shit! I should slit your fucking throat!”
“You think I did not die the day I met your eyes for the last time?”
.
.
Then there is blood. There are punches, groans, and sneers, scarlet puddles flowing into the drain like the nectar of gods. They cannot tell at what point the fight became less about revenge and more about masochism.
When they are breathless and only inches apart, Hamza wipes the tears from the corner of Uzair’s eyes as Uzair’s hands grip Hamza’s throat, not tight, but like an anchor, like a mockery of violence.
“I hate you, I hate you, you fucking gaddar.”
“You know you don’t, Uzair.” He yanks Uzair’s head up by his hair.
“I don’t,” he sobs. “I don’t, I can’t. Just kill me, please, please just—”
Jaskirat blinks. Hamza’s grip loosens only to tighten somewhere else, fisting into Uzair’s hair as he drags him forward, close enough to share breath, close enough to taste the blood between them.
Their mouths crash, not a kiss but a collision, teeth knocking, lips splitting open again where they had just begun to heal. It is messy, violent, a devouring more than anything tender, tongues forcing, clashing, claiming. Uzair gasps into it, the sound swallowed whole as Hamza takes and takes, like he is trying to drink something out of him that ten years could not kill.
They clutch at each other with bruising hands, fingers digging into flesh, into scars, into bone, like they are trying to break skin and crawl inside. Uzair trembles, breath hitching, his body betraying him in sharp, shuddering bursts, and Hamza feels it, feeds on it, presses harder. Teeth sink into shoulder, into jaw, into whatever they can find, until the copper taste floods everything, until pain and something dangerously close to relief blur into one unbearable thing.
They do not stop. Not when it hurts, not when it burns, not when their lungs beg for air. They cling like drowning men who have mistaken each other for the surface.
Lyari lives in you long after you leave it, and after a while of trying to escape it, it comes back to fistfight you in an alleyway, worlds away from home.
--