I DARED TO CALL HIM FATHER
Chapter 2. The Strange Book
After these experiences I found myself drawn to the Quran. Perhaps it would help explain the events and at the same time fill the emptiness within me. Certainly its curved Arabic script held answers that had often sustained my family.
I had read the Quran before, of course. I remembered exactly how old I was when I first started learning Arabic so that I could read our holy book. This was the day every Muslim child began to unravel the Arabic script. I was four years, four months and four days old.
The moment was marked by a great family banquet, to which all my relatives came. It was then, in a special ceremony, that the wife of our village mullah began teaching me the alphabet.
I especially remember my Uncle Fateh (we children called him Grand Uncle Fateh; he wasn’t really my uncle— all our kinsmen are called Uncle or Aunt in Pakistan). Grand Uncle Fateh was a relative very close to our family, and I remember clearly how he watched me at the ceremony, his sensitive aquiline face glowing with pleasure as I heard again the story of how the angel Gabriel began giving Muhammad the words of the Quran on that fateful “Night of Power” in the year 610 A.D. It took me seven years to read the holy book through for the first time, but when I finally finished, there was cause for yet another family celebration.
Always before, I had read the Quran as an obligation. This time, I felt I should really search its pages. I took my copy, which had belonged to my mother, relaxed on the white eiderdown coverlet of my bed, and began to read. I started with the initial verse, the first message given to the young prophet Muhammad as he sat by himself in a cave on Mount Hira:
Recite: In the name of thy Lord who created,
Created Man of a blood clot.
Recite: And thy Lord is the Most Generous,
Who taught by the Pen, Taught man that he knew not.
At first I was lost in the beauty of the words. But later on in the book there were words that did not comfort me at all:
When ye have divorced women, and they have reached their term, then retain them in kindness or release them in kindness.
My husband’s eyes had been like black steel when he told me that he didn’t love me anymore. I shriveled inside as he spoke. What had happened to all our years together? Could they be dismissed just like that? Had I, as the Quran said, “reached my term”?
The next morning I picked up the Quran again, hoping to find in the curling script the assurance I needed so desperately. But the assurance never came. I found only directives for how to live and warnings against other beliefs. There were verses about the prophet Jesus whose message, the Quran said, was falsified by early Christians. Though Jesus was born of a virgin, he was not God’s son. So say not, “Three,” warned the Quran against the Christian
concept of the Trinity. Refrain; better is it for you. God is only one God.
After several days of applying myself to the holy book, I put it down one afternoon with a sigh, got up and walked down to my garden where I hoped to find some peace in nature and in old memories. Even at this time of the year, the lush greenness persisted, brightened here and there by colorful zinnias that were still in bloom. It was a warm day for fall and Mahmud skipped along the paths where I had walked with my father. I could picture Father now, walking beside me, wearing his white turban, impeccably dressed in his conservative British suit. Often he would call me by my full name, Bilquis Sultana, knowing how much I enjoyed hearing it. For Bilquis was the first name of the Queen of Sheba and everyone knew Sultana signified royalty.
We had many good conversations. And in later years we enjoyed talking about our new country, Pakistan. He was so proud of it. “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan was created especially as a homeland for the Muslims of India,” he said. “We’re one of the largest countries under Islamic law in the world,” he added, pointing out that 96 percent of our country’s population was Muslim, with the rest made up mostly of scattered groups of Buddhists, Christians and Hindus.
I sighed and looked up beyond my garden trees to the lavender hills in the distance. I could always find solace with my father. In his later years I had become a companion to him, often discussing our country’s rapidly changing political situation with him and explaining my views. He was so gentle, so understanding. But now he was gone.
I remembered standing by his open grave in the Muslim cemetery of Brookwood outside of London. He had traveled to London for surgery and had never recovered. Muslim custom requires that a body be buried within 24 hours of death, and by the time I reached the cemetery his coffin was ready to be lowered into the grave. I couldn’t believe I’d never see my father again. They unfastened the coffin lid so I could have one last look at him. But the cold gray clay in that box was not him; where had he gone? I stood there numbly wondering about it all as they refastened the coffin, each shrill squeal of the screws biting into the damp wood, sending pain through me.
Mother, with whom I was also very close, died seven years later, and now I felt as if I was completely alone.
There in my garden, shadows had lengthened and again I stood in twilight. No, the comfort I had sought in memories proved only to bring achings. Softly in the distance I could hear the muezzin’s sunset prayer call; its haunting strains only deepened the loneliness within me.
“Where? O Allah,” I whispered to the prayer rhythms, “where is the comfort You promise?”
Back in my bedroom that evening I again picked up my mother’s copy of the Quran. And as I read I was again impressed by its many references to Jewish and Christian writings that preceded it. Perhaps, I wondered, I should continue my search among those earlier books?
But that would mean reading the Bible. How could the Bible help since, of course, as everyone knew, the early Christians had falsified so much of it? But the idea of reading the Bible became more and more insistent. What was the Bible’s concept of God? What did it say about the prophet Jesus? Perhaps after all I should read it.
But then came the next problem: Where would I get a Bible? No shops in our area would carry one.
Perhaps Raisham would have a copy. But I dismissed the thought. Even if she did, my request would frighten her. Pakistanis have been murdered for even appearing to persuade Muslims to traitor - Christian. I thought of my other Christian servants. My family warned that I should not employ Christian servants because of their notorious lack of loyalty and untrustworthiness. But I didn’t let that bother me; as long as they could fulfill their duties, I was satisfied. Doubtless they weren’t very sincere anyhow. After all, when the Christian missionaries came to India, they found it easy to make converts among the lower classes. Most of these were the sweepers, people so low in the social order that their work was limited to cleaning the streets, walks and gutters, and we didn’t want them working in our homes. We Muslims called these servile ones “rice Christians.” Wasn’t that the reason they accepted a false religion, mainly to get the food, clothes and schooling the missionaries doled out?
We looked upon the missionaries themselves with amusement; they busied themselves so eagerly over these poor creatures. In fact, only a few months before, my chauffeur, Manzur, asked if he could show my garden to some local missionaries who had admired it through the fence.
“Of course,” I said gratuitously, thinking of poor Manzur who evidently wanted so much to impress these people. A few days later from my drawing room window I watched the young American couple stroll through the garden. Manzur had referred to them as the Reverend and Mrs. David Mitchell. Both had brown hair, pale eyes and were wearing Western clothes. What colorless creatures, I thought. Even so, I did pass word on to the gardener to give these missionaries some seeds if they wished them.
But thinking of them gave me my answer to getting a Bible. Manzur would get one for me. Tomorrow I would give him the assignment.
So I summoned him the next morning. He stood at attention before me, the nervous twitch in his face making me uneasy, as it always did.
“Manzur, I want you to get me a Bible.” “A Bible?” His eyes widened.
“Of course!” I said, trying to be patient. Since Manzur didn’t know how to read, I was sure he didn’t own a Bible. But I felt he could get one for me. When he mumbled something I could not understand, I repeated, simply but firmly, “Manzur, get me a Bible.”
He nodded, bowed and left. I knew why he was resisting my request. Manzur was made of no firmer stuff than Raisham. They were both remembering that murdered girl. Giving a Bible to a sweeper was one thing; bringing a Bible to a person of the upper classes was quite something else. Word of this could get him into deep trouble indeed.
Two days later Manzur was driving me to Rawalpindi to see Tooni. “Manzur, I do not have the Bible as yet.” I could see his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
“Begum, I will get you one.” Three days later I summoned him into the house.
“Manzur, I have asked you to bring me a Bible three times, and you have not.” The twitch in his face became more noticeable. “I’ll give you one more day. If I do not have one by tomorrow you will be fired.”
His face turned ashen. He knew I meant it. He wheeled and left.
The next day just before a visit from Tooni, a little Bible mysteriously appeared on my downstairs drawing room table. I picked it up and examined it closely. Cheaply bound in a gray cloth cover, it was printed in Urdu. It had been translated by an Englishman 180 years before and I found the old-fashioned phraseology difficult to follow. Manzur had evidently got it from a friend; it was almost new. I leafed through its thin pages, set it down and forgot about it.
A few minutes later Tooni arrived. Mahmud ran in with great excitement because he knew his mother would have brought him a toy. In a minute Mahmud raced through the French doors to the terrace with his new airplane, and Tooni and I settled down to our tea.
It was then that Tooni noticed the Bible resting on the table near me. “Oh, a Bible!” she said. “Do open it and see what it has to say.”
Our family views any religious book as significant. It was a common pastime to allow a holy book to fall open and point blindly at a passage to see what it said, almost like having it give a prophecy.
Lightheartedly, I opened the little Bible and looked down at the pages.
Then a mysterious thing happened. It was as if my attention were being drawn to a verse on the lower right-hand corner of the right page. I bent close to read it:
“I will call that my people, which was not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall be, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called sons of the living God.” Romans 9:25–26
I caught my breath and a tremor passed through me. Why was this verse affecting me so! “I will call that my people, which was not my people. . . . In the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called sons of the living God.”
A silence hung over the room. I looked up to see Tooni poised expectantly, ready to hear what I had found. But I could not read the words out loud. Something in them was too profound for me to read as amusement.
“Well, what was it, Mother?” asked Tooni, her alive eyes questioning me.
I closed the book, murmured something about this not being a game anymore, and turned the conversation to another subject.
But the words burned in my heart like glowing embers. And they turned out to be preparation for the most unusual dreams I have ever had.
