Khan's alleged Swiss bank account; or about
the bandits on the trunk roads who are condemned for doing, as
private enterprise, what the government does as public policy; or
about genocide in Baluchistan; or about the recent preferential
awards of State scholarships, to pay for postgraduate studies
abroad, to members of the fanatical Jamaat party; or about the
attempt to declare the sari an obscene garment; or about the extra
hangings � the first for twenty years � that were ordered purely to
legitimize the execution of Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; or about why
Bhutto's hangman has vanished into thin air, just like the many
street-urchins who are being stolen every day in broad daylight; or
about anti-Semitism, an interesting phenomenon, under whose
influence people who have never met a Jew vilify all Jews for the
sake of maintaining solidarity with the Arab states which offer
Pakistan workers, these days, employment and much-needed for-
eign exchange; or about smuggling, the boom in heroin exports,
military dictators, venal civilians, corrupt civil servants, bought
judges, newspapers of whose stories the only thing that can confi-
dently be said is that they are lies; or about the apportioning of
the national budget, with special reference to the percentages set
aside for defence (huge) and for education (not huge). Imagine my
difficulties!
By now, if I had been writing a book of this nature, it would
have done me no good to protest that I was writing universally,
Shame ? 68
not only about Pakistan. The book would have been banned,
dumped in the rubbish bin, burned. All that effort for nothing!
Realism can break a writer's heart.
Fortunately, however, I am only telling a sort of modern fairy-
tale, so that's all right; nobody need get upset, or take anything I
say too seriously. No drastic action need be taken, either.
What a relief]
And now I must stop saying what I am not writing about,
because there's nothing so special about that; every story one
chooses to tell is a kind of censorship, it prevents the telling of
other tales ... I must get back to my fairy-story, because things
have been happening while I've been talking too much.
On my way back to the story, I pass Omar Khayyam Shakil,
my sidelined hero, who is waiting patiently for me to get to the
point at which his future bride, poor Sufiya Zinobia, can enter the
narrative, head first down the birth canal. He won't have to wait
long; she's almost on her way.
I shall pause only to note (because it is not inappropriate to
mention this here) that during his married life Omar Khayyam
was forced to accept without argument Sufiya Zinobia's childlike
fondness for moving the furniture around. Intensely aroused by
these forbidden deeds, she rearranged tables, chairs, lamps, when-
ever nobody was watching, like a favourite secret game, which
she played with a frightening stubborn gravity. Omar Khayyam
found protests rising to his lips, but he bit them back, knowing
that to say anything would be useless: 'Honestly, wife,' he wanted
to exclaim, 'God knows what you'll change with all this shifting
shifting.'
5
The Wrong Miracle
Bilquis is lying wide awake in the dark of a cavernous bedroom,
her hands crossed upon her breasts. When she sleeps alone her
hands habitually find their way into this position, even though her
in-laws disapprove. She can't help it, this hugging of herself to
herself, as though she were afraid of losing something.
All around her in the darkness are the dim outlines of other
beds, old charpoys with thin mattresses, on which other women
lie under single white sheets; a grand total of forty females
clustered around the majestically tiny form of the matriarch
Bariamma, who snores lustily. Bilquis already knows enough
about this chamber to be sure that most of the shapes tossing
vaguely in the dark are no more asleep than she. Even Bariamma's
snores might be a deception. The women are waiting for
the bandits on the trunk roads who are condemned for doing, as
private enterprise, what the government does as public policy; or
about genocide in Baluchistan; or about the recent preferential
awards of State scholarships, to pay for postgraduate studies
abroad, to members of the fanatical Jamaat party; or about the
attempt to declare the sari an obscene garment; or about the extra
hangings � the first for twenty years � that were ordered purely to
legitimize the execution of Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; or about why
Bhutto's hangman has vanished into thin air, just like the many
street-urchins who are being stolen every day in broad daylight; or
about anti-Semitism, an interesting phenomenon, under whose
influence people who have never met a Jew vilify all Jews for the
sake of maintaining solidarity with the Arab states which offer
Pakistan workers, these days, employment and much-needed for-
eign exchange; or about smuggling, the boom in heroin exports,
military dictators, venal civilians, corrupt civil servants, bought
judges, newspapers of whose stories the only thing that can confi-
dently be said is that they are lies; or about the apportioning of
the national budget, with special reference to the percentages set
aside for defence (huge) and for education (not huge). Imagine my
difficulties!
By now, if I had been writing a book of this nature, it would
have done me no good to protest that I was writing universally,
Shame ? 68
not only about Pakistan. The book would have been banned,
dumped in the rubbish bin, burned. All that effort for nothing!
Realism can break a writer's heart.
Fortunately, however, I am only telling a sort of modern fairy-
tale, so that's all right; nobody need get upset, or take anything I
say too seriously. No drastic action need be taken, either.
What a relief]
And now I must stop saying what I am not writing about,
because there's nothing so special about that; every story one
chooses to tell is a kind of censorship, it prevents the telling of
other tales ... I must get back to my fairy-story, because things
have been happening while I've been talking too much.
On my way back to the story, I pass Omar Khayyam Shakil,
my sidelined hero, who is waiting patiently for me to get to the
point at which his future bride, poor Sufiya Zinobia, can enter the
narrative, head first down the birth canal. He won't have to wait
long; she's almost on her way.
I shall pause only to note (because it is not inappropriate to
mention this here) that during his married life Omar Khayyam
was forced to accept without argument Sufiya Zinobia's childlike
fondness for moving the furniture around. Intensely aroused by
these forbidden deeds, she rearranged tables, chairs, lamps, when-
ever nobody was watching, like a favourite secret game, which
she played with a frightening stubborn gravity. Omar Khayyam
found protests rising to his lips, but he bit them back, knowing
that to say anything would be useless: 'Honestly, wife,' he wanted
to exclaim, 'God knows what you'll change with all this shifting
shifting.'
5
The Wrong Miracle
Bilquis is lying wide awake in the dark of a cavernous bedroom,
her hands crossed upon her breasts. When she sleeps alone her
hands habitually find their way into this position, even though her
in-laws disapprove. She can't help it, this hugging of herself to
herself, as though she were afraid of losing something.
All around her in the darkness are the dim outlines of other
beds, old charpoys with thin mattresses, on which other women
lie under single white sheets; a grand total of forty females
clustered around the majestically tiny form of the matriarch
Bariamma, who snores lustily. Bilquis already knows enough
about this chamber to be sure that most of the shapes tossing
vaguely in the dark are no more asleep than she. Even Bariamma's
snores might be a deception. The women are waiting for
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