One hot and dusty summer day, while strolling to a kite shop, Ali requested me to write a letter for him, addressed to Nelofer — the narrow-nosed shy girl with dusky eyes, whose family had recently moved a few doors down from Ali’s, in the fatigued neighbourhood of Mariabad by the foot of the mountain, in Quetta city.
Ali was an illiterate shoemaker, a tall, solid and tough teenager. Clumsy but confident and comfortable in his own skin, he was a few years older than us but most of the kids were cool with him hanging around. However, unlike the bunch of uniformed boys and girls who walked to school every morning, Ali measured his mammoth steps up to the street corner, waiting impatiently until the slim Nelofer, and her petite sister, walked by on their way to school. Ali’s day didn’t start until Nelofer marched past him in her blue-and-white uniform. Only then would he disappear behind the dark tinted glass of the shoe shop to sniff sheep skin, faux leather and petrochemical solutions all day. His illiteracy didn’t bother him. Whenever the kids teased him about it, he just laughed their laughs. I make shoes so you idiots can walk to school.
Nelofer was a senior student, her sister a junior. They accompanied each other to school each dry morning and back home every hot and baking afternoon. Every now and then, whenever the younger sister couldn’t, Nelofer made a shushed and rushed run to one of the shops in the main street to buy bread, a soap bar or a milk pack, because her parents had only one boy, an infant too young to run errands. Otherwise Nelofer remained indoors like her little sister, just like their mother, confined in their dungeon mud dwelling indefinitely. Veiled and suffocating whenever outdoors, all women covered themselves from men as well as the murky, sand-spitting, unsealed, backstreets of the barren Mariabad. Shy of sunshine, covered like clouded sky, Nelofer stared at the soil whenever she walked in the street. As if it was a sin, or a crime, to look up at the mighty sun, to breathe, to live.
When I read Nelofer’s letter to Ali, he ran up ten yards carrying me on his yak-like shoulders. The rough and rugged-handed kid who couldn’t scribble down the three letters of his own disyllable name, who couldn’t fly a kite, fold a paper plane or hold a cricket bat; that Ali had landed a girlfriend because the soil-gazing, naive Nelofer responded. Ali horsed around in circles, laughing, his long arms wide open like two wings of an airplane. The summer sun had brushed out the lightly scattered afternoon clouds in crimson and scarlet and maroon against the mercury mountains that castled Quetta city. The silvery hilltops glowed in a golden haze as a group of scavengers serenely surveyed the earthlings, dancing like dervishes, wings and will intact, round and round, circling one another in the spectrum of light. Down below, between heaven and earth, in that narrow, unsealed alleyway, unaware of the world around and above him, earthling Ali could not help galloping in the dirt, dancing with the dust particles, and laughing over the capacity of his camel-sized lungs. The kids were clean-bowled, stunned like fallen stumps. That was the first day we abandoned a game of cricket. Ali and Nelofer’s love-ship took off. So did our friendship.
Located off the main street, the rusty iron gate of our three-bedroom mud shack was the only one in the quiet alleyway which also connected our block with Ali’s. Because of this setting, my siblings and I made plenty of friends on either of the main streets, since all kids frequently crowded up the side passage after school to play cricket or football, or just chitchat.
Unlike Ali, I was a student. But by the time I started high school, classes, textbooks and teachers bored me to the bone. Books, however, enchanted me. Third eldest of seven kids, cared for and clothed by our mighty mother, and all surviving on our father’s often fluctuating single income, we had only enough to keep our bones warm in winter. But two things we always had: the unconditional love of a mother and the unlimited knowledge of books. My older brother, the first born, often brought new titles home, which he borrowed from friends or a library. I read them whenever he was outside and I often wandered in the world of infinite fiction, immortal poetry and boundless imagination, until interrupted by reality. The transition from textbooks to literature was timeless. It taught me to dream of writing something other than copying schoolwork.
Even though most Hazaras in the municipality of Mariabad were literate, education was hard to come by; the Ali household harboured no books except for the holy Quran. Though every family housed a copy, most folks could hardly read let alone understand it. Ali’s mother was a chubby middle-aged woman with a charcoal complexion who was ever occupied with chores. Seldom a smile creased her freckled oval face. Her main task was to take care of Ali, his younger brother and sister, and to keep the house in order. Cooking, sewing and sweeping — she knew how to deal with the household devils. Always unbothered, she left the kids alone whenever I visited Ali in their mud shack. As for books, Ali thought them more useful for making fire or stuffed as fillers for the freshly finished polished shoes before plastic packing them so they didn’t lose shape. But he made sure his chubby younger brother and the always-smiling sister went to school. He persuaded his father that he was sharp, strong and responsible enough to step up and take care of the shop whenever necessary. We’ve plenty of shoes but no vision to shape our walks and find our ways.
Writing captivated Ali more than shoemaking fascinated me. That afternoon, sitting side by side on the cemented veranda in the backyard of their house, Ali’s eager eyes popped as he watched me scribble down words on a page with a blue ballpoint.
“I wish I could read and write,” he said, looking at the ruggedness of his hands.
“How come you didn’t go to school?”
He laughed hard. “As if I had a choice. As a kid, you do what you father tells you. I remember how much I loved sitting at the wooden counter watching my father cut deals with customers and leather merchants or when he conversed with a visiting friend or one of the hunched-back co-workers over a cup of tea.” He sighed and took a deep breath. “In this country, school kids end up working in shops anyway, my father says.”
Ali wasn’t wrong. Most families couldn’t afford to send their kids to college. And a high-school graduate didn’t get a job. For a moment I felt lost in my thoughts, wondering if I’d end up in a shop once I finished school. Would I fancy to work as a shoemaker or a tailor?
“But you don’t need to worry.” Ali sensed my momentary absence. “I’ll ask my father to give you a job. We can be co-workers. You can teach me how to read and write and I’ll show you how to stitch up shoes and sell them. You have my word.”
This made me smile. “You mean it?” I teased him.
“You have my word.”
“You’re not yet a shoemaker. How do I know if you’re even good at it?”
This triggered his enthusiasm. He stared hard at me for a moment. “Do you think,” he crossed his legs, “that sitting like this all day, for several years, watching your designated trainer’s thimble-topped fingers sew leather uppers to rubber bottoms with an awl and string and lock stitch them together doesn’t count for anything?” He shook me by the shoulder. “It’s true I still make tea, do the midday home-runs to return with hot lunchboxes, polish shoes and run errands but I’ll be a master shoemaker way before you become a teacher or something.”
Ali was proud of his trade and the fact his father was a master shoemaker and salesman. Ali inherited that gene just the same as his father, who was honest with friends, family and customers of all ages, faiths and shoe size.
Ali’s mother came out to the veranda and asked if we fancied a cup of tea.
“Yes, we do.” Ali got up and followed his mother.
Unlike the kids who were schooled to obey, respect and never lie, who remained uniformed inside and out, raised by outdated textbooks and bygone traditions, Ali earned his wisdom from uneducated teachers who did not carry unsolicited books of parroting and social paralysis. Nor did they contaminate their kids’ minds with other outdated doctrines of faith and philosophy. School was carving the kids into future tools. Ali used tools to carve his future. He had learned, polished and partially mastered the mannerisms the rest of the kids had not yet begun to learn. He was quirky and spontaneous and often came up with calculated on-the-spot solutions. Like, whenever we played cricket in the street, none of the kids knew why Ali always tried to hit the ball so that it ended up in Nelofer’s home. Then he’d volunteer to knock on the door to retrieve it. And often it was Nelofer who came to the door. And I didn’t see all this at the time, nor could I connect the dots until he had asked me to pen that first letter. Nothing was uniform in Ali’s universe unless it was a pair of shoes. And no-one could equal his love for Nelofer.
Apart from crash-landing — his sole skill in the art — Ali had no interest in kites. With his hammer-hands, using his height advantage, he hijacked kids’ kites just to crash them. Then he would apologise and pay for the damage, often enough to buy two kites. He was even clumsier at cricket. His only tactic was to swing hard, either to break the bat or tear up the taped tennis ball. In the field, he missed more catches in one match than all the other kids combined. And no matter where he fielded, the high ball always followed him. Despite broken bats, misshaped balls or smashed kites, the kids never quarrelled with Ali. They couldn’t because of his bulk and his bold and always-negotiable attitude. Bats, balls or kites, Ali was never bothered because he always had the money to buy new ones and he never dishonoured a deed. A man is his words. Not his education.
In his innocent and natural pursuit, Ali’s letters also alleviated my own hunger for writing. It wasn’t until our written rendezvous that resulted in Nelofer’s rebellious reply that Ali and I started bonding like a pen and paper. He treated me with respect and cared for me like a brother. Once when I lacerated my index and middle fingers with cotton thread while flying kites and couldn’t write letters, Ali stitched up five finger protectors from fine leather pieces and presented them to me with his usual serve of sarcastic wisdom. Read books, write letters but leave the kites and cricket to me.
In the winter, with schools closed and Quetta city hazy and hibernating in its white and silver camouflage, the kids forgot about kites and cricket for most of the snowy season. We switched to snowball fighting in the frozen alleyway in front of our house, playing hide and seek in the main streets, or surrounding a firepit in the pale freezing afternoons, laughing and chatting under the spell of up-charging smoke. We didn’t see much of one another in the snow-storming, wind-whistling mornings when waterpipes popped and birds were found frozen.
When the snow vaporised, the welcoming spring reincarnated the rough terrain, the rugged mountains. Flowers blossomed like Ali and Nelofer’s buds of feeling. Kids started another year of studies. Nelofer and her shadow-like sister resumed their routine walks to school, Ali to the shoe shop. Over the last and coldest month of winter, he was deservedly promoted to master shoemaker. Now he was the only kid in the neighbourhood who stitched up his own money with the thread of his own blood, sweat and hard work. By mid-summer, Ali had persuaded his parents to pair him with Nelofer forever. Birds, kites and love-letters kept flying.
On dry summer afternoons the kids resorted to the ledge behind the last of the mud dwellings with our bags full of school notebooks. The breeze cooled us as we got our paper planes flight-ready. We spent hours ripping off pages, folding them into planes, bluffing bets before releasing them on the wind toward the cubical mud dwellings down the dipping valley. The zigzag streets of Mariabad resembled a maze more than a map. The silvery mountain range circled the rugged terrain like a sleeping serpent nesting around its natives. Unlike the International Airport, and the ever-green military cantonment stretching before the serpent mother, most of the Quetta valley looked weary and dry. Mariabad was a moisture-less mountainside mudhole. A layer of air pollution permanently lingered over the horizon, which was usually invisible from the ground.
We would sky six or seven planes simultaneously — our flock of white-feathered birds making their unsynchronised maiden flight. The always-insisting Ali made sure I scribbled down a couplet or a quartet on a wing of his poorly made aircraft hoping to make its way to Nelofer’s house. But the love-words, like the lovebirds, never landed.
Lovebirds don’t have wings but
They fly oh lover! Fly, oh lover.
One late afternoon I was finishing my school homework when I heard a knock on the door. It was Ali’s younger brother, whose mother had sent to inform me that Ali had had a fight at home and left in anger. His mother feared that Ali might do something unfathomable. His brother said that Ali had walked up to the mountain and that I should go see him. I presumed he had gone over to the ledge.
Ali was lying on his back, his hand underneath his head, his eyes penetrating the pale sky and the setting sun shone in the teardrops raining down his face.
“What happened?”
“These bastards.” His voice was coarse as if he had swallowed a pool of tears. “They can’t see two people happy.” He seemed furious. “They care about the past more than present.”
I had not seen him so sad or serious before. He looked lost and anxious and the composed personality about him seemed perplexed and invisible.
“I’m supposed to be the ignorant one but these stupid people put their bogus traditions before love, before their children’s happiness. I can’t live without Nelofer, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know that but you should calm down. There will be another way. You always find a solution.” All I could think about was how to convince Ali to walk home with me.
“They told my father that Nelofer and I will never get married and he then told me to put her out of my mind. It’s for the best, he said. For whose best?”
I had never dealt with a situation like this. I was lost for words. “Things will change. Let’s go to my home to talk. It’s getting dark here.”
“It’s already dark,” he said, looking at the horizon.
It took me a while but I managed to get him off the ledge. Ali spent that night at our home. He didn’t eat or sleep until late; neither did I. When I woke up early next morning, Ali was gone.
Nelofer’s parents had opposed Ali’s marriage proposal to their daughter. Members from both families, as a pre-marital ritual, had summoned their elders. And after digging up the graves of each other’s ancestors for bad blood, or good, both sides had declared the arrangement impossible because of cross-tribal bygone tensions. Demons of the dead were unearthed to devour love of the living. No kites, no cricket, no love letters.
Summer disappeared. So did Ali. His younger brother quit school. Like Ali, he rounded the lunchbox-runs but otherwise stayed off the streets. He reckoned Ali ran away, to Karachi, maybe Lahore. Other kids rumoured that Ali had resigned himself to shooting up drugs in a reeking downtown ditch.
Nelofer never walked to school or the shops again. Her love had seen the last of the daylight. She was married away in no time to block any potential escape plans.
I wished they had eloped.
Autumn arrived in all its brown and grey glory. Kites kayaked the skies. Cricket crammed the streets. One late afternoon, we kids were hanging out by a cliff near the gorge, two blocks uphill from our house, past the inhabited caves, and across the hillside from our usual spot on the ledge. I was steering a white kite when I heard the yelling of a sweating skinny kid who came huffing and puffing, his finger pointing towards a figure standing on a cliff, by the edge, about a quarter of a mile up the colossal mountain. Dressed in white, he was gazing at the smoggy horizon, scanning the brown and silver scenery below, and two scavengers circling each other high in the hazel sky. We started shouting but our voices didn’t make the distance. My heartbeats were racing, my hands were shaking as my dove-coloured kite drifted away. As if, in the moment, the air stood still and the mountains forgot to echo. The mighty sun masked the hilltops in opaque orange, slowly transitioning into blood red. The white kite was loose and floating in the fiery sky along with the pair of spiralling scavengers but no sight of airplanes until he opened wide his arms. For a few seconds, his white dress flickered like feathers: violet, orange, white. Then he dived, headfirst, like his kites.
