Sultan Mints

Saima felt like living in a pornographic film. “A bloody totah!” She giggled within. And it was the cramped sticky within she was thinking about. A within she couldn’t do without. And neither could anybody else, she thought. No matter how terribly they tried to escape it. It’s all within, thought Saima.
And it’s vulgar. Freud would have been proud. And wouldn’t he so gleefully encourage Saima to chop off her brother’s dick?

The thought scared Saima. Thankfully it remained within.“Out damn thought, out!” She trembled. “I’m proud to be a woman!”

Well, strangely, so was Saima’s brother, Shah. An outright pansy. Sissy. Faggot. Homo. Gay. “Mind the faggot part,” he used to say, though he usually considered himself to be a woman. Ignored his dick, even during involuntary errections.

Saima sympathized with Shah. Said he was just reflecting what was within. But she still couldn’t get over her rage about his wasted penis. Why wasn’t she the son and he the daughter? And this was the only time she let it rip and slip: “Salah, gandu!” (“Bloody faggot!”).

Yes, sir, she sure felt like living in a pornographic film. A film made by sex fanatics. The raving hardons within but drooling, somber Godly creatures and paranoid vagina haters on the dusty, misty, illusionary outs. Something they could not do without. It was all done within. And without any hesitation whatsoever. Even though many did use to end up whipping themselves, weeping forgiveness from God, or worse, throwing deadly acid on loud, arrogant women and then going home to rape the chickens. And it was said that sometimes goats and donkeys weren’t spared either. All eventually died. And equally eventually so did the acid-washed women. But not the Godly creatures of the out. The crazed hardons within. “Motherfuckers,” thought Saima. “Men who wanted to kill their fathers the most, in a Freudian sort of a way.”

However, Saima’s father was the classic anti-Freud. That is passionately Jungian. An esoteric sort of a guy, but in his early old age almost on the edge of finding a Madoodist God. Jung and Shah Abdul Latif were now only receding influences, replaced by Maulana Madoodi.

Motherfucker, thought Saima. What’s next? “Saima bibi, where’s your hijab?” Just when Saima had finally mastered the boring sufi meditation techniques he so insistently insisted upon for his family members?

“Motherfucker,” she grumbled. Took a good nine years for her to learn them with some effect. And what was that effect? A more regular period cycle. That’s all. But that was good enough. Made her less of a bitch while PMSing.

But Saima always believed the above to be a sexist myth. There was nothing known as PMSing. PMS had nothing to do with bitchy mood swings.

What a stupid bitch, thought Shah. An ungrateful, stupid bitch. Why wasn’t he the daughter? He would even have worn a hijab happily. And in fact he did.

One fine day he started to. But his father was quite certainly not impressed. “Shabash, son,” he told him. “Now you expect me to expect Saima to grow that beard I wanted YOU to have?”

Saima, though convinced her father’s attitude to be blatantly sexist and homophobic in this context, still shook her head in disgust. “What a fucking waste of a penis,” she thought. “The bugger had actually started wearing a fucking hijab.”

She wondered if this is what happened to most middle-class men (from within) in Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution there? Well it was at least better than raping chickens and fornicating with female donkeys, thought Saima. And the Teleban is what came first to her mind. Yes, sir, she thought, the Taleban and all those painted, baldy Hindutva freaks across the border. She shook her head again: “Motherfuckers! What a waste of penises! Long, glorious penises!” She sighed.

Then she, like she usually did during such periods of stress, thought about her mother. Her mother, Surayah Begum, 5ft-4’, around 156lbs, 55 years old and in a private mental institution somewhere around the suburbs of Karachi. Ah, mother, she sighed. If only she had read more Freud and Manto and watched less TV. One bright morning four years ago today, she just went mad. Totally psychotic. Believed Shah was her bahu and Saima was her joru ka ghulaam son. And she was convinced her husband was a Nokia salesman who was actually an Al-Queda terrorist hiding in her house till he got a sex change operation and turn into an Indian advertising model who was actually a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist. She really had gone bonkers. Her withins had finally lost all room to hide inside and short-circuited their way out. Ah, mother, sighed Saima. What a knuckle-head.

Now Saima wanted out. Just go somewhere away. Away from all the outs and the withins. To a place totally different. A place she could call heaven instead of a home, a hideout instead of a den and so on and so forth. “Baaki saab bucwaas!” (All is bullshit!), she thought.

She could hear her father calling: “Bitiyaa…? Saima? Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“No,” said she. “I can’t hear you, aba. But can you hear me?” She asked.
This got her father thinking. These days he thought less and preyed more. “Bitiya, what did you mean by saying that?” He asked.
“I can’t hear you,” said Saima. “Go talk to Shah.”
“But Shah won’t show me his face anymore.”
That was true, but this also meant that suddenly Shah had no qualms of changing clothes in front of Saima. “Hum aik hi tho jinss hain (After all we are of the same sex),” he used to say.
“What a waste of a penis,” Saima grumbled.
“Penis?” Shah used to giggle. “Hawwww…, shame on you, baaji.”

Saima finally decided to answer her father’s call. “Yes, father? You called?”
“Yes, daughter I called.”
“Why father? Why did you call?”
“Daughter, I wanted to talk to you about your marriage.”
“Why father, why the flying fuck for?”
The father was shocked: “Saima? How dare you use this kind of language in front of me?”
“How dare you talk to me about marriage?”
“Your mother’s not here. Who else will take care of these things, madam?”
“I will, mister. In fact I already have, dear dad.”
The father was shocked: “What?”
“You heard me father. I have already decided whom am going to marry?”
“To whom will you get married to?”
“Raju Nanathan Jigarathan!”
The father was shocked: “But he’s a sweeper!”
“And a Hindu” added Saima.
“Yes, and that too.”
“So what,” said Saima. “He’s a human being isn’t he?”
“But Saima, my daughter, imagine the insults I will have to face in the neighborhood mosque!”
“The mosque is all the world you have? What about me? My happiness?”
“But daughter, how can you be happy married to a sweeper?”
“What if he was a Muslim sweeper?” Asked Saima.
“A sweeper is a sweeper is a sweeper!” Said the father.
“What sort of a Muslim are you?” Taunted Saima.
“Shut-up!” Saying this the father planted a tight slap on Saima’s left cheek.
“And who were you planning as my husband, dear father?”
“Jinaab Sahabzada Khan Junaid Khan’s second son, Nawab Jinaab Shanzada Taufiq Mirza.”
“That idiot! The guy who keeps appearing on those idiotic social pages of all those stupid ‘high society’ magazines?”
“That idiot is a raees…a Muslim. So what if he sometimes drinks orange juice at those parties?”
Saima was shocked: “Orange juice?” She let loose a tight slap on her father right cheek.
The father was shocked. “You badtameez daughter! I’ll slit your mother’s throat!”
“What has she got to do with this?” Asked Saima.
Shah overheard the commotion. He entered the room, clad in a shuttle-cork burqua: “What are you two upto? Islam does not permit this? Shame on you!”
Both looked at Shah and then each another. There was a look in their eyes. As if they’d found an answer. Something had to give. A sacrifice. A violent blow. A death.
“You!” Said Saima.
“You!” Said her father.
“Me?” Asked Shah.
In seconds he lay on the carpet in a pool of blood. Slashed clean in two places. The throat and the groin. Dead.