When Pinky Broke My Heart

He must be about my age when he fell from the second-floor balcony. He landed right onto a large skillet in that al fresco ‘Katta-Kat’ restaurant at the ground floor of the apartment building. The loud bang startled the customers sitting on the scattered tables, though there weren’t many at that early hour of the evening. For a moment no one understood what had happened. The man who had fallen from the balcony broke the table on which that skillet was set up. The flame of the gas burner had turned off by itself but the gas was still hissing. The Pathaan cook started screaming hysterically; I couldn't tell whether it was the fright or the hot bits and pieces of the kidneys, hearts, testicles, and god-knows-what, that were now stuck on him along with hot oil. Our table was just few feet away from the fallen guy who was lying on the ground in a very unnatural pose. He was absolutely naked.

My friend Hayat was the first, among three of us, who regained his senses. He sprung out of his chair and rushed towards the man. He knelt down by his side and turned his face towards him.

“Give me a hand you f---s! Will ya”. Hayat’s piercing voice unchained my numb mind from the spell of that never-ending moment.

“We gotta take this guy to the hospital”, said Hayat commandingly.

My other friend Saarang, and I rushed towards the two. What we saw there befuddled both of us. Saarang bent down on the ground and started throwing up.

The poor man was panting laboriously. One of his arms was stuck under his body quite abnormally. Probably his shoulder had been dislocated. There were several strange triangular burn marks on his body. Those puss-filled burns were fresh and seemed to be caused by an electric iron. His knees looked wounded too. The dark coagulated blood on his kneecaps suggested that those wounds were not new. When I sat down near him I saw holes in his kneecaps. Someone had drilled holes in them. He was lying face up in a pool of blood, which was growing larger by the minute. Apparently there was no wound so big that could have caused blood to flow so profusely. Hayat held his arm and rolled him over. It did not take me more than a moment to understand that he was shot in the buttocks with a carbine or a shotgun from a close range. Pellets had sliced away most of the flesh from the buttocks and probably the lower part of the spine was shattered too.

There was an expressionless expression on that man’s pale lifeless face; it wasn’t pain, or sadness, or helplessness, or anything that I had ever seen before; it was an expression of nothingness. Is it possible to have a feeling of complete nihility and vacuity even if one is beyond pain or sadness or in need of help for that matter? It was unfathomable to me and still is.

“Sami! Get the car”, Hayat grumbled in a tone, which sounded like saying, "You're supposed to know that; don’t you, you dumb-f--k!"

I took the keys from him and rushed towards the car cutting through the small crowd that had gathered around us. When I parked the car near fervid crowd, I inadvertently looked up the building. There were three men standing on the second-floor balcony from where the man fell. They were smirking. One of them looked at me fortuitously and started straightening up the entangled corner of a red-black-green flag that was hanging down on the railing. The man directed the attention of other two towards me and they all laughed. For a moment I thought that I saw three hyenas standing on their hind legs and laughing their ghoulish laugh.

“Open the goddamned door”, Hayat yelled again.

He was carrying that man in his arms and rushing towards the car. He put the man on the back seat and pushed me down on one edge.

“Hold his head and don’t let him fall”, he said.

I could not say ‘no’ to Hayat’s compelling voice. Hayat and Saarang took the front seats and we started rushing towards Jinnah Hospital.

Though the man himself was merely a skeleton yet his head in my lap weighed like a ton. His labored and quick breathing was making his rib cage inflate and deflate rapidly. His half-opened eyes were focused somewhere behind my face, as if he was looking through me. I was holding his head with one hand and with the other I held his shoulder. One of his arms was dangling from the seat.

“Is he still alive?” It was Hayat, probably speaking from the bottom of a well.

“Yes, I think so”, I said in a voice that I had never heard before.

Our car was now cruising on Sharea Faisal cutting through Mazdas and changing lanes rapidly through other traffic. Hayat was looking incredibly poised sitting behind the wheel. I couldn’t believe that it was same Hayat whom we used to tease all the time for his sheepish demeanor. He always used to be the last person to participate in our pranks; and now, sitting behind the wheel, he looked like a take-charge, confident commander-on-a-mission. For a moment I thought that he was Captain Kirk determined to save the universe that day.

Saarang, sitting on the passenger seat, was holding the dashboard with both of his hands. He was the most loquacious one in our group; always loaded with new jokes and ideas for the pranks. He hadn’t uttered a single word since those events started to unfold. I believed that he hadn’t blinked either since the last few miles.

I was the leader and the brain of the pack. But that night, I didn’t believe that I had any brain or emotions left in me. My arms were getting numb and ants started crawling on them but I did not have any courage to move them from his head and shoulder. I wanted his eyes taken off of me but I couldn’t move his head thinking that I might hurt his feelings. I wasn't sure whether doing that would hurt his feelings or not; well how can one hurt the feelings of one who cannot feel anything; but then who knows.

“Is he still breathing?” asked Hayat while he got off of Sharea Faisal on to the road towards Hospital. I looked at the man. He was still looking at my face but I could not tell whether he was breathing or not. It was a bumpy road, with potholes filled with gutter overflow and scattered rocks. I felt that my heart had started throbbing inside my throat and although I could feel the centipedes crawling on my legs by then yet I couldn’t move them.

Hayat again asked anxiously, “Is he alive”. I pretended that I hadn’t heard him. I could see the Jinnah Hospital sign from the windscreen by then. Hayat looked back into my eyes for a moment and quickly turned his head forward. We were entering the hospital gate.

The car stopped in front of the Emergency entrance where two orderlies were sitting at the bench, idly. Hayat got out of the car and opened the back door while Saarang was still in the car holding the dashboard. When orderlies saw the “patient” they quickly grabbed a stretcher and ran towards the car.

The patient was declared DOA, Dead on Arrival, when a doctor checked him with stethoscope. Soon the medico-legal officer came and asked patient’s name. He entered “Naamaloom” in the name column. I don’t know what else he asked because Hayat was answering all his questions. I was in a trance looking at the man lying on the examination table, who was looking back at me with his half-opened eyes.

When we returned to my apartment he was still looking at me.

“I gotta go change my clothes” Hayat’s voice woke me up again. He was standing outside the car holding the door. It felt like I was looking at Hayat for the very first time. His dark shalwar-kameez was all stained with blood, with a huge blot at his belly. He followed my gaze and said, “I hope my mother doesn’t get a heart attack”. Captain Kirk was smiling even after losing the battle. I wanted to ask him not to go home that night but I couldn’t. Captain Kirk drove his Starship away leaving me all alone at that planet.

I don’t remember how I dragged myself through six flights of stairs to my third-floor apartment. When I entered the apartment it was full of people and there was quite a commotion going on. I just couldn’t recall why so many people were supposed to gather there. Then I saw a VCR sitting on the TV along with a bunch of cassettes. It then occurred to me that it was our Thursday night, when we planned to rent a VCR for the weekend.

“ARRay lund jaisa shakal kyoN bana rakha hay ni?”, Gohram hollered in his Baluchi accent. He was lying on the carpet in his string underwear as usual. There were other people lying on the carpet too; some of them were resting their backs against the walls; one guy was sitting on the windowsill; another guy was standing spread-eagle in the door that opened into the balcony, trying to establish a line of communication with a girl on the balcony across the street.

“Yaar baith jaa barray mazzay ka program aa raha hay, aaj randioN kay interview dikha rahay hain (Sit down, they are showing interviews of prostitutes tonight)”, Kaami Haraami yelled with the enthusiasm of a school girl.

I sat down against the wall. They were showing a documentary on prostitutes from Heera Mandi. The guys from balcony had lost hope in the girl from across the street and came in too. Soon Lala Javed brought in cups of tea on a large tray.

My mind was still blank. Have you ever experienced such a state of mind in your life when you cannot think about anything and mind’s own natural flow of ideas and thoughts just cease to exist? I think that must be how people go crazy.

The guys were laughing and screaming and women on the TV were telling how they were serving the Art.

“Ji hum to naach gaanay say funn ki khidmat kartay hain”, said one middle-aged Bai Ji in her hoarse voice. The glistening bright color of her painted face was not matching with her dark voluptuous cleavage.

I don’t know when that program ended and they started showing Fazila Qazi’s commercials. A guy from one corner screamed, “Yaar turn the VCR on now”, when a statue of an announcer announced for a program on current affairs.

“No wait let me just watch this program, please, please, please”, begged Gohraam. He was always into current affairs. Aitezaz Ehsan was on TV.

“The situation in Karachi is fully under control. There is no one leaving Karachi now. Ladies and gentlemen! Right now we are standing here in Sadiq-Abad (District Bahawalpur). Do you see the playground behind me? That is the place, where, according to the enemies of the state, there was a refugee camp established for the people fleeing from Karachi. See for yourselves. Do you see any such thing here?”. Aitezaz was saying that in a matter-of-fact voice pointing at a large piece of land in his background.

I recalled the two little girls who were playing with me on the train, last week, when I was travelling to Lahore. There were six families who had reserved more than half of that bogie and they were all leaving Karachi for good.

“Hum nay sab torture cells ka pata laga lia hay. There are no torture cells in the city now. We have apprehended all those who were running those torture cells and they are being dealt with the stern hand of law”, said Aitezaz while straightening his expensive eyeglasses.

When they started showing the footage of “captured” torture cells, I inadvertently looked at my jeans. There was a small bloodstain at the hem. I felt nauseated and rushed towards the bathroom. I vomited my stomach out into the toilet bowl.

I sat down at the edge of the bathtub and started crying. I felt that every vein in my heart was aching and I wanted my heart to melt its way out through my eyes. I cried, walking back and forth in that little space pounding on the walls with my fists and kicking with my feet. Then I sat down on the bathtub again and cried some more. I took my wallet out of my pocket and looked at her picture. It felt like it was only yesterday when I received her at Karachi airport along with many others. I walked beside her car from Star Gate to Quaid’s Mausoleum. On that day those twenty miles felt like a walk in the park. That was the day I earnestly felt that she could and would change our lives forever. How could she do that to me? She had no right to betray my trust; the trust that I had in myself. Then in an overwhelming rage I tore down her picture into as many pieces as I could and threw them into the toilet bowl. Pinky had broken my heart.

I don’t know how long I sat there but when I opened the door, I was taken aback by the rumbling of life that was passing like an express train through a small no-stop railway station, without slowing down, leaving candy wrappers, straws and dust afloat for a while.

"Luddi hay Jamaalo Paao ni Luddi hay Jamalo", Noor Jehan was singing on the TV and two of the guys were dancing, trying to imitate Anjuman. The show must go on.