A Sisyphean Affair

I remember it was in the leisurely residue of my vacations from boarding school that Father thought it appropriate to take me as an intern at his tuck shop in the Al-Jannah Pharmaceutical Company.

The ‘shope’ – as Father called it – comprised one refrigerator, a tea-maker, one broad shelf, and a counter. It was located in the factory basement in a spacious lunchroom strewn with chairs that looked smaller than the ones in our classrooms but seemed to accommodate much bigger people. Coming out of the elevator, the shop was the first thing one noticed on the right. Father introduced me to the staff as ‘Taaj-theen’, instead of ‘Taaju’ that everyone at home was accustomed to calling me.

I was to only observe and watch Father and receive instructions from him for the first week. On my first day, I noticed that he was much more respected at home than at work. Here, he was not addressed as ‘Haaji[1] saahib[2]’ and no one stood up to greet him. Father handed me a list that contained the cost of every item, which was slightly higher than the retail price printed on the wrapper. As I was learning these augmented rates, a boisterous man in his early twenties emerged barefoot from behind the elevator frame and started dragging all the chairs and tables, ramming them into the far left corner of the room. He was quite rangy and sported a peculiarly broad grin between a pair of sunken cheeks, complemented by two protruded cheekbones. He, I later discovered, was the canteen attendant Yousuf — euphemistically called ‘office boy’ — who did all the menial chores except for dishwashing. He was neither a boy nor did he have anything to do with the offices, though, which were situated on the upper floors of the building.

As the chairs surrendered to his brutish lunges, the peculiar grin stayed on his face. In a matter of minutes, the whole thirty-by-thirty room stood stripped to a vacant expanse of grey tiles.

Every day, I would greet customers, hand over their desired items, obtain the augmented prices, and add their entries in the journal.

Father handed me another list to go through; this one was of vendors and their contact information. When I happened to look again, Yousuf’s exuberance seemed to have evaporated and he was diligently swabbing the floor, though it had been mopped twice already. He then tied a handkerchief around his head and began to unroll the prayer mats that were stacked behind the elevator frame, all the while mumbling something to himself. He exuded a solemnity that belied his oafish excitement displayed a while ago, meticulously laying the mats and taking special care of their alignment and evenness.

“Oh paagla, siddhi ker, oaye!”[3] Yousuf frowned and yelled to the janitor assisting him. Then he knelt down, his head bent, his eyes riveted to the prayer mats, and languidly crawled along their perimeter with the devotion of a pilgrim ascending the Scala Sancta. He was caressing the mats with an air of sensuous reverence to iron out any remaining folds that I thought only he could spot.

For some reason, customers rushed in most swiftly right before the call to prayer. Once I had attended to all of them, my eyes looked for Yousuf, seeking the resumption of the ceremony I had been witnessing. Instead, the more formal ceremony had commenced: the imam presiding over the congregation. To my bewilderment, Yousuf stood away, rearranging the strewn shoes to make way for incoming worshippers. He still had that mysterious solemn smile — the dangling concave curl of his dark lips, hooked to the pit in either cheek.

This was how he singlehandedly transformed the canteen into a mosque four times a day- every day, seven days a week. The reversion back to — or the conversion to — the canteen seemed to be done with the perfunctory professionalism with which we all worked. I began to enjoy this routine. Every day, the imam with his hefty paunch would descend from the elevator, glance first at the impeccably laid prayer mats and then at Yousuf, and take his position adjacent to the front wall, facing the Qibla. Every day, Father would desert everything and scamper towards the imam to shake the cleric’s hand with both of his. Every day, Yousuf would repeatedly obliterate and recreate the mosque. Every day, I would greet customers, hand over their desired items, obtain the augmented prices, and add their entries in the journal. In times of leisure, I would read Gulliver’s Travels, much to Father’s displeasure. Every evening at six, I darted to Father’s motorcycle to go home, as Yousuf and his mates stood with their arms raised in front of the guards, getting their pockets turned out and the garbage bags rummaged. The first day when I followed suit, the security guard tapped the back of my head and said, “Aap jaayen, beta ji[4].”

Often a woman in a black abaya standing at the bus stop adjacent to the factory would smile at me and I would wave back.

---

[1] One who had performed the Hajj at least once.

[2] An Urdu/Punjabi suffix depicting formality. The equivalent of the prefix Mister. Also used by servants to address their masters.

[3] “Oaye – A Punjabi interjection, chiefly used to show extreme informality or to warn/accost someone – straighten it, you madman!”

[4] “You go, dear son.”

II

She was Zu’hra[5], an immensely jovial lady with tiny sparkling eyes and the longest hair I had ever seen. It took me some time to recognize her, since she never wore the abaya inside the factory premises. She would pop in just before the afternoon prayers to get cardamom tea and was what she called a ‘tea freak’. She often ruffled my hair to express gratitude, a gesture that has ever since irked me. Generally quite like our English teacher Ms Nuyyer — genial and benevolent — Zu’hra was quite talkative, even childlike at times, filling in quite well for both my teacher and my school-friends.

“Why do you drape the dupatta on your head when the azan is recited?” I asked her once.

“So, my tresses don’t distract the worshippers, huh! Why do you have this silly hairstyle?” She ruffled my hair again.

“Tell me!” I insisted.

“Ugh! It’s in… respect, for the azan.”

“But the azan only calls us to pray. When Mr Kaazmi rings the bell for the assembly, we simply have to be present there, not cover our heads as we carry on playing in the sports hall.”

“Mr… who?”

“Our school’s headmaster.”

“Haha,” she put her hand on her open mouth, “but you do tuck your shirt in and adjust your tie when he passes by, don’t you?”

“But God is everywhere, isn’t He?”

“So is this mind of yours, ugh!”

Father was increasingly unavailable at his ‘shope’ now. He came just around the time Yousuf improvised the mosque, and left along with the imam.

In the days that followed, I noticed that some people descended the stairs with hasty, clumsy clonks — heedlessly plonking their shoes before lurching towards the praying area, colliding into one thing or another. However, if the congregation were prostrate, all their enthusiasm and frenzy would, as it were, drain at the very sight. Most of them would start fiddling with their cuffs, twiddling their hair, checking their phones, or casting wandering glances around. Some would just take a chair and dawdle about. Only when the imam stood up from the bow did they join the prayers. Once a tall and bulky gentleman (whose name I have now forgotten) — a regular member of the praying fraternity — rushed towards the centre of the room with his beard dripping with ablution water, and found that the roll call for the last iteration had passed. Oddly, he just took a seat alongside some female teammates of his, who were having lunch, and tattled about the hot weather and the dysfunctional air conditioning for a good half an hour.

I asked Zu’hra. She said she had no idea, as women did not form congregations for praying. Finally, I asked Father, who clarified with unsolicited fervour that once the first bow was completed for a particular iteration (‘rakat’, he said), the person joining the prayer thereafter had to repeat that iteration at the end, even if he made that second bow.

“But, Father,” I said, not facing him, “is it a sin to bow in that half missed iteration?”

“No, no! Not a sin.”

“So, why not let it be a way to bow to Allah one extra time?”

“Heh. It is just… um—”

“Pointless?” I blurted out.

“Be silent, Taaju! You’re getting much spoilt.”

It made sense: it was pretty much like how Rummeez used to skip the class for which he had missed the roll call. I termed these people the ‘attendencists’.

Father was increasingly unavailable at his ‘shope’ now. He came just around the time Yousuf improvised the mosque, and left along with the imam. He had now started constantly wearing a skullcap that he called ‘taqiyah[6]’. Some senior officer from the Administration came a few times to enquire about Father but he was absent every time. Finally, he asked if I had a rate-list. I nodded and handed over the list with augmented prices to him. He squinted slightly and asked me why we did not obtain the retail price if we bought the supplies what he called ‘wholesale’.

“This is what ub’ba ji[7] gave to me,” I said.

He smiled and tousled my hair, making me regret my response.

---

[5] An Urdu name derived from Farsi, meaning Venus.

[6] A round, tight-fitting cap, worn while praying or as a symbol of religiosity.

[7] Father [followed by an Urdu/Punjabi suffix denoting respect].

III

On Fridays, everyone went for the prayer of Jumu’ah to a permanent mosque nearby and chairs remained scattered in the makeshift one until late afternoon. Yousuf looked somewhat distrait, mopping the floor with perfunctory strokes. Presently, he erected a sign that read, “Caution! Wet floor!” and came to me to say his first words,

“Chhotay saa’b[8], ik kup chai mil sukthee aey?”

He supplicated as though he had considered the possibility of my outright denial, even though tea was free for all.

“Bilku’l[9],” I replied.

Promptly, he handed me one of the few grey cups before I could pour tea into one of the common green ones used by all staff. I asked him if he did not like the colour green.

“Naeenh saa’b jee, passand kya kerna aey. Hum lokaan tha toh buss yehi kup hee hai jee,[10]” he replied, his large eyes still rather glazed and a vague half-smile coming over his lips as he scratched the vicinity of the mole adjacent to his nostril.

I peered at his dark vacuous face, handing over the cup to him.

“Aehh… please… one more spoon [of sugar], master!”

“It’s already quite sweet!”

“I’ve drunk it before, sir.”

I wondered how people so often got precisely the opposite of what they desired…

I added one extra teaspoon to the two already mixed by the tea-maker.

I noticed his intonation was laced with a Punjabi twang and he picked words from the mother tongue quite generously. However, to my puzzlement, he always maintained Urdu as his purported language at work with all of us.

Yousuf gratefully held the cup with both his hands, and an abject smile got suspended between his pointed cheekbones.

“Meyerbaani, boce[11],” he said.

He then proceeded to vanish behind the elevator frame to have his tea.

“Why not drink it here?” I asked.

“Aehh… it’s good there.”

The canteen was quite uncongested on Fridays. Yousuf slurped his tea in solitude, continually mumbling to himself and peering into the reflections of tube lights diminishing from the dampened floor as it dried, where on other days lay the holy mats.

Zu’hra told me she spent her Friday afternoons in the lunchroom as her break was longer than usual – thanks to the ladies’ being spared from the Jumu’ah prayers.

“So, why don’t you pray behind the imam as well?” I asked her.

“It doesn’t seem… appropriate, you know, with the gentlemen,” she simply said.

I could not understand how it was appropriate to chatter and chortle along with men at the lunch table but not pray when everyone was engrossed in worship.

That Friday, though, she seemed a bit quiet and remained in the lunchroom throughout the afternoon, missing her separate prayer as well.

“Not praying today, Zu’hra baaji[12]?” I said.

“No.”

“Are you lazy?”

“No… just like that.”

“Like what?”

“I am not to pray today. That’s just how it is!”

“Oh, like I am not to go to school these days?”

She giggled and nodded.

I asked if the attendencist gentlemen also got such respites, to which she replied in the negative. I wondered how people so often got precisely the opposite of what they desired: Yousuf loved laying the mats, and was supposed to observe people eat, laugh, and wander about soiling his imaginary mosque; Zu’hra loved Him and sang His praises but she was barred from praying; the attendencists only wanted the count of their prayers to be updated, they had to walk two hundred yards to do so; and I — well.

---

[8] A Punjabi elision of ‘saahib’ (see footnote 2).

[9] “Of course.”

[10] “No, master. What’s [there] to like [about the colour]! We people just have these cups, sir.”

[11] “Kind of you, boss.”

[12] Elder sister.

IV

By the end of the first month, I gradually acclimatized to the new environment. Father spent more and more time outside the factory premises, accompanying imam sahib to meelaads[13]. He also started excessively using an Islamic perfume called ittar that caused me nasal allergy, after which Mama gave me a noseclip to wear when sitting on the motorcycle with Father. Frequently, imam sahib (wearing the same ittar) would come to our shop and Father would present something sweet to him, inculcating in me the importance of charity. I could not grasp how giving hulwa[14] to a sated man was charity while so many in our neighbourhood remained hungry.

At every prayer, I observed Yousuf professionally but somewhat brusquely telling all those who were eating to hurry up so the hall could be vacated. I saw him assume the same devotional air he had on my first day at the tuck shop. Even on public holidays, when the attendance was minimal, he carried out his rituals with unaffected zest.

“Aaj toh rush kaafi kum tha. Jootay naa bhi seedhay kertay toh jugguh kaafi thi, nahee?[15]” I once asked him.

“Saa’b ji, upnha ferz toh poora kerna hai naa. Rush hovay paanhvay na hovay[16].”

“Saheeh baat hai.” I agreed, in awe of his diligence.

Every time the prayers commenced, everyone either joined the congregation or left the lunchroom (for the time being, mosque). Only Yousuf and I remained. I would service any customers that came during the prayers; while Yousuf would devotedly make way for incoming worshippers. When no shoes needed straightening and no customers were there to be attended to, Yousuf and I sat in silence that was punctuated by the imam’s nasal utterances of ‘Allahu Ukber’[17]. Occasionally, Yousuf would wave to me and show his droopy hammock of a smile. However, for some reason, he never shook hands with me.

“Would you like some hulwa?” I said to Yousuf, before imam sahib finished the prayers and gobbled it up.

“No, no, saa’b ji! Thanks very much,” he murmured.

“Don’t be shy!”

“Heh. No, please, you ea—” his voice faltered, for want of force.

Just then a fleshy man with stubble — not a regular attendee — wearing seemingly slim fit chinos and suede shoes, scuttled towards the praying mats and started struggling with his shoes. Yousuf dashed towards him and tugged them off, unfurled the remaining of the prayer mat for him, untied and loosened the laces, and gently placed the shoes at the left corner.

“Why not just unroll all of it at once?” I asked.

“Unoccupied prayer mats, sir… It seems odd.”

“To whom?”

“Aehh… it just does,” he said. “Why not you too…?” he signalled towards the unrolled mat.

I could not grasp how giving hulwa to a sated man was charity while so many in our neighbourhood remained hungry.

“I’m not an adult yet. That’s why my father has brought me here: so I can keep the shop open when he’s praying or elsewhere, you know.”

“A pious man he is!” the same mysterious half-smile curled his lips as he nodded.

“Do you wish to become pious too?”

“Well, saa’b ji, Almighty has given us all different capacities.”

“To be pious?”

“To be… aehh… anything,” he said, forming a deferential smile.

I felt a certain empathy germinating between us: the only two constant occupants of that room who never joined the congregation but participated in the prayers in our peculiar ways. There was something that connected the two of us: I was the youngest, part of neither the office-bearers nor the staff. He was the only one whose ‘worship’ was to see to the worship of others. In our shared, open, and legitimised rebellion against the muezzin, I felt a sort of affinity with him.

The muezzin first called everyone to worship — hayya ‘alas-salāh — and then to success — hayya ‘alal-falāh. I wondered which of the two was it that perpetually lured this sizeable assembly of believers; and which, if either, was an incentive for that dusky uneducated oaf.

Father looked in quite a cheerful mood that day, vigorously combing his beard and humming some naat[18].

“Father, can I ask something?”

He frowned and glowered at me suspiciously. My lips got pursed.

“OK, ask,” he said, smiling.

“Why does the azan mention success after worship, both twice?”

“Because – Alhamdulillah[19] – success in both the worlds lies within worship.”

“But if something is within another, why mention both separately? It seems like a second motive.”

“I made a mistake by putting you into that school. I’ll take you to imam sahib for a lesson today!”

I pouted again.

---

[13] Milad: a religious ceremony to commemorate Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)’s birth anniversary or to generally sing his praises.

[14] A traditional dessert, popular especially in the Punjab region of Pakistan and India.

[15] “It was quite uncrowded today; the space would have been ample, even if you had not rearranged the shoes, no?”

[16] “Master, one has to carry out one’s duty, whether it is crowded or not.”

[17] Allah is the Greatest.

[18] A paean in praise of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

[19] All praise be to Allah, used as a filler signifying one’s humility and/or the magnanimity of Allah.

V

Zu’hra was going on leave because of her sister’s wedding. On her last day, she looked slightly glum, her chin buried in her palms with her fingers resting on her freckled cheeks.

“Baaji, you don’t like breaks very much, do you?” I said.

“Hehe! No, it isn’t that.”

“You look sad! ‘Cause your sister would move out?”

“Yeah,” she continued after a pause, gazing at the floor, “she’s five years younger than I.”

“Uh-huh… when will you—” my eyes opening wide and eyebrows starting to rise.

“Allah only knows,” she said, followed by a faint chuckle.

There was a brief silence.

“Baaji, I won’t be here when you come back,” I said.

Yousuf was obviously the chief suspect. He was searched and inspected. Nothing suggested he was the culprit but nothing implied his innocence either.

“Aww! Be well, study well. Do come along with Papa some time!” She embraced me and ruffled my hair.

“Hmm…” I nodded.

In the second and final month of my stay at the factory, a gentleman apparently dropped his mobile phone while praying. He claimed that he had switched it off before the prayers and only realized once he was at his workstation that the phone was not on him. Yousuf was obviously the chief suspect. He was searched and inspected. Nothing suggested he was the culprit but nothing implied his innocence either.

To redress the situation, without sacking him, he was transferred to the factory warehouse, where he loaded and unloaded trucks. The last time I saw him was when he was going up the stairs in plain clothes, his head bent, still muttering under his breath.

Father had been most certain of Yousuf’s guilt.

“Lekin, Ub’ba ji, woh waisay achha aadmi tha. Aur phone uskay paas toh mila hee naheen[20],” I dared to say.

“Beta, tumhay nahee pata! Yeh choorhay[21] aisay hee hotay hain. Chor, bay-eemaan! Ye hidaayet paa hee naheen suktay. Inn key dilohn pe muhrein lug chuki hain.” [22]

“Kya woh Christian tha[23]?” I asked, surprised.

“Mutlub… inn logon ka Christianon wala hee ‘hissaab’ hota hai[24].”

On my last day, I took home in my bag one of the grey cups, in which I drink tea to this day.

---

[20] “But, Father, he was generally a good man. And the phone wasn’t even found on him.”

[21] Choorha: A Punjabi derogatory term for someone who has a cleaning/janitorial job, chiefly one who is a lower caste ex-Hindu having converted to Christianity.

[22] “Son, you don’t know! These ‘choorhas’ are people of this very kind. Thieves, faithless people! They simply cannot assimilate divine guidance, as their hearts have been seared.”

[23] “Was he a Christian?”

[24] “[I] mean… these people are effectively the same as Christians.”

 

By Abubakar Mehmood