Page 167 of The End of the World As We Know It

“Ah, there’s nothing to be afraid of, bachey. You’re safe here. We’re safe,” Nasir said, but his heart beat in his temples and his soul was uneasy.

He guided Khizar across the highway to the policeman Rashid’s house. As they walked away, he said to the mullah, “What do you make of that?”

Khizar didn’t answer for a few moments. He had the rosary in his hand again and the beads shook as he counted them. Finally, he said, “Uch.”

“What?”

“Uch Sharif. About five hundred kilometers south. The Alexandrian city of saints near the Panjnad, where the five rivers come together. I believe that’s the city Palwasha is describing. The shrine is of Bibi Jawindi, a woman saint from the fifteenth century.” They reached Rashid’s door. Nasir knocked, and as they waited, Khizar quietly said, “Palwasha isn’t the only one who’s dreamed of it. I’ve seen it, too, and I think she’s right. Sooner or later, you’ll be making your pilgrimage there.” He hesitated, then his face turned resolute. “But I don’t think that journey is for me. I don’t think I will be joining you.”

Troubled, Nasir turned to him, but the door was open and the burly policeman and his pretty young wife, Fatima, their arms interlinked, were beaming at them, asking them to come in, bowls of steaming lentils fresh from the pot were waiting for them, and Nasir never got to finish that conversation with the old mullah.

Madam Ujala was a punctilious teacher, but not all pupils of the schoolteacher turned road warrior were so diligent. Some of them played truant while class was in session and went exploring the countryside perforated with goh and snake holes, running through fields of spoiled crops with glee.

On a gray midday in November, when northeasterly winds brought a lashing of cold rain to Sheikhupura, turning soft winter trails into squelching mud, one such delinquent saved their community.

The twelve-year-old’s name was Hashim, but everyone called him Jamun due to the exquisitely dark color of his skin. This particularafternoon, Jamun had wandered nearly five miles away from the mosque-school. He was hopping from puddle to puddle, splashing and stomping his way across a field when he heard a distantbang. He leaned on his walking branch, squinting to see beyond the low mist of the fields. The rain had stopped a while ago and all was quiet except the dripping of water from trees and the soothing frog-like chirping of quails.

The sound came again, and this time there were three of them in rapid succession, the report familiar but chilling, and Jamun instantly dropped to his haunches. For a moment he lingered, then began creeping through the mud until he found himself at the edge of the highway behind an old banyan. He pressed himself against its rough bark and peered around the trunk.

Twenty feet away, five men, long rifles slung over their shoulders, stood in a semicircle around a big, mustached man in an army uniform, a revolver in his hands. Behind them several pickup trucks filled with more armed men smoked on the eastern highway, flanking a chain of prisoners, who stood shivering in the cold. In front of the mustached man, a body lay twitching in a pool of blood, and as Jamun watched, the man stepped forward and kicked the dying person in the head.

Jamun’s lips smashed together to hold back a cry. Very slowly he lowered himself to the ground and backed away on all fours until he was invisible behind rows of ruined sugarcane. Then he got up and sprinted back to the mosque, praying no bullet would shatter his spine as he fled.

Nasir and Khizar took the boy’s testimony seriously. Wooden barricades and rusted oil drums, manned by Rashid and two others, were immediately put up on the highway. Runners were sent to all the houses to gather the community in the mosque’s courtyard. Palwasha and Khizar led children and the older women into the prayer hall, while Nasir and Ujala handed out guns and bullets to the able-bodied men, women, and youths.

They had fourteen guns for a total of fifteen who knew how toshoot—more than half of that number teenagers. Six handguns, four shotguns, one G3 rifle, and three AK-47 Kalashnikovs in possession of men posted on rooftops. Even that, Nasir thought, was a miracle. Most people hadn’t brought ammunition with them to the mosque-community. Judging from Jamun’s account, they were outmanned and likely outgunned.

Ujala was unfazed. “You wait for my cry,” she told them, her face dark with rage, the long knife glinting on her belt, “and then you don’t hesitate. You shoot every single one of those sisterfuckers. You shoot like our lives and our children’s lives depend on it.”

The whole thing had taken them less than an hour. Armed and ready, they now waited for the cavalcade of the Wolves.

It arrived around three in the afternoon—six pickup trucks escorting a human train slowly down the highway. Dull-faced and dusty men, women, and children with iron chains on their feet and a long rope tethering them together. Despite the cold, they were dressed in flimsy shalwar kameez. Sweaters and jackets were reserved for young girls only, Nasir noted. Prize meat, he thought with disgust, as next to him Ujala and Rashid raised their weapons and pointed them at the enemy.

A tall, powerfully built man with a wheatish complexion and bushy mustache disembarked from the first truck that reached the barricade. He wore army khakis and a vest with what looked like a submachine gun slung over his left shoulder, and he was smiling brightly at them.

He leaned against the barricade and spoke in a booming voice, “Salam and blessings. So wonderful to meet you all.”

About a dozen similarly uniformed armed men got out of the pickups and spread out behind their leader, guns lifted in Nasir and Ujala’s general direction.

“Wonderful for you maybe,” Ujala called back, her finger poised on the trigger of her shotgun. “Listen, we don’t want any trouble. Please turn around and return to where you came from. Or take a side road if you’re heading to Lahore. You won’t cross the barriers here.”

“God is great, isn’t He.” The man ran a hand through oiled hair that gleamed in the winter sunlight. “A woman speaks for you all, does she? How many of you are there?”

Rashid took a step forward and aimed his G3 squarely at the man’s head. “She does, and that’s the way we like it. As for the latter, it’s none of your concern.”

“But it is. Listen and listen well, all of you. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Amir Bajwa and I’m the leader of the NPA—the New Pakistan Army. I have a total of one hundred men under my command. Even as we speak, two of my units are clearing out criminal and terrorist hideouts three hours north of here. We aim to bring order and rule of law to this new world, and we’re starting by establishing governance in Punjab—for the moment.” He grinned at them, a sly, nasty grin, and Nasir thought,Where have I seen this hideous grin before?

A nightmare. Which one?

“We have no beef with any of you,” the colonel was saying. “All we require is food and water for my prisoners and half of your ammo as a token of your allegiance and we’ll be on our way.” Solemnly he raised a finger to the sky, turned it, and pointed it at the ground. “This I swear in the name of this pure land I have vowed to protect.”

Nasir watched his crinkled eyes, his wet lips, the spittle glistening on his mustache. He glanced at the human train between the trucks—skeletal, hollow-eyed men, women, and children with cuts and bruises on their forearms and not a hint of life in their eyes.Your vow, he thought.A pox on your fucking vow.

“And should you refuse,” Colonel Bajwa beamed at them, “why, I will kill all your men and take your women and children as slaves. As labor to clear out the roads and highways to render our beloved Pakistan habitable and traversable again.”

Placid as a mountain in springtime, Ujala met the colonel’s gaze and said, “Fuck you.”

His smile didn’t waver, even as a dull red began to seep into the corner of his eyes.