Page 168 of The End of the World As We Know It

Ujala raised her left hand in the air, and on both sides of the highway several heads rose from the ledges of rooftops, their faces covered. Kalashnikovs and pistols slid into view and trained on the New Pakistan Army men.

Ujala’s voice didn’t shake. “Wewon’tgive up our guns and youwillleave us alone. We may or may not live to see tomorrow, but I promise you if you don’t leave, God help me, you and your men won’t, either.”

The red left his eyes. Colonel Bajwa gave a good-natured laugh and, raising both hands, began backing away. “I like this. Oh, I do like this.”

Behind him his men had taken cover behind vehicle doors and in the beds of their trucks. They watched their boss retreat with inscrutable eyes.

The colonel was smiling and shaking his head when he reached his truck. “So, this is the deal, right? We’re going to camp in yonder field across the highway. Tonight, exactly at eighteen-hundred, you will bring water and food for my prisoners, so they’re strong tomorrow to keep working on the highway.

“Now, say you decide you don’t want to do that. Well,Idecide to start killing the older, more useless of the prisoners one by one. Every ten minutes you will hear a gunshot until I’m finished with the lot of them. Then, if by oh-seven-hundred tomorrow I don’t have my ammo neatly stacked up around these barricades, we will return and kill every last one of you. No prisoners and no exceptions. Is that clear enough for you, meri jaan?”

Ujala had sparks in her eyes.

“Tonight,” the colonel repeated, and began to get into his truck.

A voice rang out, “Son! Son, listen to me!”

They all turned.

Maulvi Khizar had come out from the mosque’s main entrance and was seesawing toward the barricades, his walking stick precariously jabbing the ground.

“Maulvi sahib…” Ujala said.

“Khizar bhai!” Nasir cried, and lowered his weapon to make a grab for the mullah, but the old man thwarted him with a wild swing of the stick.

“Prisoners, eh?” the mullah was muttering. His opaque eyes were fixed on the mass of trucks, his face red with determination. “God’s children bound up like cattle. That’s how you will protect this country? My father and grandfather’s land? You should be ashamed of yourself.” His stick thwacked against a steel drum as he reached the barricades, making him stumble and nearly fall.

Colonel Bajwa stood behind his truck door, watching the old man. His mustache quivered. “You must be the imam of this mosque. God is great, indeed. Peace be upon you, Maulvi sahib.”

“And you, son, but I fear you don’t want peace. You want subjugation.” Maulvi Khizar’s white beard heaved on his chest. His turban had fallen off and his scalp gleamed between tufts of thin hair. “My father’s brother served in the army. He was martyred in ’65 and now my very own army wants to take us all prisoners? How have things come to this?”

“Hush, imam sahib, your passion will be the death of you.” The colonel held up a hand before his soldiers, who had swung their guns around to face this new threat. “The army is here for your protection, I promise.”

Tears ran down Khizar’s cheeks. He blinked them away. “Man is born free—the One Pure and Merciful God has decreed that. No man has the right to enslave another. And you threaten us in the shade of Allah’s house—the last living mosque in this land, for all we know. Fear the wrath of God, damn you.”

The colonel’s raised hand clenched into a fist. His smile broadened into a toothy grin. “Careful now.”

In response, Khizar banged his walking stick on one of the drums as hard as he could, then pointed it at the line of prisoners. “Let those poor souls go before you’re condemned to hell forever.”

“Maulvi sahib,” Nasir yelled. “Please come back.”

The colonel’s fist flew open. With the heel of his hand, he made a thrust-forward motion in the air.

A shot rang out, the sound a rude, deafening shock that silenced every living thing in its vicinity.

Maulvi Khizar jerked like a puppet pulled by its master. Slowly he turned around to face his friends. A clean black hole, like a third blind eye, had appeared in the middle of his forehead. A whiff of smoke came out of it and dissipated. Khizar’s walking stick dropped from his hands and clattered on the road. He smiled, or grimaced, and his right eye began to fill with blood.

“Khizar bhai!” Nasir screamed, and made to run to the dead mullah swaying on the highway, but Rashid grabbed his arm.

“No, Nasir!” Rashid hissed. “He’s gone.”

Faintly, as if from a great distance, Nasir heard Ujala cry, “Kill those bastards!” and the world was filled with blasts and whines and the staccato of gunfire. Nasir watched his own hands lift and begin firing, even as Rashid yanked him by his collar behind the cover of a drum.

Palwasha opened the mosque hall door to Nasir’s banging to find him propped against the wall, covered in blood.

“They’re coming,” he wheezed, trying to speak lucidly. A bullet had gone straight through his cheek, shattering his left jaw. “Ujala, Rashid, Faheem, all dead. It’s over.”

The girl’s grasp on her revolver tightened. Behind her, in the shadows, the eleven remaining women and children began to sob.