Read Online The Shadow Of The Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Fatima Bhutto
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pulls up beside the petrol pump and Sikandar gathers his thoughts before he shuts off the engine and pulls his key out of the ignition. As the car falls silent, Sikandar listens to the sound of the rain falling on the car’s bonnet. This will have tobe over quickly. Eid prayers are starting shortly. He has two hours to deal with Mina, go to work and get to the mosque – if he wants to do so comfortably. Sikandar simply doesn’t have the energy for a big fight on today of all days.
09:25
4
They meet in the history department of the university. There is no life on campus now, few signs of students or of professors going about their business. It is not just the university that has been snuffed out by the politics of occupation and suspicion. Mir Ali’s schools have also been identified as dangerous. Children, free to congregate in schools and playgrounds, carry home news of comrades on the outside, their fates cryptically sealed in homework assignments and problem sets. Zohran and Zaviyan walk seventy kilometres together and then thirty and fifty-two kilometres separately. Though there is a fork in the road and some delays occur, both men will reach their final destination but who will reach first?
It does not matter.
A mark is given for the correct numerical answer.
They are alive, the boys are alive. This is the message sent and received.
There are maths classes with no mathematical precepts to be learned. No serious fractions, no solving of any kind to be done, just hope to be relayed.
But still the children have to be careful. Some of their teachers are paid by the state to report on subversive activities on their campuses and in the classrooms. Not many, but maybe one or two; no one knows for sure at the time. The teachers are asked to report on students who express separatist views, on those who talk freely about their fathers’ travels. They keep special watch on those prone to boast about a brother’s strength, an uncle’s recent exploits in training, anyone whospeaks too fondly of the great state’s neighbours or mentions the years 1947, 1971.
They are encouraged to provoke students – young, old, it doesn’t matter. All information is legitimate and hungrily sought by the agencies. Assignments, not the kind sent home in maths class, are written on the blackboard: What does Pakistan mean to you? An essay on patriotism handed out during an English literature lesson.
The question answered correctly earns the industrious student a star marked in red ink at the top of the paper; but answered otherwise it means something entirely different for the pupil and his family.
The university itself is small: a few low-storeyed buildings packed together, the various faculties separated by small av-enues for bicycles and select, stickered cars to pass through. It is a young university, not older than its graduating students. Built by the province, Mir Ali’s university opened itself to the town’s aspiring offspring of traders and smugglers, who would otherwise have to study in distant cities. The education offered ought to have been largely free, but the province’s weak funding and heavy corruption meant that only the district’s wealthy ended up there.
The university is guarded by large wrought-iron gates. Over time they served not to let students in, but to prevent them from leaving.
It is almost eighteen months since the university was surrounded and the siege began. The students had been protesting the murder of one of their popular peers, Azmaray, a senior who had four months left to complete his degree in philosophy.
Azmaray had been tall and lanky, his hair growing past his chin and onto his shoulders. He didn’t look like atroublemaker; he looked like a philosophy student. But he had been a threat.
Azmaray had been photographed at a rally, a demonstration in the growing slums of Haji Abdullah Shirazi Khan road, holding a photograph of his brother, who had been disappeared by the armed
09:25
4
They meet in the history department of the university. There is no life on campus now, few signs of students or of professors going about their business. It is not just the university that has been snuffed out by the politics of occupation and suspicion. Mir Ali’s schools have also been identified as dangerous. Children, free to congregate in schools and playgrounds, carry home news of comrades on the outside, their fates cryptically sealed in homework assignments and problem sets. Zohran and Zaviyan walk seventy kilometres together and then thirty and fifty-two kilometres separately. Though there is a fork in the road and some delays occur, both men will reach their final destination but who will reach first?
It does not matter.
A mark is given for the correct numerical answer.
They are alive, the boys are alive. This is the message sent and received.
There are maths classes with no mathematical precepts to be learned. No serious fractions, no solving of any kind to be done, just hope to be relayed.
But still the children have to be careful. Some of their teachers are paid by the state to report on subversive activities on their campuses and in the classrooms. Not many, but maybe one or two; no one knows for sure at the time. The teachers are asked to report on students who express separatist views, on those who talk freely about their fathers’ travels. They keep special watch on those prone to boast about a brother’s strength, an uncle’s recent exploits in training, anyone whospeaks too fondly of the great state’s neighbours or mentions the years 1947, 1971.
They are encouraged to provoke students – young, old, it doesn’t matter. All information is legitimate and hungrily sought by the agencies. Assignments, not the kind sent home in maths class, are written on the blackboard: What does Pakistan mean to you? An essay on patriotism handed out during an English literature lesson.
The question answered correctly earns the industrious student a star marked in red ink at the top of the paper; but answered otherwise it means something entirely different for the pupil and his family.
The university itself is small: a few low-storeyed buildings packed together, the various faculties separated by small av-enues for bicycles and select, stickered cars to pass through. It is a young university, not older than its graduating students. Built by the province, Mir Ali’s university opened itself to the town’s aspiring offspring of traders and smugglers, who would otherwise have to study in distant cities. The education offered ought to have been largely free, but the province’s weak funding and heavy corruption meant that only the district’s wealthy ended up there.
The university is guarded by large wrought-iron gates. Over time they served not to let students in, but to prevent them from leaving.
It is almost eighteen months since the university was surrounded and the siege began. The students had been protesting the murder of one of their popular peers, Azmaray, a senior who had four months left to complete his degree in philosophy.
Azmaray had been tall and lanky, his hair growing past his chin and onto his shoulders. He didn’t look like atroublemaker; he looked like a philosophy student. But he had been a threat.
Azmaray had been photographed at a rally, a demonstration in the growing slums of Haji Abdullah Shirazi Khan road, holding a photograph of his brother, who had been disappeared by the armed
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