A Walk in Midnight

By Mohammad Sarwar MD FACR

Fakeer is an immigrant doctor of humble beginnings who comes to America from Pakistan. He arrives full of hope and ambition, but a new country means new challenges, perhaps the most difficult being cultural reconciliation and adjustment. However, Fakeers life in the United States is good. He enjoys dating and falls in love a time or two. He does well in his profession and is considered a brilliant radiologist.

While Fakeers American girlfriends make it look like his assimilation is complete, he ends up marrying a woman from his own culture. The past seems to haunt him constantly. Although a Muslim, Fakeer begins to drink, and his thoroughly Americanized eldest daughter marries a Hindu.

The good doctor travels to Pakistan as recompense for his excellent education. He enlists in Doctors Without Borders and goes to Kabul, but tragedy sets him off track. He returns again to America, suffering from post-traumatic stress, but it isnt long before hes back on Pakistani soil. No matter how much he loves America, the thought of home continues to haunt him. Fakeers spirit is a captive of his country of birth. Will he find eventual happiness in Pakistan or wander the world forever in search of purpose and peace?

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489713438

Mohammad Sarwar MD FACR

Mohammad Sarwar is a practicing radiologist with a medical degree from King Edward Medical University in Pakistan. He has held academic positions at several prestigious medical institutions, including Yale. He has been a professor and he has an extensive professional bibliography, but his present passion is literature, which he writes both in his native language of Urdu and in English. He is author of A Letter from the Dead.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Abdul Fakeer slowly limped down the winding roads of Lawrence Garden in Lahore. It was late September, the time of the year when the blistering heat in the Punjab started to lose some of its vicious sting. The early evening still afforded plenty of sunlight. A cool breeze carried on its wings the blissful fragrance of the flowers the caretakers of the garden took pride in growing.

Fakeer, now in his sixties, had returned to Lahore a week ago after a stay of thirty-five years in America working as a physician. It had been a hectic week of visits with family members. Only today had he found some time to himself, and he had decided to take a walk alone. He lived only a mile from the garden. He was not sick, but he did not feel well, and he had a sinking feeling in his heart. His siblings and his wife had all passed away—a tormenting loss. He felt low in spirits, and his healthy right leg had the weight of steel.

Fakeer shuffled cautiously to a nearby bench and seated himself squatly on it, both legs stretched out in front of him. He carefully laid his walking stick on the side of the bench. He breathed a deep sigh and gazed blankly into the sinking sun that had now changed into a glowing red fireball. About him were women and children of all ages, all talking and laughing as noisily as they could. Yet Fakeer hardly noticed them or the noise they generated. As he sat there, a veil of memories slowly descended on his consciousness, and he sank into a reverie. He could see and feel the entire past unfold itself vividly in his imagination.

BOOK 1

Pakistan, Home, and Family

CHAPTER 1

Fakeer’s Early Upbringing

FAKEER HAILED FROM A LARGE FAMILY. HIS MOTHER WAS ONLY fourteen when she married. After the first few pregnancies had ended in spontaneous abortions, she had eight live births. However, three babies died in infancy due to poor prenatal and postnatal care: one had prematurity-related hyaline membrane disease, the second died from congenital cardiac defects, and the third suffered from encephalocele. Each death saddened their mother and the family.

One sister and three brothers survived to adulthood. The eldest was Hakim; then came Fakeer, Hamza, Shakira, the only girl, and finally, Nazeer. No artificial methods of birth control were available in the 1930s and 1940s. After each birth, Fakeer’s mother was spared a new issue for at least two years because of the natural hormonal protection against pregnancy provided by breastfeeding, from which all the children benefited. When she discontinued breastfeeding, she would get pregnant.

Except for Nazeer, who had autism, Fakeer’s siblings all did well. The children’s successful careers deeply pleased their proud father. Hakim became a chemical engineer. Fakeer became a doctor. Hamza became a famous neuroscientist, highly published and sought after for national lectures. Shakira married well.

Given that she never entered a hospital and had no skilled nurse, it was amazing that Fakeer’s mother lived through eight births. All of them took place at home, aided by an old midwife who had no concept of maintaining a sterile environment or preventing infection. Fakeer had vivid memories of Shakira’s birth. His mother lay in a thatched annex and was covered by a barely clean white sheet, while the midwife, wearing no gloves, freely scouted the birth canal. She delivered the baby and handed her over to a maternal aunt who was there to help, as was the custom. The placenta was thrown in the garbage pile by the side of the home; the mother’s bleeding genitals were covered with ash, which was universally considered an anti-infection medication.

Fakeer’s early upbringing was typical of a lower-middle-class child in Pakistan at the time. The family huddled together in a two-bedroom home. The houses in the neighborhood were constructed shoulder to shoulder. To provide some additional breathing and living space, almost every family had constructed a clumsy annex that usually comprised an additional bedroom and a shed for a buffalo. It was considered good economics to own a source of fresh milk. One could also enjoy homemade curd, a kind of yogurt, and lassi made from the churned yogurt, which was diluted with as much water as required to satisfy the needs of the family and the neighbors, who felt free to ask for it. Women often came from a mile away to get lassi—a great drink for hot summers, especially at lunchtime.

In addition to milk, the buffalo offered one more benefit; people plastered their dung cakes on the walls to dry and then used them as fuel. Fakeer remembered an English official who saw these dung cakes stuck to the walls during a visit to the neighborhood and asked innocently, How does the buffalo relieve herself on the wall?

Fakeer’s father held a relatively well-paying job as a conductor with the Pakistan railways, a much-sought-after position. He grew up in the village of Noorshah and was lucky to have received a good education in the nearby town of Zafarwal. He used to walk five miles each way to school and back to his village. Occasionally, he was invited to stay at his uncle’s home in Zafarwal, and he was happy to visit.

Fakeer never got to know his grandfather; he had passed away when Fakeer was only three years old, and Fakeer had no memory of him. But he was told his grandfather had adored him. His grandfather had lived in Noorshah, where nearly everyone was uneducated; only a fraction had managed to receive even rudimentary Islamic schooling from the mullah at the village mosque. His grandfather, however, had finished his high school matriculation in Zafarwal and had gone to college in Narowal, fifty miles from his village. He was the only person in Noorshah with that much education.

For a long time, Fakeer’s grandfather lived in a ramshackle boardinghouse where he cooked food for himself and slept in a rickety charpai, but he was ecstatic to have his education. He was bright and thirsty for knowledge and was always eager to learn more. He eventually married and had children. Even though he had to do menial jobs in the town, he was always working on mathematical problems, which he would occasionally take back to the college for his former professors to review. His intelligence and mathematical skills soon won him considerable recognition and eventually a job teaching mathematics at the college. Only one thing made him unhappy: his village was so far away from the college that he could visit his wife, family, and friends just once every three or four weeks, depending upon the availability of a horse and the affordability of its rental fee.

Fakeer’s grandmother was illiterate, but she made certain that the household was in order and that all chores were attended to when her husband was away. And she took great care of her children. She had four—two boys and two girls. Like Fakeer’s mother, she had lost two girls in their infancy, both to pneumonia. Sadly, though, she never missed them much; she would say it would have been difficult to get them married and to give a dowry. One boy never received an education; he remained in the village and became a farmer. Fakeer’s father got an education and landed a respectable job. The two girls helped their mom until they were married. Then they stayed in the village with their families.

After Fakeer’s father had found a job and gotten married, he moved his family to a relatively respectable town several grades better than the average village in Pakistan. Still, it had no paved roads and no restaurants. However, there was a fifty-yard-long row of stands where one could shop for a variety of items, including groceries. Vendors sold sweets, mangoes, ice cream, and other edibles. The favorites were chilled mangoes, mango ice cream, and especially corn-on-the-cob roasted on coals and served with salt and lime smeared on it. The family’s house had no running water, and water had to be brought in with buckets filled at the municipal water faucets, which were turned on for only a few hours each day—in the morning, at noon, and in the early evening. These facilities also served as bathing and washing resources.

The neighborhood was closely knit, and people would often exchange items like halwa, kheer, or other nice foods they couldn’t routinely afford. The houses were not large enough to host neighborhood parties, but residents had chipped in to build a respectable-looking mosque, which became a place for namaz and a venue for social gatherings. People would bring food and share it—along with stories, gossip, and mutual concerns that needed tending. Fakeer was encouraged to become a hafiz Qur’an, which he attempted, but he soon gave up trying to memorize the Qur’an, frustrated by the time and effort needed.

Though uneducated, Fakeer’s mother could not be labeled illiterate. She had enough intelligence and common sense to shame any graduate. She was a tough but gentle disciplinarian. With great endurance and patience, she made sure her children did their homework. Since there was no electricity, they had to arrange their charpais so that the heads of their bedsteads converged on a table sandwiched in their midst. The table bore a lantern fueled by kerosene oil. The siblings had to study until 11:00 p.m. They would either be learning their lessons or doing their chores, dozing and cursing in between as they awaited the official bedtime hour. Their mother was clever; knowing the children might not obey her instructions, she would sneak a look through the door or just barge in to ensure that everyone was studying faithfully. She was well rewarded for her caring and insistence on excellence in education: except for Nazeer, all her boys ended up well-educated and successful in their chosen professions.

Fakeer’s mother knew how to make do with meager funds. She would cook food and prepare chapatis in clay choola, using small, dry wooden pieces cut from larger tree trunks. She would use a metal tawa to bake bread. The house had no formal dining room or table. Since the kitchen area was small, in the winter family members had to take turns sitting on cotton mat bori to eat. When Fakeer’s father was home, he would eat first. He would be followed by the youngest upward. In summer, it was too hot to prepare chapatis for everyone. Instead, Fakeer’s mother took prepared flour to the community oven to have the chapatis made for a nominal price. When she wanted to save money, she would spend most of the day preparing chapatis herself in an earthen oven that stood in one corner of the house.

She held money saved in a locked steel box. No one else could access it, because she had the keys tied on her waist on her shalwar nala. That money went partly to pay the household bills and partly to help her family members, who were poor and lived in a tiny village to the north. She supported her parents and two of her three siblings. Her two brothers were farmers and could barely make ends meet, but her sister, who was so dear to her, always had enough money. She had been married at fifteen; this was the usual way to get girls settled in their lives. A common saying was, The girls are our guests until they get to their homes after marriage. Fakeer would later quip that the real motive was to get rid of them as fast as you can!

There was no such thing as air conditioning. In the summer, all the males slept in the open under clear and occasionally cool skies, the banyan tree keeping watch over them. It was believed that the banyan tree provided protection from Satan’s curses, a shield as ancient as the demons it warded off. No one worried about mosquitoes. Let them feast! Malaria was countered with quinine, supplied in pills sold at pretty much any store or free at government-run clinics. The women slept indoors. The father would be with his sons. Older boys sometimes wondered how and when their father fulfilled his conjugal duties and sired so many children. Perhaps it was in the early morning when he said he had to go indoors to offer sahar, the early morning prayers.

In winter, life was more difficult. With no gas or electric heating, one had to keep warm by wearing layers of shirts and sweaters and a wrap-around shawl or blanket. Fortunately, the winters in the Punjab are short and mild. Everyone slept on one of the two charpais, the mother sleeping with the younger sons and the father with the older ones. The jute carpet seemed to massage everyone to sleep with its tight, hard ropes loosely woven together.

Mothers and fathers never slept together. Even today, this practice is uncommon except in middle- and upper-class households, where the charpai has fallen out of favor. Any semblance of sexual intimacy or exhibition of affection between mother and father by way of kissing or hugging is still considered taboo. Because everyone routinely fell into a sound sleep, snoring, rolling around on the beds, and farting, especially on evenings when the family fed on lentils and rice, caused no particular nuisance. The father was the master conductor of this anal choir! His ringing laughter matched the giggles that followed each fart. Some of the children would just smirk, half amused.

Children started school at six. There was no preschool. At best youngsters were taught the basics of Islam and the Arabic alphabet. Most children disliked such lessons, and why wouldn’t they? There was so much happening outside! A platoon of preschool children would usually roam around the neighborhood chasing stray dogs, fingering cows’ or buffaloes’ rear ends, harassing beggars, stealing from vendors, throwing rocks, wrestling with each other, pulling down one another’s shorts, and throwing mud and cow dung cakes on the partially bare butts.

One scene particularly fascinated the young children. Shouting Kapleen ho gai, kapleen ho gai, they would run to their mothers when they saw stray female and male dogs copulating. Fakeer was once spanked hard for reporting this; after that he no longer shared the news. Mothers accepted these activities since they kept children out of the house and provided much-needed relief from their whining. Like the other children, Fakeer could not wait to finish his breakfast and join the melee.

With the older children at school and younger ones astray in the neighborhood, Fakeer’s mother, like other mothers, would tend to housekeeping. The family’s house did not have many valuables or furnishings. However, his mother was obsessed with cleanliness. She would incessantly dust the plastered walls and the meager furniture. Her particular joy was cleaning the cement floors with buckets of water her son painstakingly fetched from the public faucets and stored in brick and cement tanks.

In between she would do the cooking. In summer, lunch was the major meal and dinner would usually consist of leftovers from lunch. In winter, when the days were short, heavy breakfasts and dinners were the major meals, while lunch was the extra chapati loaves made at breakfast and stored for when the children returned from school in the afternoon.

The housekeeping chores were tiring. Fakeer’s mother would relax by chatting with neighbors and with the churi who, because there was no flush system, came to clean the latrines. No appointment was necessary for such conversations. All one needed to do was stand on a pedestal and lean over the wall by the house on the left or the right. The conversation usually centered on the groceries the women had bought or would be buying that morning, the troubles the children had created, and the beatings they had received from their fathers. Wives would also bitterly recount beatings by their husbands. The real joy of these women was in backbiting and talking evil about friends. There was no radio, and most of the women were uneducated and could not read or write, so talking with each other became part of the morning ritual.

CHAPTER 2

Schooling

FAKEER WAS VERY UNHAPPY WHEN IT CAME TIME FOR HIM TO START school. It was not that he was reluctant to learn, but rather that he mourned his loss of liberty to roam the neighborhood alleys and the jealousy he felt for two deaf friends who could not attend school; there was no such thing as a school for handicapped children. Fakeer found it hard to imagine missing their post-breakfast rendezvous at the community playground. The ingenious sign language they had developed served as an excellent means of communication. Also, the mother of one of those friends was an extremely kind woman who served delicious lunches with a mixture of spices unmatched by any of the other women in the town.

For several weeks Fakeer awoke early in the morning on hearing his mother’s footsteps and would start complaining of one ailment or another—headache, stomachache, nosebleed, and the like. The moment his mother declared he could miss school, he would fall back to sleep and wait. As soon as his siblings had left for school, he would tiptoe to the kitchen, gobble his breakfast, and noiselessly snake past his mother to meet his friends. His mother, a gentle but sometimes formidable disciplinarian, tolerated his antics for a time but then quickly tightened the screws on him. She made him stay at home and learn the Arabic alphabet.

Realizing his freedom would ultimately be curtailed, Fakeer decided he would be better off at school than at home, where his mother constantly yelled at him. The initial few days at school were quite traumatic. He had to plant his butt on the tat, a rough jute carpet, and write on a wooden slate that continually needed cleaning as he scribbled on it. Between the writing assignments, Fakeer had to memorize the alphabet and stories. He could not understand why he had to be in school and could not join his friends. However, finding no alternative, he decided to pay attention to his studies and soon showed great talent at writing and reading. After a few months, he established himself as a bright, industrious student.

Fakeer’s gifts stood him in good stead not only in his studies but in sports and other extracurricular activities. His classmates could barely match his intelligence and common sense. He maintained superior grades in primary and middle school. He was the head boy monitor in every grade and helped his teachers. One of them would usually reward him with gajar halwa, a dessert made from crushed carrots that he relished as a mid-morning snack.

The teachers were extremely unhappy when Fakeer was selected for the government-sponsored Abbottabad Public School (APS) in a northwestern hill station. That selection confirmed Fakeer’s extraordinary abilities, as only one in several scores of candidates was chosen. This proved a turning point in his academic career, for the school used English as the medium of instruction, and it had attracted a highly educated, talented, and motivated faculty. The school was nestled in a beautiful valley that offered a clear view of the surrounding hills. The majestic pine trees that dotted the hills and the low-flying clouds that seemed to kiss the ground offered Fakeer his first encounter with the beauty and glory of nature. This encounter gave him a sense of nature’s truth and innocence.

The good education Fakeer received at the APS gained him easy acceptance to Government College in Lahore at age 17, a prestigious institution that admitted only top students. On Fakeer’s second day there, a professor assigned students to write an essay on why they were at the college. The next time the class met, the professor asked, Who is Fakeer? Fakeer hesitantly stood up behind the bench, fearing a reprimand, but to his delight, the professor said, I have never seen such superb essay at this early stage of college. I am so proud of you.

Fakeer loved studying at the college. He developed great friendships with students who would later become prime ministers, bank managers, and ambassadors. He also enjoyed the best Lahore had to offer. The premedical college was for two years, and Fakeer finished his studies with flying colors; he was among the top ten students in the university and was set to seek admission to medical college.

The competition for admission to the medical colleges was always intense. The most reputable medical school was King Edward Medical College in Lahore. Fakeer had done so well in premedical college and on the final examination that he was confident he would be selected there—it was one of the few institutions where admission was fair and based on merit. Many candidates were seeking admission. After a wait of several months, the list of those chosen was to be displayed at the college administration building. A throng of candidates waited for the list to be posted. The anxiety on their faces was transparent. The moment the list went up, the students rushed to see if they had been accepted. Fakeer jostled and snaked through the crowd and was beyond joy to see his name displayed as one of the top candidates. He danced wildly, hugged friends who also had been selected, and headed to the tuck shop for tea and cake.

Government College and King Edward College were neighbors, barely ten minutes apart by foot and separated by the glorious Anarkali bazaar. The bazaar, one of the country’s most-loved shopping centers, is a hub of activity all day long, but in the evenings people saturate the long, narrow street. Vendors and purveyors snake through the milling crowd, and young men try to rub bodies with the women. Anarkali was a favorite of students from the two colleges. Between classes, in the evenings and on holidays, students would visit to shop and to watch the pretty girls in their colorful, enticing dresses. The favored places were the ice cream vending khokhas and chat stalls. Being young, students had no concern about gaining weight. Because they hailed from middle-class families, most had little money. But the ones with academic scholarships had more cash to spare and were often generous and bought delicacies for their friends.

Fakeer had many friends but was closest to Sharif. They were often seen walking together to class or having a snack at the tuck shop; they shared a room in the hostel both at Government College and at KEMC. They shared study hours and often shopped and played soccer together. Everyone called them the twins. Fakeer was a scholarly type and loved to write short stories, while Sharif loved participating in college debates. Fakeer would write most of the material for a debate, and Sharif would deliver it.

Fakeer was incredibly excited about getting his education in Lahore, a cradle of great education, culture, art, and literature. The city was made famous by the Mughal emperors—from Babur to Aurangzeb to Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was dethroned in 1857 and exiled to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), where he died at eighty-seven. The Mughals ruled what are now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and part of the nineteenth centuries.

The British East India Company, which did business in the Mughal Empire, always had an eye on occupying it, and in 1857 the British quelled a mutiny by the Indians that ended the rule of the Mughals and resulted in Zafar’s exile. The British ruled present-day India and Pakistan until they were thrown out by the Indo-Pak independence movement in 1947. During their rule, the British greedily and mercilessly looted the subcontinent. It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, and the subcontinent was a major and highly lucrative part of its holdings.

The Mughals loved Lahore and made their mark on it. Emperor Jahangir, son of the great Mughal emperor Akbar, was fond of the city and is entombed there in a marvelous mausoleum. The Mughals were great builders, leaving incredibly beautiful monuments as their legacy. The emperor Jahangir had twenty wives, and Fakeer often wondered how he managed to perform his conjugal duties with so many women without access to Viagra or Cialis! Perhaps the royal hakims, the doctors of the time, had had some secret aphrodisiacs. Jahangir’s first wife was a Hindu named Man Bai. Though the emperor was a Muslim, he did not care about the religion of the beautiful women in his harem. Unfortunately, Man Bai committed suicide. She was rumored to have borne a dead child with a deformed brain and to have been ashamed that she could not give the emperor a beautiful baby. His last wife, Nur Jahan, was his most beloved one. She exerted enormous influence in managing the empire’s affairs. She is buried in an elegant mausoleum in Lahore. The city’s beautiful Shalimar Gardens are one of the many legacies of the Mughal Empire.

Lahore was a modern city during Fakeer’s college days. The population was manageable, unlike those cities where people seem to occupy every millimeter of space. The men and women there dressed elegantly, attired in both local and Western styles. Anarkali, the main attraction with its shopping opportunities, bustled with beautiful ladies in multicolored costumes, who were constantly nudged and leered at by young men. In all respects, this was the city to visit, and Fakeer was lucky to be there. Later in life, though, he was disappointed and saddened to see extremist Islam having taken control and women wearing hijabs and burqas. This made him reel in disgust. Every time he saw a black burqa, he would say, Look at the mobile coffin. He deeply disapproved of the Islamisation of the culture. Lahore no longer seemed like home.

When he started medical college at seventeen, Fakeer was sexually aroused at the sight of the girls who strutted along dressed in beautiful, tight-fitting shalwars, kameezes, and shirts showing off their behinds and their ample chests. He also had an irresistible urge to talk with the girls at his college. He was bright, so some girls consulted him on difficult assignments or asked him for the notes he so carefully and assiduously made in class. However, that type of conversation was unsatisfying.