Season of the Rainbirds by Nadeem Aslam Page A

bone in a hard-on.’ The barber smiled uneasily; he could think of nothing to say. He had often thought that Zafri’s aggressive manner resulted from his being sanctioned to draw blood and tear flesh.
    Above them a papiha came out of the rain, turning its body upright for a brief moment, its delicate claws held out. It alighted somewhere on the mosque balcony. Breathing in the smell of congealed blood and the fragrance of red roses left behind by Maulana Hafeez, the two men talked on for almost an hour without realising. When Zafri mentioned the goat with the special markings, the barber laughed and said that the day before his dog’s urine had formed a shape like a map of the country; he wondered whether that had any significance.
    Zafri gestured towards the unsold meat piled before him and said, ‘If Mujeeb Ali ever decided to get rid of his Alsatians I wouldn’t be able to make a living.’
    ‘Not many people can afford luxuries like meat these days,’ the barber said.
    Zafri picked up the palm leaf and waved it around, causing a cloud of flies to rise from the muslin and float upwards. Then he rested his head against the wall and said, ‘With my luck the only letter I’ll get would be a demand for a long forgotten debt.’
    The barber smiled. He pointed with the thumb at the mosque behind them and said, ‘Have you had a visit from the wandering film star yet?’
    Zafri opened his eyes. ‘Did he show you those photographs of himself?’ And he laughed out loud. ‘All I can say is he could not have found a better guide than Azhar. He knows where to find a pretty girl.’
    The expression on the barber’s face became serious. ‘Perhaps the girl will change her religion and they’ll get married – Azhar and that girl of his.’ And when Zafri shook his head scornfully, he added: ‘He must love her. That’s why he stays here. He doesn’t even have an office here, has to drive out to work.’
    ‘Love!’ Zafri laughed in disbelief. ‘ Love! You’ve watched too many films, my putar. Or have you been reading the women’s page again? His sort doesn’t love anyone. He’ll suck her juice out and then go after someone else, the lucky soor.’ And reaching under the muslin, Zafri took out a sheep’s testicle and shook it like a little bell in front of the barber’s face.
    Laughter from Zafri and calls of apology followed the barber as he stamped out of the shop and made his way along the platform. Some years ago Mujeeb Ali’s youngest brother Arshad, then in his late teens but already as large and as formidable as either of his brothers, had come into the barber shop and settling in the chair, his chin resting on his breastbone, had asked for a trim. While the barber worked in silence the youth had slept, snoring loudly. Twenty minutes later, at being woken he had stretched his arms and legs, opened his trousers and – ready to doze off again – had said, ‘Now shave me off down here.’
    Zafri, who had somehow found out about the incident, had never let the barber forget it.

    It had rained continuously since early afternoon. After Isha – the last prayers – Maulana Hafeez locked up the mosque for the day and, mentally organising a sermon for next Friday, walked towards Mujeeb Ali’s house. The rain rattled noisily on the umbrella whenever he emerged from under the streetside trees. The unusually small number of men who had come to the mosque for the day’s dawn prayers had alarmed Maulana Hafeez. On realising that attendance had fallen steadily over the past few days – owing perhaps to the fears aroused by the judge’s death, or perhaps to the rains – he decided that the time had arrived once more for him to remind the faithful of the maxim that nothing pleased the Almighty more than a fast observed during summer – when as many as seventeen hours might separate dusk from dawn – and a prayer offered during winter – a time when the water for ablution was ice cold and the warmth of the bed