Chapter Three
The Illness
They had arrived during Day Zero, when the universes had collided. Just as everyone was grappling to make sense of three billion people disappearing off the face of the Earth, people suddenly realized that they were there. The Idrisi.
Along with Australia and Djibouti disappearing off the face of the Earth at approximately 3:15PM, an unidentified mass of land had appeared two thousand miles off the west coast of Canada. The seas had expanded to allow for the unforeseen landmass – literally. Explorers that had sailed across the North Pacific Ocean had measured miles in between Canada and Japan that had never existed before. In Urdu, the new land mass was called the Dhok Mal – a name that the ancients had learned before the Dark Ages had come and separated everyone. It was around 2032 when borders shut down, and countries cut themselves off from one another.
Their arrival had gone fairly unnoticed at first. The first nuclear reactors, unhinged with power due to the lack of power fueling cooling agents, had begun to erupt thirty-two hours after electricity ceased to work. It was estimated that another billion people died in the explosions, and millions more suffered due to the subsequent radioactive poisoning. The US, and Russia, with their stockpiles of nuclear agents, became ghost nations. Not much was recorded but what was known from that period was that those that survived, did so by the skin of their teeth.
After the initial few years of rebuilding, Sweden and China, in a surprising joint effort, decided to send ships off to sea to greet the new arrivals. Of the three ships that ventured to the new continent, only one returned, to tell those at home of the Idrisi in the new land of Dhok Mal. It was the last exchange of information. Fear took the place of wonder. Fear of the unknown, fear of the other, and fear of each other took the place of curiosity.
Nobody knows what happened to the other two ships, or if there even were three ships to begin with. The story had become something of a folk story, a tale to tell kids to teach them to distrust an Idrisi if you ever saw one. It had all happened a thousand years ago, and with little to nothing to record what had happened, the story had passed through word of mouth alone. There were those who worshipped the legend, saying that the Idrisi had arrived to save man from the evils of the ancient human – a man driven by greed, lust for power and corruption. Other said the Idrisi were sent here to punish humans for their lack of care for the Earth. And then there were some who said that the Idrisi were devils, arriving on Earth to overtake it.
What Lira knew for certain was that she didn’t know much about the Idrisi save for the stories she’d heard growing up. Nobody she knew had left the walls of Pakistan and India (known generally as IndoPak after its reunion in 2025) for nearly a thousand years. It just wasn’t done; it wasn’t safe to even leave your city. People said some of the Idrisi knew who to fly and would sink their talons into your shoulder and carry you off to feed their family. Others said the Idrisi were could breathe fire and burn you for their next meal. When Lira was six, Apa had told her (to her horror), that the Idrisi followed those who held evil intent, and waited till your heart turned black with greed and envy, to pull it out from your chest and eat it. For that reason, Lira learned never to be jealous or to want for anything that wasn’t for her – it was the only way to hide from the Idrisi.
x.x
It was early afternoon, and the sun was beating down on the city, as it normally did. Holding a cup of freshly pressed mango lassi to enjoy for breakfast, Lira found Ayesha and Maryam sitting under a canopied charpai in the backyard. Newspaper lay unfolded between them, a stockpile of peanuts piled high. Ayesha, bright-eyed and eager as she always was, was cracking them one by one and neatly placing each peanut in copper dishes. The eleven-year old had recently decided to grow her hair out to look more like the older girls, and her two braids currently reached her shoulders.
“Even with the shade, the heat is unbearable,” Maryam sighed as Lira sat down beside her. “Do you know the ancients used to have something that would make the air feel cold even in the summer months?”
“My baba used to tell me the ancients brought the end of the world upon themselves, by being bad to the Earth,” Ayesha quipped right before she took an unsolicited sip of Lira’s mango lassi. “Their inventions were what led to Day Zero.”
“Nonsense,” Maryam was supposed to be helping Ayesha with the deshelling but instead, was lying down on the grass. “I’d happily sell my soul for some cold air. They did the right thing.”
“Ayesha, do you remember your baba?” Lira redirected the conversation, smacking Maryam’s thigh in order to make her sit up to no avail. “Before you came here? For God’s sake, help Ayesha with deshelling, Maryam.”
“He used to brush my hair, that’s all I remember,” the little girl said, without any emotion in her voice. “Apa brushes my hair too, but I tell her I’m getting too old for that. I can do it on my own now.”
“Speaking of which, can you go to Apa and ask her if she needs us to get vegetables for dinner tonight?”
Ayesha sighed, “fine.” She dusted her hands on her shalwar before standing up and walking inside.
“She’s too sweet to become one of us,” Maryam mused from her spot on the grass, where she had decided to stay. “I don’t know whether I feel sorry for her that she ended up here or happy that she’s no longer on the streets.”
“What’s the use of feeling either?” Lira began to crack the peanuts out of habit, as she’d done a thousand times before. A gentle breeze touched the side of her cheek, carrying the scent of the jasmine flowers through the air. “Have you thought of what we should do?”
Maryam looked up then, immediately aware of what Lira meant. “I still think we should send a letter to Mumbai and tell the Indians. They would pay a fortune to learn that Islamabad is keeping an Idrisi prisoner.”
“Do you want to start another war?” Lira hadn’t stopped thinking of what Maryam had told her for the past three nights. It had been all the two had talked about every chance they had a moment of solitude together. She had even dreamed of it, of seeing a winged, fanged, fire-breathing beast. “I want to make money, not have the capital city attacked.”
“Who else would want to know that they have an abomination locked up?” Maryam hissed, “There’s nobody else I can think of that would be interested in such information.”
Lira stared at the shell of the peanut in her palm, her mind racing as she let her hand trace the crevices of the nut’s hard, rough shell. “I had a thought last night, as we were cleaning the bathhouse. What if he was… you know, lying?”
Maryam eyes opened, “lying?”
“Yeah, pulling your leg.”
“Who would lie about that?”
“How could an Idrisi end up here? In Islamabad? Have you ever heard or seen such a thing?”
Maryam was silent. Then she said, “Omar has two heads, the bigger of which isn’t that smart to begin with. He wouldn’t be able to lie about such things. Didn’t you say something was off about the palace last night? It adds up, in my opinion.”
Lira bit her lip. The repercussions of letting loose such information would be cause mayhem. But what if nobody believed them to begin with? “Y’Allah, we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.”
“But what if this is our one chance, Lira?”
She knew what Maryam meant, and was familiar with the tone of her voice. Worrying about your next meal, knowing how to defend yourself against those who cast them aside as the drudges of society, working hard to make ends meet – it was all they knew, and all they wanted to leave behind. Despite the sense of companionship that the four walls brought, Lira ached to have a life where she didn’t need to worry about hustling to make ends meet for the following week.
“If this information gets into the wrong hands, we may end up with nothing,” Lira concluded, dusting her hands of the peanut dust. “Keep thinking, the right opportunity will present itself.”
What happened next happened as if in slow motion. It was one of those scenes that played in front of her eyes as if surreal, and dreamlike. Lira had leaned back on her palms, allowing herself to steal a moment of solace under the shade of the banana looming above her. The soft breeze kissed her skin, the smell of the spices churning in the kitchens of the bathhouse trickling through the air. It was rare to catch moments like this, of quiet and of peace. When she opened her eyes, she saw Ayesha open the side door, the girl’s attention immediately caught by a dog sniffing the iron fence of the courtyard. Sh
She hadn’t seen it coming. By the time she saw what was happening, it was too late.
“Ayesha, get away from there!”
The sound of her scream was foreign even to her own ears. It was shrill, ricocheting through the courtyard and snapping everyone’s attention to the scene.
Ayesha’s scream was worse.
Lira couldn’t run fast enough. In a split second, she was up and began sprinting towards the girl. The two men who had run up to the fence were already running away, the bucket of acid they had thrown over the fence rolling away from Ayesha’s feet on the ground.
The girl screamed again, the sound curdling Lira’s blood.
“Get them!” Lira yelled at the girls who ran over, “they ran towards the market!”
Khadija was gone immediately, the gate swinging in her wake. In seconds, the courtyard was filled.
“What happened!?”
“Get towels.”
“Cold water, now.”
“Ayesha, breathe.”
“Uncurl your arms, my love.”
“Get the healer.”
“Carry her inside, now!” The last command was from Apa, and it silenced all the others. Lira picked the girl by the legs, with Maryam hoisting her up by the shoulders. The two shared a helpless glance.
“Tell me what happened,” Apa said as they scurried inside with Ayesha, whose yells had dissolved into frantic sobs. “Clear the sheets and lay her down.”
“Ayesha went to the fence to pet a dog. These two men, they… came,” Lira felt sick to her stomach. “They threw a bucket of acid over the fence.”
Apa sat down beside Ayesha, placing a hand on her forehead. The girl’s skin had already begun to boil, charring at spots. The three of them shared a strained silence, filled only by Ayesha’s crying.
“It hurts,” she managed to say through sobs, “what’s happening? It hurts.”
“You need to calm down, child,” Apa’s voice was stern but Lira could see the stress in the furrow of her brow. “Lay out your arms so I can see the damage.”
Ayesha shook her head. “Why would they do this?”
Apa’s voice was flat, as if saddened by the familiarity of the situation. “Because there are those who hate us, in the city. I’ve always taught you that. You must not forget it. Now unfold your arms and stay still.”
Ayesha finally did, and both Lira and Maryam held their breath as they saw her skin curdling as if spoilt milk, the damage starting at her face, traveling down her neck and past her left arm.
“She needs a healer,” Lira managed to say. “She’s going to get an infection -.”
“The two of you need to leave,” Apa ordered, and before either of them could interject, she turned and glared. “Now.”
x.x
The mood in the bathhouse was morose.
Business went on as usual. The food was prepped, the candles were trimmed; the floors washed. Lira found herself numbly scrubbing the marble tiles of the second floor, the salt burning the cuts on her legs without her observation. Maryam had gone off wash the sheets, Rida went to sweep the courtyard, and Amna went back to stir the kheer and knead the dough used for the night’s naan.
“It feels wrong to carry on,” one of the girl’s had said, to which no one had replied. Everyone knew that the bathhouse would open without fail, with or without one of them. These types of incidents weren’t uncommon. If it wasn’t acid, it was assault with stones. If it wasn’t assault, it was harassment through verbal abuse. If it wasn’t harassment, it was stalking. Those who lived and worked at the bathhouse were outsiders, the outcasts of society. And society would make sure they remembered that.
Apa had shut everyone out of the room, but everyone could hear Ayesha’s screams.
“She’s not going to make it,” Khadija had said a few hours later. She had come back shortly after the event, having found no evidence of the men who had done this. It was nearly time for Maghrib prayers, and the a group of girls had congregated on the third floor balcony. Khadija’s stiff demeanor was stricter than usual. “And if she survives, she won’t have half her face.”
Lira felt something catch in her throat. She was never one to let her emotions show, but even she was having a hard time today. “She’ll make it,” she muttered, staring at the sky. Guilt had been pouring into her ever since the initial shock of the incident had worn off. She had been the one to send her inside to see Apa, just so she could have a moment alone with Maryam to speak of the Idrisi. If she hadn’t sent her away, she would have never been standing by the door to begin with, would have never seen the dog. She had seen the men coming and hadn’t shouted fast enough.
“I’m not so sure I would wish that upon her,” Khadija muttered as she lit a cigarette, “can you imagine what life will be like for her? She won’t be able to show herself to anyone for the rest of her living days.”
“There has to be a way to help her,” Maryam’s voice was small from where she sat on the balcony. “She’s too young.”
“Who’s going to help her?” Rida scoffed, “the people who did this to her? People will see where she’s from and will turn their back on her.”
One of the younger girls spoke quietly, “What did the healer say?”
Khadija blew into the darkening sky. “The healer gave her opium to make her sleep, so she doesn’t feel the pain.”
“There’s nothing they can do?”
Rida sighed, “the healer is an old man who helps the poor in the village. What can he do? He doesn’t have what can help her. Valerian root, ginseng, kava and eucalyptus… There is so much that can help her. It’s nothing we would ever be able to afford.”
Amna, who had been silent for the entire evening, finally spoke. “If I was her, I would want to die,” She said softly. “People already don’t see us as we are. Imagine not having your face. You would be invisible.”
The group fell silent then, the heaviness of the night encircling them. The encroaching darkness felt hollow, devoid of the opportunity it usually brought with it. The patrons of the night would be arriving soon, and they would have to adorn a mask of enchantment that none of them felt.
The thought came to Lira suddenly, and she bit her bottom lip as she thought through it. “Rida,” she started, her mind racing. “Where can you get them?”
“What?” Rida turned to Lira, confused. “Get what?”
“The ointments. To help her; the valerian root, kava, eucalyptus.”
Rida frowned, “I don’t know. The royal apothecary, in the palace walls, perhaps. It’s the only place that would carry items, if at all… wait, why?”
Lira sat there quietly, her stomach tight as her mind formulated her plans.
Maryam broke the silence, “what daft plans do you have running in your head?”
“And they would help her?” Lira said.
Rida nodded slowly, “My sister cleaned for the royal healer, before she died. She would tell me about the women who came in with acid burns. The kava root would help the skin heal, and the eucalyptus and valerian root would ease the pain.”
“Lira,” Maryam knew what she was thinking, “we’ve lost one of us today. We can’t afford to lose another.”
“Cover for me tonight,” she responded, her decision resolute and final. “I need to do something,” was all she said as she stood up and left the balcony.
Only Maryam chased her inside the bathhouse, “Lira, don’t tell me you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do.”
“I can’t just let her die,” Lira retorted, “you would do the same for me.”
“Yes, but -.”
“She’s eleven.”
“Lira, if they catch you, they will kill you.”
“She’s one of us, Maryam,” Lira stopped in her tracks and finally turned to face her, “And the only people we have are each other. We have to help her.”
Maryam’s jaw tightened as she absorbed the determination in Lira’s eyes, the reality of Lira’s resoluteness sinking in. She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her.
“Trust me, I’ll be safe.”
Maryam shook her head, “I don’t know how there’s a safe way to steal from the royal apothecary. You are playing with fire, Lira. Even for you, this is outrageous.”
Lira gave Maryam a quick hug, steeling herself as she did so. “When have I ever been sensible? I’ll be back by dawn, I promise.”
xx