On the first day of the second month of the year, Yusuf passed away peacefully in his sleep. Morni found him when he didn't come to eat breakfast that morning as he usually did. The funeral possession was attended by all of Keamari's immediate neighbours, some of the regular customers from the butcher shop, among few others. Dost Mohammad had sent Shahmir to the local mosques to announce the sad news as was customary. The last rites were performed by Dost Mohammad with some help from Shahmir who was almost as tall as his father now. The prayer was said in Ali Maqbool Masjid that was ten minutes walk from the Keamari's house and Yusuf was finally laid to rest alongside his dear wife, his father, his brothers, and his grandparents. For the next two weeks, Dost Mohammad hosted all four sisters and their dozen kids at the house. Everyday, Morni with the help of Shahmir would serve plain rice in breakfast, lunch, and dinner in trays larger than life to the family. She would also host the many people that visited their house to pay their respects. Morni would later joke that the two weeks that she hosted all four of Dost Mohammad's sisters added ten years to her face and made all her hair turn grey.
When the sisters finally left, Dost Mohammad made it a custom for him and Shahmir to visit the graveyard every Sunday to spray the graves of his parents, uncles, and grandparents with rose petals and burning incense that they would buy just outside the boundaries of the graveyard. Shahmir also chose a gravestone made of concrete and painted in white against the black engraving that read in beautifully calligraphed Urdu 'Mohammad Yusuf Keamari, loving husband, brother, son, and father' to be placed on Yusuf's grave. A three-month long grieving period was announced at the house by Morni. No one talked louder than necessary, no one laughed or made jokes, no one ate anything other than plain rice, and no one wore anything ceremonial, striking, or flashy. Dost Mohammad didn't go to work for a week, but was later forced to step in when it came to his notice that the hired help had been quietly lining their own pockets in his absence. He immediately threw two of the culprits out and hired two young, ambitious boys from the next neighbourhood to replace them. He also had to issue apologies to many of his old customers who had complained receiving less meat than usual for the week he wasn't present at the shop. The corruption and the sheer irresponsibility convinced Dost Mohammad that he could never rely on the hired help and after that week, he never took another day off voluntarily.
By mid 1920s, it was becoming clearer that one day, the British would leave India and this had given rise to another grave problem: who would rule over India once the white men left. The country had been dangerously divided among religious lines by then and it was a concern for Muslims living in Hindu-majority states and for Hindus living in Muslim-majority states as to what would happensonce the British actually left. For the Keamaris, though, the idea of eventual liberty was a dream far from reality at the moment. "Only when the last gora leaves will I believe that we are finally free," Dost Mohammad would say every time someone tried starting a debate or a discussion on the said subject. "The gora will never leave us. They will not leave until they have taken ever single paisa, every single grain, and every single drop of water on their cursed rails all the way to mother gorapur." With such passion and fiery would Dost Mohammad deliver the many speeches and sermons cursing the British that his friends and customers would often suggest he join the ongoing struggle for independence. "Maybe I will," he would say every time. "Maybe I will."
As time passed, Shahmir became a bigger and taller version of his father Dost Mohammad. He had inherited his mother's thick eyebrows that curved perfectly resting above his brown eyes that now had sparks of hazel in them. Everyone said that he looked more like his mother than his father, but he liked to think otherwise. He still had a shy personality and he was still wary of strangers though Dost Mohammad would often tell Morni that he had become more and more comfortable dealing with customers at the butcher shop than he had previously been. Morni told him that it was simply because he had settled down and now felt more secure working around, but Dost Mohammad insisted that he had observed a change of personality in him. The reality was that Shahmir had found a new boost of confidence ever since meeting Amira. She had made him realise that he was much more than he gave himself credit for. He had told her about his dream of becoming a big meat butcher and she had told him that she believed that he could do anything he put his heart and sweat to. Like clockwork, fixed in all its realities, he would wake up every morning at six, wash himself, put on the same tainted clothes that smelled of small meat and dirt, and start cutting at exactly seven. He would come home at two and then disappear for another five hours until the call to prayer at seven.
The business had been going well. Dost Mohammad had now expanded the butcher shop and merged in the neighbouring abandoned plot, put a second-hand commercial refrigerator from the same place he had bought Morni her stove and electric fan, and had taken in more hired help. No one really knew why the demand for meat had gone up so fast, but Dost Mohammad believed it was because of the mass migrations in and out of Lyallpur that had made the already majority-Muslim town into an almost all-Muslim town. The Hindus, as their faith didn't allow them and because of reasons Dost Mohammad wasn't much educated in, consumed little to no meat while the Muslims ate meat, big or small, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Another reason could have been the improving economy of the Empire as a whole as the British - in some final desperate act to keep an hold on India - had injected big funds in the country. This move, however, had backfired for the leaders of the Muslim League as well as the Hindu Congress had not only used the funding furthering their own political agendas, but they had done so in a way that only hurt the British authority. Every other day, Dost Mohammad, Shahmir, and the help at the butcher shop would see dozens of protests and rallies pass by shouting the gora to leave India. Dost Mohammad, though fiercely opposed the British, never went to any such rally or protest. "It's all games and for show," he would say. "I will not participate in such a circus of deceit."
The booming business only gave Dost Mohammad the motivation to teach his son more of the art of small meat. He would spend hours putting on demonstrations for Shahmir, have him write down the steps, and then make him repeat the steps in the correct order. "You have a bright future ahead of you," he would tell his son, patting his shoulder. "You will make this family proud one day." Dost Mohammad was especially happy when Shahmir perfectly executed the fine technique of knifing out the thinly, fainted layer of flesh compressed in between the bone and skin. He told Morni about it later that day who was happy for Shahmir and her husband. Dost Mohammad would later ask Shahmir to prepare some of the less-complicated orders all by himself boasting to his customers that his son had finally stepped into his shoes. As days passed, Dost Mohammad could see in his son what he was never really able to see in himself. He had started believing with all his heart that the good day wasn't far when he would witness Shahmir bring down the mightiest of the bulls to its knees, taming its movements, and cleanly cutting its throat saying God's name. On that happy day, he had decided but never told anyone about it, that he would take retirement for good and take Morni as far as the rails took them so she could finally see the ocean that she had always wanted to. Such was the obsession of seeing his son do what he could not that Dost Mohammad didn't see what had taken over his son. Only Morni did.
One late night, Morni woke up to hear anxious pacing - up and down - coming from Shahmir's room. She had been under an impression that something was going on with her son, but she never really paid any attention to it. That night when she asked Shahmir, he told her that he was in love with someone and that he needed her to keep it from Dost Mohammad for the time being. He told her that Amira had been insisting on getting married as she could not keep sneaking around anymore. She had told him that she felt guilty and could feel the angels cursing her for maintaining a relationship full of sin. He told Morni that he wanted to marry the girl and that he wanted Morni to meet her before making any decisions of his own. Morni smiled and nodded. She then asked him to go back to sleep and that she would love to see this Amira whenever he felt like introducing the two.
After the passing away of Yusuf, Shahmir would sometimes spend hours sitting on his grandfather's rocking chair, thinking about all the stories he had told him. One of his favourites was the one where Yusuf had been caught stealing oranges from a nearby farm of this big landlord back in his younger days and how he had unleashed his dogs on him and his friends. He would laugh every time he would tell him how all of them had spent hours stuck on the yellow chestnut tree with the dogs barking, ready to tear them apart, under it. "The bastard just laughed and laughed as we cried for forgiveness," he had told Shahmir. "He refused to call his hounds back even after we had given all of his oranges, all the money we had in our pockets, and even our shirts and pants!"
One day, Shahmir found his cigarette packs cleverly hidden underneath some towels in a drawer. At first he was just curious as to what was the mystery behind the idea of smoking. He hated the first time he placed a cigarette between his thin and crusty lips and immediately spit it out that made him cough his lungs out for a good half-an-hour, but then he swallowed the aftertaste of it and he wanted to try again. The next time, he smoked with his friends all of whom had discovered the passion months before he did. Ali Raza's father was a chain smoker. Never had Shahmir seen the fat and tall man without a cigarette between his lips and the smell that followed the fat and tall man would always make him sick. Shahmir found it interesting, rather fascinating, how smell played such a big part in strictly making distinctions when it came to naming names of everyone he had met. His mother always smelled of lilies and warmth like the sun only existed for baking the vines that hung intertwined from the window hinges and the maroon bricks and the cracks of the faded walls that had appeared only a year after Dost Mohammad had painted white over them. Dost Mohammad smelled of meat and cut onions and sweat and spices that Shahmir could not name yet. Shahmir often wondered what his smell and scent were. He wouldn't find out until after years later when Tasneem would tell him that he smelled like lilies himself with a pinch of baked timber.
The smell of cigarettes and the uncensored laughter had especially annoyed a girl - not older than seventeen herself - who came up to the boys' table and asked them to keep it down. Shahmir immediately developed a liking for her. She was short and somewhat chubby and had thick eyebrows and full lips. She called herself Amira. The boys, of course, didn't say anything and only laughed looking at each other when she had left. Shahmir was the only one who didn't laugh. Over the next few days, he would visit the same dented out place and ask for the same glass of sherbet that he didn't even like in the first place in hopes that Amira would visit one of those days. It is said that a man never forgets the first time he falls in love and for Shahmir, the anxiety and the endless search for Amira didn't halt until the day she finally came. This time with a few friends of her own. She had wrapped herself in a shiny shawl that sparkled of green and red and blue beads scattered all over it in no defined order or style. Something told Shahmir that maybe she had sewed it herself and so without delaying it any further, he walked on towards her and asked her. And so started a romance that lasted until the day Shahmir ran away, only to return years later when Amira had already been married off and had been a mother of two beautiful kids, the older one by the name fo Shahmir.
During their months-long affair that saw Shahmir discover his manhood, he would often spend hours over hours until the sun had disappeared in the horizons with Amira. Sometimes in abandoned barns, sometimes in her house when both of her parents, her sisters, and her brother had been busy working out since she was the youngest of the lot. Sometimes Shahmir would pay a tonga driver that he had made a friend out of to take them far out to the fields that no one visited except to sow and harvest them. Amira would often talk to him about a future she could see with him. She told Shahmir she wanted three kids, two of them boys and one girl and that she wanted the girl to be the youngest so that her two brothers could always protect her and take care of her long after they were long gone. She talked a lot about the sky and would always get excited every time the sky looked even a little better than yesterday, which it did almost everyday.
The day Morni met Amira, she was immediately convinced of her innocence, truthfulness, and loyalty. She later told Shahmir that she didn't think there was anyone better than Amira for him and that she would gladly talk to Dost Mohammad about them once she saw an opportunity to crack up the conversation. Shahmir jumped up in delight. He hugged his mother as tightly as he could and only let go of her when she protested that he wasn't a little boy anymore and that he had strength of his father now. He then gave Morni a kiss on the forehead and told her that he would die for her. "Don't say dare say that!" She slapped him as a reign of terror took over her.. "Don't you ever say anything like that ever again. You promise me you will live a long, long life." He nodded, but it didn't convince Morni. "Say it and swear on your mother's life that you would live a long, long life." She then took his hand and placed it on her head, "Swear on my life." Shahmir did and only then did she let go of him.
That night, Morni thought about the lady - the sorcerer and the witch - that had warned her never to bear any children almost two decades ago. Even though she had convinced herself that the idea of believing in someone who read futures from cards was childish, so much so, ridiculous, she still couldn't forget what she had said, "If you were to go against the wishes of God and bring a child to this world, you would curse the day that you did and the cursed child would go through such agony and pain in his life that you would regret the day you bore her and wish and pray that you had smothered it the day it was born."
Morni never told anyone but she would often wake up from her sleep, sweating, and out of breath. She would weep and weep and weep when no one was looking and some days she would spend countless hours praying for the safe return of her child until he would. The love of a mother is unparalleled, she would tell herself, and she was convinced that the God that she prayed to five times a day without mistake, fasted for a month without missing, and gave zakat in the name of every year would never put her through such torment of watching his son in agony. "My God will not do that to me," she would whisper to herself when she would find herself overwhelmed by the dark thoughts that she could no longer push aside some nights. "God will not put a mother through something as cruel as watching her own son die."
One night, she woke up to a feeling that something terrible had happened to her son. She ran towards Shahmir's room sweating and weeping only to see him soundly sleeping. Just to convince herself even further that her son was alright, she quietly placed her index finger to feel him breathing and only when she felt the warm, long strides of his breath against it did she finally went back to her bed. That night she begged for God's forgiveness and promised herself that she would try her best to stop. She could not let Dost Mohammad or Shahmir find out.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months as Shahmir's love for Amira only grew. Every morning he would wake up and think about her and every night he would go to sleep thinking about her. He was convinced that if he could master the art of small meat and then bring down his first bull, he could finally ask his father's blesing to ask for Amira's hand in marriage. He told the same idea to Morni who told him that he didn't need to prove anything to his father and that his father would be happy to ask for Amira's hand without any show of such kind, but Shahmir had already made up his mind. When Morni realised that, she let him have it his way.
Shahmir became addicted to the idea of pleasing his father. He was always the first one to show up to work and he was always the last one to leave. He started asking Dost Mohammad for more and more responsibilities in and out of the shop and he would carefully watch his father and the countless helpers work their knives cutting, slicing, and picking meat so to learn from their strokes. He mastered using his utensils and soon became the cleanest cut in the butcher shop. Such was his dedication to his profession that Dost Mohammad sometimes wondered if he had become better than even himself. One day, as business was going on as usual, one of his oldest customers Malik Khurana requested Dost Mohammad if it would be okay with him if his son cut meat for him that day instead of Dost Mohammad himself. "Of course," Dost Mohammad simply said, but only God knew how proud of Shahmir he felt. The same day, Dost Mohammad told Shahmir that it was time. "Next month, my son, you will cut down your first bull," he told him. "Next month, you will become the first Keamari to be called a butcher of big meat."
Thrilled by the idea and hopeful with all his heart that the achievement would earn him his father's blessing to marry Amira, Shahmir danced and sang to the same old tunes and songs of Shah Bulaar on his way back home. He kissed his mother on the forehead when he saw her cooking in the kitchen and told her what had happened. "Oh, that's wonderful news, you must tell Amira of this!"
That day, Shahmir shaved his face, split his jet black hair into a set of two, and dressed himself in his best clothes to go see Amira. They went to the same dented out spot where he had first met her and he told her of the merry news. She immediately hugged him and kissed him and wept and wept. "I never thought this day would come," she said in between her sobs. "I cannot believe we are going to get married!"
The happy couple made love in an abandoned barn that day and Shahmir told her that it was last time that they had laid in secrecy and that he would not lay with her again until the day that they get married under the watchful eyes of God. We are going to buy a small house just outside the city and I am going to take you to see Lahore. "Have you ever seen a lion?" He asked her. She told him she hadn't. "Oh, it's a mighty creature, my love, you have to see one to believe it." Then he told her how some of the bravest men to ever live had caught the beast in the great plains of Africa and how it was forced into a steel cage thicker than the trunk of a tree and transported through the oceans in a ship "as big as a city."
Amira never said much and she didn't understand much what Shahmir had to say. She came from a rather humble background and she didn't know much of the luxuries or the knowledge that Shahmir had. Her father wiped floors for this wealthy family that had three motorcars and three chauffeurs to driver them. She didn't ever had any formal education like Shahmir had and she could barely read or write. She understood poetry, though, and she would have Shahmir read it out loud to him as they would often rest under the shade of the yellow chestnut tree from Yusuf's story that still felt younger than ever. She would ask him to tell her about all the things that he had learned and would ask him the names of all the flowers that they would see on their long, long walks. In all reality, there didn't exist a woman more in love with a man. When they were together, they were inseparable and when they weren't they were only thinking about the next time they would see each other. It was as if God had made them not two, but one. Amira loved hearing Shahmir talk about the things that he loved and she would just smile and nod every time he asked her a question. Sometimes she wasn't even listening to what he was saying but only listening to his voice. She would thank God everyday for Shahmir and Shahmir would thank God everyday for her. Amira knew nothing could ever take him away from her and Shahmir knew nothing could ever her away from him.
Only a few days before the close of July, Dost Mohammad told Shahmir that he had booked for them a ride to a nearby settlement where they sold bulls like grains of wheat. The same day, as Shahmir wrapped up his work at the butcher shop, Dost Mohammad asked him to tell Morni not to wait up for him as he would be working until late night that day. It was a hot Sunday, one of the hottest days of the year, and when Shahmir reached home, he was especially annoyed that Morni had not prepared any lunch yet. "It will take another half-an-hour," she told him. "The electric fan is broken again. When is your father coming home?" When Shahmir told her that he wasn't, she cursed the fan and the day they had bought the damned thing and asked Shahmir if he could fix it instead of his father. Shahmir told her that he would but he would only be able to do so once he returned from seeing Amira and suggested that Morni try fixing it herself, "It's not that hard, maa. All you have to do is take out this metal casing right here and check if all the wires are intact."
When Shahmir met Amira that day, she was crying uncontrollably. A stray dog that she had been feeding for over a year had been found dead. It was stoned to death, she told him. For hours, Shahmir held her in his arms and caressed her until she fell asleep. He didn't dare move for he was afraid he would wake her up and so he spent the whole day resting against the yellow chestnut tree with Amira sleeping peacefully in his arms. As he looked ahead, he saw miles and miles of open fields of wild weed and overgrown grass that stretched end to end and as far as eyes could see. Within minutes, Shahmir was sound asleep as well.
When the couple woke up, it was already starting to get dark and so they decided to part ways for the day. On his way home, Shahmir picked up a bouquet of freshly cut lilies, a loaf bread, and a carton of milk. When he reached home, he called for Morni but received no answer. Singing a song that even years later, he failed to recall, he walked into the kitchen. He dropped the bouquet of freshly cut lilies, he dropped the loaf of bread, and the carton milk when he saw his mother lying dead on the floor, electrocuted from the open casing of the fan.