The White Lie

ZARNAAB ADIL JANJUA

Daastan PVT LTD 

House # A-41, Madni Street, Lala Rukh, Wah Cantt, Punjab 47040 

www.daastan.com 

www.meraqissa.com

Text copyright  © Zarnaab Adil Janjua
Book cover copyright © Ashna Zubair


Edited by Maliha Zafar & Maryam Sami Khan

The moral rights of the writer and illustrator have been asserted.

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 

ISBN 978-969-696-624-1

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Printed and bound in Pakistan by Pixel Printing Solutions

For Maa, Baa, Mitto, Dama and Nana Jan 

P R O L O G U E

Gujjardera, Praetoria 

2013 

‘What makes a Gujjar tick?’ thought Imtiaz as he twiddled with his ballpoint pen, gazing aimlessly at the myna outside. Was it the idealised depiction of his pastoral culture that was whitewashed for the drawing rooms of Iqtidarabad’s ashrafiya or was it the satisfaction of watching the rice paddy bloom after a healthy dose of nitrogen fertiliser? 

As he picked his nose in haste, Imtiaz Gujjar’s mind could not help but wander to these mundane trivialities. The examiner caught him flicking away his caked nasal mucus and shot a glance at the clock behind him. 

Seventeen more minutes to tell the civilian service examiners why democracy faces unique challenges in Praetoria. With a flurry of his pen, Imtiaz started a new paragraph on misguided strategic depth and its grim consequences. Victorian English was not really his forte but under the steadily accumulating weight of a rhythmic rote-learning, he subjected himself to at the local civilian service test prep center. Gujjar was confident in his ability to bullshit his way to a passing mark. The blatant hypocrisy of the moment was not lost on him though. 

Year after year he would dissuade his peers from sitting for this exam. He had a well-rounded argument against it, replete with statistics, percentages, and fabricated apocryphal anecdotes. In his signature magniloquence, he would often wrap these tirades up by appealing to the ego of the gent that he was trying to throw off the path of becoming a civil servant. 

Ghulami, argued Imtiaz Gujjar, was never, ever a good thing. Few listened, fewer still actually went on to pass the exam and to become revenue officers and land departments officials. But as Imtiaz stuck it out as a law student who could barely make ends meet, it soon dawned on him that when stripped bare of all his lofty rhetoric, this exam was the surest path to upward social mobility in a country like Praetoria.  

After the exam, as he reached Qila Mian Singh, Imtiaz’s mind briefly wandered to worrying about the psychiatric evaluation stage should he make the cut. Baad ki baatein baad mein, he thought. 

Halore, Praetoria

May 2013 

As with every other day, Hasan smirked at the usage of a tawwa-sized gong to signal the end of the school day. Four loud thuds courtesy of a sizable wooden hammer sent the entire student body into a frenzy. Some rushed to the toilets for the customary end-of-day smoke while those that were more conformist, headed straight for the gilded brass gates that separated HSN College from the outside world. 

Hasan was not a smoker but he headed to the canteen for a sapota milkshake to ward off Halore’s May humidity. Twenty minutes later, he thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t at the little smoke session since the headmaster’s assistant, who had already been in the toilet, wrote up some fourteen boys for smoking on college premises. Fairly regulation, but a needless letter to fourteen sets of parents and an even more needless and grueling meeting with the headmaster with the possible threat of suspension looming large.  

HSN had it all; stables, equestrian facilities, Olympic-sized pools, a polo ground, five cricket fields and the occasional library thrown in for good measure. The ochre walls that housed the Praetorian elite represented a bubble of sorts. The inhabitants were oblivious to the myriad injustices, poverty and overall bitter truths that were the reality for Praetorians outside the confines of the 8 murabbas that housed the 200-year-old campus.  

Hasan was well off, but not too well off. Keenly aware of his own privilege, he saw what his HSN fees had done to his household. How the exorbitant tuition had made his parent’s marriage burst at the seams and eventually disintegrate. Money made everything tick, he knew that much, but he didn’t just want money. 

Hasan had higher, one could say Machiavellian ideals of ruling the elite that had nourished and battered him over his 12-year sojourn in HSN’s lush confines. His network was well-established and the humble scholarship to attend college in the United States didn’t hurt. 

New York, New York

December 2014 

Aliya hated sparse, halfhearted applause. The sort that left the orator wondering whether it was even genuine or was the audience merely checking a figurative box. But a fledgling sophomore was never going to get more than that, at least not in a class of twenty-three students. Long hours spent at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, ogling the neoclassical Renaissance painting that she had explained in minute detail, supplemented by a rudimentary PowerPoint, had led her to believe she really was putting in the hard yards. 

She was sure that she would blow away her white septuagenarian professor with her eye for detail and exacting deconstruction of what Jacques Louis David was trying to portray in the Death of Socrates. 

Sentenced to death by hemlock, Socrates stood accused of corrupting the Athenian youth. Plato was distraught but had made his peace with his ustaad’s decision to die a ‘martyr.’ Aristotle was young and slightly untainted at that point. He could not see why his teacher would willingly gulp down poison for something that could be done away with a small apology. 

In anguish and pain, young Aristotle, who was probably not even born at the time the actual sentence was handed out, can be seen clutching Socrates’ knee as he reaches out to the goblet of hemlock to put an end to it all. 

A proud Lebanese, the daughter of a war-ravaged and at times dysfunctional republic, meant that Aliya tied the artwork beautifully to democracy and the struggle that must unavoidably be endured to bring it to fruition. Even though Socrates did not particularly like democracy, she thought.

Sharjah, UAE

1995

Saad was sick of the smoke around him. ‘Motherfucking chimneys,’ he thought to himself as he settled in next to his uncle at the base of the Chairman’s Box at Sharjah Cricket Stadium. 

Few Lebanese were in attendance. Cricket had not really crept into their sensibilities, but business in Abu Dhabi and an insistent distant cousin had brought him all the way down to the Gold Souk and later the stadium. 

He sipped a lukewarm Corona beer as a gaunt-looking man with large spectacles and a curly moustache walked in. His skin tone was much darker than the average Gulf resident and his gait had a distinct swagger. The starched charcoal grey shalwar kameez that adorned his lanky frame made it obvious that he was probably Praetorian. A gentleman with slightly more melanin than the previous, wearing dark shades and a black belt with the letter “D” emblazoned across the buckle followed obediently behind him. Like the oversized nature of his buckle, he had a rather large set of maroon prayer beads in his left hand which he was flicking incessantly. 

“The Praetor Prime Minister’s husband,” murmured someone in the far-left corner as the gentleman exchanged pleasantries with one side of his mouth sucking intently from a Marlboro Lights cigarette. 

Annoyed with the cigarette smoke in the box, Saad got up to leave the stadium for Abu Dhabi but brushed Ausaf Zamewari’s shoulder as he swung a chair towards himself in front of the buffet. 

Two awkward smiles later, Saad was speeding back to Abu Dhabi, thinking why anyone would want to bet on a sport this slow, that too, in such poor visibility and proximity to sandstorms.

Quitta, Balachabad

2022

The scotch coming in from the Shamman border was becoming increasingly unaffordable. Not that it mattered to Balakh Jehan, but given the magnanimity of his consumption, especially in the harsh winter months, it was causing a needless strain on his coffers. 

The supplier in Kolachi had grown circumspect about sending his men to Quitta, given the recent events surrounding the Sino pipeline. Balakh briefly considered dialling up one of his distant cousins in the Derajats and having them send a crate over, but he decided against it lest one of their elders get wind of Sardar Balakh Jehan Mazari’s propensity for good scotch in Balachabad’s long and unforgiving winter. 

Ever since Balakh’s elder brother had died in the attack on the Balachabad Assembly in 2021, his life in his home district of Pinish had never been the same. Loneliness crept in and no amount of hunting for bustards, quick dips in his pool, corner meetings, Netflix binges and slow-roasted legs of lamb could keep him from missing Akbar. 

With the mantle of political responsibility fast approaching, the quasi-apolitical Balakh Jehan only found solace in drinking and James Baldwin’s writings. Often, he would read Baldwin’s work into the wee hours of the night, in awe of the mastery with which the American author cum activist wielded his pen to strike chords in his heart that Balakh never even knew existed. 

Luckily, an old batchmate of Balakh’s from HSN College had topped the civilian service exam and has been posted as an Assistant Commissioner in Shamman, not too far from his own residence. 

As straight-edge as they came, Jibran Haider was not partial to the occasional drink but he provided Jehan with excellent company and a rare opportunity to reminisce about the decade or so, spent in the ochre confines of HSN. When Haider was free from his daily duties, Balakh would often invite him to his estate and the two would speak at length about Praetorian and global geopolitical issues. 

Two meetings in, he could not help but feel a sense of measured restraint in Jibran’s speech. After all, he was employed by the state so being hosted by a local Sardar must not go down too well with his bosses in Iqtidarabad. Nonetheless, he carried the conversations effortlessly and despite his reticence on political issues, Balakh found his company akin to an oasis. 

‘Privilege blinds you far too much,’ thought Balakh quietly as he slowly poured some ice water into his tumbler. He found that there was scarcely little to look forward to in Pinish and even his relatively smaller mansion in Quitta, which was bedecked with far more amenities than his Pinish estate. But nothing could afford him any respite from his eternal depressive episode. 

With the arid land drying up as the cooler months came, Balakh would often find scores of his tribe members lined up outside his estate, waiting on empty promises about how the supplies for next winter would be better organised and distributed. 

Occasionally, he would speak to the Federal Energy and IT Ministries in hopes of securing better infrastructure for his village, but given the financial and socio-political constraints, barely anything made it to Pinish. And Balakh was not even a politician, not yet at least. 

He had developed a rigid indifference towards politics and all that it entailed. Alas, a close friend of his from college was due to get married in a lavish ceremony in Halore in the coming month. There was nothing Balakh Jehan loved more than mixing business, pleasure and old acquaintances. 

State College, Pennsylvania

2017

‘Maybe this is why Baba wanted me to study in Praetoria,’ thought Fatima sheepishly as she sighed deeply while opening the door to the Public Safety Director’s office at Penn State. Her back was killing her; she was in intense pain as the wound on her coccyx from the night before was still sore and unhealed. But the nurse had given her leave and the university police office was the first place she had turned to. 

Rick Levi had been a nice enough acquaintance of Fatima’s. Polite and helpful, he had been in her integrative studio seminar for three semesters straight and had even been respectful and kind during group projects. What had then pushed him to the edge? 

This is why she never drank. She valued her inhibitions far too much to lose them over a red solo cup of jungle juice, or to put out for a pointless one nightstand. 

It had all been a whirlwind, but Rick had kicked her in the back towards the end of her sorority’s mixer after she had refused his advances. She was not going to let the asshole get away with that. 

With the painkillers still making her drowsy, she asked for some cold water before calmly narrating the events of the previous night as the gentle-faced African-American campus warden intently noted the details on her laptop. Linda gave Fatima solid assurances of her complete and total cooperation, and the complaint was officially filed. 

Fatima felt destitute and lonely. There was no way she could call home and tell her family about what had happened. That would mean a one-way ticket back to Kolachi and her professional and academic ambitions thrown by the wayside. The ditzy sorority coterie, she had learnt to call her family at college wouldn’t be of any help either. There really was no one she could call to hear a few comforting words or who could serve as a shoulder to cry on. 

Thirty minutes later as she piled on the beef stroganoff at the dining hall, she felt a gentle tap on her left shoulder. With her emotions heightened and her being sensitive to any foreign touch, she turned around to the warm, bearded face of Hasan Murtaza, whom she recognised as a junior at the College of Arts and Sciences.