Faisalabad
At your feet, I wish for my death.
I pray for nothing else.
—Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
My mother’s city and I
were both named
after an assassinated
Saudi king.
Before that, it was called
Lyallpur, after Sir James Broadwood Lyall,
former lieutenant governor
of the Punjab. He’d come east to India
to forge a name for himself.
Nusrat learned to sing
in this city, is buried in this city.
When he died too soon,
two days after Independence Day 1997,
as the nation of Pakistan was still
celebrating its golden birthday,
many mourners smashed the time-
pieces in their homes,
as if to hold that day in place forever,
both the triumph of it
and the tragedy.
The trajectory of murder
began in the blood.
The assassin was a prince,
the king’s nephew.
He knelt to kiss the king’s feet,
then pulled out the gun.
Like neophytes newly planted on the earth,
the British were obsessed
with tangible things, like land and coin,
tea leaf and tongue, believed time
could be colonized too,
replaced their blue-eyed God
with a devotion to the immortality
of their own tribe.
They built a new city, its orderly plan bereft
of the chaos so beautiful
to Punjabi souls, and placed at its epicenter
a clock tower, the perfect idol.
Was it really piety that addled
the king’s sense of caution,
or was it a private pathway toward holiness?
The nephew had confessed
his designs in time
to be stopped, but the king
reminded people that even he was mortal,
that all things, none
more sacred than
life itself, rested in God’s hands.
Nusrat’s legacy is carried on
by his nephew. His name is Rahat.
My mother’s name is Rahat.
Heaven, Muslims believe,
lies beneath a mother’s feet. I fall short
of them every moment of my life.
Radiating outward from its circular heart
are eight perfectly straight
streets, like giant swords dividing the city
into eight mohallas,
each with its own name, its own magic
and music. From above,
from the vantage point
of dead souls floating heavenward,
the layout is a visual echo of the Union Jack,
as if the British understood
that to truly claim a place, it must be made
in one’s own image.
Rahat means respite,
repose--and
to rest in peace
while one is still
a living thing.
What if I told you
the king’s assassin
bore the same name
as the king?
Today, the city is proudly nicknamed
the “Manchester
of Pakistan.” I can’t help
but imagine the dust
of Lyall’s decayed flesh
resting in its grave,
smiling at the tightness
of the colonial noose, how it’s now held
within the hands of the one
around whose neck it hangs.
I share my name
with both an assassinated king
and his assassin.
My father’s mother chose my name
against my mother’s wishes.
My mother must have understood the double-edged
smart of the name, which means
judge, decision maker.
My mother decided, for her,
it would mean home.
In Urdu, the clock tower
is called Ghanta Ghar, meaning Hour House,
which sounds just like our house.
However, nothing of it is ours.
There are no better cures for homesickness
than Nusrat’s qawwalis,
except when you’re a mother
and you find comfort in the unfolding
hours of a child’s existence.
Before he died
the king asked that his nephew’s life
be spared. Again,
he said, Let God’s will
execute itself.
No one of consequence listened,
believing that the two bullets in his head,
the loss of blood,
rendered him foolhardy.
Hours later he was gone, his wish
unwished.
To rename a thing
is an attempt to undo whatever
unwantedness remains.
I wonder if, like this city, I too was renamed,
and what part
of the me that was
was unwanted.
Perhaps that’s why they beheaded the nephew
on live television, then displayed
his crownless head for the world to see,
as if trying to show, through
the bewilderment on the dead man’s disembodied face,
that all that’s needed
to unfasten your grip on this world
is a sword, and someone willing to swing it.
You can see the faces
of the tower from any of the eight streets,
but the people of this city know not to trust
the time. Independence,
they say, began with the destruction
of clocks—or perhaps no one cares any longer
to fix what is broken—and so
it is assumed that whatever the faces say
must be wrong.
Sir Lyall is buried
in the English village of
Eastry, of the east.
Even now, there is a historian
in the city, once
a bookseller in Aminpur Bazar
and a devotee of Bhagat Singh,
who remains a sad-faced thing
stationed in his shuttered drawing room,
seeking in the living voice
of the dead King of Kings some excuse
for life. Qawwalis play
on a cassette deck, and on the wall
the Lifebuoy soap calendar,
untouched since that August day,
will one day become
someone else’s
inheritance of grief.
First published in Narrative, Spring 2017
At your feet, I wish for my death.
I pray for nothing else.
—Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
My mother’s city and I
were both named
after an assassinated
Saudi king.
Before that, it was called
Lyallpur, after Sir James Broadwood Lyall,
former lieutenant governor
of the Punjab. He’d come east to India
to forge a name for himself.
Nusrat learned to sing
in this city, is buried in this city.
When he died too soon,
two days after Independence Day 1997,
as the nation of Pakistan was still
celebrating its golden birthday,
many mourners smashed the time-
pieces in their homes,
as if to hold that day in place forever,
both the triumph of it
and the tragedy.
The trajectory of murder
began in the blood.
The assassin was a prince,
the king’s nephew.
He knelt to kiss the king’s feet,
then pulled out the gun.
Like neophytes newly planted on the earth,
the British were obsessed
with tangible things, like land and coin,
tea leaf and tongue, believed time
could be colonized too,
replaced their blue-eyed God
with a devotion to the immortality
of their own tribe.
They built a new city, its orderly plan bereft
of the chaos so beautiful
to Punjabi souls, and placed at its epicenter
a clock tower, the perfect idol.
Was it really piety that addled
the king’s sense of caution,
or was it a private pathway toward holiness?
The nephew had confessed
his designs in time
to be stopped, but the king
reminded people that even he was mortal,
that all things, none
more sacred than
life itself, rested in God’s hands.
Nusrat’s legacy is carried on
by his nephew. His name is Rahat.
My mother’s name is Rahat.
Heaven, Muslims believe,
lies beneath a mother’s feet. I fall short
of them every moment of my life.
Radiating outward from its circular heart
are eight perfectly straight
streets, like giant swords dividing the city
into eight mohallas,
each with its own name, its own magic
and music. From above,
from the vantage point
of dead souls floating heavenward,
the layout is a visual echo of the Union Jack,
as if the British understood
that to truly claim a place, it must be made
in one’s own image.
Rahat means respite,
repose--and
to rest in peace
while one is still
a living thing.
What if I told you
the king’s assassin
bore the same name
as the king?
Today, the city is proudly nicknamed
the “Manchester
of Pakistan.” I can’t help
but imagine the dust
of Lyall’s decayed flesh
resting in its grave,
smiling at the tightness
of the colonial noose, how it’s now held
within the hands of the one
around whose neck it hangs.
I share my name
with both an assassinated king
and his assassin.
My father’s mother chose my name
against my mother’s wishes.
My mother must have understood the double-edged
smart of the name, which means
judge, decision maker.
My mother decided, for her,
it would mean home.
In Urdu, the clock tower
is called Ghanta Ghar, meaning Hour House,
which sounds just like our house.
However, nothing of it is ours.
There are no better cures for homesickness
than Nusrat’s qawwalis,
except when you’re a mother
and you find comfort in the unfolding
hours of a child’s existence.
Before he died
the king asked that his nephew’s life
be spared. Again,
he said, Let God’s will
execute itself.
No one of consequence listened,
believing that the two bullets in his head,
the loss of blood,
rendered him foolhardy.
Hours later he was gone, his wish
unwished.
To rename a thing
is an attempt to undo whatever
unwantedness remains.
I wonder if, like this city, I too was renamed,
and what part
of the me that was
was unwanted.
Perhaps that’s why they beheaded the nephew
on live television, then displayed
his crownless head for the world to see,
as if trying to show, through
the bewilderment on the dead man’s disembodied face,
that all that’s needed
to unfasten your grip on this world
is a sword, and someone willing to swing it.
You can see the faces
of the tower from any of the eight streets,
but the people of this city know not to trust
the time. Independence,
they say, began with the destruction
of clocks—or perhaps no one cares any longer
to fix what is broken—and so
it is assumed that whatever the faces say
must be wrong.
Sir Lyall is buried
in the English village of
Eastry, of the east.
Even now, there is a historian
in the city, once
a bookseller in Aminpur Bazar
and a devotee of Bhagat Singh,
who remains a sad-faced thing
stationed in his shuttered drawing room,
seeking in the living voice
of the dead King of Kings some excuse
for life. Qawwalis play
on a cassette deck, and on the wall
the Lifebuoy soap calendar,
untouched since that August day,
will one day become
someone else’s
inheritance of grief.
First published in Narrative, Spring 2017