Iqbal woke from his nap hot and sweaty. As he swung his legs out of bed, he winced in agony. A sharp spasm gripped his lower back. Staggering over to the little fridge by the dresser, he pulled out a bottle of water and gulped it down. His phone buzzed. Ignoring it, he grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV.
“What the hell are you talking about?” the anchor, Sudhir Gupta, shouted.
“Sudhir, you watch it now!” one of the panelists yelled back.
Before he could finish, another guest interrupted, “Bloody clown, this one.”
“The country is going down the toilet,” another grumbled.
It was hard for Iqbal to spot which one of the ten talking heads in the grid was actually speaking, but it didn’t really matter; because now everyone was shouting simultaneously. The India Now channel was a circus during the best of times, but this was election night.
“Shut up, everybody!” Gupta shouted. “For God’s sake, just shut up!”
Shaking his head, Iqbal turned off the TV. Walking to the closet, he pulled out a beige sherwani and laid it across the bed. After much deliberation, his advisors had settled on a neutral color that apparently added sophistication and gravitas. Iqbal was certain that analysis had cost ten times more than the sherwani itself.
He crossed over to the desk and looked down at the two cream manila folders. One was neatly typed: “Victory Speech.” The other wasn’t labeled at all. Opening it, he began to read softly to himself. “Asalaam Walaikum, brothers and sisters. We stand here tonight with our heads held high. We fought a good fight, a righteous fight, but…” He offered a small, wry smile, then closed the folder and pushed it aside.
He flopped back on the bed, immediately wincing as his lower back spasmed again. “Fuck,” he groaned.
Right under his hip, the phone vibrated. It felt good against his back—a light massage. He let it linger for a while then yanked it out—over two hundred unread messages. Scrolling through a list of vaguely familiar names, he finally stopped at a notification from his sister: Inshallah, you will win today. We are all praying for you. I am so proud of you. It made him smile.
But the very next message, sent from an unlisted number, read: Pigs like you need to die.
Iqbal turned toward the mirrored wall at the side of his bed. One hand rubbed his belly while the other pushed the tip of his nose up into a snout.
“Oink, oink,” he grunted softly.
He let his hand drop and ran it through his graying hair. He traced his fingers along the deep wrinkles around his eyes and lips, etched into his leathery skin. The rose gold hue of his AP Royal Oak watch glistened on his wrist. He looked around the large hotel room. It was empty.
He heard a knock on the door. It was time. Pushing past the pain, he stood up and carefully buttoned himself into the sherwani, smoothing the fabric down. He swallowed a pair of painkillers, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the room.
His security detail immediately surrounded him, their heavy frames forming a protective barrier as they guided him toward the elevator. Waiting by the doors was his campaign manager, Maryam Hussain, dressed in a brightly colored salwar kameez, her graying hair tied in a tight bun under a draped white dupatta. She was focused on her phone, but when she sensed him walking toward her, she looked up and smiled nervously.
He chuckled, stepping past the guards to hold the elevator door open for her. “Maryam,” he asked, “who died?” Maryam raised her eyebrows as she smiled. Someone pressed the lobby button, and the metal doors slid shut. They descended the ten floors in silence.
The quiet was shattered as soon as the doors opened again. The massive crowd packed into the lower level erupted into spontaneous, chaotic applause. Iqbal instinctively reached over the barricades to shake the hands of his supporters, but his guards held him back, locking shoulders to form a tight wedge and driving him through the surging throng toward the stage.
High above the crowd, stretched across the entire back wall, a massive banner blared in bold letters: “Hilton Karachi Welcomes The Muslim League of India.”
As Iqbal approached the podium, Maryam caught his arm. “Too close to call,” she whispered. “Punjab and Sindh look good. Kashmir’s swinging our way. UP’s still in chaos.”
Iqbal nodded, his attention already hijacked by the crowd. A forest of green flags snapped in the air, as the thunderous chant of his name filled the room. He lifted a hand, and ushers scrambled to wave the room into silence.
Mounting the steps, he thrust both his fists into the air. The words ripped from his throat: “Hindustan Zindabad!”
The crowd went wild. Placing his hand over his heart, he bowed, his lower back wincing in protest. On either side, the teleprompters flickered to life. He glanced at the script, then shook his head.
His eyes swept across the familiar faces sitting in the front rows. It had been just a year since he had started his campaign, and here he was with a reasonable shot at being the leader of the largest nation in the world. The President of the United States of India. His eyes glistened as the weight of the moment dawned on him.
He took a deep, steadying breath, fighting to find his words.
But just as he opened his mouth, a searing explosion of pain tore through his abdomen. An instant later, another white-hot bolt struck his shoulder. His legs gave way, and he lurched forward, fingers clawing at the podium before he crashed heavily onto the stage.
His sherwani darkened instantly, a wetness spreading across his chest. He pressed a hand to it, then brought it up to his eyes. It was slick and dripping, blood streaming from his fingers onto his lips. It tasted sharp and metallic.
Strangely, the pain in his back was entirely gone. He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. His vision blurred. Through the chaos, he heard a distinct scream. Maryam? Ma?
Iqbal watched his mother struggle up the four flights of stairs as they made their way to the top floor of Sultan Manzil. The beads of sweat that had formed on her forehead dripped down her cheek. Her breath came in shallow gasps. Just as she reached the landing to their flat, it looked as if she was about to keel over, but she grabbed the wooden railing and steadied herself.
“Ma, you okay?” he called out as he ran up toward her.
She wiped the sweat off her brow, took a few deep breaths, and sternly replied, “Yes.”
Further below, his elder brother, Wasim, struggled up the stairs carrying bags filled with clothes and pots and pans. “Why couldn’t we get a flat on the ground floor?” he grunted. Then, looking down at their younger sister, still running around in circles down below, he shouted, “Zainab, come up now!”
Iqbal adjusted his grip on his bundle, his young eyes tracking his mother’s rigid posture. He knew she had been completely restless the night before, as had he. The relentless buzzing of a persistent mosquito by his ear and a steady, grating snore from the adjacent room had made it impossible to sleep. In one moment Khalil Uncle sounded as if he was drowning, and then the very next like a freight train. And the whistling—the constant nasal whistling that created notes so shrill, he thought his ears would bleed. His uncle was agonizingly annoying while he was awake, but Iqbal hadn’t realized that he could be even more irritating when he was sound asleep.
Finally, he had gotten up and stepped out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. His mother was already there, staring out into the humid Bombay night.
“Can’t sleep?” she had asked softly.
Iqbal nodded. She pulled him closer to her, the fabric of her sari smelling faintly of familiar spices. “It’s going to be okay, Iqbal. We need to be grateful to Khalil Bhai for letting us stay with him for so many days. But tomorrow we will be in our own house. And you can go to school here. And so can Zainab. And Wasim—he will finish college and get a job.”
“When is Baba going to come?” Iqbal had asked her. He saw tears welling in her eyes, but she refused to let them flow.
He could see that same fierce determination now as she dug into the folds of her sari by her waist to pull out her keys. He had once made the mistake of asking her why she carried so many. There was the one from her childhood home in Agar, and two keys for the Murud properties—one weathered by the salt spray of the beach, the other a heavy iron weight for the monsoon refuge further inland. A solid, worn key represented the farmhouse in Kalsur, perched on a hill that overlooked their mango trees. Beside them hung a few anonymous ones, their original purpose having faded into obscurity, yet remaining as a testament to her stubborn reluctance to let go of any lingering possibility. But the one she pulled out now was a heavy, tarnished key that he had seen Mushir Uncle give her.
He knew that Mushir Uncle was a successful lawyer, but he had decided to abandon Bombay for Karachi. “These ghatis and gujjus are taking over,” he had grumbled during his final visit. “There’s no point hanging around here just to watch my practice be cannibalized.”
The burgeoning, Muslim-majority province of Sindh—now rapidly consolidating its political and financial power in Karachi—had become a beacon for men with his ambitions. His friends, who had already crossed the provincial borders of the new independent Federation, persistently urged him to join them. Faced with the financial realities of dismantling one life to build another, Mushir had begun to liquidate his assets, selling properties to any willing buyer. A mix of familial loyalty and pressing need had led him to part with his fourth-floor Sultan Manzil apartment to his cousin, Jamila, for a mere three thousand rupees—a significant loss compared to the price he had paid just two years prior.
The Godrej lock was huge, its rust-mottled surface and ungainly curves giving it the unsettling appearance of a stout, pregnant woman encased in ill-fitting iron armor. A terribly twisted aluminum latch screwed into the wooden door strained under the weight. The door itself bore the marks of deep neglect: a creeping rot softened its edges, and the faded blue paint peeled away in brittle strips.
Iqbal watched his mother’s hands tremble slightly as she wrestled with the key in the stiff lock. The tumblers within the mechanism clicked and scraped against each other, finally surrendering as the shank sprang free with a loud pop. She removed the heavy padlock, her breath catching slightly, then slid the twisted latch to disengage it from the frame.With a mix of trepidation and her hand resting over her heart, she whispered, “Bismillah.” Then, with a decisive push, she flung the doors open.
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