The Zoo by Tariq Rehman

 ‘We cannot do without more funds for the zoo,’ said Ikram Arif with conviction.

‘But Ikram Sahib,’ said the Secretary wearily, ‘you constructed that lovely place for the birds we imported for you when the money should have gone for the bears.’

            ‘Sir that was inevitable. Every animal has to be given its place ─ its ecological niche ─ I mean the kind of place it is naturally used to.’

            ‘I know about all that,’ said the secretary raising his hand. ‘But there has to be a limit.’

            ‘Look at it this way, Sir,’ put in another officer from the finance ministry, ‘the Zoo is seen by so many foreigners. What kind of impression will we give them if the animals are not lodged properly?’

            Ikram Arif nodded in enthusiastic agreement. The secretary looked dubious and then smiled as if conceding defeat.

            ‘Lodge in style, money for the bears, big cats and the giraffe, ok.’

            ‘Thank you sir,’ said Ikram Arif graciously.

            The next few months were very busy at the zoo as the outlandish Austrian firm created the appropriate landscape for different types of animals. By the end of the summer there were verdant green grasslands for the antelopes, the deer, the bison and the zebras. There were tall trees in giraffe’s enclosure which itself had been enclosed into another island-like enclosure as there was a canal around the enclosure as well as concealed fences.

            The dens of the lions were in terraced plateaus with groves of trees. They too had a moat around them with drawbridges leading to an inner fence. The lions strode majestically around and stared into the eyes of the curious who thronged around the fences.While the lions lay sleepily around, the tigers paced their part of the enclosure almost all the time. But they too retired in their dens or sat away from the spectators whenever they wanted to. The elephants lived in a swampy area with a thick growth of trees and fields of sugarcane which they munched lustily most of the time. The zoo was a success and Ikram Arif, its manager, was commended by the Governor of the Punjab himself. After all, now the Governor had another place ─ besides the Badshahi Mosque and his own palace ─ to take foreign dignitaries to. Though the cost of the upkeep made financial jugglers almost give up in despair, they found the money somehow as they always did when the governor really wanted something.

            Hashmat Ali was new in Lahore. He came from Sargodha where he was an agricultural laborer. But the Malik Sahib who employed him had turned his land into a large orchard. He now required less people and the family had to seek their living in Lahore. So Fatima had cooked him parathas and the children, Azmat Ali and Zainab Bibi had clung to him at the end of the village when he came to Lahore. When the green fields ended he stood on the potholed road, he felt elated: he was going out to fabulous Lahore; the wide world. And yet stuffed in the heat between brown bodies, he could not help looking at the intensely green fields flying past him at incredible speed.

            Lahore was fabulous indeed, Chacha Barkat Ali told him, but not for village louts like him.

            ‘Work is not easy to find, son,’ he said solicitously. And, indeed, for about a month he did hardly anything more than carry people’s luggage to waiting taxies and rickshaws at the railway station. The huge gate of the station overwhelmed him with its size and the roof was the highest he had ever seen.

            Huge caterpillars of dark titanic trains rushed into the dome of the station. And not even weeks of seeing this day in day out made him used to it. It was awesome and impressive; not ordinary and routine. But the milling crowd, the fighting for cramped places in the apartments and getting knocked about by people in a great hurry was somehow a routine matter. He did not even complain about it. Then he left Chacha Barkat’s little room where ten people slept and found a room for himself. He had found a job ─ a gardener in a small school. The room was not far from the school. It was up four flights of stairs in a blind alley. It faced another dark wall and the only window was covered with newspapers because all the window panes were broken. It was so dark that he stumbled and almost fell when he entered it first.

            ‘Electricity is expensive’, said the property agent who had brought him to see it. ‘So the bulb will have to be a small one.’

            ‘But the children will study in a school,’ he replied in desperation. He wanted to blurt out how his children would go to the school. They would not be the laborers. But, of course, Zainab would get married to an educated boy. For that too she had to go to the school.

            ‘They can read in the daylight’, mumbled the agent shrugging his shoulders. Then he smiled slyly and said: Of course for   a different rent _only a bit more _ ‘you can have a meter. You can even a heater for a winter’. He   dismissed the heater with a laugh but after some haggling they agreed to a new figure for a separate meter.

      He went to fetch Fatima and the children and they   emerged looking harassed after having been cooped up in the bus for five hours. The city with its noises enthralled them and it was suppressed excitement that Fatima climbed up the stairs to her room. ‘It is a bit dangerous’ she commented when Azmat tripped on  a steep worn out step: the landlord  should get them repaired’.

‘The laughed’, ‘he laughed ‘the man looks a reptile. He should have been in a zoo!

They were in front of a termite eaten door and Hashmat   was struggling with a rusty lock.

‘Zoo’, echoed his wife blankly .Hashmat cursed the lock and Fatima pressed her daughter close. The little girl was afraid of foul language .Somebody had cuffed her on the ears with some such words .The lock opened and the door creaked ajar. Hashmat flung it open and the   fetid stench of dirty quilts assailed their nostrils .IT was dark and cavernous inside.

‘ Yes zoo. In the city they have animals in it. Enter .This is our home,’

          Bismillah, Bismillah: murmured Fatima reverently ‘Don’t look down Zainab. Come on Azmat. Lions too?

‘Enter Bismillah .Yes, and elephants, bears and what not’,

‘Lions father’,the little boy shouted ‘so farther you ate this’,

Father could not.It is old bread,’ said Zainab. ‘Yes we should see the animals. But will they no bite?’

‘No . No,’he laughed.

She sat down on the cot and put her things down .The conversation about the zoo ,so mixed up with the homecoming ,petered out now. The woman got busy in cooking and the man allowed himself the pleasure of lying back on the cot and closing his eyes. The children started quarreling.

It was more than two months later that the zoo came up for discussion again. ‘This house is so dark. In our village the fields were so green and open ,’sais Fatima

‘You thank God we have a roof at last’, he said angrily

Women never do thank God. I work overtime to get your decent food and send the children to the school,’

‘I scrub and scrub the floors, the utensils and still everything is dirty. This hovel. Then sun never peeps in here nor does the wind blow and … we are suspended somewhere. It is not like being on the earth’,

        He kept quiet. Suddenly his heart ached for the earth, the feel of the wind on his hair. He did at least work in the garden but she and the children stayed in this suspended hole. This dark fetid cave where neither stars, the moon, nor even the sun ever peeped through.

            ‘Let’s go to the zoo.’

            She extended her hand and it clutched his with emotion. He knew she was crying.

            ‘Tomorrow’ he said.

            The next day she was almost ecstatic with joy as she walked with him and the skipping children in the zoo. The wind was balmy. She had forgotten that it was spring. But the trees were laden with blossoms.

            ‘Why did they not plant these large fields’ she waved her hand vaguely at the grassland in which Zebras grazed quietly.

            ‘O are you mad?’ he laughed looking at Azmat who was also grinning, ‘they are not like us poor farmers who would not leave even bits of land unused.’

            ‘Wasteful,’ she expostulated.

            ‘It is for the animals’, he said.

            ‘See mother they are grazing there.’ The children pointed this out to her.

            ‘They are only animals’, she commented.

            They were now looking at the bears being fed. Combs of honey lay before them and the lethargic big beasts waddled up to them and their snout dug into the soft sweet thickness of the honey.

            ‘Pure honey’, she said incredulously.

            ‘I bet the bears would not touch the impure one the shopkeepers palmed off on us when Zainab was ill’ he said jokingly.

            ‘Why should they’ she replied.

            One bear came lazily and stood near the gate. The children threw food to it and it obliged them by nuzzling at it. Azmat and Zainab too threw their pastries in.

            ‘God curse you both’, cried their mother in genuine indignation. ‘He is so fat he can’t walk and there these two imps go wasting our hard earned money.’

            ‘They are only children’, said Hashmat indulgently.

            The children ran away towards the baboons who were making faces at them from the other cage. This was not a small cage but a huge area with trees, swings and ropes. Large monkeys swung from them and nibbled at apples, guavas and radishes. Here again the children threw in the biscuits ─ their last biscuits ─ and a huge impudent chimpanzee gobbled them.

            ‘This cursed brute thinks it buys these biscuits’, said Fatima bitterly. The chimpanzee turned around impudently, presented his hindquarters to Fatima, and swung himself up a tree. The other apes chattered and looked down at the human beings.

            The sinking sun peeped out of a cloud and the monkeys were bathed in gold. A cool wind started blowing and the children started clapping their hands in sheer exuberance of spirits.

            ‘Time to close’, said Hashmat regretfully. He knew they could not afford such an outing ─ the tickets cost quite a lot ─ for quite some time.

            ‘Will they sleep in these lovely wooden huts?’ asked Azmat pointing at the apes.

            ‘Those or out in the open under the stars’, he replied.

            ‘They have many houses’, said Zainab.

            ‘A big, lovely green house’, said Azmat .

            Fatima turned to go. She was thinking of her room where the sun would never shine nor would the stars be ever visible. The sun set in splendor of fiery gold and dark red but by the time they got in the bus it was dark. She sat between two women thinking about the stars which would be twinkling at the monkeys.