Late Afternoon at Masjid Wazir Khan

You do not really notice the minaret until you nearly reach the Mosque. Once you take the bend in the crowded Rang Mahal Road in Old Lahore, the minarets of the 16th century mosque rise unexpectedly over the crowded, colourful, cramped bazaar. The shops line the Mosque’s outer wall in an uneven row - small stalls displaying their low-priced wares stacked on the sides of the teeming street. And then, just by chance, as I raised my head, the minaret stood still stretching silently up to the sky from behind the row of shops looking majestically down at the bustle that consumes the eye and mind. Its multi coloured floral motifs, painted brilliantly by the dexterous hands of a long forgotten Mughal artist, shone in the late afternoon sun.

The imposing façade of the Mosque cast an impressive welcome. Two balconies, intricately painted and lattice worked, hung on either side of the stately entrance. My neck ached as I gazed at the colours, still vivid despite patches of peeling plaster. Other visitors had deposited their shoes with the kiosk at the entrance. I lingered. The colours would not let me go. Their vibrancy defied the years of dust with quiet sophistication that the cheap, glitzy wares of the surrounding shops could never outdo.

The courtyard was occupied by a large square pond brimming with green water. A green electric motor pump cast a solitary stump next to the pond, wires trailing from it to a courtyard lamp post with broken electric bulbs. I sat down on the pond’s edge and slowly felt the silence seep into me like the marble’s coolness through my socks. Then, almost in a flash, a flutter of grey and white wings flapped softly above me as pigeons circled the courtyard’s sky in a mass race. They flew the aerial lap in one whirl and ended the race where they began – on top of the three domes perched above the main hall standing at the far end of the courtyard.

An old woman clad in a worn-out brown shalwar kameez ambled past the water pond to a small shrine to the left of the courtyard. She lit a small oil lamp and placed beside others in a crooked iron shelf outside the shrine. Some burnt, some smoldered and spluttered, smoking away somebody’s silent hopes. What did the old woman wish while she lit the wick? Can the shrine in this sanctuary grant anything more precious than peace? She hobbled past the green plastic hats hanging from the knobs of the iron railing that encircled the shrine, her hand resting on the shoulder of a young girl. A small oil lamp peeping from her clenched fist, the little girl smiled shyly at me hiding her secret wishing well in her hand. Then as she looked up at the pigeons swirling in the air, the courtyard’s air was set aflutter again with the soft flails of another airborne race.

They sat en mass on one of the turrets.
“Can I go up one of these?”, I asked the man who collects shoes at the entrance. I was tired and wanted to linger.
“The Attendant has gone away for a while. He has the keys.” Then, hesitantly, “You can give him money for tea, you know”.
“I know. I will wait.”

The Attendant came ambling back – a bunch of keys in his bony hands. He unlocked the door on the side of the Main Hall to a spiral staircase with high steps. My thighs ached as I negotiated the ascent in near darkness. Halfway up, the staircase opened on to another courtyard – the roof of the main hall with the domes perched above.

“You can go higher”, he said. “It is even more beautiful from up there”. The square pond looked far smaller from here but the minarets were still majestic. The Attendant looked away from me as I finally tore my eyes away from the magnificent, detached view of the courtyard from the top. Had he been studying me? Why? I felt awkward and a little unsafe. As I gazed around at the brick houses crowding the air around the mosque, some even glued to the mosque’s outer wall, I, too, peeped secretly at the Attendant. Had he walked past me in the crowded street, I would barely have found him distinguishable in his crumpled, loose shalwar kurta and straggly beard. He had a quiet manner, though, and spoke mutedly. He wouldn’t hurt me, I decided. The view from the top beckoned. Conversation, I guessed, could ease any awkwardness.

“Do many people come up here?”
“Has anyone been hurt climbing up here”?
“How long have you been taking care of the Mosque”?

He answered in monosyllables as we climbed further up the spiral staircase, this time from inside the minaret that rose from the main hall’s roof. In the dark, secret staircase, his muddled “z” and “j” sounds struck me. The sounds and the silence seeped in with the realization that he did not belong here, not to this city, maybe not even this land. I suspected that he spoke Bengali. Something in me jumped as I reflected that perhaps he had sensed my link with the language as he had scrutinized me secretly.

“Aapni ki Bengali”? I asked him as we finally reached the lattice worked balcony that encircled the minaret from where the muezzins have been calling the faithful to prayers for centuries. He shuffled his feet and looked away in the distance as though he had not heard me. Stung, I turned away slowly and pretended to touch the vivid blue and peacock green tiled motifs that had gleamed in the sunlight. He had missed this chance, I thought. Maybe so had I. Some things are silently understood.

And then, as I turned and looked down from the minaret, the sense of an awkward loss was replaced by the stark contrast of the teeming city that engulfed the hushed, haven of this Mosque. Noisy, smoke trailing rickshaws chugged in the distance. Cars overtook tongas rushing to stop at the next traffic light. The narrow, crowded street ended somewhere at an unknown point amid a haze of brick and cemented, four-storied, terraced houses stacked against each other. The sense of a whirling, hurricane of insane activity and incessant noise was staggering. Amid this sea of sounds, stood the silent courtyard and the majestic, gleaming minarets of the red-brick Mosque – a stranger in a land that has engulfed its past in cement and smoke, among people who have lost a sense of their past as they run long laps in life’s noisy race. Its silence lulls the heart in a city that has lost the heart of its own history. I descended the dark staircase without a word – the only tribute I could pay to a Mosque that quietly teaches the worth of peaceful stillness that we can only have from owning our past.