Aurangzeb The Nude

I knew Aurangzeb when I lived in Brooklyn. His family were long ago descendents of the Mughals. Having left the land where the Mughals had found their splendor they had come to this new country to rediscover their glory here. Their pursuit for material excellence, having come to a stop in 1857, was reactivated in the capitalist halls of America. Their hunger had been stoked for two centuries. In so being, their desire for things was desperate. Those in their family that refused to work the three-daily-shifts, that refused to make sacrifices for the sake of this dream, or those that Father Mughal thought were not interested in material gain, were humiliated, and eventually exiled. However, like most Mughal kings, Papa Mughal was not interested in doing the dirty work. He wanted his sons to do it for him.
Aurangzeb was never a worker. He was a thinker. He did not work hard in school or at his jobs. The punishment handed out by his royal father was as unjust as royalty can be. Nudity.
’If you will not work for great things, you will be stripped of all things!’ – Thus each time Aurangzeb failed at something an article of his clothing would be stripped from him until there was nothing left on him. When he was not shamed into action, he was thrown out, nude, into the hallway of our apartment building. Every day after school he would stand there until night-time when he would be re-admitted back into the two-bedroom palace of the Mughals. Aurangzeb’s life became one of suffering, that is, until someone with the spirit to challenge suffering came amidst us.
’I am named after the last lion of Kabul Zoo from Afghanistan.’ The turban-wearing, thick-shouldered, bearded youth said to me. ‘My name is Marjaan Singh.’
‘Why do you wear that head-wrap-thing?’ Mansur asked.
‘It’s religion chotay,’ Marjan said, flashing a broad smile. ‘I am a Sikh.’
‘Then go see a doctor,’ Mansur answered.
‘Stupid boy, I am a Sikh. It’s a religion. In India. But now its worldwide!’
‘But I thought you were Afghani?” I asked.
‘I am!’ he puffed. ‘Sikhs are everywhere man. We moved here from Vancouver. I am an Afghani-Sikh, from Canada.’
‘But this is America.”
’I guess that makes me American too!’
He was short, thick, bulky-but-fast, like a jaguar. I recruited him for my Shtapoo team. His father, Jagjit, was a kingly man, with soft, humble features, round-like-a-mound. He had the self-deprecating humor to match.
‘I am the Sikh equivalent of the pillsbury dough-boy,’ he offered his hand to my father when the father-son came to visit. ‘Ever since Marjan’s mother died, I ballooned.’
‘Your parathas got heavier with sadness,’ my mother noted. ’It happens in our foods. Sometimes tear mix with the ghee.’
Marjan was Mansur’s age and they were polar opposites. The Sikh preferred lions and tigers, my brother preferred bugs; Marjan liked swords and knives, my brother liked magic and illusion.
‘I want to eat the whole world. Just like my dad,’ Marjan made chomping motions. Mansur, I knew, was also interested in making the whole world disappear, just, by other means. Suffice to say, the two of them were different in all regards, including girth and width. But they shared a love of religion.
‘I know about Islam – the Taliban – my father worked for them…’ Marjan once said. My father over-heard the comment.
‘The Taliban are purely Muslim government!’
‘But they like Sikhs uncle,’ he said. ‘We didn’t even have to wear the yellow ID badges they put on the Hindus.’
It probably had something to do with the fact that Sikhs were required, as part of their religion, to wear beards and turbans; that they shared a mistrust of all that were non-Afghani; that in Afghanistan, they too lived and died by the sword, like the Taliban.
I often found Mansur praying in his room while Marjan preached the history of Sikh thought to me; something of which I was entirely ignorant.
The rag-tag-team became tighter with each day passing. ‘Between your big stomach and his magic,’ my mother put a tray full of potatoes in front of them, ‘you two will cause the universe to disappear.’
Over the cries of Aurangzeb’s whimpering, Mansur responded, ‘…And only the end of the universe would bring an end to Aurangzeb’s shame.’
Marjan and Mansur watched Aurangzeb from the window day after day. The stocky Sikh, growing ever wider and the emaciating Mansur – who had a penchant for non-obligatory fasts – fell into depression over the state of Aurangzeb.
Jagjit expressed his concern, ‘We, in my family, eat when depressed. Notice how fat my son has become?’
‘Similarly,’ Amina said, ‘We stop eating. Notice how thin my son has become?’
The two boys had become sullen and quiet, never saying much except to each other. I should’ve known the pain they felt at the Aurangzeb’s disgrace, but in those days – actually, even now – a little suffering has not bothered me.
A blizzard of mammoth proportions hit in early December, just in time for finals at school. Snow and ice were everywhere, cars buried, driveways blocked; the slushy black snow of New york had nowhere to go – the sewers had frozen – and piled up, inch after inch. Soon the wind swept in, blasting the ice into the ground, into our pores, causing the trees to fall, trucks to side-swipe on the inter-state. Amidst all the cold, Aurangzeb’s shame hung around us like an icicle – it would, thanks to Mansur and Marjan’s encouragement – fall from a great height, catching velocity to impale. It’s sharpened point, shame-sharpened, would cut through time and space, through many lives.
It was at this time that Mansur and Marjan merged into one; for the sake of what they termed ‘Operation Destroy Injustice.’
‘A Muslim cannot witness injustice and turn away,’ Mansur said.
‘Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh, - The Khalsa belongs to God, all Victory belongs to God,” Marjan added a line from Sikh thought.
Their first act, then, was to stand guard outside the complex, thereby eliminating encroachment by neighborhood punks who’d enter to hurl snowballs at Aurangzeb. Next, they procured underwear, socks, blankets, trousers, and shirts – all of which, belonging to them, were too small and tight, or too small and baggy. Finally, as a means to defend Aurangzeb, Marjan, being very serious, handed the naked boy a sword he had taken from his father’s collection.
‘Take it. And Kill your father.’
‘Never accept tyranny.’ Mansur added.
Aurangzeb, who took them to be joking, or speaking metaphorically at best, held the sword close to his chest and sat back on the steps.
‘Hamid,’ he reached to grasp my hand as I walked by. ‘You believe in God?’
‘Of course,’ I said. It was easy to tell this lie. ‘I am a Muslim, aren’t I?’
‘Well,’ he said, with tears in his eyes, ‘Why would God make me go through the evil that gets done to me?’
‘Maybe God can’t help it?’
‘It’s too much…too many bad things…to be involuntary. I don’t even like to do these stupid work-shork things my father makes my brothers do! You know, I prefer to think of things all the time.’
’What do you think of?’ I asked.
’I think of evil.’
Exiles had a propensity to turn into mad-philosophers.
‘Maybe God is on the side of your father. Maybe you are the evil one since God and his supporters are always good.’ I suggested. It was wicked of me. It felt so…good.
’No. This is only a test. God is evaluating me. It is meant to make me stronger.’
Aurangzeb looked up at the door to his apartment from his underworld perch at the bottom of the stairwell. Somewhere inside that apartment his father sat, in warmth, in clothes.
’I don’t believe you.’ I said matter of factly. ’When I look at you I don’t see Justice. Does not a lack of Justice make you outraged?’
’I can adapt to it.’
’Alright,’ I said. ’Have it your way. Just know that God is sitting up there with your father in his bed, in his throne. A real God would be down here, with you. Or, better yet, a real God would see you, naked and cold, and take you up there. Instead, you get to sit here getting help from two little boys.
’They are right, you know? Your brother and his friend. My Father is a tyrant.’ Aurangzeb said.
’Yes, and he is a warm warm warm tyrant. God looks out for him and keeps him warm.’ I said.
’I wish God did the same for me.’ He had tears in his eyes.
’How do you suppose tyrants get where they are? With God’s help of course.’
’I wish God would stop helping tyrants. I wish that instead God helped me. I am more deserving. Look at me!’ Aurangzeb, naked, with shriveled penis and shivering body, said to me.
’Why don’t you help yourself Aurangzeb?’ I asked him.
’With what? All I have is this underwear and this stupid sword.’
I decided to leave the boy. Spring was a long way away. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with the winter.