Miracle on 35th Street

It started with a phone call. An ecstatic Bajjo Khala rang up Ammi with the good news. A cozy little house on 35th Street in Chaklala Scheme III was alit with a hundred ghee lamps that night. A miracle: Allah Mian had just blessed R. Khala with a beautiful baby boy.

There isn’t an antagonistic bone in Ammi’s body. So her gently cynical phone manner, especially with her darling eldest sister, struck me as rather odd. A swift arithmetic calculation revealed the source of her skepticism. As a fifty-something mother of overgrown children, Ammi has a distinct childhood memory of R. Khala as an adult going off to university. Thus, even a conservative extrapolation would put R. Khala in her early sixties at the time of delivery.

Thanks to PTCL’s after-dark quarter rate, information travels fast in the cover of night. By ten, Ammi had chatted up several siblings and cousins. Their reactions ranged from the giddily ecstatic to the mildly sardonic. With the exception of a rational Aamir Mamu, all were wholly accepting of the fundamentals of the situation. A certified post-menopausal woman had just given birth to a piece-of-the-moon baby. Hallelujah.

Bajjo Khala, flaring feminist-cum-Muslim, typified the median response. After all hadn’t one of Bibis Sarah or Hajra conceived at the age of one hundred and something, as God’s reward to an exceptionally virile Abraham? Exactly which Bibi and what age were left vague but the premise was sound: miracles can and do happen. The works of God are beyond Man’s comprehension, was the hushed undertone in most homes that night.

As the strange case of R. Khala and the Miracle Baby suggests, irrationality permeates the very fiber of our society.

Even dear Ammi, who wouldn’t set foot in Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s today if you paid her, has historically been victim to this disease. Harassed by a typical susral and disenchanted with doctors and fertility specialists, she cast her lot with Burri Imam. For the uninitiated, Burri Imam-or Burri Bhai as he is affectionately known in our family-was a saint of sorts who performed the usual run of miracles, and is now conveniently buried fifteen miles outside Islamabad.

Lo and behold. Burri Bhai, tag-teaming with the good Lord, came through with a bang. Bhayeea made a triumphant appearance and the susralis were left with sooty faces. Ammi was let off easy, soul and son intact. Her only assurance to Burri Bhai was that her eldest would drop by for a hello ever so often. For a while she kept her promise, and our annual pilgrimages to Burri Imam continued uninterrupted for many joyous years. One puzzling day, Ammi suddenly announced that Bhayeea was hereby free from his bond, so future visits to Burri Bhai would be optional. We never knew what prompted her change of heart. Perhaps it was the accumulated wisdom of the years, or perhaps our ceaseless wiseass comments finally made their mark.

Alas, others in the family have some ways to go on the road to rationality. A homeopath in Delhi has stumbled upon the cure for cancer. Her Pakistani patients-amongst who are two of my aunts-must account for a significant fraction of visas issued by the Indian consulate. There was the baba in Pak Colony who recommended chicken sacrifices with prompt cash donations to Mamu as the panacea for all ills. And there’s the famous Captain Khalid, esteemed by uncles and aunties alike, who distinguishes himself from the riffraff by his purely "Islamic" solutions. As a respectful Ammi puts it, he only hands out ayats from the Quran and never asks for a paisa: the telltale mark of a genuine faith healer. Or is it his angelic beard and his impressive Defence kothi? Regardless, the good Captain offers comprehensive packages for sickness, unemployment, infertility, atheism and infidelity-the works.

Regrettably, the only two examples of Captain Khalid’s work that have come under my direct purview-the first for a jaundice-stricken cousin and the second for a jailbird former government employee-have been unsuccessful ones. Though in his defense, I readily admit that, pound for pound, the Captain’s proposals are mercifully preferable to those of another baba I have known of. This formidable gent started by spitting on Cousin S. and then proceeded to spank her with his jharoo. Needless to say, her mild hepatitis attack was unimpressed.

Back to the genuine miracle of our time, the one on 35th Street. Several weeks after the incredible birth, R. Khala, together with several hospital employees, was arrested for baby-napping (no, not the kind where you’re caught humming rock-a-bye-baby in the vain hope of lulling your little one to sleep). Through the workings of a miraculously efficient judicial process, the Miracle Baby found his way back to his true parents. The family shamelessly effected a collective volte-face, and a flurry of I-told-you-sos flooded the phone lines.

Despite the miracle-that-wasn’t, Bajjo Khala fiercely clings to the possibility of a Hajra-like phenomenon. Or was it Sarah? The details are irrelevant. One point is certain: the Lord works in mysterious ways...