Chapter 5: karachi city gangster
Hamza, in his current position, had a few options available. He could not lay low and gain trust over a long period of time- he had been sent here as a firestarter, to set off a root fire in this city whose monstrosities kept leaking over the border and into the Indian rivers, turning them red with blood. He needed to catch Rehman Dakait's eye, but not so much that he was deemed a threat, or not worth the trouble of keeping around. He needed to look smart but not too smart, fresh-faced but not- ah, fuck, this was like that Goldilocks.
He had contemplated a particular idea while cleaning his new Alvida. By night, it seemed like it what he was aiming for. At a point when the opportunity presented itself, he would encourage the wounded Lion of Chakkiwara to shake off the yoke of its political backers and get revenge for his son Naieem.
It would be challenging the man's authority while telling him exactly what he wanted to hear, and encouraging him to do what he must be dearly craving to. From a political standpoint it would be less disastrous for Rehman than it would be for the PAP, and frankly it would not be damage of a caliber that the the Pakistan Awami Party had not already recovered from. They had been in the business of allying themselves with bloodthirsty men for a long time.
It would be the response of a Baloch. Hamza Ali Mazari had been crafted to be the ideal Baloch- a boy of common origin, of devotion to his ideals yet also of an understanding of reality. An idealist that could compromise, a youth with potential, someone who truly believed in his cause.
He pursed his lips, watching the man in question as he paced the length of the balcony. Rehman Dakait was an odd man, he thought. He liked to wear his pathani suit or drape his pashmina shawls just to stalk about his haveli in sweltering weather. Deadly men were often odd. Why would the predator not don its bright stripes as it liked? Hamza ran his hand through his hair. It had become brown and gold, bleached by the sun. Harleen's hair had been of the same colour.
A surprising amount of time in organised crime seemed to be put towards mundane things, in practice. He'd been sent upstairs to the roof by Rehman's son's request to see if he could find anything that was blocking the antenna. Sure enough, there had been a large box, and lo and behold it held the solder ingots that Donga had managed to disappear.
Rehman Dakait pulled out his phone. From his viewpoint above, he could not make out the caller ID. He tried to listen to what the man was saying, hoping it would carry up. "-lam'', he heard. What followed was heavily city accented Balochi-Urdu. It was funny, actually. He, an Indian spy, spoke more native Balochi than the Sher-e-Baloch. Life was full of such small cosmic jokes.
Then Uzair Baloch stepped onto the balcony. At the sight of his cousin-brother, Rehman went back inside, and Hamza tore his gaze away from the balcony very quickly.
He had still not gotten over how he'd responded to that man, earlier.
Daryabi were naturally supposed to be attracted to barani. He'd known that logically. But he had hardly gotten to come to grips with his own secondary sex. He had, all his life, expected to be a beta. Harleen being an omega had truly been a shock for everyone. In his bloodline, for the past god knew how many generations, every single child had been a beta. Harleen had been the first omega. Their family had never had an alpha in it ever, still. He had found people conceptually beautiful in the past- a daryabi boy from his eleventh standard class, a beta girl in a bus, a tall, rare barani woman who was in basic with them.
His body had betrayed him. How could he have allowed that to happen?
As he descended the stairs, he sighed.
Nazr and Sabr. Nothing had happened. It was just a momentary rush of hormones. His hindbrain was just being a shameless, crazed bitch. He was under no compulsion to listen to it. If everything people's hindbrains suggested happened, the number of bastard children roaming the streets would have been ten times higher.
It was not like he'd been aroused or something. He did not need to be ashamed of this. Nobody would ever learn of that one split second. Who was a dead man like him going to tell?
......
A devil was dancing over the body of an old man.
"The juice boy... you've become one of Rehman's boys now, haven't you?" The fucker was still mouthing off even with a gun pointed at him. "I'll-"
Bang. The man next to [ █████ ] went down.
That disgusting creature was still smiling.
.....
Uzair Baloch had always been weak for pretty men. That had been something he was aware of ever since college; when he saw his batchmates partying hard, when Hassan's shirt came off, he had turned a brilliant pink. It was the reason why Rehman was unable to convince him to get married to any of the wealthy Balochi trader's daughters he began to parade in front of him when he turned twenty-eight. Nobody wanted to give away their precious, rare daryabi sons to gangsters, understandably.
What on earth was was he to do, then, when confronted with a truly beautiful one?
When he saw the new recruit up close, properly, when the intensity of his grief reduced and the fog receded from his eyes, he knew at once that he was going to have a problem.
Hamza was his name. Lion. He wondered if the man's parents had consulted an astrologist before naming him. Never had he seen someone whose name fit them like a glove to such an extent before.
His hair was wavy and thick and long. It was brown and honey coloured and shone like molten gold in the sun- a lion's mane indeed. He was tall and broad of shoulder and narrow waisted, and had sharp, intensely green eyes. He was from Quetta. A Baloch youth- some twenty-five, maybe? Younger than him, definitely. A sahil, probably. Most barani advertised their secondary sex blatantly. Uzair himself did not tend to, but most of the alpha men in his acquaintance did. Either way, not somebody he was supposed to be going sniffing after.
Hamza was an enigmatic character. He seemed to be solemn, silent type at first. His face wore an ambiguous expression; he could not seem to get a good read of him. His scent was very subdued- the scents of betas were typically mild. He didn't talk shit with Donga and Siyahi. Most new recruits would be all hardworking and dedicated for the first few days before the dye of cheap new cloth was washed away. He remained that way. He'd been almost relieved that day, when he showed up late by maybe some thirty minutes.
Perhaps his stupid fascination would go away when he revealed himself to be a screw up like the rest of them, he had hoped. He was wrong. Hamza, it turned out, washed that lustrous hair of his with fucking soap, and it still looked like that. Uzair would be extremely dead if someone convinced him to use shampoo. So dead. The man probably couldn't afford shampoo, he realized, and immediately felt worse.
(He had to suppress the brainless urge to buy him some. He would look like a complete creep.)
For some fucking reason, Uzair Baloch was an idiotic, greedy man. It was not enough for him, maddening and tempting, to look but not touch. When his mother made jalebi on Eid he would scarf one down before it cooled enough and get his tongue burnt. His mother would scold him, and the next year he would do it again. He was probably going to get scorched this time too, but he could not help but wonder how pretty the new boy's face would look even as it wore a disgusted expression as he rejected him.
And so, when they won that first game of football together, he could not help himself. To touch, even for a split second. Hamza was moderately heavy, but he had felt the man's pulse with his hand- lub-dub- with his own hands and gods it was more than worth it. He caught a whiff of his scent- Allah, he seemed to be religious when it came to applying them. Cardamom, spiced chai and the scent of rain. Normally people liked it when their partners smelled of flowers or sweets but somehow, he still found himself having to swallow saliva manually.
It was not a very daryabi scent. He had no fucking excuse.
As time passed, he had to constantly prevent himself from doing it again. He behaved as though he saw him as some other random new junior, tried to affect the behaviours of an elder brother or something else appropriate. He passed the typical insults and snipes at him while pretending his tongue did not want to tell him things of a filthy nature.
To distract himself, he threw his full effort into handling Rehman. He had never seen his elder brother in all but parentage so broken before. Daryabi naturally were intensely bonded to their children; in the Quran there was a story about a daryabi woman who killed thirty pagan soldiers to avenge her baby son that the pagans had burnt alive. Rehman was a few bad interactions away from burning Lyari to the ground. He was not a typical daryabi- nobody on Earth save his children, his wife and Uzair himself knew of his nature, but that certainly didn't make him any less of one.
His brother rarely nested. So when he found him, lying curled up on his bed in a fortress of his, Naieem's and Ulfat's clothes, he said nothing. He silently slid in beside without a word and wrapped his arms around him. He stayed silent and allowed his brother to soak his front with tears and muffle his sobs into his chest. He only got up when Ulfat came to take his place.
Arshad Pappu was a filthy fucking bastard. And that Babu Dakait? Going after pups, raping little girls, nothing was below him. He frankly did not want to be the one holding Rehman back. But if he let out the Lion of Chakkiwara now, the hard work, blood, sweat and tears Rehman had put in for their people would be for naught, and the elections would be swiped by the Pashtun bastards and the era of oppression of the Balochi would continue. And that could not happen.
The news channels seemed to be determined to get Lyari torched.
"Over a month...has not taken revenge...elections.."
He changed the channel at once.
.....
The opportunity came sooner than he expected. It was like he had manifested it.
Hamza had never actually smoked. This was not out of some sense of moral superiority or commitment to his faith. One of the hand to hand combat instructors had hands that shook constantly when not fighting or smoking. It made him look very nervous, and somehow the idea of ending up like that put him off of it more than the cancer. Here, in a land where the air was more cigarette smoke than oxygen and the life expectancy of men like him was maybe fifties or sixties, refusing to smoke was like a declaration that you were planning to live long enough for things like lung cancer to be a headache.
He didn't get the appeal of smoking, not really.
It seemed Allah wanted to have some fun at his expense.
They played football again. This time, with Hamza on the field because Uzair was unable to saddle the opposing team captain with Donga. Hamza, like he said, was not too good at playing striker. He was, however extremely aware of Uzair's position on the field at all times. He had been trained how to handle blunt projectiles well. So more than really playing, he was just treating the ball like a flying object that he needed to deflect towards the baran. It seemed that extremely mortifying experience had benefits. It was like he could genuinely feel the other man's presence. Tracking the enemy was a useful skill, even if the enemy in question was not really a main target of the mission.
He inadvertently helped their team win because of it. Towards the end, when they were one point from victory, Hamza found himself in possession of the ball. He was being persistently blocked by one of the gun factory boys. He knew exactly how many paces away Uzair was, even with the boy between them, and was sort of able of launch it at him with his foot.
He himself was not sure how managed to make that pass. But Uzair was fucking crowing because of it. The baran downright did a little smug dance. That should have made him lose all respect for that thug, but he found himself amused. Then he preemptively plopped himself down onto a sandbag, because he did not want to risk there being any repeat of last time.
Reassured that he was not going to be hoisted up or anything, he relaxed. That was a mistake.
Donga who was sitting besides him, was cracking a joke.
"Passed like Maradona-' Uzair said, gesturing towards him, grinning. He then motioned Donga. "Go on, give him one."
Hamza declined. "I don't smoke."
"Why? Do you want a long life?," asked Donga. The entire group around him burst into laughter.
"Donga smokes foul shit anyways- try this," said Uzair, getting up. He took the cigarette that he himself had just taken a drag from, and pressed it to Hamza's lips.
What game was this fucker playing?
Stunned, he tapped it, eyes wide. He knew, in theory, how to take a drag.
He did not know how to do it in practise. His throat was on fire. He ended up coughing helplessly.
The men roared with laughter. Uzair, that conniving bas-
The room went silent. Rehman Dakait, who had been sitting in the corner, glaring, now stalked forward. Like lesser beasts before a tiger, they hushed. A cigarette dangled from his lips.
The Butcher of Pathani spoke.
"This was where I taught Naieem to play football." A pause ensued. "He was just a kid." The man's eyes glistened.
"Donga." The plump man shot up. "Tell me. Should we avenge Naieem?"
Uzair snapped. "Oi, I will give you a tight slap. He is agreeing with you because he is scared of you. Go on, tell the truth."
By the looks of it, he already was. "We should... but after the election, Bhai. We should wait... Babu Dakait is just waiting for us to react. If we attack now... we will only lose more of our boys."
"Yes," said Siyahi, trying to ease the spotlight off of Donga. He seemed to have brains after all. He still was not happy about that crackhead pissing on the terrace. "We have to win the elections... otherwise the PAP will get very agitated at us.."
"And.. we will lose the money they give us to run the gang, bhai."
"You." Rehman Dakait said. He was looking at Hamza. His chance had come. "If you were in my place, what would you do?"
"I would take revenge." Uzair, who had been standing next to him, squeezed his bicep, hard. "Are you out of your mind?"
"You're our leader, the King of the Baloch. They slaughtered your son without mercy. If the Badshah doesn't hit back, the whole community gets shamed. And if you're not taking revenge just to win an election, that election was already lost long ago. Till now you had to win for the sake of grabbing Arshad Pappu and Babu Dakait's turf. But for a complete victory, you have to take all of Lyari. Babu struck now because he was certain that the PAP won't let you retaliate during elections."
He paused. It was not as though he did not feel the conviction he was affecting- hadn't he himself taken such bloodthirsty revenge? He'd wiped out the male bloodline of that godforsaken Sukhwindhar from the face of the earth.
"This is the perfect time to wipe out his entire crew and take haq of his turf. The people of Lyari decide who rules Karachi. And this time, the ruler of Lyari is the Sher-e-Baloch."
Both Rehman and Uzair gave him a long look.
.....
By some stroke of bad, bad luck for Lulli Dakait, Hamza and Uzair had been sent to dispatch him together. It was like the universe had some form of kindness that it expressed rarely. For men like Hamza Ali Mazari it only really extended to being allowed to exact violence against those who hurt him. He did not have the privilege to avoid the harm done to him, but at least he wouldn’t be the only one bleeding.
They found him drinking at ten o’ clock in the morning. The smell of alcohol was something that nauseated him ever since that incident. Seeing that fuckers’ yellow teeth made something in him growl with disgust and fury.
That stupid, idiotic daryabi lump of nervous tissue in the back was half baying for blood and half terrified. He wanted to rip the man’s head off of his shoulders with his bare hands but idea of touching him made him feel ill.
Uzair approached him from behind. Hamza stalked forward.
“Hamzaah wasn’t it… hah.. pretty Balochi juice boy… how come you are coming to me in broad daylight, baby? You wouldn’t even serve me and my boys… ran away to send that old man…”
Hamza had the gun pointed straight at his forehead. Even while staring down the barrel, the fucker was still talking.
”Me and the boys would have shown a good time, bitch… such a tight mouth you had.. and still so quiet…-AH” Lulli yelled, as Uzair kicked him hard from behind. Hamza shot both his feet- it wouldn’t do if the oily goblin was able slip away, would it??
He was down. Just like that. “You should wash your mouth out,’ Uzair told him, then kicked him in the neck.
Lulli gasped and coughed like a rodent. Uzair’s eyes were trained on the man below his foot. They turned towards Hamza. “Some of these Pashtun men’s tendencies for baccha baazi extend to grown men as well,” Uzair said.
A sahil who had been raped by a man would be seen as sexually subservient, and would be greatly disrespected in most gangs. What could he say at this juncture?
Nothing. He tied up Lulli, trying to touch him as little as possible. The man’s filth seemed to leach onto his skin. He felt as though he would vomit.
”Harami,” he murmured under his breath as he threw the man into the back of the lorry.
“You should not be ashamed,” was what Uzair told him. “Nobody will harass you like that again. You are not alone anymore.” He was saying this as Hamza’s rapist lay in the back of the lorry that they were driving to take him to a flat they had prepared to torture him in.
Hearing that out of the mouth of a hardened criminal still for some reason relieved his traitorous heart. Nobody had ever adequately warned him in training about… that. Aalam Bhai never said anything about it at all. Sometimes it made him feel like he was going to go mad.
Gods. He thought, of Allah and the Waheguru, the gods of the Hindus and the God of Christians. So this was the life of a Pakistani gangster. Even killers seemed to receive morsels of kindness more regularly than █████.
Hamza got out of the driver’s seat. Uzair followed behind him. Uzair dragged Lulli up stairs by the hair, leaving behind a trail of blood. He followed. Morbidly, it looked like a red carpet.
They propped him up into a kneeling position.
Uzair gestured for Donga to step back. “The honours are for Hamza.”
He beat him with a stick wrapped in barbed wire. The first time he struck, Lulli was still able to talk. “ I should have stuck it in,” he said.
Hamza saw red.
He beat him over and over again till blood flowed from his face freely. Uzair procured an apple from god knew where and stuck it in Lulli’s mouth. He then asked him a question.
Then he pulled out the apple so hard a few of Lulli’s rotten teeth came flying out with it.
“Shall I strip him?” A wave of disgust went through Hamza.
”No,” he said very quickly. Uzair nodded, then, handed him a knife.
“Go ahead. I will buy you a new kurta.”
He stabbed Lulli freely. Each sheathing of the blade in flesh made him feel like a bit more of the rot that had taken root in his chest that first night in Lyari was being cleansed.
”Hamza, please, I won’t do it again..”
It was music to his ears. He felt as though he was floating. They left him conscious to be cooked alive. Donga broke open the lid of the last LPG cylinder.
They got out quickly. Uzair put his hand on his shoulder as they walked. He tilted his head in the universal ‘go ahead’.
Hamza lit a cigarette with his lighter, and threw it into the window of the flat without looking behind him.
He walked forward. He did not look back as the flat burst aflame with a great boom. He did not look back as that universally condemned sinner burnt to a crisp.
From here he would only go forwards. Uzair and him got into the front of the lorry. Donga stood up in the back.
Silently, Uzair reached out a hand and stroked his hair gently, so gently that it made something ache.
So this was life for Karachi city gangsters.
