S. Mubashir Noor
A Fortunate Flood
My father picked an unfortunate day to die. Now he was wrapped in a white muslin shroud and drifting in a sea of tea-black floodwater—not unlike how he’d drifted in and out of our lives.
He lay on a rough-hewn charpoy, its chipped legs buoyed by inflatable gray tubes from a tractor. A hemp rope was fixed to the charpoy’s rail, and its other end tied around my waist, which bit into my skin.
My toes wouldn’t touch the silt as I swam through cold, sticky currents. Would I ever find dry land to bury him? Should I even care?
Rescue workers had long left the area in their puttering motorboats that could barely seat more than a household of five. When I begged them to return, they gave me a once-over and said petrol prices had risen.
The drizzle fell like shards of glass. A deep mist choked the horizon, limiting sight to only a stone’s throw in any direction. Shapeless garbage bags bobbed about the water like toy ships with crows and rats for captains and crew.
My path had crossed others carting their belongings on makeshift rafts, some bearing brass pots and bleating lambs. Hollow-eyed families who looked about as alive as my father. I hadn’t seen any for a while now.
Brown outlines in the distance should be land, but I was inching no nearer. The odd gather of trees both lush and skeletal resisted the deluge, but they too appeared bent and spent.
I issued a sour chuckle. Dammit. What a crappy way to die.
I was five when the powers-that-be first promised that never again would the plains of Punjab drown in monsoon rains and India’s mischief of opening its floodgates. Thirty years had passed. Damn them all. They never built those damned dams. They never cared.
My father knew the score. He was quite the dime-store philosopher, insisting there was no saving this country. A fluke of fate had tossed it into our laps, he claimed, when we as people were no better than toddlers unable to control nature’s calls, much less run a state.
Not that he wasn’t an indulgent toddler himself. I’d barely seen him growing up. He’d abandoned us for adventure when I was still a child, leaving my siblings and me to work fields we could barely manage for pennies while our mother sewed herself to near blindness. Two days ago, he walked back in, all smiles, enthusing about making up for lost time. This morning, he was dead.
His last words were haunting, because I’d so often heard them as a child whenever he smashed to bits any clayware within reach. Sometimes in winter, when gathering firewood seemed like a chore, he’d light some of our clothes on fire for heat, but never his own.
“Kanjara, kee kitta ee—scum, what have you done?” he’d said, clutching his heart before keeling over.
What was I trying to prove by dragging his corpse along? That I wasn’t a monster? That I knew how to do the right thing? Would burying him honorably somehow make me a different man in the mirror? Shouldn’t I just release the rope and let fate decide for him the grave he deserved?
Maybe it was the whiplash of other memories half-buried that stopped me from letting go. The memory of a slim collection of mystery paperbacks he’d bought at the village fair—books that nightly soothed the aches of my daily toil.
Or the memory of when we strolled through wet thickets by the irrigation canal near the border, trapping frogs with flashlights and catching fireflies with our fists. Maybe I was just a sap.
A violent crack of thunder startled me.
I sniffed at the air. The wind now carried whiffs of sulfur and garlic. What gave?
A fluttering near my ears, then a swoosh.
I glanced behind me, my heart racing.
A bird about the size of my shoe had alighted on my father’s head. Its beak gently pecked and poked where the man’s eyes would be.
I tried to shoo it away with my palm, but each time it hopped out of reach.
A sleek chocolate-brown body, a black round head, and a white-tipped tail. Slashes of yellow skin around its eyes like a masked villain’s eyeliner. A mynah bird.
A talker, huh? Wonder if it could tell jokes. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to just fly away and choose the land of my choice without concern for borders or money.
“Kanjara, kee kitta ee?” said the mynah in a small harsh voice.
My arms went still in the water. I’d hoped to never hear the taunt again or relive it in my mind’s eye. My father shouting it a thousand times at my mother, spitting it at me when I brought home wilted vegetables, screaming it at God himself when the rains hollowed our roof.
“What?” I finally whispered.
The mynah’s eyes had brightened. Its beak was wide open, its body quivering. Was it silently laughing at my vexation?
My breath grew heavy. “Baa-ji?” I asked in a meek voice.
The bird hopped about the charpoy in silence. By then, the stench of sulfur and garlic had dimmed.
I turned around and shook my head. What was I hoping for? Some companion? A supernatural presence—my dead father’s no less—who could save me from suffering? Impossible. His remains were beginning to stink.
The sudden rush of adrenaline had focused my brain. I slapped my cheeks. Get a grip, Malkoo. Time to paddle onward, live to fight another day.
The mist was now thinning around me, but what it revealed was heartache—an endless film of forbidding water.
And yet, the currents were behaving strangely. They were going around in circles like a mini whirlpool, with the charpoy as their vortex.
A tingling started in my chest. I paddled faster to escape their orbit, but the ripples changed direction. What the hell was going on?
Ahead, a flat stump was now visible, no wider than a semitrailer and nearer than I could’ve imagined. A tiny island?
It wasn’t deserted. There was someone there. A man, or was it a boy?
A flicker of hope sparked in my heart. Another rescue worker? Could he help me get to higher ground? I could reach within earshot of the island in a few minutes. Maybe there was a God after all. Maybe there was a government after all.
I sucked on a piece of candy for the sugar rush to enliven my sore limbs. The mynah was muttering to itself in many voices, but I ignored it and started toward the island. I needed to be saved.
The island’s only resident was a very short man, no taller than a stool, with weathered features. A thick mustache adorned his humorless face. His head wore a coiffed puggaree, and his glossy waistcoat was reminiscent of patwaris—the oft-treacherous land accountants of Punjab.
He was seated at a small steel desk, poring over a thick ledger, marking it with a flourish of his … quill?
I frowned. Had his office been swept away by the flood, walls and all, leaving just him and the table intact? He looked nothing like the other rescue workers.
My curiosity was laid waste by the mynah alighting on my head.
“Kanjara, kee kitta ee?” it screeched in my ear.
I winced and let my fist fly to murder the fiend.
“Get lost,” I said as it hovered above me, its cry shattering the still. “Leave me alone, you dumb bird.”
An eerie whistle. The short man peered at me with binoculars.
The patch of water between me and the island was astir.
I gulped. Something was rising to the surface.
A concave mound many meters wide, patterned like a chessboard and of the ugliest gray, peeked above the water’s brim.
Goddammit. That thing was too large to be a turtle—hell, even an alligator. Was he some master criminal with a seafaring monster as his pet?
The mynah landed on my buoy with half a biscuit clenched in its beak. “Beware,” it said in a very human voice. “This is no ordinary mortal.”
“What’s g-going on?” I croaked.
A splash next to my arm. The man was glaring at me, frozen in a chucking motion.
I gaped at him. Did he hurl a stone? Why? “Hey, that could’ve blinded me!”
“I am the guardian of this sector. Where’s your ticket?” he asked in a demanding voice.
I cupped my ears. “Huh?”
The mynah clawed at my sleeve. “Kanjara, Kanjara.”
The mound was growing larger. My head was pounding with dread.
“I d-don’t understand. P-please help me. I need to bury my father,” I said.
His stony expression didn’t change. A sharp ridge had emerged from the water ahead of the mound.
The mynah snickered. “Who knew his people had been pressed into service too?”
The flat of my palm struck the buoy, making the mynah scatter. “Who the hell are you?” I asked the bird. “Can’t you stop talking in—”
“Impossible,” interrupted the guardian. “No ticket, no ride.”
I looked around incredulously. “Ride? Where are the boats?” My arms shot up in frustration. “Can’t you people get anything right?”
The mynah returned to the buoy and tittered anew. “You’re a stupid one, Malkoo.”
My jaw dropped open. “How do you know my name?”
More whistling. The mound was growing fast.
I nearly swallowed my tongue in terror. What province of hell had spawned this creature?
A head like a rock carved by a feral river; a jagged cliff for a snout. Its thick leathery neck met a massive black shell that bore knots like freshly kneaded bread. When it opened its maw, its razor-sharp teeth snapped like thunder.
“Kanjara, kee kitta ee?” the mynah screamed, twisting my bowels into a seekh kebab.
The guardian made a disgusted face. “What a foul pet. Now leave before mine tear you to shreds. You cannot pass beyond this point.”
My gaze flitted between him and the monster groaning ominously. I splashed floodwater on my face. This was still Pakistan, right? Not the land of the djinn or something.
Snatches of conversation, cheerful. The wind also carried the aroma of something brewing.
Son of a …
A white platform beyond the guardian’s island, not unlike a pier, floated in the sea of filth. Dinghies moored at its stiles.
Many silhouettes. People lounged on deck chairs; children crowded a steaming tea stall.
The dark cotton clouds had parted right over the pier to let through shafts of warm sunlight.
My hands trembled. There was dry land after all. There were people who’d never touched this filthy water. And here I was, dragging a corpse through hell. Why? What made them special?
The guardian tapped his foot impatiently. “Leave now, unless you want to die. The ark will be here soon.”
The creature growled on cue to show he meant business.
My forehead was clammy from sweat even though my toes were so cold I couldn’t feel them wiggle. There was no way past that beast. One lunge could take my limb, and he’d certainly puncture the buoys.
The mynah buzzed with excitement. It tittered, screeched, and hopped between the charpoy and my head.
“You can’t talk to my son like that,” it said, wagging its wing at the guardian, who recoiled in surprise.
Instantly, the bird hid its beak behind its wings and gave me a furtive glance.
I gawked at it, dumbstruck. “What did you just say?”
More sloshing nearby, and muted grunts.
Four haggard men, their heads down and wearing only singlets, were pulling along a wooden platform the length of four donkey carts.
On the platform was placed a couch, on which sat a smartly dressed man, his bejeweled wife, and two young children—all wearing fancy khussa shoes inlaid with mirrors, all bone-dry.
My teeth gnashed. A wadera, huh? Landowners who commanded vast acres of farmland. What was with the cold side-eye? Think you’re special? You’re lucky that I forgot my firearm.
The guardian’s reaction was the opposite of mine. He stood erect and saluted the family.
The wadera showed the man something like a glossy postcard, to which the latter responded with a small bow.
“Please continue, sir,” he said in an oily voice. “Have some tea at the station. Your ride will be along shortly.”
The mynah tsk-tsked as the procession pushed away. “You may as well kill yourself, Malkoo. No wonder people risked a creaky boat halfway across the world for a shot at a better life. It’s not like you could avoid death by water here.”
My temples twitched. “Careful. You’re starting to sound like my father. Maybe I ought to wring your neck.”
I glared at the guardian. “How does one get that ticket, huh? What if I promise you my kidney?”
His eyes grew softer, and he sighed. “You can’t buy this anywhere, son. You must be born in the right place.”
The water felt colder against my skin. What the hell … Born in the wrong place. Not worked hard enough. Not prayed devoutly enough. Not suffered nobly enough. Just ... born.
He’d returned to his desk and scribbled on his ledger. His pet had moved to the distance, though its deep-set inky eyes still fixed on me.
The mynah snipped at my ear. “Kanjara, you can’t turn back now. You must bury your father. Turn around and try another way,” it said in a strained voice.
“Unless you can grow wings the size of a truck, shut up.”
I scratched my arm. Survival was paramount, Malkoo. I should tip the corpse into the water and rest awhile before changing course. I was finished if night fell before I found land.
I glanced back at the charpoy. “Sorry, Baa-ji. I’d hoped to bury you honorably, but life is hard.”
No sooner had I reached for the rope around my waist than the mynah started going berserk—beating its wings in a frenzy and shrieking.
Then it dove for my arms and stabbed them with its scissorlike beak. “Don’t do that,” it said, dodging my attempts to swat it into the stratosphere. “You toss him and I’ll never be free!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I shouted back. “Who are you really?”
The mynah hovered before my face, wide-eyed and panting. “My real name won’t roll off your tongue, so just call me Chichi. I’m a djinn, well, at least a child djinn.”
A sliver of fear cut into my chest, but I was much too exhausted to panic. “Then what are you doing here? Can’t you find happier people to mock, huh?”
Chichi, the djinn turned mynah bird, shook his head vigorously. “It’s not my fault. Your late father was pissing under a jasmine tree one night many years ago, and I just attached myself to him. That’s our nature.”
Tch. That’s how he knew the man’s favorite phrase. “Sure, prey on the weak, why don’t you. Were you also responsible for his abandoning us?”
The bird shrugged. “Nothing personal, really. I just wanted to see more of the world.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. The djinn showed no remorse. He was so much like the man he’d possessed.
My belly burned with hunger. I raised myself to retrieve the meager bag of rations I’d stowed on the charpoy, when the bird jumped in front of my reaching hand.
“Sorry, I already finished everything,” said Chichi in a sheepish voice.
Then he swerved sideways with a yelp before I could close my fist around his head.
“What did I ever do to you, you scoundrel?” I spat, shaking my fist at him. “What? You came back to see me drown too?”
“No, no, I’m on your side,” said Chichi in a cracking voice. “You must bury this man on dry land. Unless the worms eat him, I won’t be set free. I can’t stay a bird forever.”
“Everything is about you, isn’t it? Get lost.”
The waves were taller now and rippling faster.
Loud whistling, not in the guardian’s shrill tone, but in a bassy timbre suggesting a steam engine.
Something was edging over the horizon—many stories high, shaped like a V with a bulbous bow, its tall pillars emitting the shadow of smoke. The ark?
The guardian stood with rapt attention, his shoulders pulled back. Even his creature stretched its neck out of the water to witness the scene.
After Chichi’s offhand remark, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the guardian was a bonna—that mythical race of diminutive thieves.
The waves grew choppier, more vicious. Soon, they would overturn the charpoy and pull me into their depths. I had to get as far away as possible.
“Sorry, father,” I said, untying the rope from my waist. “It’s either me or you. And you’re already where you need to be.”
Chichi’s feathers were now standing on end, like he’d been electrocuted. “Kanjara, kee kitta ee!”
“That won’t work on me anymore,” I said in a bored voice. “You’ve ruined my life enough. Now begone.”
“Wait, wait. You’re forgetting something important. I’m a djinn. I could easily possess you right now.”
I scoffed. “You want to drown with me? Is your kind that stupid?”
Chichi kept mum.
I reached for the burial shroud and tucked it tighter around my father’s frame. “How about you pay me back for the food by pointing me in the right direction, eh? Fly around a bit. Be useful.”
“What’s the point? Your chance of survival is slim.”
The waves were lapping at my chest. The whistling grew louder, and soon there appeared a mammoth wooden ship with bright fog lights fixed to its bow.
My pulse was frantic, but I formed a weak smile. “That’s the way it works here, djinn.”
I pushed the charpoy away and watched it dance with the waves.
Chichi wore a surprised look. “I thought you were going to shift to the charpoy?”
“Yeah … I thought so too.”
He hung his head and groaned. “Dammit. I’m stuck in this stupid meat suit.”
The ark moored itself to the floating pier, and soon it lowered steel ladders that were instantly surrounded. The chosen people were hurrying to board and shoving without reservation.
Someone fell into the water and shouted for help. No one looked. They kept climbing the ladders.
Well, that was it, I thought, cradling my chin on the buoy. When the wooden behemoth turned around, it would surely come my way. I’d run out of time. Hmm?
The creature streaked across the water in my direction. The guardian stood on its back.
“Oye, you guys want a job?” he asked gruffly.
I gazed at my father’s shroud bobbing in the distance. Thirty-five years I’d spent on the wrong side of every line that mattered. Thirty-five years playing by rules written by men on piers.
Rescue workers had considered me a corpse in waiting. The wadera’s cold stare explained my station in life. A ticket given only to those who’d won the birthday lottery. How preposterous.
My father had been right about one thing—there was no saving this country. But maybe there was saving myself.
“Do I need to sell my soul?” I asked in a tired voice.
“Very funny. I must steal supplies for the pier, and my replacement never showed. The boat is due for two more trips.”
“Wait,” I said, straightening. “You want us to guard your little island and shoo the poor people away?”
He gave a thumbs-up.
Chichi cackled with glee. “I can find a new vic—I mean, friend.”
I crossed my arms and faked a serious face, even as my heart was doing somersaults. “Aren’t you worried my poverty will stain your royal party?”
He laughed. “All that separates you is a change of clothes and address. How else do bottom- feeders rise to lead this country?”
His face darkened. “But don’t tell anyone,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. “Let them think the ticket is a birthright. It’s easier to control them.”
He passed me a glossy postcard edged in gold. It bore strange writing that came and went as it caught the light from different angles.
Chichi was fluttering next to my ear. “Hang on a minute. Where did you learn this ancient tongue?”
I stuffed the ticket in my breast pocket. Life made sense now. I was home again.
“You can count on us, sir,” I said, saluting. “My associate and I will make sure no serfs are allowed beyond this point.”
His suspicious look lingered for an instant, but then he turned around and jetted away.
I stretched my arms and yawned. “Do as you please,” I said to Chichi. “This is my best shot.”
The bird wore a puzzled expression. “I don’t get it. How can you change sides so easily?”
I hesitated. How indeed? Every man in the water thought he was different from the man on the island. But put him on the island, and he became the same man. That was the way of the world—the real flood to drown one’s vanity, the fetid water that cleansed the ego.
I combed my hair with my fingers. “You wouldn’t understand. I picked a fortunate day to live. Sometimes that’s all they ask of you.”
S. Mubashir Noor moonlights as a mediocre communications professional by day and crafts absurdist satire laced with magic realism at the crack of dusk. A Pakistani expat based in Malaysia, he enjoys photography, sharply sketched TV shows, and the fleeting euphoria of reaching his weekly word count. Find him on Instagram @smobynoor and on LinkedIn.
