More than six hundred students
and the faculty patiently heard the principal's invigorating speech on four days
in a week. Frothing at mouth the owner/principal of the school thundered and
warned western powers to desist from intrigues against Islam and Pakistan. The
students and teachers stood respectfully , feeling guilty for failing to match
the principal's fervor, undampened by cold wind of Dec and hot sun of June, for
renaissance of Islam. If once in a while a student collapsed , it was not due to
heat or cold. Feet went numb and failed to keep balance after long subjection to
immobility. (The small heap of flesh and bone was not interfered with till after
the end of the speech.) The students age group varied from four to sixteen ,
contemptuous disregard for age discrimination while preparing the minds for
higher purposes. The martial overtone of the speech interspersed with feats of
golden era of Islam never failed to stir Islamic teacher's very old heart. When
he nodded his head vigorously, the principal always noticed it and felt licensed
to indulge even more. Prior to` kindling the love of knowledge in the students'
yearning hearts warming them was essential. The conspiracies hatched by the west
against Muslims and lost glory of Islam were invariably the subjects.
Speech of the principal, a retired military bureaucrat, had different effect on
different groups of students. First to fourth graders looked terrified not only
because of threatening posture always demonstrated by the principal against
Yahood and Nisara(Jews and Christians), but also because of strategically
positioned physical instructors , shoots in whose hands immediately licked the
boys showing symptoms of getting restless. .Peon Islam Khan, incharge public
address system, being a constant victim of anti Islam forces earned sympathetic
looks of fifth to eighth graders. Ninth and tenth graders were bored to death
and wanted to drop dead.
The boarding school had been opened by Mr Saleem Malik with a view to catch the
windfall from a large number of students seeking admission in two renowned
institutions operating in the city. Shrewd businessman in him assured him that
he can easily pass for an educationist in a society where education's purpose is
not' to replace an empty mind with an open one' but with a conceited one. In
addition he had every intention of giving a taste, however bitter, of a public
school( privately run schools use word public to lure students who fail to get
admission in very prestigious schools run by the government) to the students
whose fathers toiling in middle east were in a hurry to turn their offshoots
into gentlemen, instead of waiting for three generations stipulated period laid
down by Bertrand Russell. Oil in middle east was not expected to last that long.
'I have never let my schooling interfere with my education' said Mark Twain. The
principal turned individual notion into group practice. People from all over the
country after failing to get their wards admitted in one of the two public
schools were grateful to get them accepted by Mr Saleem Malik. He assured them
that his school would provide the environments prevailing in the two
institutions only if they would bear with him for sometime. Some waited for as
long as a decade only to find out that their sons fell martyrs to the brand of
education Mr Saleem had chosen to give credence to his sincere ignorance. If
some had fits and lost their balance, local police officer,' convinced' of his
commitment never let the situation get out of hand.
As the interview had not gone well, gaudily dressed, Fahd's mother and father
sat on the edges of chairs ,looking anxiously at the principal and praying for
favorable verdict. Cowered and puzzled Fahd sat in her mother's lap
unsuccessfully trying to look away from the glib principal. When after waiting
for two hours they had been ushered in the office they had found the principal
scanning through some papers lying in front of him. They felt obliged to get a
few moments to adjust in the opulent office. . The principal had motioned them
to sit down without looking up. He had kept on assessing Fahd's test results
lying on the table in hushed silence while Fahd's parents , using sign language,
had done utmost to prevent Fahd from indulging in sacrilege of making a sound.
When after an eternity he raised his head it was only to make them feel more
ashamed.
The principal had started by chastising the parents for daring to dump the mess
of a child in his education haven. The child had done poorly in the tests given
to him by the vice principal). He made them thoroughly pay metaphorically first)
for not having prepared their four years old for the tests devised by a team of
senior professors at Cambridge University and almost eliminating every chance of
his becoming Pakistani elite 'in due course of time', His feigned reluctance to
admit the child in his great public school initially chilled culpable parents'
spines. They felt Fahd's great career to be on the rocks. But when he ultimately
condescended to bestow lineage of nobility on the family, the parents all but
collapsed under the heavy boulder of gratitude. At this moment a liveried burly
peon entered the office and snatched away Fahd as if from kidnappers. Fahd's
wailing occasioned a broad smile on his parents faces because it seemed
synonymous with birth pangs of a great career. They were told that they were not
allowed to visit during a ( breaking) period of three months, for humans as
species have always proved to be more stubborn than horses.
Fahd learnt to fend for himself in the boarding as he grew. He learnt to acquit
' himself well in the only toilet for sixty boys, in sixty seconds, the time
allocated for each boy in the morning and compliance ensured by his fat matron
entrenched in a chair just outside the toilet, holding conspicuously a stop
watch in her hand. He sat every day in a class of fifty, undisturbed by the
stench, an inevitable consequence of once a week bath facility. He could not
understand in the beginning why his lady teacher stood very close to the open
door even in freezing cold of December.
It was swimming gala week, another indispensable hurly-burly of public school
ambitions. Water was filled in the pool only ten days prior to final competition
so that contesters could practise. Rain-water frogs were not banished for ten
days from their permanent abode and were allowed to mingle happily with their
distant cousins. After two hours of participants' allocated time, it was free
for all. Scores of waiting boys , including Fahd by now in grade four, rushed
the pool from all four directions howling like red Indians and soon the
chocolate colored water held a head in every square foot. Some who didn't want
to venture far into pool, felt secure by hanging with the iron pipe, at the
brink, girded round the pool to facilitate slipping out. As the room for
swimming didn't exist, boys were content to remain afloat in their aquatic space
and talk to one of the heads littered all around in the water till the whistle
to mark the end of fun was blown.
The whistle was blown by a superannuated life guard who had been sipping tea
sitting under a tree when boys wallowed in tea colored water.. Dripping boys
started emerging from the pool after having fun for two hours, and proceeded to
their dorms after changing their trunks with their clothes in the adjacent bath
rooms . After giving a cursory look to the pool and scanning few bath rooms
casually the life guard slouched away. What he completely missed was a pair of
clothes and slippers of an nine year old in one of the bath rooms only to be
spotted by a boy who had come back to look for his missing pen.
According to post mortem report, Fahd had hit the pipe, with the crown of his
head while trying to emerge from water. After taking a lusty plunge along with
so many others he had aimed to surface as close to the pipe as possible . His
desire was to splash water with his feet while holding the pipe with both the
hands, to simulate swimming. Losing consciousness he sank in the murky water in
the proximity, but hidden from the view, of the dozens of boys reveling all
around him. His body lay on the floor in watery grave for more than two hours
while his class-mates , oblivious of great loss, continued to have fun only a
few feet above him.
Three days after, the principal addressed the assembly, keeping on his side the
specters of Fahd's parents in an unsuccessful and desperate effort to sound
earnestly mourning. He eulogized Fahd as a model student. How bravely he endured
canning when once brought to him (on the charge of spreading news of discovering
cockroaches in the food), silently shedding tears but never whining. He had been
such an obedient student and prospective soldier of Islam. At this moment he
broke down. Carefully bending over the mike, he wept bitterly , before stone
faced audience. It took principal some time to overcome his sniveling,
ludicrously enhanced by the loud-speaker. Islam Khan never failed to dump a
tissue paper on his hand whenever he stretched his hand in his direction without
having to look at him. He pledged again that he and his boys will continue to
offer sacrifices but will not leave the path leading to recover the lost glory
of Islam. Fahd's sacrifice would not go waste. Enemies of Islam and Pakistan
were destined to fail so long as mothers will keep giving birth to sons like
Fahd. His martyrdom will keep on inspiring even the future generations of
students. He named the dining hall after Fahd. Announcing free elementary
education for Fahd's younger brother, standing on the stage in school uniform,
when the principal looked at him, he further shrank from him. Looking confused
and holding his mother's frock tightly, he had already been eyeing him
suspiciously.