Saad Durrani’s comment brought me back to a part of the story that stumped Abbas and me initially and perhaps still does. When we reached the JPMC mortuary there was just one policeman, ASI Mirza from Gulistan-e-Jauhar’s police station, an “old ranker” as he described himself as he accepted Abbas’s light for his cigarette. We were standing outside and as part of the road had been dug up there was hardened mud that puckered the surface. A pool of dirty water and a half open sewage pipe were slightly visible. There was a single yellow streetlight above our heads, casting an eerie glow over everything. An Edhi ambulance stood outside, parked with its back to the mortuary’s gate with the dikki open as Nisha must have been wheeled out on the stretcher.
We entered the gate. And here I must let you know that this was my first time in a mortuary. I had seen pictures of the Civil hospital one as we monitor all wire service photographs that comes through each day, but I had never been in one. Let me tell you, they are nothing like the one’s on Law and Order or Six Feet Under. Abbas has been to this mortuary several times. He’s a veteran.
The JPMC mortuary is a forbidding place. From the outside it just has a small white gate which is inevitably shut. And whenever I have gone there, just on the outside, or passed by, an air of trespassing surrounds it. While there is no sign, it feels as if a very big one hangs over the gate saying: No entry for unauthorised people.
We entered the gate. The smell was overpowering. Oddly though, it disappeared as soon as we entered the mortuary. But from the gate to its door there was the smell of death. I couldn’t understand why it lingered there as the space was open to the air.
“Did you smell that,” Abbas asked.
“It wasn’t that bad,” I replied. I was glad there was a smell. There had to be a smell even though it was a smell that made me afraid. The smell of death is one that you won’t get anywhere else. It’s not a smell that you encounter in your daily life in any place, not even the Empress Market butcher’s hall where there is plenty of guts and gore. There is something so new about the smell of death for me but I am afraid it will catch me. Plus, it was not the smell of Nisha’s death. It was the smell of many deaths.
When we entered I was taken aback by the body. Her knees were bent oddly and her arms were folded over her chest. She was shriveled, as I knew that no matter how thin, this was not a normal body size. Later, we learnt that in a fire so much gets burnt away that you shrink from your normal size. Abbas and I didn’t talk.
Inside the small office adjoining the place where the body was kept on a wide cement and tile table we found Woman Medico Legal Officer Dr Farida. She was on duty that night and it was her job to do the post mortem.
We went back to the body and after Nisha’s sister’s father-in-law left we talked to the SHO who had come. “Show them the body,” he said to ASI Mirza who started undoing the top of the knot that held together the sheet wrapped around her. It always surprises me at how willing people (as in the police and hospital people) are to show reporters bodies. Often in the photographs we receive at the office on our emailed wire service you will see some hospital or police flunky holding aside the sheet and staring into the camera with the dead person exposed down below. It is as if in death nothing is hidden in Karachi. And while at Daily Times we never ever print photographs of the dead there are Urdu newspapers whose photoraphers scramble to get a photograph. To the best of my knowledge neither The News or Dawn print pictures of the dead either. There may be one exception for all three of us, and that is a suicide bombing if no other photograph is available. But this too is rare.
Someone close to Abbas died a long time ago of burns and I know that he would not have seen Nisha if he could avoid it. “There’s one thing,” he keeps saying to me. “Allah mujhe pani ki maut se bachae.” He says that when you drown your body becomes incredibly disfigured and ugly and smells to the high heavens. He’s seen drowning victims and I also know that he doesn’t know how to swim. Nisha reportedly told her friends that she never wanted to die a death from fire. I am floored by the terrible irony of these comments.
As I wandered in between these thoughts ASI Mirza had unwrapped Nisha’s sheet. There was a teenage girl standing next to me in addition to two under-ten boys. “Beta, are you related to her,” I asked. She replied that she was the SHO’s daughter.
“Oh, they’ll be fine,” he said. And it struck me how strangely the three children had been roaming around the mortuary. Not disrespectfully, but I mean, for God’s sake there was a body lying there.
I cringed as ASI Mirza struggled with the knot. Abbas was standing behind me. For a second I thought that I didn’t want to see. But I knew that I had to for this case. I was filled with trepidation – images of the flagellation in The Passion of the Christ made me recoil – what if there was something that would make me sick? I have a fairly strong stomach thought. Both of my parents are doctors. My father is a surgeon and my mother a dentist. And when a relative tried to commit suicide by slicing their throat open I had to stand there in their lounge holding a heated saucepan as my father stitched their throat up. I was holding the saucepan that had been heated for sterilisation. He kept putting the scissors and needle in it. So I’ve seen blood.
But this was not blood.
She was burnt beyond recognition. I stared at the high cheekbones that appeared even higher as her face had shrunk so much that her tongue protruded. Her skin had gone dark chocolate and in patches was yellow from where the fat showed through. Human body fat is yellow, jaundice yellow. Her eyes were open but only because the eyelids had retracted in the fire.
“There are no clothes,” someone said.
That’s when it started.
“She’s covered in a sheet and there were no clothes,” one police officer said. I forget which one.
Abbas and I looked at each other.
“What was she doing naked in the kitchen,” one of us asked the SHO.
‘We have to wait for the post mortem report,’ was what he said. I put this in single quotes as I can’t recall his exact words. But they were to this effect.
We walked outside.
“Her clothes could have burnt off,” I said.
“Hmmm. But then when you burn the clothes melt onto the body. There would be some evidence left.”
“But if she was naked…what would she have been doing naked in the kitchen,” I said. “Did the father rape her?” Was she being raped at the time? By anyone.
Abbas looked at me. We were discussing ugly things. We had no evidence. I felt like an amateur. Surely this was the job of the police. I comforted myself with the fact that none of this would get into print. We weren’t interested in blaming or accusing anyone. We just wanted to know what happened. The evidence would speak for itself.
Certain facts would come to light later on to clear this situation up but at that point we had a lot on our minds.
We waited. The post mortem was being conducted till about 2:30 a.m. We were growing hungry and thirsty. We sat in the car and played naughts and crosses on the misty windscreen. I beat Abbas twice and created a situation where no one could win in the third. We wrote our names out. I had just gone to the tenth of Muharram jaloos. “Ya Ali Madad” I wrote.
We grew tired and irritable. He got out for a smoke. My neck started to hurt from craning to see if anyone had emerged from the mortuary.
Finally ASI Mirza, the family and Dr Farida emerged. We waited for ASI Mirza to finish talking to the family.
“Yes, there is something definitely wierd,” he said to me and Abbas separately. “There weren’t any clothes.”
We looked at each other. “Nothing melted into the skin,” I asked. “No traces?”
I can’t remember what he said in response to this but he did say that he was suspicious.
We had to wait for the post mortem report.
(To be continued….)
