The Hangman’s Brother by David Sheskin

Minutes before his execution for blasphemy the brilliant Pakistani mathematician Zahid Abidi whispered into the ear of the hangman who would fasten the noose around his neck the proof of a long thought to be insoluble problem in combinatorial analysis that had baffled generations of mathematicians for almost 200 years. That evening the hangman shared what he had been told with his 21 year old brother, a student of mathematics named Behrouz Masoumi, who two years later published the proof in a prominent mathematical journal, and because of the latter at the age of 25 became the youngest man, but probably not the first atheist, to be awarded the Fields medal, which is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. Four years later, while attending a meeting of the International Congress of Mathematics in Moscow, Behrouz Masoumi lost his virginity to Ekaterina Anya Lenkov, a plump, bespectacled Russian mathematician who at the age of 32 had become the second woman to win a Fields Medal when she published a proof of Goldbach’s conjecture, an unresolved problem in number theory that had baffled the best minds in mathematics since it was first proposed in 1742 by the eponymous German mathematician     . When three months after their coupling Ekaterina informed Behrouz Masoumi she was pregnant, he reluctantly traveled to Saint Petersburg to live in the apartment she shared with her parents and two spinster sisters to await the birth of their son who would be named Mikhail Dmitry Lenkov Masoumi. A month after the boy was born, Behrouz Masoumi departed Saint Petersburg for Islamabad, Pakistan, ostensibly to be interviewed for a position on the faculty of mathematics at the National University of Sciences and Technology. In point of fact, Behrouz, who throughout his life had harbored a strong antipathy toward all religions but especially Islam, had since becoming the recipient of a Fields Medal been burdened with overwhelming guilt for having appropriated the genius of the executed Pakistani mathematician. No longer able to live with the mental torment the latter imposed upon him, as well as overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being a new father, one afternoon an hour before sundown he walked into the Grand Jamia Mosque in Karachi and activated a suicide bomb he had assembled in a boardinghouse in Islamabad, slaughtering a multitude of pilgrims who had come to Pakistan to celebrate the holiday Eid-el-Fitr commemorating the end of Ramadan. 

Twenty-two years after the bombing at the Grand Jamia Mosque, Mikhail Masoumi, who to the surprise of everyone, given the pedigree of his parents, had never displayed even a modicum of aptitude for mathematics, won the gentlemen’s singles title at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships to become the first male with a Pakistani father to become number one in the world in any sport other than cricket or squash. Of course what was really incredible was that Mikhail Masoumi had won the Wimbledon title playing with a prosthetic limb, which was the result of an unfortunate incident that years earlier had deprived him of his left arm. 

It would be something of an understatement to say that more than a few people were surprised when six months after Mikhail Masoumi’s victory at Wimbledon the following wedding announcement appeared in The Times of London.

Asma Abidi and Mikhail Masoumi

Asma Abidi and Mikhail Masoumi were married January 29 in London in a civil ceremony attended by family and a few close friends. The bride, 28, who for the present will retain her maiden name, has a Bachelor of Science degree in data science from the University of Cambridge, where she graduated at the top of her class, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biomechanics from the University of Oxford. She is director of the Elysium Institute of Biomechanics in London where she designs artificial limbs. The groom, 22, is the number one ranked male tennis player in the world and current Wimbledon men’s singles champion. He trained at the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow under the guidance of two time grand slam champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who is his current coach. 

The bride’s mother, who resides in London, is the prominent exiled Pakistani human rights activist Tahira Abidi, who for the past 20 years has lobbied against oppressive religious regimes. The bride’s late father Zahid Abidi was hanged 31 years ago in Pakistan for blasphemy when he was accused of reading a passage from Salman Rushdie’s controversial book The Satanic Verses during a lecture in one of his classes at Bahria University in Islamabad, where he was a professor of mathematics. 

The groom’s mother Ekaterina Anya Lenkov is one of only two women who have been awarded the Fields Medals. She holds the Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Chair in Mathematics at Moscow University where she specializes in number theory, a branch of pure mathematics devoted to the study of positive whole numbers. The groom’s late father Behrouz Masoumi, who was also a Fields Medalist, died 22 years ago in a suicide bombing at the Grand Jamia Mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. Through the use of DNA evidence Behrouz Masoumi was identified as the party responsible for the latter bombing, in which he along with 765 people perished and countless others were maimed for life. 

the couple met two years ago when the groom was referred to the Elysium Institute to be fitted for an artificial limb for his left arm which he lost as a result of a traumatic amputation. The latter occurred when Mr. Masoumi, who at the time was competing in a tennis tournament in Turkey, was one of more than 400 victims of a suicide bombing that took place in the Grand Bazaar Market in Istanbul where at the moment of detonation Mr. Masoumi was standing in front of a kiosk feasting on baklava.

The initial meeting at the Elysium Institute that culminated in the unlikely union of Asma Abidi and Mikhail Masoumi may be viewed as a most remarkable example of serendipity. Yet, if that be the case, how would one view the fact that two months later more than 2300 men, women and children lost their lives when the Neptune Queen, the flagship of the Five Seas Cruise Line, sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea five miles off the coast of Egypt minutes after an unremarkable looking man wearing a life jacket standing next to a honeymooning Asma Abidi and Mikhail Masoumi cried out “Allahu akbar!” and detonated a suicide bomb packed with four pounds of the plastic explosive Semtex?

David Sheskin is a writer and artist who has been published extensively over the years. Most recently his work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Satirist, Quarterly West, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Shenandoah.  His most recent books are Art That Speaks, David Sheskin’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Outrageous Wedding Announcements.

31 October 2023