How Grief Perishes

M. Hameed Shahid

Nabeel felt nauseated as he entered the emergency ward. The pungent smell of tinctures filled his nostrils and disrupted his breathing. His destination was Ward 3, but he had to pass through the emergency ward which was located at the entrance. Every time there would be a new case in need of urgent attention. Whenever Nabeel happened to be there, he would see people in a serious condition. They would be bleeding, maimed, seriously injured, in agony or in the throes of death. Doctors and nurses would be frantically trying to save those wretches. Sometimes they would be stanching a hemorrhage, at times resuscitating the heart by pressing the patient’s chest. Another patient would be retching to cough out the blood flooding his lungs. Do they survive? He often wondered. He hoped they did. But in his sojourn through the emergency ward he would invariably see a couple of dead bodies laid out on stretchers. They would be surrounded by wailing women, hysterical with grief, falling all over them. The men would be trying to extricate them, consoling and gently advising them to accept the grim reality with fortitude.

Nabeel wouldn’t think these thoughts when he heard the heart-rending wails. He would allow himself to ponder on these, only when he reached the long corridor of the cardiology ward. The reason was that he had seen many corpses here too, but the people accompanying the stretchers wouldn’t be mourning.

No sobs. No tears. Nothing. Their faces would be drained of colour. White like a shroud, they would walk by the stretcher reverently, as though they had been rehearsing this walk for years. And now that the moment had arrived, they would not undermine their long patient preparation by acting in an un-becoming way.

On his walk from the emergency through the cardiology ward, he would rationalize everything and his breathing would become regular. He had visited the ward about three weeks back with Nudrat. Nudrat’s father was concerned about her mother. He suspected that she had a heart condition. One day when she lay down for her daily siesta, she felt heaviness in her chest. A lump of pain and discomfort would begin in her navel and rise up to her chest near her heart and then subside leaving a trail of dull throb. Nudrat’s dad had her checked up thoroughly and only when the doctors had given a clean bill of health, was he reassured.
Nabeel never even suspected that she had a heart condition. He firmly believed that a cautious, patient person would never be susceptible to such an illness. Despite this belief, when he came to visit Nudrat’s mother, he felt very uneasy. On his second visit too, the nagging feeling was there. Perhaps what he had learnt was self-control and not acceptance and the ability to bear. Patience he had mastered long since.

Medical wards were ahead, Ward I to the right, II and III along the corridor. In Ward III in a private room lay his own sick mother. She had been ill for so long that he had virtually forgotten the times when she used to be healthy. After his father’s death, the right side of her body had been paralyzed and since then she had been bed-ridden.

In the beginning, she would become thirsty very frequently. Her throat would be dry; her stomach would churn with hunger. And she had been incontinent too. The wetness of the bed would slice through her back. She made desperate efforts to call out to her son, but incoherent guttural sounds would be produced. The effort would almost kill her. Her chest would be strained and her lower jaw would drop. Her frail body would double up.

At first he would respond with alacrity, but when this became a routine, he was a bit weary. In the end he actually had to drag himself to attend to her needs.

One day, when his mother was going through the same agonizing routine, the door-bell rang. One short abrupt ring followed by a persistent one. Nudrat’s distinctive trade-mark style. The sound terminated and silence fell. A long silence in which his mother’s incoherent sounds drowned. His heart missed a beat.

He had reached the front door before the sound had subsided. He opened the door but her demeanour indicated that she had not come to sit. She motioned towards the car. He followed her like a serf. He had no will in her presence and neither did she care for it. She was that kind of a person; confident, sophisticated.

She was not only exceptionally beautiful, material well-being oozed from her as a bubbling stream cascading down an incline.

On that day he returned home after many hours. The offensive smell of stale urine hit his senses. He looked at his mother. There was a little puddle of urine under her bed, trickling down to the door.

A gasp of remorse and grief burst out of him unintentionally.

No one wants to be grieved and no one can will grief away.

Time spent with Nudrat was euphoria. He was brimming with a sense of well-being. The fragrance-filled charm of the pretty girl evaporated from his senses. His mother turned her face away. His hands went about their work mechanically. When he had dried and changed his mother, he lifted her and placed her on the adjoining bed. He was shocked at how much weight she had lost during her illness. She was feather-light.

The way he had gone about the chores with tender, meticulous care had wiped away all the frowns of displeasure from her face, her disappointed demeanour cleared and her open, ever-fluttering eye was filled with tears of gratitude.

In the hospital corridor, ahead of the cardiology ward, where another corridor intersected the fist one, four benches were placed along the wall. Before entering the ward, he used to sit there for a few moments. Not initially, but now, after two months of his mother’s hospitalization he would always sit if there was an empty bench. The first time he had sat there with Nudrat when she had come to enquire after his mother, Nudrat was very concerned about the fact that the patient had a slim chance of survival. She never visited again, but whenever she called she would always show concern about the prolonged illness. The illness definitely had gone on for long. The bed-sores were not healing due to diabetes and her breathing had become laboured, wheezing gasps. She had been oxygen-dependent for some time; still every breath was an agonizing ordeal for her. The doctors performed tracheotomy and inserted a tube through her throat to facilitate breathing. No doctor would give them a clear picture as to when her lungs would resume breathing on their own. Sometimes they would sound very hopeful, at others they would seem to be on the verge of giving up.

Nudrat had given up on him too. Her parents had goaded her on. They had selected a very suitable match in their own family but they were helpless before their daughter’s resolve. They loved her immensely and did not want to force her. But the uncertainty of his mother’s condition paved their way in convincing their daughter. They fueled her doubts. A pre-occupied son, devoted to a very sick mother presented a bleak scenario. No one knew how long the ordeal could drag.

The doctors’ prognosis was that if the patient survived, she would need constant care and support. Nudrat was disappointed, dejected but the disappointing old woman’s son would glean out many hopeful strands out of the doctor’s talk.

For the next fifteen days, Nabeel waited for Nudrat. She never visited, but called him every day. She would want to talk about things other than his mother’s condition, but he would be so drained emotionally by the time he had tackled that issue, that she did not have the nerve to put her query across. A lovely girl, with life’s charmed vistas open before her, she did love him, but she could not live on hospital talk alone. And she could not wait endlessly. So the fragrant love inside her gradually wafted away. No surprise. On the fifteenth day she shrugged her love away. She rationalized that their love had outlived its span. She did call him on the two following days in an effort to drag him out of the depressing situation. He did not respond to her satisfaction and with a sigh she gave up on him.

Nabeel was not the son who would give up on his mother. He felt as though he was still a part of her; attached by the umbilical cord, curled up in her womb. Like Abbas Shah’s sculpture of quasi-marble in which a fetus was placed in the mother’s womb. It was Nabeel himself. He touched the translucent statue with curiosity. It was surprisingly light and shaky. His mother’s frame had also become light but it wouldn’t shake. When he looked at it, all sorts of fears would drift through his mind. He couldn’t even conceive life without this frame. But unstoppable time flew on. Nudrat had stopped calling altogether. He called her a few times but he was told that she was not in. One fine day she called to inform him of her engagement, unceremoniously. She did not even enquire after his mother. His heart sank. The shock made him speechless. Disappointment rent his heart. The lovely time spent with Nudrat floated through his senses like an elusive dream. His true love had abandoned him.

He survived. He had to, because he had no recourse. He was fully cognizant of what the doctors were saying. ‘Cannot say with any certainty, how long it would take for the patient’s condition to stabilize.’ Whenever the doctors tried to remove the tracheal tube, the patient’s body would go into agonizing spasms.

He sat on the bench and dozed. God knows how long he had been sitting there. His mother’s condition had deteriorated in the night. The doctors had re-installed the tube. The feeding-tube inserted through her nose was bothering her. Perhaps it had lacerated the delicate tissue inside and she was feeling burning pain. She would raise her shivering hand towards it again and again.

He told the doctor about it, who informed him that it was possibly a minor rupture which would heal in time. He advised Nabeel to ensure that his mother did not pull it out.

He felt like pulling it out himself to end his mother’s ordeal, but he controlled himself. He stayed awake all through the night. When dawn peeped through the window, he followed it out. He wandered aimlessly for sometime. When he returned, an emptiness had seized his being. He cast an empty gaze at the activity within the emergency ward. He found the wailing women vulgar and distasteful. ‘Will this sordid display bring back their dead?’ He laughed a bitter laugh to quell the question rising within.

One of the mourning girls was very beautiful, and the old dead woman she was mourning, very graceful. He gave them a passing glance and moved on.

Each time the passage through the emergency to the cardiology ward would be a painful one, but today, he was drained of all emotions.

He collapsed onto one of the benches and remained there. He had lost all sense of time.

A stretcher emerged from Ward 3 and he was jolted out of his stupor. He was curious to look at the corpse’s face. It was not of his mother. He slumped back on the bench. That was the first time he prayed for his mother’s deliverance from this pain.

And he prayed on till he had exhausted the cache of all the pious terms. He was suddenly destitute as if all the currency he possessed had been blown away. His incantation was incoherent gibberish. Words were like insects, wriggling in his mouth, stuck to his palate. Lifeless. His eyes were glazed. He watched but nothing registered. The mourners and the mourned lost distinction. Dead bodies were being transported in front of him. Instead of grief he felt relief, something akin to release. Perhaps this was an indication that he was still living. He could clearly rationalize that the people who had been attending to the sick and dying were finally relieved of their burden. A stench arose in him. He delved deep into his consciousness. He could see two corpses engulfed in pitch darkness. One was his dead love. He did not look at the other. He made a very sincere effort to shed tears but he was adrift on that wave of stench, gradually being carried away.



Translated from Urdu by Atia Shirazi

Portrait of a Woman

Azra Abbas

The first time when I knocked on his door, he opened it himself. He was an artist, and a well-known one. I used to go to his painting exhibitions often, but had not had an opportunity to meet him earlier. One day I called him up and made an appointment to see him. He was at the door. ‘So how are you? I’ve seen you somewhere,’ he said, standing at the door, as he combed his fingers through his hair and signalled for me to enter.

‘That’s right! At your paintings exhibition … I go often, very good strokes… your colours are very lifelike … it seems as if the strokes are applied involuntarily. But the movement in them indicates your skill. Each stroke is full of life … then your landscapes … it’s as if one is standing inside what you have painted.’

As I said this, I found a place to sit in his drawing room. He smiled and lit a cigarette, and gave me a cushion to put behind my back. I looked around his room intently. How fine all his paintings looked hanging on the walls. But one painting among them was very unusual!

‘Whose portrait is that?’

‘This … it could be anyone’s. If the one who drew it is alive he can tell; once he dies it will simply become a masterpiece from the artist’s easel. The one which startled you so … yes, whoever’s it is, it is very beautiful.’

The face in the painting was a woman’s but the features were so tangible and distinct, and the effect that spread across them showed that the artist had used all his craftsmanship to create it. It was a living, breathing painting.

‘But you can tell about it now… that…’ I asked swallowing hard, moved by the beauty of his painting….

‘Yes …. my wife…. was…. was…. that’s right….’

My ears perked up ….

‘Where is she?’ I asked with great trepidation because I could see a dark shadow coming over his face. He had lowered his head and was staring at the space between his feet.
‘The fact is that she did not want to live with me. That’s why she has started living with other people now.’

‘So she wanted to live with other people then.’ The ridiculous question slipped off my tongue.

‘No, another person wanted to live with her.’

‘So you didn’t want to live with her.’ I opened my mouth, and asked the question without even meaning to.

‘That’s not how it was earlier. Initially, she was the only one I wanted to live with. But gradually she started losing significance for me. Actually I consider a wife to be an insignificant thing, whoever’s she might be. When I got to know this woman, I had thought I couldn’t live without her. But as soon as she became my wife, I started to see her as just one of the many things around the house that I had acquired to meet my needs. A wife’s place seemed the same as the rest of them. One who would be there to fulfill my needs whenever necessary. That was it. My emotional relationship with her had come to an end. But she had also become aware of the value that I attached to her. Very slowly her attitude also started to change, although I would see her completely involved around the house. She would look after my patrons and even took care of all my own needs promptly. In her own mind, perhaps she was ready to go on living in this way, hence she very calmly went about keeping herself busy in the house. At the same time, she quietly endured all the activities where I would get romantically involved with other women. She made this part of her regular routine. I had observed her resignation to my activities and felt that if she wanted to continue living with me she would have to endure all that. But she would scrutinize every step I took. She was certainly not oblivious to what I was up to. Although she would do certain things to make me aware of her presence, I looked upon her as being unimportant to me, so that her only association with me was that she was my wife and a wife whose place was among the other items I needed around the house. Meanwhile, I would take interest in any woman who could not become my wife; whoever she might be; even if she were someone else’s wife. I would quickly get rid of any woman who approached me with hopes of becoming my wife. On occasion, this flirtatious habit of mine placed me in a dilemma, and when some women sacrificed everything for me and tried everything in their power to take my wife’s place, I would push my wife forward and she would take them away from me with great equanimity and occasionally some cunning. But it wasn’t as if she wasn’t upset by these actions of mine. There were times when she tried to make me realize and punish me for this behaviour by not coming to me in bed. But this method often did not have any effect on me. Sometimes, apparently unaware of it, she would start cavorting with me in such a manner that would leave me completely bewildered. Thus, gradually our relationship was taking on a strange dimension. She would sometimes become my friend and sometimes be a stranger to me, and sometimes she would be there for me when I returned home without having satisfied my sexual needs. She could tell when things were thus, and would yield to me with all her energy. I also felt as if she was telling me again and again that she was not unimportant. That she was not just my wife whom I could simply place alongside the other articles around the house and forget.

And then one day, when an admirer of my work, like you, came to see me, my wife looked after him as was her norm, because it was part of her daily routine to be hospitable to all my patrons. ‘This is my wife.’ I had introduced her with my characteristically exaggerated aloofness. That was how I always introduced her to strangers. ‘Okay go and get some tea.’ And she would run to go and greet my patrons laden with goodies, like a dutiful and obedient wife. The same thing happened that day.

I spent a long time talking to my guest. My wife kept coming in with water, tea and snacks. But in the meantime I don’t know what happened and how his attention focused on my wife. I was watching too. She also started coming into the room more frequently. My guest would sneak a glance at my wife. Who knows what that look was. That made my wife aware of being watched. Then that patron started coming to my house very frequently, but now my wife was included in his admiration. He would pass some comment praising her cooking, her clothes or her gait every time. At such moments, I would see her blush in the same manner as she used to, at the beginning of our relationship, but I still did not attach enough importance to my wife, to put an end to this interaction. In my eyes she was a good hostess. But I was shocked out of this spell one day. That day I watched my wife greet and entertain my patron in a different manner. She wasn’t wearing her everyday clothes that day; instead I found her all dressed up and carefully groomed. I didn’t make much of this initially, but then I saw that when she bent down to hand my patron a cup of tea, she made a conspicuous but unsuccessful show of hiding her breasts. She was discovering a new manner of exposing herself, and I could see the same glimmer in my patron’s eyes that came into mine when I beheld other women. I was looking at all this apathetically. All this was also insignificant for me. I had been in similar situations so many times. Additionally, I no longer saw my wife like this myself. She was not a woman, she was a wife, and a wife who was an object for me. Even my sexual relations with her, as I have described before, had become as much a part of my daily rituals as brushing my teeth or changing my clothes. My paintings got more attention than this. She had also got used to this treatment from me. When physical necessity took me to her bed, she also took off her clothes in the same way as she would give money to a persistent professional beggar to be rid of him. I never remonstrated against this behaviour either. Because her body no longer gave me the scent of romance that I could smell on other women, regardless of how far away they were standing. Only to fulfill a need. Once in a while when a flirtation with another woman did not happen to culminate in a sexual encounter, I would satisfy my sexual desire with my wife’s body, and unawares or not, she always fulfilled this need. That day I could see her body desperate to expose itself. Every coquettish gesture she made showed that she was making a futile effort of covering herself, and even my presence did not bother her at that point. At first it felt as if I had already seen that scene repeatedly, but then suddenly I discovered that this was the first time I was witnessing it myself, as an outsider. This was not someone else’s wife and that was not me. That was my patron. And this was my wife here. But I was looking at this scene in the same way as I would look at the strokes of someone else’s painting, trying to find new strokes that might be different and apart from my own strokes.

Then this scene disappeared from my sight. My wife was back in her old everyday clothes and got busy around the house following the same routine as before, and I was again forced to see her as an insignificant object at the dining table, the bed and in the studio. I saw the same expressionless look in her eyes once my patron had departed. She didn’t even give any justification for the fervour that she demonstrated in his presence. As if nothing had happened at all. In order to blur this scene, I also started to look at the strokes of other paintings. But this started happening repeatedly; my patron’s visits became more frequent. And every time I saw a heightened intensity in this scene. They were no longer bothered about whether I was present or not. And a new change was coming over me as new strokes were introduced to this scene. It was a very strange feeling. When he came to my house, I would stay in the same room where my wife was bent upon entertaining him. Something new was revealed in every new gesture and manner of hers. I would see the admirer fawning over her. Suddenly I felt as if I were that admirer. And she wasn’t my wife, she was some other woman. This sensation started to grow within me. As soon as the admirer left, I would grab my wife. I wouldn’t interrogate or question her; instead I would throw her on the bed and take the romance that she had started with the admirer to its culmination in a strange manner. This was no longer insignificant to me. She was also not my wife to me at that moment, the wife whom I used whenever the need arose and who cooked my meals for me, washed my clothes and looked after the affairs of my household. Now she was some other woman. But all this would suddenly end as soon as we had had each other. I would be the same as before once again and she would go back to being the same wife. Now I started enjoying this game. I started being restless for that admirer’s visits. And on the occasions that he was due to arrive, I would simply stay out of my studio. When he arrived, I wouldn’t open the door. I’d ask my wife to open the door. He would come and sit in the drawing room, and I no longer went to meet him as soon as he came in; instead I would look for ways to quietly enter the room where I saw my wife flirting with her admirer in a completely new persona. I would be thrown into a fury of excitement at every gesture of hers. I would look at all this secretly, as if she were putting up this entire show for my benefit. I would feel a wave of love rising within my body for her, which was the same as when I was trying to attract the attention of another woman. My heart would be ready to burst with love, happiness, grief and much more. All this was the same as the tumult when, while working on a new painting I would play with the colours and brushes for a long while. But all this while, the entire game would start only with the arrival of the admirer, and come to an end when I brought my wife to bed and concluded the game there and my wife remained exactly as she had always been.

But one day when my patron was due to visit, I had to go out for some important work. I tried very hard to be back in time but was unable to do so. All the while, I kept visualizing the romance between my wife and the admirer in all its splendour, and kept feeling all kinds of unknown sensations spreading across my being, and then I knocked on the door with great desperation and restlessness. My patron opened the door. I saw my wife standing behind him, looking at me as if I were a stranger, an intruder. I virtually pushed past them to get in, and ran towards my studio. Putting down the things I was carrying, I went towards the bed and called my wife in the admirer’s presence. She looked very different to me that day. An object of great value and importance. She came and stood holding the door. I stepped towards her in a sea of emotion. Come. But she looked at the bed and at me in a manner that showed that both had lost their significance for her. I tried to call her again. My whole being was ready to explode. But she had left the door and gone and was busy looking after my patron.

As I lay there, a strange notion entered my mind, an idea, a flood of such great intensity that it crushed my spirit. I wanted to see my wife in my patron’s house, and myself in his place. I got up with a start and went to my studio. That day I painted this portrait of my wife. That day, that insignificant woman had seemed very important. And the next day I told my wife of my decision.

She is living with my patron as his wife now. The two of them are not in this city any more.’

I kept looking at the artist’s portrait for a long while; at the radiance the artist had captured from her face and hidden in this portrait; that couldn’t be forgotten once you set your eyes on it. It was the face of a woman who was smiling after having become aware of her glory for the first time.

Translated from Urdu by Samiya K. Mumtaz

Snow

Neelofar Iqbal

‘Name?’

‘Sher Ali. Sir.’

General Bubbar Ali dismissed the soldier with a wave of his stick, glancing at the man as he turned away after saluting smartly. Fit and healthy…now the name…the name was very wrong…Sher…Bubbar…Sher…Bubbar…the bastard’s name was a problem. Oh well, bubbar sher was always a bigger lion than the common lions. With that thought he turned to the Captain who had brought the man and said, ‘All right.’

The Captain brought his heels together in a smart salute, turned sharply and walked out of the room with his body held taut like a bow.

When Sher Ali enlisted in the Army, the villagers sent him off like a bridegroom.

‘You are now the mother of a soldier.’ The women didn’t even try to hide their envy.

‘It’s the will of God,’ said Sher Ali’s mother happily, but she didn’t want them to think she was a proud woman, so she quickly spread a brightly striped khes (1) on the cot and brought out the sweetmeats on an aluminum tray.

‘You’ll write me letters, won’t you son?’ she asked, wiping her eyes and nose with her chaadar (2) as she spoke.

‘Sure I’ll write, why wouldn’t I?’ promised Sher Ali before leaving. He could write well. It was only Master Karam Ilahi’s canings that had made him run away from school in the fifth grade, otherwise he could write quite well. And now he had got this job in the Army after a great deal of effort. Shakoora, one of the men from the village, had joined the Army and been made the batman of some Major. He was the one who put in a good word for Sher Ali with his Sahib and got Sher Ali enlisted.


1. khes: thick, printed bedsheet 2. chaadar: wrap
Sher Ali had asked many questions about the Army; he wanted to know all the details and at first Shakoora tried to put him off. He had a lot of standing in the village; whenever he came to spend his leave in the village, wearing his khaki uniform and carrying a bag, he was treated like a hero. Girls would peep at him from behind doors, and if they passed him outside they would be overcome with a heady mixture of embarrassment and glee, turning red and hiding their faces in their veils. They didn’t care if he was a Major or a Colonel or just a soldier. It was the khaki uniform…it did something to them. And the simple villagers would surround him and listen raptly to stories about life in the Army, which he recounted like tales of Sinbad the Sailor. Young men looked at him expectantly, their bright eyes reflecting the gleam of the brass buttons on his uniform.

When Sher Ali persisted with his questions, Shakoora looked right and left, lowered his voice and said, ‘We…ell, the officers live like kings, but the batmen…why don’t you try for another job?’

A job in the army and…no it wasn’t possible. ‘Look if you can’t help me man, don’t.’ Sher Ali had said, feeling hurt. He still wanted to join the army. Shakoora was thin and dark and he looked good in his uniform while he, Sher Ali, was tall and fair, and healthy. Imagine how good he would look; the thought made his head swim. And think of Munawwari, smooth as a butterball, his fiancée Munawwari, what would she think? And then finally one day, Shakoora helped Sher Ali get a job in the army.

He understood what Shakoora had been trying to tell him on the very first day, when he was made batman to a Captain Sahib. Sher Ali had never cooked a meal in his life, or even rinsed a glass for himself; his mother did all that. The Major’s wife was a tall and fair woman. She had two children who were four and five and a small baby.

‘Can you cook?’

‘No ji,’ (3) Sher Ali replied, a little surprised. He thought a batman’s job was to look after his rifle and his Sahib’s uniform and shoes.

‘All you batmen try to be very clever…never mind, I’ll teach you. For the time being you cut the onions and peel the garlic. There it is, in the vegetable rack. You can do the dishes later; they are all lying in the sink. Then clean the kitchen thoroughly. I’ve been without a batman for four days and it is really filthy. There, there’s the
dishcloth, and wash it after you’re done with it; don’t make a mess like the others. The last one was kicked out for that. He used to throw the dirty

3. ji: polite address
dishcloths over the wall. And once you are through with cleaning the kitchen then make the beds and do the dusting. I am expecting some guests at four…oh no, I forgot! You have to go to the store also. You can write, can’t you? Make a list…no wait. First do the dishes and the other kitchen work, the guests will come for tea…you know how to make tea don’t you?’

Within two or three days Sher Ali had learnt that he was supposed to cook, wash dishes, wash and iron clothes, dust the entire house, and look after the garden as well as the children. Begum Sahib had taught him how to prepare the baby’s bottles and wash nappies on the very first day. Sahib and Begum Sahib (4) went out most evenings, and it was Sher Ali’s job to feed the children and put them to sleep. He had to sit up late, waiting for the couple to return so that he could open and shut the gate for them, not permitted to go to his quarters till they’d locked themselves in their own room. In any case, Sher Ali soon became quite adept at all the chores and learnt how to perform his duties obediently like a good, exemplary soldier.

Years went by and Sher Ali was promoted from a Captain’s orderly to a Major’s orderly and so on, till he became a Brigadier’s orderly. In his many years of service, this was the best. There were two other batmen in the house besides him and the work was divided among them. The best thing was that the lady of the house had nothing to do with the housework; she spent the mornings at coffee parties and the evenings at the club, and the house and kitchen were the domain of the batmen.

Then Sher Ali was told that he had been promoted again and today he had accompanied Captain Sahib to General Bubbar Ali’s magnificent bungalow. He was really thrilled. It was a great honour to be appointed to a General’s staff, the high point of a batman’s career. He wondered about his new duties as he left the General’s room.

‘Follow me,’ said the Captain.

‘Sir.’ Sher Ali brought his heels together smartly and followed the Captain out of the veranda towards the driveway. Captain Sahib was walking towards the rear of the bungalow. There was a large ground at the back; on one side were many servant quarters and two large garages. There was a car parked in one of the garages and just outside, almost blocking the first car, was an army jeep. The big car mostly in use by the General was parked in the porch at the front.

A soldier was sitting with one leg resting on top of the other in front of the second garage. He was looking intently at the pictures inside an old English

4. Begum Sahib: lady of the house
magazine in his hands. His nose was long and bent at the tip with large flaring nostrils, as if he were sniffing at something permanently. He had high cheekbones and sunken cheeks. He had the bright and inquisitive eyes of people who know how to get enjoyment out of everything and every word. The moment he saw the Captain he stood up with a jerk, putting the magazine down on the stool and saluting sharply, then looked at Sher Ali with interest.

‘Come inside,’ said the Captain from the door of the garage.

Sher Ali moved forward and was about to enter when he jumped back involuntarily. Just inside the garage, tied to thick iron hooks with chains, were three huge, ferocious-looking dogs. The moment they saw Sher Ali they strained against their chains, and one of them started jumping and barking angrily. Seeing Sher Ali move back, the Captain’s voice took on an ordering tone.

‘Don’t…move forward…you are here for them,’ he said and then turned towards the other soldier.

‘Mir Zaman, he will be under your training for ten days. Teach him everything about the dogs. And you! Make sure you learn everything properly, and let them get used to you. They are very expensive dogs; the General is very fond of them. Mir is going to leave in ten days and it is now your duty. Right?’ the Captain said as he walked out of the garage door.

‘Sir!’ Both of them saluted smartly.

Mir Zaman cast a long curious glance at the newcomer before entering the garage again. He rested his hand on the back of the large white dog with shiny black patches of fur. Seeing him so close, the dogs grew excited. Tails waving, they started rubbing their noses in his clothes and hands. Sher Ali felt a shiver of revulsion go through his body at the sight of their wet noses and drooling mouths. One wolf-like dog stood on his hind legs and tried to climb on the man’s shoulders. The garage was resounding with the heavy breathing of the dogs, their wet red tongues hanging out of their mouths. Perhaps this was the way they showed their affection. ‘Shush, shush,’ Mir Zaman made as if to shoo them away and turned towards Sher Ali.

‘This one is a Doberman. A pure German breed…this one here, the one with the short tail…and that one over there is a German shepherd. His father and mother came directly from Germany. It’s a very pure and special breed. He is the pure bred son of pure bred parents that belong to the other General Sahib who gave him to our General when he was a pup. There is talk of his daughter marrying our General’s son…it’s a very special and expensive breed. They are worth over a hundred thousand rupees each. They go to races and large bets are placed on them…one has to maintain strict control over them. They shouldn’t get anywhere near other dogs and bitches or they may catch a disease. A doctor comes regularly to check them over…they have to be taken for regular walks. If you don’t exercise them twice a day they become lethargic…any way, you’ll learn the ropes in the next ten days. I haven’t served them less myself. You’ll have to learn how to cook their meat. Their rotis (5) must be thick…’

‘Isn’t there a cook here?’ Sher Ali was a bit confused.

‘Cook? Of course there is a cook, in fact there are two, but whom should they cook for? Men or dogs…the kennel? When you’ve been placed on duty over here, it is your job to do all the work here, isn’t it? I’ll also teach you how to give them a bath.’

Sher Ali looked at the dogs with awe…and they were awe-inspiring.

The Doberman’s neck and head were brown, the area around the eyes and nose was black and his back and hind legs were totally black…the elongated slanting eyes looked proud. His shiny velvet-like fur bore testimony to his good health and his pointed ears were held straight as if listening for some unknown sound. As he breathed through an open mouth with the tip of his tongue hanging out, one could see rows of sharp white teeth on either side… ‘they could rip a man apart,’ Sher Ali thought with spine-tingling horror…the other dog, the one Mir Zaman called a German shepherd looked like a wolf. Sher Ali had seen wolves near his village, and there was no difference between them and this dog.

‘This breed is a cross between a wolf and a dog…this is what you call a real dog.’ Mir Zaman spoke with great pride, as if he were talking of his own breeding.

It was higher than the Doberman with the same broad chest, narrow waist and proud eyes, but it was the third dog that really fascinated Sher Ali. He had never seen such a beautiful dog in his life. This one looked a little lighter in weight as compared to the other two but was of the same height. White as silver, with leopard like shiny black spots, narrow waist and a deep broad chest, the dog had a long pointed white tail. His bright round eyes were focused on Sher Ali who was totally awed by his beauty. Seeing Sher Ali look at the dog so raptly, Mir Zaman caressed the animal’s silky ears and said, ‘This is a Pointer from a family of very high pedigree…the breed is over three hundred years old. When he came here, his pedigree came

5. roti: bread
certified with him. The certificates are lying with A.D.C. Sahib; I’ll show them to you one day. It’s a cross between a Spanish Pointer and Bloodhound…General Sahib takes him along when he goes hunting…there is no other animal with a nose like his. He can search out game wherever it may fall. An Arab wanted to buy him for two hundred thousand but we didn’t sell him. He wins trophies in exhibitions…he’s a pedigree dog, pedigree…’ Mir Zaman said ‘Pedigree’ in a special way and then focused his eyes on Sher Ali’s face to see the effect of the words on him. He wanted Sher Ali to ask him what it meant. Sher Ali wanted to know desperately, but he didn’t ask, deliberately. In any case he looked suitably impressed and Mir Zaman continued.

‘They are not as ferocious as they look. They are very loving animals and would give their lives for their master. This German shepherd here…if its master dies he would stop eating and die…still, it’s best not to keep them where there are small children. They are unpredictable, and can turn wild anytime. They were left unchained every night in the beginning; then one day the Doberman got hold of the newspaper boy’s leg. If it hadn’t been for the four other men who were around at that time he wouldn’t have survived. He had to have fourteen injections. They are kept tied since then and only go for walks morning and evening. Thy have to be exercised, but they are good boys…don’t be scared…come here, closer…come on man…you have to get used to this now…good, good; that’s better. Come here to the Doberman first; pat him…oh come on…you are so afraid for your life…they won’t do anything, I’m telling you. They recognize friend or foe…see, they are wagging their tails. If an outsider touches them they will tear him apart and you wouldn’t see much more than a heap of blood and bones…come on…good…that’s it…come here.’

‘I say namaz (6) five times a day man, my clothes will get dirty…’

‘Well, you can pray or you can do a job. You are not the only one who prays. I used to say my prayers too. Now I do it only in the evening and night, after I am through with them. There, that’s a clean pair of clothes hanging over there…on the front wall of the garage.’

He gestured towards the far wall of the garage where some clothes were hanging from a peg on the wall.

‘Where are your quarters?’ Sher Ali asked and then his eyes fell on a cot placed against the wall at the far end and some rolled-up bedding perched on top.

6. namaz: prayers
‘My trunk is lying in the cook’s quarters. There are more quarters too, but other servants already occupy those. There is space enough, but the dogs’ servant must live with the dogs, mustn’t he? He has to look after them, make sure no one tries to steal them or hurt them…there are lots of envious people around…they are worth over a hundred thousand each. You can also keep your trunk in the cook’s quarters. Mehr Gul is a good man; make friends with him and you will get tea and stuff. Just keep two changes of clothes here in the garage.’

‘What about food?’

‘Vegetables are cooked separately for the servants, you’ll also get some otherwise go eat from the Mess and have your food allowance cut…you’re not new; you know all this.’

‘May be not, but I’m new here aren’t I? We had a very good time at the Brigadier Sahib’s…they never stayed at home; we batmen used to eat all the food. We used to cook lots of things…the begum never entered the kitchen or asked any questions…’

‘Don’t talk about these grand folk…they eat less and drink more!’ Mir Zaman winked and laughed.

‘There must’ve been two or three people over there, and here there are seven. Who’s going to feed seven men with chicken and game? Here they cook vegetable stew. You get rotis from the tandoor. (7) Eat your fill and be grateful to God.’

‘And they?’ Sher Ali pointed to the dogs, ‘What do they get?’

‘They…’ Mir Zaman stretched the ‘they’ expressively. ‘Don’t ever talk about their food… they are royalty…the princes of Caucasus… they get five kilos of meat every day and one and half litres of milk each. How much does that make it…? Ah yes, four and a half litres…then rotis are cooked for them and they even get special imported biscuits and that thing in tins, what’s its name…dog food. You ask about them? You’re crazy man…I say one should not be a batman, one should be a Doberman, then you get the best of every thing.’ Mir Zaman laughed out aloud.

‘It’s ok man…it’s just that I have never done dog duty before…the others also had dogs, but I never had to look after them, just go to my own quarters
and go to sleep. I swear I’ve never seen dogs like these before…I’m getting the shivers…they must bark at night, don’t they? Do you close the garage

7. tandoor: clay oven
door or leave it open? It must be freezing cold in here…’

‘It has to be left half open…if you close it completely they get frantic and make a lot of fuss. Bark? Of course they bark…Dobermans or desi…(8) a dog is a dog…he’s not going to speak English! In any case man, the problem is only in winters; they stay inside only in winters. Here they get the sun all day and are more comfortable. In summers they stay on the other side of the bungalow. They have an air-conditioned room there, you’ll be in heaven my boy…for free.’

‘Air conditioned? Oh boy…well done my dears.’

‘Well of course, they come from a cold climate after all.’

‘I come from a cold climate too, and you look as if you also come from a cold area…is that right? Never mind, at least there will be some luxury for us because of them.’

And thus Sher Ali became the batman of dogs.


__________________________


Maulvi Sahib (9) started his sermon before the Friday prayers. Sher Ali was seated amongst the rows of namazis. (10) He really liked Fridays. On Fridays he scrubbed the dog dirt out of his skin, purified himself and wore clean clothes. He felt really light-hearted on the way to the mosque. Today too he was here, head bowed, sitting with the other namazis. He had been away from the bungalow for quite a while now and a bit worried about getting back in time, but stayed on to hear Maulvi Sahib speak. Just a little while longer…Maulvi Sahib usually talked of many learned things, answering many queries in his mind. After spending all his time with dogs, Sher Ali really enjoyed this change on a Friday.

Maulvi Sahib had passed through Raja Bazaar on his way to the mosque today…this was the same day when a bomb had exploded in
a Suzuki parked in front of some shops there…bits and pieces of human bodies had got stuck to the shutters of the shops and the wires on top of them, and the road was stained red with blood in patches. The sole of Maulvi Sahib’s Peshaweri (11) sandal had inadvertently touched a tiny heap of clotted blood and was still sticky with it…he had tried to scrape it clean

8. desi: local 9. maulvi sahib: muslim priest 10. namazis: ones who are praying 11. Peshaweri: a special kind of sandal, originally from Peshawer
but the dirt and blood had stuck even faster. Human blood…Maulvi Sahib was still shaken and was getting very emotional as he spoke, his voice breaking. The word Asraf-ul-Makhluqat (12) kept cropping up in his sermon. ‘Think Muslims, think! Whom has God designated as Ashraf-ul-Makhluqat, just think about it.’

‘What is he saying? I am not very educated and can’t understand him.’ Sher Ali asked the man sitting next to him in a whisper.’

‘Ashraf-ul Makhluqat.’

‘Ashraf Mafluk?’

‘Makhluq, man makhluq.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning better than all beings, the best.’

‘Ok, ok…who’s the best of all beings?’

The man next to Sher Ali seemed irritated with the whispering. He wanted to hear Maulvi Sahib speak and this goof wasn’t letting him. He gestured to the man to keep quiet. Sher Ali fell silent and started wondering who the best of all beings was.


_____________________________


Sher Ali had now been looking after the dogs for four months. When he had come, it was November and the beginning of winters and now it was really cold. February was the coldest month in the Northern areas of Pakistan. The hills of Murree were laden with snow and winter rains had begun. Biting cold winds blew at night, entering the garage from the half-open door and penetrating through all corners. Sher Ali’s duvet and the extra blanket proved totally inadequate and he would shiver all night…and the dogs stayed awake. They dozed in the mild sunlight all day and after a short nap at night they would be wide awake. When a fellow dog barked in the far recesses of the night they would immediately stand upright. Their pointed ears erect, they would join in the chorus with great enthusiasm.

‘You’ll get used to it in a few days,’ Mir Zaman had said and it was true; he

12. Ashraf-ul-Makhluqat: the best and noblest of creations
was almost used to it. Still, he would keep waking with a start, then fall asleep again. Sometimes the noise was so loud he could not go back to sleep…perhaps it was a bitch calling out to them. He would fume, his thoughts going to his own woman whom he hadn’t met in months. Sometimes in this half-awake state, his mind would go back to the days before he enlisted. One day he had encountered the seductive Munawwari. Seeing him she had tried to hide behind a tree; there wasn’t anyone around and he had feigned a grab towards her…she had given a small scream and hidden herself further; he had gone along his way laughing. Then his leave-breaks became few and far in between, and these few visits had made him the father of many children. Sometimes he got the news that one was ill, or the other had left school, but he could do nothing for them. Once he joined the army, his family life came to an end. The officers grew angry at the very mention of leave. He could only send a money- order, and that he did. Now there was a letter from the village saying that his mother was ill. There was no hospital or doctor in the village; patients were put on cots and taken to the nearest town. Who would take his mother? He was her only son. He had planned to ask for leave when he was put on duty at the bungalow. Upon mention of leave Mir Zaman had said, ‘Leave? Here? My father died and I nearly got a lynching when I spent an extra day away. I don’t say that orderlies don’t get leave. Why should I lie? They do get leaves, but not the dog-wallahs …you tell me, if the dogs’ batman goes away, who’s going to look after them…the General? Forget it my man.’

He wrote home saying he couldn’t get leave, but hadn’t heard from them since then. He wondered if his mother was still alive.

One day, when Sher Ali got up at the crack of dawn, he started sneezing and his nose and eyes started watering. Every bone in his body ached and a lump of pain seemed to be stuck in his throat. He drank two steaming cups of tea and took two aspirins with them. When he felt a little better he took the dogs out for a walk. He thought it was just common cold and would get better the next day, but it became much worse at night with a high fever.

All night he trembled with cold, in the cold, piercing wind blowing in from the garage door till finally it was morning and the sun came out.

That day he felt especially weak but he kept doing his chore albeit slowly. He cleaned the garage, washed the dogs’ dishes and took the dogs out. Seeing the state he was in, Mehr Gul took pity on him and cooked the dogs’ food. He came back and fell in a stupor.

Mehr Gul gave him his own tried and tested tablets along with tea, but taking the medicine on an empty stomach made him vomit immediately.

‘Sher Ali, brother, sleep in my quarters tonight. It is very cold here in the garage; your fever will get worse. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the dispensary.’

‘No it’s ok lala, (13) the fever will go away by the morning…somebody has to stay here…tomorrow I’ll ask for leave. I’ll go back home and rest.’

Next morning the sun was out. He brought the dogs out and set his own cot out in the sun. He was in no condition to take the dogs out for a run; he’d been vomiting all night and was feeling really weak. After tying up the dogs in the sun he fell on his cot. The combination of high fever, the warm sun and the dispensary medication had a soporific effect and he fell into a deep sleep.

‘General Sahib is coming.’ An orderly shook him awake. He got up with a start and almost fell over with dizziness at the sudden movement, but took control of himself and quickly rolled up his bedding.

General Sahib was coming over to see the dogs. The other General was with him too, the one who’d given him the German shepherd. Sher Ali hurried as much as he could in his condition and pulled the cot away to hide it behind the trees and stood at attention next to the dogs.

Both the Generals were of more or less the same stature and walked in the same manner. Both had the same heads and necks, but where there was a glimpse of the bull dog and bubbar sher in the countenance of General Bubbar Ali, in his feverish state Sher Ali couldn’t determine who the other General resembled. That there was a resemblance with something he was sure, but he couldn’t see what it was. They were both laughing aloud at something and the other General slapped General Bubbar Ali as they laughed. ‘It seems both of them are… God have mercy,’ thought Sher Ali.

Both of them were talking in English and didn’t take any notice of him even though he saluted as smartly as he could, given his physical condition. Their attention was focused on the dogs, their faces red and eyes somewhat unfocused with the effects of alcohol. They looked at the dogs lovingly, gesturing towards them as they spoke in English. The beautiful Pointer was licking the extended hand of General Bubbar Ali with affection and the other General was totally engrossed in the German shepherd, which was ignoring him and gazing towards the little sparrow hopping on a nearby tree with interest. Sher Ali couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying except the words ‘one lac’, from which he gathered that either one of the dogs was worth one hundred thousand, or that, that amount had been offered

13. lala: respectful way of addressing
for one of them or perhaps there was a bet of that amount placed on one of them.

Then suddenly, with his eyes still focused on the Doberman, General Bubbar Ali spoke. ‘Do they go for walks every day?’

‘Sir.’ Sher Ali came to attention.

‘Bath?’

‘Sir.’

‘Is the meat cooked properly?’

‘Yes Sir.’ As Sher Ali spoke he sneezed, then tried to hide his running nose in his shoulder. His eyes were also watering.

‘What is the matter?’ The General asked the orderly standing next to him.

‘Sir he is very sick, he’s got the flu.’

‘Where does he sleep?’

‘In the garage Sir…with the dogs.’

‘Hunh,’ grunted General Bubbar Ali.

‘But that is infectious!’ The German shepherd General struck his stick on the ground with irritation. ‘It is bad for the dogs.’

‘You should not sleep with the dogs,’ said General Bubbar Ali dryly.

‘These people…’ The German shepherd General shook his head and turned his red eyes angrily towards Sher Ali for the first time. The cold eyes sliced through his body, freezing the marrow in his bones…he felt his knees weaken…clearly both the Generals were angry with him and he was sinking into the ground with shame. He wanted to ask for forgiveness but didn’t know what to say, so he stood quietly at attention and kept his eyes focused on the piece of straw stuck to the toe of the German Shepherd General’s brown shoes.
‘You sleep here in the veranda…watch the kennel…and you…you arrange for his medicine, he’ll make the dogs sick.’ General Bubbar Ali looked with annoyance at Sher Ali and turned to leave with the other General.

Sher Ali watched the Generals go, then looked at the dogs, then back towards the two Generals…they were turning into the driveway; the dogs, looking equally proud, were looking around them in an unconcerned manner. Then he walked slowly to his cot. Something circled in his vacant brain like a lost thought. Where did that come from? This was hardly the time, but thoughts do enter the mind like that. For no reason he thought of the word ‘Ashraf…makhluq…’ He hadn’t had a chance to find out what it really meant. How strange to think of it now…how silly.

Sher Ali slept in the veranda that night. The veranda was at the back of the house and faced the garages, and it was easy to keep watch over the dogs from there. It was open on three sides and the guest room windows opened onto it with a big door alongside.

His fever soared that night even though he had taken the two tablets that he’d got from the dispensary with a cup of tea. Mehr Gul brought him a cup of milk, but the sight of it made him feel ill and he returned it without drinking.

‘You are being really stubborn, brother Sher Ali; now listen to me and put your cot in my quarters tonight. You haven’t eaten anything for two days. In the morning I’ll take you to the big hospital, the C.M.H.’ Mehr said, feeling sorry for him.

‘The sky is black tonight, there are thick clouds and I saw some lightning just now, it’s definitely going to rain…see, the wind is blowing already. Come on let’s go to my room, we’ll make some space for you there,’ Nazir the gateman offered.

‘As if dogs catch people’s sickness…but there can be logic only where there is some sense …these people don’t talk sense even when they are sober…in their condition only God can drum some sense into them…’ added batman Alam Khan.

‘Oh man of God…Oh God man shut up. You’re going to get us all court-marshalled one day.’ Mehr Gul pretended to be angry with Alam Khan.

‘Lala Sher Ali why are you being so stubborn? Come on now to our quarters. It’s a cruel night tonight, you have a high fever. It’s not right to sleep in the open.’ Alam Khan cajoled.

‘No…I have orders from above, it’s not a joke; someone has to watch the dogs after all…what if something happens. It’s okay, not that serious; I’ve taken the medicine from the dispensary and I have a duvet and a blanket. A little help from God and the night will pass. Go on all of you, go to sleep and don’t worry about me…I’ll go to the hospital in the morning, take a week’s medical leave.”
Sher Ali wrapped the duvet around him, covering his head with the blanket, and tried to sleep. His temples were throbbing and head bursting with pain; perhaps the fever had increased. In a little while he started shivering and his body started aching terribly. His head was hot but his feet were freezing. He lay like that for a while, then moved the blanket slightly to peer outside. The lights were out in the quarters, it was totally quiet; they were all asleep. It was just the sound of the wind that kept increasing. Once in a while the crackle of dry leaves rolling in the courtyard added to that sound. The sky was pitch black with clouds and the huge dark silhouettes of the trees swayed in the wind. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky for a second, followed by a distant rumble. Then a rain-sodden gust of wind touched his forehead as it entered his duvet. He quickly covered his face again and wrapped the blanket and duvet more tightly around himself. Suddenly it grew louder and like a drill the cold wet wind bored its way into his covers. He curled up even more tightly and lay shivering. He shivered and shivered; then his body started growing stiff…the dogs were totally silent that night.

After a while the fever, or perhaps the medicine, made him drowsy and he lost track of time. Suddenly he became aware of great thirst. ‘Water,’ he croaked and tried to get up, but couldn’t move. Slowly he fell into a deep sleep again, and then he was not sure, but it was the sound of the dry leaves or his mother calling out that he heard. ‘Sher Ali, I’ve come to fetch you, come with me.’ It had been a long time since he had been to the village; he’d heard that his mother was in a bad way, but he still couldn’t go. Now he had to go…and he started following his mother quietly.

The weather worsened as he drew near his village and there was snow everywhere, lots and lots of snow…but his mother was walking surprisingly fast, as if she were flying in the mist. The more he tried to walk faster the more the snow slowed Sher Ali down. His big army boots were frozen. Snow was entering them from the top and soon they were full of it, his thick khaki socks completely soaked. With a great effort he pulled out one foot from the snow and took one step forward at a time… he could see the village at a distance; see the small houses with their brown mud walls and snow-laden tin roofs. Trees that appeared from the gloom were also covered with white snow, snow that covered his head and shoulders like a white powder when he brushed against their branches…harder, harder, harder. He tried to walk faster, but felt himself getting stuck in the snow. It was so difficult to pull out his feet; he had to use both his hands to pull one leg out when the other would sink in. And his mother, how fast she was going in front of him…a grey mist seemed to be covering the sky and the land…the sky was the gloomy dark colour of grey clouds from horizon to horizon. Then the dark mist rolled in and his mother disappeared from view; he was surrounded by the mist and couldn’t see anything, only a few glimpses of his village in the distance. There was no light in the village; it was enveloped in death-like darkness. Then he became numb with fear…it was not his village; it was some other village, unknown, abandoned, haunted…he wanted to scream, call out to somebody, but there was no one anywhere near him. He was completely alone and surrounded by snow. More snow started falling. His hair, his khaki coat, everything was covered with the stuff. The sound of blowing wind surrounded him and dainty snowflakes danced a macabre dance of death around him, like restive spirits. He was stuck to his knees in the snow and couldn’t move his legs at all. He was trapped and looked helplessly like a petrified animal at the falling snow around him.

Then he saw three shadows rising from the village in the distance. He opened his eyes to see better through the mist. Slowly they came near…they were three men wearing brown coats.

‘Here…I’m here,’ his lips moved but there was no sound.

One of the men saw him and started moving towards him. He was covered from head to toe in a blanket. As he drew near he seemed to become shorter and fatter. He came to a standstill in front of him and looked at him with fierce red eyes…then he started barking. He barked as he scolded him, or perhaps scolded him as he barked; Sher Ali couldn’t really tell. He tried to open his eyes wider…he couldn’t make out whether it was the brown fur of the German shepherd or the General’s khaki uniform…and those bright shiny things; were they the brass tacks on the Doberman’s collar or the medals on the General’s chest. He tried to salute, but was stuck in the snow up to his shoulders and his arms were stuck to his sides. He couldn’t salute. He looked with faltering eyes. It was the Doberman in front of him, or maybe it was the General…

‘Please save me…for God’s sake…it is you isn’t it…the same…Ashraf…Ashraf …’

‘Yes the same.’ The Doberman turned his proud eyes towards him pityingly.

‘I understand, yes I understand now…I understand.’ He spoke through frozen lips and through dimming eyes looked around him. There was nothing but snow, lots of snow all around.



Translated from Urdu by Saba Ansari

In Search of the Seven-coloured Bird

Rasheed Amjad

It was over breakfast that he had thought of getting the old string cot standing on the back terrace, re-strung. They had disposed off a lot of their old things when they moved to this new house. Somehow this string cot had got here. For a couple of days they had used it to sit in the sun on the back terrace. Then life became so busy that basking in the sun became a rare treat. The cot had been strung with coarse hand-spun tape. Ravished by the rains and the sun, the coarse tapes soon gave way to hanging listlessly. Then one day his elder son ripped off the hanging strips of the weather-beaten tape from the cot’s frame and stacked it against the wall. For years it stood there, just like that. Sometimes when he ventured on the back terrace he would think of selling it off to the ragman along with other useless things. Then he would forget all about it... Nobody had ever thought of getting it re-strung. It had no utility. There were brand new beds in every room and then there wasn’t any space either, for the string cot. But that morning on the breakfast table, he thought of getting the cot re-strung. Winter was just around the corner and it would come in useful when basking in the sun. They could at least use it on holidays. Eating in the sun gives such a lovely feel. In the old house they had often eaten on the roof, especially in the winters. But now there was a drawing room. There were tables and chairs, but nothing like eating under the sun while basking on a string cot, he reflected. He didn’t mention it to his wife because like always, she was sure to harangue him for useless spending. There was always an ongoing argument between necessary and unnecessary expenditures in the house. There was just enough money to go round. Wasn’t it enough, he would say, that they were living a decent middle class life. But the wife still had to get so many things for the house. There were curtains to change, bed sheets to buy; there were the kids with their demands of this and that. The old string cot featured nowhere in anybody’s scheme of things. Nobody in the entire household supported it, so he put off mentioning its repair until he could get the materials required for its mending and find somebody to do it. In the old locality the cot stringers would hawk their services every other day, but in this new place nobody peddled for such things. Why, there were no string cots in the entire neighbourhood. You had to go into the city if you wanted a string cot done. He thought he would take a round of the old city after work one of these days and bring along someone to string the cot.

He headed for the old city after office.

It wasn’t the day of string cots these days. The cots strung in coloured plastic tape looked so attractive. There were so many shops selling those near the overhead bridge. When he got there, the cots strung in multicoloured plastic tapes fascinated him. He got a flat refusal from the very first shop. The shopkeeper said, ‘You will get the tape but there is nobody to string the cot.’ He said that he would take the cot stringer with him and drop him back in his car.

The shopkeeper nodded his head in the negative. ‘Nobody strings cots these days. The handful who know the trade, are hardly enough to meet the demands of the city market. There is hardly any chance of your finding someone to do the job.’

He got the same response from the second, the third and the fourth shop. The disappointment put a damper on his hopes and the image of the cot on the terrace, strung in multicoloured plastic tape receded into a corner of his mind. ‘No hope at all?’ he asked the man in the last shop.

‘You might find somebody at the old bridge. I think you just might. There is a big market there,’ the storekeeper said.

Venturing into that part of the city at that time of the day wasn’t exactly child’s play, but he braved it. Maneuvering his car at snail’s pace through the narrow streets gave him an inexplicable ecstasy.

‘This is where life really is,’ he contemplated, ‘full to the brim.’

He reflected how, when a couple of years ago he had been living in the inner city, his own life too had been just as full. Overflowing to the brim. A never-ending melee. The camaraderie and warmth of human interaction from all around.

This new locality was all peace. Silence. Every person unto himself. The standard of living had gone up but it was like having moved from the bosom of mother earth and replanted in a pot. But this was his personal sensibility, for his wife and children were happy. At the mention of the inner city they would frown in displeasure, but he himself always found an excuse to wander into that locale. Even now, in spite of feeling ravenously hungry, he was getting a vicarious pleasure in inching through the streets.

The market on the other side was bigger. He parked his car with great difficulty. He got the same disappointing response from the first two or three shops: Bring the cot over.

‘This isn’t possible,’ he thought. ‘The carrier-van will not charge less than two hundred rupees for a one way trip. That will make four hundred just for cartage.’
.
‘So the cot can’t be strung.’ His heart sank.

In the twinkling of an eye the screeching bird on the back terrace took flight. The same old, cheerless terrace and the old frame of the cot against the wall.

‘All that trouble for nothing,’ he said to himself. ‘I might as well go back.’

‘Come in Sir, I have a great variety.’ He heard the voice coming from inside the shop before which he stood.

He went inside. The storekeeper was very good-natured. He began, ‘Take your pick. The rates are very reasonable.’

‘I don’t have to buy anything,’ he said hesitatingly, ‘I have to get a cot strung.’

‘Hum, you want to get it strung…where is it?’

‘It is a bit of a distance from here, but I can take the chap along and drop him back. I’ll get all the material from you. Just the chap…’ he said hastily.

The storekeeper eyed him for an instant, then, ‘It’s hard to get the chap these days but you take a seat. I’ll go find out.’

The multicoloured bird was back on the back terrace, after a swirling flight in the depths of the sky. The storekeeper left him sitting. He bid his time between hope and despair.

‘The chap isn’t available right now but you can get him early tomorrow morning. You will have to come and pick him up at six in the morning for if he starts work somewhere else…’

‘I shall be here … shall be here,’ he said quickly. ‘Tomorrow is a Sunday. It’s a holiday. I shall be here at six.’

‘Take the material right now,’ suggested the storekeeper. ‘I shall open shop late tomorrow, but the chap will be here.’

Putting the skeins of tape in the car he suddenly thought, what if the chap did not show up the next morning? These four hundred rupees would go down the drain.
He turned to the storekeeper, ‘Look, if tomorrow morning the chap doesn’t ….’

The storekeeper interrupted him midway, ‘The chap will be here Sir, but after six o’clock I am not responsible.’

His wife saw the material on the rear seat of the car as he parked it in the porch. Her glance took in the skeins. ‘What is that?’

He panicked. He would have preferred to have had his dinner first and then explain it all at leisure, but today his wife had come out to open the gate.

‘This…’ he moistened his throat with saliva, ‘I thought, that, that upstairs…on that back terrace upstairs…that cot, it should be re-strung.’

‘What…!’she shrieked, ‘that old cot. For whom…and all this material. How much did it cost?’

‘Not much…’ he stammered, ‘Just three, four hundred rupees.’

‘Three, four hundred…?’ she shrieked again.

‘Four hundred and fifty.’ The words dropped from his tongue in confusion.

‘Four hundred and fifty...?’ her shrieks gathered volume. ‘And the labour?’

‘Two hundred…. two hundred…’ He did not know what to say.

‘Six hundred and fifty…’ his wife slapped her forehead in vexation. ‘Are you in your senses…six hundred and fifty rupees for a useless cot…?’

He escaped inside.

‘Here we are starving to death and His Lordship goes around buying string. I was worrying why he was getting so late today and he…’

He tried to put in a word.

‘Enough, enough,’ she yelled in infuriation. ‘Don’t even talk to me…’

‘Look, please listen to me…’ over lunch, he tried to speak gently.

‘What should I listen to…?’ Her anger knew no bounds. ‘Your priorities are all mixed up. What are we going to do with this cot?’

‘Winter is round the corner. We will use it for basking in the …’

‘Who can afford to bask in the sun? There is hardly any time…’she cut through his sentence. ‘What are we going to do with this cot? There is no place to keep it.’

‘I have lost my calculator. There is no money for that and you have gone and spent four hundred and fifty rupees on the cot,’ his elder son complained.

‘Just be quiet, all of you,’ he scolded.

‘Why should we be quiet…?’ the wife’s temper shot up. ‘You don’t have money for the house and you go around spending it on this useless stuff… Return the material.’

‘That can’t be done…’ he ventured quietly.

‘Why can’t it be done…? Tell the storekeeper to take it back at a discount. If you can’t do it, then I will go with you. I shall talk to him myself.’

‘No…No.’

‘Okay, then don’t talk to me.’ She got up and walked away. Both the boys followed her. He was left sitting there, all alone.

‘I made a mistake,’ he reflected… ‘Really, what is the use? There is the whole month to go by and these six, seven hundred rupees, all for nothing…I could have bought the boy a calculator for five hundred…He reminds me every day about it. But what can I do now? The tapes can’t be returned and then …tomorrow.’

He moved his head sideways in annoyance…six o’clock in the morning …getting up late on a holiday …such a luxury. I have to get there at six o’clock. That means I have to get up at five. I really messed it up. He reproached himself. This was nothing new for him…he had often worked like that…do something and then reproach himself. ‘This is my fate.’

Despondence rent the air all day. Over tea, in the evening, his wife said, ‘I wasn’t going to talk to you but once again I am telling you, go return the stuff. You are always like that. First you do something and then realize your mistake. You ought to pay heed to me.’

He said, ‘It isn’t possible now. He will never take it back.’

‘I will talk to him. Be reasonable, after all what are we going to do with the cot?’

He moved his head in the negative, ‘I know he will never take it back.’

His wife stomped out in a huff.

It was the same at dinnertime. The boys sat through the meal with swollen faces. The wife didn’t say a word. He couldn’t be silent any longer… He said, ‘Okay, it was a mistake but what can we do now?’

‘This is an old excuse,’ his elder son remonstrated.

‘It’s a mistake each time.’ There was bitterness in his wife’s tone. After all when will you get some common sense? How did you ever get that idea about the cot into your head?’

‘Father has not been to the terrace since so many days…’ the younger son added his bit, ‘I wonder how he managed to see the cot.’

‘It’s all my bad luck...’ The wife slapped her head hard in exasperation. ‘I really don’t understand how this cot got into his head. I have been trying to get the exhaust fan in the kitchen replaced since so many days. It doesn’t work properly. There is no money for that and this cot…’

He said nothing. In any case what could he have said? He was guilt stricken at having wasted so much good money. What would it have mattered if the cot had not been mended? So many other utilities in the house required attention. But never mind, it was the same thing all over again. What could he do now.

Momentarily he thought of going back and trying to return the material. But the storekeeper... his attitude, the whole scenario. ...He was positive the stuff could not be returned. The only remaining option was that six o’clock in the morning….getting out of bed on a Sunday, a holiday …five in the morning. What a mess he had got himself into, just like that.

It was Saturday night. They usually sat up late talking of this and that, but the wife’s mood was so awful that he didn’t dare strike up a conversation. The boys went into their own rooms after dinner. The husband and the wife turned over to their sides in bed. It was tough getting up at five in the morning but he had to be there at six. The man was waiting. On the way back he said to him, ‘Better do a good job. This cot has created quite a problem.’

‘Don’t you worry Sir. I shall do such a good job that everybody will fall for it.’

When he got home everybody was still fast asleep. He took the man to the back terrace. He handed over the bag with the material and came into the kitchen, made a cup of tea for himself and settled down to read the newspaper in the lounge.

‘If you were going to have tea, you might as well have woken me up.’ The bitterness of the night before was absent from her tone.

‘Err…actually… I had to go very early,’ he said softly.

‘So you have brought him over.’

‘Forget it yar...now let it be.’

‘This is an old habit with you. First you do something and then repent over it.’

‘What can I do now…You can’t change your habits at this age.’

‘Darling, that is why I am always telling you to discuss things with me before you go and do something.’

He sighed with relief and went upstairs.

The chap was an expert. He was already half way through the stringing.

The multicoloured bird shone on the terrace in full splendour.

He dropped the man back after two or three hours. When the wife and his sons saw the cot, they were all praise for it. It looked like a seven-coloured bird dancing on the terrace.

‘That was a lot of money but it looks nice,’ said the wife.

‘It is beautiful,’ said the elder son.

‘It’s a wonderful combination of colours, Father.’ The younger son added. ‘I am sure they are your choice. The storekeeper couldn’t have given such a lovely combination.’

Happiness enshrouded him.

yar: a friendly and casual way of addressing someone
‘Now where is it to be placed?’ asked his wife. ‘It will wear out in the rains. Let us put it in the verandah for now. I will look up somewhere for it. Hey, it looks great.’

They talked animatedly over lunch. The cot crept into the conversation quite a few times and each time the colour combination got a lot of appreciation. After lunch he took a short nap and went out to see a friend. They started playing cards there. It was late evening by the time he got back. The wife was ready with a list of groceries. They were late in coming back from the market and it was soon time for dinner. He had just got into bed after dinner when he got a burning sensation in his chest. There was pain as well. His breathing grew slightly uneven. His wife called out to the son,’ Quick, get the car ready. Your father is not feeling well.’

The younger son also came along. Both the boys put him into the rear seat of the car. His wife took his head in her lap and began to recite something… He went into stress much before the car got to the hospital.

Perhaps it happened while they were putting him on the stretcher, or perhaps when they were shifting him on to the bed in the hospital emergency. Somewhere in between he lost the race for life.

They returned in the ambulance. The wife beside him and the sons in a car at the rear of the ambulance. All hell broke loose then. The neighbours came out of their homes. They had brought the stretcher from the ambulance into the lounge, when somebody asked, ‘Where do we put the body?’

Somebody motioned towards the bedroom and the old woman from the neighbours said, ‘There is no cot in the house.’

‘The cot...’ his wife lifted her head, crying.

‘The cot ...’ both the sons looked at their mother between sobs.

‘It’s upstairs,’ the wife’s sobbing turned into a throbbing pain.

They pushed aside the sofa in the lounge and made a place for the cot in the centre of the room. From the stretcher, his lifeless body was transferred on to the cot.

‘So important to have a cot in the house,’ a woman whispered into her neighbour’s ear, ‘and nobody has them any longer.’

In the lounge, the seven-coloured bird, its wings spread out in splendour, chirped and pranced. But its chirping could not be heard by anybody. Neither could anybody see its colours.



Translated from Urdu by Nyla Daud

Escape

Khalida Hussain


‘It is sinister the way the way events take shape. The way they are bound to. And post-event there is a general, resigned seal of acceptance. All arguments are suspended,’ she mused, perched on the edge of the bed.

Outside, the day, quite oblivious to its surroundings, proceeded at its own languid pace.

‘Whether someone’s boat arrives or misses it’s destination….’ A faraway snippet from a poem teased her thoughts and she emitted a subdued chuckle.

She had faced this situation for years…..ages…..centuries. But then what was fear? Bundles of fear hurtle your way. Some even materialize. So what? ‘A fistful from a granary.’ She surprised her wriggly daughter at having dug up an adage from a long-forgotten list. For example, the same fear materializing into an event.

She crossed her legs and began to swing them like she always did when she was idle. The wall-clock ticked away monotonously. A pleasant, orange glow emanated from the heater. The quilt on the bed had shaped itself into a tent from which she had emerged in the morning.

Time moved on but the event was still. ‘A lousy script,’ she burst out laughing.

‘Push the story forward. Events…..Events. At least ten solid moves in five minutes.’

But all was still. The hullabaloo outside had ceased, because the event had been sealed.

She thought she would lay herself down. She stretched to her full and lay on the bed, making a pillow of her arm. She was happy because she had overcome her fears at last. For instance, she was not scared at that moment, even though the calamity was still in passing. She picked up the half-read book from the bed-side. A wicked laughter bubbled somewhere within. So, a time to mull over your grievances. Vagrant poetic lines over-whelmed her. Good thing, she had the time to catch up on her reading; a respite that she didn’t usually get on a holiday. But by the very first line came the realization that it was eerily quiet around her. As though time had forgotten to pass. Because nothing, absolutely nothing was happening.

She bolted up. ‘So nothing is happening anywhere.’ She dragged a chair, just for the heck of it, opened the closet and then shut it with a bang. Lastly she knocked on the closed door. She studied the door closely. It was the first time she observed it in so much detail. Usually the day and night were enacted outside the front door, in your full view.

The inside view was so alien. She was amazed at the colour and the intricate carving detail. She had lived within but it had really registered for the first time. The same way we do not observe innumerable things which exist around us. She peered out of the magic-hole. The ornamental tiled disc from Thatta was fixed to the wall, deathly still.

She turned the lock, but the bolts did not move. No one had the keys to the door.

In fact there were no keys to any door in that house, though there were several keys and locks in the store. The locks lay in heaps and the rusted keys hung in bunches on the wall. The keys to the door and the closet also lay buried somewhere. Useless. In the same way that people and objects become meaningless for one another.

Perhaps she herself was one such key whose lock existed. Perhaps not. Or maybe it had hung in some strange bolt somewhere, for ages.

She extracted herself from the debris of old locks and keys and tried the door again. Wasted effort; it was jammed. It did not even budge, as if it were a solid wall and not a door.

That lock had been bothersome for quite sometime now. It always had to be wrenched open. She was hesitant to close it fully, but then in a fateful moment she thought she would lock the pleasant heat in and shut the freezing cold of the day out. She locked herself in too.

For some time a strange sense of calm prevailed. She was on her own. Away from all bothersome intrusions. She looked around and noticed for the first time that the door was the only exit from the room. The windows too were sealed with bars.

Man, in his foolishness builds fortifications with little realization that sometimes bliss lies in escape.

She suddenly remembered the food cooking on the stove. She tried the door again. She heard her little girl knocking at the closed door. The desperate cries of ‘Mama, Mama,’ rising in pitch.

She was shocked out of her trance. An icy fist of fear gripped her jugular. ‘Bunty, tell Papa that Mom is locked in. Tell Ali to turn off the stove,’ she shouted through the crevice.

Bunty’s cries continued but Ali was also at the door. ‘Don’t worry Mom. The door’s jammed.’

‘Won’t it ever open now?’

‘Papa has had a look. It will have to be knocked down. But the force will bring down the wall too. The roof might cave in. I warned you about the sub-standard construction. But don’t you worry.’

‘Now what?’ she enquired.

‘Papa’s gone to get the mason.’

Bunty’s fearful screams were draining her emotionally. She would sometimes put her ears to the door, sometimes her lips; sometimes she would bring her eyes close to it. A dull exhaustion was laying siege to her body. Finally she abandoned the struggle and collapsed on the edge of the bed. The swirling bits and snatches of long-forgotten poetry had subsided in her mind.

She tried to think rationally. How did this come about? The gravity of the situation dawned upon her. Being locked in was definitely calamitous. Long ago, she recalled that a child had been left locked in a classroom during the holidays. Maybe everyone had left here also, like the school.

It was deathly quiet outside. Was it really that difficult to open locked doors? The people outside must be experiencing an exhilarating sense of freedom. Eternal superiority of the free over the confined ones. The closed insides of rooms contrasted with the vast openness of the universe.

She shifted her posture. Bunty had cried herself to sleep. Ali had exhausted all means at his disposal and had left to fetch the locksmith.

A bitter chuckle arrested in her throat. No one in the whole town to open one lock! The day happened to be Sabbath and the guilds people had set their tools and implements aside.

She heard the prayer-call.

What a strange situation. Who knows the locksmith may never come. She put her tired head on the pillow. The calm that she had experienced on being alone had evaporated, transforming into rising panic.

‘Is this really happening to me?’ She tried to recall the details of the events before being locked within. It seemed like ages had passed. Bunty flickered in her mind like a faint memory. She tried to rise from the pillow.

‘When, oh when will the locksmith arrive? Would the house really collapse?’

It would become a struggle to save either her, or the house. What was more important? She gazed at the door-frame again.

Then a pair of very large shears zoomed in her vision. Shears which could cut anything into little snippets.

She thought how the crow was an imbecile. It was a mundane matter. What was the phrase, ‘the road ahead fraught with difficulties?’

She tried to fold the pillow under her head, but her arm, lifeless with sleep, fell aside.

‘Haw-haw,’ Jamal laughed his characteristic laughter.

‘Yes, the same crow. Once there were a crow and a sparrow. Both shared a nest.’

‘How absurd. What do the two have in common? What’s the saying, birds of a feather, may flock together…..’

‘I don’t know Jamal. Sometimes things don’t follow a predictable pattern. So listen…..

When the sparrow’s eggs hatched, the crow became greedy. He insisted that he had to eat the bird-lings. Poor sparrow. She hatched a desperate plan.

Be my guest. But why eat them raw? Why don’t you get a cooking pot and cook them first? I’ll prepare you the dish myself.

Away flew the crow, in search of a cooking-pot.

This is also known as strategy.’
It was deathly quiet outside. Everyone had left to search for the elusive maintenance man. The whole town virtually, in search of one such who works on holidays. Because a totally insignificant woman had been locked inside a room. Although she had absolutely no utility outside the room too.

She tried to turn on her side.

‘The crow went to a potter and said in singsong: You potter, I crow-person. Make me a pot and I’ll cook the bird-lings, la-dee-dah.

The potter gave the pat reply: Bring me the clay and I’ll make a pot for you.

See how people gain time? You couldn’t even do that. Very few people are smart enough to gain time. Do you hear?

The crow approached the clay: You clay, I crow-person. Give me clay. I take it to the potter. He makes a fine pot. Then I cook the sparrow’s darlings, la-dee-dah.

There is one fascinating thing about the crow-person. He is absolutely certain that he is a crow-person. Conclusively separate from all that which is not crow-person. But I am so unsure whether I have a separate identity, apart from that which is not me.

But hold on. Listen to how the story unfolds.

The clay replied: Bring me a deer who can dig me away with his antlers. Surely I cannot walk to the potter myself ’.

‘And now you will be directing the deer to the clay, ’ said Jamal.

‘Why me? The crow has set out since ages. It was some job tracking the deer in the expansive deserts and vast jungles where he was cavorting. The crow descended and perched on his antlers.

‘And beseeched, would you please dig up some clay, dear brother?’

‘Don’t interrupt Jamal. You did not allow me to furnish the la-dee-dah.’

‘Your utterance, by the way is grammatically incorrect,’ he said.

‘Focus on the quintessence. The real meat of the story. Actually we are all desperately trying to gain time, in an effort to avoid the inevitable. To stall the passage of time.
So the deer replied: I am weak and debilitated by constant lack of nourishment. I can hardly move. You may bring the hounds to tear me apart and then devour me. After that you can claim my antlers and dig up the clay.

Now it was the crow’s turn to approach the hounds:

You are the dear hounds. I am the crow-person. You eat the deer. I take the antlers. I dig clay, take it to the potter. He makes the pot. I cook the sparrow’s little darlings, la-dee-dah.’

The maintenance man had not arrived yet. She tried to gauge what time it was by peering through the crack in the door. She tried to lift the curtain, but her arms, grown heavy with inactivity, slumped to her side.

Seemed like the day had peaked and the evening was approaching.

‘What! They have not found a lock-smith yet?’

‘What a valiant deer. Gave his life for the love of the crow. Died a horribly painful death, devoured by the hounds.’

‘Do not interrupt, Jamal.

I myself am ravaged with hunger, whined the hound. Bring me cow-milk so I get the strength to hunt the deer.

Now the crow had to beg the cow for some milk:

Can’t you see I have gone without food for ages? Get me fresh juicy grass so that I am able to produce milk.’

‘So the crow went to the grass.’

‘Do not jump the story Jamal. It is in bad taste.

So the crow went to the grass and repeated his sing-song oriental litany:

You grass, me the crow-person. Please feed the cow so that the milk descends. The dog devours the deer. I take antlers, dig up clay and take to the potter. The potter makes pot. I cook the sparrow’s darlings, la-dee-dah.

The grass protested: How can I go to dear sister cow? You will have to cut me with a pair of shears. Cut and take me.’

Shears, shears, shears. Oh the darned shears with their long arms. Who invented them? Cut everything. Nothing is of any importance; cut through everything. Even iron. Because they are made of iron. So much so that love, sanctity, relationships, life, blessings; it ravages all. It is up to you if you want to hack things into large pieces or small snippets.

‘So, where did the crow-person obtain the shears from?’

Yes. The shears were the essence. The quest all along was for shears; all along, albeit through strange references.

‘Jamal you are clue-less. You don’t know where to find shears.’

‘You are an expert in the matter, not me. You have cut large ribbons. And other things besides, all your life.’

‘For God’s sake, he had to take shears from the blacksmith, who said: Shears can’t be made available just like that. Some on-going story, a liaison, a bond, a knot, some unspeakable matter, some moustache.

Forget this. I spoke just for the sake of speaking. Yes. So the black-smith said: Wait a bit. I’ll make you a pair of shears. Here take them.

What an impatient crow.’

‘Impatience? My word! Eons have lapsed. Very few could have mustered such patience as the crow. People like us would definitely have forgotten the object of our quest by then. You call him impatient!’ said Jamal.

‘Yes. I do, O and I shall continue naming him so. Or why did he ask the blacksmith to quickly place them on his wings, so he could fly them? The blacksmith also warned him of the absurdity of this act.

Dear brother Raven. The shears are molten fire. They will scorch you. Burn you to ashes, he had said.

Did not heed him. The fool. He wanted to hurry along. We all want to hurry along. With burning shears placed on our wings.’

The predictable happened. The bird-lings grew up and had flown away into the open skies. But the maintenance man did not turn up.

Heaven knows what day, what year the clock-hands depict.

Suddenly she heard foot-steps on the stair-case, coming to a halt in front of the door. ‘This is the one,’ someone said.
The door flung open on its own volition; without even a slight push. Oh how?

The maintenance man’s face is obscured by mist. In his hand he is carrying a pair of shears. One arm extends from north to south. The other runs east to west.

Jamal, Shahid and many other on-lookers stand around her. The shears meanwhile are closing down on her.



Translated from Urdu by Atia Shirazi

Bats

Hasan Manzar


It was the month of May. That night in Naples was not supposed to be cold. Both of us and our children were exhausted after the day’s outing, therefore we returned to our hotel before it went dark. The children instantly slumped onto their beds without taking off their warm clothes, socks or shoes. We also intended to sleep early but somehow were not all that sleepy.

After having tea, my wife sat down to write a letter. I was going through the tourists’ albums and photographs which I had bought from various scenic spots in the city. Besides, I had my own photographs too. I was labelling them with names, dates and places.

While writing the letter, the wife (since she was the only woman there, so instead of saying “my wife” over and over it will be sufficient to say “the wife”) stood up for a while and went to the window. She started looking across the road where a yellow and white board of Meusitieri stood on an iron pipe near the building of Credito Italiano. I glanced at her and started placing my photographs in sequence.

The wife had started writing another letter after finishing the first one. Again she stopped writing, stretched her fingers and went to the window. This time she stood there longer and returned gloomily.

When the third time she acted in the same manner and came back distracted I asked her, ‘Why do you keep going to the window? I smell a rat.’

‘Yes,’ she laughed,’ there is one’.

‘If you continue doing this, some Italian dandy might climb up the vines into our room.’

Our marriage was still young enough to suspect one another superficially. After a year of our marriage, when once she had gone somewhere, I started skimming through the book that she was reading, as even a short period of awaiting was annoying for me. On her arrival, I started turning the pages of the book and then with a surprise I said, ‘Oh, what is this paper?’

‘Must be a bookmark,’she said disinterestedly.
‘It is a letter for you,’ I replied. She was taken by surprise; I started reading it aloud, ‘Dear…. Hope you are fine. I think of you every minute, do you also think of me?’

She suddenly tensed up and tried to take the paper from my hand. The letter was for her but without an envelope. At the end there was a name which I had heard from her along with many other names just after we got married. ‘Our neighbour Nabila sang well, Tony played the mouth organ, Saeeda Ashraf was a position holder, Yousaf the sissy used to be amongst girls all the time and Naveen used to call him ‘uncle’ of our children and Margaret was always flirting around.’ This name was also one of them, yours J. KH.

She relaxed and in a split of a second snatched the letter from my hand. Then she sat on a chair and asked innocently, ‘Who J.KH?’

I said, ‘So soon you have forgotten the poor soul!’

‘Aren’t you ashamed to be saying such things?’ she glared.

‘Why should I be ashamed?’ I said. ‘It gives me pleasure to be married to a girl who was admired by others as well. I haven’t married an ordinary girl.’

Such an ‘after marriage’ period had not yet waned away.

Once again she went and stood by the window. I asked her in a louder voice this time, ‘Who’s there, who are you watching?’

She turned and looked at me and with a finger on her lips signalled me to come to the window.

The road was quiet. On either side there were small yellow trees. ‘Credito Italiano’ was on the ground floor of this three-storey building. A dim light sifted through the curtained windows. One side of this building faced our hotel and the other one was on the wide road with a zebra crossing and a traffic light. Right by the Meusitieri board stood a woman. She was wearing a grey coat and thin stockings which could hardly be protecting her from the cold. In a way, her feet and legs under her knees were almost bare. Her shoes were white. She was smoking, perhaps to keep herself warm.

We left the window. The wife said, ‘I have been watching her for two hours now. The poor soul! Keeps going to and coming back from the pasta coffee shop.’

Settling down on the couch we started talking about her. I said, ‘She is probably a spinster; it wouldn’t be right to call her a girl. She could be a night-walker.’

The wife said woefully, ‘Maybe the one for whom she is waiting has not turned up; some sailor or boyfriend perhaps.’

‘Lovers are never so late; neither the awaited nor the ones who wait,’ I said.

The woman looked tired. The wife said, ‘If she had money on her, she would have gone to the coffee shop. Then all of a sudden she said, ‘Go and bring her up here.’

I was shocked. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Just like that. I feel like talking to her. It is so cold, I’ll offer her coffee.’ When I did not agree to her demand, she said, ‘If you are not going, then I will. After all she is a woman like me.’

I did not stop her. She had put on her coat and was covering her head with her scarf when I made for the door and said, ‘You’ll be responsible for it if she has me trapped. I have all the weaknesses of other men in me.’

With a signal of her hand she told me to go out. There were hardly any steps down the third floor so I did not take the elevator. When after crossing the road I reached the bus stop, I looked up to see that the wife was standing at the window. I had always wondered about the interest of domesticated women in these unmarried, unchaste women involved in the sex trade. There used to be times when our domestic women stayed away from this other kind but were still curious about them.

I think that if in all those places where women fought battles and ploughed the fields and men fed the children and cooked food, there were such men who lived in isolated areas and walked the streets at night, the domestic males would be as interested in the life and ways of those men, wanting to probe their souls and find out how they talked, what they ate and drank, what kind of clothes they wore and how they fared with their wives.

It was the first time I was talking to such a woman. She saw me coming towards her and stopped to say, ‘Good evening Signore.’

I also said, ‘Good evening Signora.’

Then taking out my cigarette box from my pocket I said, ‘The sea wind is blowing, it is quite cold.’
‘Is it?’ she said, ‘Not that cold; you seem to be from a hot country.’ Like all others who live near seaports and sailors, her language was a combination of various languages. She could explain herself to anyone in the world. After a few moments I was also speaking the same universal language.

I gave her a cigarette, took one myself between my lips, lighted up both and turned to look up at the window. For some time I also walked with her from the pasta coffee shop to the Meusitieri board and back. I will not say that I was horrified. Deep down I was enjoying walking with a young, white Italian woman. There were some cars parked beside the road which were mostly Italian; some big, some small but all from the same stock.

I asked her, ‘Would you like to come with me to the hotel for an hour?’

She said, ‘Si’ and without calculating continued, ‘charges are the same for an hour or a whole night……. and the advance.’

‘How much?’ I asked. She stated a nominal amount and once again said, ‘An hour or one night, it’s all up to you.’

I took out the purse from my pocket. The notes were filthy and almost coming apart but for the cellophane that kept them intact. The amount was hardly enough for a dinner at a mediocre restaurant for the wife and me.

‘This way please,’ I said.

‘Signore,’ she said and started walking beside me. I looked up triumphantly at the wife. When we reached the hotel restaurant, she unwittingly turned towards the elevator. Some people who were seated around on different tables looked at us casually and kept on drinking and talking. I felt completely at peace and when the elevator started to move, I told her that my wife was present upstairs.

‘Is she?’ she lifted her eyebrows and said, ‘does not matter as long as you are paying.’

The wife came forward and shook hands with her and asked her to sit down. For some time the wife and I both did not know what to say. The woman was sitting quietly on the sofa. She had kept her hands folded in front of her and appeared to be tired. I will call her ‘the woman’ and not ‘that woman’ as there was no other woman without a name present in the room. The wife, the woman, the sleeping kids and I were the only ones there.

The wife asked me to call the room service and when the waiter came in, she said, ‘Coffee for three,’ and asked the woman, ‘will chicken sandwiches be all right?’

‘Gracious Signora,’ said the woman and the wife said to the waiter, ‘a big plate of sandwiches.’

‘Signora,’ he said and went away.

It seemed that the woman’s mind had gone numb. May be because of such an unusual situation or perhaps because of watching out alone in the cold night for two hours at the same spot, like a soldier who keeps vigil at some important place by moving like a pendulum, challenging any passerby who comes along with, ‘Halt, who comes there?’

One night in Rome, when I had gone out alone as the wife was too tired, a woman had called after me in Arabic saying, ‘Hello darling,’ and soon after, ‘hello love.’

This woman must be calling out in the same manner after every passerby and then watching out for the next one, if he should walk way.

I said she looked numb, not upset or disturbed. Wherever she was taken, she must be going without contemplating what she would see there; what sort of place or what kind of person her companion would be. Cleanliness, body hygiene, politeness or behaviour do not matter in this profession. She had started walking beside me without saying a word, just like a porter hired to carry luggage would have done. She had summarized all in her one sentence saying, ‘As long as you are paying, it doesn’t matter.’

The wife made a cup of coffee and offered her first. She said something which meant, ‘you first’ and the wife said in English, ‘no you take first, you are the guest.’

‘Guest? What is that?’

I told her that a person coming to see someone is a guest. She took the cup and said, ‘Oh I see, thank you Signora.’ Then the wife offered her the sandwiches. She did not hesitate this time, though her manner was decent as she picked up the sandwich and started eating.

As a courtesy, we both took one sandwich each and asked her to have more. The wife said to her, ‘It is a cold night and you must want to have wine; we both don’t drink so shall we get some for you?’

Her complexion had turned pink now and she looked younger. She said, ‘No…No.’

After wiping her mouth with a tissue paper she sat against the sofa back, relaxed. Now she was not tense anymore and not concerned about being with a man and a woman. No one deserved more sympathy than a prostitute in this world. I had said this many a time to my wife and in my own country when female beggars attacked our car, I used to get furious, saying that if they wanted to fend for themselves, they could but had become habitual beggars, wanting to eat without earning. If there was no one else in the car I would say, rather the wife would complete my words by saying that prostitutes were better than those beggar women.

After a while, in order to breed familiarity, we started talking about her country. ‘How beautiful a country it is; how pleasant the weather is; such fruits are not found anywhere in the world.’ I said that Rome was not built in a day. She raised her eyebrows, and looking at her I came to the conclusion that if the phrase were changed to ‘not built in a century’, it would not matter. She kept on listening to our flowery, flattering conversation without any reaction. We talked about Rome, Napoli…. Once she said with surprise, ‘Have you seen the whole country?’

The wife said, ‘A little, and you?’

She answered in the same language saying, ‘A little.’

We were not asking her personal questions, as we knew it would hurt her. Otherwise I thought that everyone visiting her kind must be enjoying the personal stories of these women in the amount that he paid for his pleasure. There is something melodramatic about such a thing, as if a client would pick her up from the market and offer her a home after listening to the story.

She got up and went to the bed where the children were sleeping. She kept looking at them for some time. Then she put her finger on their lips and kissed them one after the other. The wife went and stood beside her. ‘This is a boy.’

‘I know figlio.’

‘This is a girl.’

‘I know, figlia’, she said with a nod.

Then she picked up the poncho, which the wife was knitting and was almost done. ‘Yours?’ said the woman.
The wife pointed towards our daughter saying, ‘It’s hers.’

At once her face lit up. I kept myself away from their conversation, as I usually do, when women indulge in womanish talk. To this the wife always reacts with, ‘So are we supposed to talk like men?’

Then she asked the names of both the children. The wife asked her, ‘Your name?’

‘Salvana.’ She came back to her seat. Now some personal conversation had begun and I was expecting to be able to delve deeper into her heart to find out about her love for Italy and The Vatican. Was she also proud of her country’s past? But the language constraint prolonged the pauses in our conversation. Obviously, her profession had not invented a language for such talk. Ultimately she begged to leave. She extended her hand to pick up her long coat.

The wife said, ‘What is the hurry about? We sleep late; where will you go?’ The last query was spontaneous.

She said, ‘Home.’

We did not have the courage to ask what she meant by home. The wife asked if she cared for another cup of coffee.

‘No, thank you,’ she said.

Then the wife said as if mumbling to herself, ‘You must be scared standing alone on the road in the dark, at night.’

‘Paura?’she said.

‘Fear of the dark,’ said the wife.

She laughed and said, ‘Bats are not frightened of the dark. I am a bat, we are all bats.’

The wife moved back a step. She is always afraid of bats as if they were all vampires.

I helped her put on her coat. The wife went to see her off at the landing. She was sending her back into the sea of darkness. I went with her up to the place where we had seen her walking. I gave her a last cigarette. After taking a puff she said, ‘Thank you.’
When I came back to our room, the wife, as I had expected was standing at the window. She had been watching us all this time. I asked, ‘Were you keeping watch over me? But remember, there was no one doing this for years before you came into my life. What will you do about those years?’ She gave a last look at the road and said, ‘Gone.’

Her repressed emotion had left her exhausted. Tired, she sat down infront of me. I was thinking that a tourist who did not see the prostitutes and the down trodden of this resort had not seen anything of that country. The wife went to the children’s bed with dead feet. She started as she picked up the poncho. She held out the money peeping through it saying, ‘This……..’

Instinctively we rushed to the window to look for her in the thickening darkness but she was gone, vanished in the state of Rome.



Translated from Urdu by Mahjabeen Zaheer