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

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