The bearded man said, ‘But surely there is someone here because the dog barks again and again.’
‘But where is the dog?’ asked the youth.
The question caught them unawares. No one had thought of this. Why had none of them yet seen a dog?
The man with the bag said, ‘Now the dog too has become a mystery.’
The bearded man said, ‘It isn’t the dog that’s a mystery; it’s the man.’
The man with the wounded head interjected in a tone of utter disinterest, ‘As long as you can tell the difference between the two.’
The bearded man ignored his sally and turned around. ‘Let us go back.’
‘Why?’
‘It is not wise to go any further.’
And so they turned back. They continued to walk in silence, and reached the spot from which they had started out. The youth sat down and spoke in a tone laced with terror, ‘Are we following him, or is he following us?’
‘What makes you think that he is following us?’ asked the man with the bag, fear in his voice.
‘I say that because, when we were turning back, I had felt as though someone were coming behind us every step of the way.’
‘Did you turn to look?’
‘No.’
The old man with the beard lauded the youth, ‘That was sensible of you, young man! One should never look back.’
The man with the wounded head, who had slumped against the tree as soon as they had returned, now got up with a start. He opened his eyes wide and stared at the youth. He said, ‘It happened to me too. When I set out to look for him, I had felt as though someone was following me with rapid, long strides when I turned back.’
The bearded man said in a worried tone, ‘But my friend, you should have said that at the time.’
‘I had forgotten it, but now that this young man has said it, I remember it.’ He stopped suddenly as though struck by something.
‘What happened? What is wrong?’
‘Wait, let me think.’ He tried in vain to remember something. Giving up, he said, ‘Friends, think carefully and tell me … when I was counting, did I count myself?’
‘Count yourself?’ the man with the bag asked in a daze.
The man with the wounded head thought for a moment, then said, ‘Maybe I didn’t count myself … Yes, I am sure I didn’t. I forgot to count myself.’
The other three were a bit flummoxed. They said, ‘So?’
‘So, the man who is missing is me.’
‘You?’ They were shocked.
‘Yes, me.’
They looked at the man with the wounded head in stunned silence. The youth was the first to come to with a start. He suddenly remembered that he too had not counted himself when he was counting the others. He said, ‘The man who is missing is me.’
Hearing this, the man with the bag too remembered that while counting the others, he had failed to count himself. He figured he must be the missing man.
The bearded man was lost in thought. After much deliberation, he said, ‘I counted all the others while I was counting, but forgot myself. So, obviously, I must be the missing man.’
By now everyone was confounded. The question was: Who was the missing person? The man with the wounded head was once again reminded of the time when he had gone looking for the missing person and had had to return alone. ‘At that time, I felt that he was somewhere close beside me, but I wasn’t here.’
The bearded man spoke as though he was trying to explain something very elementary, ‘But you are here, my friend.’ Upon hearing these words, the man with the wounded head looked at each of his companions as though he could not bring himself to trust the bearded man’s words. Each of the men convinced him that he was, he was truly there. Finally, he drew a long, shuddering breath and said, ‘Because you bear witness to my presence here, I must be here. How sad it is that I must rely on the testimony of others for my being.’
The bearded man said, ‘Friend, be thankful that there are three men to bear witness for you. Think of those who once existed but whom no one bore witness for. Now they have ceased to exist.’
The man with the wounded head said, ‘You mean if you go back on your testimony, I will cease to exist?’
These words had a profound effect on the others. Each man had the lurking fear in his heart: Am I the missing person? And each man agonized: If I am the missing man, do I exist or not? Their eyes betrayed the fear in their hearts. They looked at each other, then haltingly, fearfully, voiced their doubts. Each bolstered the others’ spirits. Each bore witness to the others’ presence. Bearing witness to the others’ presence and hearing their testimony, they were content. But the youth once again fell into doubt. ‘This is very odd … just because we stand witness to each other means that we are … that we exist.’
The man with the wounded head laughed. The others asked, ‘Friend, why do you laugh?’ The man with the wounded head said, ‘I laughed because it occurred to me that I can bear witness to others, but I cannot be my own witness.’
These words once again left them bewildered. A strange doubt held them enthralled. They began to count themselves all over again. This time they began by first counting themselves in. At the end of each exercise, they were still befuddled and asked the others, ‘Did I count myself?’
First, one tripped the other’s calculations, then, the other tripped a third, and the third tripped the fourth person’s calculations. Finally, the youth asked, ‘After all, how many of us were there?’ The question pierced their hearts. Each one asked the other, after all, how many of us were here? The bearded man heard them out and said, ‘Dear friends, all I know is that when we started out, we were all accounted for and no one was missing. Gradually our numbers dwindled until we could be counted on our fingers.
‘Things came to such a pass that we lost faith in our own fingers. We counted our numbers again and again, but always came up one short. Then each of us remembered our mistake and started counting all over again to find that we ourselves were missing.’
The youth spoke in a disbelieving tone, ‘Have we all gone missing, then?’
The bearded man glared at the youth, angry at him for once again tangling the skein that had just been disentangled. ‘No one is missing; we are all accounted for.’
The youth once again asked in a coarse, uncouth manner, ‘But how can we tell that we are all accounted for? After all, how many of us were there to begin with?’
‘When do you mean?’ the bearded man asked furiously.
‘When we set out.’
The man with the wounded head stared at the youth. ‘When did we set out?’
The youth stared back at the man with the wounded head. His eyes welled up. He said, ‘I cannot remember when we set out. All I can remember is that the house was filled with smoke and my father was sitting on his prayer rug. His eyes were closed, his lips were moving and his fingers were on the beads.’
The man with the wounded head was still staring, transfixed, at the youth. Then he spoke yearningly, ‘Young man, you remember a lot. I don’t remember a thing any more.’
The youth spoke sorrowfully, ‘But I cannot remember where she was at that instant.’
The bearded man grew tearful and said, ‘If only we could remember where we had set out from, when and under what circumstances!’
‘And why,’ the youth added.
‘Yes, and why we had set out,’ the bearded man stressed, as though this was something he had momentarily forgotten and the youth had reminded him of it.
The youth scoured his memory and said, ‘If I had really set out from Jehanabad, all I remember now is that the rainy season had passed and the koel had left the mango orchards and the swing had been taken off the neem tree in our courtyard.’ He became lost in his own thoughts. His voice lowered until it sounded as though he were talking to himself, ‘But she continued to come to our house even after the swing had been taken down.’ And his thoughts took him further and further away, back to
the rain-drenched days when the yellow neem fruit carpeted the ground and when, perched on her swing, she would soar higher and higher and sing: Little drops of rain/My swing sways in the rain. ‘But she had continued to come to our house even after the rains … Yes, yes … absolutely … but where was she that day?’ He tried his hardest to remember. Then he grew weary and said, ‘I cannot remember where she was that day.’
The man with the wounded head kept staring at the youth.
The man with the bag asked, ‘What if you didn’t leave Jehanabad?’
‘What do you mean?’ The youth stared in open-mouthed surprise.
‘For instance, as our respected elder said, what if we had set out from Gharnata?’ the man with the bag spoke in a tone that implied that this was a ridiculously funny idea and that he was actually poking fun at the bearded man. Still, the youth took it seriously and pondering it, said, ‘From Gharnata?’ He thought some more and said somewhat sadly, ‘If I had indeed set out from Gharnata, I do not remember a thing.’
‘If we did indeed set out from Gharnata,’ the bearded man started speaking in a subdued tone, fell silent, then spoke haltingly again, ‘I remember it was the flush of early morning and the minaret of Masjid-e-Aqsa …’
A crack of laughter escaped the man with the bag. ‘The minaret of Masjid-e-Aqsa in Gharnata!’
Flustered, the bearded man lapsed into a nervous silence. The youth looked uncomprehendingly at the bearded man. ‘Masjid-e-Aqsa?’ he mumbled. Then he too fell silent.
The man with the wounded head could take no more. He said, ‘I am heartily sick of this. How does it help me to remember the conditions under which we left, or in which season, or even the name of the city we left behind?’
‘Yes, what difference does it make to remember those conditions or the name of that mosque.’ The bearded man sighed. ‘Still, it would have been nice if we could remember when we had left or where we had left from.’
‘And why we left,’ the youth interjected.
‘Yes, and that too.’
‘And also,’ the youth went on, ‘how many of us there were when we set out.’
The bearded man spoke in an explanatory tone, ‘Our numbers were just right then.’
The youth absorbed these words, then asked, ‘Was he with us when we set out?’
‘Who?’ asked the bearded man.
‘He who is now no longer with us.’
‘Who?’ The bearded man looked astonished. ‘There was no such person.’
No such person? One looked at the other, the other looked at the third. There was astonishment and there was fear among them. They sat in bewildered silence.
They sat as though they would never speak again.
Finally, the youth stirred. He pricked his ears, trying to catch a sound. The others saw him straining to hear something; they too strained their ears. They sat attentively, trying to catch the faintest sound.
‘Is someone there?’ the youth whispered.
‘Yes, my friends, there is someone close by and that is why the dog is barking,’ the man with the bag said.
The four men looked at each other. Then the youth spoke softly, ‘What if it is him?’
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
The bearded man glared at the youth, then stopped to think. Suddenly, something occurred to him and he got to his feet with a start. The others also stood up. They began to walk in the direction from which the sound had come.
The Wall1
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‘He is laughing.’
‘What?’ Suddenly, everyone turned to look at Gibran’s face.
Once again, Gibran strained his ears to try and hear something, then said, ‘Yes, yaar. This sounds like laughter. He is laughing.’
Everyone strained their ears to catch that distant sound and – with their worried looks and anxious silence – lent their approval to Gibran’s testimony. There was only one person who was not a part of this gloom. His silence was coloured by disinterest rather than dismay. Mandaris, who was the eldest among them, tried his best to not let his anxiety overcome his stature. With immense dignity, he muttered in a sorrowful tone, ‘He too …’ and fell silent.
Suddenly, a shudder ran through Ameer’s body and he got to his feet. His friends remained sitting and looked at him with questioning eyes.
‘I will go and get some news,’ he said and went away.
The others kept sitting silently. Dusk was falling. Their eyes followed Ameer, yet they could not keep him in sight very long, but the gathering darkness could not stop the sound from travelling. Their ears were tuned to the distant sound.
‘Now there is no sound at all,’ said Asahil.
Gibran cocked his ears and tried to listen intently. Agreeing with Asahil, he said, ‘Yes! Now there is no sound. It seems as though he has stopped laughing.’
Then they heard footsteps. They saw Ameer coming back. No one said anything. No one asked anything. The question lay not on their lips but in their eyes. Their questioning eyes surrounded Ameer.
‘But he is not there.’
‘What?’ And once again they were startled.
‘Yes! My friends, he is not there. I went close to that long boundary and looked from one end to the other. He was not there.’
‘So he too …’ Mandaris spoke in his majestic but sombre tone, and fell silent.
‘But where did he go?’ asked Asahil, sounding worried.
‘Where those who had gone before him would have gone,’ Mandaris answered gravely. And his solemnity seemed to have sealed the lips of his friends. All of them stayed silent. After a long time, Asahil muttered, ‘So many of our friends went this way and got lost. The strange thing is that every friend announces that he will go there and come back with some news, but the moment he scales the wall, it is as if a lock is placed on his tongue. And then instead of looking towards us, he looks in the other direction, laughs loudly and goes over to the other side.’
‘What is on the other side?’ Asahil asked.
‘The other side?’ Startled, everyone looked at each other with questioning eyes and fell into deep thought – everyone except Amasa.
Mandaris saw Amasa look unperturbed and asked, ‘O Amasa, do you know what lies on the other side?’
‘There is nothing worth knowing on the other side.’
‘Nothing? Then what does everyone go to look at, and why does he laugh?’ Ameer asked angrily.
‘He laughs when he sees there is nothing there to see.’
This enraged Ameer even more. He got to his feet and said, ‘I shall scale the wall and come back and tell you what lies on the other side.’
Worried, his friends looked at him and saw that he was on his feet and ready to go towards the wall.
‘Those who left before you said the same thing,’ Amasa said with a laugh laced with poison.
‘But I shall come back,’ Ameer said angrily and set off swiftly. Soon, he disappeared from sight as he had set off with rapid strides and the darkness too was falling fast. His friends watched him go till as far as the eye could see; then, straining their ears, they sat down in fearful silence and waited to hear the same sound that they had heard several times before.
Gibran tried to listen intently and then said, ‘There, he too …’
‘What? He too?’ The friends were startled.
Once again, Gibran tried to listen carefully to that distant sound and said, ‘Yes, he too!’
Each of the friends tried, in his own intent way, to listen to the sound and then spoke in fearful tones, ‘He too.’
And then the sound ceased. Gibran tried to cock his ears as best as he could, but he could not hear anything. Disappointed, he said, ‘Now there is no sound at all.’
‘That means he has gone,’ Mandaris said.
‘What else can it mean?’
Everyone sat quietly for a long time. Finally, Asahil twitched and jerked his body and spoke, ‘If only we had the tongue of Yajooj and Majooj.’2
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p; ‘How would that help?’ Amasa asked in amazement.
‘Then we would have licked the wall down at night.’
‘But then it would come back in place the next morning,’ Amasa answered dejectedly.
‘We would lick it down again.’
‘And the next morning it would rise again.’
Mandaris tried to intervene by speaking in his elderly manner, ‘Dear ones, do not fight amongst yourselves! Put your heads together and try to find a solution to this business of the wall.’
‘It would be better if we were to go back,’ Gibran said.
Asahil looked hard at Gibran and said, ‘What did you say? Go back?’
‘Yes, go back. Our safety lies in going back, or else this wall will bring terrible misfortunes upon us.’
‘Going back will bring terrible things upon us.’
‘Those terrible things will be much better than this, where one by one we will climb the wall with a prayer and a declaration on our lips, then laugh a meaningless laugh and, without uttering another word, jump off the wall to the other side. After all, what purpose can such an act serve?’
Mandaris drew a long breath and said, ‘Dear ones, I can see that this wall has erected walls between us. Before these walls rise any higher, we should find a solution to this problem. Therefore, my dear ones, I have decided that I shall climb the wall myself.’
‘Mandaris! You?’ everyone asked in alarm.
‘Yes, I … I shall climb the wall and bring you news of the other side.’
‘It is the same declaration,’ said Gibran, ‘which the others who have gone so far had made. They made the same declaration, but never returned.’
‘But I have thought of a way to return.’
‘And what is that?’
‘I shall take a long rope and tie one end of it around my waist and put the other end in your hands, and then I shall climb the wall. When I fall victim to the laughter and am about to jump to the other side, all of you must pull at the rope; that way I shall not be able to jump across, and will return with news of what lies on that side.’ Amasa heard this and laughed instinctively, but Mandaris turned his eyes away from him and put his plans into action. He wrapped one end of a long rope around his waist and tightly tied a knot, and gave the other end to his friends and set off in the direction of the wall.
The Death of Sheherzad Page 5