The Death of Sheherzad

by Intizar Hussain

  On the surface, ‘Noise’ seems to be another simple story like ‘Needlessly’: two friends set out in search of a quiet spot and walk all across a city that is full of noise; in the end, they return where they started, in a café that is much quieter now and far more conducive to a quiet serious talk about serious matters, but by now the urge to talk has left the two friends. Has the noise in the city numbed their senses, or is it merely a pretext for their unwillingness to talk about dark things? The noise of the city camouflages their dark fears; the city when it falls silent can be a far scarier place than the ‘there’, the place out there where a war is raging and from where news trickles in only occasionally.

  ‘The Sage and the Butcher’ has been chosen for its emblematic quality; it represents the influence of the Jataka Katha on Intizar Husain’s writings and is one of the vast numbers of stories he has written on incidents and characters from the Upanishads and the Katha Sagar tradition of storytelling in the Indian subcontinent. I chose to include it here just to give another flavour and to show how Intizar Husain adopts diverse narratorial voices and makes them his own.

  ‘Between Me and the Story’ is not quite a story; rather, it is an essay on the acquisition of nuclear arms by the two ‘monkeys’ in South Asia. A sober reflection on the perils of the atomic bomb in the hands of nations that have not yet grown to full adulthood, it mourns ‘life’s dark night’ that has become ‘darker’ since the demonstration of nuclear capability. ‘The Death of Sheherzad’ mourns the fate that befalls all great storytellers when their raison d’etre is taken away from them. The stories dry up on their lips because the wellspring deep within them can no longer sustain creativity.

  Then there is the world-weary cynicism of having come full circle to reach one inexorable conclusion: we may have our dreams, but we cannot run away from our destiny. ‘Dream and Reality’ is a story rooted in the early days of Islam when dreams were pure and untarnished, but despots had already unleashed their reign of terror; the shades of a new homeland for the Land of the Pure talked about in Basti are unmistakeable even though the context here is the early years of Islamic history with the mention of real-life characters such as Ibn-e Ziyad. The flight to the safe haven that had been possible in the Prophet’s time, now simply brings one back to where one had started. Medina, the City of Light, and Kufa, the City of Darkness, stand out as two poles the human spirit traverses in its search for meaning. Sometimes, when evil has been let loose, this journey becomes not merely hazardous but futile, for as one tries to escape darkness, one simply goes around on a circuitous path from which there is no escape.

  Two stories that draw on ancient sources but tell startling modern stories are ‘The Story about the Monkeys of the Big Forest’ and ‘The Last Man’. The former shows a seamless intermingling of snippets from diverse sources that harmoniously come together to tell a cautionary tale: ‘This is the tragic tale of the monkeys of the Big Forest, the monkeys that have since disappeared without a trace. The place where the monkeys once lived has turned into a city full of human beings; where there were once tall trees there are now sky-scraping buildings standing in their place. It is said that once upon a time there was a densely forested tract here.’ With one story spilling out of the gut of the previous one, quite in the manner of a dastan or qissa, this is as much a story about evolution and change – which can be for good or bad – as it is about the human condition. ‘The Last Man’ picks up the idea of a man turning into a monkey and brings it to the following, startling conclusion: How does one know that one has changed? What is one’s real self? Upon what does one build a sense of being? Does a sense of self derive from the outside world, or does it spring from some unknown well deep inside one?

  While the stories included here have been selected not merely for their translatability and innate readability, the fifteen stories have been chosen also to give a glimpse into Intizar Husain’s vast and varied oeuvre. That the range of his concerns, not to mention the spatial difference covered in them from the ancient ages through the medieval period to modern times, is eclectic is amply reflected in this selection. Running through all fifteen of them, like the string that keeps the pearls in a necklace together, is Intizar Husain’s own voice: measured, mellow and mild, never moralistic or magisterial.

  Intizar Husain’s writing in Urdu throws up many challenges to the translator. First and foremost, there is the story itself, often not a typical story with a beginning, middle and end, but a rambling monologue peopled by characters from a past that is in many ways more vivid than the present. In other words, not like a story at all but the recounting of a dream, or a story one has heard a long time ago, or maybe in another lifetime. Then there is the simplicity of his Urdu prose, a deceptive simplicity that can trip up the unwary. The cadences that are at once lyrical yet rooted in everyday speech can be amazingly difficult to carry across cultures and languages. Intizar Husain’s Urdu is richly textured with both sounds and silences. Often, a great deal is said by what he chooses not to say. Never wasteful with words, he relies on images and motifs that are at once evocative of emotions and feelings: the kite with a cut string drifting past a soot-encrusted crumbling parapet. There is nostalgia, a sense of something irretrievably allowed to slip past and the pain of being severed – all conveyed through a single image. There are short sentences interspersed with long rambling ones with many digressions. There are numerous culture-specific allusions, metaphors and similes drawn from parables, folklore and oral narratives, and images that are immediately and powerfully evocative for a South Asian reader. The rain, for instance, which means totally different things to a child in, say, the UK, and a little boy in the dry dusty plains of north India yearning for the first tumultuous burst of the monsoon clouds. Then there are the bewildering and frequent changes of tense as the stories invariably slip between past and present, between memory and desire. In the best tradition of oral storytelling, craft and technique take a back seat; the spoken word is all.

  Then there is his vocabulary. It must be remembered that born as he was in 1923, he spent the first twenty-four years of his life in western United Provinces. The influence of this part of upper India has never quite left him and his writings, even though Lahore has been his home for the better part of his life and career. His writing is replete with references to things that are characteristic to this part of India and to his own Shia Muslim sensibility. The Karbala near his childhood home still exercises a near-magical spell on him. He can still remember all the lanes and alleys of his neighbourhood just as he can recall the names of the people, not to mention the fruits and vegetables that grew in this part of the world. His language, naturally therefore, has the quaint charm of those long-gone days laced though it is with a simplicity that is the hallmark of the modern and the contemporary.

  In translating Intizar Husain, I find it best to stick as close as possible to the ‘word’ and let the ‘spirit’ take care of itself. While exact equivalents cannot be found – no two synonyms are quite the same even within the same language – between languages as disparate as English and Urdu, it becomes especially challenging to find resonances that come close to each other. My endeavour in these translations has been to allow the indomitable spirit of Intizar Husain’s writing to soar above the translation, intact and unharmed. It is the ‘word’, the literal text that requires close approximation, and I sincerely hope I have not done an injustice to that.

  New Delhi Rakhshanda Jalil

  May 2014

  1Published as ‘Daira’ in the short story collection titled Sheherzad ke Naam, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2002.

  2In the original story, Intizar Husain has called it Roopnagar. Roopnagar, from the description in the story, can be any small town anywhere in Uttar Pradesh, though there is a Roopnagar in Delhi and another in Punjab. Roopnagar is also a metaphor in popular culture for any generic town, especially a pretty town. I have chosen to translate it as Guisetown because the word ‘roop’ also has an element of f
orm, forms that can change, hence a town of guises.

  3The story of the men who went to sleep in a cave has been narrated in the Surah al-Kahaf (Surah 18, verse 22) in the Holy Quran; a similar story is narrated in the Bible but there the number of sleepers is specified as seven and the incident is commonly referred to as the ‘seven sleepers of Ephesus’.

  1Published as ‘Neend’ in the short story collection Kachhuwe (Tortoises), Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 1995.

  2The Fall of Dhaka refers to the surrender by the West Pakistan army on 16 December 1971.

  1Published as ‘Aseer’ in the short story collection Kachhuwe (Tortoises), Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 1995.

  1Published as ‘Woh Jo Kho Gaye’ in Intizar Husain aur Unke Afsane, Educational Book House, Aligarh.

  1Published as ‘Deevar’, in Kachhuwe, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2011.

  2Yajooj and Majooj are tribes who find a mention in the Quran; being quarrelsome and rapacious they were imprisoned behind a high wall by Zul Qarnain, the just ruler. They could not scale the high wall except on the appointed day by Allah’s will. In a Hadith, according to Bukhari, ‘…every day Yajooj and Majooj break (dig) through the wall erected by Zul Qarnain (A.S.) until they reach the end of it to the extent that they can actually see the light on the other side. They then return (home) saying that “We will break through tomorrow.” But Allah causes the wall to revert to its original thickness and the next day they start digging through the wall all over again, and this process continues each day as long as Allah wills them to remain imprisoned. When Allah wishes them to be released, then at the end of the day they will say, “If Allah wills, tomorrow we will break through.” The following day they will find the wall as they had left it the previous day (i.e., it will not have returned to its original state) and after breaking the remaining part of it they will emerge.’ Yajooj and Majooj (also known as Gog and Magog in the Biblical tradition) were agriculturalists and had presumably tried to break the wall with tools or implements. Interestingly, this incident, which finds a mention in the Quran, has over the centuries become a parable for troublesome people who are destined to pull a wall down all night long for the rest of their lives with little else than their tongues. All night they lick away at the wall till only a paper-thin barrier remains and leave it for the next day. The next morning their night’s work is gone and the wall is back in place; the following night they must start the process of licking the wall all over again; this they must do till the Day of Judgement. Intizar Husain has devoted an entire story to this duo and the futility of their eternal task; the story called ‘Raat’ is included in the collection, Kachhuwe.

  1Published as ‘Reserved Seat’ in the collection Sheherzad ke Naam, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2002.

  2Imam Zaman is believed by Shia Muslims to be the twelft h and final imam who will be the ultimate saviour of humankind.

  1First published as ‘Baadal’ in the short story collection Kachhuwe, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 1995.

  1Published as ‘Besabab’ in short story collection Kachhuwe, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 1995.

  1Published as ‘Rishi aur Qasai’ in Shabkhun, Allahabad, June-December 2005.

  2Kaushik is probably used here as a generic name as Kaushiks are among the highest of the Brahmins. This story is possibly inspired by the Vyadha Gita (meaning ‘Teachings of a Butcher’), part of the epic Mahabharata, and consists of the teachings imparted by a vyadha (butcher) to a Brahmin. In the story, an arrogant sannyasi is humbled by a vyadha, and learns about dharma (righteousness). The Vyadha Gita teaches that ‘no duty is ugly, no duty is impure’ and it is only the way in which the work is done that determines its worth. Dharmavyadha’s name is an ironic one for it means, the ‘butcher of dharma’. Intizar Husain has used more Hindi words in this story than his other writings and shows a keen and accurate knowledge of not merely Hindu mythology through his readings of the puranas and the kathas, but also a grasp of Sanskrit words and their ‘corrupted’ usage in the rhythms of daily discourse among ordinary people, words such as deekh for dakshina.

  1Published as ‘Shor’ in the collection Kachchuwe, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2011.

  2A sprawling colonial-era garden in Lahore, just off the Mall. Incidentally, the large public garden is not far from Intizar Husain’s home on Jail Road. He has, elsewhere in his writings, mentioned going for a daily walk in Company Bagh. According to local Lahori lore, the ubiquitous Club Sandwich, found on the menus of most colonial-era clubhouses across the subcontinent, is said to have been devised by a chef in the club located in the garden premises.

  3‘Paani re paani, tera rang kaisa …’ These are the words of a popular song from the Hindi film Shor (1972). That it is being played on a transistor radio is an indication of the immense popularity of Hindi cinema on both sides of the border. The extent of knowledge about film trivia is another indication of how widespread this interest is among all sections of Pakistani society. Evidently, young men roaming public gardens listen to Hindi film songs with as much interest as the city’sintellectuals. Incidentally, the song is a duet sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh, not Kishore Kumar as mentioned here.

  4I wanted to retain this word to introduce English readers to an expression widely used among Urdu speakers. Like several English words that have been adapted and subsequently incorporated into the Urdu lexicon, ‘boriyat’ retains the original meaning of the English word boredom but also has an extra dash of tedium, ennui and weariness.

  5Before the advent of 24x7 news channels, across much of South Asia, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was considered the most trustworthy source of news. The BBC reporters, such as Mark Tully, have been at the forefront of reporting on all major man-made events as well as natural calamities; their bulletins have been beaming news on the radio into homes long before the notion of ‘breaking news’ became common. The BBC could also be relied upon to give a fairly balanced report, often unlike the news that filtered out from state-controlled news agencies. In Pakistan especially, where news would be severely controlled by the military regimes, the BBC could be the only source of independent news.

  1Published as ‘Mere aur Kahani ke Beech’ in the short story collection Sheherzad ke Naam, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2002.

  2From ‘Zamana-e-hazir ka Insan’ in Iqbal’s collection Zarb-i-Kalim.

  3A newspaper in Karachi, Pakistan

  4A prominent fiction writer who wrote old-fashioned romances in Urdu; she was extremely popular, especially among women readers.

  5A magazine brought out in Lahore, Pakistan

  6Editor of Savera

  7Prominent Pakistani poet and writer

  8Pakistani writer of modern, abstract short stories

  9Kuh-e-Nida, meaning the Mountain of Summons. The legendary mount from which the call of death comes from the other world.

  1Published as ‘Sheherzad ki Maut’ in the short story collection Sheherzad ke Naam, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2002.

  1Published as ‘Khwaab aur Haqeeqat’ in Intizar Husain aur Un ke Afsane, Educational Book House, Aligarh.

  2Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad was the son of Ziyad ibn Abu Sufyan. After his father’s death in 673, Ubayd became the Governor of Kufa and Basra. He is an especially despised figure in the history of Islam for his role in the slaying of Husain, the grandson of the Prophet and the son of Ali, in the historic Battle of Karbala on the tenth day of Muharram, in the year 680. In this story, a fictionalized recreation of a historical occurrence involving real-life personages from the early history of Islam, the city of Kufa becomes a metaphor for the great calamities that can befall a people who adopt indifference. The people of Kufa have, on various occasions, functioned as metaphors for hypocrites or those who chose not to speak up against injustice and misuse.

  1Published as ‘Mahaban ke Bandaron ka Qissa’ in Shaharzad ke Naam, Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, 2002. I have used the expression Big Forest for Mahaban, whi
ch is a generic term in Hindi for any dense or big forest, a bit like Roopnagar in the story entitled ‘Circle’. This propensity to use a common noun as a proper noun is typical of Intizar Husain.

  2The Fasana-e-Ajaib, written by Mirza Rajab Ali Beg Surur, is one of the most popular dastans in Urdu.

  3Refers to the stories contained in the Arabic work of fiction better known as The Arabian Nights.

  1Published as ‘Akhri Admi’ in the collection of the same name, Lahore, 1967. The names mentioned in this story appear in the Bible. For instance, Eleasuf is a common Hebrew name. Eliazar, another common Hebrew name, was a priest who succeeded his father Aaron and was a nephew of Moses. Zebulun was, according to the Books of Genesis and Numbers, the sixth son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Zebulun. There are at least three individuals with the name Eliab: the son of Helon and a prince of the house of Zebulun according to Numbers 1:9; the son of Pallu and the father of Nemuel, Dathan and Abiram; and the eldest son of Jesse, and thus the older brother of King David. Intizar Husain has used the Arabized versions of these names; I have retained those from the original Urdu.

  2Khizr is the name of the prophet skilled in divination who is said to have discovered and drank of the fountain of life; hence he is considered the saint of waters. He is referred to variously as Khwaja Khizr or Ala Khizr. In some parts of the Muslim world, believers make offerings of flowers and lamps to him, placed on tiny rafts that are floated on water.