BEGUM SAHIB: No.
MAJEED: Then why, may I ask, do you feel it necessary to send me away?
BEGUM SAHIB: Because I think it’s better this way.
MAJEED: Better? Better for whom?
BEGUM SAHIB: For all of us . . . for the family.
MAJEED (gets up again): You’re talking in riddles, Mother.
BEGUM SAHIB: Majeed, you’re my son and I’m your mother . . . Nothing should happen between us that would stain this sacred relationship . . . I want you to leave for Karachi today and stay there for as long as I say.
MAJEED: But, Mother . . .
BEGUM SAHIB (cutting him short): You have plenty of friends there. I’m sure that with their help, or just on your own, you’ll get your boat safely ashore through this maelstrom we call life.
MAJEED (wants to say something, but fails and sits back down): Okay . . . I’ll go.
BEGUM SAHIB: Your decision . . . (Drops into silence as she notices AMJAD enter the room in his wheelchair pushed by karim.)
AMJAD: You’re a strange fellow, Majeed . . . All this time I was waiting for you in my room so we could decide what to get Saeeda for her birthday . . . Instead, I find you lounging around here. (To THE BEGUM) Ammijan . . . so have you thought of something for a present? What kind should it be? . . . I’m going crazy thinking about it.
BEGUM SAHIB: Why don’t you ask Saeeda?
AMJAD (laughs): Listen to that. You’re the limit, Mother dear . . . If I ask her it wouldn’t be a surprise, no fun. (To MAJEED) Well, Majeed? (MAJEED remains silent) Speak up!
MAJEED (rising): Ask Ammijan. As for me . . . well, I’m leaving.
AMJAD (surprised): Leaving? Wherever for?
MAJEED: Karachi.
AMJAD: Have you gone mad? Karachi . . . What for?
MAJEED: What for? . . . (With a faint smile) To get my boat out of a maelstrom.
AMJAD (to THE BEGUM): What’s happened to him? (To MAJEED) Sit down, yaar . . . The day after tomorrow is her birthday . . . we should make a decision right now.
MAJEED: The decision has been made.
AMJAD: What?
MAJEED: That I’m going to Karachi for good.
AMJAD: What are you babbling about? (To THE BEGUM) Mother, what is all this?
BEGUM SAHIB: Nothing . . . just a little mother–son quarrel.
AMJAD: Over what?
BEGUM SAHIB: That you can’t ask.
AMJAD: I may be overstepping myself . . . but Majeed is my brother. If there’s been a misunderstanding between the two of you then it’s my duty to clear it up . . . I know Majeed better than you do . . . He couldn’t possibly do something that would cause such a problem. (To MAJEED) Hey, come over here.
MAJEED: Bhaijan, I’ve got to pack now.
AMJAD: For heaven’s sake . . . what’s going on? (To THE BEGUM) Ammijan, for God’s sake, stop him! If not for me, then for Saeeda’s sake. He’s the only one here who keeps her spirits from sagging. He does so much for me. If you were to let him go, God knows what’ll become of me, Ammijan. Whenever he takes Saeeda out for a stroll, I imagine I’m the one who’s walking with her; whenever he plays some game with her, I feel the great void in my life created by Fate’s cruel hands beginning to fill. I often say to myself, ‘Amjad, what would your life be without Majeed for a brother? The debris of your life wouldn’t even be fit for the garbage dump.’ Please stop him. Why are you separating us? Don’t play God, Ammijan. (Breaks into sobs.)
MAJEED: Ammijan, I’m leaving.
BEGUM SAHIB: Wait!
(MAJEED stops.)
BEGUM SAHIB (gets up and begins to stroke AMJAD’s head affectionately): Son, don’t cry . . . Majeed’s not going anywhere . . . everything will stay right where it belongs, for that’s the will of God. (To MAJEED) You sit down with your brother and think about Saeeda’s birthday gift. (Exits.)
MAJEED (after thinking for a while moves towards AMJAD’s wheelchair and speaks in a hushed voice): Bhaijan, please let me go.
AMJAD (lifting his head up): Let you go? Go where? Don’t be crazy!
MAJEED: You don’t understand.
AMJAD: I understand everything. Take out your handkerchief and wipe my tears, come on. (After some hesitation MAJEED takes out his handkerchief and begins to wipe away AMJAD’s tears rather hastily.) What are you doing, yaar? Not like that! You don’t even know how to wipe tears . . . (Smiles) It’s really such a simple thing, you know.
MAJEED: Not as simple as you think, Bhaijan.
AMJAD (still smiling): All right, then, it isn’t. It’s a formidable task . . . Anyway, come and sit beside me. We’ve got to think about Saeeda’s birthday gift. Sit!
MAJEED (sitting down in a chair beside AMJAD): So think!
AMJAD (sighing): I’m thinking, I’m thinking! What else is there to do? But you have to think, too. (Both of them lapse into deep thought.)
(Curtain)
ACT VII
The garden adjacent to Nigar Villa. Evening. The water coming out of the fountain has stopped, as though it has bubbled itself out. In the background, the sombre grey hills are trying to hide their formidable height in the evening mist. The grass appears to be heavily trampled. To the right, away from the fountain and behind the dense shrubbery, sits AMJAD in his wheelchair. ASGHARI is standing behind him holding the handles of the chair. Presently she begins to push it.
AMJAD: No, Asghari, wait a bit.
ASGHARI (stops): But Amjad Mian . . .
AMJAD: I want to receive the last wound of my life tonight.
ASGHARI: If receive it you must, why not in your imagination? But . . . but haven’t you been dealt that wound already? Why must you insist on reopening it?
AMJAD (attempting to smile): There’s no limit to the stupidity of a man in my condition . . . He rips open the stitches of his wounds to probe inside; feels the stab of pain and considers himself the greatest martyr there ever was. (Laughs) Asghari, you’ve never had something of yours destroyed. How can you ever know the misery of people who having sunk into the depths of despair try to mould anew the debris, the rubble of their destruction into tall, imposing structures.
ASGHARI (smiling): I’ve gone beyond even that, Amjad Mian . . . I’ve built those tall, gigantic structures and then torn them down with my own hands . . . and in the process, calluses have formed in my heart.
AMJAD (shudders): Asghari, you frighten me. Yes, you really do.
ASGHARI (laughs): I’m a wasteland. Every wasteland is frightening, though it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have the time to mourn itself, much less frighten others. It just cowers . . . timidly.
AMJAD: Have you also had some misfortune or other in your life then?
ASGHARI: NO! What misfortune can possibly befall a person who is herself a misfortune!
AMJAD: You sound as though you’ve been singed.
ASGHARI: Only because now you can sense the burning.
AMJAD: You mean this sense was asleep before?
ASGHARI: Yes . . . sound asleep.
AMJAD: What woke it up?
ASGHARI: The train that went off the track.
AMJAD (muttering): The train . . . that went off the track . . . (A little louder) Will it derail again?
ASGHARI: Whatever God wishes will come to pass.
AMJAD: Don’t mention God . . . He and I are no longer friends.
ASGHARI: No, Amjad Mian. Miserable as we are, our bond with Him is never severed . . . However much and however often we may break it, it just mends itself again.
AMJAD: That’s nonsense.
(Suddenly they are startled by the sound of approaching feet. MAJEED and SAEEDA appear, both out of breath. SAEEDA, who looks extremely fatigued, sits down on the rim of the fountain while MAJEED remains standing.)
SAEEDA: I really am tired today.
MAJEED: Even though we didn’t walk very far.
SAEEDA: That’s true.
MAJEED (after a pause): It would’ve been infinitely better if I had left for Karachi.
; SAEEDA: I guess so.
MAJEED: I’m caught in a strange dilemma. I could have gone to Karachi . . . but the question is: Would I have succeeded in bringing my boat ashore through this maelstrom? . . . No, I would never have made it.
SAEEDA: I know.
MAJEED: You know . . . and I know . . . Just about everyone but Bhaijan knows. And that’s the most agonizing part of the story.
SAEEDA: I’ve often thought of telling him, but (rising abruptly) I’m afraid the shock will kill him.
MAJEED: Exactly. That’s what I fear most, too. The doctors are unanimous that he has, at the most, a year to live . . . It would be downright cruel to snatch even this bit from the poor man.
(Behind the cover of the shrubbery AMJAD suddenly clenches his teeth. ASGHARI firmly grasps his shoulder.)
SAEEDA: We must try to keep him happy as long as he lives. His feelings are sensitive to the lightest touch. We have to be careful.
MAJEED: What if one of our own blisters bursts in the process . . .
SAEEDA (almost screaming): That would be disastrous!
MAJEED: All the more reason why I should go away . . . Until Bhaijan . . .
SAEEDA (cutting him short): Don’t talk like that, Majeed . . . don’t be so cruel.
(AMJAD trembles in his wheelchair. ASGHARI clutches his other shoulder firmly as well.)
MAJEED: Love is always cruel and selfish, Saeeda. It’s not even ashamed of dancing for joy on another man’s grave.
SAEEDA: We mustn’t think such things.
MAJEED: You’re right, but what if such thoughts drift in on their own?
SAEEDA: What can we do? . . . Let’s go in.
(SAEEDA starts off towards the villa. MAJEED follows with a soft, slow stride. Behind the bushes AMJAD sits in his wheelchair with his head hung low. ASGHARI stands directly behind him, immobile like a statue.)
ASGHARI: Should we go in now?
AMJAD (his head still hung low): No, not now . . . I’m thinking.
ASGHARI: About what?
AMJAD: I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking about what I should be thinking.
ASGHARI: That’s useless thinking.
AMJAD (lifting his head): Don’t I know that? What else can I do? (After a pause) You’re even more cruel than they are. You won’t even let me think. You’re really cruel, Asghari.
ASGHARI (smiles): Love is cruel and selfish, Amjad Mian. It doesn’t even hesitate to dance at its own death.
AMJAD: Come in front of me. (ASGHARI goes over in front of AMJAD, who looks into her eyes, thinks of something, and then mutters) Where was this book all this time?
ASGHARI: Somewhere in the wastebasket . . . where it properly belongs.
AMJAD: Let’s go. Take me inside.
(ASGHARI begins to push the wheelchair towards the house.)
(Curtain)
ACT VIII
The same room as in Acts I, II and IV. It is night. An emerald-green light filters down from the ceiling giving everything in the room a sickly hue. The bed is empty—as if it had never been occupied. ASGHARI wheels AMJAD into the room.
ASGHARI: What made Dulhan Begum move out into Begum Sahib’s room?
AMJAD: She was afraid.
ASGHARI: Of you?
AMJAD (smiling ruefully): Who’d be afraid of me? . . . She was afraid of herself.
ASGHARI: She isn’t all that vulnerable, Amjad Mian.
AMJAD: Time eats even the biggest mountains hollow. She’s just a young woman.
ASGHARI (after a pause): Do you want to sleep now?
AMJAD: Sleep? (Laughs) Don’t mock me, Asghari. Don’t disgrace my misery . . . my burning wounds.
ASGHARI (after another pause): Do you love Saeeda?
AMJAD: NO!
ASGHARI: Then why the burning wounds?
AMJAD: Let me think . . . Will you let me think?
ASGHARI: Go right ahead.
AMJAD (after a protracted pause during which he remains totally immersed in thought): I don’t love Saeeda . . . I certainly don’t. Just as one picks the nicest thing from the market, I picked Saeeda from among countless other women to be my wife. I was proud of my choice and rightly so. She is beautiful beyond all comparison. The only right I have over her is that I chose her and made her my mate for life . . . the same life which now lies in a crumpled heap in this wheelchair and can’t move without someone’s help . . . The doctors have given me a year to live at most . . . I can’t understand why I want to keep her shackled in chains whose every link is as uncertain as my life . . . I don’t understand it at all . . . (He thinks for a while.) There can only be one reason for it: her youth and beauty (with a start), of course! This has to be the only reason! (Feeling a stab of pain) Oh! Oh! That vision . . . I can never forget it . . . She . . . beauty itself . . . lying in this canopied bed, in all her breathtaking youth, her ardour, her tenderness . . . putting the choicest silks of the world to shame . . . this vision clings to me . . . No, rather, I have clung to it . . . (After a pause) Asghari!
ASGHARI (startled): Yes.
AMJAD: Could there be a way to expel this vision from my thoughts?
ASGHARI: Every problem carries its solution within it.
AMJAD: Then we must look for the solution. But . . . but why do I feel so diffident?
ASGHARI: I don’t know. This is your problem. Certainly there would be no shame if you were to look for the solution yourself.
AMJAD: I know. I know . . . I’m well aware of all the base desires that inflame this passion. But this matter will be decided tonight.
ASGHARI: What matter?
AMJAD: Come in front of me. (She does so.) Go and lie on the bed!
ASGHARI (hesitates): Amjad Mian? I don’t have the youthful beauty that puts the world’s choicest silks to shame. My poor youth—all it needs is a piece of coarse burlap.
AMJAD: Go lie on the bed, Asghari!
ASGHARI (tears streaming down her eyes): No, Amjad Mian, it’ll be unkind to the bed . . . it’s become used to Dulhan Begum’s soft, delicate body.
AMJAD: That’s an order!
ASGHARI (lowering her head in submission): You’re the master. (Lies down on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.)
AMJAD: Do you know what night this is? . . .This is the night when a crushed, warped, and worthless youth is about to become whole. This is the night of resurrection, of annihilation. Under its dark cloak Existence will melt in the fires of Non-Existence to assume a new, immortal form . . . No other night will follow this night. Its blind eyes will come wearing such collyrium that its blindness will be transformed into interminable, clear vision. This is the night when the last drops of Life itself will trickle out, terrified, from the mangled udders of Death. The night when grand palaces, their turrets reaching to the heavens, will rise from the womb of destruction and the waters of Zamzam and crawl back into the farthest reaches of the earth, replaced by clouds of dust with which the pure souls will cleanse themselves; and the Author of Fate will overturn His inkpot and wistfully weep in some lonely corner of the sky. Tonight Amjad divorces, in an irrevocable divorce, all the Beauty of this world and marries in its place Ugliness (suddenly screams), Asghari . . . Asghari . . .!
(In the meantime ASGHARI has risen from the bed, gone over to the window and opened it. She is poised on the windowsill, looking down intently into the depths below.)
AMJAD (screaming): What are you doing, Asghari?
ASGHARI (turns around on the windowsill and looks at AMJAD): Proposal and consent are necessary . . . my master. (Flings herself out.)
AMJAD (covering his eyes with both hands): Asghari! (Removes his hands and stares for a few moments at the open window that yawns like a dark wound on the green wall.) Proposal and consent (murmurs) proposal and consent—yes, indeed! (Pushes his wheelchair forward with both of his hands and manages to reach the window with great effort.) I knew . . . I knew this was the way to solve my problem . . . but perhaps I needed someone to hold my hand. (Grasps the windowsill and with great diffi
culty heaves his crippled body on to it and lets it hang over the other side.) My hills! My dear hills! My dear Asghari! (His body slips over and then instantly his entire being is lost in the darkness.)
(Curtain)
Co-translated with Wayne R. Husted and Azam Dadi
The Fifth Trial*
[Translator’s Note: The magistrate who appears in the second part of this piece was Mehdi Ali Siddiqi. In a social meeting, which took place in a coffee house the day after the trial, Manto asked him why he had fined him if he admired him and considered him a great writer, to which Mr Siddiqi replied, ‘I’ll give you my answer after a year.’ He did give his answer in a piece, ‘Mantō aur Maiñ’ (Manto and I), which appeared a few months after the writer’s death. At the time, Mr Siddiqi did not know that Manto had already written the second part of ‘The Fifth Trial’ as it did not appear in print until two years after the publication of his own piece. The two accounts of their meeting are somewhat, perhaps even significantly, different and vividly portray some aspects of Manto’s personality.]
One
I have been dragged into court four times concerning my short stories and now, recently, a fifth time. I want to talk about what transpired during this last trial.
My first four stories to be tried were ‘Kālī Shalwār’ [The Black Shalwar], ‘Dhuvāñ’ [Smoke], ‘Bū’ [Smell], and ‘Thandā Gosht’ [Cold Meat]. The fifth one was ‘Ūpar, Nīche, aur Darmiyān’ [Upper, Lower, and Middle].
I was acquitted on the first three stories. I had to travel two or three times to Lahore from Delhi to be present at the hearing for ‘Kālī Shalwār’. However, ‘Dhuvāñ’ and ‘Bū’ turned out to be a real pain because I had to come all the way from Bombay.
But it was the court case on ‘Thandā Gosht’ that proved to be the most vexing. It really left me completely exhausted.
Although the proceedings of the case took place right here in Pakistan, they involved such convolutions that a person with my sensitive disposition could hardly withstand it. Here, you’re subjected to every kind of indignity and humiliation. May you never have to go to the weird place called ‘court’, the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere.
My Name Is Radha Page 48