Basti

by Intizar Husain

  “Today there seems to be more trouble than usual,” Irfan muttered.

  “Well, yesterday’s rumor turned out to be false.”

  “But yesterday people took it as absolute truth.”

  “Yes, yesterday it seemed to be absolutely true.”

  “News and rumors both have a one-day lifespan. The next day, what difference does it make if you find out that it wasn’t news but rumor, or that it wasn’t rumor but news?”

  Salamat and Ajmal entered by way of the kitchen. Salamat cast a ferocious glance all around, swept his pointing finger around the room, and said loudly, “I ask why the door is shut, and why the curtains are drawn, and why it’s dark!”

  Irfan glared at Salamat and said coldly, “Because there’s a lot of noise outside.”

  Salamat looked ferociously at both him and Irfan: “Yes, and because you don’t want to hear the voice of the people! But, you imperialist devil, this voice can no longer be suppressed. It will come ripping its way through curtains, and it’ll burst your eardrums too!” Then he called out, “Abdul!”

  Abdul swiftly emerged from the kitchen. “Yes sir?”

  “Abdul! Open the door, and draw back the curtain.”

  “And let some light and air come in from outside. Light, air, and the voice of the people!” Ajmal added encouragingly.

  “Don’t open the door. The procession is very rowdy,” a voice came from a distant table.

  Salamat said furiously, “The masses are enraged against the capitalists and the imperialist flunkies!”

  Then Salamat and Ajmal both sat down at his and Irfan’s table.

  A white-haired man, who had been sitting alone for some time drinking tea, got up from his place, approached, and said, “You’re educated young men. Please tell me, what’s all this that’s happening?”

  Salamat looked contemptuously at him and said, “What’s happening is what ought to happen.”

  The white-haired man stared at Salamat’s face. Then he sighed, “God have mercy upon us,” and went back and sat down in his place.

  “Yar,” said Salamat, “I feel that this white-haired man is even more ignorant than my white-haired father.”

  “My father,” said Ajmal, “is more ignorant than your white-haired father and this white-haired man put together.”

  “But my father is not my father.” Salamat ground his teeth. “I’m a bastard.”

  Ajmal announced, “I refuse to consider my father as my father.”

  “Yar, our disgusting fathers have ruined us.” Salamat’s voice was suddenly tearful.

  Ajmal looked at Irfan, then at him: “Say something, you two.”

  Then Salamat grew angry again: “They think that by staying silent they can save their disgusting fathers, and the bastard sons of their disgusting fathers, from the firing squad of time.” He pounded on the table. “But it can’t be done!”

  “Salamat Sahib, you’re sitting here,” an acquaintance said, coming in through the kitchen, “and there in Gol Market the liquor shop is being looted.”

  Ajmal gave a start. “Really?”

  “Yes indeed, I’ve just come from there. Liquor is running in the gutters, and dogs are lying around dead drunk.”

  “Then we’ve missed our chance again,” Ajmal murmured regretfully. He poked Salamat. “Come on, yar. Let’s at least go see.”

  “Go where? To see what?” Salamat said irritably. “We don’t have to go to looted liquor shops to see dogs lying dead drunk! Where’s the lane in which you can’t see dogs lying dead drunk?” Then he gave the surrounding tables a look so fiery that it shot out sparks, and yelled, “Dogs! You’ll have to wake up now! The day of reckoning is here: you’ll have to account for yourselves. You, me, everyone.”

  “Except me,” Afzal said comfortably. Entering, he had heard Salamat roaring; he had come and stood by the table in silence. Now he slid a chair over and sat down opposite Salamat, and said, looking him in the eye, “Mouse! Why are you standing up on your tail? I’ll have to settle accounts with you! I’m only waiting for a bamboo flute.”

  “For a flute, and for the city to burn down!” Salamat said angrily.

  “The city’s burning right now.” Afzal closed his eyes, then opened them and spoke as though from another world. “Mice! You’ll rue the day when I come here with a flute in my hand! I’ll come and command you to listen to what the flute is saying. I’ll command you mice to follow me. You’ll come out of your holes and follow me, until I reach the ocean, and I’ll command the ocean, ‘Ocean! Take these mice!’ and in a single swallow the ocean will suck all you mice down into its maw.”

  “Nonsense,” Salamat sneered.

  “Yar, what’s the point of wasting time here? Come on, let’s go to Gol Market.” Ajmal seized Salamat’s arm, and they went out.

  “Salamat is a disgusting person,” Afzal muttered, “and Ajmal too, and that flunky Zavvar too, who’s become even more disgusting now that he’s an officer. That whole tribe is made up of disgusting people.” Afzal paused to look at Zakir and Irfan, who sat in silence. “Yar, you two are good people, beautiful people. How rare beauty has become in the world! Myself for one, and then the two of you. Only three beautiful people.”

  “From those three, strike out my name,” Irfan said with distaste.

  “You’ll regret it!” Afzal gave Irfan an angry look.

  “I know the list is yet to be greatly expanded,” Irfan said venomously.

  Afzal gave him a steady stare. Abdul came by, making an inspection tour of various tables. He saw Afzal, and said respectfully, “Afzal Sahib, you’ve come? Shall I bring tea?”

  “No.”

  “Water?”

  “No.”

  When Abdul started to leave, Afzal addressed him: “Abdul, you’re a good person.” He pulled a diary out of his pocket, opened it and wrote something, then said, “On this date, I struck Irfan’s name from the list of good people, and wrote your name instead.” Then he addressed Irfan: “From today, you’re an ugly person. And remember that the world is never without beautiful people.”

  Abdul silently slipped away. In a little while, he came back with a glass of cold water: “Here, Afzal Sahib, sir! Have some water.”

  Afzal looked gratefully at Abdul. “Abdul! You’re a beautiful person.” He drank the water, then asked, “Where did those two disgusting men go?”

  “In Gol Market the liquor shop has just been looted. They went there, and you have to go there too,” Irfan said in that same venomous voice.

  Afzal gave Irfan a silent angry glare, then rose and went out.

  “Yar, Afzal is a free spirit. Why do you tangle with him?” Zakir said.

  “A free spirit?” Irfan muttered. “Who here is a free spirit?”

  “I mean, he’s a free-wheeling type. He’s not a political hack by any means.”

  “Yar, it’s like this: I can’t stand fake revolutionaries, and I can’t stand fake prophets either.”

  “Then who’s genuine?”

  “They’re all fake, including me.” Irfan paused, then asked, “Do you know how much Comrade Salamat’s bank balance is?”

  “Salamat’s bank balance? Yar, he’s the penniless type. What work does he do, to earn enough to have a bank balance?”

  “Zakir, you don’t realize. He does a great deal,” Irfan said meaningfully, and then fell silent.

  “Yar, I don’t understand any of this.”

  “What is there not to understand? Nothing is hidden any longer. It’s written on people’s foreheads who they are and what they’re doing.” Then in a different tone he said, “Well, yar, let’s drop the subject.”

  “Yes, yar, what’s it to us?”

  “Yes, what’s it to you? You’re somewhere else nowadays.” Irfan, whose face was still quite tense, relaxed a bit and smiled. “Zakir, have you been getting any letters from over there?”

  “Letters? No.”

  “What I mean is, since coming here you must surely have written. And you must hav
e gotten an answer?”

  “No,” he said shamefacedly. “I haven’t written. And no letter has come from her.”

  “You mean from that time till now there’s been no correspondence, no exchange of messages at all?”

  “No.”

  “And now you’re remembering her? Yar, you’re a wonder!”

  Really, how strange it is, he thought. Since coming here I haven’t written to her, nor has she written to me. The thick cloud of memories again began to envelop him. A dimly lit road, then complete darkness, then an illumined zone, a glowing memory.

  •

  How tall Sabirah had grown, and how her bosom had swelled out, so that now she always kept it covered with her dupattah, but those two round swellings still made themselves apparent. Their conversations were sometimes loud, sometimes soft—sometimes so soft that his voice became a whisper and Sabirah’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment. After returning to the College, on Surendar’s advice he wrote her a long letter.

  “Zakir! Did you mail the letter?”

  “Yar, I mailed it, but—” He stopped in mid-sentence.

  “But what?”

  “Yar, what if she understands?”

  “Why else did you write the letter? You wrote it so she’d understand.”

  “Yar, if she understands, then—?” He broke off in the middle.

  “Then what will happen?”

  “She’ll think that—”

  •

  The sound of someone banging on the door: “Open up!” Suddenly returning from the illumined zone of memory, he looked around in the dimly lit atmosphere. Someone was banging on the door, and the people sitting at the tables were watching the door anxiously.

  “Don’t open it, the procession is nearby.”

  “There’s no telling who it is!”

  “It’s people from the procession, don’t open the door.”

  “Go on, open up, or else they won’t care, they’ll take revenge, they’ll burn the place down!” Abdul came out of the kitchen and went to the door. Pulling back the curtain slightly, he looked out through the pane—and was reassured. Opening one leaf of the door a little, he hurriedly brought in the new arrivals and at once shut the door again.

  “Friends, you banged so loudly on the door that you frightened us!” an acquaintance said to the regulars who had come in.

  “But how can frightened people frighten anyone?”

  “How are things outside?”

  “Bad. There’s a lot of destruction.”

  With his heart and mind full of memories, he halfway heard and halfway didn’t hear. He had come back from the zone of memories the way a sleeper might suddenly wake, with sleep still filling his eyes. The sleep-spirit might then come like the touch of a breeze, and he would again be oblivious and dead to the world. Memory-images were floating around him.

  •

  Then Sabirah was moving in his imagination, when she had come to Vyaspur for a few days. In those days we two had come close to each other. When the engine whistled, she too was drawn up to the open roof, where I still came when I was home from Meerut during the vacations, to sit from evening into night, watching the fields that went on into the distance, beyond the fields the railroad tracks, beyond the railroad tracks the rows of trees. We both stood leaning on the parapet, our heads touching. We watched the whistling, smoke-spitting engine, and the moving, lighted cars that followed it. In the day, these cars looked separate, but in the dark of night they were like a row of lamps strung together and moving. The row of lamps was drawn along, it came running along. When it passed, Sabirah would say with delight and wonder, “What a long train it was, car after car. Which train was it?”

  “The Delhi train.”

  She was amazed. “This train goes to Delhi!”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She was silent for a little. “Zakir, you must have seen Delhi? What’s it like, Delhi?”

  “I’ve only gone once, but after my exams, I’ll go there to live.”

  “Really! How?” She was astonished.

  “I’ll go there and work.”

  “Really?”

  Night was falling. The moon had not yet come out. But there were a few stars, twinkling like distant lamps in the expanse of the sky. I looked steadily at Sabirah’s wondering face.

  “Sabirah!”

  “Huh?”

  “Sabirah, if I should get a job in Delhi then—then—” My tongue began to stumble. “Then—we two can live together there.”

  “What?” She looked at me with surprise, as though she didn’t understand at all. I went on looking silently at her; and then as though she had suddenly understood something, she all at once slipped away.

  The next day she and I avoided each other’s eyes, but when night fell, the whistle of the engine and the clanking of the wheels again brought her to the roof. Keeping her distance from me, she stood with her chin on the parapet. But the train paused in its journey, somewhere in the shelter of the trees, and the engine went on whistling. We drew nearer to each other, very near indeed. So near that I could feel the warmth of her body, and its softness as well.

  After that, we leaned on each other with more confidence as we watched the Delhi trains come and go. With our chins propped side by side on the cool parapet full of spots of dark mold, we watched the trains moving sometimes slowly, sometimes fast. Now we no longer had any questions about this train, as though our plan of traveling in it to Delhi had been agreed upon.

  Then letter after letter came from Khalah Jan, saying to send Sabirah home. Ammi said, “Ai hai, Batul is driving me mad! These are bad times, how can I send her?”

  “Ammi! Shall I take her?”

  Abba Jan looked hard at me, and said, “The times are very bad.”

  •

  “I’ve heard, sir, that there’s been shooting.”

  “What?” He looked at the speaker with a start. The speaker was Abdul, who was collecting the empty teacups. His face looked anxious. “I don’t know, sir, but a man just came from the Regal, he was saying so.”

  He had come back from his forest, and was staring at Abdul’s face.

  “These are bad times, sir.” As Abdul spoke, he picked up the tray full of empty teacups and took it away.

  “I think we should go out.”

  “Out?” He looked at Irfan with surprise.

  “Yes. After all, how long can we sit here, shut up inside? And besides, it’s almost time for me to be at work.”

  “Then what’s the point of my staying on alone? I’ll go home.”

  “Anyway, let’s go out, and we’ll see.”

  Outside things had changed a great deal. He looked with wonder at the road. In the morning, going to the College, he had passed along this road. Then it was clean and neat, as usual. Cars, scooters, bicycles, scooter-cabs were rushing to their various destinations. Buses packed with people were in rapid motion. The fast-moving scooter-cabs were jockeying for position, urgently trying to dart in front of each other. But now the whole street was full of scattered bricks. Here and there among the scattered bricks lay gleaming fragments of broken glass from bus windows and car windows. A half-burned double-decker bus lay helplessly in the middle of the street, but it wasn’t blocking traffic. How much traffic was there to block? One or two cars, trying to avoid the bricks, crept timidly past the double-decker, and suddenly accelerated once they had cleared it. Then after a long time, the sound of a bus noisily coming by, jolting over the bricks, and passing indifferently on.

  As he passed near the petrol pump, he saw that a crowd had gathered. The crowd were staring with wonder at a long car that lay overturned, its four wheels pointing toward the sky and its roof against the ground.

  Passing by the wondering crowd, he went on. In front of the National Auditorium a furious crowd had gathered. A respectable gentleman, entering the Auditorium, hesitated: “Excuse me, sir, is the speech over?”

  “You’d do better to ask whether it’s begun!”


  “So the speech hasn’t taken place?”

  “No,” a young man said angrily. “The imperialist pimps, the sons of bitches! Their time to make speeches is finished!”

  A motorbike, dashing along, pulled over and stopped: “What’s happening up there now?”

  “They’re throwing chairs.”

  The motorbike rider pulled out a pistol, fired it into the air, restarted the motorbike, and vanished.

  “Yar! His car must be parked over there?”

  “Good idea. The pimp looted the poor to buy it, let’s burn it!”

  Ammi welcomed him with a pounding heart and terrified eyes, made the gesture of taking his misfortunes onto herself,* lifted her hand and said tearfully, “Oh God, thanks be to You.”

  “What’s happened?” He looked at Ammi with surprise.

  “Ai, my son! I was terrified. People in the neighborhood were saying that there was firing. My heart stopped beating. I was in a state of panic, I went again and again to the door. I kept praying, ‘Ai, God, my son has gone out, let him come back safely.’”

  “Has Zakir come?” Abba Jan’s voice came from the outer room.

  “Go, my son, show your face to your father and then come back. He was worried too.”

  When he entered the room, he saw that Khvajah Sahib was sitting with Abba Jan.

  “Son! Where’s my Salamat?” Khvajah Sahib asked the question abruptly.

  “I saw Salamat in the afternoon, then he went off somewhere with Ajmal.”

  “The wretch must have gone off with the procession.”

  “With the procession?—I don’t know.”

  “The wretch has caused me a lot of worry,” Khvajah Sahib muttered angrily. “I’ve heard there was firing?”

  “Firing?—No.”

  “If there hasn’t been firing yet, there will be.”

  “Has a curfew been imposed?” Abba Jan asked somberly.

  “Not yet.”

  “How long can it be before it happens? May God the Most High have mercy on this country.” Abba Jan sighed.

  “Maulana! In Amritsar—now there was a curfew! Anyone who once stuck his head out the window never got a chance to pull it back in again. The moment a head appeared, they fired.”