DECEMBER 15
. . . The moment I stepped outside the door, there was such an explosion that all the doors and walls trembled. It seemed as though someone had exploded gunpowder right in the street. When I went on, in Chauri Bazaar I saw a lively crowd of Easterners around a snack-seller’s shop. Some were shouting for snacks, others clamoring for jalebis. I asked them what had caused the explosion.
“What did you say, you there?” one asked, cramming a handful of sweets into his mouth.
“Just now there was an explosion, as if a cannon had been fired right nearby.”
“Some son of a bitch must have set off some gunpowder,” another said carelessly.
“Look, you!” a third said angrily. “All this war stuff can go take a flying leap. You leave us alone to tend to our bellies. Go on, get the hell out of here!”
I went on, feeling abashed. Are these the men who will protect the Throne of Delhi?
I stand between the tomb of Hare-bhare Shah and the Jama Masjid, and look toward the sky. Oh my Lord! While His Majesty the Emperor, the Shadow of God, is here, what shadow is it that I see trembling on the minarets of the mosque and the turrets of the Fort?
A naked faqir, with a grey beard, long dirty tangled hair, and eyes like glowing coals, screamed wildly, “Get away, don’t you see that there are corpses here?”
“Corpses? What corpses? Where are they?” I cast a glance around.
The faqir fell silent. He muttered, as though talking to himself, “Keep your mouth closed. Who told you to reveal the mysteries of the Lord?” Then he went off toward Hare-bhare Shah’s tomb. As he neared the tomb, he vanished from my sight.
DECEMBER 16*
. . . Today is September 14,* Doomsday. The cruelest day of the year ’57. When I left the house, I saw the city in utter disarray. I stood there astonished—when suddenly there was a loud explosion, as though a hundred rifles had been fired together. I was bewildered. I didn’t know where I should go. My feet of their own volition took me toward the Red Fort.
When I reached the gate of the Fort, what do I see but the gate closed, the lock fastened, no doorkeeper, no watchman. Near the gate a cannon has been mounted, but there’s no one to fire it. My mind is confused; it’s stranger than strange. The Fort of Shah Jahan locked up—? Finally someone appeared. I recognized him. It’s the doorkeeper of the Pearl-showering Court. Where is he running off to? I stopped him. He kept on running, and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get away from here. A platoon of Khakis are coming.”
“And His Majesty the Shadow of God?”
“His Majesty the Shadow of God is at Humayun’s Tomb. The princes and princesses are scattered here and there. They’ve taken refuge wherever they can. The Fort is empty, it rings like a hollow pot.”
I turned back. The streets were dead silent, but from the distance came the sound of cannons being fired. Sometimes one way, sometimes another. Sometimes by covered paths, sometimes on the open road. Sometimes the street was empty from one end to the other. Sometimes terrified people, with small bundles clutched under their arms, followed by their families, were running away. In Chauri Bazaar I saw a different scene. People stood with sticks and bamboo rods. One man left his house carrying a slat from a bed-frame, and came and joined the ranks. Another came from his house armed with a blow-pipe, and took up a firm position in the middle of the street, flexing his biceps.
I approached them and asked confidentially, “Dear friends, what is your intention?” The one with the blow-pipe thundered, “To fight!”
I looked with amazement at the one with the blow-pipe, then at the one with the bed-frame slat, and then went on. Then my amazement somehow subsided. All right, fighters can fight even with blow-pipes and tongs and bed-frame slats. Those who won’t fight will abandon charged cannons and loaded rifles and run off.
Passing by the Jama Masjid, I paused. I couldn’t move. A carpet of corpses had been spread. From the direction of Hare-bhare Shah’s Tomb a furious voice came: “Who told you to linger here? Go away!” I looked that way. It was that same naked, mad faqir. A fit of shivering came over me. Walking swiftly, I went on. From then on I didn’t look to one side or the other. I went running home.
•
At home, Ammi Jan sat weeping floods of tears. When she saw me, her grief was intensified. “Son, what will become of Batul?”
Abba Jan sat there, patient and serious. He looked at me, hesitated, then said, “Is this news true?”
What answer could I give? I knew exactly as much as everybody else knew. I thought, then said, “I’m going to Irfan’s office. I’ll find out there what’s the real news.”
“Then go, and come back and bring us word.”
Everyone I ran into on the road, everyone I asked, everyone was just as informed and just as uninformed as I was myself. No one had any confirmed news. And everyone knew that it had happened, and no one believed it. Torn between belief and disbelief, on the way from home to the Shiraz I decided a thousand times that this news was only a rumor, and decided a thousand times that this rumor was real news.
My guess was that Irfan would be in the Shiraz at that hour. He was there.
“Irfan! Have you come from your office?”
“Yes. Do you want the news?”
“Yes!”
“Don’t ask. No one knows the real state of affairs. We tried very hard to make contact with Dhaka, but we didn’t succeed.”
“There’s no telling what shape poor Zavvar will be in.”
“Those people were moved from the Governor’s House to the Intercontinental.”
“And my mother is worried about her sister.”
“She has good cause to worry, but what can we do?”
“You’re right.” I fell silent.
The Shiraz was full then, but no one was drinking tea. They were all asking each other questions. They were asking about what they already knew. They had already accepted what they were refusing to accept.
EIGHT
NOW HIS whole being was concentrated in his legs. Normally, while he walked he thought about so many things, and while he was thinking he found himself ending up in one place or another. Now he was solely and exclusively walking. He walked with swift steps; what with the noise of his footsteps, he couldn’t hear any other voices, or perhaps there were no other voices. He was walking alone in the empty city, and the whole air was echoing with the sound of his two feet. The noise of his footsteps overpowered even the noise of a scooter-cab: when the scooter-cab came right up near him on the street and began to move slowly alongside, he realized that the scooter-cab was empty and the driver was looking at him. “No,” he said, and the driver speeded up and went off. Whenever I really have to go somewhere, then the scooter-cabs fly by like winged horses, none of them stop. And today, when I don’t have to go anywhere, there’s an empty scooter-cab with me at every step, inviting me, as though I were the only passenger in the city. He lifted his eyes and glanced around, then looked off ahead into the distance. There seemed to be no one around, either nearby or in the distance. Where has everyone gone? Once more he examined the scene, near and far. He saw a few small groups standing still or slowly walking along, talking among themselves, with drained, collapsed faces. Why are all their faces drained and collapsed? With fear?
As he walked along, his gaze fell on a wall with a big poster on it. On horseback, sword in hand, bloodthirsty face, “these fighters for the faith, these your mysterious servants.”* It produced no reaction in him: for now this picture was dead, and the words too. At the next corner the same poster, the same picture, the same words. A dead picture, dead words. The image of a rally-ground rose up in his mind. Banners hung everywhere, and big posters waving in the air like banners. At the time how alive their words and pictures seemed! The rally is thrown into disorder. The rally-ground lies empty but the posters still wave in the air. The words written on them, the pictures printed on them—how dead they look. Days afterward, no one has taken down
the posters. A car passed by him. On its bumper was written “Crush India.” Perhaps the car owner had forgotten about the slogan? If not, then—if not, then what? He didn’t understand anything. The truth was that his mind was empty, empty. His mind, and his heart too. Since morning he’d had the most intense need to think, to feel. He hadn’t yet comprehended how one goes about feeling a great disaster. In the morning he stayed shut up in his room for a long time, and kept trying to feel something. The more he tried to feel, the more he was overpowered by numbness. Then Khvajah Sahib came, and when he was sent for he was obliged to go and sit in the drawing room. Khvajah Sahib always imagined that Zakir knew more than other people. Today as well, he had sent for him because of this suspicion. But what did he know? He only knew what everyone else knew too. Even Khvajah Sahib didn’t ask him too many questions today. Today he had only one question.
“Maulana Sahib, what’s this that has happened?”
Abba Jan answered Khvajah Sahib’s mournful question in a dry tone: “Khvajah Sahib, this world is a place of reckoning. Men reap whatever they sow.” Then, in silence, he began smoking his huqqah.
Khvajah Sahib sat in silence. Then he said, “Maulana Sahib, when I was listening to the radio, I wanted to weep floods of tears. But I’m an old man; it’s not proper for me to weep before young children. I sat there, restraining myself. Finally I rose and left the room, and placed a chair in the courtyard under a tree, and sat outside. There was no one near me. They were all sitting inside, listening to the radio. All my self-control broke down, and I wept.” Khvajah Sahib’s eyes filled again, but he restrained himself. He sat in silence. Then with a sigh he rose, paused, and then said, “Maulana Sahib! Pray for my older boy. His mother has been weeping constantly since last night.”
“Khvajah Sahib! Tell her to have patience. God the Most High gives to the patient, the reward of patience. ‘Surely God is with the patient.’”* Then he closed his eyes, and began to recite something under his breath. He had put his huqqah aside. His eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. Zakir went on staring at him; he wanted to get up and quietly slip away, but it seemed that his legs had no strength.
Now it was as if all his strength had gone into his legs. Swiftly moving feet—at this moment they were all he was. From one road to another, from the second road to a third. Reading the posters on the walls. It seemed that he would cover the whole city, and would read everything that was written on the city’s walls, whether in the form of life-size posters, slogans written in chalk and charcoal, or abuse and insults. But without feeling anything. Without any sense of boredom he read so many posters with the same message, and so many two-word slogans written in English on car bumpers, on car windows. He felt that he was not reading slogans, but walking on dead flies. He began to feel nauseated. Lifting his eyes from the walls, he began to watch the people passing nearby. All their faces, drained and collapsed, looked the same. Devoid of feeling. Only the slightest trace of fear quivered in them. They seemed like shadows themselves, as though they were weightless. Do I have weight? he suddenly thought, and fell into doubt. Walking along quickly, he suddenly slowed down and began to measure each step. He was trying to feel weight in himself. Do I have weight, or not? When does it happen that a man becomes weightless, and when does it happen that a man’s body becomes a burden to him, and his head a heavy load on his shoulders? Another scooter-cab, which had come alongside him and was moving at a turtle’s pace. Seeing that the scooter-cab was empty, he absentmindedly began to climb into it, when a thought struck him: Where do I want to go? Nowhere at all. When I have to go somewhere, every scooter-cab is full and every empty scooter-cab races by on the far side of the street. And now, when I don’t have to go anywhere, they sit on my head. “I’m not going.” The scooter-cab speeded up and moved off down the street.
He had given no instructions to his feet. He was just walking, taking long strides. But “the Mulla goes only as far as the mosque.” After wandering all over, he had to come there. Irfan was already there, with a cup of tea before him and a cigarette dangling between his lips.
“Tea?”
“I’ve walked a lot today.”
“Why?”
“I just did.”
“Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Anyway I’ll have to have tea.”
Irfan ordered more tea. Abdul brought the tea very quickly, put it down, and went off without a word.
He and Irfan sat opposite each other, drinking tea, as though there were no connection at all between them. As he drank the tea, his glance happened to fall on a wrinkled, crumpled newspaper—and then was fixed there. It was all the same news, and the same headlines, that he had read at home. At that time the headlines had attacked him like enemies. But now all these heavy, thick, sensationalist headlines looked like a pile of dead words. But he had to do something to keep himself busy, after all. Listlessly he ran his eye over some of the headlines. Somehow he began reading a news item. He went on reading, without taking in what he was reading. His eyes were occupied, his mind disengaged. Finally he lost interest entirely. Pushing the newspaper aside, he glanced at Irfan, who had finished his tea and lit a cigarette. He too removed a cigarette from the packet on the table, held it between his lips, and lit it.
“Yar, say something.”
“Is it so necessary to talk?”
“It’s not necessary, but still . . .” As he spoke, he cast a glance around. A few of the tables were occupied. At one table a man was sitting alone, drinking tea and reading a newspaper with great concentration. At another table very near by, a man had finished his tea and was staring into space. Near the kitchen, a group sat around a table. They were talking, but in very low voices, and haltingly. Despite the tea-drinkers, how silent the Shiraz was today!
The white-haired man entered just as he always did. He started toward their table, then changed his mind and went to sit at his own table near the counter. Abdul approached: “Tea?”
“Yes, tea.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
Abdul brought the tea very quickly and set it down. Abdul was serving very quickly today. He wasn’t pausing to chat with the tea-drinkers.
The white-haired man’s tea was getting cold, but he was still staring at the wall before him. Suddenly he bowed his head, buried his face in a handkerchief, and began to weep with great sobs.
All those sitting at the various tables stayed where they were, watching the white-haired man in silence.
“We ought to leave now,” Irfan said.
“Why?”
“I can endure defeat. I can’t endure sentimentality.”
But meanwhile the white-haired man suddenly stopped in the midst of his sobbing. He wiped his eyes with the handkerchief, and began to drink his tea in silence.
After this brief display of emotion, the Shiraz again fell silent. The man who had been drinking tea and reading a newspaper, again became absorbed in drinking tea and reading the newspaper. The man who had been staring into space ordered more tea, went over and picked up a newspaper lying on a nearby table, then sat down again and began to leaf through it. The group around the table by the kitchen, who had been talking, had fallen absolutely silent for a long moment; then they again began to talk in low voices.
Salamat and Ajmal entered, and the moment they entered the silent atmosphere of the Shiraz was somehow disturbed. Staring at Zakir and Irfan, they scraped their chairs noisily over the floor as they sat down, and Salamat said sharply, “Order tea.”
Salamat looked intently first at him, then at Irfan: “You people are responsible for this defeat.”
Neither made any response.
“Irfan! I’m telling you, you’re responsible for this defeat. And you, Zakir.”
“How?” Zakir asked innocently.
Salamat said wrathfully, “You imperialist stooge, do you play innocent and ask how? Haven’t you thought about what you’re
teaching to boys? The histories of kings. Opium pills! Yes, and your father is responsible, who every day feeds my father an opium pill of religion! Even today he fed him a pill. Today my father went and learned the lesson of patience from your holy-minded father! He says, ‘God is with the patient.’ I said, ‘Old man, these magic spells can’t save you any more. The day of reckoning has come.’”
Irfan looked peacefully at the enraged Salamat and said, “So it seems that today you’ve accepted your father as your father?”
Salamat glared at Irfan. “Are you mocking me?”
“No, I’m expressing satisfaction.”
A young man from the table near the kitchen stood up and came over. He went over to stand near Salamat and asked venomously, “Salamat Sahib! I heard your speech at your party’s rally, when you supported Bangladesh. Why are you sorry today?”
“Sorry?” Salamat said angrily. “Why should I be sorry? I’m warning the imperialist pimps that they’ve lost the game.”
“In other words, Pakistan has lost the game? Is that what you want to say?” The young man’s eyes were bloodshot with fury.
The manager guessed from a distance the deteriorating situation, and hurried over. He began trying to pacify the young man: “Please sit down at your table and drink your tea.”
“No, just let me ask what my friend here really wants!”
The manager seized the young man’s arm and managed to take him back to his own table. Then he came and said, “Salamat Sahib, please don’t say such things today. People’s hearts are very heavy today.”
“Which people’s hearts?” Salamat asked, grinding his teeth.
“Look, I’m not going to argue with you.” The manager, as he walked away, called to Abdul. “Abdul! Bring tea for Salamat Sahib.”
No answer came from Abdul. He had already arrived at the table with a tray of tea.
“Abdul!” Irfan said, getting up. “This tea will go on my tab.” And before Salamat could say anything, Zakir and Irfan had both left the Shiraz.
Outside the Shiraz, there was a crowd standing on the footpath. They were having a very hot argument, and more people were collecting. What were they arguing about? He couldn’t hear. He only heard one word repeated again and again—“traitors.” And then suddenly two young men fell on each other.
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