The Weary Generations

by Abdullah Hussein

  Hearing her childhood name, one that was seldom used now, made her realize not just her father’s love but also his grief.

  Before going to bed that night, Azra shed all her clothes and took a long time rubbing sweet almond oil over her whole body and sat in a hot bath afterwards until it was nearly midnight, still slowly massaging her limbs.

  The administrative authorities finally decided to respond to political pressure and hold trials. In a summary trial, Naim was sentenced with retrospective effect to imprisonment for addressing an ‘illegal’ meeting to a term exactly equal to the period he had already served in confinement and released at the end of the one-day proceeding. Trials like these were held in the cases of a score of other prominent men across the country. The rest of the hundreds who had been put in gaol were left there for long periods of time. Additionally, in Naim’s case, they confiscated the ten acres of land granted to him for war services, although they had no power to take away the medal for distinguished conduct with which he had been decorated. On the day of his release from prison he was received back in Roshan Pur by followers from other villages as well as his own, slogans were chanted in his honour and he was buried under garlands of marigold thrown round his neck, and he gave thought to nothing else in the euphoria of freedom. At night he lay in bed beside Azra and took her in his arms, clasping her with the whole of his body from head to foot as tightly as he could, inhaling her smell, listening to the beating of her heart and feeling the softness of her firm breasts. Azra too held him tight, wrapping her arms and legs around him, wishing desperately for this occasion to renew the passion that had slipped from her grasp. For a long time there was just the breathing of the two bodies, warm and willing but still and unmoving. Then Naim’s grip relaxed. He rolled away from her and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  After a while, he said, ‘The food. It’s because of the food in there. It was like poison.’

  ‘I know,’ Azra said, raising herself on an elbow and putting a hand softly on his stomach, caressing his wasted body. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell munshi to shoot some partridges. A few days of proper food …’

  ‘I am sorry, Azra,’ Naim said.

  ‘No, don’t be. You’ll be all right before you know it.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he repeated softly.

  That night’s failure brought back to him the extent of his loss, including the prime land of which he had been so proud, although he had at times been ashamed of it too. At times he had thought he had been far from brave in the war, that he had been afraid, the fear had filled his body and soul, he had not stood up and fought in the face of mortal danger, never fulfilled the norms of what people called ‘courage’ and the army ‘gallantry’. Still, with the passing of time he had come to feel that the losses he had suffered were deserving of a reward. That night, looking, with a certain regret, at the unblemished flesh of his wife, to whom the passing years had done no harm, the seeds of real self-doubt began to stir in the depths of his mind. He regained his strength in time but not his vitality of spirit. He became morose and began to fear his wife and everything connected with her. He never resumed the duties he had previously discharged in the village or on Roshan Agha’s lands. The promised return of their ancestral lands had not materialized. Naim now concentrated on cultivating his six acres, which were barely sufficient to feed the four mouths of his family and their cattle. He spoke less and less. Despite much effort, Azra remained unable to revive his soul. Eventually, she withdrew once again to Delhi, only occasionally visiting Naim in Roshan Pur. It took Naim a long time to come out of his shell, sparked once again by an incident in the uneasy relationship between himself and Azra.

  It was the time when political awareness was beginning to awaken a sense of separate identity among the Muslims of India. A grand gathering had been arranged in Delhi to try and bring together all the Muslim parties in the country. For this purpose Sir Aga Khan, who lived in France, was invited, as an international symbol of Indian Muslimhood, to preside over the meeting. Naim and Azra wanted – Azra more than Naim – to go and take part in this significant national event.

  They still slept together, in the same room but in separate beds laid alongside one another with a yard’s space between them. Once in a while they made love – as they did on this, the night before they were to go to Delhi. Afterwards they lay in bed and talked in brief sentences, marked by long silences in between.

  ‘Don’t you think it was a good thing to invite the Aga Khan to preside over the meeting?’ Azra asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Naim said. ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘He is famous.’

  ‘Well, he is very rich.’

  ‘But look at his life, so eventful. And so glamorous. I am excited. The day after is the New Year, we can go to Waheed’s New Year’s Eve party.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to any party. Only with you to the conference,’ Naim said.

  Azra was quiet for a few minutes. When she spoke it was with a deep sadness in her voice. ‘Naim?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wish things could have turned out differently.’

  Naim knew what she meant, yet still he asked, if only to say something, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, so much. I wish you hadn’t gone to prison, for one thing.’

  It took Naim a few minutes to completely absorb what she meant. Very slowly, the entire climate of his feelings changed. He turned his head slightly to look at her. What he saw surprised him. He looked at her face, the swollen lips, the thrust of the chin, the pointedly raised breasts, round white thighs, and all he saw was a coarse sensuality, naked and without shame. He wondered how it was that he had been in love with this woman for so long. He got off the bed and went to stand by the fireplace. He was shaking. Resting his elbows on the mantelshelf, he took his head in his hands, trying to calm himself. After a while, he returned to his own bed. Azra lay with her back to him, her eyes wide open, trying to dream about the past and wondering how and where it had gone. It took most of the night to douse the flames of bitter sadness inside her and for her to sleep for a few hours full of dread. In the morning, the distance between them increased, she spoke calmly to Naim, telling him she was going to Roshan Mahal on her own. Naim was relieved. He felt the distance between them stretching to a new limit, although he knew that there still remained some grains of love – that insoluble residue of a union between him and Azra that would not come to an end in this one night. Before he had slept in the night, however, he had decided that, one way or another, he would have to get out of this hole into which his spirit had dived.

  On open ground opposite the Jamia Mosque the stage was set for the All India Muslim Conference. All the Muslim political and religious parties in the country had come to participate. All manner of people, from Bombay to Peshawar, in their regional dress and headgear, were gathered there. A ceremonial gate of bamboo poles, tall trees cut for the purpose and wrapped in palm leaves, was erected at one end to serve as the entrance. A red carpet, lined on both sides with pots of winter flowers of all colours, led from the gate to the dais, a raised wooden structure covered with fine carpets and more flower pots all round. A high-backed chair, upholstered in golden silk, stood behind a large table, also covered with silken cloth of the same hue. At ground level in front of the dais were rows of chairs extending beyond the width of the platform. The first rows were of sofa chairs and behind them several more rows of simple, armless wooden seats. Behind the chairs there was an area for sitting and standing. This durree-covered ground was full of people, some sitting in the front, others standing at the back, the foot soldiers whose innocent perseverance and cheapness of life was the blood in the veins of every movement. They sat and stood unprotected from the sun under an open sky, their cheeks hollow but eyes bright with hope, looking up to their leaders who sat in the chairs and talked among themselves. The dais and the seating area was covered with orange tarpaulin strung up overhead with the help of bamboo poles and strong
ropes. To the left and right of the dais in the front row sat the official delegates of each participating party. There was Sir Shafi, who headed the Punjab faction of the Muslim League. Among them was also the poet Dr Mohammad Iqbal. In the middle were the brothers Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali of the Khilafat Movement. On one side sat long-bearded Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni and Shabir Ahmad Usmani of Jamiatul-Ulema-e-Hind. Each party had nominated twenty delegates who sat in prominent places in front of their followers. The rows behind them were occupied by the major and minor nawabs and jagirdars, dressed to the full in their jewels, medals and other finery, from the Muslim states and estates of India. Because of the Muslim custom of purdah, there were few women in the gathering.

  After Azra’s earlier change of heart and decision to go to Delhi by herself, Naim was not sure whether she would come to the conference. But as he entered the arena from the back, he had no difficulty in spotting her. She was sitting in one of the wooden seats in the last row, up against the first row of people sitting on the ground. Scanning the entire assembly, Naim could not see Roshan Agha, although he knew that the Agha had been planning to attend. Azra was sitting on her own, with the two chairs on either side, although they were in great demand, left vacant in deference to the woman present there, one who was not sitting in the very small separate enclosure reserved for women but with the men. Naim waded through the sitting crowd and took the chair next to her. She looked at him and there was no trace of the previous night on her face. Her eyes were bright and expectant. A few moments later the Aga Khan, surrounded by the reception committee, walked up the red carpet, a short, rotund figure in white morning suit, although it was well into the afternoon. He mounted the three wooden steps to the dais, took off his fan-shaped black hat to place it on the table, refused the rose garlands offered to him, stood his white cane against the arm of the chair and, acknowledging the slogans chanted by the sitting crowd with a wave of the hand, took his seat in the golden chair. Despite his prejudices, Naim thought the man had a striking presence. Without taking her gaze from the dais, Azra placed her hand on Naim’s arm and whispered to him, ‘Just listen to him when he speaks. I heard him once. Such beautiful English, with a slight accent.’

  With a jolt, Naim’s whole attention shifted to Azra, while his eyes remained fixed on the scene in front of him – men moving to and fro from one end of the dais to the other, talking, gesticulating, someone taking the microphone, men sitting behind him chanting ‘Zinda Bad’ and ‘Allah-o-Akbar’. But he was neither seeing nor listening to it, like a deaf and blind man roaming in his thoughts: she is beautiful, she’s coarse, she is loving, she is greedy, she is brave, she’s vivacious, she is faithful, she is contradictory, she’s a rich woman who gets what she wants, what in the world is she doing sitting here with me! The conflict in his heart took him away for a while from where he sat. When he returned to the present, Sir Shafi had finished a brief speech and was declaring at the end, ‘I announce the merger of Punjab Muslim League into the All India Muslim League and from now on will follow its leadership –’

  He was interrupted by the ear-splitting slogans of ‘All India Muslim League Zinda Bad’ and other such from the crowd. When the noise died down, Sir Shafi went on, ‘Today the Muslim community of India –’

  He was stopped short by a gentle rebuke from the Aga Khan, ‘Muslim nation, not community.’

  Sir Shafi picked it up, ‘– today the Muslim nation of India has been united as one on this platform.’

  Naim’s mind took a dip once again. Merge! Merge! We have merged and mingled, and yet remain apart, in large unknown spaces, echoing with suspicion. She is a better woman. No, just richer. I am a poor farmer. She is sitting by my side with her hand on my arm, lost in her own passions. Nothing to do with mine. Or with me. How have we walked for so long on the sides of this distant space, keeping within sight? Or am I totally in the wrong? Or is it love, as she says. If it is, it is a separate world …

  He was brought back to the conference by the roar of the crowd. An important-looking man was at the microphone, saying, ‘After counting the votes, I declare the resolution passed.’

  Suddenly Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar jumped on to the dais, pushed the man aside and stuck his face into the microphone. ‘We cannot accept this joint electorate in this way. Politics being the means of obtaining material benefits, we demand one-third representation at the centre and weighting in the provinces.’

  The man who had been at the microphone covered it with his hand and started speaking to the maulana in fast, pleading tones. A man who had been speaking to the Aga Khan, bending down to his ear, saw the Aga nod and stepped over to take resolute possession of the microphone to announce an interval for tea, after which, he said, the meeting would be reconvened. The Aga Khan got up from the presidential chair. He put on his hat, picked up his cane and left the stage, saying to someone as he passed the microphone, heard by some in the audience, ‘Keep a hold on Mohammad Ali, don’t let him speak during the interval.’

  Those occupying the chairs stood up and dispersed, while the sitting crowd stayed put, chanting slogans, having nowhere to go for tea.

  It was to be years before the Muslim masses gathered under the banner of the Muslim League behind the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, albeit without the religious parties who advocated the precedence of Islam over politics. For the time being, the Muslim Conference remained merely a symbol of Muslim unity, the different factions of Muslims keeping their distance from each other, holding to their separate agendas. Naim and Azra exchanged a few words, Naim telling her that he didn’t feel like staying for the next session of the conference and Azra trying gently to persuade him to stay not just for the day but also the next when the conference would formally end and the Aga Khan give an address. But in the end Naim went. He got out the same way he came in, through the back. Passing through hundreds of people sitting on their haunches, patiently waiting for something to happen, anything that would give them a reason to raise their voices in a slogan they had shouted a hundred times before as if it were the most precious thing they possessed, Naim knew what he had to do. He had no way of increasing his meagre landholding or earning a decent living, nor could he leave the big house and go to live in his two brick rooms or his father’s house; he simply had no heart for it. There was also the stinging regret of coming away from Azra, an act over which, despite his willing heart, he had lost control. He imagined that he had decided, not at that particular moment but before that, perhaps during the night before, that he would put himself once again at the disposal of the party and this time go the whole hog. He couldn’t suppress, however, a sneaking ambition mixed with the thought that some time in the future he might be considered good enough to join the leadership of the organization at some level.

  He wanted to put the work on his land in Ali’s hands with Rawal to help him with it. But it proved impossible. Ali, although only sixteen, had matured beyond his years and under the influence of his mother and the traditional enmity between step-siblings had never taken to Naim. During the time Naim was in gaol Ali had fallen in with a bad lot and was taken to the police station a couple of times under suspicion of cattle theft. Eventually Naim saw no alternative but to get him out of the village for a period before anything worse happened.

  ‘Come with me,’ Naim said to Ali one day when he went routinely to see his mothers.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Out.’

  They walked together along some fields, Ali leading the way without knowing where they were going, and Naim deliberately falling behind to keep his brother within sight and reach.

  ‘Why don’t you work on your land?’ Naim asked him.

  ‘What land, six acres? Not even enough for one man.’

  ‘That is all we have,’ Naim said.

  ‘Thanks to you since you lost your own by going to gaol.’

  ‘We can all eat if we work properly.’

  ‘No. I am going to get more land.’


  ‘How?’

  ‘I am going to earn more money.’

  ‘By stealing cattle?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You won’t earn one paisa but end up in gaol instead.’

  ‘It will not be the first time for this family,’ Ali said sarcastically.

  ‘Have you been pulling a plough?’ Naim asked with a smile, unseen by Ali.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Your neck is like a bullock’s.’

  ‘Have you come out here to make fun of me?’

  ‘You run with men who are bad characters. They are older than you and are criminals.’

  ‘I can stand my ground with any of them.’

  ‘That ground will soon be a prison yard.’

  ‘What is it to you?’

  ‘I will have to go and beg the police to let you off like the last time.’

  ‘Nobody asked you.’

  ‘It’s my duty. You are my brother.’

  ‘You are not my brother. You are son of your own mother.’

  ‘Your mother and mine are both our mothers.’

  ‘No,’ Ali said belligerently.

  ‘Haven’t I looked after them?’ Naim asked.

  ‘You don’t have to. I can look after my mother.’

  ‘You have the brain of a pig in your head. You never come to see me in

  my house.’

  ‘It’s not your house.’

  For a moment Naim didn’t know what to say. ‘And you fight with Rawal.’

  ‘Rawal is a son of a bitch.’

  ‘There is filth on your tongue,’ Naim said decidedly. ‘I am not listening to such talk. I am going to take you to town and leave you there.’

  Without warning, Ali took off. Naim ran after him. The peasants working in the fields shaded their eyes against the sun and said, laughing, ‘The young one’s exercising the elder.’

  The two ran on through fields mown and unmown, fertile and barren, startling wild pigeons and partridge and quail, which flew off in all directions, and rabbits scurrying away helter-skelter from under bushes looking for another shelter. Ali, younger and quicker, was putting ground between himself and Naim. A rabbit jumped out of a hole and struck Naim’s legs. It rolled with the blow for a few feet before running off. Naim was out of breath. He stopped and sat down on a small mound of earth. Seeing him tiring, Ali stopped running as well.