by Frank Wynne
But one day she did a housecleaning. I saw the white stockings and the raggedy broom, and just when I least expected it blond hair was dragging on the floor and she shoved the broom under the bed. I had to run because it seemed like the broom was searching for me, and suddenly I heard a scream and saw her feet running towards the door. She came back with a burning torch and jammed half her body under the bed and tried to burn my eyes. And I, clumsy, didn’t know which way to run and was dazzled and bumped into everything: the legs on the bed, the walls, the feet on the chairs. I don’t know how, I found myself outside and made for the puddle of water under the horses’ drinking trough, and the water covered me up but two boys saw me and went to look for reeds and started poking me. I turned and faced them, with my whole head out of the water, and stared right at them. They threw down the reeds and ran away, but immediately they came back with six or seven bigger boys, and they all threw stones and handfuls of dirt at me. A stone hit one of my little hands and broke it, but in the midst of badly aimed stones and in utter terror I was able to get away and run into the stable. And she came looking for me there with the broom, with the children constantly shouting, waiting at the door, and she poked me and tried to make me come out of my corner full of straw and I was dazzled again and bumped into the pails, the baskets, the sacks of carob beans, the horses’ hoofs, and a horse reared because I’d bumped into one of his hoofs, and I went up with him. A whack from the broom touched my broken hand and almost pulled it off, and a trickle of black spit oozed from one side of my mouth. But I still was able to get away through a crack, and as I escaped I heard the broom poking and poking.
In the dead of night I went to the woods with the roots. I came out from under some bushes in the light of the rising moon. Everything seemed hopeless. The broken hand didn’t hurt, but it was dangling by a sinew, and I had to lift my arm so it wouldn’t drag too much. I walked a little crookedly, now over a root, now over a stone, till I got to the root where I used to sit sometimes before they dragged me off to the bonfire in the square, and I couldn’t get to the other side because I kept slipping. And on and on and on, towards the willow tree, and towards the watercress and towards my slimy home under the water. The grass rustled in the wind, which whipped up bits of dry leaves and carried off short, bright strands from the flowers beside the path. I rubbed one side of my head against a tree trunk and slowly went towards the pond, and entered it holding my weary arm up, with the broken hand on it.
Under the water streaked with moonlight, I saw the three eels coming. They seemed a little blurred, and intertwined with each other, winding in and out, making slippery knots till the littlest one came up to me and bit my broken hand. A little juice came out of the wrist, looking like a wisp of smoke beneath the water. The eel held onto the hand and slowly pulled it, and while he was pulling, he kept looking at me. And when he thought I wasn’t watching he gave one or two hard, stubborn jerks. And the others played at entwining as if they were making a rope, and the one who was biting my hand gave a furious yank and the sinew must have snapped because he carried off the hand and when he had it he looked at me as if to say: “Now I’ve got it!” I closed my eyes for a while, and when I opened them the eel was still there, between the shadow and the shimmering bits of light, with the little hand in his mouth – a sheaf of bones stuck together, covered by a bit of black skin. And I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I saw the path with the stones, the spiders inside my house, the legs hanging over the side of the bed. They were dangling, white and blue, like they were sitting on top of the water, but empty, like spread-out washing, and the rocking water made them sway from side to side. And I saw myself under that cross made of shadows, above that fire full of colors that rose shrieking and didn’t burn me … And while I was seeing all these things the eels were playing with that piece of me, letting it go and then grabbing it again, and the hand went from one eel to the next, whirling around like a little leaf, with all the fingers separated. And I was in both worlds: in the slime with the eels, and a little in that world of I don’t know where … till the eels got tired and the slime sucked my hand under … a dead shadow, slowly smoothing the dirt in the water, for days and days and days, in that slimy corner, among thirsty grass roots and willow roots that had drunk there since the beginning of time.
THE ANSWER IS NO
Naguib Mahfouz
Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies
Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006). Born in Cairo, Naguib Mahfouz is one of the finest contemporary writers of Arabic literature. His honest, unsentimental, haunting stories created controversy in his native Egypt, where death threats culminated in an attempted assassination when he was eighty-two. In 1988, Mahfouz became the first (and to date, only) Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His best known works include The Cairo Trilogy and Children of the Alley.
The important piece of news that the new headmaster had arrived spread through the school. She heard of it in the women teachers’ common room as she was casting a final glance at the day’s lessons. There was no getting away from joining the other teachers in congratulating him, and from shaking him by the hand too. A shudder passed through her body, but it was unavoidable.
“They speak highly of his ability,” said a colleague of hers. “And they talk too of his strictness.”
It had always been a possibility that might occur, and now it had. Her pretty face paled, and a staring look came to her wide black eyes.
When the time came, the teachers went in single file, decorously attired, to his open room. He stood behind his desk as he received the men and women. He was of medium height, with a tendency to portliness, and had a spherical face, hooked nose, and bulging eyes; the first thing that could be seen of him was a thick, puffed-up mustache, arched like a foam-laden wave. She advanced with her eyes fixed on his chest. Avoiding his gaze, she stretched out her hand. What was she to say? Just what the others had said? However, she kept silent, uttered not a word. What, she wondered, did his eyes express? His rough hand shook hers, and he said in a gruff voice, “Thanks.” She turned elegantly and moved off.
She forgot her worries through her daily tasks, though she did not look in good shape. Several of the girls remarked, “Miss is in a bad mood.” When she returned to her home at the beginning of the Pyramids Road, she changed her clothes and sat down to eat with her mother. “Everything all right?” inquired her mother, looking her in the face.
“Badran, Badran Badawi,” she said briefly. “Do you remember him? He’s been appointed our headmaster.”
“Really!”
Then, after a moment of silence, she said, “It’s of no importance at all—it’s an old and long-forgotten story.”
After eating, she took herself off to her study to rest for a while before correcting some exercise books. She had forgotten him completely. No, not completely. How could he be forgotten completely? When he had first come to give her a private lesson in mathematics, she was fourteen years of age. In fact not quite fourteen. He had been twenty-five years older, the same age as her father. She had said to her mother, “His appearance is a mess, but he explains things well.” And her mother had said, “We’re not concerned with what he looks like; what’s important is how he explains things.”
He was an amusing person, and she got on well with him and benefited from his knowledge. How, then, had it happened? In her innocence she had not noticed any change in his behavior to put her on her guard. Then one day he had been left on his own with her, her father having gone to her aunt’s clinic. She had not the slightest doubts about a man she regarded as a second father. How, then, had it happened? Without love or desire on her part the thing had happened. She had asked in terror about what had occurred, and he had told her, “Don’t be frightened or sad. Keep it to yourself and I’ll come and propose to you the day you come of age.”
And he had kept his promise and had come to ask for her hand. By then she had attained a degree of maturity that g
ave her an understanding of the dimensions of her tragic position. She had found that she had no love or respect for him and that he was as far as he could be from her dreams and from the ideas she had formed of what constituted an ideal and moral person. But what was to be done? Her father had passed away two years ago, and her mother had been taken aback by the forwardness of the man. However, she had said to her, “I know your attachment to your personal independence, so I leave the decision to you.”
She had been conscious of the critical position she was in. She had either to accept or to close the door forever. It was the sort of situation that could force her into something she detested. She was the rich, beautiful girl, a byword in Abbasiyya for her nobility of character, and now here she was struggling helplessly in a well-sprung trap, while he looked down at her with rapacious eyes. Just as she had hated his strength, so too did she hate her own weakness. To have abused her innocence was one thing, but for him to have the upper hand now that she was fully in possession of her faculties was something else. He had said, “So here I am, making good my promise because I love you.” He had also said, “I know of your love of teaching, and you will complete your studies at the College of Science.”
She had felt such anger as she had never felt before. She had rejected coercion in the same way as she rejected ugliness. It had meant little to her to sacrifice marriage. She had welcomed being on her own, for solitude accompanied by self-respect was not loneliness. She had also guessed he was after her money. She had told her mother quite straightforwardly, “No,” to which her mother had replied, “I am astonished you did not make this decision from the first moment.”
The man had blocked her way outside and said, “How can you refuse? Don’t you realize the outcome?” And she had replied with an asperity he had not expected, “For me any outcome is preferable to being married to you.”
After finishing her studies, she had wanted something to do to fill her spare time, so she had worked as a teacher. Chances to marry had come time after time, but she had turned her back on them all.
“Does no one please you?” her mother asked her.
“I know what I’m doing,” she had said gently.
“But time is going by.”
“Let it go as it pleases, I am content.”
*
Day by day she becomes older. She avoids love, fears it. With all her strength she hopes that life will pass calmly, peacefully, rather than happily. She goes on persuading herself that happiness is not confined to love and motherhood. Never has she regretted her firm decision. Who knows what the morrow holds? But she was certainly unhappy that he should again make his appearance in her life, that she would be dealing with him day after day, and that he would be making of the past a living and painful present.
Then, the first time he was alone with her in his room, he asked her, “How are you?”
She answered coldly, “I’m fine.”
He hesitated slightly before inquiring, “Have you not … I mean, did you get married?”
In the tone of someone intent on cutting short a conversation, she said, “I told you, I’m fine.”
TOBA TEK SINGH
Saadat Hasan Manto
Translated from the Urdu by Frances W. Pritchett
Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) was an Indo-Pakistani writer, playwright and author considered among the greatest writers of short stories in South Asian history. He produced twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel and three collections of essays. Manto is best known for his stories about the partition of the subcontinent immediately following independence in 1947. Manto is often compared with D. H. Lawrence, partly because he wrote about taboos of Indo-Pakistani society. He was tried for obscenity six times but never convicted. In his journalism, he predicted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Manto was opposed to partition and had refused to go to the newly formed Pakistan, until a Hindu colleague remarked that, were it not for the fact they were friends, he would have killed Manto. The next day Manto packed his bags and took his family to Lahore.
Two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of Pakistan and Hindustan that like criminal offenders, lunatics too ought to be exchanged: that is, those Muslim lunatics who were in Hindustan’s insane asylums should be sent to Pakistan, and those Hindus and Sikhs who were in Pakistan’s insane asylums should be confided to the care of Hindustan.
There’s no telling whether this idea was wise or unwise; in any case, according to the decision of the learned, high-level conferences took place here and there, and finally a day was fixed for the exchange of lunatics. Thorough investigation was made. Those Muslim lunatics whose relatives were all in Hindustan were allowed to remain there. As for the rest, they were sent off to the border. Here in Pakistan, since almost all the Hindus and Sikhs had already left, the question of keeping anyone didn’t even arise. As many Hindu and Sikh lunatics as there were, all of them were conveyed, under police protection, to the border.
No telling what was going on that side. But here in the Lahore insane asylum, when word of this exchange arrived, major discussions began to take place. One Muslim lunatic, who every day for twelve years had regularly read the “Zamindar,” was asked by a friend, “Molbi Sa’b, what’s this ‘Pakistan’?”; after much thought and reflection he answered, “It’s a kind of place in Hindustan where razors are made.”
Having heard this answer, his friend was satisfied.
In the same way, a second Sikh lunatic asked another Sikh lunatic, “Sardarji, why are we being sent to Hindustan?—We don’t know the language of that place.”
The other smiled: “I know the language of those Hindustaggers—those Hindustanis go strutting around like the devil!”
One day, while bathing, a Muslim lunatic raised the cry of “Long live Pakistan!” with such force that he slipped on the floor and fell, and knocked himself out.
There were also a number of lunatics who were not lunatics. The majority of them were murderers whose relatives had bribed the officers to get them sent to the lunatic asylum, to save them from the coils of the hangman’s noose. These understood something of why Hindustan had been partitioned and what Pakistan was. But they too were ignorant of the actual events. Nothing could be learned from the newspapers. The guards were illiterate and crude; nothing could be picked up from their conversation either. They knew only this much: that there’s a man, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whom people call the “Qa’id-e Azam.” He has made a separate country for the Muslims, the name of which is Pakistan. Where it is, what its location is—about this they new nothing. This is the reason that in the insane asylum, all the lunatics whose minds were not completely gone were trapped in the dilemma of whether they were in Pakistan or Hindustan. If they were in Hindustan, then where was Pakistan? If they were in Pakistan, then how could this be, since a while ago, while staying right here, they had been in Hindustan?
One lunatic became so caught up in the circle of Pakistan and Hindustan, and Hindustan and Pakistan, that he became even more lunatic. One day he had been sweeping—and then climbed a tree, seated himself on a branch, and gave an unbroken two-hour speech about the subtle problem of Pakistan and Hindustan. When the guards told him to come down, he climbed even higher. When he was warned and threatened, he said, “I don’t want to live in either Hindustan or Pakistan. I’ll live right here in this tree.”
When after great difficulty his ardor was cooled, he came down and began to embrace his Hindu and Sikh friends and weep. His heart overflowed at the thought that they would leave him and go off to Hindustan.
In an M.Sc.-qualified radio engineer, who was Muslim, who used to stroll all day in silence on a special path in the garden entirely apart from the other lunatics, the change that manifested itself was that he removed all his clothing, confided it to the care of a warden, and began to wander all around the garden entirely naked.
A stout Muslim lunatic from Chiniot who had been an enthusiastic worker for the Muslim League,
and who bathed fifteen or sixteen times a day, suddenly abandoned this habit. His name was Muhammad Ali. Accordingly, one day in his madness he announced that he was the Qa’id-e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In imitation of him, a Sikh lunatic became Master Tara Singh. In this madness it almost came to bloodshed, but both were declared ‘dangerous lunatics’ and shut up in separate rooms.
There was a young Hindu lawyer from Lahore who had been rejected in love and had turned lunatic. When he heard that Amritsar had gone away into India, then he was very sad. He had fallen in love with a Hindu girl from that very city. Although she had rejected the lawyer, even in his madness he hadn’t forgotten her. Thus he abused all those Hindu and Muslim leaders who had connived together and made Hindustan into two fragments—his beloved had become Hindustani, and he Pakistani.
When talk of the exchange began, then some of the lunatics comforted the lawyer, saying that he shouldn’t mind about it, that he would be sent to Hindustan—the Hindustan where his beloved lived. But he didn’t want to leave Lahore, because he thought that in Amritsar his practice wouldn’t flourish.
