by Rita Kothari
As we turned round the corner, and walked a few steps towards the buildings, we saw a neatly dressed teenager from a well-to-do family holding, with both hands, a plateful of food covered with elaborate grandeur. The boy was walking towards us. This food was probably meant for the Faithful Ones observing Ramzan, but it had been a while since roza had begun, and the namazis had probably left the mosque. The boy strode towards the handicapped child with food in his hands. The handicapped child stretched out his palms to receive the food.
The boy said to him, ‘Bring a bowl first, then I’ll give it to you.’
On hearing the words, the elder brother almost threw the wooden cart and sprinted. Joyfully, he took to his heels, unmindful of the harsh thorns that hurt his heels. Meanwhile, the handicapped boy had stopped wailing.
Suddenly, someone yelled out, ‘Tufail, O Tufail! Wretched fellow, that food is only meant for a Muslim.’
Tufail’s father was on his way home from prayers, the ritual of breaking the roza and namaaz. He happened to catch his son before he committed a sacrilegious act. Standing at some distance, an old Muslim beggar woman heard his words. On realizing her rightful claim to the food, she sprung into action and stood expectantly before Tufail. Meanwhile, the Gedri boy had also zipped back, like the wind, with a thaanv in his hands. Tufail’s father marched swiftly to the scene of action to whisk the food away from his son, which he promptly poured into the old woman’s kasti.
The Gedri child extended his bowl and begged, ‘Sain, some for me please.’ His little sibling began to wail, ‘I am hungry … I am helpless … Baba, in the name of Allah …’
Tufail and his father walked away
The moment they had turned their backs, the old beggar fished out from her kasti all the food, halved it equally—rice, keema tikki, roti and mithai, and put one half into the little boy’s bowl. She patted the little boy and went away.
My faith in humanity was revived, and life which had seemed barren, stirred before me once again in the guise of spring.
Oxen
MUHAMMAD DAUD BALOCH
Iam a peasant with a small house in a small village of rural Sindh. House? A mere hut it is. I have two acres of land; I am the owner of the land as well its cultivator, the haari. If the harvest escapes the greedy eyes of the chief landowner, I do not have to scrounge for food for the next three or four months. Otherwise, I have to frequently return home with just the chaadar on my wretched shoulder. I have a strong and healthy pair of oxen (Abro–Sabro) for cultivating the land. At dawn, I take them to the field and return home with them in the evening.
My field is on the outskirts of the village where formerly every haari was a Sindhi, but ever since Seth Nenumal left for Hindustan, that land has been allotted to Punjabi Mohajirs. We haaris share brotherhood through labour and meet up with each other to chat about this, that and the other. At times I go up to them, at times they come and meet me. Of the many things we talk about during such meetings, matters of business often come up. We also have conversations about how good or bad the oxen have been, and how the chief landowners continue to exploit and torture, and so on. Sometimes, I tell the Punjabi mohajjirs that they should teach me Punjabi Urdu, and very often, they tell me that I should teach them Sindhi because they say now we are Sindhis and Sindh is our watan.
During one such session of chatting about trade and deals, Khairuddin Punjabi and I struck a deal of exchanging our oxen. Mine were much better than his, so he agreed to give me a donkey along with his oxen. I was happy that I had received something extra, whereas Khairuddin must have felt happy that he had landed such good oxen. I reached home with my pair and the donkey. According to the usual practice, I hitched the oxen to the plough and took them to my field. Initially, the oxen quietly toiled and cut furrows in the field.
After a little while, when I said to the two of them, ‘Khabe jaat athai’, instructing them to make furrows to the left, the oxen paid no attention, but tried to shrug off the leash that kept them tied to the plough. I kept saying, ‘Khabe sadye andar baahir per ta aa’, that is instructing them to make furrows inside the soil, but they had never heard these Sindhi words before and I simply could not control them. I was perplexed, and began to feel cheated by Khairuddin Punjabi, who had given me a pair of deaf oxen in exchange for my strong ones. How could I go back on my word and return them? I decided to settle scores with him someday. Meanwhile, I spent yet another day hitting and pelting the oxen who did not understand my language. Frustrated, I decided to return them and the donkey to Khairuddin.
Early one morning, I left the plough and leash in the field, and marched towards Khairuddin’s field with the three animals. I had barely gone halfway when I saw Khairuddin Punjabi coming towards me with my oxen. When we both stood facing each other, Khairuddin said to me that my oxen didn’t understand his language although he had whacked them so hard that their skin peeled off. He said, ‘Please return my oxen to me, and you take back yours.’ I returned the pair and donkey to him. We went back to our fields with our respective animals.
While walking back, my eyes fell upon the backs of my oxen marked now by brutal beating, and tears welled up in my eyes. It occurred to me, that if without a language this is what happens to a beast, Allah only knows what happens to humans.
The Death of Fear
SHOUKAT HUSSAIN SHORO
It was three o’ clock in the depth of the night but the firing had not ceased, it continued intermittently and at times, exploded suddenly, sending out waves of terror. Zainab lay, along with her two-year-old son, on a stringed cot. Kamil had lain down on the cot next to her. Every few minutes, he tossed and turned.
‘Are you awake?’ Zainab’s voice was a nervous whisper.
‘Yes, and you can’t sleep either?’
‘Who can sleep when death stares in your face?’ Zainab replied in a fearful hush.
It frightened her to think that her voice might cross the room, the house and return with a bullet.
‘I had given you a Valium, didn’t you take that?’ Kamil asked.
‘I swallowed two tablets, and my head weighs a ton now, but I am unable to sleep.’
Kamil fell silent. He knew that the fear of death was far more potent than sleeping pills, and even an entire bottle could prove useless.
‘The last few Sindhi families in the neighbourhood have left. We are the only ones left. The mohajjir’s daughter next door dropped in today. She said it was dangerous for us to stay in this neighbourhood any longer, and that we should shift elsewhere,’ Zainab said.
‘Do you think she was warning you out of sympathy? She must have been sent purposefully to terrorize you.’ Kamil sat up with rage.
‘No, no. How’s that possible?’ Zainab replied, in disbelief. ‘I became a member of this house only a few years ago, while these people have lived next to you for forty years. All of you have spent time together like families, shared meals with each other and played together. How can they do that?’
‘They may not do anything, but it would not stop them from inciting others,’ Kamil said. ‘They have set their eyes upon our house.’
‘How do you know?’ Zainab asked, perplexed.
‘The girl’s father talked to me about it. He said exactly the same thing: that it was dangerous for us to stay here. He also said that if I would sell the house, he was willing to buy it.’
‘Then? What did you say?’
‘I told him that my house costs four and a half lakhs, but he is not willing to pay more than one and a half lakhs.’
‘Hmm …’ Zainab was lost in thought.
Bang … bang … bang … .The firing was not far away.
Zainab got up and sat beside Kamil on his cot. Kamil took her hand in his. Her hand was ice-cold. And when he put his hand on her forehead, it was damp with perspiration.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kamil wiped the perspiration with his hands and said, ‘Are you scared? Lie down.’
‘Aren’t you scared?’ Zainab lay down besid
e him.
Kamil did not respond, but he thought to himself, of course I am scared too. He ran his fingers through Zainab’s hair.
‘Allah knows, how many nights I haven’t slept. There was fear even at the time of curfew. Despite a curfew, the mohajjirs attacked the homes of Sindhis. Now that the curfew has been lifted, its even more scary. I feel as if our house is under fire.’
‘So, what do we do?’
‘There is no alternative. Sindhis, with homes in villages fled from there the moment riots began. We have had nothing to do with villages. Our ancestors were from Hyderabad. Who would have imagined that we would feel unsafe in our ancestral homes?’
‘I suggest that we sell the house and live in a Sindhi neighbourhood.’
‘Sell the ancestral house for peanuts?’ Kamil asked, irritated.
‘The house is not more precious than our lives, God forbid. What if they barge in and kill us, what use would the house be then?’ Zainab tried to see Kamil’s face in the dark.
Kamil took a deep breath. He realized that Zainab had a point. He was not oblivious to what the two of them had avoided voicing. More than their lives, they were anxious about the safety of their little son.
‘All right then, I will go and check out houses in Qasimabad tomorrow. We will first buy the house and then sell this to our neighbours. Others may not give even this much for the house.’
Zeenat heaved a sigh of relief and buried herself in Kamil’s arms.
On making inquiries with the property dealer in Qasimabad, Kamil came to know that prices of real estate had skyrocketed. Sindhis living amongst mohajjirs in Latifabad and Hyderabad had also begun to move to that side. Which is why plots had become expensive and rents had also gone up. Kamil’s son was still very little, even a smaller place would have served their purpose. One of Kamil’s friends told him that in the Sindhi Muslim Housing Society, a house owned by the retired official, Haji Sahib, was available. His son practised medicine in Saudi Arabia; Haji Sahib and his wife occupied the ground floor, but the upper floor was available. It had two bedrooms. Haji Sahib demanded a monthly rent of Rs 1500 and a year’s rent in advance. Kamil thought the rent was exorbitant, but he felt there was no harm in talking to Haji Sahib. The latter might bring the rent down on seeing a fellow Sindhi’s helplessness.
It was evening. There were a few chairs laid out in the lawn outside the house. Some men, looking like retired bureaucrats, were sitting on them. Haji Sahib offered Kamil a chair and began to ask him for a fuller account of things.
‘Now look here,’ Haji Sahib addressed his companions, ‘look, how poor Sindhis are being compelled to sell their ancestral homes, as if Hyderabad was not a part of Sindh, rather it was the Hyderabad of the Deccan in India. The house belonged to their ancestors but they don’t have a right to live there!’
Kamil found Haji Sahib’s words heartening, they appeared like drops of cool water on parched earth. Perhaps Sindhis had begun to realize how much like orphans they had become.
‘We are suffering from the same misery,’ a retired teacher said, looked at Kamil. ‘We were talking about exactly the same thing, just before you arrived. World history is full of instances of how people from other lands dislodge and destroy the aboriginal groups. For example, the Red Indians in America.’
‘These are hackneyed examples of colonization. You must try and understand the current political strategy,’ declared an intellectual bureaucrat among them.
‘The MQM’s terrorism is on the same lines as Hitler’s Nazi movement. By creating a sense of victimization and arousing sentiments of racial purity, Hitler militarized the Germans. Similar Nazi terrorist strategies are being used here. The Nazis robbed the properties of the Jews and exterminated them. The same thing is being done to the Sindhis.’
‘Where will they push us?’ Haji Sahib asked. ‘We will find acceptance in neither India, nor Afghanistan nor Iran.’
‘You think these are random riots? You think these innocent Sindhis are being killed aimlessly?’ The intellectual bureaucrat continued to speak without listening to Haji Sahib. ‘All this is a part of a well-thought-out strategy. MQM plans to drive away the Sindhis from the bigger cities, and bring mohajjirs to the cities. This wedge between them will support the MQM’s politics, and eventually it will stake its claim to form “Mohajjiristan” and divide Sindh into two.’
‘You are right,’ Haji Sahib sighed, ‘we are sick of these problems …’
‘But, sain, I beg your pardon, these problems have been created by our fathers and grandfathers. Who drove the Sindhis away, and invited outsiders to come here, and live? They said: “Muslims are our brothers.” We gave them Karachi, Hyderabad and other big cities as gifts. Our generation is paying the price for this mistake,’ Kamil said.
‘Miyan sahib,’ the retired teacher addressed Kamil, ‘how old are you?’
‘Thirty.’
‘So, how would you know what happened then? If the Hindus had not inflicted atrocities upon Sindhi Muslims, you think we would have done this? Were we that insane? The Hindus considered themselves superior and civilized. You young men don’t even know the discrimination Hindus practised,’ the retired teacher said angrily.
‘You are probably right. But Hindus had not formed terrorizing groups and gone into the houses of Sindhi Muslims, humiliated them, robbed them and beaten them up. They had not fired at innocent passers-by. If in the eyes of the Sindhi Hindus, Sindhi Muslims were illiterate and uncouth, in the eyes of the mohajjirs we are savage and irreligious. What difference has it made to us? On the contrary, an unfamiliar language and culture have been thrust upon us …’ Agitated, Kamil argued.
‘Yes, young man, you are absolutely right. We were blinkered and fell over the cliff. The mohajjirs have conquered us. Yaar, I tell you, Sindhi Muslims have bad destinies following them.’
‘No, Haji Sahib, this is not about destiny. We have our own weaknesses.’ The intellectual bureaucrat held forth. ‘We Sindhis lack communal pride. We lack political insight. Every Sindhi thinks only of himself. Read the newspapers, and see how Sindhis are at each other’s throats. People decimate each other’s families out of personal vendetta, they behead each other over trifling matters like water. How many Sindhis support each other? On the other hand, look at the mohajjir politics of Sindh. Within a few years, Altaaf got together all the mohajjirs on the same platform and formed a strong organization. Sindhis have been merely talking about it for years. What have they achieved? Everyone builds a little mosque of his own. There must be some hundred parties and organizations. As long as Sindhis do not kill their egotism, and get together on a single platform, we cannot achieve anything. Sindhis will continue to be thrown about, and harassed, and the conspiracy to drive them away from cities will meet with success.’
The atmosphere became morose. Nobody seemed to want to talk.
‘All right, yaar, we’ll make a move now,’ the retired teacher and the bureaucrat got up to leave.
Haji Sahib stood up to see the two of them off. Sitting down once again, he asked Kamil, ‘So what do you do?’
‘I am a lecturer in a college.’
‘All right, young man, consider this as your own home. You are welcome to stay here. In times of crisis, we Sindhis must help each other out. If we don’t, who will?’
‘Very kind of you, sain,’ an overwhelmed Kamil responded, ‘but I have a request. The rent is very high. I earn three thousand rupees. If I spend half of my salary on the rent, it’ll be difficult to survive. To be honest, I have money just enough for fifty per cent of the advance. The moment I am able to sell my house, I will give you the rest.’
Haji Sahib mulled over this.
‘All right then, tell me, how much rent would you be able to pay?’
‘Sain, I’d be obliged if you accept eight hundred rupees,’ a humbled Kamil replied.
‘Eight hundred rupees?’ Haji Sahib threw his head back and laughed. ‘That’s too little. My friend, you want me to make a loss or what!�
��
‘No, Haji Sahib, God forbid, I wouldn’t want you to make a loss. I merely shared my helplessness with you. If you would be so kind as to …’
‘Hmm …’ Haji Sahib was again pensive.
‘How many children do you have?’
‘A little son, two years old. To be honest, we are worried more about him than ourselves. The fear looms so large that my wife hasn’t slept in months.’
‘All right, I can bring the rent down by three hundred rupees. Twelve hundred is the final price. You can pay me half the advance and take the key, I trust you.’
Kamil thought it was futile to insist further.
‘All right, sain, I respect your decision. Will you kindly show me the place?’
Haji Sahib opened the door leading to a staircase, and took Kamil upstairs. The place was fine, sufficient for Kamil’s purposes.
‘I will come tomorrow with the advance and take the keys.’
Kamil left.
When he reached home and shared the good news with Zainab, he saw the dark clouds of despair and dread disperse from her face. Her nervous eyes lit up. Kamil saw how hope renewed life.
‘How’s the house, tell me?’ Zainab asked.
‘Quite good. We will be able to live comfortably.’
‘The rent is not very high, I hope.’
‘It is. He quoted thousand five hundred at first, but finally agreed upon thousand two hundred. Haji Sahib is a good man, and quite sympathetic. Finally, it looks as if Sindhis have begun to understand each other.’
‘May God give the Sindhis wisdom enough to unite, otherwise these monsters will not let us survive,’ Zainab said.
