Anwar looked askance. What a strange thing to say!
‘Rasheed’s death was probably the last traditional death in that country,’ Javed said, by way of explaining his earlier comments. Then he fell silent.
For some time, both sat in silence. They ate a little, toyed with the food, drank some water and sat back. Javed glanced around once again. The faces had changed. There were fresh kadhais on several tables and new diners with new jaws working in the same untiring way. The jaws were getting bigger and bigger. He turned his eyes away and said, ‘You were asking about my feelings and reactions since I came back, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yaar, at first I felt as though everything had changed here, everything. I felt jolted, almost disoriented. Gradually, I began to see that nothing had changed here; again I felt disoriented.’
‘What is the connection between these two feelings?’ Anwar asked in amazement.
‘There is no connection at all. Well, never mind, let it be,’ Javed said, swiftly changing the subject. ‘Tell me about the situation here.’
‘There is nothing to tell.’ By now Anwar was so thoroughly dispirited that he did not have the heart for any more stories.
‘So, whom were you talking about yesterday?’
‘Was I? I don’t remember.’
‘The one who was shot?’
‘Oh! You mean Mirza …’
‘Mirza was killed by a bullet? Who shot him?’
‘He was leaving a demonstration. The street was crowded.’
‘That is the problem with demonstrations; streets become clogged. What happened then?’
‘He crossed the street … he must have taken barely four steps when someone fired a gun and he died instantly.’
‘But who fired the gun and why?’
‘Someone must have … just like that.’
‘Strange, very strange, indeed! Then what happened?’
‘That’s it.’
‘You mean nothing happened after that?’ There was terror in his voice now.
‘No, nothing. What could happen after that?’
‘A man is killed by a bullet, and nothing happens. That is strange, isn’t it Anwar?’
‘Perhaps you are right. I hadn’t ever thought of it before. ‘
‘You never thought of it?’ He looked at Anwar with a mix of surprise and fear.
‘Yes, yaar,’ he said with something approaching shame and began to look at Javed with some perplexity.
‘Javed!’
‘Yes! What is it?’
‘Yaar.’ A little scared now, he tried to probe one last time. ‘You must have seen worse things out there … hmm?’
Javed hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘you are right. But at least we knew why it was happening to us … at least we understood what was happening.’
Those Who Are Lost1
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The man rested his wounded head against the tree trunk, opened his eyes and asked, ‘Have we come out?’
The bearded man answered in a tone of quiet contentment, ‘Praise be to the Lord, we have emerged unscathed.’
The man with a bag slung around his neck nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, undoubtedly, we have managed to save our lives and get away.’ Then he looked at the bandage tied around the head of the injured man and asked, ‘How’s your head now?’
The man replied, ‘I think some blood is still seeping from it.’
The bearded man spoke in the same tone of quiet contentment, ‘Don’t worry, my friend. The bleeding will stop and, if the Good Lord so wills, the wound will soon heal.’
The man with the wounded head now opened his eyes fully and looked at each of them closely. Then he lifted a finger and counted them – the bearded man, the man with the bag slung around his neck and the youth. Surprised, he asked, ‘Where is the other man?’
The youth was startled. ‘Who? You mean … one of us is missing?’
The bearded man glared at the youth. Then he spoke to the man with the wounded head in a soft, chiding tone, ‘My friend, our numbers are not so large that we can go wrong in counting.’
The man with the bag agreed with the bearded man, then he too counted each of them – the bearded man, the man with the wounded head and the youth. He too was startled, ‘Where is the other man?’
The youth looked despairingly at the man with the bag. Then he counted them all over again – the bearded man, the man with the bag and the man with the wounded head. Sounding quite worried, he asked, ‘Where has the other man gone?’
The bearded man looked at the trio with stabbing, angry eyes. He raised a finger and took in each of the three – the man with the wounded head, the man with the bag and the youth. It was his turn to be startled. He counted them again. Again he was startled. He counted them for the third time, slowly and carefully. Rattled, he muttered, ‘Strange, very strange!’
The foursome looked at each other in fearful bewilderment. And the same exclamation rose in whispered unison to their lips, ‘Strange, very strange, indeed!’ And then they fell silent.
It was a long silence. A dog started barking somewhere in the distance. The youth looked at the others with fear-filled eyes and said softly, ‘Why is the dog barking?’
The man with the wounded head was indifferent to his question. ‘Who can it be?’
‘Must be him,’ the bearded man spoke confidently in a loud, ringing tone. ‘He can’t be very far away; he must have gotten lost somewhere close by.’
The man with the wounded head picked up a bamboo staff and got to his feet. ‘If it is him, and the dog is stopping him from getting here, I must go and fetch him.’
He held the bamboo staff and began to walk in the direction of the barking dog. The remaining three sat in silence. The man with the bag asked, ‘Can it really be him?’
The bearded man said, ‘Who else can it be at this strange hour in this strange land?’
‘Yes, it must be him,’ the man with the bag spoke complacently. ‘He was always so scared of dogs. If ever he spotted a dog on the road, he would become still as a statue.’
But the youth spoke doubtingly, ‘Have you noticed … the sound of the barking can’t be heard any more.’
The man with the bag tried to listen closely, then said, ‘Yes, that’s true, there is no sound now. I wonder what could have happened.’
The bearded man spoke reassuringly, ‘The two of them must have chased the dog away. They will be here any moment now.’
And the three fell silent again. Their eyes had turned in the direction the man with the wounded head had taken. The man with the bag was staring unblinkingly. He spoke as though he had suddenly spotted something, ‘He is coming alone.’
‘Alone?’ the bearded man asked.
‘Yes, alone.’
The three watched the man with the wounded head as he came closer. The man with the wounded head came up to them, put his staff away and sat down. He said, ‘There was no one there.’
The man with the bag asked incredulously, ‘But then, why did the dog bark?’
The youth said, ‘Dogs don’t bark just like that.’
The man with the wounded head said, ‘But there was no one there.’
‘That’s very strange,’ the man with the bag said.
The youth pricked his ears again. He said, ‘Listen … what do you make of that? Isn’t it the sound of a barking dog?’
Everyone listened carefully. Then the bearded man said to the man with the wounded head, ‘Where did you go off to? The sound of barking is coming from the other direction.’
The man with the bag picked up the bamboo staff lying close beside the man with the wounded head and got up. He said, ‘I will go and see.’
The bearded man also got to his feet and said, ‘Why don’t we all go and see?’
The other two also got to their feet. All four of them set off in the direction from which they had just heard the barking. They walked very far. But they found nothing. The man with the bag muttered as he wa
lked, ‘There is no one here.’
The bearded man tried to bolster his courage. He said, ‘Call out to him; he must be somewhere close by. He is a man, not a phantom that he will disappear like this.’
The man with the wounded head spoke despairingly, ‘Yes, call out to him and see.’ And he took a long shuddering breath as though he was plucking all his courage to call out but, suddenly, he stopped short. He turned towards the man with the bag and said, ‘I can’t remember his name. What was his name?’
‘Name?’
The man with the wounded head tried hard to recall the missing man’s name but to no avail. Then he turned towards the youth, ‘Surely you must remember, young man.’
The youth replied, ‘Forget the name, I don’t even remember his face.’
‘Don’t even remember his face …’ and the man with the bag fell into deep thought. Finally, he said, ‘You know, it is amazing; even I cannot remember his face.’ He turned towards the bearded man. ‘Sir, surely you remember his face and his name.’
The bearded man was lost in thought. He tried hard to dredge it up from his memory. Then he spoke in a worried tone, ‘Friends, let us turn back, for there is danger in searching any further.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we remember neither his name nor his face. In such a situation, God knows what we might chance upon. We might think it is he, and it might not be him but someone else. This is a strange hour and we are in a strange land.’
The four of them turned back. They walked till they reached the spot from which they had set off. They got a fire going and the man with the bag took out some mixed gram from the bag and began to cook it.
After they had eaten and drunk, they sat warming their hands by the fire. Remembering those they had left behind, they grew tearful.
‘But who was that man?’ the youth asked.
The others feigned ignorance and asked, ‘Which man?’
‘The man who was with us but got left behind.’
‘Oh … that man … we had nearly forgotten him. Yes, who was he?’
‘It is very strange,’ said the man with the bag. ‘We don’t even remember his face or his name.’
‘Wasn’t he one of us, then?’
The youth’s question left them dumbfounded. Then the man with the bag said, ‘If he wasn’t one of us, who was he? And why was he tagging along with us? His sudden disappearance …’ He fell silent. They looked at each other as though each was trying to fathom why the man had disappeared, why he was with them, who, how, when …
Finally, the bearded man gathered their flailing courage and said, ‘Friends, do not succumb to doubts, for doubts hold no recompense for us. He was undoubtedly one of us. But we left our homes in such disarray that we could not possibly recognize our fellow men, nor could we keep track of our numbers as we fled.’
‘But why can’t we remember how many of us there were when we left?’ the youth interjected. ‘And where we had left from …’ he added.
The bearded man tried hard to remember. ‘All I can remember is that when I left Gharnata …’
‘Left Gharnata …’ the three were startled and looked at the bearded man in amazement.
Then the man with the bag began to laugh loudly. The bearded man had stopped short at the others’ amazement. Now he was thoroughly rattled by the laughter of the man with the bag. The man with the bag went on laughing and said, ‘It is like, if I were to start boasting and say, “When I was leaving Jehanabad …”’
Jehanabad? Everyone was shocked.
Now the man with the bag, who had been laughing at the bearded man all this while, was jolted into silence. The man with the wounded head gave a sharp, hard cackle of laughter and said a bit sorrowfully, ‘I have been uprooted, so it does not matter any more whether I left Gharnata or Jehanabad or Mecca, the Most Sacred of Homes, or Kashmir …’ and he too fell silent.
These words of the man with the wounded head so affected them that they all fell silent. After a while, the bearded man spoke tearfully, ‘We have left behind everything that we owned, but must we leave our memories as well?’
The man with the bag spoke after a great deal of thought, ‘All I can remember now is that our homes were burning like dry kindling and we were running out and running away.’
The youth’s heart grew heavy. He said, ‘All I can remember is that at that moment, my father was sitting on his prayer mat holding a rosary in his hand. His lips were moving in prayer and there was smoke billowing all around us …’
The bearded man asked in a soft, cloying tone, ‘Did your father live to see all this?’ The youth made no answer. His eyes were brimming with tears.
The man with the bag spoke pensively, ‘All I can remember is that our homes were burning like piles of tinder and we were running out in blind panic.’
The man with the wounded head remained unperturbed. All he said was, ‘Friends, what’s the good of memories? How does it help me to remember whether my head was struck with a bamboo pole or a stick or whether it was cleaved in two by a sword? All that matters to me is that right now, at this very moment, my head is aching unbearably and blood is trickling down it.’
Everyone looked at the man with the wounded head with deep sympathy.
The bearded man looked long and lingeringly at the man with the wounded head and said, ‘My breast has more wounds than your head.’ He sighed deeply and continued, ‘Oh, what a town it was before it was razed to the ground!’
‘What a crowd of people and how quickly they disappeared before our eyes!’ the youth spoke dolefully. He was lost in a maze of memories. He remembered the moment when he had placed his very first kiss on a pair of tremulous lips. He remembered making those grandiose announcements that one usually makes at such moments and how lowly time and place seem to become and how magical the path of love. Now he recalled the moment with sadness. He muttered, ‘Had she been here now, our numbers would have been even.’
‘She?’ The bearded man looked askance. ‘Had who been here?’
‘Her.’
‘Who?’
The youth made no reply. He was looking unblinkingly into empty space. The bearded man and the man with the bag continued to watch him. The man with the wounded head leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes as though he were heartily sick of this whole business. The man with the bag finally asked softly, ‘Was it a woman?’
‘Woman?’ The bearded man jumped at the word.
The man with the wounded head also opened his eyes in surprise.
‘If it was a woman,’ the man with the bag said, ‘God knows we have been deprived of good companionship!’
The bearded man looked daggers at him and said, ‘If it was a woman, God knows, her companionship would have ruined us all!’
The man with the wounded head laughed sardonically and asked, ‘Aren’t we already ruined?’
‘But that ruin would have been far worse.’
Then the man with the wounded head spoke in a suddenly cruel tone, ‘You old man, it is far better to come to naught because of a woman than to have to suffer like this – without reason, without cause.’ And he closed his eyes and rested his head once more against the tree trunk.
There was a long silence. The man with the bag got up to collect bits of firewood and stoke the fire. They continued to sit like that – each lost in his own thoughts, drowning in their own forebodings, warming their hands beside the fire – until finally the bearded man muttered, ‘Isn’t it strange that we can neither remember his name nor his face? We can’t even remember whether this person was a man or a woman.’
The man with the bag spoke as though he was putting immense pressure on his brain to recall something. ‘Who was the missing person? Who could it be?’ And then he added suspiciously, ‘What if it wasn’t a man?’
‘Not a man?’ The youth was perplexed.
The bearded man hesitated then said softly, ‘Yes, it could be so.’
Again, there was silence. The you
th was caught in a snare. He asked, ‘If it wasn’t a man, who was it?’
The bearded man and the man with the bag fell into deep thought. The man with the wounded head opened his eyes, looked at the youth and said, ‘If it wasn’t a woman, who was she? And if she was a creature from hell, to hell with her!’ And he closed his eyes once again.
‘Creature from hell!’ The other three were startled. After a moment’s hesitation, the bearded man said, ‘Friend, don’t talk like that lest we lose trust in our fellow men.’
The man with the wounded head opened his eyes and looked at the bearded man. Once again he laughed in his typically sardonic manner and said, ‘Old man, do you still repose trust in your fellow men?’ He closed his eyes, put his head back and slumped against the tree trunk.
The bearded man looked worriedly at him and asked, ‘Friend, does your head hurt a lot?’
The man with the wounded head kept his eyes closed, but shook his head in negation. He stayed quiet. The bearded man probed, ‘Do you remember how you were hurt? And how you escaped?’
The man with the wounded head kept his eyes shut, but spoke in a tone of extreme torment, ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘How strange!’ said the youth.
‘No, there is nothing strange about it,’ said the bearded man. ‘If the wound is deep, it can numb the brain and paralyse the memory.’
‘My head has not been wounded, yet I feel as though my brain has been numbed for some time,’ said the man with the bag.
The bearded man tried to explain, ‘It happens in such circumstances; one gets petrified …’ He stopped, startled, mid-sentence, and for a while sat motionless as though he was straining to hear something. Then he looked questioningly towards the man with the bag and asked, ‘Isn’t it the same sound?’
The man with the bag pricked his ears and said, ‘Yes, it is.’
The three strained to catch the sound, looked fearfully at each other and continued to gaze in mute terror. The man with the beard got to his feet. The man with the bag and the youth also stood up. As they began to walk away, the man with the wounded head opened his eyes. Grimacing in pain, he too got to his feet and began to walk behind them. They walked far – first in one direction, then the other. Then they were surprised. The man with the bag said, ‘There is no one here for miles around.’
The Death of Sheherzad Page 4
