Animal’s People

by Indra Sinha

  Standing alone on the field of battle,

  O Hussein, never shall I forget Hussein! showing

  no fear, the zibh-e-Azeem of Abu Abdillah

  Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!

  “You’re listening always,” says Elli. “How do you distinguish the sounds?”

  “I don’t distinguish,” replies Somraj. “I try to hear it all together, all at once. When songs clash, as you called it, sometimes out of that comes a new music, something completely fresh.”

  “Like with lives,” she says.

  The fire is burning in a big courtyard outside the masjid. Tele screens all around show those like me who cannot see directly. The coals are laid in a large square pit raised a few feet, surrounded by a platform on which are the guys with big leather bellows making it hotter still. Every time the men heave the bellows, sparks fly sideways, the coals glow with anger. Already fierce red they’re, and must get hotter still. The bellows groan, jets of air turn the coals white with fury. Long ago I’ve lost track of Somraj and Elli. Now I have to be devious, I am going to do this fire walk and no one shall forbid me. It is to my advantage that I am low to the ground, people are not used to talking at knee level. The crowd is thick with young men wearing black headbands, they are forming into lines which move slowly forward converging, joining, like streams becoming a river, heading for the platform where the steps lead up to the fire.

  On the ground I find a black scarf where someone has dropped it and with some difficulty tie it one-handed around my head. I have no black shirt to wear, nothing else in fact except my kakadus. I’ve joined a line of guys who have begun moving towards the inferno. Their legs are like trees before and behind me, their feet are wet where they have dipped them in water, they leave damp footprints on the paving, I did not know to do this so I place my hands and feet in patches of moisture, hoping to pick up some. The others are singing loudly the words of the lament.

  now comes night to roof the dark horizon,

  the black standard of the People of the Cloak

  slides from the shoulder of ever-revolving time,

  pitiless heart, let your sigh of sorrow scorch the sky!

  tongue, it is time to mourn, eye, it is time to weep!

  We are coming near the steps and men around me are flinching as they feel gusts of heat from the fire, still they move steadily forward, me with them, we are going up the steps. No one has stopped me, nor said a thing.

  It’s like my mind is detached and floating above, I see myself mounting the stair on fours, my hands on the wooden planks, splashes of heat catch my face, beyond the topmost step is a ledge of wood, then the brick wall of the pit, from then on it’s fire. I can now hear the fire, it does not crackle or roar, it’s hissing like some giant cobra stirred up and enraged, if I had anyone to say prayers to, I would say them, but I haven’t, so I’ve started under my breath singing a different song.

  I am an animal fierce and free

  pure in heart I’ll never be

  but not this way shall my life end

  this fire itself shall be my friend

  The man ahead of me steps off into the fire. Little clouds of smoke squirt from under his feet as he runs, where he has stepped the coals are dark for an instant. A voice in my head says “You shall cross,” and then my fear is gone, I’m filled with a certainty that I will do this and live, I will run across like that man did, quicker than he, I will live.

  “Hey, who’s this?” A burly Yar-yilaqi guy is looking down at me. A black band is round his head, his black shirt’s unbuttoned, something of gold is gleaming in the hairs of his chest.

  “I’m doing the fire,” I mumble.

  “No you are not, get him out of here.” So I’m bundled back down the stairs and into the crowd.

  Two feet appear under my nose, toes pointing right at me. It’s Farouq. “Ha ha, enjoying yourself, Animal? What can you see?”

  “Nothing. I would have done the fire walk. They stopped me.”

  “Yes, I know,” he sniggers. “Want to watch me do it?”

  “Would give me a laugh if you catch fire,” I retort. Bitter disappointed I’m that I was stopped. I could have done it.

  Without a word the bugger beckons to one of his chums and suddenly I’m hoisted off the ground and into the air.

  “If I burn, you burn,” he says with a weird laugh, like he’s high, next thing I’m arsed to his shoulders which is exactly the last place I expect to be.

  “Pray I don’t drop you,” says he from below.

  It’s crossed my mind that Farouq’s not joking, he plans for me a terrible end. Or maybe he’ll trip and, oh, Animal le pauvre’s short, awful life ends in a public cremation. Now again I’m terrified.

  Way above the heads of the crowd, the fire’s heat is fierce on my face. A little way off I spot Somraj and Elli. A couple of guys are looking at her in a not too comfortable way, but Zafar’s there beside them with Nisha and the surliness turns to smiles flashing. Nisha looks round, our eyes meet. Fully amazed she’s, to see me looking at her from a fire walker’s shoulders. She tugs at her dad and points, so I’ve given a wave.

  All wave back, except Elli. Elli’s eyes are fixed on the pit of cokes being quickened by the bellows-men, strange eddies are playing under the red glow of the fire, her father in his hell hole, he had quietly faced such danger every day out of love for her.

  Somraj is speaking in her ear, I think he’s telling her the story of Hussein, but such is the hubbub in the place, the sound of the fire itself and above all the waves of chanting Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! that she cannot hear much. Then Eyes, it comes into my head with perfect certainty what she is thinking. It’s of a different kind of fire, that Somraj had breathed, which had scoured his lungs and taken away his singer’s breath. What must it have been like, that inferno? O who will speak now for the orphans? She has heard so many stories of that night, so many accounts of that vast slaughter of innocents. Who now will speak for the poor? What must have been the terror of waking in the dead of night, blinded by acrid gas who will protect these wretched ones running out into the night gulping fumes that tore and burned your insides where now will they find refuge causing you to drown on dry land because your lungs have wept themselves full of fluid. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! That night had been cold, a night of bright stars hear what harm the heavens have wrought and all over the city, weddings were taking place for the astrologers had decreed it an auspicious time a strange wedding for Hussein, the son of Ali somehow they did not see the knot that fate had twisted for they have dressed the bride and the groom the threads of thousands of lives gathered together not in wedding clothes, but shrouds and severed, all at the same moment. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Elli feels horror, also the failure of her imagination. What music was played at this wedding? She’s unable to imagine the cries of the dying, of those who lost their families in the stampede of panicking people the thirst tormented cries of men and women whose children’s hands had been ripped from theirs. One woman there was who, knowing that she was dying instead of festive lamps, the house itself was torched wrapped her newborn son in her shawl and laid him in a doorway hoping he’d be found the colours used at this wedding were bloodstains by someone who would love him. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Elli’s thinking that this woman was perhaps lucky not to have seen the furnace that melted her son’s spine, the hammer-blows that beat his humanity out of him. She wants to give that boy back the gift of walking upright the bride’s gift was the groom’s severed head but as she thinks this she looks at Somraj and realises there is something she wants just as much in which country may a bride expect such a gift a gift for the sad, gentle man standing beside her by God I swear, never will I wish to marry another she would reach out and take his hand did she not fear he would be embarrassed, perhaps offended no, not until I am covered and in the grave how she yearns to give back Somraj the gift of his voice Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!

  The m
arble balconies that surround the courtyard of the fire are lined with women in dark robes. On this night most of them have pushed back their veils, their faces are lit from below, the glow softly rouges their cheeks watching with unblindfolded eyes. As I sway towards the fire on my strange two-legged steed, the men just ahead of us are placing their feet on the wooden steps as the seventy-one rode off to die. A thrill of excitement or dread goes through my body, the pitch of the chant rises.

  Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!

  The black-robed Yar-yilaqi women raise their arms and bring them down hard on their chests pierced by the spears of his enemies. There are old women up there, and young pretty ones trampled by the hooves of horses I try to imagine Ma Franci in her black nun’s dress among them, she would fit, lamenting Sanjo and the death of the world, with a grief as pure as these women mourning for their lost Imam O Hussein! Never shall I forget Hussein! How their arms all rise at the same instant, and all fall, thump! Ya Hussein! thump! Ya Hussein! thump! Ya Hussein!

  We are so near the fire that my forehead is burning. Only a few paces more to where the steps lead up onto the platform. I’m perched high on Farouq’s shoulders. Swords drank, busy with slaughter. Ahead of us men, and boys too, those with black headbands and some without, are climbing to the burning edge of the fire. Corpses were scattered in the desert. There are men on the sides, keeping well back from the edge of the pit, ready to help those who are going across. Savage birds hovered overhead night and day. A little ahead a man steps on to the coals, which are dancing with a bright heat. In four long strides he walks across. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! The second goes, and the third, and the next. Paradise is theirs, they have gone to Paradise. Helping hands pull them to safety on the far side. No one is left ahead of us. They have become burned up in God. I feel Farouq take a deep breath and tighten his grip of my legs. Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! As he steps out I open my mouth to warn him not to drop me but instead I’m bellowing with the rest

  now Shimr Maloon do what you do

  the blessed head kissed by Al Mustafa

  tormented by thirst as if the desert was in it,

  now lies there on the desert sand

  Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!

  The strangest thing happens to me. As the heat roars up around us I feel that I am floating above the sand of a baking desert which is shimmering with heat he who was a shining light is murdered my mouth is on fire with a burning thirst and my eyes are burning and the passages of my nose are burning where the fiery heat rushes in murdered in Karbala and lies unburied and all around there are crowds and commotion, people falling dead, and somewhere in the distance are the banners of the enemy, shaking with hatred for all that’s good and I’m helpless and unable to prevent the terrible thing that’s happened which is the murder of goodness and innocence and the victory of evil and in some part of my head there is a roaring noise like a great wind, fanning the flames, a voice in my head is saying l’injustice ramportera la victoire and I realise that we have gone across and that I have been dreaming Ma Franci’s or rather Sanjo’s dream of the end of the world.

  Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein! Ya Hussein!

  We are turning around. We are going back around. We will go over again. I begin to feel dizzy I, Muhtasham, the beggar at your door. Again it comes, the heat, the crimson wound, the fire is flowing, such colours are shifting in the coals. My head is doing spirals. I feel myself begin to slip from Farouq’s back, sliding I’m standing, empty, empty-handed, at the door of helplessness falling and there is nothing now between me and the fire.

  Let me die I’m thinking as I fall, I’ll be happy. Everything in my life is swallowed up in that wish for oblivion. The fire itself as it jumps towards me has lost its ferocity, seems like a mild sunshine. Next thing I know I’m lying on a carpet inside the masjid, Farouq and others are bending over me.

  “He’s come to,” says one.

  “Little idiot,” Farouq says. “Picked your moment, didn’t you? I’m halfway across and you let go from round my neck.”

  “What happened? Did you drop me?”

  “You fainted,” says this other Yar-yilaqi guy. “You were lucky, if he hadn’t danced and caught you, you’d have burned.”

  “You caught me? You danced?”

  “Thank me some other time,” says Farouq.

  “Did you burn your feet?”

  “No.”

  “Fucking shame.”

  “I should have let you die,” says he.

  TAPE FIFTEEN

  A big book of animals from the library Nisha borrowed once and she showed it to me, this book had pictures in of all the animals of India, bears and apes, wolves, deer of all kinds, rhino, tiger, lion, buffalo, you name it. There was cobra, king cobra, python, bloodsucker lizard, hoopoo, fish eagle, kite and crow, there was gharial crocodile, mahseer fish, hyena and jackal and dhole, which is a wild dog with round ears, but in all the book, in all of its hundreds of pages and pictures, there was no animal like me. Nisha said, “That’s because you are unique. Be proud of it.” But I just felt sad.

  Why mention this now? Because two nights after the fire walk I’m up in the mango tree, higher than Elli’s roof. Above the Little Bear’s swinging by his tail, a few shapes are flitting that might be bats. No problem now is this tree, which had so fought me the first time I climbed it. By now I know its ways as if they were stairs, this knot that stumpy branch, twist here, pull up there, leaves above me black, the moon tonight’s not yet risen. See, I have found a name for the animal I am, I’m the bat-eared ape that climbs only in the dark of night.

  Elli and Somraj are sitting on the terrace, their faces are lit from the glow of an oil lamp. My bat ears are flapped forward to hear what’s being said. She’s telling him about her marriage. It seems she met her husband when she was studying medicine and he was learning law. They met many times before they fell in love, at friends’ houses, at demonstrations against the war in Iraq which the Amrikans called Desert Storm. Much of her talk, which is Hindi-Inglis mixed, I don’t follow. There are some things even a don for language can’t explain. What does it mean “students at pen state came out to support gay rights”? Appears these two were both idealistic idiots who thought that with law and medicine hand in hand they could change the world.

  “He seemed so exciting,” says she. “He’d been to Colombia and eaten fried ants and drank stuff which he said was like a cannon blasting the skull into fragments.”

  “We have daru like that,” says Somraj, “but I don’t advise you to try it.”

  “I was naive,” she says, “I didn’t realise people change easier than worlds.”

  The shadows on his face change, so he must be smiling. What? More smiles? And here he is drinking whisky with Elli and not even disapproving. I cannot imagine him behaving like this with any other woman. Maybe it’s because she’s a foreigner. But Somraj really seems to like her. You can see it in the way he leans forward when she talks, you can tell he wants to hear. He wants to know everything about her.

  After getting married, she says, she was working long days in a hospital, the husband was struggling to make it as a lawyer. They’d come home tired and flop in front of the tele. Forgotten their lofty schemes, they were becoming the sort of people they once despised. “I mean,” she says, growing more passionate, “the sort of people for whom the world’s nothing more than a box of dancing illusions, whose ideas of what’s important stop at the edges of their own self-interest.” Somraj nods. Well, there are plenty like that in Khaufpur.

  “We were drifting to a place I did not want to be. I could foresee golfing weekends and evenings out with company wives, the whole hateful middle-class flapdoodle. I wanted nothing to do with it. I felt I was losing my life. If the marriage had been better in other ways I might have tried harder to save it. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t.”

  Moths are whirring round the lamp that sits between them. He is silent, thoughtful, bent forward like a statue. What
did he know of marriage, whose own had lasted only three years before it was terminated by that night?

  “This is when I thought of coming to Khaufpur. I would open a clinic. I would touch the real world. It was a completely unreasonable idea and I was sure he’d hate it. Instead he praised me for being noble. When I began taking Hindi lessons, he said it was a beautiful dream to have.”

  “I am glad you had that dream.”

  Oh please, Mr. Somraj sir, let’s not have you descending into slush. Any moment now they’ll be holding hands and after that, who knows what? Of course it’s why I am here, I’m waiting to see what they’ll do, jamisponding has become my career. Will they kiss? Maybe even do it?

  “I wish you’d let me treat you,” says Elli, after they have been silent a while. “I hear you coughing at night.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” he says. “How can I take your help for myself while others are still denied it?”

  “Then make them come, reason with Zafar.”

  “Be patient with us, Elli,” says Somraj. “One day the patients will come.”

  “That’s what Zahreel Khan said,” she replies. “Him I didn’t believe, but somehow I believe it when I hear it from you.”

  Once again the moment comes close for which I am waiting. Night has plunged Khaufpur into its peculiar blackout, beyond the small cloud of lamp light is a deep sky of stars. Somraj in his white garments looks like a headless ghost, his dark face and hair have vanished.