The Weary Generations

by Abdullah Hussein

  ‘You catch a rabbit and cook it,’ Ali said, laughing. ‘It’s good for running strength.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, swine,’ Naim replied.

  ‘You can’t catch me. You are old and heavy from eating too much.’

  Naim knew his brother was right. He could never catch the younger man in a race. They were now a few yards from Naim’s house. A thought struck Naim. He put two fingers in his mouth and let off a sharp whistle. Within seconds his two guard dogs jumped the boundary wall and fell on the boy. Naim leaped up and ordered the dogs away before they could do damage. He had his hand on Ali’s neck, barely encircling the thick, coarse-fleshed stump joined at one end to hefty shoulders and at the other to a powerfully wriggling head. Having only one hand to use, Naim had to fall back on the trick he learned in the army of immobilizing a man by pressing on certain points in the neck. Ali was screaming to get out of the grip. Naim drag-walked him to his house. There he asked the servants to saddle a horse. That done, he mounted the horse and the servants lifted Ali up to sit behind him. Naim then had a rope tied round him and Ali and dug his heels in. The horse, carrying the two of them on its back, started running.

  Halfway to the town, wriggling to get out of the bind, Ali asked, ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To the cloth mill.’

  ‘It’s not even built.’

  ‘It will be built. They are taking men on.’

  ‘You want me to work there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will run away.’

  ‘I will take you back as many times as I have to,’ Naim said.

  ‘I don’t know how to work in a mill.’

  ‘They will teach you. You will learn a skill. You only know that our father went to prison before you were born. But you don’t know that he had great skill in his hands.’

  ‘You have no skill,’ Ali said accusingly. ‘You only have the skill of going to gaol.’

  ‘Yes,’ Naim said. ‘I am sorry.’

  Ali relented in his struggle to break free. ‘What skill did father have?’

  After a pause, Naim said, ‘He made guns.’

  ‘Real guns?’ Ali was excited. ‘Guns that fire bullets?’

  ‘Yes,’ Naim said. ‘But he never made bullets and never fired them.’

  Ali seemed disappointed. ‘I want to make guns. And bullets.’

  ‘You can’t, it’s against the law. But you can learn some other useful skill. You can get rich and buy more land by learning a skill.’

  Ali had calmed down. ‘All right,’ he said after a while. ‘Marry me then to Aisha.’

  Naim half-turned his head to look at Ali. ‘She is promised to Rawal,’ he said.

  ‘I will kill Rawal.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I am not lying. I will, I swear.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Naim said to him. ‘I will arrange it. Only if you promise to work away from the village for a while.’

  ‘Let me out,’ Ali said, squirming. ‘The rope’s cutting into my back. I won’t run away.’

  Naim loosened the rope. Ali jumped down from the horse and started running alongside it.

  ‘You will arrange it?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘I will try.’

  ‘What does that mean? I make no promises if you don’t arrange it.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Naim said. ‘Now be quiet. We are nearly there.’

  At the cloth mill, still under construction, one of the first in the country, the man in the recruiting office asked, ‘How old is the boy?’

  ‘Sixteen years and eight months,’ Naim replied.

  ‘He is too young.’

  ‘I can do all the work,’ Ali said, pressing forward.

  ‘According to the Factory Act –’ the man began to say.

  Naim leaned forward and shouted in the man’s face, ‘When I was sixteen they put a rifle in my hand and sent me to fight in the war. Look!’ He struck his left hand on the table several times.

  The man in the office was so shocked to hear the sound of wood tapping on wood that he entered the name in the ledger and hastily gave a chit to Ali to go and report to the electrician on site.

  CHAPTER 23

  ALI WAS OUT of his element in that foreign land of concrete and steel where no earth split open beneath his feet to reveal tiny green shoots that grew into big trees and plants to provide food for the living creatures as if they were faces of God. This machinery too was called a ‘plant’ by the engineers and mechanics and electricians; this was the first English word that Ali and others like him learned and began to use, though they did not understand it for it had neither food nor shade. It was still under construction and there were rumours that it would somehow in the end make cloth. Despite his discomfort, Ali stuck to it, eating and sleeping with four other labourers in a small room of brick and mortar, in the hope of marrying Aisha; he knew that as long as he kept away from the village and out of trouble his brother would not forsake either him or the promise he had made. On his days off Ali ran back to Roshan Pur and went to Naim’s house, at times even spending the night in the house where his brother now mostly lived alone when he was not away for days on the instructions of the local organization. Naim had persuaded his own and Ali’s mother to break their word to Aisha’s mother regarding her verbal betrothal to Rawal in favour of Ali. The women – the older with much complaint, the younger more readily – eventually agreed, but not before extracting a promise from Naim that he would find another girl for Rawal to marry. Rawal was not consulted, nor did he openly say much. Ali was living on Naim’s promise that he would have Ali and Aisha married as soon as the boy became eighteen years old – until one day an incident occurred which stopped Ali in his tracks.

  Towards the end of the next year, Mahatma Gandhi, on his return from the Round Table Conference in London, launched his civil non-cooperation movement by publicly making salt on the sea shore at Dundy. Afterwards, he walked from village to village, gathering followers on the way. Naim had wanted to go and join the march, but he was hampered by two things: he was asked to go to Peshawar – not to take part but to report, as an eye-witness of the imminent events there, back to the organization; and, second, he wanted to get Ali’s marriage over with before he left for anywhere. Ali and Aisha were married in a simple ceremony, presided over by Naim. Rawal had disappeared from the village for the day.

  Two days later, a party of three men arrived from Delhi. Naim’s house had been selected as the place in which to perform the token gesture of making salt. Naim knew that the news of it would reach Roshan Mahal and he wasn’t sure how Azra would react to it. Further, there was the risk of being arrested by the police for breaking the law. In view of the latter, it was decided that they would disperse – the three men back to Delhi and Naim to Peshawar – the same evening.

  In a sheltered spot in the garden of the house a huge, open-mouthed iron karah, used for making gur, was placed on top of a hole in the ground full of burning wood from a couple of dead trees, except that instead of cane juice in the container it was water from the well boiling over the fire. For fear of the police, only a few men from the village had had the courage to come round to attend the ‘ceremony’. They all sat by the pot of boiling water, looking at it expectantly just as they used to sit waiting for gur to form from the evaporating juice. It being his brother’s house, Ali sat on a three-legged wooden stool among them, assuming a place of importance, while Rawal wandered around, seemingly taking little interest in the proceedings. Naim sat with the three visitors on the back veranda of the house, out of view of the boiling water pot, writing a speech for one of the guests that the man was going to make at a meeting the following week.

  The water in the pot boiled and boiled, and more was poured into the pot and more wood burned, and still it boiled down and there was no salt. Disappointment spread over the faces of those sitting and standing around. Naim and his companions were told the news. One of the three guests thought for a while and said
that it had all been a mistake and why did they not think of it in the first place? Of course there would be no salt in the sweet drinking and irrigation water well. Then one of the villagers said that he knew of a well outside another village about ten miles away that had been abandoned because it created salinity in the land. Two men were sent to this well with two or three large milk pitchers loaded on to a donkey to fetch water from there. The rest of the assembly waited patiently in the garden. A hukka was started up anew and Bakhsh the bald had to be coaxed, known miser that he was, to produce tobacco in his turn. In the face of his resistance the men mocked him relentlessly for having a body like a hairless woman until Bakhsh the bald reluctantly got a little bit of tobacco from the roll of his turban, and then he wouldn’t let go of the hukka pipe until, pulling furiously at it, he had burned half the fresh tobacco in it. They sat and smoked and gossiped and laughed thus until the two donkeys – two of the best in the village – arrived back, one carrying the two men, the other four pitchers full of water from the abandoned well. A fire was lit with more dry wood upon the embers, and the water was poured into the pot. Then everyone sat around looking to see what happened. The water boiled, and as it went down it left a layer of greyish matter all round the inside of the pot. Ali went running to the back veranda to tell Naim the news. All four men came to check. One of them scraped a little bit of the powder off the rim of the pot and put a grain of it on the tip of his tongue. Yes, it was salt, he nodded. A low shout went up from the men, shushed by Naim.

  ‘It is salt,’ the taster said, ‘but not for cooking. It may even be no good for you.’

  ‘But is it salt?’

  ‘It is that all right,’ the man answered. ‘We have done it.’

  The pot was quickly tipped over to pour the remaining water on the fire to douse it, and then the upturned pot was put on top of the ashes, concealing all signs of their illegal act. Then all the villagers, except for Ali and Rawal, went home, carrying no salt but only the pride of having defied the laws of the earthly gods that ruled their lives.

  By now it was the evening. Ali was the only one left in the house other than the servants. He headed for home. After the day’s hectic work, he wanted to have a night’s sleep before going back to the mill. He was nearing the village when he heard quick footsteps. He turned round to see Rawal coming up fast behind him, sights firmly fixed on Ali. Ali had thought Rawal had gone home. He didn’t have the time to steady himself before Rawal jumped on him, knocking him down. Ali sprang up after the first attack but was struck down again. Once again Ali wriggled out from under Rawal and was on his feet. He was still dazed by the assault but understood what it was about. For a moment he thought of running away from Rawal’s clutches, knowing that he could outrun the other man. But he didn’t want to give Rawal the advantage of victory in this fight. They wrestled for a minute, pushing and shoving. A passing villager saw them, stopped for a moment before continuing on his way home, mumbling, ‘You never know when the police will arrive and the boys are playing games.’ Rawal wasn’t playing games; there was murder in his heart. Strong as Ali was, Rawal was a thirty-year-old man and tougher. Eventually, he got Ali in a bear hug and squeezed him down to the ground.

  ‘I am going to kill you,’ he said, sitting on top of Ali, his hands on the boy’s neck.

  Ali knew that this time it was impossible to get out of Rawal’s grip. He was thinking fast. ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘You think you can take her away and be happy? I will rub you out here and now.’

  ‘It was my brother’s wish – why don’t you talk to him?’ Ali said.

  ‘I will finish you before Neem comes back.’

  ‘And where … will you be … then?’ Ali said, trying to breathe under the grip of Rawal’s hands on his neck.

  ‘Where?’ Rawal said, increasing the pressure.

  ‘I … can’t … breathe.’

  Rawal loosened the grip a little. ‘Where do you think I’ll be?’

  ‘You will be in gaol. You will never get out. Your wheat crop will rot.’

  ‘It will do your bitch mother good to starve.’

  ‘So will your aunt.’

  ‘Neem will look after her,’ Rawal said.

  ‘He is always away. If you kill me our house will fall to the ground.’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care.’

  Ali’s words, however, got through to Rawal, somewhat slackening his determination to kill. But he wanted to inflict the maximum damage before letting go. He squeezed Ali’s neck with all the strength of his hands. Ali’s eyes popped out. Then Rawal started punching Ali’s face, wrecking his lips and nose.

  ‘You sneaked up on me in the dark,’ Ali said, crying. ‘Let me go and we will fight tomorrow. Face to face. In the daylight.’

  ‘There will be no tomorrow for you,’ Rawal said, mercilessly continuing to punch. ‘I never want to see you in the village again, do you hear that? Take her and run away from here. If I see you with her in the village I swear I will kill you both.’ Rawal pulled out a long shining knife from under his shirt.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ali said, howling, ‘I will not come back.’

  ‘Go.’ Rawal took his hands off Ali and stood up. ‘Run.’

  Ali ran on home, his face bleeding and a permanent terror settled in his heart. The very next day, he left the village.

  Even before Naim left the train at Peshawar railway station, he remembered the promise he had made years before to Amir Khan, his fellow-wounded for some time in a foreign hospital. Both knew that they were no longer of any use for battle and would go home. Before they parted, Amir Khan had made Naim give his word that he would visit Amir Khan in his village near Peshawar if ever he passed that way. After all these years, Naim remembered the name of the village. The day was ending. Naim decided to look Amir Khan up and, in case he found his old companion-in-arms alive and well, spend the night with him. He took a tonga from the station. After over an hour and a dozen miles, the tonga stopped by a stony little hill.

  ‘End of the road,’ the tonga driver told him. ‘Now you walk. Kaka Khel is on the other side of the hill.’

  Naim climbed the narrow path to the top of the hill and got a view of the village. Under a moonlit sky, the village lay in the dark, with the dim points of lanterns visible in a few houses. But over on the far side a glow of light spread upwards, creating a halo in the air that enhanced the blackness of the rest of the village. Naim passed through unlit streets where men in great loose shalwars and huge turbans, rifles slung across their shoulders, passed him wordlessly like shadows. He stopped one of them and asked about Amir Khan. The man pointed towards the flood of light pouring from the house on the other side. As he neared the source of the light, he saw the walls of the house marked by torches of slow-burning oily wood, giving off the faint fragrance of burnt mountain pine. In the courtyard, a large crowd of men sat in a circle, with an old, long-bearded man in the middle, covering his ear with one hand, singing a Pushto song in drawn-out, high tones. Naim had walked into the middle of a celebration. Hesitantly, he entered the courtyard.

  Amir Khan never got an artificial leg. Hopping on his crutches and peering at the newcomer, he approached Naim.

  ‘Aha!’ he smiled, showing his missing teeth. ‘Naeem!’ Balancing on one crutch and opening the other arm, he hugged Naim.

  ‘Recognize me, you old devil?’ Naim said. ‘I thought you might have gone blind.’

  ‘Why, I can pick you out among a thousand men any time. We are friends from bad times.’

  He led Naim to the place of honour beside his own carpet seat on the ground. ‘This is my friend,’ he said loudly to the assembly, ‘Subedar Naeem Khan, come specially to attend my son’s marriage from Dilli. He is my friend from bad times.’

  All the men got up one by one and came to shake hands with Naim. The old singer shuffled over. Sitting down in front of Naim, he began his song all over again. Amir Khan struck him over the head with his crutch.

&nb
sp; ‘Shut up, you old fool,’ he said. ‘My friend has not come from far-away Dilli to listen to your babbling. Let me speak to him. Now, then,’ he turned to Naim, ‘tell me, how are you?’ He bent down to look at Naim’s left hand, then brought it up close to his eyes, examining it minutely. ‘Good,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘very good,’ before letting go of it. ‘Wazir Khan,’ he shouted. A young man answered. ‘Come, come here.’ Amir Khan turned to Naim again. ‘This is my son. You have come at the exact right time. We are going to start off any minute to bring the girl home.’ Then he said proudly, ‘He is in the army.’

  The boy, about eighteen, resembling but better-looking than his father, stood respectfully and looked at Naim with unsmiling eyes. Naim shook hands with him once again.

  ‘I am going inside the house for one minute,’ Amir Khan said to Naim. ‘You talk to my son. Not long to wait now.’ He hopped over to the house.

  To go to the girl’s house, they had to climb up and then down another hill, in the light of just two burning tree-torches and a few lanterns, along narrow and dangerous paths full of stones that rolled underfoot. Naim, being an honoured guest, walked under good light, but he saw that most of the others, especially the tail-enders, made their way over these precipices in total darkness with such ease as if they could clearly see the path.

  The arena for the nikah ceremony – for arena it was, for a contest, as Naim later learned – was different from Amir Khan’s courtyard in some respects. It wasn’t in a house but was set in plain open ground some distance away from the girl’s village, although the lighting was provided by the same kind of torches made from young trees, cut down and supported by surrounding their bases with heavy stones. Second, there was a small tent, erected on one side of the arena, with its curtains drawn shut. Third, there was food; behind the tent, whole lambs, skewered over iron stands, were being slowly turned and spit-roasted on wood fires, giving off saliva-inducing smells that carried on the air. The groom’s party was received and seated.