‘I heard the noise of men,’ he said after a while.
The woman did not answer.
‘Were they soldiers?’
The woman nodded weakly.
‘Did they beat you?’
The woman let out a brief whisper of pain. Hesitantly, Ali put a hand on her arm and started pressing it gently. She shut her eyes and seemed to doze off. Ali rose up on his knees and began slowly massaging her shoulder and the whole length of her side with both hands. It was the first time since his marriage to Aisha that he had put his hands on another woman with such ease. The roughness around the edges of the woman’s face when awake had disappeared as if her features had recovered their true contours in sleep. There had been an imperceptible shift in her appearance which made her look comely and innocent. He kept staring at her for a long time, taking the utmost care not to break the rhythm and pressure of his hands in case he woke her, listening to the tiny cries of pain and pleasure she gave out every few minutes or so. Eventually she opened her eyes and sat up. She felt her sides, her legs, and gripped her shoulders.
‘I am going to bathe,’ she said, softly pushing Ali away. ‘Do you want to eat something?’
‘No,’ Ali said.
She went and looked down through the windowpane and saw an abandoned street with some dead bodies still scattered around and soldiers walking about.
‘Dogs,’ she said, ‘dead dogs,’ and went into the bathroom.
She was wearing a nice white shalwar-kameez when she returned, drying her hair with a towel. She went and sat in a chair. ‘Get off the floor,’ she said to Ali. ‘What is the matter with you? Come and sit in the chair. What is your name?’
‘Ali. What is yours?’
‘Naseem.’
‘It is a nice name. Are you feeling all right?’
‘I am all right, nothing happens to me. I have taken many blows in my life.’
‘Tell me about your life.’
‘Why do you ask?’ she said severely.
‘I want to listen,’ Ali said, putting his hand on her arm.
She shrank away from his hand. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, but not with anger. ‘You have nice eyes. But don’t touch me. There is nothing to tell about my life. We lived in a village not far from here. My father worked in the zamindar’s fields. The zamindar had his way first with my mother, then with me. My father came out to fight but was killed by the zamindar’s men. After some time I ran away from there and came here. A nice woman here took me in as a servant. I was thirteen years old.’
‘Have you not gone back to your village since that time?’
‘What for?’
‘Your mother?’
‘Don’t want to see her. I remember only my father. He was big and strong, and there was no fear in his eyes. Apart from him, I have not seen a beautiful man.’ She got up from the chair. ‘I am going to eat something. You want a morsel, or a cup of milk?’
‘Yes.’
Ali went and stood by her side as she blew on damp wood to build a fire. Darkness had fallen outside.
‘What was the trouble?’ Ali asked.
‘What trouble?’ ‘Outside.’
‘It is all about mad dogs.’
‘Who?’
‘Musalmans and Sikhs.’
‘What about them?’
‘There is a place up the street called Shaheed Gunj. Musalmans want a mosque there and Sikhs want a gurdwara. Mad dogs fighting over mad places.’
The wood had just caught fire when there was a knock at the back door. Naseem swore and got up to go down the steps. She opened the door and stood there talking in whispers to someone. Ali went to stand at the top of the steps. There was a hole in the wall down there where he had spent what seemed a very long time. He felt the hard coins in his shirt pocket. He had found them tied up in a piece of cloth that had been pushed into a hollow between two protruding bricks cutting into his back as he sat there. He had pulled it out and undone the knot. In the pitch dark inside the hole he could not see, but feeling the contents in his hands he knew that they were several large coins. Moving his fingers over them several times, he identified them as silver rupees. This, he thought, was the woman’s whole fortune secretly pushed into a hole inside the wall. This did not stop him from taking two rupees from the loose purse before tying it up at the neck and pushing it back in the hollow. Now as he stood listening to the woman below he made up his mind to give back the money. He could now make out the words from the woman’s gradually rising voice.
‘There is a curfew outside, damn it,’ she was saying. ‘Can’t you wait until tomorrow?’
There was the pleading voice of a man in answer to her.
‘At a time like this!’ she said. ‘Animal!’
After a few more moments, she half shut the door and climbed back up to the top.
‘You have to go,’ she said to Ali.
Ali looked at her in silence.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘You can come back tomorrow during the day.’
‘Let me stay tonight,’ Ali begged. ‘I will go tomorrow.’
‘No,’ she said sternly, ‘I am busy.’
‘There are soldiers –’
‘No soldiers in the back street. Go now.’
Her expression had changed, the rough edges to her face and voice had returned. Frightened, Ali quietly went down the stairs and out the door. As he left he passed a bearded man in loose unwashed clothes who went in the door and bolted it from inside. The narrow back street was deserted. He did not know where he was or where he was going, except that he had to keep walking. For the first time since he boarded the train at Rani Pur Ali felt the unbearably aching pull of home.
CHAPTER 26
BEFORE HE COULD decide for himself what to do next, nature felled Naim. One morning he felt more than usually dizzy and lay down on the cot after breakfast. A while later, as he awoke from sleep, he found that he was unable to pick himself off the bed. He told his mother, who ran to the village hakeem. The hakeem, after examining Naim by poking fingers in his flesh and asking questions, declared that it was no different from a horse or a donkey whose body becomes hot-cold after a race and jams up. But the sick animal, he said, gets back on his feet – he flicked his fingers to indicate a speedy recovery – within two days with proper treatment. The treatment was the tried and tested potion, effective for both man and beast, of jackal-meat stock made with herbs supplied by the hakeem. The stock, said the hakeem, had ‘hot properties’ that would unlock the joints and perk up the flesh. Naim refused point blank to drink the stuff, although Rawal had set a snare and spent a whole night in a field of near-ripe wheat to catch the jackal. Eventually he did catch one, killed and skinned it and brought it home, and the old woman boiled it with herbs without Naim’s knowledge. Naim wouldn’t have it. Luckily, the stroke was not severe. His speech was not affected and a little voluntary movement began shortly to appear in his limbs. After the discarded jackal, the next best thing Naim’s mother could do was to massage the paralysed left side of Naim’s body with linseed oil seared with cloves, which she did three times a day, apart from feeding him hot chicken soup. Whether the massage worked or whether the body regained strength from its own natural resources was never definitely established one way or the other. But after two weeks Naim could sit up in bed with the support of pillows behind his back without feeling tired and could even move his leg and the half-arm on his left side a few inches every day by way of exercise. From the very first day, Naim had read all hours to while away the time, holding a book in his unaffected right hand. Books were stacked around him, some on the table and others on the floor beside his bed. That was what he was doing one evening by the light of a lamp when Azra appeared at the door.
It was not until a fortnight after Naim fell ill that Azra got the news from the munshi who had gone to Delhi, ostensibly to show the crop accounts to Roshan Agha’s main munshi, called the manager, but also to let Azra know about Naim’s condition. She had known of his release from
prison and had been thinking – fearfully because Naim had not contacted her – of going to Roshan Pur. After the munshi’s visit, she left for the village and went straight to the big house, which had been not just abandoned but neglected for years, for the servants, although they still received wages in money and kind for looking after the house, had taken to working in the fields to earn extra money. There was only the loyal old man who lived in one of the rooms in the outhouse. Confused and frightened, he ran out to collect the servants from the village and the fields. Azra, sitting on the thick roots, visible above the earth, of the great bohr tree, heard, as from afar, the sounds of doors and windows opening and shutting and of furniture being dusted and dragged about. She sat there, refusing the offer of tea or a meal, until the sun went down. The house was eventually cleaned and aired, made ready for her. But she did not go in. Leaving behind the small heap of fallen leaves she had made while she sat under the large tree and accompanied by the old servant, she came out of the main gate and headed for the village. The house was never to be lived in again.
It was evening when Azra stepped into Naim’s house for the first time in her life. She lingered at the door of the courtyard. She could see the shadowy figure of Naim’s mother, whom she had only met once before in all those years, moving about in the lamp-lit room. As Azra stood in the darkened doorway, the old woman came out and went into the next dimly lit room. On trembling legs, Azra crossed the courtyard and reached the door of the first room. Naim was sitting up in bed with his back to the door, reading a book. Hearing the footsteps, he said without turning his head, ‘I don’t want the massage just yet. Give me something to eat.’ Hearing no answer nor a shuffle of feet, he turned his head to look. For a few long moments, inhaling successive short breaths, Naim stared at Azra’s figure standing absolutely still in the doorway of his room as though it were a vision he had longed for from a former life, disbelieving it. The book fell from his hand on to his stomach as he tried to turn over to face the door, but his body would not cooperate. Azra walked into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, her body touching his. She put both hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back on to the pillows. Her hands resting on him and Naim gripping her arm with his one hand and making a supreme attempt to lift his left half-arm to touch her with it but failing, they kept looking at one another in silence until the old woman appeared carrying a cup of warm linseed. It took her a minute to recognize the woman sitting on her son’s bed. She smiled a simple peasant’s smile and sat down at the foot of the bed. She rubbed a little oil on her palms and started to massage her son’s leg. Neither Naim nor Azra, locked in a gaze, paid any attention to her. Naim’s eyes were once more seeing an image of the old Azra, but Azra saw that her husband’s hair had receded almost halfway over his head and the several days’ growth of beard on his face was more than half white. Wordlessly, Azra bent over and put her face close to Naim’s. He kissed her on the brow, the cheeks and the lips but did not linger, raising her face with his hand to about a foot from his. Minute after minute, with their eyes alone, they renewed their acquaintance, until Naim’s mother’s hands became hot from rubbing and she left the room, taking the pot of oil with her.
‘You have,’ Azra spoke her first words, ‘lost some hair.’
‘No,’ Naim laughed. ‘A lot.’
‘And your eyes,’ she said, ‘have become wrinkled.’
‘Because they didn’t see you for so long.’
‘Are you cross with me that I didn’t come?’
‘You came once.’
‘Only once,’ she said with sadness.
‘That was no place for you. Once was enough.’
‘No, I should have come.’
‘No, no.’ Naim was quiet for a moment. ‘You know, the hardest thing for me was the night. I kept busy during the day, but the night without you was like – like a mountain.’
‘A mountain?’
‘One that had to be climbed.’
‘You spent many nights alone when you were here.’
‘It is not the same. The place I am talking about has nights – nights – oh, I can’t put it into words – like stone.’
‘The words?’
‘No, nights. Like they are made of stone and you have to scale them with nothing to hold on to and only on the other side is another day.’
‘You know, Naim,’ Azra said, ‘a strange thing happens to me. Have I told you this before?’
‘What?’
‘This strange thing that always happens to me?’
Naim laughed. ‘You have told me many strange things that happen to you.’
‘No, this: I can’t imagine your face.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know your face as well as my own – no, as well as my own hands. But as soon as you go away, I can’t remember it, can’t picture it in my mind. No matter how I try, I can’t bring your features back to memory.’
‘Well, I have been away a long time.’
‘No, it has always happened.’
‘From the very beginning?’
‘Yes.’
‘That means,’ Naim said, smiling, ‘that you didn’t love me.’
‘No,’ Azra cried, pressing her hands down on Naim’s chest, ‘seriously, I have never understood this. I can picture everything of yours, your feet, legs, the way you walk, even your voice, the whole figure but not the face. Does it happen to you as well?’
‘No, never,’ Naim replied. ‘Your face, your voice, they are always there, they alone carried me through all the stony nights.’
Naim’s mother came into the room, carrying a tray on which she had two bowls of chicken shorba, mango pickle in a separate saucer and hot rotis wrapped in clean cloth. Carefully, she placed the tray on the table and walked out soundlessly, avoiding looking at her son and Azra, neither of whom looked at the food or at her.
‘Uncle Ayaz died,’ Naim said.
‘I heard,’ Azra answered.
‘He was not happy with me. Never came to see me in gaol, not once. A few days after he died his old servant Aslam came to visit and gave me the news. Some time later, I dreamed about my uncle. He was standing at the door of the prison as I was walking out a free man. He handed me his favourite walking stick and walked away without saying a word. Now here is something that would astonish you, as it did me. When I came back to Roshan Pur, Aslam came to see me. He told me that my uncle had left his house in Delhi to me but all the household goods to him, his old servant, except just one thing – the silver-topped cane. He had brought it with him along with the papers for the house. Aslam had never mentioned it to me when he came to visit me in gaol. I asked him and he said that he didn’t know about it until later when my uncle’s lawyer read the will.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Absolutely true.’
‘Amazing. He must have loved you very much.’
A shadow of pain appeared in Naim’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Khala died last year,’ Azra said.
‘Did she? I am sorry.’
Suddenly, Azra took his face in her hands and said, ‘Naim, promise me one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Say that you promise.’
‘All right, I promise.’
‘Come with me to Delhi.’
Taken by surprise, Naim looked at her without answering.
‘Won’t you?’
‘What for?’
‘You need proper treatment.’
‘I am getting better,’ Naim said, making a little movement in his left leg.
‘You are deceiving yourself, Naim. You won’t fully recover like this, and not here. You need a good doctor’s treatment, in a hospital if necessary. Look, you promised.’
Naim was quiet for a few moments, avoiding Azra’s gaze. There was an intensity in her face that he found himself powerless to resist. In the end, he closed his eyes and nodded. Azra lowered her head and began rubbing it on his chest.
Until now, Na
im’s life seemed to have led him by its circumstances not from the front but from behind, like a man being pushed along in a storm by gusts of strong wind, limiting his own movements to the resistance of his limbs. Now, in a life circumscribed by necessity, he had entered a different world – the unfamiliar territory of the mind. He could do no more than read and think. It was as if a skylight in the ceiling, cut through the roof – at which he stared most of the day and night – had opened up. Into this he was to step on hesitant, fearful feet, for the place beyond was in utter darkness, and he was like a child who presses himself on hands and knees against invisible barriers until his eyes begin to make out the shapes of things about him and then he stands up, extends his arms in front and walks, becoming familiar with the blackness. Occasionally, he indulged in dialogue, often with himself, at times with his doctor but rarely with Azra.
Dr Ansari, a cultivated man, renowned too for his political activities, and a friend of Roshan Agha, visited once a week to examine the sick man who lay in Azra’s room in a separate bed, and he usually left Naim with a thought. At times it would be something as troubling as this:
‘Are you a believer, Naim?’
‘Believer in what?’
‘God. Religion.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because even in this day and age when science is making great advances and machines are taking over the work of men’s hands and feet, belief in religion is still a force that a man can bring to bear on his life.’
‘Which religion are you talking about?’
‘Doesn’t matter which, the main religions all have a common aim.’
‘Paradise?’
‘No, the provision of comfort and hope.’
‘Even in illness?’
‘Especially in illness. Let me explain. Illness, long-term illness, as for example yours, can drive a man to dark thoughts, sometimes to hopelessness. Religious belief can pull you out of that condition. It provides you with a focus for positive thought. The worst thing in a state of illness, as I have often said to you, is a negative attitude. External application of medicine alone cannot do the job. Putting it purely in medical terms, it can reduce the agitation of the mind and bring down the blood pressure.’
The Weary Generations Page 32
