Anticipating adverse comments of such sort, Somerset Maugham once named a collection of his short fiction The Mixture as Before, referring to the general predicament short stories collections suffer from. But Asad Muhammad Khan is unique. He is an astonishing writer who is never predictable and with each story he takes the readers into a new zone of experience and narrative style. He never fails to surprise his readers by keeping away from the beaten track. His collection, Ghussay Ki Nai Fasl, offers a delightful diversity which should be considered the hallmark of this fiction-writer, one of the greatest among the contemporary Urdu writers.

Ghussay Ki Nai Fasl is the third collection of Khan’s short fiction and was first published in 1997. This followed two of his previous, equally memorable collections which included prose as well as some poetry. I remember reading the book soon after it came out and being moved by the title story in particular. But picking up the book again upon its recent re-publication, I found myself in doubt: is this really an old publication? If the year of its first publication had not been printed inside, it could easily have passed off as a new publication. There is nothing dated about Khan’s stories; they are as contemporary and relevant as they must have been when they were first published.

This is yet another quality of Khan’s fiction; while it is very firmly rooted and closely connected to the issues of this age and time, it does not lose its relevance with time and become a relic of the past.

Rooted in the past while contemporary to the core is the title story of this collection. The protagonist has a stocky body and is known for his bad temper, so he comes to be known as Hafiz Gainda. Hailing from a village near the Gomal River, Hafiz leaves his home and crosses the Sulaiman Mountains to travel to the faraway capital Delhi in order to fulfill his heart’s desire of seeing the face of his beloved king, Sher Shah Suri. Suri exercises a strange fascination for Khan and he has repeatedly returned to him and his times, but in different ways.

Hafiz Shukrullah Khan, aka Hafiz Gainda, strolls down the streets of Delhi and decides that since all cities are essentially the same, he should spend his time profitably in the library. He stays in a serai, and at night he is awakened by a horrifying noise, as if a horde of ghouls and evil spirits were in pursuit. He wakes up to find a greater horror awaiting him. The story progresses like an ancient dastaan, full of twists and turns which enhance the suspense. Hafiz takes up a sword in one hand and a lamp in the other to discover the source of this fearsome noise. It turns out to be a group of men and women who meet at night to vent all the anger pent up in their hearts and souls. The noise they make is the reflection of their anger and through its expression they obtain a release from the emotions. They are a part of a new sect which has gained popularity in the city.

The story does not digress from its historical detail and develops almost like a Borgesian fable. The author does not interfere with its development and does not step inside the narrative frame to explain or deconstruct it. The seething anger within people and their desire to liberate themselves from it, even through such extraordinary measures, form the enigmatic confines of the story and draw the reader in.

The story is, of course, multi-layered with several possible meanings, yet I could not help but read it in the media-infested context of our society. If the characters in the story had been living today they would have come forward to express their anger in any one of the endless TV talk shows that we have. Perhaps this was the ‘capital talk’ of another day.

A man without fear is the central focus in the rather brief narrative which opens the book. The man without fear works as a labourer in Karachi to earn his livelihood and publishes a small book of his writings in Urdu, a language he has learnt to love. He too seems to be a historical character as contemporary realities would hand out guns and rifles to such people instead of books and the love of language. There is another interesting piece about a Dutch student who wanders around Karachi but one of the most remarkable one in this collection is a vividly recollected memoir of Saddar with its coffee-house culture in the bygone days of Karachi and the English department of the University of Karachi. Titled ‘Toofan Kay Markaz Main,’ it employs the technique of fiction to successfully evoke the spirit of Karachi that was, a city which now reaps a new harvest of anger.

Another story explores power and the desire to control through love with the circus as its central metaphor. The inmates of a police lock-up, an aging singer who tries to cover up her identity, star-crossed lovers and people trapped on the wrong sides of all kinds of borders make up the bulk of the other stories in this rich collection from a modern master of short fiction.

The reviewer is a fiction writer and critic. He is series editor of selected Urdu short stories published by Oxford University Press, Karachi.

Ghussay Ki Nai Fasal

(SHORT STORIES)

By Asad Muhammad Khan

Ilqa Publications, Lahore

ISBN 9789699473401

194pp.