October 26, 2003

THE 1971 crisis, which led to the break-up of Pakistan and the inception of Bangladesh, has been very much of a hushed affair in Pakistani politics. But it appears that at least two young writers have decided lately to break the silence.

Kamila Shamsie in her novel Kartography, published in 2002, talks about Aunty Maheen. “Aunty Maheen was Bengali, I knew because every so often, aunts or cousins would arrive from Bangladesh, bearing gift wrapped saris and a reminder that Aunty Maheen, grew up in another language. After the relatives left, stray words of Bengali would stay clustered around her tongue, falling off in ones and twos, un-understood and untranslated.”

Recounting the names of the main players on the political front, Shamsie writes, “‘Of course there won’t be war,’ said Asif, running his fingers through his luxurious mass of hair. ‘Everyone’s playing brinkmanship, that’s all. Here’s what’ll happen: Mujib will back down on his six points, give up the whole idea of a decentralized federal system of government, in exchange for some political and economic concessions towards East Pakistan. Once he does that, Yahya will invite him to form the government and at that point, Bhutto will also take his place as leader of the opposition. It’s the only sane, rational, not to mention cheerful choice. Mujib’s no zealous revolutionary and besides, whatever the Bengali masses might want, they’re just rabble and our army will decimate them if they try to make some kind of one-legged stand. No one wants to be slaughtered.’ He snapped his fingers at the Ampis waiter and asked for more ice.

‘No one wants to be enslaved either,’ Maheen said, waving down at Laila and her new husband.”

A little further in the narrative Maheen and her fiance Zafar, sit by Karachi’s seaside and watch the sun, setting into the sea. He puts his arms around her, not caring that they are out in public, “‘Peaceful, isn’t it?’ She nods, ‘Hard to believe, civil war is actually here. It’s almost as though it’s happening in another country — Laila heard from some foreign journalist that the army’s slaughtering my people by the thousands in Dhaka’.

My people — Zafar shivers, ‘Maheen listen to me.’

‘No Zaf, we’re not leaving the country. I don’t want to be a stranger among strangers. War does crazy things to people, but wars end. I’ll lie low, I promise that. And when it’s over — please God, soon! We’ll get married and have children and one day, every day, we’ll tell them, how we survived this inferno.’”

Did Zafar and Maheen survive that inferno? Yes, perhaps they did, but not without paying a price. A price as precious as that of the love, that they had shared together.

In her novel Noor published in 2003, Sorayya Khan takes the reader to the other landscape. Late at night lying in bed with a sheet pulled to his chin, hands next to his sides, palms flat, ready as had been his habit in the army, Ali recalls what he’d seen. “From above in the airplane, there was no question. East Pakistan was beautiful, lush and green, the way West Pakistan never was, even during the monsoons. Snaking rivers and endless tributaries, flowing like life itself through the rich fields. The earth so fertile, it hardly needed seeds.

“Ali couldn’t remember, he wasn’t certain that in the beginning, he’d needed or even had a reason to go to war. He’d rushed into it, an adventure of a lifetime. Now he wasn’t certain any of the things he’d been told (except the facts about the Indians), had ever rung true to him. That Bengalis, dark and stupid, not really Muslims, didn’t deserve their own country, their own leaders. What he did remember had an order to it, like fact books on formations. After he landed in East Pakistan at the Dhaka airport, it took one day before he asked himself, this is my country?, another day to know he wasn’t fighting the war for his country, another day yet to know he wasn’t fighting for Nanijan or for that matter, any family. On the fourth day, he felt like a mercenary.

“Even as he spoke to Sajida thirty years later, unable to convey how gracefully the dance of death was choreographed, that war afternoon, the first day of the short monsoons, he needed a moment before he could continue. ‘Nothing,’ Ali said to Sajida, ‘but a bathtub of death.’ Remembering what he had seen, he added, ‘No place for a child.’”

In his short story ‘The last encounter’ (included in the collection, 1971 and After), Kazi Fazlur Rahman, a Bangladeshi writer writes about the discourse between a Pakistani soldier Captain Azam and Rashed his Bengali captive, immediately after the signing of the surrender document by the Pakistan army.

“‘What are you going to do now, that the war is over?’

‘I really don’t know. What I know is that I won’t be able to go back, to the life of a student.’

‘And I can’t go on being a soldier. But whatever happens I look forward to visiting your Bangladesh one day, perhaps years later. I would like to find out, what sort of a country it is going to be — a country for which, so much blood has been shed.’

A shadow passes over Rashed’s face.

‘I also wish I knew what the future holds in store, for my Bangladesh. Sometimes I have more anxieties than hopes. You’ve not only maimed, tortured and killed. In the process you’ve brutalized our people, both as victims and avengers of brutalities. We have also learnt to kill. Shall we now be killing each other? And we were such a gentle, peace-loving people?’

‘Perhaps you have good reasons to be anxious,’ Captain Azam smiles sadly, ‘However, our officers and soldiers also have learnt to kill unarmed civilians, women and children. They won’t be able to forget, the taste of blood. When they go back, they will look for opportunities to kill and inflict pain, on their own people. They may not spare even those, who let them lose here. And that will be your revenge.’”

Years later sitting in her Boston apartment, balancing a plate of pakoras on her knee, Aunty Maheen (in Shamsie’s Kartography) nods at young Raheen, “‘I would never have said that at your age. That’s what it did, you see — Bangladesh. It made us see, what we were capable of. No one should ever know, what they are capable of. But worse, even worse, is to see it and then pretend, you didn’t. The truths we conceal, don’t disappear Raheen, they appear in different forms.’”

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