July 4, 2004

An intrepid reader of classical literature, Shahnaz Aijazuddin is currently translating Tilism-i-Hoshruba into English. Her maiden publication Lost From View is a collection of her printed newspaper columns, based on travel, childhood recollections, reactions to books she has read and statements on the political scene

“YOU have to simply put logic away when you are reading this,” says Shahnaz Aijazuddin as she points towards the eight volumes of Tilism-i-Hoshruba, the great Urdu epic. “Composed in Persian by Abul-Faiz Faizi to entertain the Mughal emperor Akbar, it is a daastan about Amir Hamza, a legendary hero who is loosely based on the personality of the Holy Prophet’s (Peace Be Upon Him) uncle Hazrat Hamza (RA) who was a great warrior. He is the keeper of the Kaaba, born in Makkah but from here on there are lots of characteristics pinned onto him. Thus this whole persona of a wonderful warrior is created,” explains Shahnaz Aijazuddin.

“The basic storyline is that King Zamarat Shah Bakhri, who is popularly known as Lakaa, has declared himself as a living idol. Amir Hamza is fighting him because he stands for truth, goodness and true faith. He has chased Lakaa from tilism to tilism, these magic bound kingdoms. The story starts where Amir Hamza has defeated Lakaa in the Tilism of a Thousand Faces and Lakaa has escaped to Kohistan.

“The companies here are magic bound, kafirs, sorcerers, witches, fairies who populate these kingdoms. Satan has actually invited him to come to Kohistan because the ruler of Kohistan has relations with the ruler of Hoshruba, a vast legendary empire. So Hamza now sends a contingent of infamous tricksters, the Ayyars and his own grandsons into the tilism and they fight for years and years and the story revolves around how they gain allies, convert people to their side and come in confrontation with fantastic genies and witches.”

Shahnaz labels it as “escapist literature” since the “whole thing is so out of space and time”. So what attracts her to read it over and over again and then translate it, a rather Herculean task? “The actual fantasy, the illusion, is what attracted me when I was a child but now I find the treacheries, the deceptions and the plots all so reflective of our political scene,” she asserts.

Engrossed in her Tilism, her magic bound kingdom, Shahnaz was delighted when Intezar Hussain handed her The Romance Tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah, translated, edited and with an introduction by Frances W. Pritchett. “The reason I took it was that it has a very comprehensive introduction to the background of how these dastans, the narratives, were written. Secondly I was interested in how Pritchett, an expert on dastans, has approached the work,” says Shahnaz.

She read it because “it padded up my references since it deals with the characters in their youth”. The Romance tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah carries translated extracts from the original version and according to Shahnaz, “The author has remained very faithful to the text and has captured the essence of it without losing the original spirit.”

Another treat for Shahnaz has been Ved Mehta’s Dark Harbour. “Mehta is a leading subcontinental writer, who moved to America when he was thirteen, attended a blind school, went to Harvard and Oxford and wrote his first book when he was just twenty,” says Shahnaz Aijazuddin.

“Because he is a writer and a friend, I had become used to a certain kind of writing. But this is like discovering a new person because he writes purely of his life as an American. He writes about the rigours of building his house on an island and the insurmountable problems that come his way.” Shahnaz found that she could identify with it because she has been through it and “the building fraternity is the same anywhere in the world. Secondly Mehta also describes his courtship with his wife and I wanted to read about it too,” says Shahnaz.

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