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December 5, 2004
REVIEWS: Who am I?
A young recruit, in his own estimation “a refined and poetic soul”, is doing sentry duty on his first day outside a two-room post while his four superiors sit inside to protect themselves from the fury of a burning sun. He is assailed by a mixture of pride and trepidation as he considers the reasons why he has been brought to this faraway place from his native land, a “city of writers”, where he could have become a good novelist. As he reminds himself that man’s conscience and a sense of duty can even call him to the gardens of death, this has a sobering effect. For then he refuses to take pity on his situation. But the feeling of anguish returns once again as he remembers Lyla, his Persian ex-girlfriend, who had stormed out of his life, contemptuously with a parting shot: “Your ears are as big as a donkey’s; if only you’d ever use ‘em.”
Now he was determined to show his toughness in dealing with the perceived “barbarians who threatened the lives of innocents”. He stood guard. And then the moment of his first encounter with the enemy and the opportunity to demonstrate his ruthlessness arrived. A man came close by on his bicycle, his son sitting on its bar. He ordered the two to stop. The man was thoroughly quizzed, but his disarming replies left the young reservist flabbergasted. He kept searching for any sign of defiance in the man’s body language, but found none. Piqued beyond endurance, this sadistic beast then made the man commit a most shameful act while his son stood watching. Devastated, the man hung his head in shame.
The young boy, “that little feeble thing, whose silence and apparent servility all this while gave not a hint of how tormented he was, left the oppressors of his father dumbfounded as he grabbed a piece of rock. The four soldiers and the helpless father witnessed the boy’s stoic face turn igneous, fearless, and the hand holding the rock rise in a gesture of unimaginable defiance to strike at the usurper of his land”.
This about sums up “The barbarians and the mule”, a touching story penned by Moazzam Sheikh, a Pakistani-American short story writer. It is one of the 19 stories included in Sheikh’s new anthology titled A letter from India. The story depicts the violent reaction of a people subjugated by intruders. Does Iraq come to mind?
The other stories in the book described in the blurb as “an eclectic selection of contemporary short fiction from Pakistan”, portray life in multifarious dimensions. A few were originally written in English, but most were translated from Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pushto and Seraiki. At least half of the writers have been anthologized (and some translated) for the first time. Many writers, even some personal friends of Mr Sheikh, were omitted in order to give space to “newer voices”.
What nudged Moazzam Sheikh to take up this assignment from Penguin India was the painful realization that anthologies of Pakistani literature were almost non-existent. The handful that existed were devoted to a few big names. He was alive to the fact that there had been a loss of intimacy among his people with their own literature, a result of long years of colonialism. This loss had been “truer” and “more tragic” with respect to the anglicized class which ended up in the driving seat after Partition.
He notes in his foreword that students in Pakistani schools have ample opportunity to read and understand Shakespeare’s plays and poetry as part of their curriculum, whereas a work like Heer by Waris Shah reaches people in distorted forms through folk wisdom or movie versions, which are often grossly off the mark.
His undertaking is meant to introduce the creative gems of local writers to his people. Another lament of the compiler is that most modern Urdu writers living in Punjab know virtually nothing of their fellow writers in Punjabi. Hence the general impression that nothing is being written of merit in languages other than English and Urdu. This book should dispel this belief.
The stories touch upon such issues as identity, individual freedom and interpersonal relationship, but none more boldly and explicitly than sexuality, as in “Papa’s girl”, by Soniah Naheed Kamal. Another story that should grab the reader’s attention is “If truth be told” by Javed Shaheen. This is about a septuagenarian woman, Sardari Begum, who is given to picking up quarrels with her family members on trivial matters and leaving home only to return later. The last time she does that she fails to come back. After 20 days, her son sets out in search for her at the mazars she loved to frequent. As all hopes of finding his mother fade, and the son sets out on his journey home, he curiously finds himself feeling a sense of relief at his mother’s departure who, paradoxically, rejoiced in doling out food to devotees at the shrines and caring for them, but was never at ease with her own family.
The story which finds its way to the cover of the book by virtue of it being the most outstanding (and not, we should trust, because the publisher is Penguin India) is “A letter from India” by Intizar Husain. One Qurban Ali, living in Madhya Pradesh, reminisces about the good old days when his extended family lived together but the events of 1947 led to its eventual breakup, some members setting out to foreign shores for greener pastures, others being massacred in Hindu-Muslim riots and still others at the hands of “brothers of Islam”. All in all, the family saw 21 of its members meeting a violent death.
Other things hurting Qurban Ali were the way the world had changed. Some family women had given up wearing burqas, while others had the gall to marry non-Muslims. This and other bereavements make Ali’s tale a heart-rending read.
A Letter from India: Contemporary Short Stories from Pakistan
Edited by Moazzam Sheikh
Penguin Books India. For more
info log onto
www.penguinbooksindia.com
ISBN 0-14-303049-3
168pp. Indian Rs200
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