Fever Log and Other Stories
By Peerzada Salman
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 978-969-716-336-6
129pp.

Peerzada Salman is a fellow lover of beauty. He has a penchant for beauty in all its manifestations. He has fed himself on the likes of William Shakespeare and Mirza Ghalib, whose lines remain on the tip of his tongue. This love for beauty infuses his own writing, evident from his new collection, which comprises a novella and a string of very short stories.

The novella Fever Log is the story of a world that is disintegrating in the mad days of the corona pandemic. People are dying left, right and centre. Old friends are going without bidding adieu and leaving “a host of unsaid words.” Men are asked to work from home so they have more time to spend with their spouses. Love which, as Shakespeare says, “alters not when it alteration finds”, is split apart when it is faced by altercation. Home, which is supposed to be a refuge in such times, is shaken to the core.

The pandemic brought out the importance of closer human bonding but it also necessitated distances. In showing the disintegration of a marriage, Salman has shown that marital life needs the convergence of a bond as well as the divergence of a distance, breathing space. The pandemic shattered both.

There are some characters in this novella which are discernible, making one believe that this is an autobiographical novel. But Salman has taken the liberty of fiction to mould the story according to his whims, throwing in his quips here and there. It remains a sad story, where the protagonist puts his life in the dock to ask the fundamental question: is this life worth saving when everyone else is dying? The narrative comprises brief diary entries, making it a sharpened and insidious study of the gradual disintegration of a marriage.

A slim collection comprising a novella and a number of short stories portray a search for beauty in a disintegrating world

Happy Birthday Beatriz is the most intriguing story in this collection. But you have to know the necessary allusions to enjoy this one. I shouldn’t divulge all but suffice it to say that Beatriz is the name of a female character in Jorge Luis Borges’ famous story El Aleph, in which Borges himself is the protagonist. Borges’ character Beatriz Viterbo is based on a woman called Estela Canto, who actually came into Borges’ life but declined to marry him. Borges had named that character after his favourite poet Dante’s beloved ‘Beatrice’.

In El Aleph, Borges describes an object in possession of Beatriz through which one could see the whole world with its past, present and future. This is perhaps a metaphor for the new vision an unrequited love provides a lover. But it is also a metaphor of the inability of language to describe the total experience of reality.

Salman’s Beatriz experiences the reality of many worlds and is a celebration of Borges’ Beatriz. It should induce you to read Borges’ El Aleph and then search for Borges’ actual love story. Then you may be inclined to read Salman’s one-and-a-half-page story again. This is how good literature proliferates your interests and increases your keenness for life.

You will enjoy reading Salman’s story Two Anarchists if you know that two of its characters, Goneril and Regan, are actually characters from Shakespeare’s King Lear. They represented filial ingratitude in Shakespeare. In Salman’s story, they are portrayed as nieces of a dead artist. Like King Lear’s divided kingdom, they own a painting which is torn into two pieces. There are some other inter-textual connections that are worth exploring.

The other day, we fought about stepping out. She said she couldn’t stay back in the apartment for a long time. I warned her about the danger in might entail. She said she would keep a distance from others and was desperate to go to the supermarket, which opens for a few hours. I took her to the market; she bought groceries, which we did not need, and a jumper suit (they have that too). We returned, and she could sense I wasn’t fine with panic-buying. She cried. I did not try to console her. There has been a pattern. She cries; I don’t interfere. I think she doesn’t like me as much. I’m to blame for it, partially. Women want constant attention. They don’t allow you too much time to waver. I don’t think she’s into someone, not yet, at least, or I could be wrong. She is looking for ways to pick a fight with me. Actually, I’m kind of inured to this. I instigate fights and then sit back. Hard to rationalise. — Excerpt from the book

Prometheus is another story that reworks the old myth of Prometheus — the famous Greek Titan who stole fire for human beings and provoked the ire of the god Zeus. Salman’s Prometheus is “inspired by the French Revolution” and revolts against the new Zeus (who lives in “a castle made of silver bullet-proof clouds”) along with his poet friend, whose name is, interestingly, Milan K; a juxtaposition of Milan Kundera and the K of Kafka. The Zeus of this story is against books and poetry and making the masses dumb. This is a beautiful allegory of our times and can be interpreted as a critique of bigotry.

Along with gods, there are demigods as well here. Marlon Brando for one, appears in one of Salman’s stories. He tries to woo a woman having “finely trimmed lips and well-sculptured torso”, claiming that the real Marlon Brando is different from the actor Marlon Brando. The woman wants to meet the actor Brando, the one who wears masks. She loves his masks, not him, while he loves her.

Then there are some very small love stories; small, broken, unfinished, incomplete, which often feel like just the beginning of a story, or a false beginning at that. One of his characters says, “Love is at its warmest best when it begins. It should keep on beginning.”

Finally, we arrive at, by far, the best story in the collection: Broken. This is a story of a broken man trying to woo a broken woman. They are working on a play about a couple who are drifting apart. The woman’s “smile and face conjure a magic that only a poem can.” The protagonist goes to her home, overhears a little scuffle between her and her former husband and sees his own story mirrored in that scuffle.

The ex-husband feels insecure about men wooing his wife. The protagonist feels that the ex-husband looks like him. He sneaks out of the home. The story doesn’t go on to tell us if the protagonist keeps pursuing that woman or not. But he who had come to ensnare her, must now feel empathy for her husband and refrain from his venture. The best part is that this empathy is not described in the voice of the protagonist. It is for the readers to feel and draw the conclusion as to whether he should still try to woo that woman or not.

A lover of Shakespeare and Ghalib cannot refrain from making pointed, polished and poetic observations about his characters. Here is one such observation: “Beautiful women and sadness go together like a heroic couplet. One unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.”

Salman is in search of beauty in a disintegrating world where, in the words of poet Jaun Elia, “Every day, another thing is broken.” In such a world, he is trying to contrive connections. Bustling with colourful characters coming from both life and literature, this book is a dainty feast.

The reviewer is a poet, fiction writer and translator. His latest Urdu poetry collection Gul-i-Dogana has been published by Maktaba-i-Daniyal. He can be reached at kashifsyedraza@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 25th, 2026