Kahani

Short Stories by Pakistani Women

Aamer Hussein

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780863567179
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Pakistan's finest women writers - Jamila Hashmi, Mumtaz Shirin, and Fahmida Riaz, amongst others - introduce us to the compelling cadences of a rich literary culture. A naive peasant is left with a white man's baby; a frustrated housewife slashes her husband's silk pyjamas; a middle-class woman sees visions of salvation in the tricks of circus animals … Equally at ease with polemic and lyricism, these writers mirror the events of their convoluted history - nationalism and independence, wars with India, the creation of Bangladesh, the ethnic conflicts in Karachi - in innovative and courageous forms. Influenced both by the Indian and Islamic traditions of their milieu and by the shocking impact of modernity, they are distinguished above all by their artistic integrity and intellectual honesty. 'An excellent anthology by Urdu's foremost women writers' Muneeza Shamsie, Newsline 'I hope that this engaging and diverse work will encourage other translations of contemporary Pakistani fiction.' SOAS bulletin

FARKHANDA LODHI

Parbati

‘Kill!’ Was it a voice or an echoing memory?

‘Kill!’ It was advancing.

Guns roared … from both sides, from every side … and all round was the reverberating, recurring patriotic anthem.

‘Kill!’

Cannon, aeroplanes, sirens, whistles and the thumping of hearts. Then silence. Churning the silence, dividing consciousness, a cry.

‘Kill!’

A bullet whistled by, barely scraping her shoulder. Protecting her head, she bent over and started walking. The border was a few steps away. She had to get there. No sound but a hissing silence, a storm in the heart and a rumbling at the core of the earth. She tightened her grip on both arms.

Another bullet came from one side, from all sides. Rain, noise, fire, heat, thirst …

She inched forward, clasping her ears with both hands. Balanced and supported on her arms, she crossed the border before dawn broke. The rumble of the cannon had stopped – but now it grew louder and more rapid. There was still time for the day to break. The distinctive smell of gunpowder surrounded her, the smoke momentarily obscured the morning light.

She lay down in the cover of the bushes and tried to breathe deeply. There was no danger of anyone passing by here. ‘If I hear the sound of footsteps or see anyone coming, I’ll jump into the canal on the right,’ she decided with complete calm. For a long time she lay lost in thought, biting her painful, swollen lips. She had so many obstacles to face. The wounds on her knees were oozing fresh blood and she was aware of her chest wounds, stiff with caked dirt. ‘Where can I go in this condition?’ her mind kept reflecting.

The morning birds had not begun their chorus. Why were they silent? Fire and thunder had swallowed their happy contentment and the world appeared desolate. How quickly the world’s beauty had changed to mourning. She was choked by fear and hatred. A wave of revulsion, towards loved ones, strangers, even her own being, ran through her. Her inner self plunged into deeper and deeper darkness. The sun refused to come up. Cannon-balls thundered and the horizon was lit by temporary flares that would illuminate the sky and then suddenly die down. Each time she heard the rumble she feared a cannon-ball would land on her. She had chosen a bad spot to stop. Danger was imminent. She moved forwards. Further and further. The dread silence moaned palpably and shouted out, as children were orphaned and widowed women’s precious honour was plundered. The rumble of tanks and cars, slogans old and new, noise … People awoke and involved themselves in life’s struggles, but her mind was still asleep. Totally paralysed. How could she go among those people? She was almost naked, covered in blood. Her shirt hung in tatters from her breast. Ashamed of her condition, she hesitated for a fraction and then moved forward with renewed determination.

She became conscious of her wounds throbbing; her awareness grew as she emerged slowly from an unconscious state. Now she was able to register the world of objects around her. The trees standing like spirits in the semi-darkness were really trees and the sun had yet to rise. Despite the smoke, it had risen. The world has to go about its business. In the nearby village, death challenged life and life answered back, resolutely making its way forward. It cannot stop. It must not stop.

She kept walking. The village was a few paces away. Not even an ant was visible; the mistreated and angry village curs were barking. Where had the people gone? Silence gripped all. She had reached the village boundaries.

Nothing was visible behind the fallen wall. There was nothing in the village to hold back the people. She wanted to weep: over the devastation in the village, over man’s helplessness and short-sightedness, or then to return to where she had come from and never set foot in this place again. There was a fierce desolation in her. She thought: The earth is our mother and look at the flames engulfing her breasts … why does she not die? Her sons destroy her, are destroyed themselves, and yet the air resounds with a single cry: ‘Kill!’

This is the game thought up by your wise sons. O, Mother! Maybe I will get killed in this game. If I live I will think long and hard of your condition. I don’t have the time now. Elastic time shrinks and expands, as in a game.

A hundred yards away the military jeeps were visible as they arrived and departed. All around were clouds of dust and smoke. Scraps of dry grass were ablaze. The standing ears of grain had been scorched and bony sticks from the old leafless tree were crackling in the flames. She wet her lips with her tongue. How thirsty she was! She would not survive. Her throat prickled with thistles. She was parched. She collapsed half alive on the mound of rubble. The sound of footsteps … closer … closer … and closer still and a voice telling somebody, ‘Kill her!’

‘Yes, yes. Kill her!’

She sat up with lightning speed and tried unsuccessfully to clothe her body. In front of her were two armed soldiers, staring at her meaningfully. Their probing looks went straight through her garments, entering her flesh, searching her mind and her heart. Her body stiffened in fear and apprehension of danger. Her power of speech had been usurped and her pupils felt as if they had turned to stone.

‘Why did you not leave with the village folk? Your condition is not good.’ Their tone reassured her. There were tears in her eyes.

‘What … what can I say? I have saved myself from those savage beasts in the last village. I have faced cruelty and violence to mingle with the earth of my land. You are my brothers. Finish me. Do me this favour.’ She spoke effortlessly and the soldiers were in a quandary: should they silence this talking parrot or allow her to die with her tale of woe locked in her? One of them went running off and returned with a thick cotton blanket, covering her body with it. The soldiers were restless, hesitating to make her fresh, beautiful body their target. Fire was raining down. The air was smouldering.

‘Do you have any relatives?’ one asked.

‘Let it be, yaar. Don’t waste time.’ The other shook his head.

‘Life or death?’ The first one persisted.

‘Whatever you can give.’ There was a note of challenge in her tone now and her voice was clear.

‘That is in God’s hands.’

The soldier looked back. His companion had long since left. He set off without another word. She was saved. She lay among a hail of cannon and gunpowder … nobody came to either rescue or finish her off. The defenders of her country were fighting. Could anything be more reassuring than that?

The afternoon went by. She was worn out by thirst and hunger. A small caravan stopped near her with its token presence of men, the women and children strangely subdued. They stood under the sheesham tree with terror-stricken faces, children crying in their mothers’ laps, their lips dry and pale. Then trucks and other vehicles drove up and the military police herded them in like cattle. A man who looked like an officer gave instructions in low tones. There was not the slightest fatigue visible on his face as he looked confidently around him. The soldiers were going about their work swiftly, their briskness and jokes relieving the atmosphere of sadness. The officer standing next to an old woman said, ‘Ma! Running away from death, are you? Why don’t you stay back? Let a useful man take your place.’ He laughed.

‘Oh no, son’, she screamed in her vernacular. ‘I’ll tuck myself into a corner.’

‘Is life that precious?’

‘Yes, son, I don’t want to die at the hands of those kafirs. Death will visit all one day.’

‘Ma! This is a chance for martyrdom,’ the soldier told the old woman.

‘Martyrdom is a result of one’s actions, son! I am useless. What martyrdom is there for me?’

Everyone was laughing and work continued as if nothing had happened, as if people had woken up from a night’s sleep to find that the morning had dawned on a new age, a new world, and the desire to discover this new world, and apprehension at what they might find, had distracted them all. The women were silent, fear lurking in their eyes. The joy and verve of the men concealed a deep anxiety which compelled the officer to repeatedly look towards the east and the soldiers to herd the women and children like cattle.

She was wounded so she was made to lie down in a jeep. Her face wore the pallor of death and she was being removed to a hospital so she could be revived. She shouted profanities.

‘Kill me … no, no … kill me … how will I face my own? … no, no … I am not in a position to return … my brother will commit suicide when he sees me … how will my mother show her face to anyone? I beseech you in the name of the honour of your women … for the sake of your wives’ chastity and loyalty, leave me here. Savage beasts have plundered me. Let dogs tear me to pieces. I have no one to call my own now. I don’t even belong to myself.’

She kept babbling and the jeep kept driving at full speed. The two sitting in front paid no heed to her nonsense, treating her like a piece of baggage. It was their responsibility to deliver her to her destination and that was all. The jeep stopped and one man got out. His place was taken up by empty cartons and bundles. The road was full of people. Their emotions brimmed over in the slogans they were shouting. Young boys poked their heads into the jeep and stared and she thought irritably, why doesn’t the jeep start? Why was she being transported in this manner? Was it her funeral procession?

‘This is my funeral procession …’ She raised her voice and was enraged by the lack of feeling in the man sitting in the front seat. He was refusing to hear her. Has everyone turned to stone? What has happened to all of them? They’ve all become puppets, puppets manipulated by time and politics, she thought, and screamed at the man sitting near her, ‘Are you deaf?’

‘I don’t have the time.’

She got up and bent over the front seat. ‘You don’t have the time? Not even the time to get rid of me?’

The man driving the jeep turned round to look and felt her breath on his temples. ‘I won’t get rid of you,’ he said deliberately, ‘because you’re young and not bad-looking.’ Then he changed the subject. ‘Why don’t you lie down? Don’t add to my problems.’

She had come to ask him questions, talk to him, and here she was being told off. The jeep kept grinding on. The fresh air revived her slightly. ‘What will you do with me?’

‘Pickle you.’

She kept quiet. There was no reason to say anything further.

The jeep entered the compound of a huge building and stopped. Bearers came forward with a stretcher. She descended, spurning all help.

‘All right. Salaam.’ She stopped.

‘Wa’eikum asalaam.’ The man had put on a pair of dark glasses and was looking at her: a woman wrapped in a cotton blanket, encrusted with dirt, hair in disarray and tears streaking the filthy face. She looked like a mad woman.

‘What’s your name?’ The man’s heart filled with sympathy and pity for the solitary woman.

‘Nothing …’

‘Nothing is no name.’

‘Parveen’, she answered shortly, lost in thought.

‘Parveen’, the man repeated and added, ‘Peena’.

She smiled interrogatively, as if to say, ‘What is my destination now?’

The man took off his dark glasses and gave her a deep look. ‘I’m Hassan. Anything I can do for you?’

‘Nothing …’, Parveen answered angrily. She had been disappointed in Hassan. A strange disappointment.

‘All right. Khuda hafiz’. Hassan walked away.

‘Khuda hafiz’. Parveen’s hand kept waving for a while. She had softened towards him again and people looked with surprise at this peasant woman with the appearance of a sadhu, who stood there waving goodbye in such a courteous manner till the jeep was out of view. But there was terror on her face. Pure terror.

When she recovered her health she was transferred from the hospital to the camp. She was irritated when people inquired about her close ones and relatives, turning hysterical on occasions, as if her inner world had been trampled by its experience of terror and injustice. Gradually people stopped asking.

In the camp Parveen attached herself to a widow who loved her like her own daughter. She would spend her whole day in the camp educating the women and children and people would look at her pityingly. She became everyone’s apa. In the morning and evening it was usual for her to sit down with the younger children, who enjoyed their pupillage under her. Anxious mothers, dislocated from their homes, got some respite and they would sit and speculate in Punjabi with each other.

‘Hai nee, what a nice girl! What will become of her?’, one would ask.

The other woman, overly emotional and sensitive to Parveen’s condition, would strike her breast with both hands and exclaim, ‘Oh, why did the kafirs plunder her honour?’

In the camp young girls were being married off every day. Those women who are always on the lookout to marry off all the young girls in the world were on the lookout for a mate for Parveen, but to marry her required ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Azra Abbas, Voyages of Sleep
• Altaf Fatima, When the Walls Weep
• Khadija Mastoor, Godfather
• Hijab imtiaz Ali, Tempest in Autumn
• Hijab imtiaz Ali, Two Stories
• Mumtaz Shirin, The Awakening
• Mumtaz Shirin, Descent
• Amtul Rahman khatun, Grandma’s Tale
• Fahmida Riaz, Some Misaddressed Letters
• Jamila Hashmi, Exile
• Farkhanda Lodhi, Parbati
• Umme Umara, The Sin of Innocence
• Khalida Husain, Hoops of Fire
• Glossary
• Biographical Notes
• Copyright