Ghalib at Dusk Read online

  The lake was a sight from another world early in the morning. It took at least three hours to get there by changing buses. But even so, often he got up and left home while still dark to be at Haleji at dawn, to be the only man to witness the mysterious silence of the water and the trees, and the gradually lightening sky, to see the birds taking off in a sudden rush and then settling down again on a grassy island in the lake. He had heard Haleji was a bird sanctuary with the greatest variety of birds in South Asia, or was it all of Asia? And what varieties of sweet water fish hadn’t he found in those waters! Katla, rahu, kalonch, narayan. Once he had caught a rahu so big, it weighed at least fifty kilos, and it took him all his years of acquired patience, and at least two hours of sitting quietly, gripping the line, then letting it go a little, playing with the beast to exhaust it. Deftly, he bided his time, not giving up, not getting edgy. It was a battle between man and nature, and it lasted a lifetime, almost. Finally when he felt the frenzied tugging of the fish ease, he started to pull the line in, worn out but with a sense of quiet accomplishment.

  He liked that Hasnain Ahmed grew quiet when fishing. He could comfortably be alone even when he was with his friend. If the day went particularly well, he might even ask his friend for a loan. A family emergency, he could say, without going into details. Immediately he became discomfited at the thought that Hasnain Ahmed might oblige him. He was still on an equal footing with his friend. Like two gentlemen, they went out fishing together.

  He fingered the length of the rod, not that he had anything against the simple bamboo ones he had used all his life. But this shiny complex thing with its padded handle, its gleaming fibreglass rod and the solid metal reel was something else. He imagined himself catching a great rahu of impossible weight and his picture being taken by a foreign reporter for one of those glossy magazines.

  Hasnain Ahmed returned. Their breakfast had been loaded into the jeep. ‘I bought some excellent shrimp at the market last week. A banquet for the fish!’

  Maqsood Ali couldn’t help smiling. Shrimp as bait! Not like the paste he prepared with wheat chaff and leftover rice.

  ‘And we’ll take along our old lines just in case this fancy gadget lets us down.’ Hasnain Ahmed laughed his resounding laugh.

  Maqsood Ali laughed in his timid way. ‘It’s only a fishing rod. We’ve fished all our lives. We’ll fix it.’

  In the jeep, all the paraphernalia loaded, they set out. Immediately he felt the power of the vehicle as it rode the bumps on the uneven roads with effortless grace. Soon they were travelling east on the highway connecting Karachi to Hyderabad. There were very few cars on the road at this early hour, it being a Friday, and a day of rest, and the jeep flew past them. The eastern sky was tinged with red. A few trucks sped by, decorated like brides with colourful tassels and flashing sequins. The truckers honked manically to get past the jeep. Normally Maqsood Ali would have made a wry comment on the lack of civility in the drivers. But today the slight sense of danger thrilled him as Hasnain Ahmed manoeuvred the vehicle expertly to let the trucks pass. The raw morning air struck their faces and made their scarves flap about. Such reckless freedom! Like two boys out on a forbidden path.

  He looked out to the right. A few roadside tea shacks had opened. Men were sitting on stools, wrapped in dark chadars, holding glasses of tea. The radios from the stalls were all tuned into the early morning religious broadcast from Radio Pakistan. He wanted to jump out and throw his arms around them—all those men drinking tea: the labourers, the farmers from the villages flanking the highway, the bus and truck drivers on their way to far-off destinations.

  He rested his head on the back of the seat and began to doze. The thought of asking his friend for money flitted across his mind like an unwanted memory. He woke in less than ten minutes. He had seen Nasima running wildly towards the lake. He hadn’t seen her face but had known it was her the way one knows people in dreams without actually seeing their faces. He was sitting by the bank, he had just cast the line, and he saw her running towards the water and behind her there were many, many people. They were laughing and taunting her. Sabir was one of them and so was Nasima’s ex-fiancé. He even saw Hasnain Ahmed standing in a corner, whispering to Nasima’s doctor.

  Immediately he knew he shouldn’t have come on this expedition. Panic seized him. He wanted to ask Hasnain Ahmed to turn back. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach and his head felt heavy. He knew now the dream would have to be played out to its grim end. The drowning of Nasima must follow. But how could it? She was at home, probably still asleep. He tried to scold himself into thinking like a man of sixty and not a schoolboy. He tried to focus on the air, the silence, the birds, the unwieldy rahus he was going to catch. All else could be taken care of, in its own way, in its own good time.

  Later, later, he soothed himself. He tried to still his pounding heart. All of life’s unresolvable mysteries—marriages and illnesses—could be taken care of later. And yet, he sensed he wouldn’t be at Haleji today, if he knew how.

  In Lieu of Gold

  SOON AFTER SULTAN’S wife appeared in the neem tree, he decided to plant trees throughout his mohalla in Orangi town. When he first arrived here from Bangladesh after the ’71 war, he missed the rains, the greenness of his former homeland. But Biharis like him had no homeland anymore. They had no homes, no businesses, no country. He had to get used to the dryness of this desert called Karachi and its drier people, but he never stopped hoping he would return to his house in Chittagong some day. He kept to his mohalla, barely venturing out of Orangi into the distant, menacing arms of clamorous Karachi. Once they settled down on this little bit of land Nawab-din rented out to him, he planted fruit trees all around the little courtyard of their one-room house. But now he decided he’d shade every single alley in his mohalla with a neem. He had two papaya trees, a guava, a custard apple, and a jackfruit tree. Only the neem near the entrance to the house bore no edible fruit. In its green shade, Amira begum had sat in the afternoons and picked over rice or daals, combed her hair, and listened to film songs from All India Radio.

  Sultan also grew vegetables in a corner of the courtyard: in winter he planted tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, radishes; in early spring, spinach, fenugreek, coriander, green chillies. Nothing grew in the summer. It was too hot then and water was always short.

  Every day Amira begum slipped out into the vegetable patch as she was getting ready to cook. If okra were the right length, she plucked those. He liked them finely sliced and fried crunchy. She picked two or three tomatoes to chop and add to daal, a handful of coriander leaves and a few green chillies to grind into chutney. Sultan wouldn’t eat without the chutney.

  Then she bathed, and sat in the lemon-green shade of the neem and ran the comb through her hair, rolling the falling white and black hairs into a ball that grew as she combed. When her hair was free of tangles she wound it into a tight bun and lay down on the charpai to nap.

  Sultan came home at six, sometimes seven after a day’s worth of roaming the unpaved lanes of Orangi with his cart full of old newspapers, magazines, canisters, cardboard, old shoes. He washed under the tap in the courtyard before sitting down to eat, Amira sitting down with him. But first, she brought him fresh chapattis just off the griddle. She watched him eat and went back into her kitchen to roll out more. When she saw he was slowing down, she sat down on the mat next to him, and picked up the straw fan that stayed with her winter and summer, with which she fanned herself like some people turned beads on a rosary.

  One day, after he had eaten, she said: ‘Allah has blessed you with fine hands. Whatever you grow turns sweet. Look at this sharifa.’ She pointed to a custard apple split open on a plate, glistening and milky sweet. She had picked the ripe fruit that afternoon. It was nestling among the leaves. She had looked up and caught it peeping shyly from among the foliage when she was lying on the charpai, fanning herself to sleep. Thank God, she managed to get to it before the birds did. ‘Nawab-din says you can use the land behind his hou
se to plant more trees.’

  ‘More trees?’ Sultan repeated, picking his teeth with a sharpened stick he kept in his kurta pocket. ‘Why must I plant more trees, and that too, because landlord Nawab-din says so?’

  ‘You could sell the fruits,’ Amira begum hesitated. ‘Nawab-din will be happy with a share in your profits.’

  ‘I don’t need him to tell me what I should do just because I rent this piece of land from him. Who’s he to give you ideas? I’ll plant and he’ll profit! You know why I planted these trees?’ Sultan’s voice had a sadness that complained of being ill-understood. ‘For you,’ he said, as if being forced to explain an obvious fact. ‘I don’t want to make money from them.’

  ‘For me? You planted the trees for me? You should know what a woman wants,’ Amira begum said. In her voice, too, a little of the same pain of not being understood was apparent. ‘In all the thirty years we’ve been married, have you ever bought me gold earrings or a set of gold bangles?’

  ‘Can you eat gold?’ Sultan asked irritably. He waved a hand towards the garden and got up from the floor. ‘You’ll know the value of these trees when I’m gone.’

  He went to the tap, rinsed his mouth and filled his watering can. In the dying light of dusk, he flitted between the tap and the trees, a waif of a man, watering his garden. He didn’t speak another word to his wife before he went to bed.

  Amira begum worked long in the cooking shed from where she was aware of all her husband’s movements, scrubbing her dishes over and over again, until the aluminum pots tingled like her scalp after a good combing session. She did not go into the room until Sultan had gone in, turned out the light and got into bed. He would never, she decided, never know what she wanted. These trees were for her, he said, but she knew they were for himself. She had seen him when he was watering them and pulling weeds: he was like a father with his children.

  Amira begum didn’t have an opportunity to test the true value of the trees her husband had planted for her because she died soon after that conversation. One evening Sultan returned home and found her under the neem, lying on the charpai, unable to speak or open her eyes. She had been sniffling and coughing for days and had complained of shortness of breath. They had both put it down to the cold weather. Sultan tried to make her talk. All he could get out of her was what sounded like ‘water’. So he rushed to the shed where she cooked, filled a glass from the matka and rushed back. He tried unsuccessfully to make her drink. She had fever, he realized, because her face was glowing like the charcoal she cooked on. He went out to get the women from the neighbouring houses. They came and they talked, they tried to give her water, they touched her forehead and shook their heads. One of them mentioned the doctor. Sultan stood at the front door and watched them. Then all of a sudden he told them to leave. They looked at him shocked, but they left because they were used to his strange ways. Sultan had very little patience with them. He knew they used to fill Amira’s head with gossip about maulvis who could give her a miraculous taaweez to bless her womb with sons.

  Sultan brought the thick quilt from the room and tucked it around her. Then he went back to the cooking shed and brought the stove and lit a fire. He did not go for the doctor. He sat next to his wife on a stool. When night came, he single-handedly dragged the charpai to the room, put his hands under her back and lifted her and the quilt onto the bed. This tired him. He was a small thin man and he stood in the doorway, panting. Amira begum opened her eyes for a moment, focused them on him and closed them again before he had time to get close to her. She died close to dawn, as the sky was paling and bluish shadows hung sheepishly in the branches of the neem. It was some instinct that told him she wasn’t breathing, because her face didn’t change at all in fading from life to death.

  The funeral was small since Sultan and Amira begum were childless, and Sultan hardly had any relatives in Karachi. Amira begum’s people didn’t come because they accused Sultan of murdering his wife. He had seen no point in dragging her to the hospital where her suffering was going to be prolonged. He knew she was going to die. It was when she had opened her eyes and looked at him. At the time he thought he had missed the meaning of that look. He gazed long at her face after the neighbour women had bathed her and laid her out in a white kafan. She looked like a child-bride, younger and happier than when she had been younger and happier. There was no element of pain or suffering on her face. It was a different youth, a different peace on her face. It had permanence. Sultan knew he had done right in letting her go.

  He bore her to the kabrastaan, helped by three of the neighbours. They lowered her into the freshly-dug grave and shovelled earth on top of her. The maulvi led them through their prayers, after which they walked back home.

  Tired and listless, Sultan lay down on the same charpai under the neem where Amira begum used to languish away the afternoons. A gripping tightness in his stomach conveyed to him that he hadn’t eaten at all since the previous afternoon. Soon it would be the time when he came home and stood his pushcart against the wall and Amira begum went to heat the tawa while he washed at the tap. A quiet dread, like thick muddy water, began to seep into him with the lengthening shadows. It wasn’t her death so much as the half-formed realization that the courtyard would never again hold those odours of her—her oiled hair, the spices, the glowing charcoal odour of her, the fresh chapatti odour—all the smells he could identify and associate with her now by virtue of their absence.

  He repeated to himself: she had to go, so she went, over and over again. But how was it that the order of their going had been reversed? She was so much younger than him, not even a woman when he had brought her home as a bride. It never entered his head that gold was something she desired. She had never asked for it except that day when she brought up the subject of planting trees on Nawab-din’s land. And what had he said? Can you eat gold? Sultan sat up on the charpai and looked up into the dark branches of the neem as if he might see her there.

  The neighbours took turns to keep him fed until he told them to stop. He was tired of expressing his gratitude to them and he really didn’t care much for their company. He wandered the streets of Orangi town with his pushcart, making halfhearted deals, buying other people’s discarded objects. There was none of the former tang in his exchanges with the housewives over their old newspapers and empty Rooh-afza bottles. He puzzled them by not haggling. You’re not the same Sultan, their eyes said.

  Amira begum had been dead a month. It was no longer cold. March was an uncertain month that didn’t know whether it wanted to linger as spring or rush headlong into summer. In the mornings it was cool but by midday, all hints of coolness vanished, and the streets that Sultan walked glittered like glass and the women who came to the door shielding their eyes with chadars drawn over their heads told him to go away and come back later.

  Sultan couldn’t decide what to plant at this time. The mornings were cool enough for spinach and fenugreek, but the heat of the day would wilt them. He settled on torai. He remembered Amira begum didn’t like to cook torai so this would be the first time he would be trying it out. Amira begum had been on his mind all day. Some days she came and settled in his mind like fog. It was with great restraint that he managed not to break into conversation with her.

  One evening in mid-March he saw her sitting up in the branches of the neem. He didn’t know why he so calmly accepted her appearing there. What she was doing up there, he didn’t ask. And she looked young, as she had after dying. She had the restless, prankish look of the child-bride he had brought home. She started pelting him with the sour neem berries. No matter how he ducked, her aim was faultless. It didn’t enter his mind to reprimand her. He just played along with her, not happy or sad, or incredulous, but with the quiet resignation with which he had come to accept most things.

  Amira begum didn’t appear in the tree after that day. Sultan cut branches from the neem and transplanted them into little pots with earth he dug out from his garden. He mixed manure into the soil before put
ting the cuttings in. He watched his saplings anxiously for the next month or so. They didn’t die, which meant that they had taken root. He left them in the pots for another month. One scorching morning in May he emptied his pushcart, piled the pots of cuttings on it, along with a shovel, a bag of manure, and his watering can and set out. The first stop he made was just at the beginning of his alley, outside Nawab-din’s house.

  He started digging a hole. He had to take frequent rests as he got tired from the bending and lifting. Nawab-din’s children came out and stood a little distance away from him and stared at the growing hole. Nawab-din’s wife peeped out through the hinges of the front door several times but didn’t come out. Soon other children from the surrounding houses joined Nawab-din’s. One of them finally asked: ‘Sultan chacha, what is this?’ Never having known how to talk to children, Sultan always addressed them as if they were adults who irritated him. ‘Can’t you see? It’s a tree.’ The children didn’t ask anything more, and in a few minutes they were bored enough with the monotony of his work to leave him alone. When the hole was about two feet deep and wide, Sultan mixed manure with the fresh damp earth, picked out the stones, and piled it back into the hole, placing a young neem in the middle. He watered the tree and moved to the next alley. There he only managed to plant one more sapling. By then his back hurt so much and he was so out of breath he could barely push the cart home.

  Of the twenty-five neems he planted, only three survived. But Sultan continued planting new ones, undaunted. Some were trampled upon by cows and goats, some had been pulled out by the roots and left to rot right there. No doubt, the children, he thought. They were getting their revenge. He saved money to buy wire netting. As he was putting it up around a newly-planted cutting, he caught one of the urchins trying to slither past his eye. ‘You,’ he said, ‘or any of your blighted friends ever come near my trees, and I’ll powder your bones into surma, and use it as fertilizer.’ The child scuttled away, but the word spread. They left his trees alone.