Same way is this, a story sung by an ulcer.
My friend Faqri gave me this mashin, batteries I stole from Ram Nekchalan’s shop, he can’t say anything to me. Now the tape is running. I’m remembering the eyes that hide inside your eyes, you said I should ignore you and talk straight to those who’ll read these words, if I speak from my heart they’ll listen. So from this moment I am no longer speaking to my friend the Kakadu Jarnalis, name’s Phuoc, I am talking to the eyes that are reading these words.
Now I am talking to you.
I am saying this into darkness that is filled with eyes. Whichever way I look eyes are showing up. They’re floating round in the air, these fucking eyes, turning this way and that they’re, looking for things to see. I don’t want them to see me, I’m lying on the floor, which is of dry dust, the tape mashin is by my head.
The instant I began talking the eyes came. I tried to hide. For some time I stayed silent. The eyes remained, they were wondering where the words had gone. They watched quietly, blinking now and again, waiting for something to happen.
See, it’s like this, as the words pop out of my mouth they rise up in the dark, the eyes in a flash are onto them, the words start out kind of misty, like breath on a cold day, as they lift they change colours and shapes, they become pictures of things and of people. What I say becomes a picture and the eyes settle on it like flies.
I’m looking right now at my feet, which are near the hearth, twisted they’re, a little bent to one side. Inside of left foot, outer of right, where they scrape the ground the skin’s thick and cracked. In gone times I’ve felt such hunger, I’d break off lumps of the dry skin and chew it. Want to see? Okay watch, I am reaching down to my heel, feeling for horny edges, I’m sliding the thumbnail under. There, see this lump of skin, hard as a pebble, how easily it breaks off, mmm, chewy as a nut. Nowadays there’s no shortage of food, I eat my feet for pleasure.
The hearth near which my feet are resting is of clay shaped somewhat like, like what, I’ve never thought of this before but it’s like a yoni, which is a cunt, I don’t know another way to say it, there’s a gap you feed in hay, twigs etc., then put bits of dungcake and sticks to get a fire, which I’ve one burning. Outside the sun has yet to show its face. I can hear people passing, going for dawn shits on the railway line. They’ll be well wrapped up this morning, blanket or thick shawl. The poor sods who are on the street must cover themselves in what they can find. Winter nights here you can freeze. That night they say was a night of great cold. Zafar used to say that as people were breathing clouds of mist out of their mouths that night, they little knew what kind of mist they’d soon be breathing in.
The eyes are watching people breathing mist. Stupid eyes, they don’t know what the mist does to the people, they don’t know what happens next. They know only what I tell them.
In this crowd of eyes I am trying to recognise yours. I’ve been waiting for you to appear, to know you from all the others, this is how the Kakadu Jarnalis in his letter said it would be. He said, “Animal, you must imagine that you are talking to just one person. Slowly that person will come to seem real to you. Imagine them to be a friend. You must trust them and open your heart to them, that person will not judge you badly whatever you say.”
You are reading my words, you are that person. I’ve no name for you so I will call you Eyes. My job is to talk, yours is to listen. So now listen.
My story has to start with that night. I don’t remember anything about it, though I was there, nevertheless it’s where my story has to start. When something big like that night happens, time divides into before and after, the before time breaks up into dreams, the dreams dissolve to darkness. That’s how it is here. All the world knows the name of Khaufpur, but no one knows how things were before that night. As for me, I don’t remember any time before my back went bad. Ma Franci would talk, proud as if she were my real mother, of how I used to enjoy swimming in the lakes behind the Kampani’s factory. “You’d dive right in, with your arms and your legs stretched out in one line.” Whenever she said this I’d feel sad also angry. I still dream of diving straight as a stick into deep water leaving my crooked shadow behind.
On that night I was found lying in a doorway, child of a few days, wrapped in a shawl. Whose was I? Nobody knew. Mother, father, neighbours, all must have died for no living soul came to claim me, who was coughing, frothing etc. plus nearly blind, where my eyes had screwed themselves against the burning fog were white slits bleached on the eyeballs. I was brought to the hospital. Was I Hindu or Muslim? How did it matter? I was not expected to live. When I did, they circumcised me, if I was Muslim it was necessary, if I was Hindu what difference did it make? After this I was given to the nuns. I grew up in the orphanage. I do not know what religion I should be. Both perhaps? Neither? Or should I listen to Ma Franci, loves Isa miyañ, he said “forgive your enemies, turn the other cheek.” I don’t fucking forgive. I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a Hindu, I’m not an Isayi, I’m an animal, I’d be lying if I said religion meant a damn thing to me. Where was god the cunt when we needed him?
I was six when the pains began, plus the burning in my neck and across the shoulders. Nothing else do I remember from that time, my first memory is that fire. It was so bad I could not lift my head. I just couldn’t lift it. The pain gripped my neck and forced it down. I had to stare at my feet while a devil rode my back and chafed me with red hot tongs. The burning in the muscles became a fever, when the fevers got bad I was taken to the hospital, they gave me an injection. It did no good. After that my back began to twist. Nothing could be done. It was agony, I couldn’t straighten up, I was pressed forward by the pain. Before this I could run and jump like any other kid, now I could not even stand up straight. Further, further forward I was bent. When the smelting in my spine stopped the bones had twisted like a hairpin, the highest part of me was my arse. Through flowers of pain I could make out an old woman kneeling by my cot, wiping my head and mumbling strange words in my ear. Her skin was wrinkled as a dried apricot, so pale you could see clear through it, she looked like the mother of time itself. This was Ma Franci. She already knew me well, but this is my first memory of her. Ma stroked my face and comforted me in words I did not understand. Tears were falling down her face. Mine too. This feverish dream gradually faded and became my new life.
On my hands I learned to walk, my legs grew feeble. My hands and arms are strong, my chest is strong. The upper half of my body is like a bodybuilder’s. I walk, also run, by throwing my weight onto my hands, hauling feet forward in a kind of hop. It took a long time to master this new way of getting about. Maybe it was months, maybe a year. When I could run I ran away because the teasing had begun.
The orphanage kids started calling me Animal one day during a round of kabbadi. You’d think such a tough game I’d have difficulty playing, but with my strong shoulders and arms I was good at catching opposing players and wrestling them to the ground. One day I grabbed this boy, he kneed me in the face. It hurt. I was so angry I bit him. I fastened my teeth in his leg and bit till I could taste blood. How he yelled, he was howling with pain, he was pleading, I wouldn’t stop. I bit harder. The other kids started shouting, “Jaanvar, jungli Jaanvar.” Animal, wild Animal.
Another time, I’d have been about eight or nine, we’d gone to swim. Just now I mentioned lakes, really they’re clay pits behind the Kampani’s factory where bulldozers would dump all different coloured sludges. These pits are massive, the water in them stinks, but when the rains come they fill up and become proper lakes with reeds etc. Since rain water is clean people would wash their cows and buffalos, we kids would jump in, splash around in the water. I could no longer dive or swim, I’d wade up to my neck, but my arse stuck out of the water.