“But my father is not my father.” Salamat ground his teeth. “I’m a bastard.”
Ajmal announced, “I refuse to consider my father as my father.”
“Yar, our disgusting fathers have ruined us.” Salamat’s voice was suddenly tearful.
Ajmal looked at Irfan, then at him: “Say something, you two.”
Then Salamat grew angry again: “They think that by staying silent they can save their disgusting fathers, and the bastard sons of their disgusting fathers, from the firing squad of time.” He pounded on the table. “But it can’t be done!”
“Salamat Sahib, you’re sitting here,” an acquaintance said, coming in through the kitchen, “and there in Gol Market the liquor shop is being looted.”
Ajmal gave a start. “Really?”
“Yes indeed, I’ve just come from there. Liquor is running in the gutters, and dogs are lying around dead drunk.”
“Then we’ve missed our chance again,” Ajmal murmured regretfully. He poked Salamat. “Come on, yar. Let’s at least go see.”
“Go where? To see what?” Salamat said irritably. “We don’t have to go to looted liquor shops to see dogs lying dead drunk! Where’s the lane in which you can’t see dogs lying dead drunk?” Then he gave the surrounding tables a look so fiery that it shot out sparks, and yelled, “Dogs! You’ll have to wake up now! The day of reckoning is here: you’ll have to account for yourselves. You, me, everyone.”
“Except me,” Afzal said comfortably. Entering, he had heard Salamat roaring; he had come and stood by the table in silence. Now he slid a chair over and sat down opposite Salamat, and said, looking him in the eye, “Mouse! Why are you standing up on your tail? I’ll have to settle accounts with you! I’m only waiting for a bamboo flute.”
“For a flute, and for the city to burn down!” Salamat said angrily.
“The city’s burning right now.” Afzal closed his eyes, then opened them and spoke as though from another world. “Mice! You’ll rue the day when I come here with a flute in my hand! I’ll come and command you to listen to what the flute is saying. I’ll command you mice to follow me. You’ll come out of your holes and follow me, until I reach the ocean, and I’ll command the ocean, ‘Ocean! Take these mice!’ and in a single swallow the ocean will suck all you mice down into its maw.”
“Nonsense,” Salamat sneered.
“Yar, what’s the point of wasting time here? Come on, let’s go to Gol Market.” Ajmal seized Salamat’s arm, and they went out.
“Salamat is a disgusting person,” Afzal muttered, “and Ajmal too, and that flunky Zavvar too, who’s become even more disgusting now that he’s an officer. That whole tribe is made up of disgusting people.” Afzal paused to look at Zakir and Irfan, who sat in silence. “Yar, you two are good people, beautiful people. How rare beauty has become in the world! Myself for one, and then the two of you. Only three beautiful people.”
“From those three, strike out my name,” Irfan said with distaste.
“You’ll regret it!” Afzal gave Irfan an angry look.
“I know the list is yet to be greatly expanded,” Irfan said venomously.
Afzal gave him a steady stare. Abdul came by, making an inspection tour of various tables. He saw Afzal, and said respectfully, “Afzal Sahib, you’ve come? Shall I bring tea?”
“No.”
“Water?”
“No.”
When Abdul started to leave, Afzal addressed him: “Abdul, you’re a good person.” He pulled a diary out of his pocket, opened it and wrote something, then said, “On this date, I struck Irfan’s name from the list of good people, and wrote your name instead.” Then he addressed Irfan: “From today, you’re an ugly person. And remember that the world is never without beautiful people.”
Abdul silently slipped away. In a little while, he came back with a glass of cold water: “Here, Afzal Sahib, sir! Have some water.”
Afzal looked gratefully at Abdul. “Abdul! You’re a beautiful person.” He drank the water, then asked, “Where did those two disgusting men go?”
“In Gol Market the liquor shop has just been looted. They went there, and you have to go there too,” Irfan said in that same venomous voice.
Afzal gave Irfan a silent angry glare, then rose and went out.
“Yar, Afzal is a free spirit. Why do you tangle with him?” Zakir said.
“A free spirit?” Irfan muttered. “Who here is a free spirit?”
“I mean, he’s a free-wheeling type. He’s not a political hack by any means.”
“Yar, it’s like this: I can’t stand fake revolutionaries, and I can’t stand fake prophets either.”
“Then who’s genuine?”
“They’re all fake, including me.” Irfan paused, then asked, “Do you know how much Comrade Salamat’s bank balance is?”
“Salamat’s bank balance? Yar, he’s the penniless type. What work does he do, to earn enough to have a bank balance?”
“Zakir, you don’t realize. He does a great deal,” Irfan said meaningfully, and then fell silent.
“Yar, I don’t understand any of this.”
“What is there not to understand? Nothing is hidden any longer. It’s written on people’s foreheads who they are and what they’re doing.” Then in a different tone he said, “Well, yar, let’s drop the subject.”
“Yes, yar, what’s it to us?”
“Yes, what’s it to you? You’re somewhere else nowadays.” Irfan, whose face was still quite tense, relaxed a bit and smiled. “Zakir, have you been getting any letters from over there?”
“Letters? No.”
“What I mean is, since coming here you must surely have written. And you must have gotten an answer?”
“No,” he said shamefacedly. “I haven’t written. And no letter has come from her.”
“You mean from that time till now there’s been no correspondence, no exchange of messages at all?”
“No.”
“And now you’re remembering her? Yar, you’re a wonder!”
Really, how strange it is, he thought. Since coming here I haven’t written to her, nor has she written to me. The thick cloud of memories again began to envelop him. A dimly lit road, then complete darkness, then an illumined zone, a glowing memory.
•
How tall Sabirah had grown, and how her bosom had swelled out, so that now she always kept it covered with her dupattah, but those two round swellings still made themselves apparent. Their conversations were sometimes loud, sometimes soft — sometimes so soft that his voice became a whisper and Sabirah’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment. After returning to the College, on Surendar’s advice he wrote her a long letter.
“Zakir! Did you mail the letter?”
“Yar, I mailed it, but—” He stopped in mid-sentence.
“But what?”
“Yar, what if she understands?”
“Why else did you write the letter? You wrote it so she’d understand.”
“Yar, if she understands, then—?” He broke off in the middle.
“Then what will happen?”
“She’ll think that—”
•
The sound of someone banging on the door: “Open up!” Suddenly returning from the illumined zone of memory, he looked around in the dimly lit atmosphere. Someone was banging on the door, and the people sitting at the tables were watching the door anxiously.
“Don’t open it, the procession is nearby.”
“There’s no telling who it is!”
“It’s people from the procession, don’t open the door.”
“Go on, open up, or else they won’t care, they’ll take revenge, they’ll burn the place down!” Abdul came out of the kitchen and went to the door. Pulling back the curtain slightly, he looked out through the pane — and was reassured. Opening one leaf of the door a little, he hurriedly brought in the new arrivals and at once shut the door again.