“Friends, you banged so loudly on the door that you frightened us!” an acquaintance said to the regulars who had come in.
“But how can frightened people frighten anyone?”
“How are things outside?”
“Bad. There’s a lot of destruction.”
With his heart and mind full of memories, he halfway heard and halfway didn’t hear. He had come back from the zone of memories the way a sleeper might suddenly wake, with sleep still filling his eyes. The sleep-spirit might then come like the touch of a breeze, and he would again be oblivious and dead to the world. Memory-images were floating around him.
•
Then Sabirah was moving in his imagination, when she had come to Vyaspur for a few days. In those days we two had come close to each other. When the engine whistled, she too was drawn up to the open roof, where I still came when I was home from Meerut during the vacations, to sit from evening into night, watching the fields that went on into the distance, beyond the fields the railroad tracks, beyond the railroad tracks the rows of trees. We both stood leaning on the parapet, our heads touching. We watched the whistling, smoke-spitting engine, and the moving, lighted cars that followed it. In the day, these cars looked separate, but in the dark of night they were like a row of lamps strung together and moving. The row of lamps was drawn along, it came running along. When it passed, Sabirah would say with delight and wonder, “What a long train it was, car after car. Which train was it?”
“The Delhi train.”
She was amazed. “This train goes to Delhi!”
“Yes, of course.”
She was silent for a little. “Zakir, you must have seen Delhi? What’s it like, Delhi?”
“I’ve only gone once, but after my exams, I’ll go there to live.”
“Really! How?” She was astonished.
“I’ll go there and work.”
“Really?”
Night was falling. The moon had not yet come out. But there were a few stars, twinkling like distant lamps in the expanse of the sky. I looked steadily at Sabirah’s wondering face.
“Sabirah!”
“Huh?”
“Sabirah, if I should get a job in Delhi then — then—” My tongue began to stumble. “Then — we two can live together there.”
“What?” She looked at me with surprise, as though she didn’t understand at all. I went on looking silently at her; and then as though she had suddenly understood something, she all at once slipped away.
The next day she and I avoided each other’s eyes, but when night fell, the whistle of the engine and the clanking of the wheels again brought her to the roof. Keeping her distance from me, she stood with her chin on the parapet. But the train paused in its journey, somewhere in the shelter of the trees, and the engine went on whistling. We drew nearer to each other, very near indeed. So near that I could feel the warmth of her body, and its softness as well.
After that, we leaned on each other with more confidence as we watched the Delhi trains come and go. With our chins propped side by side on the cool parapet full of spots of dark mold, we watched the trains moving sometimes slowly, sometimes fast. Now we no longer had any questions about this train, as though our plan of traveling in it to Delhi had been agreed upon.
Then letter after letter came from Khalah Jan, saying to send Sabirah home. Ammi said, “Ai hai, Batul is driving me mad! These are bad times, how can I send her?”
“Ammi! Shall I take her?”
Abba Jan looked hard at me, and said, “The times are very bad.”
•
“I’ve heard, sir, that there’s been shooting.”
“What?” He looked at the speaker with a start. The speaker was Abdul, who was collecting the empty teacups. His face looked anxious. “I don’t know, sir, but a man just came from the Regal, he was saying so.”
He had come back from his forest, and was staring at Abdul’s face.
“These are bad times, sir.” As Abdul spoke, he picked up the tray full of empty teacups and took it away.
“I think we should go out.”
“Out?” He looked at Irfan with surprise.
“Yes. After all, how long can we sit here, shut up inside? And besides, it’s almost time for me to be at work.”
“Then what’s the point of my staying on alone? I’ll go home.”
“Anyway, let’s go out, and we’ll see.”
Outside things had changed a great deal. He looked with wonder at the road. In the morning, going to the College, he had passed along this road. Then it was clean and neat, as usual. Cars, scooters, bicycles, scooter-cabs were rushing to their various destinations. Buses packed with people were in rapid motion. The fast-moving scooter-cabs were jockeying for position, urgently trying to dart in front of each other. But now the whole street was full of scattered bricks. Here and there among the scattered bricks lay gleaming fragments of broken glass from bus windows and car windows. A half-burned double-decker bus lay helplessly in the middle of the street, but it wasn’t blocking traffic. How much traffic was there to block? One or two cars, trying to avoid the bricks, crept timidly past the double-decker, and suddenly accelerated once they had cleared it. Then after a long time, the sound of a bus noisily coming by, jolting over the bricks, and passing indifferently on.
As he passed near the petrol pump, he saw that a crowd had gathered. The crowd were staring with wonder at a long car that lay overturned, its four wheels pointing toward the sky and its roof against the ground.
Passing by the wondering crowd, he went on. In front of the National Auditorium a furious crowd had gathered. A respectable gentleman, entering the Auditorium, hesitated: “Excuse me, sir, is the speech over?”
“You’d do better to ask whether it’s begun!”
“So the speech hasn’t taken place?”
“No,” a young man said angrily. “The imperialist pimps, the sons of bitches! Their time to make speeches is finished!”
A motorbike, dashing along, pulled over and stopped: “What’s happening up there now?”
“They’re throwing chairs.”
The motorbike rider pulled out a pistol, fired it into the air, restarted the motorbike, and vanished.
“Yar! His car must be parked over there?”
“Good idea. The pimp looted the poor to buy it, let’s burn it!”
Ammi welcomed him with a pounding heart and terrified eyes, made the gesture of taking his misfortunes onto herself,* lifted her hand and said tearfully, “Oh God, thanks be to You.”
“What’s happened?” He looked at Ammi with surprise.
“Ai, my son! I was terrified. People in the neighborhood were saying that there was firing. My heart stopped beating. I was in a state of panic, I went again and again to the door. I kept praying, ‘Ai, God, my son has gone out, let him come back safely.’”
“Has Zakir come?” Abba Jan’s voice came from the outer room.
“Go, my son, show your face to your father and then come back. He was worried too.”
When he entered the room, he saw that Khvajah Sahib was sitting with Abba Jan.
“Son! Where’s my Salamat?” Khvajah Sahib asked the question abruptly.
“I saw Salamat in the afternoon, then he went off somewhere with Ajmal.”
“The wretch must have gone off with the procession.”
“With the procession? — I don’t know.”
“The wretch has caused me a lot of worry,” Khvajah Sahib muttered angrily. “I’ve heard there was firing?”
“Firing? — No.”
“If there hasn’t been firing yet, there will be.”
“Has a curfew been imposed?” Abba Jan asked somberly.