Ammi didn’t encourage Auntie Sharifan to pursue the matter. She changed the subject completely. “Auntie Sharifan, tell us something of how things are back there.”
“How things are back there?” Auntie Sharifan sighed. “You want to know how things are back there. Who’s there at all any more? The Big Mansion is full of refugees. Khan Sahib’s house is locked up. The Small Mansion is a complete ruin. Last summer, when the dust storms came, one of its walls fell in. Since then, inside and outside are all one. Poor Turab Ali, whose house was so crowded and bustling, has stayed on in it all by himself. His whole family has come here, and he’s completely alone there.”
“By now he must be quite old?”
“Like a dried-up stick. He lies on a cot in the empty house, coughing.”
Sharifan sighed. “There was a time when families were expanding, and even big houses began to seem small. Now this time has come, when all the families are scattered. Now even small houses seem big. Just think about your house back there! But now who’s left? Batul Bi and her younger daughter, two people and such a big house.”
“So Tahirah has gone?”
“Yes, her husband came last month from Dhaka and took her away. Now she’s sending letter after letter saying ‘You come too.’”
“Is something being arranged for Sabirah?”
“Requests have come from a number of places, and I told Batul Bi, ‘Look, whatever boy you can get, marry her off to him and be done with it. It’s not as though there are that many boys around, for you to worry about whether the match is good or bad! The boys have all gone off to Pakistan.’”
“Then?”
“Dulhan Bi, it was my duty to give advice, and I gave it. Beyond that, people follow their own notions of what’s good for them.” Then she said in a low voice, “I’ve heard that Sabirah has refused.”
“Sabirah has refused?” Ammi said with surprise. “She wasn’t that kind of a girl.”
“She says she’ll get a job. When I heard that I beat my breast — that the daughter of a family of Maulvis should go and work in offices!”
“Oh.” Ammi looked pensive.
Some of this talk of Sabirah I heard, some of it I didn’t hear. As Auntie Sharifan embarked on this topic, her raised voice had grown softer and softer, until it assumed the form of a whisper. And just then Irfan arrived, and knocked at the door.
“What’s the matter, aren’t you going to the Shiraz today?”
“Why not? Of course I’m going. Let’s go.” And I immediately set out with Irfan for the Shiraz.
Perhaps with me also, things left behind were slipping further away. But the things all around absorbed me more and more. This city with its bustling restaurants, leafy trees, and well-developed girls was becoming a part of me, and moreover its shape was changing before my eyes. Those lanes with collapsed, burned-out houses testifying to the terrible events that had happened there, were now fragrant with new houses and new residents, and the streets were full of a new hustle and bustle. The shopkeepers sitting in the abandoned shops no longer looked uprooted, the way they had before. Now they looked as though they’d been sitting there forever. The old and new parts and elements of the bazaar had already blended together. Shops, shopkeepers, goods and merchandise in the shops, customers who came and went, passersby strolling along, all had merged to form a whole.
I had started out in this city as a wanderer, and had made the Shiraz my camp. Friends came by various roads and with various excuses, and gathered in this camp. One friend’s whole family had been forced to live in one room, or one verandah, of an abandoned house. When the crowded atmosphere oppressed his nerves, he wandered through the wide spaces of the city. In his wanderings some auspicious moment brought him to the Shiraz, and from then on he belonged there. Another friend had been allotted a big house; fearful of its expanses, he left it, and roamed through the city. In the course of his roaming he discovered the Shiraz. Another friend had lived comfortably and securely here in his own ancestral home since long before Partition. But in this new atmosphere of houselessness and homelessness, his heart was alienated from his ancestral home and he chose to be homeless, he came and camped in the Shiraz.
In those days when the whole population seemed to be homeless, we knew we had a home — as if we had been sitting in the Shiraz through many births, like faithful priests sitting smeared with ashes, and would sit there for many births to come. As claims were approved and houses were given to the homeless and work to the unemployed, we Shiraz-dwellers began to look unsettled, as though we were the only ones in the city without a house. It was in those days, when we were going through all this, that Afzal became a restless spirit and a lover of alcohol, and the acid etched its way into Irfan’s voice. In those days Salamat and Ajmal had not yet known the taste of drinking and revolution. They were still only “intellectuals,” and sat in the Shiraz arguing merely about literature and art; but the one who made the greatest name for himself in these intellectual discussions was Zavvar.
Zavvar was the youngest of us all, but he established himself among us as a learned scholar, and his brilliance and maturity of mind fully made up for his youthfully downy cheeks. At such an early age, after reading books of all types and descriptions, he announced that wisdom doesn’t come from books, but from passing through the experiences of life. Thus, in search of wisdom, he sat for a few days with Afzal, trying out liquor. Then, believing it inadequate, he tried marijuana, hashish, and opium. Taking baths, changing clothes, and shaving he considered to be a waste of time, and insofar as possible he avoided such extravagances. Partly because his shoes were rather old, and partly because they were unpolished and covered with dust and dirt, they looked ancient. He himself took out and threw away their inner soles, and contrived to leave the nails protruding. He used to walk for miles, and come back to the Shiraz with his heels covered with blood.
“Yar, why don’t you get a shoemaker to fix your shoes?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“To become a man, one ought to have the experience of torment; and great art is born only through suffering.”
Thus, always looking for new experiences of torment, he took the Civil Service exam and passed it.
“Zavvar! So now you’re going to become an officer in the Civil Service.”
“I, a Civil Service officer! I take refuge in God against such a horror!”
“After all, you took the test of your own free will, and passed it.”
“A man ought to pass through that experience too.”
“A new experience of torment!” Irfan laughed his sarcastic laugh.
Now it was late at night, and we were walking silently along Mall Road, absorbed in our situation.
“Yar, do you know what time it is?”
These words displeased Zavvar. “Even if we find out, what difference will it make?”
“I mean,” I said, “at some point a man ought to sleep, too.”
“Provided he has a place to sleep,” Irfan put in.
These words too displeased Zavvar. “Irfan, you stay awake out of necessity. For me staying awake isn’t a necessity, it’s a choice.”
“Staying awake, and taking the Civil Service exam,” Irfan said with a sarcastic smile.
Zavvar’s face grew red. I at once turned toward Salamat. “Salamat, you have a fine big house. Why do you wander around in the streets with us?”
“That house isn’t mine, it belongs to some Sikh.”
“But the Sikhs have gone.”
“That makes no difference. My father has taken their place.”
Ajmal suddenly remembered that Afzal’s house was nearby. “Yar, if you really need a place to sleep, Afzal’s house is right nearby.”