“Maulana Sahib! A letter has come from my Karamat. Nowadays he’s posted in Dhaka.”
“What does he write? He’s well, isn’t he?”
“He’s all right, but it seems from his letter that he’s somewhat worried.”
“Nowadays, who isn’t?”
“Yes, that’s true, conditions are getting worse and worse with every passing day.” Khvajah Sahib then addressed him: “Isn’t it so, Zakir my son?”
“Yes sir, conditions are not at all good.”
“What’s the news?”
“News? There’s no special news.”
“Maulana Sahib!” Khvajah Sahib addressed Abba Jan. “What’s come over our sons? They wander around so much, but if you ask them for the news, they say there’s no news! When I ask Salamat, he always tells me the same news: that the revolution is coming. I said to him, ‘Son, revolution isn’t coming, war is coming.’ He answered, ‘Yes, and revolution is coming with it.’ I said, ‘Wretch, don’t you see what’s happening in East Pakistan?’ And what answer does he give me? ‘East Pakistan is being liberated.’ I said, ‘Get out of my house, bastard son!’”
“May God have mercy upon us,” Abba Jan said briefly, and put the mouthpiece of the huqqah in his mouth.
“Yes, may God have mercy, conditions are very bad. Why, just this morning, when I had offered my prayers and was coming back, I saw army cars heading toward the border-crossing point at Wagah. There were a lot of them.” He paused, then addressed Zakir: “Son, what do you think, will there be war?”
“What do you think?” He sent the question back to him.
When the question came his way, Khvajah Sahib sent it over toward Abba Jan. “Maulana Sahib, please answer your son’s question.”
Abba Jan continued to smoke his huqqah in silence. But Khvajah Sahib kept looking at him. Finally he took the mouthpiece out of his mouth, slid the huqqah toward Khvajah Sahib, and addressed Zakir: “Son, you’re the one who understands political affairs. I only know one thing: I tell you that when the masters are cruel and the sons are rebellious, any disaster at all can befall the Lord’s creatures.”
“When the masters are cruel—” he hesitated, “when the masters are cruel, and the people lick the dust.” Abba Jan’s long-forgotten words echoed in his mind.
“You’re entirely right.” Khvajah Sahib’s head was bowed.
Seeing that both his elders were silent, he gratefully seized the opportunity and slipped away.
At Nazira’s shop too, this was the topic of conversation. Handing him a pack of cigarettes, Nazira asked, “Zakir Sahib, sir! What do you think, will there be war?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, sir, but people are saying.”
Karim Bakhsh, who had planted himself on a stool nearby, announced confidently, “War, sir, is bound to take place.”
“Karim Bakhsh! How do you know?”
“I offer the dawn prayer, do you?”
“No.”
“Offer it, then you’ll know. In the evening, you can’t tell anything from the sky, there’s too much noise. At that time it’s mute. Get up at dawn and see, at that hour the sky speaks. Lately a comet has appeared.”
“Yar, I’ve heard that, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Get up at dawn and look at the sky, you’ll believe it. The tail is just like a broom.”
“Yar, may the broom not make a clean sweep of us!”
He had scarcely set foot in the Shiraz and exchanged greetings with Irfan, who was already sitting there, when Salamat entered with his platoon. Now Salamat had with him not only Ajmal, but a whole group. And now, in view of his position of leadership, he spoke more haughtily.
“Reactionaries!” Salamat stared intently first at him, then at Irfan. “What do you think? Will there be war, or not?”
“Oh, if only war depended on my opinion!” Irfan’s voice was sarcastic.
Salamat’s face at once tensed. “Irfan! The time for your refined humor and delicate sarcasm is already over. Today you’ll have to give a straight answer: either you want war, or you don’t want it. You’ll be forced to make a commitment.”
“Commitment!” Irfan gave a poisonous smile. “Salamat, you’ve come to the wrong place. My commitment can neither stop the war, nor start it.”
“Still the same worn-out, rusty, boring, conventional technique for avoiding the question of the times.” Salamat looked contemptuously at Irfan, and turned his attention to him. “And you, Zakir? What do you say?”
“Me? What can I say?”
“Are you for the war, or against the war?”
He fell into thought. “I don’t know, yar.” He paused, then said, “I don’t really know what I’m for and what I’m against today.”
Ajmal stared at him. “This person wants to confuse us.”
Someone else in the platoon said, “When the situation confronting them becomes concrete and demands commitment, the reactionaries get rattled.”
Salamat rolled up his sleeves, and looked wrathfully all around. He was preparing for a regular speech. “Creating confusion is an old imperialist trick. Today all the imperialist agents are doing it.” Then he ground his teeth and pounded his fist on the table. “Imperialist devil, your tricks won’t work any longer! You want to save yourselves by creating a confederation with India, you want to suppress the voice of the poor. These tricks won’t work. There will be no confederation with India. There will be war!” This Salamat said so loudly that everyone sitting in the Shiraz could hear it. They heard, and looked at him and Irfan as though they had been caught planning some giant conspiracy against Pakistan. Salamat cast a glance of satisfaction around the room, and began again. “There will be war, and this worn-out system which sustains you will be torn to pieces. Not one of those stale, rotten moral values you carry around with you, that spread a stink in the society, will survive. My babbling fool of a father asked me what then would survive. I said, ‘Old fool! I will survive — I, the revolution!’”
Afzal had come in at some point, and was sitting in silence, staring at Salamat. When the speech was over, he opened his mouth: “Mouse, your opinions raise such a poisonous stink that from now on I’ll have to wear a gas mask to come to the Shiraz.”
Salamat gave Afzal a furious look. Once more he pounded his fist on the table, and yelled, “Reactionaries! Imperialist stooges! Boot-lickers of the capitalists! Your day of reckoning has come.”
“Fellow, lower your voice. The man is the size of a sparrow, and such a loud voice comes out of him!”
Afzal’s way of addressing him rattled Salamat, for it was a powerful blow to his position of leadership. Staring at Afzal, eyes burning with rage, Salamat suddenly rose. “You devil, your conspiracy against the people won’t succeed!”
“It won’t succeed, it won’t succeed!” The whole platoon began to shout the slogan; still shouting it, they left the Shiraz.
As soon as the platoon left, there was silence all around; the three sat for some time in silence. Then Afzal grumbled, “Yar, these revolutionaries will ruin us. And how much that mouse talks!”
“This is the time for people like him to speak,” Irfan said.
“When shoelaces speak, and those who can speak fall silent.” He was startled. What long-ago words had come to his mind! Nowadays this kind of thing was happening to him. Some forgotten saying of Abba Jan’s, some remark of Bi Amma’s, would suddenly come into his mind and at once slide away again — the way a snake would raise its head from the grass, then vanish again in an instant.