“You’re right.” I fell silent.
The Shiraz was full then, but no one was drinking tea. They were all asking each other questions. They were asking about what they already knew. They had already accepted what they were refusing to accept.
EIGHT
Now his whole being was concentrated in his legs. Normally, while he walked he thought about so many things, and while he was thinking he found himself ending up in one place or another. Now he was solely and exclusively walking. He walked with swift steps; what with the noise of his footsteps, he couldn’t hear any other voices, or perhaps there were no other voices. He was walking alone in the empty city, and the whole air was echoing with the sound of his two feet. The noise of his footsteps overpowered even the noise of a scooter-cab: when the scooter-cab came right up near him on the street and began to move slowly alongside, he realized that the scooter-cab was empty and the driver was looking at him. “No,” he said, and the driver speeded up and went off. Whenever I really have to go somewhere, then the scooter-cabs fly by like winged horses, none of them stop. And today, when I don’t have to go anywhere, there’s an empty scooter-cab with me at every step, inviting me, as though I were the only passenger in the city. He lifted his eyes and glanced around, then looked off ahead into the distance. There seemed to be no one around, either nearby or in the distance. Where has everyone gone? Once more he examined the scene, near and far. He saw a few small groups standing still or slowly walking along, talking among themselves, with drained, collapsed faces. Why are all their faces drained and collapsed? With fear?
As he walked along, his gaze fell on a wall with a big poster on it. On horseback, sword in hand, bloodthirsty face, “these fighters for the faith, these your mysterious servants.”* It produced no reaction in him: for now this picture was dead, and the words too. At the next corner the same poster, the same picture, the same words. A dead picture, dead words. The image of a rally-ground rose up in his mind. Banners hung everywhere, and big posters waving in the air like banners. At the time how alive their words and pictures seemed! The rally is thrown into disorder. The rally-ground lies empty but the posters still wave in the air. The words written on them, the pictures printed on them — how dead they look. Days afterward, no one has taken down the posters. A car passed by him. On its bumper was written “Crush India.” Perhaps the car owner had forgotten about the slogan? If not, then — if not, then what? He didn’t understand anything. The truth was that his mind was empty, empty. His mind, and his heart too. Since morning he’d had the most intense need to think, to feel. He hadn’t yet comprehended how one goes about feeling a great disaster. In the morning he stayed shut up in his room for a long time, and kept trying to feel something. The more he tried to feel, the more he was overpowered by numbness. Then Khvajah Sahib came, and when he was sent for he was obliged to go and sit in the drawing room. Khvajah Sahib always imagined that Zakir knew more than other people. Today as well, he had sent for him because of this suspicion. But what did he know? He only knew what everyone else knew too. Even Khvajah Sahib didn’t ask him too many questions today. Today he had only one question.
“Maulana Sahib, what’s this that has happened?”
Abba Jan answered Khvajah Sahib’s mournful question in a dry tone: “Khvajah Sahib, this world is a place of reckoning. Men reap whatever they sow.” Then, in silence, he began smoking his huqqah.
Khvajah Sahib sat in silence. Then he said, “Maulana Sahib, when I was listening to the radio, I wanted to weep floods of tears. But I’m an old man; it’s not proper for me to weep before young children. I sat there, restraining myself. Finally I rose and left the room, and placed a chair in the courtyard under a tree, and sat outside. There was no one near me. They were all sitting inside, listening to the radio. All my self-control broke down, and I wept.” Khvajah Sahib’s eyes filled again, but he restrained himself. He sat in silence. Then with a sigh he rose, paused, and then said, “Maulana Sahib! Pray for my older boy. His mother has been weeping constantly since last night.”
“Khvajah Sahib! Tell her to have patience. God the Most High gives to the patient, the reward of patience. ‘Surely God is with the patient.’”* Then he closed his eyes, and began to recite something under his breath. He had put his huqqah aside. His eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. Zakir went on staring at him; he wanted to get up and quietly slip away, but it seemed that his legs had no strength.
Now it was as if all his strength had gone into his legs. Swiftly moving feet — at this moment they were all he was. From one road to another, from the second road to a third. Reading the posters on the walls. It seemed that he would cover the whole city, and would read everything that was written on the city’s walls, whether in the form of life-size posters, slogans written in chalk and charcoal, or abuse and insults. But without feeling anything. Without any sense of boredom he read so many posters with the same message, and so many two-word slogans written in English on car bumpers, on car windows. He felt that he was not reading slogans, but walking on dead flies. He began to feel nauseated. Lifting his eyes from the walls, he began to watch the people passing nearby. All their faces, drained and collapsed, looked the same. Devoid of feeling. Only the slightest trace of fear quivered in them. They seemed like shadows themselves, as though they were weightless. Do I have weight? he suddenly thought, and fell into doubt. Walking along quickly, he suddenly slowed down and began to measure each step. He was trying to feel weight in himself. Do I have weight, or not? When does it happen that a man becomes weightless, and when does it happen that a man’s body becomes a burden to him, and his head a heavy load on his shoulders? Another scooter-cab, which had come alongside him and was moving at a turtle’s pace. Seeing that the scooter-cab was empty, he absentmindedly began to climb into it, when a thought struck him: Where do I want to go? Nowhere at all. When I have to go somewhere, every scooter-cab is full and every empty scooter-cab races by on the far side of the street. And now, when I don’t have to go anywhere, they sit on my head. “I’m not going.” The scooter-cab speeded up and moved off down the street.
He had given no instructions to his feet. He was just walking, taking long strides. But “the Mulla goes only as far as the mosque.” After wandering all over, he had to come there. Irfan was already there, with a cup of tea before him and a cigarette dangling between his lips.
“Tea?”
“I’ve walked a lot today.”
“Why?”
“I just did.”
“Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Anyway I’ll have to have tea.”
Irfan ordered more tea. Abdul brought the tea very quickly, put it down, and went off without a word.
He and Irfan sat opposite each other, drinking tea, as though there were no connection at all between them. As he drank the tea, his glance happened to fall on a wrinkled, crumpled newspaper — and then was fixed there. It was all the same news, and the same headlines, that he had read at home. At that time the headlines had attacked him like enemies. But now all these heavy, thick, sensationalist headlines looked like a pile of dead words. But he had to do something to keep himself busy, after all. Listlessly he ran his eye over some of the headlines. Somehow he began reading a news item. He went on reading, without taking in what he was reading. His eyes were occupied, his mind disengaged. Finally he lost interest entirely. Pushing the newspaper aside, he glanced at Irfan, who had finished his tea and lit a cigarette. He too removed a cigarette from the packet on the table, held it between his lips, and lit it.