“Fellow! What are you doing here? Are you asleep?”
“No.” He jumped up. Afzal stood before him.
“Then what are you doing?” Afzal asked, sitting down on the grass.
“Yar, I didn’t know what to do; when I couldn’t tell what to do I came here. Here at least there’s solitude. Why are you here?”
“I always come here from time to time, to visit the flowers. The flowers, and the trees. They’re good people, they’re all my friends.”
“To visit the flowers? Today?”
“Yes, today.” Afzal was silent, then said, “Yar, this morning my eyes opened before daybreak. I thought I ought to see how the morning of a defeat dawns. I opened the window of my room and looked out. I kept looking for a long time. Outside there was nothing at all. I closed the window and pulled the sheet over my head and went to sleep. I slept till the afternoon, and finally my grandmother shook me and made me wake up. Yar! Have I ever told you about my grandmother?”
“No.”
“When we left it was the rainy season, there was a flood. On the one hand riots, on the other hand a flood. But my grandmother wouldn’t leave the land. My mother explained to her that we were leaving because of the flood, and when it went down we’d go back. My simple grandmother was taken in. But those words stuck in her mind. Every few days she demands, ‘Daughter! The flood must have gone down, take me back.’”
“Really?” He burst out laughing.
“Absolutely. Even now she thinks that when the flood goes down we’ll go back. So today she shook me and woke me up. I got up, rubbing my eyes. She fed me, most lovingly. Then she said, ‘My child! The flood must surely have gone down. So take me back!’ I stared at her face. It came to me to say ‘My dear little granny! If the flood has gone down back there, it has risen over here. How can we go back?’ My heart told me not to say it — she would go on to ask more questions. I decided to go out. Then I left, and as I went out I thought that today, rather than meeting disgusting people, it would be better to go and visit the trees and flowers.” He fell silent, cast a glance around, then said, “The sun is good right now, but it’s going down.” Sadness came into his voice. “The December sun is good, but it sets so soon.”
Afzal is right, he thought. When a man’s heart and mind are empty, and his power to think and feel is taken away, then he ought to go and sit politely in the company of trees, and chat with the flowers. Unquestionably the trees are wise, and the flowers make good conversation. He looked at Afzal, who was paying no attention to him and was staring at the trees in the distance. His glance too began to travel along with Afzal’s, and settled on the trees in the distance. Both their bodies were here, their eyes on the distant trees. Their hearts and minds too were drawn that way.
“Fellow! Listen.” Afzal addressed him in a confidential tone.
He came back with difficulty from the world of the trees, and didn’t look happy to be back. “Yes, what is it?”
“Yar! Shouldn’t I take the management of Pakistan into my own hands?”
“What?” He gave Afzal a strange look.
“Yar, this is what I’ve thought of. If I find two virtuous people and they become my arms, then I can take on this responsibility. One is you, and Irfan can be added as the other. Sometimes he says disgusting things, but still he’s a good person. If you two give me a hand, I can make Pakistan beautiful again. Yar, these ugly ones have spoiled the face of Pakistan, they’re very disgusting people.”
He laughed somewhat bitterly, and said nothing.
“Fellow, you have no faith in me.” Afzal’s mood changed.
“I have faith in you, I have no faith in myself.”
“You don’t trust yourself? Yar, among those disgusting people we are the only beautiful ones.” He paused, then said, “You know that some acres are going to be allotted to me.”
“I’ve been hearing that for a long time.”
“I didn’t take it seriously either. But now it’s happening. The allotment is about to come through, I’ve prepared my map. One acre will be used for beds of roses.”
“A whole acre? — What’s the point?”
“Yar, in Pakistan the flowers have been growing fewer, that’s why people have been growing uglier and hatred has kept on spreading. I thought I ought to save those bastards’ faces from growing distorted. So the scheme is that one acre will be beds of roses, two acres will be a mango orchard. Yar, the truth is that listening to the voices of those disgusting people has ruined my hearing. If there’s a mango orchard, then at least we can hear the call of the koel. How about it?”
“It’s a good idea.”
“All right, then get ready, we have to make Pakistan beautiful.”
At that very moment there was a rumbling in the sky, loud enough to burst the eardrums. He and Afzal both raised their eyes to the sky. “Air-raid!” burst from his lips.
“Air-raid,” Afzal said with surprise. “The siren didn’t sound.”
“Our sirens have been silent all day.”
Afzal stared at the sky. Gradually the atmosphere grew still. Afzal drew a breath of satisfaction. “Yar, I was afraid a bomb would fall, and all these flowers—” He fell silent.
“And you say that we have to make Pakistan beautiful.”
“Yar, can’t we stop the wars?”
Afzal asked the question with so much innocence that he burst out laughing.
“Zakir, you’re laughing. I’m asking the question seriously. Can’t we stop the wars?”
“No.”
“Fellow, you just don’t know me. But I need two virtuous people — Zakir!”
“Yes.”
“Will you be my arm?”
•
Again a low rumbling began in the sky. The sound grew louder and louder until it became an ear-splitting roar. Today, ever since the late afternoon, the attacking planes had been flying very low. They came swiftly and passed on, without dropping bombs. He glanced at the ticking clock before him. It was almost 7:30. So apparently this was the last air raid. And he remembered that in ’65, the night of the cease-fire had been just like this — I abruptly awoke from sleep. The walls of the room were trembling, the windows and doors rattling. I looked at the clock. Twelve o’clock was striking. I was stupefied and frightened. At that time the cannons ought to have fallen silent. Had the cease-fire agreement failed, and war broken out afresh? The guns were thundering so loudly that the roaring and thundering of the past sixteen nights paled by comparison. But suddenly the roar and thunder stopped. Perfect silence, unfathomable stillness. Just a moment ago there was such a roar and thunder that the earth trembled and the walls quivered, and now in a moment such silence, such stillness. I was shaking. Perhaps a cease-fire is more terrifying than a war. I had emerged from one terror and had taken refuge in another terror — in a deeper terror. Then all the rest of the night I couldn’t sleep.
The minute hand of the clock, after a long terrifying journey of twenty-nine minutes, has arrived at the thirtieth minute and is stuck there. The sky is silent. So the Indian planes have shown their power for the last time and gone back. So the cease-fire has taken effect. I get up and open the window, peer out and look at the sky, run my gaze around for a long distance in every direction. I don’t see anything. The atmosphere is dark, the whole city is immersed in darkness. Afzal was right. There’s nothing at all outside.