As we talked, he glanced at my table and saw a wooden picture frame there that held the photo of a young woman. He got up and approached it. ‘Do you mind if I look at this picture?’ he asked.
‘Not at all.’
He gave the picture a cursory glance and went back to sit in his chair. ‘She’s a very pretty girl. I take it she’s your …’
‘No, that was a long time ago. I liked her, even loved her. But, sad to say, she didn’t know, and I … I … no, well, her parents married her off. The picture is a souvenir of my first love that died before it really even began.’
‘A souvenir of your love,’ he repeated, passing his tongue over his dry lips. ‘But you must have had other affairs. I mean you must have experienced real love too.’
I was about to say that I was one of those men like him who couldn’t love. But then, who knows why, I stopped and without any reason told a lie, ‘Yes, I’ve had my share. You must have had a lot of lovers too.’
He turned completely silent, as silent as the ocean’s depths. He fell lost in thought, and when his silence began to depress me, I said, ‘Hello, there! What are you thinking about?’
‘I … I … nothing. I was just thinking about something.’
‘You were remembering something? Something from a dream? An old wound?’
‘A wound … an old … wound … not any wound. I have only one, and it’s very deep, and very deadly. One is enough,’ he said and then stood up to walk around the room. But as it was small and filled with chairs, a table, and a cot, there was no space, so he had to stop by the table. Now he looked very carefully at the picture and said, ‘They look so similar — yours and mine. But her face wasn’t so mischievous, and her eyes were large and knowing.’ He sighed with disappointment and sat on a chair. ‘It’s impossible to understand death, especially when it happens to someone so young. There must be some power that opposes God, a power that’s very jealous and wants no one to be happy. Anyway.’
‘No, no, as you were saying,’ I encouraged him. ‘But, to be honest, I actually thought you’d never been in love.’
‘Why? Just now you said I must have had many lovers,’ he said and then looked questioningly at me. ‘If I’ve never been in love, why am I always sad? If I’ve never been in love, why am I like I am? Why don’t I take care of myself? Why do I feel like I’m melting away like a candle?’
These were rhetorical questions.
I said, ‘I was lying when I said I thought you’d had many lovers, but you too lied when you said you weren’t sad, that you weren’t sick. It’s not easy to know what others are feeling. There might be many other reasons for your sadness, but as long as you don’t tell me, how can I know? No doubt you’re getting weaker and weaker by the day, and obviously you’ve experienced something terrible, and … and … I feel sorry for you.’
‘You feel sorry for me?’ Tears welled in his eyes. Then he said, ‘I don’t need anyone’s sympathy. Sympathy can’t bring her back from the grave — the woman I loved. You haven’t loved. I’m sure you’ve never loved because you have no scars. Look over here,’ he said, pointing at himself. ‘Every inch of my body is scarred by love. My existence is the wreck of that ship. How can I tell you anything? Why should I tell you when you won’t understand? If someone tells you his mother has died, you can’t feel what he must feel. My love — to you — to anyone else — will seem completely ordinary. No one can understand its effect on me. I was the one who loved, and I was the one everything happened to.’
He fell silent. Something must have caught in his throat, because he repeatedly tried to swallow.
‘Did she take advantage of your trust? Or did something else happen?’
‘Take advantage of me? She wasn’t capable of taking advantage of anyone. For God’s sake, please don’t say that. She wasn’t a woman but an angel. I curse death, which couldn’t stand to see us happy! It swept her away under its wings forever. Aghh! This is too much! Why did you have to remind me of all this? Listen, I’ll tell you a little of the story. She was the daughter of a rich and powerful man. I had already wasted all of my inheritance by the time I met her. I had absolutely nothing and had left my hometown and gone to Lucknow. I had a car, so I knew how to drive, which is why I decided to become a driver. My first job was with the Deputy Sahib, whose only child was this girl—’ All of a sudden he stopped. After a while, he emerged from his reverie and asked, ‘What was I saying?’
‘You got a job at the Deputy Sahib’s house.’
‘Yes, Zahra was the Deputy Sahib’s only child, and I drove her to school every morning at nine o’clock. She kept purdah, and yet you can’t keep hidden from your driver for long, and I caught a glimpse of her on the very second day. She wasn’t just beautiful. I mean there was something special about her beauty. She was a very serious girl, and her hair’s centre parting gave her face a special kind of dignity. She … she … what should I say she was like? I don’t have the words to describe her.’
At great length, he attempted to enumerate Zahra’s virtues. He wanted to describe her in a way that would bring her to life, but he didn’t succeed, and it seemed like his mind was too full of thoughts. From time to time his face became lively, but then he would be overcome by sadness and start sighing again. He told his story very slowly and as though he found pleasure in its painful recitation.
It went like this. He fell completely in love with Zahra. For several days he kept busy devising different strategies to catch a glimpse of her, but when he thought about his love with any seriousness, he realized how impossible it was. How can a driver love his master’s daughter? When he thought about this bitter reality, he became very sad. But he gathered his courage and wrote a note to Zahra. He still remembered its lines:
Zahra,
I know quite well I’m your servant and that your father pays me thirty rupees a month. But I love you. What should I do? What shouldn’t I do? I need your advice.
He slipped this note into one of her books. The next day as he took her to school, his hand trembled as he drove, and the steering wheel kept slipping from his grip. Thank God he didn’t have an accident! He felt strange all day, and while he drove her back from school in the evening, Zahra ordered him to stop the car. He pulled over, and Zahra spoke very seriously, ‘Look, Naim. Don’t do this again. I haven’t told my father about it — I mean the letter you slipped into my book. But if you do this again, I’ll be forced to say something. Okay? Let’s go. Start the car.’
He told himself he should quit his job and forget his love forever. But this was all in vain. A month passed without his resolutions were his dilemma being solved, and then he mustered the courage to write another note, which he stuck into one of Zahra’s books just as before. He waited to see what would happen. He was sure he would be fired the next morning, but he wasn’t. As he was driving Zahra home from school, she once again asked him to refrain from such behaviour, ‘If you don’t care about your honour, then at least think about mine.’ When she spoke in this stern way, Naim lost all hope. Again he decided to quit his job and leave Lucknow forever. At the end of the month, he sat down in his room to write his last letter, and in the weak light of his lantern, he wrote:
Zahra,
I’ve tried very hard to do as you wanted, but I can’t control my feelings. This is my last letter. I’m leaving Lucknow tomorrow evening, and so you won’t have to say anything to your father. Your silence will seal my fate. But don’t think that I won’t love you just because I live far away. Wherever I am, I will always love you. I’ll always remember driving you to school and back, driving slowly so that the ride would be smooth for you, for how else could I express my love?