Jameel Sahib sighed, ‘Yes, you keep saying that, don’t you?’
***
Unfortunately, Jameel Sahib was able to help me with only two chapters before he passed away, and now I lack readers who are so perspicacious, perceptive, and punctilious, and whose suggestions are so spot-on, enriching, and assuring.
Finally, I must thank my better half, my wife Idris Fatima, who smiled indulgently whenever she found one of the many weaknesses in the text. Still you will probably be able to find mistakes that you might like to see corrected. After she read through the manuscript, I said, ‘I can’t get rid of my Rajasthani lilt, and my idioms. I keep washing my scarf but the stains remain!
Out, damned spot! Out, I say…9
I’m surprised you didn’t notice any errors this time.’
‘As soon as I finished my schooling,’ she began, ‘I moved in with you. From Aligarh, to this house, I mean, fort, or, really, small fort. It’s been forty-three years. I can’t remember anymore how I used to talk and how you used to talk. Now everything I hear just sounds right.’
Since we mixed up our cultural kit and caboodle long ago, and we sipped the cold, sweet waters of the Sindh and Ravi Rivers, this was bound to happen. But I have absolutely no complaints. Praise be to God, the Lord of all worlds!
LONDON
OCTOBER 6, 1989
1 Kunna: Tasty gravy baked in an earthen container — Chiniot’s special dish.
2 Curdled milk was given to patients with chronically upset stomachs. It’s not too far-fetched to think that Ghalib used it to counteract the effects of his drinking.
3 Translators’ note:
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet 2.2. l. 1–2
4 Meaning, I wandered through many countries and cities, but spoiled by your elegance and beauty, I saw nothing.
5 You can find an example of this in the third part of ‘The Mansion.’
6 ‘And only He makes you laugh and makes you cry’ (Quran, Qala Fama Khatbakum 27, An-Najm 53).
7 I didn’t mention Yadon ki barat [The Marriage Procession of Memories] because, in it, the bridegroom rides on the shoulders of the members of the procession and has to throw dates to them as well as play the shehnai by himself. Then, when he’s introduced to the bride during Arsi Mashaf (sitting together with the bride and the Quran in front of a mirror), he doesn’t look at her but instead falls in love with his reflection. And yet many of its characters are so memorable that their exploits ought to be written in the ink of wine.
8 Translators’ note: The RCD was the Regional Cooperation for Development, the multinational development organization established by Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey in 1964 and dissolved in 1979. It was followed in 1985 by the Economic Cooperation Organization.
9 Shakespeare. Lady Macbeth dreams that she has blood on her hand and tries to get it off but can’t manage to, whatever she tries.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Barbara Epler and Tynan Kogane at New Directions; Meru Gokhale, Fazal Rashid, and Archana Shankar at Random House India; Arshad and Zeba Yousufi for their generosity and time; and the PEN Foundation, whose grant helped us to complete this translation.
MATT REECK AND AFTAB AHMAD