SHORT FICTION
Retake on history
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`In diverse voices, the stories in this collection do grapple with the tragedies of Partition and history, but they also move beyond nationalism ...'
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"PRECIOUS as my mortality, may you be blessed, dearest one, with obedience, success and accomplishment; may you live a long life whose courtyard is beautified with posterity and prosperity!" With these words of blessing begins celebrated Pakistani writer Intizar Husain's short story "A Letter from India". This is the title story in this anthology of contemporary short stories edited by the San Francisco-based writer and translator Moazzam Sheikh. This elegant and thought-provoking enterprise brings together an assortment of works in English as well as in the Pakistani languages, including not only Urdu, but also Punjabi, Siraiki, Sindhi and Pashto. In diverse voices, the stories in this collection do grapple with the tragedies of Partition and of the subcontinent's history, but they also move beyond nationalism to look at questions of identity, sexuality, family, individual freedom and interpersonal relationships. And they look at them so searchingly that we are moved to wonder whether we are really two different nations at all.
Sheikh himself has translated many stories in the collection, including Intizar Husain's story, which was originally published as "Hindustan Se Ek Khat" in Kacchve (1989). The entire story is structured as one long letter from a "Nameless Qurban Ali", dated 27, Ramzan ul Mubarik, h 1394 (corresponding to October 15, 1974), from India. The family has split several more times after Partition, with descendants in Kathmandu, Kuwait, Dhaka and elsewhere, and the narrator himself, "sitting at the mouth of the grave... a dawn's candle, soon to be extinguished with the closing of my eyes". Much has befallen this once-proud family, "Muslims of the just faith of Hanafi" and descended from a recounter of the hadiths. Another ancestor fled from Jahanabad in 1857 carrying only the family tree. "Finding this land kind-hearted, he pitched his life's tent here."
And this is where the narrator remains, tending to the haar-singaar creepers at their father's grave. Everything has changed, he mourns: "We are fallen leaves from a tree, falling to the whim of the wind, fated to the dust." He berates the Pakistani side of the family for its decline: "I ask, has every family lost its pedigree in Pakistan? Strange! We have spent centuries in the land of Hind, some of it in a time of grandeur and pride, some in decline. Allah is great! He made us rule the land and He made us the ruled as well. We kept the family tree dearer than life. But the members on your side lost it in a quarter century... "
But when a relative comes to meet him after decades, and knocks on the door, there is that perfect, beautiful and tragic moment of bonding: "Blood recognised blood — if not that, there is nothing to recognise, anywhere."
Moazzam Sheikh's translation is restrained and elegant, letting the cadences of Qurban Ali's narration transport us into a different world, one that is full of grace and beauty, but also lost forever. I had tears in my eyes at the end of this masterpiece of storytelling.
There are other interesting stories in this collection. Sheikh's own story "The Barbarians and the Mule", the opening story in this collection, is remarkable for its controlled irony. Soniah Naheed Kamal's story "Papa's Girl", first published in the Talus Review, is a brilliant piece about obsessive sexuality. "Hieroglyphics" by Fahmida Riaz, originally published as "Khat-e-Marmooz", is full of feeling and lyricism.
This collection has several impressive features. While Urdu is the main language of the stories, there are also pieces translated from the Pashto, Punjabi and Sindhi. At least half of the writers in this collection, Sheikh tells us, are being anthologised for the first time; several are even being translated for the first time, and 11 stories have been translated exclusively for this volume. Several of the writers are women. The only thing that strikes me as odd is that quite a few of the writers and translators represented here are based in the West. Apart from Sheikh and his wife Amna Ali, the other translators, Elizabeth Bell, Gulalai Ahad, Aquila Ismail and Muhammad Umar Memon, also deserve mention for their subtle translations. For anyone who is interested in seeing peace in the subcontinent, A Letter from India is a valuable addition to the bookshelf. May there be many more letters exchanged between the countries.
A Letter from India: Contemporary Short Stories from Pakistan, edited by Moazzam Sheikh, Penguin India, p.168, Rs. 200.
UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA
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