The Scatter Here Is Too Great (20 page)

“I will show you the way out,” he said. He had taken off his cloak and bag and looked strange and ordinary. We walked out of the house and he asked me, “So are you really bhai's son?”

“Yes?”

“He was a great man, you know,” he said, pointing me out of the lane. “He used to come here to perform. I was a kid then.” Then he laughed, his voice eager and childlike. “You might be taking me for just an advertisement on the road, but I got into this business because of your father. He was not an ordinary performer with magic tricks. He was different. He told us stories. I learned about stories from him, and that's what I do myself now. Once you tell somebody a story, you all are in the same world and you can all speak to each other about the same things and understand the same things. Bhai used to do strange tricks I have never seen anybody else do. He made sculptures of smoke! Can you imagine,
sculptures
! We had nicknamed him ‘Jahaz' around here. He imitated sinking ships, sputtering out smoke as they sank.”

I knew what he was talking about. My father died spitting blood because of that smoke.

“But how did your brother know I was his son? I have never come here before,” I said.

He laughed dismissively. “He's God's man. We all have veils on our sight. He doesn't. In one glance, he can see generations of your family tree, and oh, here's your ID card,” he said, handing me back my ID card.

We turned into a narrow lane and suddenly I realized that he was surrounded by a swarm of kids who had been standing around the water hand-pump at the other end of the lane. They all carried buckets and cans and bottles in their hands: pink, yellow, green, blue . . . When they spotted him, they ran like mad
Ballee! Ballee!
they yelled, their buckets and cans flying behind them like balloons.

Ballee, become a bear na? Make that sound. . . .

Ballee, swing me on your arms? Please please please. . . .

Ballee, become an airplane, fly for us again, Ballee?

He dropped his bag and lifted the smallest kid in his arms, who immediately complained:
Ballee, what did you become in the bazaar today? Ballee you said you're going to show me what you became. I waited for you. . . .

Ballee—the Bird of Death—with a child in his arms looked toward me, smiling embarrassingly. He put the kid down, and then told them he would come to play with them in the evening and become a bear, airplane, butterfly, shooting star, and collapsing building. All right, an eagle too. Okay, Okay, that as well . . .

We were startled by a loud honk. A Suzuki minivan, just a couple of feet less broad than the width of the lane itself, was coming straight at us at an uncomfortably constant speed. The driver had his hand on the horn and did not seem to believe in brakes. The children scampered against the uneven walls of the lane.

It was evening. The moon was a lovely pink. As I stood waiting for the bus, I was filled with a sense of wonder. What the man in the box and Ballee said was true: reasons are invented, and stories give us reasons to connect ourselves to the world, to bring ourselves together in things that others could read. Fragments were true; but we needed stories greater than fragments. We needed stories in order to connect ourselves to the world.

I waved to a bus. My dread and fear had been replaced with an enormous sadness for things that I had lost. I realized that was the difference between my father's stories and mine. He told stories to find ways into the world, to communicate with it. I wrote to avoid the world.

The bus had only a few passengers. I rested my head against the rusted steel bars of the window and listened to the conductor shouting out the stops the bus was going to make.
Nayee Karachi, Sakhi Hasan, Waterpump, Hyderi . . .

Yes, this city was unknown and the noise was great. But this scatter must be gathered.

You are listening.

I
do not exaggerate: one of the biggest joys of publishing this book is to be able to thank all the various people who have made it possible for me to write. I wish there was a way to show my gratitude to them; here, I offer a mere nod to their generosity and kindness.

My work is, will always be, a tribute to my teachers, who have always been exceedingly patient, generous, and kind toward me. Their collective warmth and support over the years has enabled me to muddle through life, literature, and other things I am passionate about. Foremost among them: Kamila Shamsie—my first writing teacher, who, eight years later, was also the final reader of this manuscript before it went out to publishers. There is no way to thank you, K, for your support and friendship. I only hope this book could show just a fraction of all the goodness you have showered upon my work over the years.

Rahat Kazmi, my first teacher, who introduced me to great works of literature and who, to this day, continues to lend me his books, and continues to be a fine example of a broad, ideal reader—one who is familiar with all novels in Urdu and English (translations included) and is ever eager to talk about literature, Urdu poetry, William Faulkner, great books, and ideas. Thank you, Sir, for continuing to remind me of the vastness of my
jahalat
and the work I have to do to lessen it to whatever degree possible.

Dr. Saeed Ghazi at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)—my teacher, colleague, friend—whose lectures and classes are some of the best I have attended and who presented to me countless books and articles when I could afford little. Thank you, Saeed. It is impossible to meet the standards of generosity you have set inside the classroom and outside.

At Columbia I was very fortunate to be in the company of extraordinary writers who helped me better myself as a reader and writer, and continually inspired with their remarkable commitment to the enterprise of fiction. Above all: Ben Marcus, Richard Locke, Jaime Manrique, and Zadie Smith. Thank you also to Rob Spillman, who, during the writing of my thesis, helped me unlearn a lot of bad MFA tricks and remain true to the story.

The book went through many stages and at every stage I was blessed to have trusted readers who read the book and pointed out its many flaws. Azeen Khan saw it from its roots to its shoots. Nadeem Aslam, Alisa Ganieva, Taymiya R. Zaman, and Kamila Shamsie read the final iteration of the manuscript and offered immensely insightful feedback and suggestions.

A very special thanks to Mehreen Zahra-Malik for editing my work with loving attention for many years. It has taught me more about prose than I could reckon. I also owe thanks to David Rogers who appeared out of the blue to read the initial versions of the manuscript. He sent it back to me with invaluable feedback, which greatly improved the work.

It has been a pleasure working with enthusiastic editors who believed in the book and helped better it in so many ways: Tim Duggan and his fantastic team at HarperCollins, Meru Gokhale and Faiza S. Khan at Random House India, and Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape.

The unwavering enthusiasm with which Clare Alexander championed the book and stood behind it has been nothing short of amazing. Thank you, Clare. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to have you as a representative and advocate.

The Fulbright Scholarship program in Pakistan made it possible for me to undertake an MFA at Columbia University when I had an admission offer but no money; so, thank you to the USEFP for the funding and help. Can Serrat Residency, El Bruc, Spain, allowed me the time and space for thirty-days to mull over how to bring together the various pieces of the book and meet some warm, wondrous people. Thank you, Marcel and Karine.

A book emerges in part out of the life one lives: my abundant gratitude for my friends on whom I depend for life-enhancing conversations, ideas, and laughter. You are the sustainers of my soul, my dear Azeen Khan (amazing reader, friend, critic), Ali Aftab Saeed (my lifeline in Lahore), Ali Sethi (music, literature, friendship), Faiza Sultan Khan (for Karachi afternoons, long conversations, unceasing laughter over the years), Aurangzeb Haneef (LUMS/PDC/sane advice), Hasan Karrar and Spenta (marvelous neighbors, history and literature conversations, Bahar/Tara), Manan Ahmed (Lahore, Berlin, NYC, walks, space, history, Empire, life, literature, books), and Danny Wallace (for all hostilities and love and support over the years).

A book, above all, is a conversation with other books and stories. And storytellers would fail if they did not fulfill their responsibility toward stories that helped them understand the world and themselves better. I owe a lot to Naiyer Masud's writings, who is among the greatest fiction writers in Urdu. I met
Jahaz
in his story “Sheesha Ghat.” It is an honor to have an incarnation of him in my story
Things and Reasons
. The line quoted on page 1: “
name the streets and number the dead”
is from Harris Khalique's searing poem, “I Was Raised in Karachi.” Musharraf Ali Farooqi's extraordinary translations of
Tilism Hoshruba
and
Dastan-e Amir Hamza
(
The Adventures of Amir Hamza
) reintroduced me to these stories and helped me reconnect with them in a way that was important to my work here. I also owe a debt of gratitude to him for his support of my work over the years.

This book, with all its warts and faults, is for my friend, Umair Ibrahim from whom I have learned so much, including my sense of humor, but most of all, his support has been instrumental in allowing me to have the courage to improvise my life—a comrade in the real sense of the word:

BILAL TANWEER
was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. His fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in various international journals including
Granta
,
Vallum
,
The Caravan
, and
Words Without Borders
. He was selected as a
Granta
New Voice in 2011 and was a recipient of a 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant. He received his MFA from Columbia University, a program for which he received a Fulbright scholarship. He was recently named an Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He lives and teaches in Lahore, Pakistan.

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THE SCATTER HERE IS TOO GREAT
. Copyright © 2014 by Bilal Tanweer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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