Two Short Novels (15 page)

‘They are Muslims, though,’ the sentry said, ‘like us. Only they have been too long with the infidels!’

‘That Hindu Maharaja is known to be very fond of White women!’ another raider put in. And he winked at his companions.

At this they all laughed and sniggered.

Maqbool too smiled, but tried to cover up his lack of enthusiasm for their talk by taking the cup of tea offered to him by the confectioner.

As he stood back, the handle of the bicycle erratically swerved and he nearly dropped the tea in his confusion.

‘Put the steel horse away and sit down here,’ the sentry said.

Maqbool took the advice as the easiest way out of the awkward situation.

The tea was scalding hot and he began to blow at it in the spitting-spattering manner of the Kashmiris. And he took advantage of the inclination of his head over the cup to survey the faces of the enemies with surreptitious glances. They were highly tanned, all of them, except for one who was fair-complexioned and blue eyed, with red cheeks. Their torsos bristled with cartridge belts. But their clothes exuded the odour of sour sweat, which came in waves towards his nostrils.

They too became aware of the fact that he was a literate man and somebody. So the sentry asked him as politely as he could in his accented Punjabi. ‘Why are the Kashmiris so effeminate! You ride a woman’s steel horse? Why?’

‘I have a motorcycle,’ replied Maqbool knowing that his status would go up immediately if he said this. ‘But there is no petrol available. So I borrowed my sister’s bicycle.’

Amira was nearly going to rebut this lie with his raised eyebrows but checked himself in time.

Maqbool hurried with his tea, thinking that the longer he stayed here the more difficult conversation might become for him.

‘In this they are like us — they drink scalding hot tea!’ said the red-cheeked Pathan.

‘Also, they eat
naan
and
kulcha
!’ said another.

‘But they stink!’ said another. ‘I cannot go near the latrine in the house where I am!
Toba
!
Toba
!’

‘To be sure! To be sure! To be sure!’ the others chimed in and laughed.

‘
La hol billa
! — talking of the refuse early in the morning!’ said the sentry deprecating the unholy talk.

Maqbool had been keeping up a smile as he drank the tea. When he finished with some alacrity, and paid Amira, he directed a
Salam alaikum
, with a hearty bluff, towards the raiders. And then, with a smart sweep of his salwar, he rode off.

‘One of our leaders!’ blurted out the unfortunate dunce Amira.

Maqbool did not slow down to hear any more, but paddled along the length of a furlong to Ghulam Jilani’s house. The stray sentries at the head of other lanes saw him pass. But they had also seen him sitting by their compatriots on the bench outside the confectioner’s shop.

When he had gone half way, however, the raiders outside Amira’s shop were shouting to the other sentries.

He paddled faster.

But soon a shot rang out beside him.

He did not turn to look, but raced along, aware that they had got to know of him. His legs were collapsing under him, as their shouts tingled in his brain. But his eyes were set almost as though in a reverie. The bitter taste of defeat was in his mouth. He could see Ghulam Jilani’s house like a mirage before his eyes. He swallowed the saliva in his mouth, puffed and darted into the gulley, where the side approach to the house lay. He was in luck. The door was open. And Ibil, the old bearded servant, sat smoking the hookah on a charpoy
.

‘Maqbool!’ the old man greeted him warmly for he had known him as Ghulam’s friend since they were children.

‘Not a word!’ Maqbool cautioned him.

And, lifting the bicycle under his arms, he proceeded upstairs, leaving Ibil gasping for breath at the realisation of the danger in which Maqbool might be, considering that he was a firebrand.

Ghulam Jilani was pouring tea for a tall handsome stranger and for lawyer Ahmed Shah, as Maqbool entered the big old Kashmir style reception room covered with carpets and cow-tailed cushions. None of the three people on the
diwan
got up as he entered, but all of them looked at him, Ghulam embarrassed and surprised, Ahmed Shah with a contemptuous twist of his mouth, and the stranger with a blank, straightforward stare.

‘Come, come,’ said Ghulam with an effort at cordiality, ‘come and have some breakfast.’

He deliberately avoided welcoming him by name. And Maqbool understood that his friend was seeking to shield him from the stranger, who was presumably one of the officials of the invading army.

‘Khurshid Sahib,’ began Ahmed Shah in a slightly bantering tone. ‘This is Mohammad Maqbool Sherwani!’

The stranger moved his head briefly, but remained immobile with a conceited smirk on his lips.

Maqbool sensed that Khurshid Anwar knew him to be one of the men of the Kashmir National Movement.

There was no retreat from this situation, because to go downstairs into the street was to court death at the hands of the tribesmen, who had got to know his identity from the confectioner; while, if this man was, indeed, Khurshid Anwar, he, Maqbool, had walked straight into the lion’s mouth. However, he rested the cycle by the entrance and walked politely up to sit by the edge of the white table cloth on which breakfast was laid out.

Ghulam Jilani kept his face bent, probably because he did not want to betray any emotion, but his fair complexioned, round visage flushed a vivid red and betrayed his confusion. And he went on pouring the tea in order to keep his eyes averted from all the guests. After he had filled the cup, he put in the milk and two spoons of sugar, and he offered the tea to Maqbool.

Maqbool took it and, affecting a naturalness which he did not feel, said: ‘I am sorry to disturb you so early in the morning — without a warning!’

‘When have you ever announced your arrival?’ said Ahmed Shah challengingly. ‘You workers of the National Conference are like the Communists — always very earnest and very busy.’

Maqbool’s first impulse was to return the compliment by reminding him that he himself had once been a President of the Baramula branch of the National Conference; that, in fact, he had manouvered to be elected to this position, but he felt that would be completely unworthy of him. So he kept silent.

Ghulam Jilani’s face was like a beetroot now.

For a moment there was a secret exertion of wills and a blind wars of impulses in all the four men. The grease congealed on the fried eggs in the plates before the stranger and his cup of tea remained full; while Ahmed Shah ate chunks of bread and butter, even as he picked up a white fried egg his fork so precariously poised that Ghulam Jilani and Maqbool Sherwani both nervously stared at his hands, praying that he would perform the miracle and catch it up in his mouth without dropping it. He did so and they relaxed.

But Ahmed Shah, who had seen them watch his performance, was unnerved enough at the deep roots of his sense of inferiority, and he broke the silence with a violent attack on Maqbool.

‘You are a strange person! Never letting us know where you go! Why were you not here to welcome our friends? You know if you were not our friend, they would never have forgiven your defection to the camp of the Hindu Maharaja. I suppose you have come back now that you know the people of Srinagar are on our side and are ready to welcome — ’

‘There is no question of forgiveness, as there has been no defection,’ Maqbool cut in. ‘And the people of Srinagar are not ready to welcome the raiders.’

‘They shall soon decide whom they will welcome,’ said Khurshid Anwar, provoked by what he considered to be Maqbool’s effrontery. ‘Our army has outflanked Srinagar, from Gandarbal, and we shall soon make a frontal attack!’

The strong Punjabi accent of his Hindustani speech annoyed Maqbool on aesthetic grounds, even as Khurshid Anwar’s whole Western Style aggressive personality roused a blind yearning in him to go away from the man’s presence. Anwar’s English clothes seemed to revive the humiliation at the hands of the White Sahib tourists in Kashmir. But he brought all the self-control he possibly could to bear on his being, though he could not help answering back.

‘Why, then, haven’t you made the frontal attack? Are you frightened of the Indian army coming to our rescue?’

‘Oh no!
. . .
no, no!’ Khurshid Anwar said with a blustering half laugh. ‘Let my boys secure the base in Baramula and compensate themselves for their trouble in coming all the way from Peshawar and Abbotabad — then we shall move forward. There are still riches hidden in the houses of Kashmiri Pandits, even if they have taken the Panditanis away!’

At this Ghulam Jilani blushed visibly. And even Ahmed Shah was ashamed enough to want to cover up the obscene strategy with brave talk.

‘Khurshid Sahib is joking, to be sure,’ he began. ‘But this expedition has been planned by one of the bravest officers of the Pakistan army! Mr. Jinnah himself is in Lahore, waiting for the good news of our accession to Pakistan. And in Mirpur and Poonch, the Azad Kashmir movement has already set up its own government under Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim. Gilgit has also fallen. Now if only we had sense, we would have voluntarily offered to unite with Pakistan rather than hitch our wagon to the Maharaja’s fading star — and Hindu India.’

‘There is nothing but contempt in our minds for Maharaja Hari Singh — who has fled with his bag and baggage to
Jammu — ’

‘Cowards can’t stand and fight,’ Khurshid Anwar said boredly.

‘Drink up your tea, Khurshid Sahib,’ said the weak Ghulam Jilani, thinking that the only way out of this discussion was to concentrate on breakfast and hope for a miraculous termination of the controversy.

‘Don’t be so solemn always!’ said Ahmed Shah trying to humour Maqbool in case he should flare up against Khurshid Anwar’s mockery.

But Maqbool had recognised himself in his own action and was now bent on courting disaster since it had come to him.

‘How can you sit by, and see your home town sacked — and looted! What have we come to
. . .
?’

‘Why, whose house has been looted?’ Ahmed Shah asked. ‘Yours? Have you been home and seen? Not mine, nor Jilani Sahib’s!’

‘Our friend, Muratib has lost his factory,’ said Maqbool.

‘Only because he was a fool and too mean to give some presents of carpets to our guests!’

‘Strange talk!’ Maqbool said raising his voice. ‘Even friendship seems to mean nothing to you!’

‘Don’t bark!’ challenged Ahmed Shah getting up and pathetically seeking to dominate Maqbool with his small five foot frame.

Ghulam Jilani jumped up and dragged him down with the words: ‘Ahmed Shah — Maqbool Sahib differs from you! That is all! Try and convert him! You are a lawyer!’

‘In order to destroy anarchy,’ thundered Ahmed Shah, pale in the face, ‘we will also resort to anarchy and violence. I believe in reasoning with intelligent men, not with fools! I want union with Pakistan
. . .
I believe in a Central Muslim State, which will be a counter to Communism in the north, and to the Bania Hindu Raj in the south. And we can connect up with our brethren in the Middle East and revive the glory of ancient Islamic democracy in a world ridden with unbelief! The poet Iqbal himself preached this. How should this village idiot, pretending to be a poet, know the intricacies of our design, the concept of Muslim federation! I know more about this than all of you!’

The last words were so gauche that both Ghulam Jilani and Khurshid Anwar turned their faces away from him.

‘You do not believe in your own words,’ Maqbool thrust the rapier home. ‘How can anyone believe in your words?’

‘I shall murder you!’ Ahmed Shah raged and got up again.

This time it was not Ghulam Jilani but Khurshid Anwar who pulled him back: and the latter did not have to use his obvious physical strength, but only a few words: ‘You leave that to me, Ahmed Shah! Just sit down and don’t be so jumpy. Let me settle with our friend
. . .
’

Ahmed Shah sat down docilely enough.

‘Ahmed Shah Abdali’s logic!’ mocked Maqbool comparing him to the infamous Afghan invader of a century ago.

‘Stop mocking at him!’ bullied Khurshid Anwar. ‘You are not much of a hero either! Running away from home, then sneaking back to spy and curry favour with your rich friends — ’

‘I have poor friends also,’ cut in Maqbool, though he realised the folly of having come here. ‘The people will not easily reconcile themselves to this goondaism — ’

‘Stop this
tain tain
and listen to me,’ shouted Khurshid with a vulgar tone in his voice, ‘I am a straightforward Punjabi and not given to argument
. . .
and don’t sell me any of your bluff about the people. Islam is a brotherhood in which there are no distinctions, such as the Hindus make — ’

‘All one happy family in Pakistan!’ interrupted Maqbool. ‘Mr. Jinnah and the refuges and all! — ’

‘I have asked you not to interrupt me,’ shouted Khurshid Anwar.