Two Short Novels (14 page)

‘The situation has gone beyond
our leaders
,’
said Muratib. And then he began to puff at the hookah with a bored expression which was a cover for the terror which pervaded him. And as he looked away, his face seemed to betoken the attitude that Maqbool was not welcome.

There was a silence between them during which the gurgling of the hubble-bubble assumed exaggerated proportion.

Unable to bear the suspense, Muratib said: ‘If I were you, Maqbool, I should make myself scarce.’

‘But you are not me,’ Maqbool said with a trace of arrogance in his voice which he tried to convert into humility. ‘I am under orders
. . . .
Besides, I feel that on principle we must struggle
. . .
if we believe in freedom from these “Muslim Brethren” as we believed in freedom from the British and their friends.’

He felt priggish after he had said this, especially as he fancied he saw an embarrassed smile on the mouth of Muratib Ali. So he hung his head down in order to beckon that feeling of humility to come to him through which his attitude could become clear to his friend, without explanation, and through which he could summon the necessary strength to move him.

‘Principles!’ Muratib minced the words between his front teeth. ‘Where are the arms to back the principles?’

Maqbool realised that if there had been the armed strength to give the invaders a fight, Muratib might have appreciated the principles.

‘The Indian army
. . .
,’ he said, in a voice which betrayed a degree of wishfulfilment.

Muratib merely waved his head, pushed the hookah aside, flushed red and then said: ‘Your friends accepted the partition of India! They betrayed their principles! Where is their secular State now? And they allowed those who believed in divide and rule to dominate the country! Now, it may be too late even if they do come to our help —’

‘But our co-religionists in Pakistan have sold out completely,’ said Maqbool with suppressed anger in his voice. ‘And you know it! Do you think these Pakistanis would have come here without the knowledge of the British Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan army?’

‘Too bad,’ said Muratib in a doleful tone. ‘You have probably heard that they looted my factory
. . . .
’ And he rubbed his hands on the warm Kashmiri dressing gown he was wearing.

Maqbool was sorry for Muratib, though the whining accent of his friend irritated him. For he guessed that Muratib had enough money left over in his Srinagar Bank, as well as in Amritsar and Delhi, where he exported his carpets and shawls, never really to be in need.

‘I met Juma and his brothers,’ he said to transfer his sympathy to those who deserved it more. ‘Their mother does not seem to be frightened of the killers. She was abusing them roundly as I passed by their house. The old woman has spirit
. . .
’

‘There you go — with your half baked ideas,’ said Muratib resentful of Maqbool’s lack of sympathy for him and because he could immediately sense an indirect comment on his weakness in Maqbool’s praise for Juma’s mother.

Maqbool did not say anything, but he felt calm because Muratib’s lack of will confirmed his own line of action. At least that much was certain — his love for others, whatever else he knew or did not know. Meanwhile Muratib could live in his separate tragic cycle of cynicism. Surprisingly enough the factory owner’s awe-inspiring fatalism was combined with an acute sense of factuality, from the stark statements he had made about politics.

He looked up at the thick set, well-fed frame of his friend, with shy brown eyes and curly hair.

‘My mother and wife have been weeping since yesterday,’ Muratib said furtively turning his eyes away from Maqbool. ‘And I owe a responsibility to them, brother, which I must put before everything else —’

Maqbool realised from these words, what Mahmdoo had taught him by now to sense, that Muratib was deeply involved in his vicious circles.

‘I too have a mother, a sister, and a father,’ he answered. But again, after he had said these words, he regretted that he had been so gauche and childish, putting his own ego, moth-eaten by fears, against his friend’s separateness.

‘And I don’t suppose you have seen them!’ taunted Muratib. ‘You went away without telling them where you were going, and they have been hysterical with worry, thinking you were dead or something!’

For a moment, Maqbool felt ashamed to acknowledge the truth of this charge. But he had told his sister where he was going and therein lay his confidence. Muratib was exaggerating. At least Noor could not have been hysterical. She was a good girl and believed in him. She might not have told his mother and father where he had gone, but surely she had reassured them that he was not dead. And they should have understood. For often he had gone out for days into the villages on political work, and, by now, they had surely begun to accept the fact that he was a dedicated person. Somehow, he felt he could not work up that kind of emotion about his family which Muratib felt. And, for good or ill, that was so.

‘I told Noor that I was going to Srinagar,’ he said tamely. Then after a pause he said, ‘One has to do certain things in which one cannot take one’s blood relations with one
. . .
’

‘
Acha
, Hatto, you are a hero!’ said Muratib impatiently.

The undercurrent of mockery in Muratib’s voice annoyed Maqbool. But he accepted it, and the accompanying hostility, as the well deserved punishment for daring to ask suddenly from a man, whose soul was in pawn to money and privilege and family ties, to abandon all this for what seemed just now to be no more than a slogan or a shibboleth. He sat there, with head hung down.

‘To tell you the truth
. . .
,’ continued Muratib, but did not finish.

Maqbool understood from Muratib’s face that his presence was not welcome.

‘I will go,’ he said getting up from the chair abruptly.

But now Muratib jumped up shouting ‘no’ and went and embraced him and said, with tears in his eyes: ‘Maqbool, forgive me, I am a coward! I really do not want you to go.’

‘There is no talk,’ consoled Maqbool. And with that detached warmth with which the ceremonial embrace between men is conducted, he pressed his torso against Muratib’s chest. The passion which he could not work up in himself for his friend had yielded to personal affection.

And now those springs of tenderness were also released in Muratib, which had so far remained hidden in him:

‘I know there will be no peace in our land until we have fought them, Maqbool!’ the factory owner said, ‘I feel sad in my heart
. . .
but we are deserted. Everyone seems to have been cowed down. And I have become a coward!’

‘No, no, brother,’ interrupted Maqbool separating from his friend. ‘We are all liable to fear. Only, if we allow fear to grip our souls, we become cowardly. And each one of us is capable of this, in a situation like the one we are in.’

‘Perhaps it is so, but I am not a poet and do not know all the things,’ said Muratib sitting down on the edge of his chair, his face covered with his hands. ‘But the coterie of friends, that we were, is now separated. You will not accept
. . .
I am frightened. And Ghulam is under the thumb of his father. And the only person who could have advised him, your clever friend, lawyer Ahmed Shah, in whom you believed, even against my advice, has gone over.’ Saying this he passed his right hand over his forehead and face, as though to cast off the oppression from his visage.

‘I was a fool about Ahmed Shah,’ agreed Maqbool realising that he had, indeed, been always too impressed by Ahmed Shah’s brilliant talk to apprehend his real temperament.

‘I remember well,’ said Muratib ‘that when you made him President of the National Conference branch of Baramula, I told you that he was an opportunist, who would use the movement only for his own ends. He needed that prestige to work up his practice.’

‘He had a fairly good practice before,’ Maqbool put in as a corrective. But he realised that he himself had never been wise and tended to take people at their word rather than as human beings pulled by different desires and ambitions. ‘Though I confess,’ he added, ‘that you did warn me and you have been proved right. I was not shrewd enough to anticipate his reactions to the changed situation. But Ghulam is, I know, a good man at heart, however he may be swayed
. . .
’

‘He is weak,’ said Muratib. ‘Even weaker than me. He cannot cut the connection with his father, as I cannot deny my mother and my wife anything!’

‘I will try to talk to Ghulam,’ said Maqbool.

Muratib laughed a little and shrugged his shoulders. And Maqbool became aware that the vague sense of hostility, fear and indifference towards him and the things he represented, was creeping back into his friend’s soul. Most people here would feel that, he was sure now. And he thought, nostalgically, of the fighting spirit built up by the friends in Srinagar, the enthusiasm and the doggedness which he had never seen among the people of Kashmir before. How was he to communicate that to his brethren in the occupied town of Baramula?

‘Talk is cheap, brother,’ said Muratib. ‘But what plan have you brought with you? What are we to do?’

‘I know you have always despised words,’ Maqbool protested. ‘I have only a voice. And it is all we can do to talk to each other, to strengthen our morale, to resist in our minds the idea of occupation by the “Muslim brethren”. To sabotage their plans and to survive until help comes from Srinagar.’

Muratib looked up at Maqbool and, after all, allowed some real warmth to come into him for the earnestness of his friend. He was even stirred by a wave of admiration.

‘If a little money can help,’ he said, ‘you can have it, frustrate their plans and try to survive until help comes from the drawer.’

Maqbool sensed the measure of Muratib’s support and accepted the fact without even a mental protest. Perhaps it was good enough that, in spite of the loss of his factory, Muratib was still offering money. That material support was not to be despised. And though there were too many gaps in Muratib’s understanding of the struggle and his sympathies, it seemed that he would, nevertheless, not go against what he, Maqbool, knew was worth struggling for.

‘May I go to Ghulam’s house?’ Maqbool asked Muratib.

‘It is dangerous,’ said Muratib. ‘Go home to your people. I will try and send a message to Ghulam to come and see you.’

‘Then he would be in danger,’ said Maqbool.

‘Here is some money,’ Muratib said handing him a wad of notes. Maqbool thrust the notes into his pocket and shook hands with Muratib a little shyly, and, without looking at him, walked away.

‘God be with you!’ said Muratib contemplating the youthful figure of the poet disappearing into the darkness of the hall on the top of the stairs.

Maqbool had to affect the casual effrontery of an inmate of the big house as he came into the lane, freewheeling the bicycle, so that he could will himself into the necessary pose of ordinary behaviour before he should pass by the Pakistani sentry on his way to the house of Ghulam Jilani in the middle of the main bazaar.

This made him feel as though he was striking a semi heroic pose and he relaxed from the dramatic attitude as he actually emerged into the bazaar.

The street was empty, except for a Pathan sentry and some raiders who were sitting on a bench outside the shop of the confectioner, Amira, drinking their morning tea.

The sentry turned to him, as though from habit, even as he held the steaming cup away from his mouth. And, for one instant Maqbool’s heart congealed, bringing an involuntary tremor of weakness in his legs. Then, with an almost physical exertion of his will, he converted his dazed apprehension into a smile and, with a loud bluff in his voice, called to the confectioner: ‘Amira, Hatto, a cup of hot tea.’

‘Come, come, Maqbool Sahib!’ the confectioner greeted him. ‘Will you have a
kulcha
with your tea?’

‘No, you know that I don’t eat first thing in the morning,’ he said to establish the fact that he was a daily visitor at this shop and he hoped that the name ‘Maqbool’ by which Amira had addressed him, meant nothing to the Pakistanis.

Amira looked at him a little quizzically, as he began to pour the tea, while Maqbool came and stood, with the saddle of the bicycle resting on his posterior, astride the bench on which the Pathans sat.

‘Salt tea or sugar?’ asked Amira.

Maqbool winced because such a question was sure to betray him: if he was a regular visitor here, surely Amira would know about his taste. Fortunately, Amira had asked him this in Kashmiri.

‘All Kashmiris drink salt tea,’ said Maqbool quickly in Punjabi to show that they were not saying anything unusual to each other in Kashmiri. ‘I did not know you even made tea with sugar.’

Amira realised that he had been foolish and tried to put the situation back to normal by saying: ‘Our guests here prefer tea with sugar.’

‘I cannot understand you Kashmiris drinking tea with salt!’ commented the sentry in his broken accented frontier Punjabi.

‘Foolish folk!’ said one of the other Pathans, shaking his head with a trace of arrogance and contempt in his voice.