The Weary Generations (40 page)

Walking from one street into a bazaar, he saw a change in his surroundings: the bazaar was quieter and, instead of going about their business, people were standing about, talking in low tones and looking towards the corner where the next bazaar began, running across the first. All the shopkeepers had paused in their business and were looking around with apprehension. Ali could not see anything unusual from where he stood. He walked on. As soon as he turned the corner, he was brought to a halt. About a hundred men, members of the Khaksar Movement, stood at attention, four-deep, shoulder to shoulder in straight lines, clad in their distinctive khaki uniforms and carrying clean, shining spades on their shoulders, a symbol of the movement's armed defiance. Facing them, a short distance away, were policemen, most of them Indian constables and sergeants, but heading them were white officers. On both sides of the street, parallel to the Khaksar lines, stood a motley gathering of men, chanting muffled slogans as if they dared not shout with full throat yet wished to express their anger. The Khaksar ‘soldiers' stood motionless and mute with their bodies erect, perfectly disciplined in the manner for which they were renowned. Ali walked up the street and stood on one side among the crowd. The stand-off between the Khaksars and the police did not last for long. A white officer advanced from the police ranks. He was in a different uniform. He had no police insignia on his lapels and was wearing a solar hat, although he carried a revolver in a black holster. To Ali he did not look like a policeman either in his bearing or in the way he barked an order.

‘Get back,' he said to the massed Khaksars, pushing the air with an open hand.

Nobody moved. The crowd on both sides of the street fell silent. The ranks of the Khaksars seemed to be made of stone with their feet embedded in the earth. The officer, a man of indeterminate years with a red face and a fine sandy moustache on his upper lip, turned redder. He unholstered the revolver and waved it in the air.

‘Go back,' he shouted. ‘Go. Disperse. Go away. All of you.'

There was a long moment in which the officer glowered at the men before him. He slowly raised his revolver. Suddenly a tall, hefty Khaksar at the head of a row of them broke ranks. He took two steps forward, raised his spade above his head and brought it down with its sharp end on the head of the officer, uttering a loud humph from deep inside his chest to back up the power of his enormous arms. The spade cut through the solar hat and the skull like a cleaver, sinking down to the eyes, and the head parted visibly on one side, an ear hanging lopsidedly under the mangled hat. The white man fell backwards, going slowly down on his feet, his hand automatically firing the revolver in the air. Soldiers appeared from behind with cocked rifles and started firing at point blank range.

It all happened so quickly that the men at the receiving end only moved after they saw bodies falling. Then they fled. They turned back, running, and were hit in the back, or they entered side streets or dived into shops, pursued by the soldiers. Some fell without being hit and crawled under the footboards of shops. Gripped by fear, Ali leaped up the three brick steps leading to the closed door of a house and started thumping on it with both hands. The bullets flying past him pinned him to the wall. Blind with panic, he pushed and kicked at the door, thinking fast at the same time about finding another escape route. Just when he was about to give up, the door was unbolted from inside and a woman's face appeared in the slim crack. Ali pushed the door open and threw himself inside. The woman quickly bolted the door. A woman of fading youth, she looked at the man's face for a moment and uttered a foul oath.

‘Run upstairs,' she said, ‘motherfucking pig.'

Dark narrow steps climbed straight from the door at a steep angle. Ali ran up, stumbling, falling and scrambling halfway up in his haste. The woman followed. They emerged in a room lit dimly by the sun coming in through dirty squares of glass fitted in two small shut and bolted windows.

‘What do you think this is, your fucking mother's house?' the woman asked in anger. ‘Who are you?'

Ali looked at her without answering.

‘Are you dumb? I am asking you, who are you?'

‘I don't know anybody here,' Ali blurted out.

‘You are right, I don't know you either. Who are you and why have you barged in here?'

‘They are firing guns,' Ali said.

‘You think I don't know, you think I am deaf? You wanted to get me
killed, you son of a dog?'

‘I am a stranger,' Ali said. ‘I only came to this city yesterday. I didn't know where to go.'

‘So you chose my door. Are you a fool?'

‘No,' Ali said, now almost blubbing. ‘Forgive me.'

The woman calmed down. ‘Sit down, now that you are here.'

She went to the window and peered through the glass. Down in the street the shooting had stopped. The woman had a masculine roughness not just in her voice but in the way she bore herself and walked.

‘Why are you sitting on the floor?' she asked Ali. ‘Get up, sit in the chair.'

Reluctantly, Ali sat straight up in the armchair.

‘Why are you sitting like that?' the woman asked with a hint of a mocking smile. ‘Lean back. Are you a peasant?'

‘No,' Ali said, ‘I am an electrician.'

She went to sit on the bed. ‘You came to this city to look for work?'

‘Yes.'

‘This bitch city is falling down, haven't you noticed? Only dogs will live here. Go back where you came from. Have you any money?'

‘N-no.'

‘God help me,' the woman said. ‘No beggar comes up to my room.'

‘I thank you,' Ali said awkwardly.

‘Oh, shut up. Have you eaten anything?'

‘No. I am not hungry.'

‘You don't look very fat. Are you very poor?'

‘No – yes.'

‘You poor beggar, don't even know what to say.'

There was a loud knock on the door below. The woman ran to the window to look. By the time she hurried back, they were kicking at the door. The woman pulled Ali up by the arm and, shoving him in front of her, went to a door in the back of the room, pushing it open. There were steps leading down. They were equally dark, with a ray of light filtering in through a hairline slit in the door at the bottom of the steps. Ali fell in the dark and rolled down a few steps, hurting his leg and an elbow. The woman caught up with him. A few steps up from the bottom, she slid a plank of wood in the wall to one side, pushed Ali in the dark hole revealed behind the plank and put it back in place. She rushed back up the stairs. The black hole was not a proper hiding place but an irregular space gouged out of the thick wall, perhaps left as such during construction. Hardly able to stand in it, Ali sat down, bunched up in a corner against sharp brick ends sticking out of the surface. The soldiers, having kicked the bottom door
down, ran up the stairs and were all around her as she got back up.

‘Where is he?'

‘Who?'

‘The man you let in.'

‘I don't know what man you mean –'

The policeman cut her off with a slap on the face. The others were looking around the room, under the bed, inside the almirah, snatching clothes off the pegs and flinging them to the floor.

‘Keep your hands off me,' the woman shouted.

The policeman slapped her again, twice, across the face. Then the others joined in. They punched her to the ground and kicked her. ‘Get up, slut. Stand up, cheap prostitute …'

‘Pigs,' she was shouting back, ‘dogs.'

A young white officer ran up the steps into the room. The woman spoke to him.

‘Are you finished killing men? Have you now started on women?'

Paying scant attention to her or to the men beating her, the officer quickly looked around and went to the door at the back. He opened the door and went down the steps. Three policemen followed him. They descended the steps and opened the door at the bottom, looking to left and right along the back street and came back up.

‘I know nothing of any man,' the woman, slumped on the floor, was whimpering under the blows. ‘I know nothing, you dirty sons of dogs.'

The officer raised a hand to stop the men. ‘Nobody here,' he said, and motioned them to leave. They all followed him out of the room and down into the bazaar.

The woman lifted herself up from the floor, crying silently and pressing her hands to her sides. She went down to shut the door but found it had been kicked off its hinges. She clambered back up and after bolting the door of her room from inside she lay down on the bed, scrunched up on her side with her knees up to her chest, until her sobs stopped. Slowly, she got off the bed, her face screwed up with pain, and went down the back steps. She went all the way down to shut the bottom door and bolt it. On the way back up, she carefully removed the plank and gestured with her head for Ali to come out. Up into the room, she went back to the bed and lay on it, gathered up as before. Ali sat beside the bed on the floor.

‘I heard the noise of men,' he said after a while.

The woman did not answer.

‘Were they soldiers?'

The woman nodded weakly.

‘Did they beat you?'

The woman let out a brief whisper of pain. Hesitantly, Ali put a hand on her arm and started pressing it gently. She shut her eyes and seemed to doze off. Ali rose up on his knees and began slowly massaging her shoulder and the whole length of her side with both hands. It was the first time since his marriage to Aisha that he had put his hands on another woman with such ease. The roughness around the edges of the woman's face when awake had disappeared as if her features had recovered their true contours in sleep. There had been an imperceptible shift in her appearance which made her look comely and innocent. He kept staring at her for a long time, taking the utmost care not to break the rhythm and pressure of his hands in case he woke her, listening to the tiny cries of pain and pleasure she gave out every few minutes or so. Eventually she opened her eyes and sat up. She felt her sides, her legs, and gripped her shoulders.

‘I am going to bathe,' she said, softly pushing Ali away. ‘Do you want to eat something?'

‘No,' Ali said.

She went and looked down through the windowpane and saw an abandoned street with some dead bodies still scattered around and soldiers walking about.

‘Dogs,' she said, ‘dead dogs,' and went into the bathroom.

She was wearing a nice white shalwar-kameez when she returned, drying her hair with a towel. She went and sat in a chair. ‘Get off the floor,' she said to Ali. ‘What is the matter with you? Come and sit in the chair. What is your name?'

‘Ali. What is yours?'

‘Naseem.'

‘It is a nice name. Are you feeling all right?'

‘I am all right, nothing happens to me. I have taken many blows in my life.'

‘Tell me about your life.'

‘Why do you ask?' she said severely.

‘I want to listen,' Ali said, putting his hand on her arm.

She shrank away from his hand. ‘Don't touch me,' she said, but not with anger. ‘You have nice eyes. But don't touch me. There is nothing to tell about my life. We lived in a village not far from here. My father worked in the zamindar's fields. The zamindar had his way first with my mother, then with me. My father came out to fight but was killed by the zamindar's men. After some time I ran away from there and came here. A nice woman here took me in as a servant. I was thirteen years old.'

‘Have you not gone back to your village since that time?'

‘What for?'

‘Your mother?'

‘Don't want to see her. I remember only my father. He was big and strong, and there was no fear in his eyes. Apart from him, I have not seen a beautiful man.' She got up from the chair. ‘I am going to eat something. You want a morsel, or a cup of milk?'

‘Yes.'

Ali went and stood by her side as she blew on damp wood to build a fire. Darkness had fallen outside.

‘What was the trouble?' Ali asked.

‘What trouble?' ‘Outside.'

‘It is all about mad dogs.'

‘Who?'

‘Musalmans and Sikhs.'

‘What about them?'

‘There is a place up the street called Shaheed Gunj. Musalmans want a mosque there and Sikhs want a gurdwara. Mad dogs fighting over mad places.'

The wood had just caught fire when there was a knock at the back door. Naseem swore and got up to go down the steps. She opened the door and stood there talking in whispers to someone. Ali went to stand at the top of the steps. There was a hole in the wall down there where he had spent what seemed a very long time. He felt the hard coins in his shirt pocket. He had found them tied up in a piece of cloth that had been pushed into a hollow between two protruding bricks cutting into his back as he sat there. He had pulled it out and undone the knot. In the pitch dark inside the hole he could not see, but feeling the contents in his hands he knew that they were several large coins. Moving his fingers over them several times, he identified them as silver rupees. This, he thought, was the woman's whole fortune secretly pushed into a hole inside the wall. This did not stop him from taking two rupees from the loose purse before tying it up at the neck and pushing it back in the hollow. Now as he stood listening to the woman below he made up his mind to give back the money. He could now make out the words from the woman's gradually rising voice.

‘There is a curfew outside, damn it,' she was saying. ‘Can't you wait until tomorrow?'

There was the pleading voice of a man in answer to her.

‘At a time like this!' she said. ‘Animal!'

After a few more moments, she half shut the door and climbed back up to the top.

‘You have to go,' she said to Ali.

Ali looked at her in silence.

‘Go,' she said. ‘You can come back tomorrow during the day.'