Two Short Novels (19 page)

In the gloom of the cell, however, such self righteousness seemed only a way of consoling the heart, as it were.

Apart from the terror that impinged on his consciousness from every side, the low ceiling, made of rough, wooden planks, over which were the heaps of the tongawallah’s belongings, all covered with back soot of hearth fires, weighed him down.

He saw a cockroach steadily advancing between the planks and he realised that there must be other insects about in the cell, possibly scorpion and rats, and even a snake. His eyes wandered across the dirty surface of the string bed and he was sure that there would be bugs in it. The instinct for the clean life that had always made him recoil back from the disarray of his own home and the squalor in the huts of the poor he visited, assailed him, and his soul shrank at the realisation that if he had to stay here for the night the insects would certainly creep over his body.

Suddenly, he felt that his own clothes were sodden and grimy and torn, and a kind of nausea arose in his mouth, which was partly aroused by the acrid stink of the atmosphere and partly from the thirst for water which possessed him, as also from self disgust.

As he became aware of his thirst, this feeling began to overpower all the rest. He smacked his tongue to quench the thirst, only to find that the nausea increased with the licking.

His eyes explored the gloom of the cell for the pitcher of water that he imagined must be there. And, now, used to the gloom, he traced the curve of a vessel by the oven. He dashed forward
and found a glazed earthen cup covering the pitcher in the corner. Impetuously, bending the pitcher on one side, he filled the cup and drank the water, only discovering as he did so, that the liquid was stale. Then, suddenly, he felt the urge to pass water. This awkward but real thing seemed to be almost the final humiliation. He was confused and embarrassed by it, and began to feel the poignancy of the absurd situation, which was like the awful predicament he had faced as a child in school once when the schoolmaster would not listen to his plea and he had done it in his salwar
.

After a moment’s hesitation, and a few circular steps in the middle of the room, he became convinced that the only dignity lay in defying his own self-respect, and going to a corner in the dark.

After he had gone through the disgust aroused by the foetid atmosphere, he sat back on the bed, a little calmer, though still with the lingering horror against squalor inside him.

The absence of any significant odour seemed to clear his conscience. And he had the momentary illusion of being born again, though, immediately, he met the fact of frustration, the anxiety which had always seemed to him to be the point in the curve of his life at which his fate always seemed suspended in the air.

He had the apperception that the verdict of Khurshid Anwar would result in his being strung up in the courtyard of the square, his blood would be clotted on the earth amid the dung of the stables, his body drained of life, all looking so horrible that no one would be able to contemplate it. He felt he would accept that, if only to be out of this dark chamber. Only, perhaps his sister Noor would come and see the carcass hanging up there — and tears of self-pity came into his eyes. And he felt he must at least write her a final message.

His eyes now explored for the light. And, instinctively, he went towards the chinks in the door. By riveting his eyes about an inch or two away from the line of light he could perhaps write.

He sat down on the earth, resting his back on the door. The light was so thin, he would have to adjust himself sideways.

He felt for his notebook and pencil in the pocket of his tunic and found it was there. For a while, his mind meandered in the many dimensions of the darkness before him, in the gradations of vague feelings and the confusion of the unknown experiences yet to come. Then he had the feeling of Noor’s long plaits of hair, the way he used to pull them to tease her, to be affectionate to her. And with the feel of the plaits, came the memory of her hands, as they lay dropped on the pillow in her sleep, the swift eager movements of her limbs in the kitchen and the virgin’s tenderness in her eyes . . . . He began to scribble:

‘My little sister, Noor, we shall not see each other.’

The act of writing with the little pencil in the light of the chink in the dark relaxed his spirit and he persisted.

Time had been more or less destroyed for him while he wrote to his sister, because he deliberately expected the worst to happen. But during the long wait for something to happen, he tried to imagine that, beyond him, life was going on. And when he knew that this was so, he was full of envy for those who were still active, aching to be there with them, alive . . .

Then, suddenly, there was a hubbub in the courtyard, and through the chink of the door, he saw Khurshid Anwar arrive at the head of a little procession, with little round Ahmed Shah leading the train.

The tribesmen in the courtyard got up and bowed, taking their hands to their foreheads to the accompaniment of salutations.

‘Where is the traitor Sherwani?’ asked Ahmed Shah stepping forward.

Tall Zaman Khan pointed to the cell.

‘Arrange a charpai
for Khurshid Sahib,’ Ahmed Shah said. ‘We will try the infidel here and now.’

Some of the soldiers who had been seated on a bedstead near the cell, along with Zaman Khan, in the capacity of watchmen, scattered away, thus leaving a little clearing before the charpai
.

Ahmed Shah ran a little caper and, spreading a blanket on the bedstead, smoothed it for Khurshid Anwar to sit upon.

Meanwhile, Zaman Khan proceeded towards the cell, and, unlatching the door, faced Maqbool Sherwani, who had been waiting, with his eyes glued to the chinks in the door.

‘Come out,’ Zaman Khan said surlily. And then he called three soldiers to come and receive him.

Maqbool’s heart, the troubled heart, was beating in spite of himself. He anticipated the worst. And though he had seen his judges come into the courtyard, the suspense was terrible.

The three warders dragged him out, then pushing the mouths of their rifles into him, they thrust him forward before Khurshid Anwar’s improvised court.

The interrogation began without much formality, with a broadside from Ahmed Shah, who strutted about in his self-appointed role of public prosecutor.

‘Why oh,
kafir
?
Are you still unrepentant?’

Maqbool was dumb at the effrontery of this man, who seemed so anxious to please his new masters. His mind, deadened by the hours he had spent in the cell, had not yet got used to the light.

He could not comprehend the process by which a person, supposedly human, could suddenly become a turncoat. He vaguely ascribed the change, in Ahmed Shah’s attitude, to ambition and greed, and, instinctively, he knew these to be the compensation which the little round man required for his lack of physical
height.

He sat down on his haunches, instead of answering his ex-friend’s questions.

Ahmed Shah advanced in a fury and kicked him, so Maqbool fell back.

Dazed by the assault, the victim just watched the lawyer, still unable to believe that the thread of connection between the two Kashmiris should break so completely through the change in political allegiances. Somehow, he could not believe in the scene in which he was involved. He had the hallucination of being in hell. And they all seemed like the angels of Gabriel — frightening monsters. For he despised them all, more even than they hated him. And in his heart he was free of them, from the strength of what he believed to be his larger sympathies as against their crude insults. The combination of this belief, and the strange itch of irreverence against the chosen race of the Muslim brotherhood in his limbs, almost made him smile.

But he controlled himself from expressing himself against the force of this trial and sat up, surveying his tormentors from the corners of his reddened eyes, blinking every now and then, as though to adjust himself to the solid reality of Khurshid Anwar and the soldiers before him, and the antics of Ahmed Shah, the solid round pillar of the new society. He felt angry as a lion watching the incomprehensible feats of the tormentors who were twisting his tail, as it were.

At least the oracle spoke through the sharp, clear Punjabi voice of Khurshid Anwar: ‘Answer the questions which are going to be put to you. Otherwise we shall have to extort your confession by other means
. . . .
And, if even now you repent and realise that you were born a Muslim, and not a Kafir, we will forgive you
. . .
Zaman Khan, stand there by him — and — ’

Ahmed Shah cut into Khurshid Anwar’s utterance: ‘Sardar Khurshid Anwar is being generous to you in the hour of our victory. Tonight our army will be in Srinagar. So I give you the chance to recant. Repeat after me: “I give up my membership of the Kashmir National Conference
. . .
” ’

Maqbool’s nerves had not quite recovered from the shock of the physical humiliation of the Pathan tribesmen who had chased him in the morning, when the verbal threats were hurled at him in quick succession by the supreme judge and the prosecutor. He was making up his mind to speak, but his reactions were delayed by his physical condition.

‘Zaman Khan!’ shouted Ahmed Shah.

‘Anwar oh — Kafir!’ Zaman Khan called, even as he bent over Maqbool and slapped him.

The leopard in Maqbool made him sit up after he had reeled under the blow, and his eyes and face glowed with rage. And yet, from underneath the surface layers of his mind, he felt the futility of anger against these performing puppets. He had heard of such rough justice in the old British days of the ‘Quit India’ movement, when Jayaprakash had been tortured in Lahore jail, and of the tortures in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, but he had never thought that it would happen again after the world was finished — not in the backwaters of Kashmir.

‘You can kill me without all this,’ he spoke after all. ‘Why do you want to prolong the farce?’

‘Khurshid Sahib was being generous to you!’ roared Ahmed Shah. ‘He wanted to give you a chance. But you are an ungrateful wretch! A treacherous slave of the Hindu Maharaja and his accomplice Nehru! . . . Answer me, will you or will you not recant? . . .’

Maqbool was fascinated by the twisting mouth of the roly-poly. He watched the stiffening, small, boulder-like legs of Ahmed Shah under the fat torso. He saw the rigid stern hand of the lawyer raised in admonition. And he realised that it was no use saying anything in answer to this dummy, all wood and rag. He just stared like an idiot at the automation.

‘Answer me,’ shrieked Ahmed Shah, frustrated.

‘What do you want to know?’ Maqbool said, afraid that a gesture from the prosecutor to Zaman Khan, and the watchdogs with their rifles behind him, would assault him again. Somehow, the prolonged physical humiliations seemed worse to him than the direct blow of death, because of his inability to answer back.

Encouraged by the prisoner’s response, Ahmed Shah began to hurl his questions on him:

‘You went to Srinagar some days ago and came back to conduct sabotage against the liberation army of our Muslim brethren in Baramula? Give me the names of your collaborators in Srinagar and Baramula.’

The prisoner could not help grinning stupidly at Ahmed Shah’s histrionic manner.

‘This is no laughing matter! Answer me. What have you been doing since yesterday when you returned? Whom have you been seeing? Give me full details.’

Maqbool started at the prosecutor with a set and impassive face.

Ahmed Shah outstared him and shouted: ‘How many people have you contacted since last night?’

Maqbool looked from face to face and then withdrew his eyes, because the whole court seemed like a shaken kaleidoscope before his dizzy brain.

‘If you will not answer, Zaman Khan will make you disgorge the facts in his own way!’ threatened Khurshid Anwar. ‘If you value your life, be a good man, an honest Muslim, and answer!’

‘You are pro-Bharat still, are you not?’ shouted Ahmed Shah.

‘So were you once!’ answered Maqbool as though speaking aloud to himself.

‘But I have repudiated the traitors who have sold Kashmir to the Maharaja and to Nehru! I spit in the faces of all your leaders! I shall try them for their crimes against the people of Kashmir as soon as our armies enter Srinagar! . . . And you need not expect any mercy from me, because you were once known to me! . . . I could have saved your life if you had recanted. But you dare to insult me! . . .’

‘Never mind,’ said Khurshid Anwar, knowing that his lackey was reacting stupidly. ‘Don’t let us waste time. It will soon be time for the evening prayers
. . .
Proceed
. . . .
’ And he looked at the reddening western sky, where the sun was going down.

‘You are pro-Nehru! And your leaders in Srinagar are pro-Bharat! All of you have united and called in the Indian army to desecrate the sacred soil of Muslim Kashmir, whose people want to unite with their brethren in Pakistan. And you and your friends are helping the Indian army. Admit it? — That you are a traitor?’

Maqbool’s eyes had also followed Khurshid Anwar’s to the western sky. What was more, he felt that he heard a distant rumbling on the horizon. And his attention was distracted, so that he heard but did not listen to Ahmed Shah’s fateful indictment. His prejudice against the lawyer made him unresponsive to the mechanical intensity of the prosecutor’s voice. He felt remote.

‘Come to your senses! Raper of your sister,’ shouted Khurshid Anwar. ‘Do you not value your life?’