The Rebel — Episode 01 — Chapter 01
The Urdu novel ‘Sarkash’ by Mahmood Ahmad Moodi was published as a series of almost 89 episodes in the monthly Jasoosi Digest from July 1990 to January 1998. An English translation of the novel is being undertaken voluntarily.
KEY CHARACTERS IN THIS CHAPTER:
- Afzal Chaudhry: Leading Character
- Riaz: One and only friend of Afzal Chaudhry
- Family of Afzal Chaudhry
- Tajaan: Daughter of Weeda Musallii
- Malik Aslam Zaman: Landlord
- School teacher of primary class
- Mochha tea seller
The memories of my childhood sparkle in my mind like a bright star. Nonetheless, when compared to today’s standards, these memories lose their magic. Shakargarh, a border town, was where I regained consciousness.
Everything that God gave us was present in our home, except for wealth and prosperity. My uncles are in a competition to see who can have the most kids while living with us. Both my aunts looked terrible, almost like skeletons, with no blood in their bodies. My aunts’ physical condition was so poor that they couldn’t stand for long, and would fall down if they did. Nevertheless, they remained committed to their goal of having more and more children. In the house, there was a big, semi-finished hall-like room with a low wall that served as a boundary and not as a curtain. In one section of the house, both brothers and their children resided and used it as a sleeping, cooking, and bathing space.
In the compound, there was a small hut-like room that served as both my father’s and my bedroom. I was his only son. You may be wondering why my father fell behind in the competition to have the most children with his brothers. The answer is that my mother passed away while giving birth to me, their first child.
My father gave everything he earned to my younger aunt, and because of this, she accepted us happily. Every week, she would prepare a special dinner in our honor, but only a few grams of meat would be prepared in a large cauldron that would be considered small by today’s standards. My little aunt wasn’t to blame; with the amount of wealth my father and uncle had, this could have happened. Actually, the three brothers were sharecroppers for Malik Aslam Zaman, receiving only a hundred rupees per month, two sets of clothes per year, and a few sacks of grain for each crop.
Looking back, I am amazed at how our ancestors managed to make ends meet on such meager wages and how we were alive, especially given today’s higher standards of living. Now I believe, price control committees were not yet in existence, so the price of everything was under control.
In spite of the adverse conditions like inadequate nutrition, confined living space, and unfavorable living conditions, I discovered that my health and fitness were excellent while at home. Perhaps my physical resemblance to my mother played a role in my good health and fitness. I pray that Allah grants her a place in Jannah, as I’ve been told she was a beautiful and brave woman. My mother was not originally from our village; she was from Kashmir. My parents had a loving relationship, which may have been why my father never remarried after her passing. It’s also possible that the reason he never remarried was that there were no other eligible abandoned women in our village. Only Allah knows the true reason.
My father was deeply committed to my education and had a strong desire to see me succeed academically. He wanted me to get higher education i.e. matriculation (according to him). There was a middle school in our town. My father was insistent on pursuing matriculation. He was so determined that he promised to send me to Sialkot for further studies if I passed middle school, even if it meant spending all his wealth. I was hesitant to inquire about my father’s assets, unsure if they even existed. Were they the two loose cots we slept on or the iron trunk that held our clothes? Or perhaps the cow we owned barely produced any milk despite constantly grazing. Regardless of whether my father had any assets or not, his love for me remains unforgettable. Even now, when I recall his words, my eyes, which have become cold and unsympathetic, become teary.
It was my father’s dream for me to finish my matriculation and pursue a career as a clerk in an office, as he believed this would bring great honor to our family. I followed my father’s wishes by attending school regularly and also took on additional responsibilities such as squeezing my teacher’s legs and purchasing groceries for his household. Occasionally, he would have free time while napping, he took the opportunity to teach us something. It wasn’t his fault, though, the school was a government one. He revealed to me once that his monthly salary was a mere 74 rupees and 50 paise, which is less than what a sharecropper makes, and he had to make 74 trips around the city to collect it.
I had plenty of free time once I finished school for the day. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone at home what I did or where I went. In the evenings, My father and both of my uncles would arrive home tired, take turns bathing under the hand pump, and rush through dinner before lying down. As night fell, the whole town grew silent, with even the dogs barking only sporadically.
Seeking respite from the tedium, I would occasionally depart from the town. A small bridge crossed a contaminated drain situated within a land affected by waterlogging and salinity, near the road to Sialkot. Seated on the wall of the culvert, I would observe the ceaseless flow of vehicles and women passing by, lost in contemplation without any clear direction. Since childhood, I have been afflicted with the condition of overthinking, as I may have mentioned before. My thoughts would invariably converge upon the wall of the culvert, as if it were the epicenter of my contemplation.
When I moved on to middle school from primary school, I befriended a boy who became one of my closest friends. Although his name was Riaz, due to a longstanding custom in many towns and villages to not call someone by their real name, he was also known as Raju. It was the same case with me, Although my birth name was Afzal, I had always been called by the nickname Fajja.
Raju was a thin boy, almost half my height, but for me, he was a big thug. His father owned a grocery store, and Raju often had to sit there. He would quickly pocket a few rupees from the initial income, but later he would put the money in the cash drawer.
In school, he always maintained a gentle man demeanor, but when we met at the small bridge in the evenings, he would have a paan in his palm and a heron cigarette in his fingers, revealing a different side to his personality.
He would sit cross-legged near me on the wall of the culvert and sweep the ash with clicking his fingers after taking long puffs of cigarette and when a single girl or woman passed by, he would wink at her in such a way that she could not see him but I must see him.
Raju had a strong passion for movies, and he always requested me to accompany him as his film partner. As he had enough money, buying two tickets instead of one was never an issue for him. I was aware of his motive to use me as a sort of bodyguard due to my towering stature and premature facial hair growth. Any newcomer to our class would mistakenly assume that I had failed for years.
There was no reason for me to refuse Raju’s proposal to go to the movies since I had a lot of time on my hands. I was not one to pick fights, but it was clear that I was afraid of no one. I was already fed up with the monotony of life.
There was a cinema house in the suburbs of the town. Its construction was done with bricks and mortar only, but its name was ‘crystal palace’. Seated in the center of the shabby hall on a plywood chair, watching my first-ever movie, I experienced a level of excitement that Columbus may not have felt upon discovering America.
In several scenes, I jumped out of the seat to such an extent that my face fell off. In many scenes, Raju held my hand and stopped me from reacting, even though emotions were being expressed around us. Boos and whistles were heard intermittently. Once the heroine, who was probably Sabiha, started dancing wearing a net veil, while a young man in a dhoti also started dancing near the platform of the screen. Even though we were sitting in the third class compartment and it was packed. Only a couple of mustachioed men stared at us during the interval. No one said anything. I had, by the way, carefully placed a little knife in my waistcoat pocket. As we sat in the hall, we sipped a few pieces of sugar cane and then Raju lit two beedi cigarettes, offering one to me. I didn’t know how to smoke, but I just puffed the smoke like the style of Raju and swept away the ash with a pinch. I once tried to exhale smoke from my throat but it got stuck, causing my eyes to pop out. Thus, I gave up attempting to swallow the smoke. Today for the first time I felt a little younger.
I arrived home after watching the movie and saying goodbye to Raju, and found that everyone had already fallen asleep. My father was also snoring in the cell-like room but when I started to lie down on my bed, he suddenly raised his head and said.
“My child, please do not return home late at night. If you wish to watch a movie, attend the 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM show on Sunday.” Having uttered those words, he once again rested his head on the pillow and began snoring again.
I shrank into an iron-cot like a cold mouse. I couldn’t understand how he came to know that I had gone to watch a movie. That night, I fell asleep very late. Sensations were running through my entire body as if I had truly discovered a whole new world. I couldn’t forget the scenes from the movie. It was the first time I experienced a wave of excitement in my boring life. I had a tough time falling asleep. My dreams took a strange turn from that night. Usually, I dreamed of animals like dogs, bears, cats, and horses. But that night, I saw girls that looked like Sabiha Khanum. I even saw a horse in my dream, but I was sitting on it, wearing fancy clothes, a crown on my head, and a sword hanging from my side. I must have spent too much time listening to the girls singing in the chorus, because someone woke me up when it was time to fight with the villain.
My aunt, who was holding a bucket, was standing next to me as usual, instructing me to milk the cow. When I woke up at that moment for the first time, I felt unhappy and annoyed. Milking the poor cow was much more difficult than extracting oil from the desert.
Regardless, the daily routines of the house carried on as usual, but after that day, my friendship with Raju became stronger. We weren’t just friends, we needed each other too. I was his bodyguard and he was my investor and advisor. The interest of watching movies was ongoing frequently. By now, I knew all the actors by name.
Sometimes in the evening, Me and Raju would sit at Mochha’s tea shop in the bazaar. Mochha sold tea and also used to fix bicycle punctures. I couldn’t figure out what they had in common. Maybe they both made good money. Both businesses were doing well. Newspapers were delivered to Mochha’s shop and occasionally a movie magazine would also come.
Sometimes Raju and I would also do some shooting when we saw a deserted area near the fields or a bridge. We would divide all the roles among ourselves. Sometimes Raju would become the hero and I would become the villain, and sometimes I would become the hero and Raju the heroine. He would wrap a scarf around his neck like a romal (handkerchief) and put his finger on his nose while saying in a sad and thin voice, “You won’t leave me, will you, city boy?”
I say with a heavy but romantic voice, “What talks you make, O’ white girl from the village! I have written my life to your name. It is better for me to leave the world than to leave you.”
When Raju was playing the role of hero and I was playing the role of villain, Raju would point towards the invisible heroine who had fallen on the ground and say in an angry trembling voice, “You heartless person! Aren’t you ashamed of touching that girl? I’ll teach you a lesson.” I would laugh mockingly and Raju would jump on me. I would pretend to get beaten up and once he accidentally hit me hard on the knee. He sat down holding his hand. There was a slight bruise on his hand.
Sometimes we used to race invisible horses in the fields and try to pick up invisible girls working in the fields and put them on the horse to escape. Once we got so lost in this game that we fell into the nearby river. We were fortunate that we both knew how to swim, otherwise there was no one around to save us and the river was quite deep at that point.
We had reached the eighth grade and were starting to understand worldly matters. Both of us had a higher intellectual level compared to other kids our age.
One day, I was sitting on the bridge, peeling sugarcane and sucking it, when I heard a very sweet and melodious voice from somewhere, “Didn’t your heroine come today?”
I rescued myself from falling from the wall with sugarcane into the drain. When I got ready, I looked around and saw the daughter of ‘Weeda’ (real name Waheed) Musallii (The street sweeper community became Muslim from Christian) standing at the end of the bridge. She looked up at me and smiled, her smooth white teeth peeking out from the back of her juicy, tooth-stained lips.
Sharecroppers like us and their children in villages are considered to be ‘despicable working class.’ In fact, they are considered more ‘despicable’ than the ‘working class’. But Musallii are considered inferior creatures compared to us.
Weeda Musallii worked in the stables of Malik Sahib. I didn’t know if he was respected there or not, but I always heard about her daughter Tajaan that even though she was a Musallii, she had tantrums like the mistresses. She used to go to work in Malik’s house, but from landlords to laborers no one has any courage to look at her with a crooked eye, otherwise the girls of this class have no such importance.
Tajaan had an excellent reputation. She wasn’t interested in anything except her own business, and she always returned home promptly after finishing work. She used to say that a branch only bends when it’s flexible. Therefore, if someone tries to use power against you, you must break down and not bend. My uncles and aunts often talked about her in these terms.
A rebellious traveler’s journey through the ups and downs of life continues, read the rest of the story in the next chapter.
