Dhaka Saturday August 18, 2012

Bangla Literature,partition & Translation

Escape

Hasan Azizul Haque (Translated by Hasan Ameen Salahuddin)

 

He tried to listen for the faintest of sounds-for any sound. But neither sound of the breeze nor the falling of leaves existed to reach his ears. The ground was frozen over within that moment. The diverse multitudes of leaves were all wet, bathed in the silent dew. The north wind took to forces of storm. It ran through the open field to suck out the last bit of warmth from his body. The wind came back once again with the same gusto, and retreated to leave this side of the world after having shaken all the dry leaves off the trees just as dusk approached. With that, the fields, the gleaming backlogged water of the pond, and the jungles of unidentified mounds of half-dried yellow leaves all lay still. The cold wind left a fog that surrounded him like the phlegm in the congested lungs of a dying pneumonic patient. The world around him fell static through the mist and the stale death induced pale darkness. He tried hard to listen to something, anything, but no sound fell on his ears. Neither sound of the breeze nor the falling of the dry leaves or even the dew sliding off and falling on them to make a dribble reached his ears. He wound the ragged wrapper around his torso to put his weight on his elbows, lying on the uneven, wet, hay-coloured ground to stare into the heavy haze.

Though the world of sound, besides his heartbeat, became alien to him at that moment, there was no shortage of noise just before evening shadowed the planes. He had heard the heavy traffic of buses and trucks plying the black-pitched-road far off. Even the engines of the small cars and the shrill whistle of the passing mail-train had been audible. He heard these sounds all day long, and as soon as evening approached, a number of crows flew over the bush in the barren field; then there were pairs of stork followed by white-breasted kites, and lastly a few lone birds flew away, accompanied by a gigantic bird with its large wings spread across, flapping infrequently with its feet stretched back parallel to the ground and its beautiful head scanning the grounds to-and-fro. The bird cut through the air making swishing sounds with every flap of its big wings, floating towards one corner of the eastern sky, growing smaller every moment till it completely blended into the sky. The smaller birds nesting in the bamboo-clump near the village on one side of the field were chirping away in cacophony then, although they disappeared as soon as the night progressed on a bit more. He nearly undressed himself completely while trying to ward off the bone freezing cold by tightly winding the wrapper around himself and covering the gaping hole in it near his belly with his lungi. He felt pangs of hunger even at that moment. He started munching on chira from a small sack made of dirty rags, as he un-mindedly thought to himself, 'Hmm… they've gone to sleep.'

He thought of nothing else for quite a while after that. He started to teeter on his feet as he walked away from the pond after drinking some water from the vessel that he had very carefully collected from a canal. As soon as the cold became unbearable such that his head felt like a block of ice and his feet had gone numb- he took shelter in this dry ditch. Somehow managing to generate some heat by curling up he started to think once more, 'The night has dragged long after all. Hell knows how long I've been walking -can't even imagine where I've turned up at. And have never felt such satanic cold before!'

The first acknowledgement of the winter entered the soft-headed man's mind as he lay in one corner of the harvested barren field. It was as if he heard someone yell, 'Bachir, O Bachir, hey Bachir! Sleeping are you? The master will take an ear away for that! Such deep sleep of yours!' He heard the screams for only once in his head. Everything went still once more.

One could have very well claimed that it was the coldest winter. Just as it had approached early with Aghrayan barely starting off, it lingered on as piercingly even when Maagh drew almost to an end. The cold spell had begun abruptly, even before Sharath expired and the leaves had turned yellow in the season, even before one had the chance to enjoy the approaching winter breezes. The elders, just as every previous year, said, “Oh its cold, definitely cold! This is what bone-freezing cold really is. Of all the years I've been around and have grown my hair and beard white, I have never seen such cold!”

Then the young, much like every other year, would laugh and say, “Hah! No wonder you feel so. Just the way we are not feeling so cold now, you had not felt the same as us when you were young. It's nothing much but the blood being the real factor.” Some would nod their heads in the affirmative, “Yes, it may well be that. The warmth of the blood is the real factor. We had even cut the paddy under the full moon when we were as young as you in the middle of Poush. We went into the field even in clear nights with only the stars hanging bright. The blood is the real factor.”

But the verdict of the elders who did not say anything further had to be undeniably accepted in the end that year. It was as if the winter had kept overflowing from the skies on the flat lands that year. The village was veiled by the black of winter with the cold north winds blowing wildly during the day, while the ground was left freezing after the winds had subsided in the evening. The stark white land became black with winter. The slippery black sediment that overtook the lands could in no way be related to the layer of moss that blanketed the crop-land every Sharath.

Work had begun in the extreme cold that year. What could the winter do as long as there was work to be done? It didn't matter. No matter how cold, no matter how much the harvest amounted to, half of it was due to be dropped off at the doorstep of the land-owner, and even then: what would the winter be able to do? And thus, like clockwork, all able bodies with a sickle in hand went out into the fields just like any other year. All of them had to face the fierce northern winds with their ragged wrappers and old-dirty-smelly kanthas tightly wrapped around their bodies. Thus all the sickles in the village were put to work. Each iron sickle with just a hint of steel in them turned silver bright as mid Poush approached. The harvested paddy was laid in bound bundles in the field, each resembling the corpse of a felled soldier in war-fields for a few days. Each dew-soaked grain of rice gleamed like specks of gold, while the chore of the sickle came to near end. They started to mound the bundles into little hills while marching in their hard-soled shoes made by the local cobbler.

The flat lands had been stripped off the green lush while the ditches were filled with nothing but the gleaming black silt from the land. The snipes poked the mud with its long bill while flocks of white and black herons stood in rows on their long legs. The northern winds started to take toll on the lands as even the bright green grasshoppers camouflaged themselves with the dull brown mud of the roads and the trees were denuded of all their leaves.

The picture of the winter engulfing the country flashed vaguely across his uneducated mind. Even though the description given so far is absolutely accurate, the picture he drew was raging with fresh memories and emotions. Thus, even if he forgot to acknowledge many components, he added elements of his own, making the image truer to him. Even though he was dying of hunger and the cold spell took over his body as it had slowly created this aura of a stunned blackened abyss, he somehow mustered the strength to look back over his shoulder having rested on his elbows. The mist gathered itself to veil his sight, such that he could see nothing at all. The surrounding remained motionless, and the ditch he took shelter in started to bite him with fangs instead of providing warmth. Even so, he somehow curled up and imagined the picture and heard, very distinctively, the yells once more, 'Bachir, O Bachir, hey Bachir! Master will teach us a good lesson if you keep sleeping away like that!'

He did not have to put in much effort while yelling at him. Bashir had already jerked away from the warmth of his wife's body in one fluid motion. Her symmetrical hand hit the cold floor with a meaty thud. His eight year old boy cleared off the bed instantly. Bashir came back to his senses and placed his wife's fallen hand around her neck and slowly hugged his child. He then carefully came out of the kantha and took the hanging wrapper and covered himself head to toe. No time was wasted in finding the gleaming sickle even in pitch dark. While closing the mango-wood-door from outside, he asked, 'Is that you Chaha?'

'Yes my child, yes! How soundly you sleep- I am totally out of breath from calling you,' there was agitation in Wajaddi's voice, 'Hurry now, it's getting late. Don't you know that the manager is not easy to handle? Master's appointed caretaker, the lords of the Shaotal and their mistresses don't sleep. The rascals drink all night long and are always present at the field before twilight hits the sky. I am vexed by all of them! Have to be present there in this ungodly hour. Come, hurry, let's go.'

'Coming, coming,' Bashir had no hurries, 'let me smoke up a little first.'

'We're going to be late. Have your tobacco then. I am off.'

'Wait a bit Chacha. Why are you so tense? Just see… this won't take long.'

'The manager's still going to blame me. He is surely going to sack me.'

'So what? Is there any scarcity of work during Poush? All the lords require labourers during this time. Your manager can go to hell,' Bashir had said plucking straw from a heap and forming a small ball of it in between his palms by grinding the strands together, 'I can't head off without smoking first, no matter what anyone says.'

The conversation on tobacco and having a smoke in the severe cold morning enticed Wajaddi to have some as well. Squatting down on one corner of the verandah, he kept saying, 'Have it your way then, since you are not letting it go… let me have a couple of puffs while at it. No, no, don't grind it so hard. You'll crush it.'

The ball made from the straw was then thrust onto a burning fire on a spit of coal to burn it, and once formed into a ball of burning red coal itself, it was placed onto the mouth of the hookah. Wajaddi silently shivering with cold looked on intently as the hookah was being prepared to be smoked. Everyone else around them was waking up to go to work, some to their own fields and others to fields that belonged to others. All had their sickles gleaming in whatever light that fell on them. Bashir put his lips to the hookah and inhaled twice, making it look like he was kissing the object with much care and passion. Then he handed it over, 'Take it.'

Wajjadi, having the hookah in his possession for a couple of minutes, was lost in the smoke billowing from his mouth and nostrils. He spoke up, 'You were right… nothing is right until you smoke before going to the field.'

'I told you so. And there you were, ruining the moment by keeping on badgering me with the manager's lore.'

'When are you going to harvest your paddy?' Wajaddi asked.

'Such a small amount of paddy? How much time can that take? One and half Bighas land… three months whether I chose to cut down the paddy or not, three months either way. It's the start of the season. Let me work for some of the lords first and bring in some money into the house and then I can start harvesting my own. How about you?'

'Mine? Here, take the hookah. What a sense of humor! I have already cut the measly things down and bound them together to look like an unattended diarrhea patient. It's high and wide enough though to hide a small goat in,' Wajjiddi burst into laughter in a raspy tone like a hyena with bronchitis, 'Let it be son.'

'I just asked because you had. Nothing more.'
'Up now. We should not be late any more.'
They headed out and spotted a group after one amongst the group yelled out, 'Who is it there?'
'Who are you? Is it Bhokta?'
'Yes. Is that Wajaddi Chacha? Who else is with you?'
Bashir replied, 'It's me Bhokta.'
'Oh. Which field today?'
'Jamtala. And you?'
'Bherendagar. Whose field is it?'
'The manager's. Did you harvest your own, Bhokta?'

'It's done. Have to start sowing from the day after tomorrow. Come by and thrash some paddy for me one day.'

'I will, I will. Why won't I?'

Bashir and Wajaddi advanced on with the morning not yet in sight. A thin mist lingered in the atmosphere. The black soil was slightly wet and rock hard. Smoke from the cow-sheds was mingling with the haze. The village was veiled heavily. They cut through the curtain to emerge onto the field. The wet rice grains strewn across it felt like a spiked whip against the soles of their feet. The chilled wind was blowing the paddy against each other, and the sound of friction was going up and down in changing rhythm.

There was no other sound in the vast open field. The men walking about looked like shadows in the dark. As soon as the fog lifted with the sun's rays tearing through it to fill the vast plane of the field, the sight of so many men working on the field became breathtaking. Only one sound rose out of it all at that moment, a deep harmonic hum that seared through the air and the land filling up every nook and cranny in the field. There is no other name for such music- it is the song of life; the song for living; warm, raging, immortal.

He felt as if he was dying, lying curled up in the ditch. He didn't know how people died, but did believe that the dying ones had no thoughts or could feel neither joy nor sorrow, they could just see their life flash in front of their eyes. He too was unable to think, his mind had frozen over just as his body in the cold, his feelings of joy and sorrow were things of the past, and he had no strength left to feel any pain. He had given up to even defend himself from the cold. With his eyes closed he was helplessly peering into his thoughts to come up with images one after another. Vivid with colours, whether they were of people or the horizon, the sky or the trees, whatever they were-- they were all grazing him by.

He started to become overwhelmed with all the sounds from the beautiful hum of the song of life mingled with the swishing of the sickles, the accidental crumbling of a dry snail or crab under one's feet, the sprint of a field mouse, the songs in everyone's lips filling up the air, chopping off the paddy, binding them together, piling them up in mounds, then carrying them away by bull-carts with creaking wheels, thrashing the paddy amongst quarrels. And many more sounds mixed with his memories from all around filled up his heart. He could clearly see the day progressing into the second stage with the red of the sun turning to the bright white while the hum started to subside slowly into the stillness of the field itself and the many sickles, all started to shine at once in the afternoon sun.

With these fleeting pictures, the last one also made its way through-pushing and shoving- and remained affixed in his mind. He was covered in goosebumps. He tried to shake it off, throw it into a dark abyss, but the still picture could not be removed.

Nearly everyone had gone home from the field that day. The Shaotal men and women were sitting round a fire while roasting rats and squirrels and carefully skinning them. The farmers and owners were busy taking inventory of the harvest. Bashir and Wajaddi were a bit late in returning that night. They covered their faces and ears and were hurrying back without any word. The ground beneath their feet was ice cold. After staying quiet for long, Bashir spoke up, 'Chacha?'

'Yes?' Wajaddi was a bit distracted.
'Have you heard what I am hearing?'
'Why? What did you hear?'
'Haven't you?'
'Will you tell me what the matter is?'
'They say that there will be another revolution.'
'Where?'
'What are you saying? Have you not heard all the men gossiping here and there today? They are chopping down all the Hindus in Pakistan and the Muslims in Kolkata.'
Wajaddi flared up, 'Who told you all this? Who?'
'Everyone is talking about this!'
'Let them! Go home, eat some rice, and go to sleep.'
'But… tonight it's our village that…'
'Look here,' Wajaddi cut off, 'don't talk gibberish. This is why they call us uneducated! What will happen tonight in our village? What?'

'The Hindus from Nababpur and Sristidharpur will be coming to our village after performing puja for Maa Kali.'

'Go home,' the irritated Wajaddi stopped midway and then started again, 'why didn't you just slit the throat of the idiot with your sickle who told you so?'

'But, everyone is talking about it.'

'Just keep quiet, will you? I am feeling very cold right now.'

Both fell silent in their walk back, but Bashir piped up once more after a while, 'Chacha, I have a feeling it is about to start once more.'

'How stupidly stubborn can a person be? I am telling you to go home, and here you are still blabbering away.'

Bashir ignored the slander and started to whisper, 'Loyalty lies within one's self. No matter what, Pakistan is still a country of Muslims. The Muslims rule there…'

'Then why didn't you go there?'

'Can we really dare to leave everything behind and just take off with our families like that, O Chacha? But still the country…'

Wajaddi turned around to face Bashir very suddenly. It was as if he was bludgeoning Bashir with his silent stare. Bashir also came to a standstill and stared back stupidly. Waajjaddi asked, 'How many fathers do you have? Huh? How many? How many mothers? Just the one, right? Only one country the same way. Understand? Now go!' He walked away in a huff without sparing a second glance backwards.

But they did come after that. They did come from far away villages to slaughter totally unknown people, having left the warmth of their homes, with vermilion smeared across their foreheads. Bashir's family sitting on the cold floor, kept listening to the drums tear through the mist clogging the field, the gongs resonating in the air to make even the Maagh skies tremble, and the blowing conches to stab at the whole village with ugly claws of a preying eagle as they approached.

The poor attempt of defense was very easily crumbled to the ground with the dust as the bull-carts blocking the road in a haphazard manner were all destroyed. The first sacrifice was of Wajaddi in front of Bashir's eyes. The surrounding straw houses were all set afire. The light from the fires danced on the strange faces with vermilion smeared thickly across their foreheads while raging flames feasted on Wajaddi's stunned, blood-stained face.

'Bachir, Bachir! They are running towards your house…'

'Where? When?'

'There there! They are approaching our house too!'

'Oi Rakib! There they are the bastards…'

Bashir ran with his heart clutched in his hand. The house was burnt down to the ground by then. They were all gone. His eight year old son was speared to the ground. The corpse of a 26 year old girl, resembling a burnt coal black log, lay on the floor of the burning house with the air suffocated with the smell of burning flesh.

'Allah do You really reside in all beings?' Screamed out Bashir, 'Where, where are You, tell me where?'

Having seen this picture, he stood erect instantly as hard as a column of steel. The pulsing veins on his neck stood out. His hands clenched into fists, riddled with throbbing veins- became as strong as iron rods. He could not see the picture any more, he could not see anything anymore; he went blind with rage and became mad with anger. He walked for miles without end to leave his country, to migrate into the newly founded Pakistan for the last couple of nights. He hid himself in the bushes and jungles during the days, without confronting anyone, or asking for any help, not even from God. He kept telling himself, 'I am not Bachir anymore. Bachir is dead. He does not belong to any country. I will take birth in a new country now!'

The whole day passed in this way, hiding away in a bush and listening to the various sounds of the world around him. All the sounds were mingled away with all the futile thoughts during the day. The northern winds had blown all day long but stopped abruptly with the evening. The fog blanketed the world heavily around him, and he had no idea when everything fell silent. He tried to listen to any kind of sound but failed to hear anything when he eventually noticed the stillness of the world. He only felt that he reached the borders of another country. He was running away even without knowing it. He had to be very careful to have not been sighted by anyone during his escape.

He did not want to be noticed even by any creature. He had heard once that people were not allowed to enter another country, just as they were not allowed to leave their own. He felt as if a torch would shine in his face any moment and his lifeless body would just fall onto the ground.

A very strong draught of cold pierced his body suddenly, cutting into his flesh, drilling into his bones to reach and freeze his bone-marrow, and with all that the core of his brain started to ache with a twisting pang that poked at every corner of it making him lose all his senses. Yet, he was still advancing, at least it looked as if he was moving on his feet. It was more of a mechanical motion with his numb feet having lost all connections with his brains. He slipped and fell on the hard ground and involuntarily rolled into the ditch. He was sure that he was dying at that moment.

He was dying; everything around him was also dead. The fields, the ponds, the water bodies- all were detached from the living world. The eastern bank of the ditch he lay in was high enough to block any view of the outside world. All those pictures came crashing back once again as the world started to collapse on him, becoming smaller by the moment.

One fourth of a sickly yellow moon over the horizon became visible in that instance. The light of the sickly moon made visible the form of a man who climbed the eastern bank of the ditch having limped across the length of the field from the east. He was wearing a dirty old dhuti that reached up to his knees. He was wrapped in a thick shawl with many trinkets hanging from his shoulders amongst which was a gleaming axe in the moonlight. Bashir, standing very still, looked at the man turning his head. But his head just drooped down instantly. He went back to his pictures; his whole life flashed in a moment before his eyes. He saw his flat country with every little detail, which suddenly changed into warpath. He saw Wajaddi's blood flowing on in crimson, brighter and redder than the fire engulfing everything, and his dead face burning in the fires. He saw his child speared to the ground and the corpse of a 26 year old girl blacker than coal. The ditch came to life with his unholy scream. Bashir came out of the ditch with a squirrel's swiftness to stand in front of the silent man in dhuti. His ears started to ring violently as he heard someone yell out, 'Bachir, Bachir!' He could feel the blood of his son being splashed on his face. The whites of the eyes of dead Wajaddi kept staring at him without expression. With a piercing gaze at the man opposite him, Bashir snatched away his axe and dealt a deadly blow on his head. With an earth-shattering death scream the man's skull crumbled within itself, and he dropped rolling into the ditch.

'You escaped from this country, had you, you Bastard!' His teeth bared out and were shining white like a gorilla's fangs, even in the mild moonlight.

Two torches lit up instantly at that moment, one to fall on Bashir's face and the other on the unfortunate man's axed head. As the light was taken away, Bashir saw his face replaced by Wajaddi's, bloody, disfigured and as stunned. The misty veil seemed to have lifted from his eyes. But as tears gathered in his eyes, both the worlds --the one he had left behind, and the one he was journeying to-- dimmed out.

Hasan Azizul Haque, in his illustrious literary career, has written short stories that have given life to an exquisite form of literary language hitherto unknown. Partition occupies a very special place in his fiction, along with other recurring subjects such as the liberation war, women's issues and indescribable sufferings of farmers and working class people. His short story collections include Samudrer Swapna, Shiter Aranya (1964), Atmaja o Ekti Karabi Gaachh (1967), Jeeban Ghase Agun (1973); and his novels include Agunpakhi (2006).

Hasan Ameen Salahuddin is a coordinator of Brine Pickles, the first Creative Writers' & Performance Literature Group in Bangladesh. He is a poet and translator. He has also published a couple of short stories and a play. Currently he is pursuing a graduate degree in journalism while teaching A level Physics at Sir John Wilson School.