Martyrdom
Translation of "Shaheedi" by Maqsood Saqib, a story of the fortunes of the descendants of Bhai Mardana before and after the partition of 1947.
Mr. Zakarya wakes up, pulls the damp newspaper from his front doorstep, and sits in a room towards the rear of his dwelling. This was a special spot for Mr. Zakarya. The actual room resembled a small nest more than anything else. There was barely any space for a chair and a table. Whenever Mr. Zakarya sat there, all of his attachment for the rest of his house withered away. Neither the sound of anyone’s voice nor any household noise ever reached his room. Using that silence like a blanket, he would begin reading a newspaper with keen interest and attentiveness. Every single word, every single paragraph, every single column, was to be filtered through the eyes of Mr. Zakarya. He would try to avoid reading from the front page to the last. Columns that were highlighted, or in larger fonts, were to be discarded as mere attention-wasting advertisements. He would glance at the bottom for the page numbers of each news story covered and proceed to read through those pages. Doing this would instill in him a certain feeling that he likened to walking down the streets of Lahore on clear paths, until one is blocked by some drums guarding a sign saying, “Go from here” and the pedestrian changes his course and amends his route accordingly. Eventually, one does reach his path but having to follow these haphazard guidelines erodes that feeling of true exploration one begets walking on a clear straight path.
Since Mr. Zakarya could not find any avenue to overcome the difficulty of having to navigate the newspaper’s contents for the full story, he would instead commence reading from the middle of the newspaper, rather than the front. In this way, he would often read from the very last page to the first. Being an experienced newspaper reader, he had come to master the art of guessing what the headlines would be after starting from the last page. Sometimes he would see the headlines and laugh, other times he would get frustrated and slap his head. The former implied his guess was correct and the latter meant he had been way off mark. He would exclaim, “The editor is just forcing it, the news stories are not what he is portraying them to be!”
Unlike any other reader, he would finish reading the paper at the dates given in Hijri, Gregorian, and Bikrami Calendars. He would always refer to them respectively as the Islamic, English, and Desi Calendars. His reading technique, while unorthodox, had strong roots. Although he had left the life of a newspaper columnist, he refused to abandon the habits in his routine he had imbibed through this experience. During his time writing, his news stories and reviews and critiques of theatre, film, and radio broadcast were received with great affection by readers. So much so that he would be swarmed by letters from readers expressing their approval and satisfaction with his work. His colleagues would sometimes sneer and exclaim that Zakarya needed his own postal box just to hold all these appreciation letters. This merely reflected their jealousy, as Zakarya was genuinely beloved for his abilities.
Though it was his job to entertain others by writing reviews, he received immense satisfaction while listening to the radio. In his view, cinemas and theatres were of less import and so he would visit them less often, preferring to gather the information for his reviews from his own sources. But tuning into, or being on, the radio was something he could spend all his life doing. He would be thrilled listening to classical music and enjoyed being in the company of the great classical ustads, renowned for their expertise of tabla, dholak, sarangi, sitar, and bansuri. He would sit and immerse himself for hours in the vast seas of their art. These masters would all gather in the radio canteen, where Mr. Zakarya would begin inquiring about every small detail of their craft. “Where were you born?”, “Who taught you music from your family?”, “Who did your ustad learn from?”, “What was your greatest concert?”, “What other great artists have you been acquainted with?”. He would ask them questions in intricate detail. And the amused artists would never shy away from answering each of his queries.
To this end, Mr. Zakarya would gather so much information that he would rewrite articles and essays for the newspaper on people who had already been featured in previous editions. He would make sure to highlight the artists’ financial condition and the crude behaviour meted out to them by petty bureaucrats. He would criticise and ridicule the wretchedness of the government in every publication, to the end of ensuring these forgotten artists received their due in credit. “They are part of our national heritage, and we must conduct tours around the world so that we may enshrine our heritage in every corner of the Earth!” he wrote once. The readers would often write to Mr. Zakarya in support of this idea, and he would publish these letters on the pages allocated to him. The musicians would read and feel exalted and dignified by Mr. Zakarya’s pen, feeling that he was the root of their livelihoods.
But now all of this was but a distant memory. He had been a very dedicated man throughout his career, only staying home during his one rest day. However, after his retirement he felt as if he was stuck in his house. He would rarely leave to venture outside, and never again toward the streets of the musicians. All that he had written all those years was left to the dust of history, and his work was largely forgotten. During the initial days of his retirement, he would sometimes see himself featured on the paper or on the radio but as the years progressed, he began fading into obscurity. One time a publisher came to him, having gathered all that Mr. Zakarya had published over the years- piles and piles of papers. Offering him to publish many of his great articles into one book, the publisher asked him to sign an agreement for it. Which Mr. Zakarya naturally agreed to.
But a fortnight passed and the publisher returned with two dozen copies of the published book. He offered them back to Zakarya, saying that everybody he gave the books to was thoroughly disinterested in such content as times had changed and nobody wished to contemplate the ideas he had been writing about.
Mr. Zakarya would sit alone and begin laughing at his own fate.
That day in the room he began thinking, and ventured to find the bag that contained his original articles. He sorted them and decided to read the very last one. By chance, as he held the article, the page beneath it caught his eye. Intrigued, he picked it up and began reading this article titled “The Martyr” with keen interest. He saw a name in the last paragraphs of the article which rang a bell, bringing back memories in a way he had not felt before. “Tabla Player Niyamat Hussain.”
Mr. Zakarya leaned back on his cushion, and all of a sudden an image began forming in his mind’s eye. A slim man of slender height, garbed in salwar-kameez, holding a small leather bag containing a cigarette box and matches which he would light and immediately return to his bag, very small eyes and a wide nose, a clean shaven face and receeding hairline with hair up to his neck. A bonafide rural and simple demeanour. When he talked he would stop to check the other person’s face and shake his head accordingly. This is what he remembered of Niyamat Hussain, that renowned tabla player.
Mr Zakarya contemplated the image he had generated. Suddenly, that image began to speak and he recalled the sound of Niyamat’s voice:
“What to say of those days of 1947! At first, all felt fine. We began hearing daily of terrible cases of looting and murder but whoever told us about it would then console us that ‘It is merely a temporary matter, eventually everything shall be fine as it used to be.’ They would tell us to not fret and keep our spirits up.
Our village and the general locality lived in absolute peace. Though we had begun to sense fear creeping in, we never made a show of it. Around that time, my maternal cousin came to visit us at our house. One morning he began pestering me that his overgrown beard felt odd on his face, insisting, ‘Come with me to Baddon and I will get it shaved there.’ He attempted to lure me in with promises of getting good food together before returning to our house. Baddon was a village significantly bigger than mine, almost like a town. It had a train station and felt just like any other small city around us. We met a dozen people in our village who tried to convince my cousin to visit our local barber Raja, but he adamantly retorted that Raja was too clumsy with his shaver and might give him a bloody face. He exclaimed that while Raja uses just water with his blade, the barber at Baddon does it with soap and a faster, more efficient blade. He offered to get me a shave as well, promising I would not regret it. It was peculiar, here he was appointed a local village council member and now he did not wish to get a shave from my village’s Raja. I kept trying to convince him I did not need a shave, but he kept insisting until I relented and agreed to accompany him to Baddon. Back then, I did not have a set routine for learning tabla. I worked to gather enough money to buy a tabla and would practice when I got the time.
I hopped on the bicycle with him, and we left for Baddon. Soon, we sat at the barber’s shop. My cousin was getting his shave while I stared at the road outside. While the barber washed his face with soap, I noticed some men rushing towards the vegetable vendor who had a stall opposite to the barbershop. They pulled the vendor outside, and one of them stabbed him with a knife in the stomach. He fell down, bleeding profusely. The others then pulled out their swords and all I could do was to shout, ‘They killed the vegetable seller!’ The barber heard me and sprinted out of his shop as fast as he could. He shouted in a loud panicked voice, ‘Run everyone, save your lives. The slaughter has started!’
We did just as he said, and ran in one direction. Of course, it was not towards our village but we scarcely had the mind to realize that. Every direction we went in was filled with the bodies of the dead and the smoke of raging fires filling up the sky. The only sounds to be heard were the screams and wails of the dying, and the jaikaras of those who did the killing. I cannot say with any certainty how many miles we ran, or where we ran to. We even came across a whole train carriage glutted with blood and corpses, every one of which had been looted. Everywhere we saw falcons, vultures, and dogs feasting upon the bodies. In a state of acute panic, we would stop for a few moments to hide somewhere, and then overcome by the fear that our spot was unsafe, we would run again to find another refuge. Whenever we heard any crackling of leaves we would panic and run again. We felt as if our blood was drying up. The two of us were not men, but the walking dead, conquered by fear. We forgot what hunger and thirst felt like, and the only thing fuelling us as we ran for our lives was fear. Our hiding spots too, were rapidly selected and discarded by our sense of fear.
We eventually decided to hide in a field of crops. They saw us and surrounded us. We both agreed upon a solution to this unrelenting state of fear: we would offer ourselves up and be slaughtered. Instead of considering running yet again, we both thought it better to fall into their hands. We rose up from our hiding spots and exclaimed, ‘Come and kill us, this is the only way to end this chase.’ They heard us and got closer, brandishing their bloody swords. I spoke again that we were solely interested in being liberated from fear. But God knows what took over their hearts. One of them from the jatha spoke and asked us, ‘You Muslims, what Muslims are you?’
I replied, ‘We are Mirasis, from Mardana’s house.’ He then said, ‘You do look like a Mirasi, but the one with you does not.’ I told him that he was a Kambodar, recently appointed as one (hence the change in his dress). I wondered when they would end it all, anticipating how they would put us to the sword and end our terror. Having run for our lives for so long, we were fed up with life itself. After everything that we had witnessed while on the run, we were convinced they would not leave us alive. We asked ourselves, why were they delaying in killing us?
Then another one from them spoke up, ‘If you really are a Mirasi, confirm it by telling us what you do.’ I replied, ‘Ask me anything about your creed and if I don’t tell you more about it, you can do as you please.’ He then recited a verse from Gurbani and I, ready to be slaughtered, recalled the next five verses and recited them in response. All of them were struck dumb. For a moment, they forgot how to speak and did not know what to do. Then the one among them who had spoken to me in the beginning finally said, ‘No brothers, we will not kill them. They are Mardane ke.’
Although we had prepared ourselves to die, their swords refused to strike us. They took us into their company, walking us to their village. They fed us well, offered us drink, ensured we were bathed and dressed in new clothes. They had us sleep with them for the night, and at daybreak these same men mounted us on their horses to escort us to the refugee camp. From there we joined other local Muslims and came to this country to reside among our co-religionists. Here we lived in absolute poverty, but that is a tale for another time.” Niyamat Hussain, Master of the tabla, stopped talking and began smoking his cigarette.
Mr. Zakarya opened his eyes. He tried to trace the first page of that edition, ignoring his usual habit of reading in his haste. He finally found it and read the headline: ‘Sectarian attack on a mosque, 6 Muslims martyred while reading the fajr namaz.’ Mr. Zakarya then checked the date on the newspaper: Monday 9 Ji’alz 1413 Hijri (1992 AD). He could not continue reading any further.
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Zakarya realised that he was reading the obituaries of that edition and Niyamat Hussain, an extraordinary survivor of the partition, was killed by his co-religionists while praying inside that mosque.
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SGPC President Gurcharan Singh Tohra recounted once how, when trains of dead Hindus and Sikhs came to Sirhind in 1947, he joined a band of Sikhs who would stab people off trains to Pakistan with spears. During one such incursion, he heard a very heartbreaking wail that came from some miserable wretch onboard, unsure if it was a result of his spear stab or someone else’s. He immediately ran away and secluded himself in meditation and recitation of Gurbani. This episode would weigh in on his mind for the rest of his life and he would donate handsomely to Malerkotla mosques annually on Eid to feel free of that burden.
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