The Weary Generations (19 page)

Satisfying himself thus, Naim went about his guard duties, gradually losing his self-consciousness until a couple of days later when he was brought to a halt again: he imagined that the man had smiled at him. Without stopping, he managed a wan smile back. On his next round the man spoke to him. In a heavy, thick voice, he said, ‘Officer.' Naim stopped near him. The man knew few English words but made himself understood.

‘Sun,' he said, pointing to the large window just behind him, ‘all day. I burn.'

Naim nodded and hastily withdrew. Still, he couldn't keep himself from going to speak to the doctor in charge.

Doctor McDonald smiled sarcastically. ‘Does he think he is in a hotel?'

‘But, sir,' Naim said, ‘he is badly wounded. At least we can stop the sun coming in. It is very hot in there and he is suffering.'

‘Suffering, hah! Can you imagine how many people he may have made to suffer?'

‘Very true, sir,' Naim said, but didn't go away.

The doctor looked at his amputated arm and relented. ‘Don't look to me to do anything, I can only attend to his wounds. But you are free to do what you can.'

After a bit of looking around, Naim found a piece of tarpaulin that he hung up, with the help of another soldier on guard duty, a partly shell-shocked man who had the use of both arms, in front of the window. It stopped the sun coming in.

‘Thank you,' said the prisoner several times, gratitude showing in his eyes.

From then on, Naim stopped by the man at least once in a day to ask him
how he was, to which the man always replied, ‘Thank you,' with a smile.

A few days later the man spoke to Naim once again. ‘I Harold. Thank you for favour.'

‘No favour,' Naim said to him, ‘only my duty.'

‘I return favour,' Harold said.

‘Thank you. But there is no need.'

‘I make hand.'

‘Hand? What hand?'

‘That.' The man pointed to Naim's empty sleeve.

‘This?' Naim asked, raising his left upper arm. ‘How?'

The man simply said, ‘Yes, yes,' vigorously nodding his head.

Naim came away from there saying no more than ‘thank you'. On the following days Naim did not stop by the man; and by generally ignoring him he tried to discourage the man from speak to him. Some days later, however, with the help of another wounded prisoner who spoke better English than Harold, Naim came to understand the prisoner's offer: Harold and his father, coming from a long line of cabinet makers, had worked all their lives in a factory that made artificial limbs before Harold was taken into the army. All he needed, the prisoner speaking on behalf of Harold said, was some tools and a piece of wood. Throughout this conversation, Harold, with a smile on his face, kept saying ‘thank you' and pointing to the back of his shoulders and neck where the tiny boils that had come up on the skin from the heat of the African sun were already beginning to lose their angry red colour and were drying up. On top of his guilt, Naim felt embarrassed. Conspiring with another guard, he stopped going to Harold's ward altogether. Days passed without Naim setting eyes on Harold. The longer he stayed away, however, the stronger the image of the man with a pathetic smile on his lips impressed itself on Naim's mind. At the same time, as if by coincidence, the feeling of the loss of an arm became intensified inside him, obliging him in the end to give up his dignified resistance and go to the doctor once again.

‘It is against the rules,' Doctor Major McDonald said. ‘They cannot be given even the smallest sharp instrument. They can open up their wounds, or kill themselves right off. These people are fanatics.'

‘I am sure he won't do any such thing. I trust him. Sir, it is a question of my arm.'

‘We are setting up an artificial limb factory in India. You will get it properly done as soon as you are back there.'

Naim persisted. ‘Sir, I think this prisoner can make a good one and quickly.'

It went like this, back and forth, between Naim and the doctor, for a few days. Eventually, perhaps again as compassionate gesture towards Naim, the doctor said, ‘All right. I can use my discretion in this matter, but if anything untoward happens the responsibility will be entirely yours.'

The doctor decided that Harold should be shifted to a vestibule near the entrance so that he could not be seen by the other prisoners and that Naim should spend the whole time with him for the few hours a day that the man was using the tools he was given. Furthermore, he decreed that the tools should be taken from him at the end of each day's work and put away. After the job was finished, the prisoner would be shifted back to his previous place in the general ward.

This was done. Naim procured a few carpenters' tools and a piece of cured hardwood, of which there was plenty in those parts. He would take them all away from Harold in the afternoon and bring them back the next morning. Over the next two weeks, Naim saw that shapeless piece of wood take on the form, at Harold's meticulous hands, of a forearm almost exactly the size of the one Naim had lost, a wrist and a hand, complete with criss-crossing veins, bits of knobbly bone sticking out in the right places, the wrinkled skin on the wrist, finger joints and fingernails, all perfectly carved with nothing more than a penknife aside from a couple of bigger tools which he used initially to cut the wood to the proper size. Finally Harold asked to examine the stump-end of Naim's arm more closely for dents and depressions so he could work out where to cut into the joining end of the wooden limb. This took the longest time and required several fittings. The only thing Harold couldn't do was to fix the small metallic catches and hinges that would hold the attachment securely in place. For that Naim would have to go to a factory in India.

Naim took the wooden arm to the doctor. Although surprised to see the workmanship, the doctor said without a smile, ‘Good. Move him back to the ward.'

Taking him from the vestibule, Harold's independent home for over three weeks, to the ward, Naim said to him, ‘Sorry for this. And thank you.' He took the artificial arm and put it in his trunk, safely wrapped in woolly clothing.

Four weeks later Naim received his honourable discharge with a letter of commendation and a small pension. Before boarding ship for his voyage home, Naim paid a last call to the sick POWs. When he learned that Naim was going home, Harold produced the broadest smile that anyone had so far seen on his face. Naim lingered there. There could be no conversation other than broken phrases between them. But Naim had a question on his
mind that he didn't want anyone else to interpret for him. Finally he asked it. ‘Why did you do it for an enemy?'

Harold first answered with a pause and a shrug, as if he didn't understand the question. Then he said, ‘I not know you enemy, only man.'

Twelve weeks after returning to Roshan Pur, Naim was called up to Delhi by the army authorities and decorated with Distinguished Conduct Medal. With it came an award of ten acres of land in his village, a promotion-on-retirement to subedar and an increase in his pension.

O Mir, beyond bearing is the melancholy of a broken heart Fan awhile with thy dress to rekindle its fire

–
Mir Taqi Mir

M
ORE THAN USUAL
it had been a time of distress: a drought that burned the earth and whatever green it held to a dirty pale colour and then to ashen grey, followed by rains that fell without cease, causing floods as the rivers and canals broke their banks and destroyed whatever was left in the soil, demolishing the mud roofs of houses, bringing great hunger to the bellies and grief to the eyes of humans and beasts until they had the deranged look of great misfortune. Hindus and Sikhs sacrificed virgin goats to the hungry gods and goddesses while the Muslims kneeled down to pray to their one omnipotent God that water, the scourge, be transformed once again into the life-blood of the earth; they never let go of the hope, the last refuge of this patient breed, that this difficult time too, like so many that had come before, would pass, for such had been the fate of the Indian peasant from the beginning of time.

When Naim returned, the first and, as it turned out, the only one to come back alive from the war, he found the slow, sleepy rhythm of life beating steadily in the breast of the village as he had left it. The earth's topsoil, washed away by the rain, had been replaced by the floods that brought with them dark fertile earth from the banks of the waterways. Once the waterlogged fields dried out they exposed rich, glittering layers that cried out for seed. A few months later, the same peasants stood among knee-high crops and, reassured by the miracle of their hope, lifted their eyes to the sky in gratitude not for the accident of soil but to their gods who had made it shift. Naim had come through Bombay on the return voyage and got himself fixed up in a military-run factory with clips that securely attached his wooden arm to his stump. In the factory they marvelled at the artificial limb and asked questions about the factory where it was made and the kind of machinery they had. They shook their heads in wonderment when Naim told them the truth. As well as fitting the clips
they treated the wood with chemicals and applied a special paint of a colour that almost exactly matched Naim's natural skin. Under a full shirt sleeve it would take a close look, or prior knowledge, to tell one hand from the other. Naim could not help his father with work on the land as much he used to do in the past, although he did whatever he could – he could work a plough, but only for so long, and he trained himself to ride as well as he ever did before. The only thing he was unable to do was cut green fodder with a scythe, which required the grip of both hands and, however natural-looking his left hand was, he could not make a fist of it. He did, however, begin to partake of all the normal events in the village – the prize-bullock races, the kabaddi matches and such. On biggish occasions of this kind, in his or a neighbouring village, he put on his army uniform and joined the festivities. Men bowed their heads in deference as they met him, women covered their heads with dupattas in the presence of this gallant man, although he was still only a boy, and young girls, who had heard his mother boasting that in countries across the ‘seven seas' many women wanted him to marry them but that he had rejected them and come back to his village, surreptitiously uncovered their heads of thick black hair and did not move away from his path, looking unashamedly straight at his face. Upon his return, Naim was seen as a different man, as if a stranger had come to live in the village.

He was crossing the canal bridge when he saw three riders coming up from the other side. It was Juginder Singh and two youths from the village. They reined in their horses as they came alongside Naim.

‘Where have you been?' Naim asked Juginder Singh.

‘To see the pigs.'

‘Did you find any?'

‘Lots of them. We dug pits. Going on a hunt tomorrow. Want to come?'

‘Yes.'

‘Come to our dera when the sun is up to a spear's height. Have your lassi with us.'

‘Right.'

Naim was awakened the next morning by a noise coming from outside the house. Slipping his feet into the old army boots that he found comfortable to wear, trying to yawn the remaining slumber out of his body, he walked over to the outer yard where animals were tethered beside their troughs. It was a bright morning, the sun had just come up and there was still time enough before he needed to start out for Juginder Singh's house. Approaching the mare from behind, he took hold of the thin, flat bones at the back of its knees and pressed them, one after the other,
between his thumb and forefinger. The sudden, tiny kicks of the mare that ran through her body like a current told him that the animal was healthy and alert, ready to be mounted. He patted her on the neck, making her move her skin upon her flanks in a shiver as only animals could do. Ali had toddled over. Naim picked him up with one hand and sat him on the mare's back. The child clung to it, grasping the hair on the mare's neck and screaming with a mixture of fright and glee. The boy's mother ran over to grab her son down from his perch. Laughing, Naim examined the horse's reins and mouthpiece that were hanging from a nail on the wall.

‘The reins are ripped a little on one side,' he said to his father.

The noise outside increased. Naim went out to look. He saw a handful of people gathered at Ahmad Din's door. Among them was the munshi, holding the reins of his horse, with two of his servants standing by him. Ahmad Din was shouting at him.

‘I am not giving you a straw from my house. I have nothing for you. Go away and tell this to whoever you want. I don't care.'

The munshi spoke menacingly. ‘We will search your store. I know you have grain.'

‘You step into my house and I will pursue you till I am dead, you evil, heartless man. Be off!' One end of his turban trailing on the ground as if it had been torn from his head, his clothes dust-smudged and saliva running down his scraggy beard, he was speaking in a terrible, breaking voice. ‘I will tell them that you and your servant dogs knocked me down and beat me. You beat an old man. I will go to court, I will beg mercy from the white man's law …'

Naim went over and stood beside the crowd. Ahmad Din spread his hands in front of him, as if begging for alms. The munshi took a look at Naim and checked himself.

‘All right, no need to shout so much. We can talk about it another time.'

‘What other time? I have no time for you. Not even the blink of an eye. Don't you dare come back again!'

The munshi was already walking away with his two men.

‘What is the matter?' Naim asked Ahmad Din.

A man, another sharecropper, answered instead. ‘They came for motorana.'

‘What is that?'

‘Motor tax.'

‘I don't understand,' Naim said to the man.