The Weary Generations (35 page)

With a jolt, Naim's whole attention shifted to Azra, while his eyes remained fixed on the scene in front of him – men moving to and fro from one end of the dais to the other, talking, gesticulating, someone taking the microphone, men sitting behind him chanting ‘Zinda Bad' and ‘Allah-o-Akbar'. But he was neither seeing nor listening to it, like a deaf and blind man roaming in his thoughts: she is beautiful, she's coarse, she is loving, she is greedy, she is brave, she's vivacious, she is faithful, she is contradictory,
she's a rich woman who gets what she wants, what in the world is she doing sitting here with me! The conflict in his heart took him away for a while from where he sat. When he returned to the present, Sir Shafi had finished a brief speech and was declaring at the end, ‘I announce the merger of Punjab Muslim League into the All India Muslim League and from now on will follow its leadership –'

He was interrupted by the ear-splitting slogans of ‘All India Muslim League Zinda Bad' and other such from the crowd. When the noise died down, Sir Shafi went on, ‘Today the Muslim community of India –'

He was stopped short by a gentle rebuke from the Aga Khan, ‘Muslim nation, not community.'

Sir Shafi picked it up, ‘– today the Muslim nation of India has been united as one on this platform.'

Naim's mind took a dip once again. Merge! Merge! We have merged and mingled, and yet remain apart, in large unknown spaces, echoing with suspicion. She is a better woman. No, just richer. I am a poor farmer. She is sitting by my side with her hand on my arm, lost in her own passions. Nothing to do with mine. Or with me. How have we walked for so long on the sides of this distant space, keeping within sight? Or am I totally in the wrong? Or is it love, as she says. If it is, it is a separate world …

He was brought back to the conference by the roar of the crowd. An important-looking man was at the microphone, saying, ‘After counting the votes, I declare the resolution passed.'

Suddenly Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar jumped on to the dais, pushed the man aside and stuck his face into the microphone. ‘We cannot accept this joint electorate in this way. Politics being the means of obtaining material benefits, we demand one-third representation at the centre and weighting in the provinces.'

The man who had been at the microphone covered it with his hand and started speaking to the maulana in fast, pleading tones. A man who had been speaking to the Aga Khan, bending down to his ear, saw the Aga nod and stepped over to take resolute possession of the microphone to announce an interval for tea, after which, he said, the meeting would be reconvened. The Aga Khan got up from the presidential chair. He put on his hat, picked up his cane and left the stage, saying to someone as he passed the microphone, heard by some in the audience, ‘Keep a hold on Mohammad Ali, don't let him speak during the interval.'

Those occupying the chairs stood up and dispersed, while the sitting crowd stayed put, chanting slogans, having nowhere to go for tea.

It was to be years before the Muslim masses gathered under the banner
of the Muslim League behind the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, albeit without the religious parties who advocated the precedence of Islam over politics. For the time being, the Muslim Conference remained merely a symbol of Muslim unity, the different factions of Muslims keeping their distance from each other, holding to their separate agendas. Naim and Azra exchanged a few words, Naim telling her that he didn't feel like staying for the next session of the conference and Azra trying gently to persuade him to stay not just for the day but also the next when the conference would formally end and the Aga Khan give an address. But in the end Naim went. He got out the same way he came in, through the back. Passing through hundreds of people sitting on their haunches, patiently waiting for something to happen, anything that would give them a reason to raise their voices in a slogan they had shouted a hundred times before as if it were the most precious thing they possessed, Naim knew what he had to do. He had no way of increasing his meagre landholding or earning a decent living, nor could he leave the big house and go to live in his two brick rooms or his father's house; he simply had no heart for it. There was also the stinging regret of coming away from Azra, an act over which, despite his willing heart, he had lost control. He imagined that he had decided, not at that particular moment but before that, perhaps during the night before, that he would put himself once again at the disposal of the party and this time go the whole hog. He couldn't suppress, however, a sneaking ambition mixed with the thought that some time in the future he might be considered good enough to join the leadership of the organization at some level.

He wanted to put the work on his land in Ali's hands with Rawal to help him with it. But it proved impossible. Ali, although only sixteen, had matured beyond his years and under the influence of his mother and the traditional enmity between step-siblings had never taken to Naim. During the time Naim was in gaol Ali had fallen in with a bad lot and was taken to the police station a couple of times under suspicion of cattle theft. Eventually Naim saw no alternative but to get him out of the village for a period before anything worse happened.

‘Come with me,' Naim said to Ali one day when he went routinely to see his mothers.

‘Where?'

‘Out.'

They walked together along some fields, Ali leading the way without knowing where they were going, and Naim deliberately falling behind to keep his brother within sight and reach.

‘Why don't you work on your land?' Naim asked him.

‘What land, six acres? Not even enough for one man.'

‘That is all we have,' Naim said.

‘Thanks to you since you lost your own by going to gaol.'

‘We can all eat if we work properly.'

‘No. I am going to get more land.'

‘How?'

‘I am going to earn more money.'

‘By stealing cattle?'

‘Maybe.'

‘You won't earn one paisa but end up in gaol instead.'

‘It will not be the first time for this family,' Ali said sarcastically.

‘Have you been pulling a plough?' Naim asked with a smile, unseen by Ali.

‘No, why?'

‘Your neck is like a bullock's.'

‘Have you come out here to make fun of me?'

‘You run with men who are bad characters. They are older than you and are criminals.'

‘I can stand my ground with any of them.'

‘That ground will soon be a prison yard.'

‘What is it to you?'

‘I will have to go and beg the police to let you off like the last time.'

‘Nobody asked you.'

‘It's my duty. You are my brother.'

‘You are not my brother. You are son of your own mother.'

‘Your mother and mine are both our mothers.'

‘No,' Ali said belligerently.

‘Haven't I looked after them?' Naim asked.

‘You don't have to. I can look after my mother.'

‘You have the brain of a pig in your head. You never come to see me in

my house.'

‘It's not your house.'

For a moment Naim didn't know what to say. ‘And you fight with Rawal.'

‘Rawal is a son of a bitch.'

‘There is filth on your tongue,' Naim said decidedly. ‘I am not listening to such talk. I am going to take you to town and leave you there.'

Without warning, Ali took off. Naim ran after him. The peasants working in the fields shaded their eyes against the sun and said, laughing, ‘The
young one's exercising the elder.'

The two ran on through fields mown and unmown, fertile and barren, startling wild pigeons and partridge and quail, which flew off in all directions, and rabbits scurrying away helter-skelter from under bushes looking for another shelter. Ali, younger and quicker, was putting ground between himself and Naim. A rabbit jumped out of a hole and struck Naim's legs. It rolled with the blow for a few feet before running off. Naim was out of breath. He stopped and sat down on a small mound of earth. Seeing him tiring, Ali stopped running as well.

‘You catch a rabbit and cook it,' Ali said, laughing. ‘It's good for running strength.'

‘Shut your mouth, swine,' Naim replied.

‘You can't catch me. You are old and heavy from eating too much.'

Naim knew his brother was right. He could never catch the younger man in a race. They were now a few yards from Naim's house. A thought struck Naim. He put two fingers in his mouth and let off a sharp whistle. Within seconds his two guard dogs jumped the boundary wall and fell on the boy. Naim leaped up and ordered the dogs away before they could do damage. He had his hand on Ali's neck, barely encircling the thick, coarse-fleshed stump joined at one end to hefty shoulders and at the other to a powerfully wriggling head. Having only one hand to use, Naim had to fall back on the trick he learned in the army of immobilizing a man by pressing on certain points in the neck. Ali was screaming to get out of the grip. Naim drag-walked him to his house. There he asked the servants to saddle a horse. That done, he mounted the horse and the servants lifted Ali up to sit behind him. Naim then had a rope tied round him and Ali and dug his heels in. The horse, carrying the two of them on its back, started running.

Halfway to the town, wriggling to get out of the bind, Ali asked, ‘Where are you taking me?'

‘To the cloth mill.'

‘It's not even built.'

‘It will be built. They are taking men on.'

‘You want me to work there?'

‘Yes.'

‘I will run away.'

‘I will take you back as many times as I have to,' Naim said.

‘I don't know how to work in a mill.'

‘They will teach you. You will learn a skill. You only know that our father went to prison before you were born. But you don't know that he had great skill in his hands.'

‘You have no skill,' Ali said accusingly. ‘You only have the skill of going to gaol.'

‘Yes,' Naim said. ‘I am sorry.'

Ali relented in his struggle to break free. ‘What skill did father have?'

After a pause, Naim said, ‘He made guns.'

‘Real guns?' Ali was excited. ‘Guns that fire bullets?'

‘Yes,' Naim said. ‘But he never made bullets and never fired them.'

Ali seemed disappointed. ‘I want to make guns. And bullets.'

‘You can't, it's against the law. But you can learn some other useful skill. You can get rich and buy more land by learning a skill.'

Ali had calmed down. ‘All right,' he said after a while. ‘Marry me then to Aisha.'

Naim half-turned his head to look at Ali. ‘She is promised to Rawal,' he said.

‘I will kill Rawal.'

‘Shut up.'

‘I am not lying. I will, I swear.'

‘Don't talk nonsense,' Naim said to him. ‘I will arrange it. Only if you promise to work away from the village for a while.'

‘Let me out,' Ali said, squirming. ‘The rope's cutting into my back. I won't run away.'

Naim loosened the rope. Ali jumped down from the horse and started running alongside it.

‘You will arrange it?' he asked anxiously.

‘I will try.'

‘What does that mean? I make no promises if you don't arrange it.'

‘All right, all right,' Naim said. ‘Now be quiet. We are nearly there.'

At the cloth mill, still under construction, one of the first in the country, the man in the recruiting office asked, ‘How old is the boy?'

‘Sixteen years and eight months,' Naim replied.

‘He is too young.'

‘I can do all the work,' Ali said, pressing forward.

‘According to the Factory Act –' the man began to say.

Naim leaned forward and shouted in the man's face, ‘When I was sixteen they put a rifle in my hand and sent me to fight in the war. Look!' He struck his left hand on the table several times.

The man in the office was so shocked to hear the sound of wood tapping on wood that he entered the name in the ledger and hastily gave a chit to Ali to go and report to the electrician on site.

A
LI WAS OUT
of his element in that foreign land of concrete and steel where no earth split open beneath his feet to reveal tiny green shoots that grew into big trees and plants to provide food for the living creatures as if they were faces of God. This machinery too was called a ‘plant' by the engineers and mechanics and electricians; this was the first English word that Ali and others like him learned and began to use, though they did not understand it for it had neither food nor shade. It was still under construction and there were rumours that it would somehow in the end make cloth. Despite his discomfort, Ali stuck to it, eating and sleeping with four other labourers in a small room of brick and mortar, in the hope of marrying Aisha; he knew that as long as he kept away from the village and out of trouble his brother would not forsake either him or the promise he had made. On his days off Ali ran back to Roshan Pur and went to Naim's house, at times even spending the night in the house where his brother now mostly lived alone when he was not away for days on the instructions of the local organization. Naim had persuaded his own and Ali's mother to break their word to Aisha's mother regarding her verbal betrothal to Rawal in favour of Ali. The women – the older with much complaint, the younger more readily – eventually agreed, but not before extracting a promise from Naim that he would find another girl for Rawal to marry. Rawal was not consulted, nor did he openly say much. Ali was living on Naim's promise that he would have Ali and Aisha married as soon as the boy became eighteen years old – until one day an incident occurred which stopped Ali in his tracks.

Towards the end of the next year, Mahatma Gandhi, on his return from the Round Table Conference in London, launched his civil non-cooperation movement by publicly making salt on the sea shore at Dundy. Afterwards, he walked from village to village, gathering followers on the
way. Naim had wanted to go and join the march, but he was hampered by two things: he was asked to go to Peshawar – not to take part but to report, as an eye-witness of the imminent events there, back to the organization; and, second, he wanted to get Ali's marriage over with before he left for anywhere. Ali and Aisha were married in a simple ceremony, presided over by Naim. Rawal had disappeared from the village for the day.