Read The Weary Generations Online
Authors: Abdullah Hussein
âSo you want to enlist?'
âYes,' answered Naim.
The officer nodded to the sergeant, who proceeded to take down the necessary details: name, domicile, father's name, occupation. Naim's tongue quivered as the name of his father was called for. But there was no reaction from either the sergeant or the officer. After he had been put through a cursory medical examination and enlisted, Naim felt as if he had already won his first battle.
The recruiting party did not leave; they set up camp in a field and demanded food for the night. Only the officer got into his vehicle and left, the wheels raising clouds of hot dust from the baking path in their wake.
He returned the next morning, accompanied by Roshan Agha. All the men of the village â and some women, mostly old, who kept their distance â came out to greet him. They were joyous to see their supreme master, since he came to their humble abode so rarely that some young lads had never set eyes on him. They jostled to get near him, grateful as supplicants who wanted nothing more than to be in the presence of this near-deity they called âmai-baap' â âmother-father'. Without wasting any time, Roshan Agha got up on a chair and addressed the peasants while the officer and his men stood to the side, arms folded, as though they had nothing directly to do with all this.
âThe English sarkar is fighting a war with our enemy. I want all young men to come forward and fight to save our country. As the gora sahib has already told you, coins of Royal silver shall be given to you every month, plus as much as you can eat of food, and uniforms with strong boots, guns in your hands for tha tha tha, free tickets for the railway trains for you to go where you want, and much more. But that is not all. On top of it, here is my word to you: everyone who goes to fight, his family will get double share of the crop they grow.'
Roshan Agha's word was law. Inside of two hours, sixteen young men were enlisted. The visitors, including Roshan Agha, left the village with eighteen fresh soldiers. Women wept, old men's chests fell in several layers, young girls lost all sense of tomorrow.
Niaz Beg kept himself locked in the storeroom for a day and a night. When he emerged the next afternoon, the terror of the previous day had given way to a vacancy in his eyes that had spread out to cover his whole face, like the vista of an empty, barren field.
âNaim gone?' he asked.
The old woman, sitting by the hearth, looked back at him with vast, desert-like eyes without answering. Niaz Beg cautiously approached the wall of the adjoining house and called out, âHussain gone?'
âGone,' his neighbour replied from the other side of the wall.
âWho else?'
No reply came from across the wall.
Niaz Beg waited for a moment, then asked, âAre you going out to the fields?'
Still no answer. Giving up, Niaz Beg picked up his hukka from the courtyard and went to the hearth. It was cold.
âNo fire?' he asked.
His wife, silently waiting for his anger to rise, shook her head. Niaz Beg put the hukka down. He went off to a corner of the courtyard to pick up
the sickle and a length of rope that lay on the ground. He stood there trying to fix the hand-scythe inside the folds of his turban. Looking at him working blindly on his turban with trembling fingers and failing, the woman's eyes filled with grief and pity, although they were still dry as parched earth. Eventually Niaz Beg picked up an identical implement lying near by that had belonged to his absent son. He threw it to the young boy.
âLet's go get some millet for the animals,' he said to his wife's nephew.
The twelve-year-old caught the scythe in the air and chirped, âYes, baba, I can cut. Yesterday I cleared half marla of greens with Neem before he left â¦'
On his way out, Niaz Beg was brought to a halt by the sight of the buffalo's teats swollen like inflated rubber tubes.
âNobody milked the buffalo today?' he asked, addressing his wives although not looking back at them. He spread a hand under the distended udder. A few drops of milk fell on his palm.
This was a crime in his house. In the past, he would have jumped up and down with rage and shouted, âYou do this to a tongueless animal? Your own milk will dry in your breasts and your children will perish, bitches â¦' But on this day he dried his palm by wiping it on his beard and said weakly, âThe buffalo is throwing milk,' and went out.
The older woman made as if to get up to go to the buffalo, then fell back where she had been sitting on the ground. Covering her eyes with a hand, she began to weep.
Outside, all was calm. Some old men wandered about in the fields among heaps of the cut crop without touching any of it. The sun shone cruelly on a patient earth; the storm had passed through and taken away the heart of the village.
129th Baloch, Duke of Connaught's Own, Ferozpur Brigade, Lahore Division
F
OR TWO MONTHS
the regiment stayed at headquarters, during which time they were given training â brief and brutal â in how to do battle, consisting chiefly in the use of .303 rifles, fixed bayonets for hand-to-hand fighting and grenade attacks. Apart from that, there were parades, never-ending parades; marches, quick marches and âdouble-ups' carrying twenty seers of kit, left-turn here and right-turn there, stop here and about-turn. The peasants, village dwellers who could stop and start and execute a turn at will like birds upon the wind, took the discipline heavily to heart and broke under the shouted orders and having to learn how to walk in long trousers and strange boots.
It was the beginning of August and black monsoon clouds thundered overhead, making it the darkest of nights. Ali Pur's Abdullah, Naim's only friend in the platoon, was trying to mend a tear in his uniform. Four West Punjabi soldiers, carefully turned away from each other, were busy changing into their night shirts.
âWhere did you disappear from the firing range?' Naim asked.
âI don't loiter,' Abdullah replied. âI come straight home.'
âHome?' asked Naim with an ironic smile. He pushed his bedding roll against the wall with his boot and sat down on it. âYou were firing like a madman today. I was afraid you'd kill someone.'
Abdullah stayed silently bent over his needle and thread.
âIf you do it again, you'll be shot,' Naim said.
Feeling tired after the day's training and weary of Abdullah's silence, Naim rested his head against the wall and shut his eyes. Outside it had started raining. A man sitting on the far side of the barracks began singing a song of barsaat that spoke of the onset of rains cooling the sunburnt earth and of women in pale dresses rising and falling on swings tied to ancient trees.
âExactly a year ago,' Abdullah said suddenly, âI caught a lovely fish.'
Naim opened his eyes. âDid you eat it?'
âNo.'
âWhat happened to it?'
âIt was the most beautiful little fish I ever caught. How could I eat it? On its body, only as big as my hand, were thousands of spots of all colours, red and orange and blue. I can never forget it. Today I saw a stone in front of me as we were crawling on the range. This stone also had many, many coloured spots on it and was of the same size and shape as the fish. Suddenly, I felt like running off to catch a fish. This is the season for it. When the rains came, we went fishing in the ponds. That is why I fired on the stone.'
Wide-eyed, Naim looked at him. âYou wanted to kill the stone?'
âNo.' Abdullah paused. âYou are a book-reader. You will not understand.'
âI will tell the sergeant,' said Naim, laughing.
âI will break the motherfucker's head.'
âYou have a bullock's brain inside your head.'
âI don't know,' Abdullah said thoughtfully. âBut I have a bullock's heart.'
âBullocks don't have a heart, they are rough and insensitive. Now horses, I know about horses, they have a heart.'
âBullocks too. You know, when my brother died our Blue didn't eat for two days. My brother had brought him up from when he was little. I went out and he followed me. I took him to the millet field and he didn't once put mouth to it. I sat down under a tree. I bit into a mango and gave half of it to the bullock. That was the only thing he ate in two days. Afterwards he put his head on my shoulder and cried.'
âCried!'
âHe had tears in his eyes.'
âGood bullock,' Naim laughed. âWhat happened to the fish?'
âHuh? Oh, the fish. Don't know, I brought it home and put it in a dish full of water. From there it disappeared.'
âDisappeared where?'
âDon't know. We all think the buffalo ate it.'
âYou definitely have a buffalo's brain, if not a bullock's.'
The West Punjabis had taken off their night shirts and were bathing in the rain outside and laughing. Half of the recruits from across the barracks were out in the rain. Others stood on the veranda smoking and watching the bathers lit by flashes of lightning. Naim started humming a tune he had once heard in Roshan Mahal coming from what seemed a long time ago.
âNeem,' Abdullah raised his head again from his needle, âwhen will the war start?'
âIt has started.'
âWhen?'
âA few days back.'
âHave you read it in a book?'
âThey are called newspapers. Why, are you in a hurry to die?'
âTo fight. Even to die will be better than this. We have sisterfucking rifles and bullets but no one to kill. As soon as I hold a rifle I want to kill. You think a stone has blood under its skin? I shot it because I am fed up with the parade. Nothing but parade and more motherfucking parade.'
âDon't worry, you will soon get a chance,' Naim said.
Five days later the order came for the Brigade to move. There was commotion in all the barracks. They polished their boots to a high shine, oiled their rifles until even the shoulder-pieces sparkled, rubbed soda on their uniform buttons and finally massaged mustard oil into their washed hair and combed it. As a last touch they passed eye-pencils of kohl across their eyelashes to darken them further as if they were getting ready for a wedding. There were sounds of the opening and shutting of trunks, yet in the very centre of this noise there was silence among the men which seemed as though it would be broken with a bang at any moment: each of them felt as if the others would suddenly burst out laughing or else assault the men nearest to them for no reason at all. The order to move had triggered a force that rippled out through every muscle in their body; it was the expectation of freedom that they would have in the field of battle. After a while, the letter-writing began. The educated ones among them wrote their letters first and then wrote for the others. Naim had to write the most.
âAren't you going to send a letter home?' he asked Abdullah.
âWhat is the point? If I am killed my wife will be looking for another husband even if she has three hundred of my letters.'
âIf a woman does that in Punjab,' one of the Punjabis said, âshe is killed.'
âPunjab is full of junglees,' Abdullah said as he slid the bolt of his rifle in and out of its empty casing, making a sharp metallic sound familiar to them all. âWhat were you saying?'
âLetters,' said Naim.
âYes. Letters.'
âThat is a silly thing to say.'
âWhat is?'
âThat letters don't mean anything.'
âIt's true. Once read, they are like dead people. Reading old letters and
weeping over the dead is no use. It is like seeing yourself dying beforehand. Anyway, nobody in our whole family can read. They will have to go to other people to have it read to them. That is no use too.'
âWhy not?'
âDon't want to tell the whole world what I am doing.'
âThey already know you have been recruited into the army.'
âThat is enough for them.'
There was a peculiarly secretive side to Abdullah that interested Naim. Naim was, however, the only one among them whose life had changed for the better. His time in the village had devastated not just his mind but also his body. The discipline of the past two months, which had given the peasants for the first time in their lives the feeling of boredom and listlessness, instead offered Naim a system of routines with which he had been familiar for most of his early life: he was again living as a regular, cheerful man.
Some time before midnight they embarked on a goods train. A layer of wheat straw mixed with leaves of corn and millet was laid on the floor of carriages for the soldiers to sit and lie upon. They put down their rolls of string-tied bedding along the corrugated iron walls of the carriages and sat on them. Sleep had vanished from their heads; their eyes glittered in the semi-darkness along with their cigarette ends, the only light in the carriage being provided by a low-flamed hurricane lantern hung high up in a corner. One soldier in Naim's carriage had a stomach-ache and was the only one lying down, uttering occasional cries with his head tossing on a thin bed of corn leaves. The train carried no goods other than the conscripts and didn't stop at normal stations, running at its regular half-speed pace for long periods of time. When it stopped it was only to let another train pass or to get water from a station pump. When the train stopped the carriages became stuffy and humid and the men gathered round the open door to breathe, attracting the attention of the people down at the station.
âWhat station is it?' a soldier would ask.
âDharam Pasa. Where are you going?'
âTo the front.'
âWhat front?'
âWar.'
âWhere?'
âWhere your mother lives. Want to send a message?'
The soldiers would laugh.
âWill we get horses?' Abdullah asked.
âDon't think so,' Naim replied.
âI saw horses in a carriage up the train.'