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The Thal Desert
When railway tracks were being laid in the
Thal Desert, it is said that there were dust storms, as usual, and sand
dunes would form at places on the tracks. An old munshi from that period
used to relate strange stories about the events supposed to have taken place
when the tracks were being built. He said that once the tracks were laid
right through Hazrat Pir’s shrine. The trustee was scared of the British
Government, and that is why he was also conferred the title of Khan Bahadur.
But why should Hazrat Pir be scared of the British? So the same night a
veritable army of djinns and spirits descended on the Thal and chewed
up the steel tracks as though they were sugarcanes. When the British
engineer arrived on the scene the following morning, he found chewed up
husks of tracks flying all around. Then seven cauldrons of sweetened rice
were distributed among the poor and the destitute to propitiate Hazrat Pir,
and alterations were made in the route. That’s why there is a big detour
before the train reaches the next station.
About the engineer, Munshiji used to say that
he was greatly upset by the dust storms in the Thal. He had also written to
his government back home, complaining that he couldn’t make much progress in
his work because after each dust storm the topography of the area changed,
the dunes disappearing from one place and turning up at another. Moved by
his earnest appeal, the British government contacted the Government of
India, which obtained an amulet from a known pir of Delhi and hung it from
an acacia tree. After that whenever dust storms came, the sand dunes didn’t
touch the railway tracks. But it seems Hazrat Pir was a greater pir than the
other. This was corroborated by the fact that when a violent storm blew, one
sand dune installed itself on the tracks in defiance of the amulet hung on
the tree. Another amulet was sent for from Delhi and when the new amulet was
hung in place of the old one on the acacia tree, a sizzling sound was heard
and the dune caught fire and was reduced to ashes in no time flying in all
directions. In short, as long as the work on the railway went on, the tough
tussle between the two pirs continued. Hazrat Pir’s djinns and
spirits are active even now. Only a couple of days ago Alla Jawa and his
water buffalo were run over by a train for the simple reason that he had
showed the audacity to travel by train too frequently. The elders advised
him not to overdo it lest Hazrat Pir got angry, but he didn’t heed their
advice. And so it happened - while he was trying to drag one of his
buffaloes off the track, he found himself under the wheels of the engine
and was reduced to a pulp. People had to scrape his skin from the tracks
with shovels.
When the railways had extended from Khushab
to Kundian, the elders of the Thal had predicted that the morals of the
people would decline. The inhabitants would prefer taking up jobs rather
than tilling the field. The village would become desolate and people would
have no regard for each other. All this came to happen, but something else
happened too. About a hundred villagers were recruited as labourers to lay
the railway tracks. Within a short time they earned enough money to get
wells dug in their lands, to pull down thatched huts and put up brick-built
houses in their place, and to buy land. It was during this period that
Misri’s father had also bought a piece of land. Earlier, he had to travel to
far-off villages every day during the harvest season to work for the
landlords in the field, shearing the crop and thrashing and lugging the
grain. Now he had become a small landowner and was given some importance in
the community.
Misri Khan was in his prime when his father
had died. He still remembered many anecdotes concerning the railway tracks
related to him by his father. For example, his father would say, ‘My son,
the trains that you see lumbering along at a distance of a kos from
the village would not be there if we had not laid the tracks. The British
engineer would measure the land and give us instructions to begin the work.
Then he would be either whistling away or smoking cigars. We’ve done the
actual work of laying the tracks on the entire stretch that you can see
before you, and our sweat and sometimes our blood had dripped on it. That’s
why the track is evil-omened. May God save us all, by the grace of Hazrat
Pir, from this iron pest!’
Misri had been watching the trains since his
childhood. When the train was still far away, he could hear the roar, as
though some giant was grinding a gigantic millstone. Then the boys would
leap to their rooftops to have a glimpse of it. As it rumbled along at a
distance of one kos from them, they would tell one another that the
train came from the place where the earth ended. It was a common belief
among the village women that whoever travelled in the train would become a
wanderer for life. And that the train was under the shadow of the djinns and
spirits who, at the instance of Hazrat Pir, had once chewed up the tracks as
though they were sugarcanes. Only those inhabitants of the Thal Desert dared
to travel in the train who had got amulets from the trustee of Hazrat Pir’s
shrine. Khan Beg, a man from this village, had once showed the temerity to
ride the train without the amulet. As a consequence he had to move from one
place to another for his entire life in search of livelihood. At last he had
crossed the river Chenab to reach Cheneot where he worked as a labourer in a
Seth’s house. One day, while he was carrying bricks on his head, he slipped
on the staircase, and the bricks fell on top of him as he fell down and
smashed his head. As the news of his death spread, the trustee of Hazrat
Pir’s shrine got into a rage and declared, ‘Wretches! Sit on the train
without my amulet, if you dare! Whoever defies Hazrat Pir will meet the same
fate!’
Misri had watched the train from near and
far. He had thrown stones at it as he had put stones on the tracks and saw
them reduced to powder as the train rolled over them. He had also seen
strange faces at the windows of the train, men wearing turbans with
upstanding crests and tresses, women wearing heavy gold earrings, and
children who had thrown peanut shells and bits of chewed-up sugarcane at
him. Once a child had thrown a whole length of sugarcane at him by mistake,
he had eaten half of it and brought home the remaining half for his mother.
His familiarity with the railway trains consisted simply of these
experiences, nothing more. He didn’t know how to board a train, how to sit
in it, how it looked from inside, and how it felt when the train moved. He
had no idea how it stopped, then how it started up again, and why it threw
up so much smoke? Once he had pleaded with his father to take him for a ride
on the train like many other children who came to no harm after their train
rides. His father had explained to him that those children were not from
Hazrat Pir’s area. Children from his area travelled in the train only after
obtaining an amulet from darbar sharif, or they slipped out of the
windows and were carried away by jackals.
Even when he grew up, Misri was not required
to go out of the village. For him his own village was his world, and outside
the village lived only ghosts, spirits and witches, demons and magicians.
And big towns like Mianwali and Khushab were inhabited by carnivorous
savages who roasted alive simple villagers and devoured them.
Only once did Misri go out of his village
when his father had fallen sick and insisted on being treated by a village
doctor in the north who lived in Chitta in Soon Sakesar area. He had taken
Misri along. The railway tracks had not reached there, so he had to walk
with his father from morning till evening to get there. Khuda Bakhsh, the
son of his father’s friend there, told him that the maulvi said that before
doomsday came, the Dajjal would appear and that it was indeed the same
Dajjal that pulled the train running up and down the Thal.
Misri had been quite content to live in his
world of sand and dust storms, of sparse crops of grams and houses, of
fading colour with their courtyards fringed by black-stemmed acacias with
white, elongated thorns. In Chitta, he realised for the first time that the
world outside the village was beautiful. Right in front of Chitta, a huge,
gleaming lake spread for many miles at the foot of Sakesar. To the north of
Chitta lay the undulating harvest fields, and a cool breeze blew over the
tall, fragrant grass grown on the hills. At dawn, along with the call to
prayer one could hear the sound of curd being churned emanating from nearby
houses. People had ruddy faces and a kind of sparkle in their eyes. How
wonderful would it be if his village were situated on one of the hills of
Sakesar! After sowing crops he would come only occasionally to have a look
at them and spend the rest of the time at the chaupal, chatting away and
singing. His hair also would be anointed with oil just as Khuda Bakhsh’s and
he also would have got the barber to give him a shave every four, five days
and gone to watch kabaddi matches, animal fairs and comedy shows put up by
wandering troupes of dancers and actors. The multi-level houses plastered
with the white mud-cakes of Chitta looked so beautiful that they had stolen
his heart. He thought, much as he wished his father to live on for years,
but if he died he would sell their land at Thai and settle down at Soon
Sakesar, never to look back at the deserts where the sun kept blazing like
an oven, the wind smote one’s face and there was no trace of greenery except
for the acacias and the gram saplings.
For a few days after Misri returned to the
village with his father, he kept on thinking about it. Then his father died,
and he gradually fell in love with the sandy land where his father had
battled with storms and dunes. What, he told himself, if the mirages gleamed
in the Thal during the day, the winds howled at night, and dust rained
continuously from the skies? So what if the mud cakes plastered on the
village houses had burned in the sun to red embers, and the raging
sand-swept wind had left pockmarks on the walls? After all, the graves of
his forefathers going back to three generations lay there in the village
graveyard and it was there that standing on hillocks his grandfather, like
his father, had looked for a speck of cloud in the sky, but found the dust
storms instead.
And did Soon Sakesar have anything comparable
to the acacias in the courtyards that stood solid on their black stems,
rustling in the strong wind? How pretty the trees looked, laden with yellow
flowers and spreading their fragrance all around? When people woke up in the
morning, they found their beds strewn with yellow flowers, and if anyone
poured out water from the earthenware jar he found one or two yellow flowers
floating in the tumbler. And during those days, some girl or the other from
the village would be abducted. The elders said that the djinns lived in
acacia fragrance and could be seen only by unmarried boys and girls. And
whoever saw them fell in love; the boy abducted the girl and the couple ran
away.
It was in the season when the acacias
blossomed that Misri had run away towards the hills of Soon Sakesar with his
abducted bride. The girl wished to travel by train but Misri knew that if he
sat on the train, Hazrat Pir would get him caught. So, he went up to Khuda
Bakhsh in Chitta and stayed hidden for six months in his mud house about two
miles away from the village. He returned to his village only when the girl’s
father promised Khuda Bakhsh that on his return to his village he would
publicly announce that he had, in fact, got his daughter married off to
Misri. He did just that and thus saved his honour that was at peril. And he
had not told a lie to the villagers. The first thing that Misri did after
reaching Chitta was to get the maulvi marry him to Nisho in the presence of
two witnesses brought along by Khuda Bakhsh. And when they returned to their
village, Nisho was carrying his child, and obviously, it was a legitimate
one.
They named their son Shakoor Khan, but people
called him Shakkar (Sugar) Khan, because of his paternal lineage, ‘misri’
meaning candy. As for Misri and Nisho, they called him by his pet name
‘Meetha’ (Sweet)
When Meetha grew up a bit he went one day
with his friends to have a look at the train from close. That day he had a
coin, which he showed to all the children. One boy told him that if he put
it on the track and the train rolled over the coin, it would turn into an
elongated knife blade. It sounded strange to Meetha that a one-paisa coin
would turn into a knife worth a qua’rter, and that too in an instant. So
when tracks began humming and the children knew that the train was
negotiating the big turn near Hazrat Pir’s shrine, Meetha put his coin on
the track. But as the train came nearer and the tracks began to ring and
shake, the coin slipped off the track. Meetha had his eyes fixed on the coin
and when he saw it tumble down, he said ‘Ah!’ and lunged forward to put it
back on the track. Luckily, an older boy leaped just in time to restrain him
and the train engine lumbered along noisily at a yard’s distance. The wheels
of the train turned making a sing-song sound one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven...
If the older boy had not stopped him in time,
Meetha would have been turned to mincemeat. This fact was transmitted by the
peasants working closeby to the women going into the alleys, getting
constantly exaggerated as it travelled from mouth to mouth. When it finally
reached Nisho, she came to know that Meetha had been run over by the train
and that the train dragged along half of his corpse and the remaining half
was lying at the spot.
Nisho ran towards the railway track, weeping
and screaming. Seeing her in that condition people from the fields and lanes
gathered around her. Then Nisho and all others saw from a distance that the
boys were returning, Meetha among them, riding a piece of wood as though it
were a wooden horse, galloping and kicking as he came along, laughing all
the time. Nisho kept running in the same speed and picked him up in her
arms. Now, she was running back as though she had just saved him from being
run over by the train, and if she slackened her grip on him, the tracks
would draw him back.
The same day a couple of youths from the
village decided to go to Mianwali to have a look at the animal market there.
Misri also agreed to go with them as he hadn’t seen the town of Mianwali
before. There was no need for him, in fact, to go there. Then when someone
told him that they were going there by train and would return by it, he
backed out. However, he was told that they would do so after obtaining
amulets from Hazrat Pir’s shrine. Someone else reported that because of the
war things had become dearer and as a consequence the trustee of the shrine
had hiked the price of the amulet. At this Misri said, ‘I don’t want to get
on the demon that was going to gobble up my son this very day. A hundred
people from this village had participated in laying the tracks. That is why
Hazrat Pir is very angry with the people of this village. I don’t want to
die a horrid death in the train. When my time comes, I want to die a
peaceful death with the words of kalma sharif on my lips.’
When Meetha was in his first grade in the
village school, word got about that a canal as wide as a river was going to
be dug from the Indus and the Thal would soon become lush green with harvest
like Sargodha and Lyallpur. Orchards would grow there, factories and cinema
houses would be built. Roads would be laid up on which English ladies would
walk. And the most educated person of the Thal would be made the
commissioner.
The following day Misri Khan and Nisho went
to see their crop along with their son. Sparse plants stood in the field
like sulking children with mud on their face and ready to cry at the
slightest provocation. Misri and Nisho decided that they would grow orange
and malta in their orchards when the canal was dug. They also decided there
and then that they would give Meetha the best of education so that the
government would be obliged to come to them begging for his appointment as
commissioner at a salary of one thousand rupees per month. Thinking such
sweet thoughts brought tears to Nisho’s eyes. She drew Meetha into her arms
and didn’t let him go for a long time. When Misri released him from his
mother’s embrace, Meetha said to his father in surprise, ‘Papa, put your
head on mum’s chest and listen. It’s pounding like a train!’
Both had laughed heartily at this. Then Misri
turned serious and said, ‘Nisho, the deputy commissioners must be travelling
on trains, mustn’t they?’ Nisho closed both her fists, kissed the thumbnails
and then put them on her eyes, ‘We’ll get an amulet from Hazrat Pir’s shrine
even if it costs us a hundred rupees.’ And thus the future course of
Meetha’s life was settled.
Just as Misri’s father had worked hard to lay
the railway track, he worked hard at the canal network dug through the Thal.
With the money thus earned he sent Meetha, fortified with Hazrat Pir’s
amulet, from the school in the village to the bigger school in the town and
then to the city. But it so happened that Meetha didn’t have to take train
ever. There was always someone or the other going to the city and Meetha was
sent along with him. And thus, in course of time, Meetha passed his higher
secondary school.
Gradually the sand dunes disappeared from the
Thal, and crops began to undulate in place of mirages. Lush green paddy
crops glittered where sparse gram plants grew earlier. The sugarcanes also
grew in plenty. The area was connected on all sides by roads, and dust
storms changed their directions. Though Misri couldn’t grow orange and malta
orchards, he began to gather rich harvest and felt immensely pleased with
himself. So much so that he teased his wife, ‘Nisho, I feel like a young man
all over again and feel like eloping with you to Soon Sakesar.’ Just a few
days ago Khuda Bakhsh from Chitta had come down to borrow hay and
vegetables. Now, people from that paradise came down and wandered about this
hell looking for work.
The village primary school had now graduated
to a middle school. A teacher of this school advised Misri to send his son
to the civil engineering school. When he was told that Misri wants his son
to be the deputy commissioner, he tried to reason with him in the following
way: ‘Look, every person is a deputy commissioner by himself in the job he’s
doing. I’m the deputy commissioner of this school. If your son becomes an
overseer, he’ll become the deputy commissioner of roads and canal.’ Misri
was convinced by the argument. After passing his civil engineering, Meetha
alias Abdul Shakur got a job somewhere near Bhakkar and began to send his
parents fifty rupees every month along with parcels of clothing and English
tonic. He would make it a point to send something or the other through the
people going to his village - suitcase, table, chairs, a large mirror in
which Misri and Nisho could see their faces at the same time.
Once when he had come home for a visit he had
brought a blanket from Chatral for his father and a brand new Lady Hamilton
suit for his mother. That day Misri dyed Nisho’s temples with henna with his
own hands and, after she had worn the new suit, led her into the inner room
and took her in his arms lovingly. As Nisho disentangled herself from his
embrace, she broke into laughter seeing him crying. She had said to him,
‘Don’t be a child. We’re now old enough to start saying our prayers.’
The evening before his holidays got over,
after dinner his parents told him that they have found a fantastic bride for
him. ‘We think you know her - Halima, daughter of the nambardar’s
brother, don’t you?’ But the son suddenly became quiet. When Nisho and Misri
finished their say, he got up and said, ‘The marriage is my personal affair.
I’ll choose the girl I wish to marry. Please don’t worry about that.’ So
saying he bolted out through the courtyard.
‘A strangely insolent boy!’ Misri blurted out
as he glared at his son’s receding figure. ‘Who the hell will worry about
his marriage if we don’t!’
This was the first disappointment that Nisho
had about her son. She said, ‘The railway tracks, the roadways and cars have
turned everyone impertinent. Don’t you see young men wandering about
bare-headed in the street and laughing before their elders with their mouths
wide open, like dogs?’
And Misri wondered how the world had indeed
gone for the worse. Those who took a debt never returned it, and if they
did, it was as though they were doing a favour. Children went to Joharabad
for movies without taking permission from their parents. People moved about
in the train without bothering to obtain amulets from Hazrat Pir. The Thal
had prospered but people lost their roots, just as he was going to. Didn’t
his son tell him just a little while ago that he would marry on his own?
The following day Misri and Nisho went after
their son hammer and tongs. There was so much bitterness that at one point
Meetha went so far as to imply that his parents, too, had married without
their parents’ consent. At this Nisho burst into uncontrollable tears and
Misri hurled a few curses at his son. However, before he left home. Meetha
promised that he would think over it and let them know within a month. While
seeing him off, Misri felt his arms for the amulet and asked, ‘Where do you
tie Hazrat Pir’s amulet?’ The son simply smiled and replied, ‘I’ve given it
to a friend who’s scared of going around in train.’ After that Meetha went
away and throughout the night Misri had nightmares about his son being run
over by the speeding train.
‘What an impertinent son!’ Misri exclaimed as
he got up in the morning. ‘Forget us who are his parents. He has no
consideration even for Hazrat Pir, and does not bother about the fact that
the train has been cursed by him!’
Then one day Misri received a letter from his
son that informed that he was going to Warsik for two months’ training. He
wanted his father to meet him at Kundian station. ‘First, I’ve something to
tell you about the instructions you gave me at the time of my departure.
Secondly, I’ve bought a transistor radio for you that needs neither
electricity nor battery to operate it. It runs on the same material as is
used in flashlights. And the most interesting thing is that you can take it
anywhere you like - chaupal, fields, roads, roundabouts—and play it on. You
can take it along with you when you go to the fields; if not, it will
entertain mother at home. If you come to Kundian, I’ll hand it over to you.’
They were ecstatic and looked at each other
dreamily for a few moments. Then Misri said with a start, ‘Oh God! It’s the
seventh of the Christian month today.’ He got up excitedly, but plonked down
again. ‘Nisho, I can’t reach Kundian in time if I walk. I’ll have to take
the train.’
‘So what?’ Nisho reassured him. ‘I’m going to
Hazrat Pir’s shrine to get you an amulet right away. Fifteen or twenty
rupees is no big sum.’
‘Fifteen or twenty rupees!’ Misri was amazed.
Then he said in a reflective tone, ‘A strangely impertinent world!’ Nisho
chided him, ‘Do you know who it is you’ve called impertinent?’
Misri shivered in fear. He quickly covered
his ears with his hands and began to mutter something under his breath. He
had uttered blasphemy for a small sum of money! He didn’t know that he had
also changed so much like the world around him. After Nisho left for the
shrine, he broke into tears and kept on repenting till she came back.
Nisho had got the amulet for ten rupees. She
gave her husband freshly washed clothes to wear and took out the shoe inlaid
with gold thread from the basket and the well starched turban from the box.
Misri was very jittery. Time and again he groped for the amulet under his
sleeve fearing that Hazrat Pir’s djinns and spirits might have taken it off
as a punishment for his audacity. Nisho tried her best to reassure him and
finally agreed to accompany him to the railway station and help him get into
the train.
The railway station was seven or eight miles
away from the village. When they reached there the train was yet to arrive.
Both of them sat under a tree and decided that if Meetha agreed to the
marriage, then they could have it in the month of Kartik. And if he
said no — as the times had changed — then what could they do? Nisho said,
‘If he had to say ‘no’ then why should he ask you to see him at Kundian and
bring the transistor radio for us? After all, he’s our legitimate son; he
wouldn’t say no.’ Then they also discussed about the way they could manage
the children of the village when they would gather to listen to the radio,
and how should they respond if anyone came to borrow it.
Then all of a sudden they could hear the
train whistling at a distance. Misri got up hastily and touched the amulet.
As the train stopped, a fellow villager who had come on the train was
surprised to see him there and asked him how he could gather the courage to
travel by train. Nisho said, ‘He is going with the permission of Hazrat Pir.
Meetha has asked him to meet at Kundian. He’s bringing a radio for us.’
The fellow began to sing Meetha’s praise and
in the meanwhile the train began to move. Misri ran in panic and somehow
caught hold of the bar, but he couldn’t set his feet on the footboard. He
dangled on the bar for a while and then fell with a thud. One of his feet
came under the wheel and his toes were smashed.
The train stopped. With a shriek Nisho ran to
his side and took him in her arms like a baby. A crowd gathered there. Misri
Khan was holding with his two hands the five bleeding toes over which the
wheels had passed.
An official from the railway came and said
peevishly, ‘Are you blind? Couldn’t you look before you leapt?’
Nisho squirmed at this and screamed at the
official, ‘May you be blind, and your people, and your forefathers...!’
The official muttered something under his
breath and left. Nisho sat by Misri. The man from their village wanted to
tie a bandage by tearing off his turban, but the train had begun to move.
‘It has started again!’ Misri looked at Nisho,
stupefied.
‘Let her go, the bitch!’ Nisho caught his
arms.
But Misri snatched away his arms, and began
to run with a limp as fast as he could, leaving a trail of blood on the
track behind him and screaming, ‘Aye, someone stop it, this bitch. I’m going
to Kundiyan; I’ve got the ticket.’
Slowly, the last coach of the train rumbled
along and he was left there like a beaten man with his mouth wide open.
Nisho and others reached by his side. He looked at the train receding
further and further, and said, ‘How impertinent she could be! What would
she, the bitch, have lost if she had tarried a moment for me? Everything in
this age is like that - insolent and callous.’
He sat down holding in his hands the wounded
toes, then Nisho held them up in her own hands and began to cry. ‘Why did
you’ve to utter those disrespectful words about Hazrat Pir?’
At that moment Misri’s face had assumed an
expression that seemed to say that it would still take ages before the Thal
was populated.
—Translated from
the Urdu by M. Asaduddin
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