The One Who Did Not Ask
By Altaf Fatima
Translated by Rukhsana Ahmad
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 978-969-7161-72-0
387pp.

The One Who Did Not Ask is the English translation by Rukhsana Ahmad of Altaf Fatima’s Urdu novel Dastak Na Do. Rukhsana Ahmad has written and adapted several plays for the stage and BBC, achieving distinction in both.

Dastak Na Do was serialised and televised in the early days of PTV and an abridged translation was published monthly in the Herald. Later, the novel was rendered into English as The One Who Did Not Ask and was first published by Heinemann UK in 1995. It was out of print until now, when Lightstone Publishers, rendering a great service to Pakistani Urdu writers, published it again, given the renewed interest in stories set around Partition.

In her introduction to the novel, Rukhsana Ahmad highlights that The One Who Did Not Ask appears to be an almost ingenious narrative, powered by the sheer energy of its story, with a sophisticated mastery over language, painstaking and precise characterisation and a structure which manages to hold together a vast array of characters and several complex themes, sometimes even in inherently anomalous and contradictory positions.

It is the beauty of its chaste language and the subdued lyricism of its depiction, no less than the vivid characters, which draw many readers towards the novel.

A fresh translation of an Urdu novel by the late Altaf Fatima is lucid enough to be read on its own merits

It is a story about the decade preceding Independence. It depicts a glorious past in united India and portrays Hindus and Muslim co-existing peacefully. However, only Muslims are shown as victims of violence at the time of Partition. The fear and danger are captured accurately enough, even if the horrors are counter-balanced by acts of real human kindness, like the Sikh gardener’s touching loyalty.

Altaf Fatima’s strength lies in creating strong female characters and, as the story progresses, the action expands to include more women, soaking up their resourcefulness and transforming their lives.

Gaythi in Dastak Na Do is a good example of a strong female character. In pre-Partition India, Gaythi is a little girl who befriends a Chinese Muslim boy who peddles household items on his bicycle. He looks after her when she falls from a tree and breaks her leg. She keeps seeing him despite her family’s condescending attitude towards him.

Liu Chu, whose Muslim name is Safdar Yaseen, reminds me of the eponymous character in Tagore’s ‘Kabuliwala’, who moves from Afghanistan to Bengal and befriends a little girl there.

Both the ‘Kabuliwala’ and the Chinese boy miss their own families and find some solace in the little girls who come into their lives in a distant land, thousands of miles away from home. Gaythi rides her bicycle on roads, expresses her love to a cousin without any reservations, and defends her straightforwardness when her unrequited romance becomes known to her family.

Altaf Fatima makes Gaythi leave her home when she is frowned upon by her family and becomes the target of their disdain. Gaythi fails in her exams and shows no remorse about it, by saying that it is a personal matter, and failing and passing exams doesn’t matter much to her.

It is a story about the decade preceding Independence. It depicts a glorious past in united India and portrays Hindus and Muslim co-existing peacefully. However, only Muslims are shown as victims of violence at the time of Partition. The fear and danger are captured accurately enough, even if the horrors are counter-balanced by acts of real human kindness, like Sikh gardener’s touching loyalty. Altaf Fatima’s strength lies in creating strong female characters and, as the story progresses, the action expands to include more women, soaking up their resourcefulness and transforming their lives.

Gaythi and Safdar Liu Chu live out the drama of this separation in a microcosm which replicates the reality of the Asian continent. The brutal, stony divide of the Himalayas, which partitioned two ancient cultures as they developed along parallel lines, remains insurmountable for people in the world. In spite of their common religion, the Indian characters around Safdar cannot view him except as an alien. They are reluctant to interact with him at any other level.

The embodiment of the racial ‘others’ raises the novel from the stature of an ordinary love story to a serious and challenging examination of the nature of prejudice. It is this intuitive perception at the heart of the novel that attracted the translator, Rukhsana Ahmad to it and made the labour of translation worthwhile.

Nostalgia is a mood favoured by Urdu writers. It is integral to the Muslim consciousness. Writers have often delved into the past and bemoaned the loss of an ideal age, free of the vicious evils of the present. This is accompanied by a deep and instinctive desire for change, but within the old framework of references.

The literal meaning of translation is to carry across. When a text is translated it is carried across from one language to another. Edwin A. Cranston, who is the leading translator of classical Japanese poetry, has said that translators have duties to their authors, but they also have duties to their own powers.

It is said that the process of translation is not passive. A translator has his or her own creative impulse, and that creativity plays its role in the process. As such, a good translation is faithful to the spirit, not to the letter of the original work.

As I read the original Dastak Na Do and now the translation The One Who Did Not Ask, I must say that Rukhsana Ahmad has done a tremendous job. Her translations deliver the meaning of the original text beautifully, as well as the quality of style of the original text.

For instance, when Safdar is allowed to enter Gaythi’s bungalow and hurls his bundle on the floor and sits down, that very instance “Malan walked past him wearing a long red and black skirt, a short tight-sleeved blouse and a blue scarf. Safdar longed for a fine white bamboo screen and a brush, so he could steal all the suffering and music of this hard-working middle-aged woman’s person and capture it in bamboo sticks.”

Rukhsana Ahmad’s own views on her translation shifted it away from being simply an exercise, making it something more interactive and collaborative. She humbly accepted that she didn’t know anything about Lao-Tzu — Dastak Na Do’s theme is based on Lao-Tzu’s famous philosophy that ‘you don’t have to knock on doors to ask for good things.’ She had a friend introduce her to Lao-Tzu’s philosophy. Thus, while translating, rather than going for the literal meaning of the Urdu title, Ahmad went for the philosophy.

It’s a smoothly translated book, very easy to read. Contrary to what people think, an effortless translation requires harder work. Praise for a literary translation can hardly come much higher. But when it comes down to opinions on whether the work is a good translation or not, it will largely be up to individual readers to decide.

Literary translators have a tough job. Remaining true to the original text, while also delivering the translation with a style and flow comparable to that of the source, is not an easy job. Having said that, I must say that the book The One Who Did Not Ask is lucid enough to be read and reviewed primarily on its own merits, rather than as a translation.

The reviewer writes short fiction in Urdu and is currently working on her first novel

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 2nd, 2024