The powerplay and the name of Yazeed come up unexpectedly in a late Manto short story which lent its name to one of his many collections from his prolific post-Partition era. Written in the era of the squabble over the newly formed states of Pakistan and India, as the fear of India blocking the waters of the rivers begins to spread, the protagonist decides to name his son Yazeed in the hope that this one will open up waterways in the same way the “other one” had blocked access to water. The story stops short and we know that naming such names will not help as these conflicts have escalated into full-fledged battles between the two countries.
The narrative of the marsiya also moved Ismat Chughtai, one of the greatest fiction writers from the Progressive era. Well known as a non-conformist and iconoclast, Ismat had a no-holds-barred approach being labelled an “Uncivil Woman”, also the title of a newly published of essays on her life and work, edited by Rakhshanda Jaleel in India. Ismat was moved by the great humanistic power of the marsiya and this is what she attempted to recapture in her Aik Qatra-i-Khoon [A Drop of Blood], a retelling which is a kind of half-way house between a marsiya and a novel. Most readers missed the acidic bite of the characteristic Chughtai style, the zip and zing. I found it to be a rather damp squid when I reviewed it on first publication. After so many years, I wonder if the required pathos was somewhat of an alien element for her but also begs the question whether the events of Karbala are amenable to contemporary prose?
All such questions were reduced to mere trifles when a few years back Qurratulain Hyder came out with a long story called Qaid-Khanay Main Talatum Hai [Tumult in the Prison]. Author of the magisterial Aag Ka Dariya [River of Fire], she was a master of telescoping different historical moments into a pulsatile present and had by then written three volumes of Aakhir-i-Shab Kay Hamsafar [Co-travellers at the End of the Night], a non-fiction novel of the author’s life and times beginning a mere thousand years ago. Taking the narrative framework from the famous marsiya by Mirza Dabeer, and rendering almost entire lines into prose, she recaptures the situation in which Zainab is responding to her interrogators in the prison cell of Syria. In the narrative are blended the tragic voices of children affected by the ceaseless violence in the Middle East, making it one ceaseless and continuous story. With the subsequent civil war in Syria, it is a haunting reminder of history serving as a bone-chilling account of today.
While this enigmatic piece bewildered some of her admirers, it led to a critical essay from Intizar Husain, the arch fictionalist who was also a close contender for fiction’s crown and a contemporary, never an unquestioning admirer. Named after the story, the essay was reprinted in his last collection Apni Danist Main [In My Opinion], published in 2014. He suggests a reading of Hyder’s work as a marsiya and at the same time as a short story, an afsana of the twentieth-century Karbala. He disregards questions as to why the author did not write a straightforward marsiya, but goes on to point out that that far from being the enlightened age of modernity, our age is tainted with its “religious fanatics, tyrants and ideologues”, drenched in blood and best expressed as a Karbala.
Avoiding any sort of direct comment to the extent of being reticent, Intizar Husain never made any pointed reference in his fiction. Burnt cities, desolation and the erosion of hope are constant themes in his work, often free-floating so that one city could be the other and one historical period easily the other. Directions keep getting reversed in the brilliant and angst-filled fable Khwab Aur Taqdeer [Dreams and Destiny], where a group of travellers intending to head back to Medina find themselves facing Kufa each time. Clearly, they have lost their moorings and their quest has acquired the proportions of a dystopia — the Promised Land turned sour. This is what lies on the other side of Karbala.
Although not overtly political, the events of Karbala are part and parcel of the personal affliction borne by Mariam in Asad Muhammad Khan’s brilliantly evoked character study. She wants the young boys to wear green shirts during Muharram days instead of playing hockey and resorts to choice abuses when she has nothing else to say about the “murderers of her shejada [little prince].” Even more real is the singular person from Kufa in the story named after him who hears about the tumultuous events but goes on to eat a hearty meal, smear the spilled oil on his beard and fall into a satiated sleep. Nothing else matters to him and he can let history deal with its turmoil.
I have been thinking off and on about this Singular Person ever since I heard Asad Muhammad Khan read it out in his inimitable style many years ago. This man’s sense of contentment continues without any disturbance but sometimes I see with him with a sword in hand, ready to spill the blood of those who dare disturb his repose with any news. For him Karbala is Nowhere. He may be overbearing, but he would be an outsider in the realm of Urdu literature.
Asif Farrukhi is a writer, editor and teaches literature. He has written extensively on Intizar Husain, Partition stories and fiction
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 1st, 2017