Human brotherhood
Fatima Hussain's new book takes an in-depth look at Sufism
By Zaman Khan
The War that
Wasn't:
The Sufi and the Sultan
By Fatima Hussain
Publisher: Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi
Pages: 245
Price: INR 750
Bullah Shah once wrote, "Key janaan mien kon aan Bullahia." The quest to know thy-self is as old as stream of consciousness. Mysticism is path to know thyself. Let me state at the outset that mysticism is not confined to any particular religion and a non-believer could also be a great mystic as a believer can. It is a universal phenomenon and transcends religions, cultures and geographical boundaries. It is older than any recognised, codified religion of the world. Its core message is peace and harmony.

Past, present, future
Dhanak is perhaps the most important Pakistani speculative fiction story ever written
By Shahabuddin Gilani
The editor of quarterly Urdu literary magazine Kitabi Jareeda, published from Lahore, Syed Qasim Mahmood, has done a commendable job by publishing Ghulam Abbas's two long out-of print short stories, Dhanak and Jazeera-e-Sukhanwaran, in the current issue of his magazine.

A word about letters
By Kazy Javed
The master's 150th birthday
I got a copy of the Urdu translation of Chekhov's play The Seagull in the last week of January. Translated by Muhammad Salimur Rehman, the play has recently been published by the Board for the Advancement of Literature under the title Sumandri Bugla. It was pure chance that I read the play on the night which, I later came to know through a newspaper report, was Chekhov's 150th birthday.

A family friend once posted a video on Facebook: Kids butchering English nursery rhymes. "Punjabi" was implied at the beginning. This reviewer thought of Caliban's tragicomic words: The red plague rid you /For learning me your language!

The fact that these children shouldn't be made to suffer English when the emphasis should be on mother tongue does not enter our soft heads. Shamefully our feudal elite has kept us ignorant of our colonial history, our ability to understand our current misery is clipped, colonial rule is confused with other imperial experiments, distorting our self image. Tragic consequences: Punjabi is not taught and most Pakistani Punjabis deem it beneath them to read it, owing to inferiority complex, discontinuity with native literature, and incarcerated mentality.

Aijaz Ahmed criticised Jameson over his thesis that all third world literature is national allegory, accusing western literary theorists of having almost no knowledge of non-European languages, thus relying solely on cosmopolitan writers in the West and making assumptions about literatures such as written in Malayalam. Aijaz has a point but he's off. This reviewer feels Jameson's thesis holds water: the third world literature has no choice but to pass through colonialism since it affects every aspect of life. Whether Ustad Daman drinks tea or Coca Cola, his drinking habits pass through colonial experience in Bhubhul, an ignored Punjabi novel, published in 1996.

Farzand Ali's novel is auto-fiction comprising two parts. One belongs to Gogi the narrator. The second part revolves around Ustad Daman, the people's poet and explores our narrator's intellectual development. The novel masterfully paints Gogi's life among a family of landless farmers. In elegant prose:

(All dwellings burn down when one catches fire. In the small village of ours lived only raheks. All raheks had built huts . . . Also, raheks weren't really living but paying penance.All the huts stood connected to each other. Here a wall was shared, there a covering. No one could claim a solid or not-so-solid a roof. We called a ceiling made with straw dug into midgety earthen walls our lean-to. None of the raheks owned a piece of land of their own.)

Without clichés the author depicts poverty, power dynamics, friends, loves, daring young girls, hunger. One of interesting characters is Chacha Landu who falls in love with a married woman Hoshaan, who leaves her kids and husband behind, lives with Landu, then returns, devastating him. The novel often challenges our borrowed Victorian notions:

(She had a strong and attractive body.

Her husband's body appeared to be weak, lacking in muscles.

In response to Naji's addressing me as "little one," I asked, "Bhabhi, do I look little to you?"

"You look many things to me," she smiled without inhibition.)

Found in these lines is the lack of inhibition a la Heer and celebration of sexual feelings, eroded by convent education. Farzand can insert sorrow so smoothly; it haunts you for a long time. Zohra and Gogi fall in love. Gogi's parents want a vatta-satta arrangement. Gogi wants to rebel but Zohra's idea of love is different:

("Remember, Gogi, I used to kiss your mouth . . . Do you know why?"

Almost weeping, I said, "Because I seemed a little boy." She laughed involuntarily in response to the way I said it. She spoke again, "Remain still for a moment peacefully. I need to kiss your forehead." Then she kissed it with such love it elicited tear from my eyes . . . I checked my forehead, where still lingered sweat drops owing to the heat of her lips.

The one inside me grew melancholic one more time.)

The protagonist is neither a hero, nor anti-hero. He seizes moments sometimes and sometimes moments defeat him. Throughout he remains, as per Daman's advice, connected to people, not fame or critics. This reviewer was struck by Farzand's ability to introduce varied emotional experiences at will. The reviewer found himself laughing out loud on the simplest of humour. The poet hires a tonga and persuades the driver to go through a one-way street; the cop's on duty. The driver is asked to tell the cop that the wrestler Bholu's father is aboard only to hear the cop has in fact seen Bholu's father. As the tongawala relays the cop's reply, Ustad Daman says that your cop is naïve for wrestlers require more fathers.

On another occasion, sudden sadness! The reader is aware Ustad Daman's health is declining; he's hospitalised. His organs are dying. Gogi is depressed. Daman's all tubes. Governer Jilani pays a visit and the poet doesn't even stir. Suddenly the news of Faiz's death arrives and Ustadji yanks out all the needles and goes to the funeral uttering these words in extreme pain:

("He was my friend. I have to go.")

Daman passes away a few days later.

Toni Morrison makes a distinction between writers: one who maintain status quo and those who challenge it. Farzand and Daman stand beside Morrison. In a quintessential scene, Gogi makes up a couplet protesting the treatment meted out to the weak. The arhti hears of it from his crony, has Gogi brought before him. For Gogi this is the moment: do or die (a moral death). Summoning up the courage he recites expecting a thrashing. Instead he is taken to meet Ustad Daman, whose own history mirrors Farzand's. A literary friendship begins.

Intizar Husain sees colonialism as an era of discontinuity setting in motion a process of alienating people from themselves. In the first phase a mentally colonised elite is created; second the middle class mimics the habits of the elite and gradually the lower strata catches up. He also points out that western experience of fiction writing is mainly a phenomenon of eye and ear experience. Reading Bhubhul was so refreshing for his art relies on the indigenous technique of rasa where different moods anchor the prose and mise en scène.

The novel is memorable because it fictionalises a literary figure and allows its readers a peep into an intellectual's evaluation of events such as military coups. Among other charms one is the appearance of characters from our cultural world, from Faiz to Madam to Allauddin, who once shows up when in need of money. Ustadji borrows the money from Heera Mandi.

My only disappointment seems that we never witness any conversation of note between the two about colonialism, especially for a man extremely educated, involved in the freedom struggle, with friends like Nehru and Faiz, knew languages, jailed, and tragically lost his child and his non-Muslim wife due to the British, though he's astute enough to draw an embarrassing comparison between his arrest under colonial rule and Bhutto government Perhaps it falls on the next generation to build on what Farzand has given us.

Past, present, future

The editor of quarterly Urdu literary magazine Kitabi Jareeda, published from Lahore, Syed Qasim Mahmood, has done a commendable job by publishing Ghulam Abbas's two long out-of print short stories, Dhanak and Jazeera-e-Sukhanwaran, in the current issue of his magazine.

Both the short stories are representatives of the craftsmanship of the great story writer, but Dhanak stands out for being highly relevant to the present state of affairs in Pakistan.

Written way back in 1967, Dhanak foresees with utmost poignancy, the rise of religious extremism in the country since the mid-Seventies. The story begins, in 1967, at a 71-storey hotel, Hotel Moeen Jo Daro, where scientists, political leaders and renowned personalities from different walks of life from around the world have assembled to hear a Pakistan astronaut, Adam Khan, speak to them over radio after he lands on the moon. On the one hand, people gathered at the hotel are highly excited about the first man landing on the moon and to hear directly from him about his experience. On the other hand, far from the city of Karachi a prayer leader of a mosque announces, after Fajr prayers, to the namazis with contempt that "an anti-religion Pakistani has claimed to have landed on the moon. Brethren, what this man says is utter blasphemy. Let us Muslims unite and smother this blasphemy before it spreads any further to harm the Ummah." The cleric gets loud applause and support from those present at the mosque.

When Adam Khan returns from his moon expedition, a reception is arranged for him where the wife of the ambassador of a Western country gives him a peck on the cheek. Clerics interpret this innocent expression of affection in such a way as is expected of them.

Then clerics of various shades of opinion join hands and launch an agitation to press the government to stop acts of blasphemy, obscenity and transgression.

The clerics' agitation gains strength rapidly as the government fails to act against them decisively because they cannot afford to lose their support if they had to stay in power. Finally, the government falls and fresh elections take place. The clerics contest the elections on one platform and one-point agenda of defeating anti-religion forces. Initially, they have some disagreement over the formation of government, but their leader saves the coalition by convincing his partners that separately one colour does not have the kind of attraction that a Dhanak (rainbow), made of all the seven primary colours, has. So the coalition of religious parties' forms government and it embarks upon purging society of all anti-religion practices and "satanic influences." Now the government sets about to implement "true religion" in all earnest.

The affairs of the state are run from the hujra of a prominent mosque in the capital. The clerics tell the people that the modern education that is imparted at schools, colleges and universities are harmful to religion and their interests, so all the modern educational institutions are converted into madrassas. Hotels and clubs are turned into orphanages. Purdah is made mandatory for women and girls. Education for women is restricted to basics of religion and what is required to maintain the account of washer men. Music, cinema, theatre, poetry and all art and culture are banned.

Only the police and soldiers are allowed to keep firearms. The rest of the populace is allowed to keep only swords and daggers. Men can own and display swords and women only daggers. All men take pride in the display of swords. Even water carriers carry swords under their waste bands while at work.

Envoys of foreign countries are told to go back to their countries as their presence in the country would have corrupting influence on the morals of the people. They are told that they will be summoned to the country whenever need arises for consultation with them.

But the coalition does not have smooth sailing for long. Differences crop among them on the interpretation of religious tenets. They resort to mutual recriminations. Then they begin to stage protest rallies against one another. Gradually, rallies turn violent. Various groups attack one another's places of worship. It all begins with the destruction of a niche at a mosque in a bomb blast. Soon violence takes the shape of Armageddon. Groups kill members of other groups. An atmosphere of hate and fear prevails all over the country.

In the midst of the fratricide, one day the sound of bomber aircrafts and battle tanks are heard.

Many years later, on a moonlit night, four European tourists are taking a camel ride among the ruins of the country. At one spot their guide tells them, "Here once stood the 71-storey Hotel Moeen Jo Daro."

Ghulam Abbas was neither an atheist nor an agnostic. One should follow Dhanak by Manto's essay Allah Ka Fazal Hai. Manto had foreseen the shape of things to come in the mid-Fifties.

I got a copy of the Urdu translation of Chekhov's play The Seagull in the last week of January. Translated by Muhammad Salimur Rehman, the play has recently been published by the Board for the Advancement of Literature under the title Sumandri Bugla. It was pure chance that I read the play on the night which, I later came to know through a newspaper report, was Chekhov's 150th birthday.

Like other great Russian writers of the 19th century -- Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstory -- Chekhov is widely known in our corner of the globe. English translations of all of his works have been available here since long and many of them have also been rendered into Urdu. In fact, Urdu translations of his short stories were published before the Partition and they greatly influenced Urdu fiction that was passing through its formation period in those days. Manto was the first to introduce Chekhov here and he also confessed consciously accepting his influence.

Chekhov's plays have been translated into Urdu and published from India. Before The Seagull, Muhammad Salimur Rehman translated another play of the Russian author Three Sisters, which was published from Lahore in 1976 under the title Teen Behnaiy. He says he is now making translation of the playwright's famous drama The Cherry Orchard.

Chekhov's 150th birth anniversary celebrations provided Russian President Dmitry Medvedev with the opportunity to profess his love and admiration for the writer. After laying a banquet of white roses at the monument to Chekhov in Taganrog, a port in southern Russia where he was born in 1860, the Kremlin chief told a meeting that he had developed a keen interest in his "early teens and had read all of Chekhov's works including early humor stories as well as his personal letters. Honestly I am happy about this because if I didn't do it then I don't know when I would do it."

A newspaper report says that Chekhov's birthday made President Medvedev, son of a university professor, to think about his own legacy: "Today I have thought about what Chekhov had time to do, and caught myself thinking a not very pleasant thought Chekhov passed away when he was 44 after creating his immortal works. I am also 44".

Chekhov died in 1904. 44 years earlier, he was born to a grocer who was the son of a serf but had managed to purchase his family's freedom. He received his education from the Medical School of Moscow University. However, he practiced medicine only a short time before dropping it for writing.

He stepped into the world of literature as a humorous writer under the pseudonym Antosha Chekhonte but soon veered towards serious writings. His short stories, novels and plays are admired for strict realism and a delicate sense of humor shaded with pessimism.

Chekhov won fame and popularity among his countrymen and in Europe before reaching the age of 35 but by that time he had noticed symptoms of tuberculosis. It was an incurable disease in those days that finally pushed him to his long home.

Diwan Karomal once described Mirza Qilich Baig as a "book-producing machine". Syed Mazhar Jamil has now counted the books that Baig wrote and says the number is 457. They include books written in Sindhi, Persian and English on literature, philosophy, history, culture and sociology as well as a number of novels, plays and short stories. The great poet Shiek Ayaz once wrote in a letter to Ibrahim Joyo that he respected only one Sindhi scholar and that was Mirza Qilich Baig Mirza, he added, " he is the greatest literary figure of Sindh after Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai".

The number of books that Mirza Qilich Baig wrote and translated is amazing, but more important is the fact that he was a progressive thinker. He continued writing all his life mainly to introduce modern ideas, trends and reforms in his corner of the globe. Sindhi had been a language of poetry till his times, but he successfully turned it into language of prose. This development has greatly influenced Sindhi literature, culture and wisdom and made Dr. Ghulam Ali Alana to label him as the father of Sindhi prose.

The role Mirza Qilich Baig played in the second half of 19th century is not different from that of played by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Raja Ram Mohan Roy. If he is not well known outside Sindh, it is because little has been written about him in English or Urdu. The Pakistan Academy of Letters recently published a book on him titled Mirza Qilich Baig: Shakhsiat aur Fun. Authored by Naseer Mirza, it is probably the only book on the great Sindhi scholar in Urdu.

Now Dr. Shahid Iqbal Kamran has written an insightful article on the role Mirza Qilich Baig played in the formation of the modern Sindhi mind. He rightly claims that Baig modernised the people of Sindh. The article is part of the current issue of the quarterly Al-Aqreba published from Islamabad under the editorship of Syed Mansoor Aqil and Shuhla Ahmad.

The American Jewish historian, who reviled Israel for its expansionist policies, criticised the US administration for invading Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and was known worldwide for bringing out the darker side of American history died of heart attack past fortnight at 87.

Howard Zinn's fame is mostly based on his book A People's History of the United States. Published in 1980, it offended many Americans for it was the first scholarly attempt to make public the sordid realities that historians and governments had been trying to conceal for generations. The book showed that five hundred years of American history was full of bloodletting, violence, injustice and inhumanity.

Another famous book of the Boston University professor is his autobiography published under the title You can't be Neutral on a Moral Train. The book carries the message that the present ugly system will not change until people stand up for justice and their vision of the good society.