issue 22: winter 2020
One morning, when she woke up, she realized that her right eye was not aligned with her left eye, and her right hand could not coordinate with her left hand. One side refused to work with the other side. She became very worried about this half-ness of hers. A terrifying ring of black smoke suddenly surrounded her on all sides. She became frightened and tried to hide her face with her hands, but her hands were unable to cover her face, leaving half of it exposed. On one side, there was the soft, warm protection of her hands. On the other side, a morning of swirling dust and the harsh sun of summer. She looked around her and tried to call someone. Tried to call someone and say, do you see what is happening? But everyone was asleep under the rising sun and the sound of their warm breaths filled the room.
She got up and walked by everyone. She saw that everyone was whole and intact, smiling peacefully in their sweet and deep sleep. She breathed with ease when she saw them sleeping sweetly and deeply. She splashed her face with cold water. At this point, she realized that her face was split in two halves. One side was slightly raised than the other. The two were not equal. She hurriedly looked at her reflection in the mirror. Everything was fine there. The same, unchanged picture – only colourless after many years of viewing it. God forgive! She tried to close her eyes, disgusted by the sight. But it was like her left eye belonged to the mirror. Her socket stayed glued to the mirror. Despite her attempts to shut it, the left eye remained open. She looked with surprise. How could one eye be shut and the other eye be open. Then a wave of terror spread from her spine to the rest of her body. She remembered that she had invited everyone over for tea that day. All the people she knew. She had tried to keep pace with them, but they had left her tired and panting. Her strength and stamina had given up. They – all of them – did not know that she was left tired and panting after her attempts to keep pace with them. They did not know that she was a step, maybe two steps, maybe centuries of steps behind them. Or maybe if we turned our faces, they were the ones who were centuries behind her? God forgive! She thought. Only those who are outside of time can be ahead. And who can be outside of time?
The promise of time. Indeed, humanity is in loss. But more than anyone, it is my gender that is in loss. No one is devoured by time like my gender. From one moment to the next, our meat separates from our bones. Our skin keeps wrapping around us like a scarf, so we may be identified, but desolation sings unchecked inside this external identity. She tried to laugh at herself. Her other half cried. It is surprising that spectators want to see something other than us in us. And how important it is – for us – this spectating by the spectators. This race between the spectator and spectacle is strange because everyone is both spectator and spectacle. And everyone is flowing in a mad torrent together. Sometimes she felt like asking her family, and even people outside her family, to come, sit, take a deep breath, and tell each other that we are not what we want to see or show. Our mutual connections are the relationships of wounded people. But time, time! Where is the time! We have to do so much in so little time. Like the hands of a clock, from the brightness of morning to the darkness of night: go, go, go. And still stuck in the same place where we started from. She tried to think of all the people who were galloping towards the highest levels of success at breakneck speed. They should’ve reached the other pole of the world by now. But is the other pole different from this pole? She got tangled, confused. She started the race to finish the day’s chores. She needed to be done by eleven.
The house was filled with dust because of yesterday’s storm. She started cleaning the dust settled on objects. She was astonished when she saw the clean, spotless objects emerge from under layers of dust. (But why can’t we shake off our own dust?). She remembered the way Yasmin’s house was always clean – the walls and floors always sparkling. Everything in her house shined. She was building her second two-story house in the city’s richest neighbourhood.
“Oh God! When did you buy this rubber plant? But you need a bigger pot for it.” Naseem said as soon as she walked inside.
“Yes, yes! That’s necessary.” She responded without paying much attention. She looked at Naseem from the corner of her eyes. Did she notice?
Did she see? She tried to hide her left hand inside her sleeve. It seemed lifeless to her, even though it was attached to her arm. And her left-eye! God forgive!
“You know the saree you were wearing yesterday? It had such a lovely print! Quickly, tell me, where did you get it?” Begum Hameed bowed her head and looked at her own beautiful hands, before she looked up and asked the question.
“God! This turquoise is exquisite! It’s real?” Farhat was always quick to spot expensive gemstones.
“Yes! Saleem brought it back from his last trip to Iran.” Begum Hameed lingered lovingly on her husband’s name.
“And how are you, Naseem? How long before the new house is finished?” Raheela asked from the far corner of the room.
“The floors are being done. Yes, yes – that plot went for eighty thousand. You never asked again. So we let it go...”
“Yeah – there were some problems.”
“That skin lotion is back on the market. Don’t complain later!” Begum Yousuf announced as she caressed her beautiful face, which was decorated with make-up. She used to say that no one should appear in front of their husband with their real face. Her make-up box was always next to her. Then there was Mrs. Shaukat Ali. Her husband was a famous public intellectual. She used to say that men can be intellectuals or illiterate – it doesn’t make a difference. The fight between man and woman is a simple fight of ego. So I handed my ego to my husband the very first day and told him, you can burn it to the ground, or you can clean it and polish it and put it on a pedestal, I want nothing to do with it. And – in her own words – fortified herself. The husband never accessed her real self, so there was never any disillusionment. Everything went splendidly. And then there was Raheela – whenever she needed new jewellery, or a new dress, she cooked her husband his favourite dessert. She used to say that the relationship between husband and wife is the same as any diplomatic relation. Anybody who forgets this is doomed. No need for honesty and transparency.
“But this is all a lie – why a lie?”
Raheela gleefully chuckled at this question. “Don’t mess around trying to be truthful. Even God won’t be able to save you.”
“The last chapter is now out in the Woman’s Magazine.” Rafia, who was the author of the circle, announced.
“Oh – oh okay! I didn’t get the chance to read it yet.” She felt regret that she couldn’t even make a connection with Woman’s Magazine, and a deep sigh of sorrow got stuck in her throat, refusing to come out. The promise of time. Indeed, humanity is in loss. We made humans high and mighty and then dragged them through the worst humiliations. The suffocation, the humiliation, it was all leading her further and further inside dark caves full of rancid, reeking skeletons that declared: whoever was respectable is disrespectable, whoever was appealing is unappealing. You are a second-class gender, and this stamp of second-class has spread its blue-black ink from your skin to your bones. This is your real identity. You abandon the battlefield and run. Now the revealed book will be put in your left hand and those of the left hand – shame! shame! – the people of the left hand are branded with dark melancholy – and the people of the right hand – the people of the right hand are manifestly bestowed with glowing faces.
She looked around the room. Her left-eye was strange; it saw loose bones bundled together by pieces of skin. And she was shocked by this eye, which saw that everyone was panting with the effort to keep pace with each other. And smiling. Everyone was smiling an anguished smile. The smile said: we are ahead. She said – without a sound, without a word – as she poured the tea into cups: “Only those who are outside of time can be ahead. And time’s grip is strongest on us. That’s why we are so comically anguished that one eye laughs at us and the other one cries. Come! Let’s wash our make-up and look at our wilting faces without any sadness. And make our connection with Woman’s Magazine because we are a second-class gender, and let us not be sad at that either.”
But no one was ready to breathe the air inside the dark caves full of rancid, reeking skeletons. She was exhausted. She tried to close her eyes, but what could she do about the left eye? Alas! This left eye expelled me from my tribe. She was running away in search of refuge, away from the clatter and laughter. Then she remembered the person who was put on this earth as a prophet, who ran from the torture of prophethood, who found refuge in the hollow trunk of a tree. But the people of the town cut the tree in half, and along with the tree, the prophet.
She was inside a hollow trunk. The people of the town were coming with saws in their hands.
Khalida Hussain (1937-2019) was a renowned Urdu fiction writer. She was the author of multiple story collections and a recipient of the Pride of Performance award, one of the highest civilian honours given by the Pakistan government.
Haider Shahbaz is doing a PhD in Comparative Literature at UCLA. He is the translator of Mirza Athar Baig's Hassan's State of Affairs (HarperCollins India, 2019). He was the 2016-17 Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He lives in Lahore.