Between six and seven in the evening, I am going to act on the decision I made a couple of months ago. And the decision was – well, the decision is, that I will ask the clerk, Anwar Ahmed, to get on the back seat of my bike, and go for a spin with me. Of course, this is all an excuse. I will get out of the city, and turn my bike towards the road that goes along a high mountain range and some deep valleys, and when I have travelled about three miles down this road, I will reach a turn, and by this point, my speed (well, my bike’s speed) will be so fast that it will be impossible to go any faster. Then I will head towards the spot on the road where there is no protective barrier, and suddenly turn away from the road and fling myself, my bike, and the clerk, Anwar Ahmed, off the road, and we’ll fly down into the deep depths. I believe – I don’t know why I believe this – right then Anwar will emit a piercing scream from his throat. An unbelievable horror will detonate in his heart. We’ll begin to descend downwards. The way bikes fall in stunt films. These moments will be the moments of my victory, and I will quickly try to tell Anwar what is happening, why it’s happening, and how it’s happening. Whatever I can get across I will try to explain to him. And quickly. Because once gravity completely overpowers us there will be nothing left – not me, not the clerk, Anwar Ahmed, and not my bike.
Right now, I’m waiting for him. The bike is parked underneath my building in its usual spot, and I’m writing this all down. Why? Maybe because waiting for Anwar is becoming a hellish ordeal and I want to keep myself occupied with some task – or, maybe, deep down inside, I am thinking about why Anwar should be the only one to know about what will happen, and is going to happen. Anwar doesn’t play an integral role. I can take another person with me. It doesn’t have to be Anwar. How many of these others would I like to take with me on this ride today! It was only a coincidence that Anwar had been free and agreed to come along. The head clerk could have taken up my invitation, thinking he could get some fresh air. Otherwise any other clerk would have definitely come along if I had offered to treat them to dinner.
Thinking this is making me quite happy; it could’ve been any of them, any of them would’ve been suitable for spending this eternal evening with me. But anyway, it was Anwar who happily agreed to come to my flat (what flat? this wretched eight-by-ten is better described as a coop!) in the evening so we could go out on my bike and have some fun. So maybe I’m writing because it is everyone’s right to know whatever is going to happen later this evening. Anwar shouldn’t be the only one to know. And when people will find our ruins in the deep depths next to the turn, which is three miles down the road, and will come here hoping to find out more about us, is there any problem if they find this note lying about? No, I think there is no problem with that. But just now it occurred to me that people who find this note might think this is something written before a suicide – actually, they will think of it as something written before both a suicide and a murder – they might think of it as some type of note like that, and I don’t want that to be the case, not at all, I don’t want them to reduce my action to something so simple as a suicide or a murder. My action – which will take place today – will be very complex and nuanced. This feeling that my decision cannot be neatly categorized is giving me immense satisfaction, and I’m feeling assured that I’m no ordinary man.
And everything that happened to me is not ordinary either. In fact, it is so extraordinary and astonishing that now when I feel like talking about it the narrative refuses to be fully captured. But perhaps the real reason I am unable to narrate what happened to me is that I haven’t written anything in years, not even a letter to someone. Years ago, some people made me think that I was a pretty decent writer. Under their influence, I even wrote a bunch of rubbish, and I always wanted to bring these writings to the attention of these people as quickly as possible. Then it struck me one day that I have made myself quite pathetic in the way I depended on these people. Damn it all, I thought, and after that day I stopped writing completely. I’m thinking that if I had continued to write this whole time, all that I’m writing now, could’ve been written a lot more elegantly. I get it! The secret desire in my heart, which is perhaps the secret desire in every writer’s heart. Is this the seduction of being appreciated posthumously for the beauty of my prose? Maybe. And now I want to laugh at this thought – this thought is tickling me, making me want to let out a loud, carefree laugh – but I cannot laugh, I can only smile. Really, my reality is not coming through like this. How can I tell it? First, the repeated mentions of laughter and smiling I have made are not at all, not even a little bit, meant to be symbolic, or how do you say it, meant to be similes or metaphors in the service of some unique idea. I just want to talk about the muscles, tissues, and nerves in my face, indeed it is because of my face that at some point this evening my bike will fall off from the three-mile turn in the road, and at that precise moment my office’s clerk, Anwar, will also be with me.
The whole fault is of my smile, the smile on my face, which has been fixed there with an unshakable ferocity for the past few years. Even if I desire, and I have desired so much, desired with such passion, to make my face capable of expressing something other than a smile, I can’t do it. But now I’m thinking that whoever will read this note will at this stage begin to feel a strange frustration about what this person really wants to say and why he doesn’t get to the point. So, I feel that I should now blindly detail whatever it is I want to say. Without thinking twice about any word or sentence. Some years ago, I was involved in an accident. Not just me, many people were involved in this accident; some died and others remained alive. The way it often happens in accidents. I was one of the intermediates, the group of people that doesn’t die or live, but gets injured. Regained consciousness to find myself on the operation table. Was informed that it was highly unlikely that any bone in my body remained unbroken. And that it was nothing short of a miracle that I was still alive. For me it was shocking that my whole body was shattered into pieces, but my mind was completely functional. Doctors used their best medical expertise to put me back together in my original state, and wrapped me in a shell of hard plaster from head to foot, so my body could wait for the damaged parts to recover without moving and causing any further damage.
Those people who have never been involved in such an accident cannot imagine what kind of experience it is to be imprisoned in a shell of hard plaster, waiting to fully heal, and maybe my pen doesn’t have the power to truthfully narrate such sensations, and maybe there is no benefit in telling them, or any function that will be served by such a narration. During those days, I would feel that I was somewhere inside the shell, somewhere but where? Where in there was I? I could not decide. But then suddenly I would experience an itch or a pain in an indefinite place inside the shell, and the sensation would spark a disjointed thought in my mind before disappearing, the thought that I was continuing as usual. I remember there was an image that lay heavily on my mind, and I used to play around and explore the many angles of this image. I used to imagine myself as a silkworm shut inside its cocoon, waiting in the cocoon for the day it could burst out as a butterfly; the long, warm nights of sleep inside the cocoon made me dream of death and darkness.
My recovery was extremely successful. All my body parts were re-joined so neatly that nobody could say they had ever been broken. Everyone was happy. I was happy. My doctors were happy. The world was happy. During this excitement, nobody noticed – I didn’t notice – the smile which was now fixed on my face due to the muscles on the right and left side of my lips being permanently pulled, the result of a physiological malfunction. I had to return to my office after a full recovery, and that morning, I was worried. I was anxious and frustrated, anticipating all the questions people would bombard me with. I went to the mirror in a bad mood; I wanted to look at my reflection and confirm my own jolted emotional state in the reactions of my face, but in the features of the face staring back at me there was no expression of anxiety or frustration, only a smile. A wave of alarm coursed through my body at this sight, but in the features of the face staring back at me there was no alarm, only a smile. Alarm turned into terror, but in the features of the face staring back at me there was no terror, only a smile. I became angry at myself for being terrified, but in the features of the face there was only a smile. At the realization of this curious paralysis my eyes were wide with shock – on my face, only a smile.
This, I guess, was the beginning of a post-plaster post-recovery world. In simple terms, the whole matter was this: I had become normal in every other respect after being healed in a plaster shell, but my face had become a living mask which could only exhibit a smile – only a smile! – and it did not possess the luxury anymore of being animated with any other emotions, the various types and kinds of feeling, any turbulent sensations, nothing other than a smile. It was not that I had been emptied of all these different emotions and feelings. I loved some people and hated others. There was jealousy and anger. Shame, modesty, immodesty, longing, agitation, frustration, laziness, exhaustion, vengefulness, regret ... all these emotions were there; in fact, I also wanted to smile, but I couldn’t smile, because only that person can smile who is not always smiling, who has moments of not smiling to differentiate them from the moments in which he smiles. On my face, an eternal smile was now fixed. Crazed sentiments appeared in my eyes, but on my face, there was a smile frozen forever. My eyes began to look frightening. I started to wear sunglasses.
Doctors and experts deliberated seriously over my case, and their interpretation was simple and straightforward and completely acceptable to me. There are seven nerves inside the skull that control the actions outside. The seventh of these nerves controls the actions of the muscles in the face, including the emotional states expressed through these muscles. During the accident or during the healing process, while I was inside the plaster shell, this seventh nerve was damaged on some level in such a way that some muscles in my face had permanently tensed and gave the impression of a smiling face to anyone looking at me. The experts believed that this occasionally happened. I remember they told me that sometimes the weakening of the seventh nerve created a condition in some people which made it impossible for them to eat without tearing up and crying. ‘Compared to crying, smiling is still better,’ a doctor told me as he patted my shoulder and advised me to forget all about it and learn to move on and live.
I tried to forget my new face and live with the forced smile. But I soon realized that this didn’t only concern me. Like your writing, your face is to a large extent a matter in the control of other people. Even if you want to forget, they don’t let you forget. You might want to accept the situation, and live with it, but they will continue to isolate it and make you aware of its presence. I still don’t entirely blame myself. I didn’t lose hope quickly. I was hopeful as I set out to explore the world with a face perpetually spoiled by a smile, and which continually signaled ‘all is well’ to the world with its stupid cursed grin.
I am becoming impassioned for no reason; it is completely meaningless to feel this way. Even if I’m impassioned, what can I do? If someone entered my eight-by-ten coop right now, they will see a cheerfully unconcerned person sitting and writing away. Will they know what is behind this face? I have chosen one person from all the people in the world – who happens to be Anwar Ahmed, a clerk in my office – to listen to me explain this whole situation. This is exactly as if I pulled out a lottery ticket with a random name on it. Otherwise, I have no personal problems with Anwar.
I admit that I have been unsuccessful in dealing with the world with a face always forced to smile. But before convincing myself to act on this absolute decision today, I tried my best. I tried to find jobs that required happy and smiling faces. I got hired as a receptionist in multiple offices. But the owners couldn’t tolerate my display of ‘goodwill’ inside their rooms: ‘Be serious. Am I telling a joke?’ During this time, a few events took place that will get a good laugh out of people capable of laughing. A group photo happened. As is traditional, everyone smiled in the picture, so they would look good. The photo was captured, and everyone went back to being normal. The photographer looked at me, and laughingly said: ‘Sir, the photo was captured a while back and you are still smiling. You don’t have to smile for me anymore.’ The people in the office laughed heartily at this. ‘He is our Smiley.’ ‘Actually, he is our Mr. Cheerful.’ ‘He is always happy.’ ‘Listen, tell me something. What is the secret to your happiness?’ ‘I think he has no sorrows in the world...’
All this became routine for me. I was seemingly reconciled to the damage done to my seventh nerve, but it was a lie. The rest of the six nerves going to my brain were slowly being affected by the damage done to the seventh nerve, and in the end, my situation forced me to make this decision.
There was an event that took place before this decision. A person dear to me died, and I went over to offer my condolences. People were in mourning. It was a sorrowful atmosphere. I sat down, and said a few sentences of the kind that people say when expressing their grief. Then I saw that everyone there was staring at me, and instead of any expression of sadness, their faces were stricken with anger, and they were looking at me with extreme hatred, and some of them looked amazed and afraid at the same time. I was a wolf among a herd of sheep. In an atmosphere of mourning and bereavement, someone with a smiling face was like a blast at a concert. I got up. Without saying anything. And that very day I knew that my situation was now unmanageable. I cannot live in this world with this face anymore. And then the decision, on which I have to act on today, started to take root in my mind. An accident can only be cured by another accident. And the way I was not alone in my first accident, there should be someone with me now as well ... what’s the harm if along with an injured bull, a fly or two buzzing around its wounds also dies!
I am getting an odd sense that when I started writing, I was feeling a different enjoyment inside me, and now, in the end, it’s altogether something else. I don’t know what this sensation is. I think I don’t want to write anything else. Anyway, the wait is about to end. The room is filled with the darkness of the evening, and the darkness is touching me softly. It is touching my lips too ... where there is the same smile.
I can hear his footsteps on the stairs below. Anwar has arrived. The first stair, the second, the third...
The keys to the bike are right in front of me!
Mirza Athar Baig is a philosophy professor at one of the oldest colleges in Pakistan, is the author of three novels, a short story collection, and numerous plays for television.
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.