Half Maghar Moon

IT WAS EVENING, halfway through the month of Maghar, as fall gave way to winter. The departing sun burned like a red ball among the dark rain clouds that gathered behind the shopping mall, which slithered like black cobras filled with poison. Clean, bright clouds could not keep their hold on the sky, as the departing redness of the sun bore holes through them with a biting winter wind.

But we poor folk, slowly dying in the city, thin and worn out, when did we ever have enough time to feast our eyes on this kind of show?

Perhaps it was on such a Maghar night, drenched in the seemingly cold but inwardly warm air, that one of my drunken poet friends had said, “My heart longs to kiss this wind.” I could understand the literal meaning of his words, but not their full meaning. This is the season that the playwright Balwant Gargi called “pink season,” sometime between summer and winter, with warm days and cool evenings.

But in my heart, the wind of another Maghar night was blowing.

I kept searching for the moon in the thick clouds, but the slices of cloud had become drunk, staggering and dissolving into the black night. Hidden within them were the drops of moisture carried by the cold winds of winter. The wind blew so hard that the clouds seemed to churn. This is the way the clouds of the middle of Maghar always are, unsettled and warm.

That old Maghar night smouldered on, like the moon. The clouds did their best to hide it away but were finally defeated and allowed it to shine through, letting it appear before us. This is one of those stories of my old home, in Krishan Nagar.

These thoughts of mine from thirty-five or forty years ago rise in the cold half Maghar night like a wind that continues to blow after the first rains of winter. The red sun of the last evenings of the month of Katak—I don’t know why it pierces the heart so. Thoughts of the long nights of winter fill the heart, then empty it.

I was in eleventh class then, at the preparatory college, and the pressure of the final year examinations for both the eleventh and twelfth classes was already upon us. I had gotten entangled in a strange situation that past summer and couldn’t get out of it. We started college in April, and then during summer vacation, student elections had been held, and who knows how, but my meetings with the members of our Leftist group had increased. We were beaten up once or twice by the Islamists and participated in some demonstrations on Lahore’s Mall Road. So we began to think a lot of ourselves. It was peak of the power of the People’s Party government and student politics were hot. There was always something to keep us busy, something that would set fire, that would then smoulder among us.

I was barely seventeen or eighteen years old. I had just entered the college, and I was still under pressure to leave it and get a job. Our house was in Krishan Nagar, and we lived on the second floor. It had only two rooms, one big and one small. My room, where I lived and slept, was tiny, and it was a bit lower than the other room. My mother and my two brothers stayed in the big room. After my father passed away, we had come here to live in Lahore, and my uncle and his family lived on the ground floor.

Because of my associations with the Progressives, I started coming home late at night. My uncle made a scene about it for some time, but when he saw my budding facial hair, he kept quiet. He would say, “Sons, you have to study for yourself and not for me. This is the time—two, three years and, that’s all. What you will earn for the rest of your life will be based on these years. These four years will count for forty years. Study, my sons, or else go find a job. I never went further than grade 10, but because of Partition, I got a good job. You won’t get that so easily, I think.”

But we were burning inside. After classes were finished for the day, there would be meetings in the college residence. There were discussions about new things happening, about new members. Group leaders from other colleges would come as guests. Long sittings, long discussions, hot and cold. The leaders would speak loudly, with anger, everyone would be reprimanded suddenly, and some would take offence. There was always fear of an attack by the Islamist party, and there was talk of confrontation. There was always a warning to be prepared and remain alert.

From one coffee house to the next, then from that one to a third. This is how the evening would pass, and then the night. I was new to all of it. Every day I would get some book to read and stay up all night reading it, understanding only parts of it. I caused my own bit of trouble, as I had not yet been included in the inner study circle of the group. My thing was about God. Is there a God or not? Every day I would stand up and half agree, and half disagree, with comrade Luqmani, a senior member of the group. But in the middle of the night, going home, I would become fearful. If there were a God, then what? That night Luqmani got angry, saying “Haven’t I already told you He doesn’t exist? We have created Him. Our fear has created Him. All religions were invented just to rob people. There is neither sin nor virtue. The only reality is man, and nothing else. Read this book and come back tomorrow.”

That night I lost heart. When I returned home, I vowed that I wouldn’t talk to him next time—he didn’t listen to me at all. It was a half Maghar night and drops of winter rain started falling. A gentle wind also blew. I walked along Lahore’s Mall Road, and, turning at the public library, I felt as if I had been bitten by the tall trees there. The old, tall peepal trees along that road blew in my mind, and I shivered from the cold. Perhaps I hadn’t eaten anything all day. My mouth was bitter from tea and cigarettes. The wind infused with the fragrance of the rain-soaked earth blew over the grounds of the Chishti High School, spreading in four directions.

I passed by the Laat Sahib, where the chief secretary used to sit in British times and the chief minister now sits, and crossed the Neeli Bar bus stop, named for that green and fertile region south of Lahore. I reached home and stood in front of the house.

It was crossing midnight. The rain had stopped, leaving the land drenched and making the coal tar roads shine like shivering mirrors in the blowing wind. Above, the clouds ran fast. Within them, the moon played like a child, peeking out occasionally by surprise. There was also a bit of warmth somewhere in the blanket of cold.

The usually alert houses of Krishan Nagar were silent today. The dim light of the moon made the shape of the standing houses more prominent. Otherwise, they couldn’t be seen.

The last hurdle was how to get into the house. If I knocked at the door, everyone would wake up. Climbing the wall adjacent to the empty plot next to our building, creeping along the roof next to the rain gutter, and finally clambering down to open the window into my room, I was inside. I slowed my breathing to normal and then realized there was a sound at the doorway into the hall. It was as if someone had sighed or sobbed. I looked out of my room but couldn’t see anything. I began to feel frightened, and I remembered Luqmani’s words about God. “Oh God, have mercy!” I unconsciously prayed to God in my heart. “Oh God, forgive me! I won’t listen to Luqmani.” Slowly I put my foot in the doorway. There was total darkness, and everyone was sleeping, exhausted, in the other room. Suddenly my foot touched a body. She was lying on the floor, face down. Oh my God! It was the daughter of the family from Dubai.

The story of the woman from Dubai was very strange. The family had been living in Dubai for a long time, but they still had a house on our street. They had rented their house out, and then the renter and his family squatted in it, taking possession of it illegally, as happens so much of the time. A case was filed in court in an effort to force them out. After some years passed, the Dubai family won the case by bribing someone, but possession was another matter. Someone told them that as long as you don’t come in person, you won’t get possession. The men in the family all had jobs in Dubai, so the woman came back with the kids. But they still couldn’t move into the house. The Dubai woman was actually from the old walled city centre, from a place called Rang Mahal. She would turn up every day and fight with the people in possession of the house, but they had gotten a stay of proceedings, so they refused to move. A few children would always come with her, with one of them trailing behind, whimpering, or stopping to play along the way.

She always had a troop of children with her, eight or maybe even ten. She was staying with relatives and would make a round each day on a rickshaw to come to the house. Sometimes she would visit with my mother, too. She was accepted as a part of the neighbourhood, and the whole mohallah seemed to be with her. If only the house were vacant, so that she could actually move into it. One day—God knows what stories she told to my mother—but she came to live with us with all her children. Maybe she was just hoping to put pressure on the renter. Without giving a second thought as to how everyone would all live in one room, my mother spread a cloth mat on the floor for the children. All day long there was wailing and crying, and bread was made and distributed. The children brought groceries from the bazaar all day long, back and forth. Our household would have otherwise been slowly dying of starvation, but that woman would just go to the bazaar to make a phone call, and the postman would come after a few days to deliver a money order.

My aunt fought a lot with mother about the arrangement, but once mother had consented, how could she refuse to let them stay? The woman from Dubai was tall and heavy-bodied, with skin a sheer black colour and a shining nose stud. She had attractive features, with a thin nose and large eyes. Standing with mother, she stared at my aunt, the veins in her forehead bulging, and said “Hoonh” loudly, at which point my aunt rushed inside, the tap-tap of her shoes echoing against the floor. With that, we finally reigned over the house, but it only lasted for a short time, a bit less than a month.

I remember that there was no water tap in the upper part of the house. There was only a small stove in the big room, for making roti. There was no proper place to wash dishes. On one side was a small stove, and we used to wash dishes near it in a tub. There was no drainpipe for the water we carried up from below, and so it would splash onto the rooftop and then run down the side of the house into a small drain in the street. A sewer system hadn’t yet been built, and the streets were half finished and half unfinished. All day we would bring water in buckets from the ground floor, because of which the stairs were always wet. Sometimes a child would slip and get hurt. The woman from Dubai’s eldest child was a daughter, and she beat her a lot. I don’t know why. Her daughter was also sheer black in colour, and she was maybe a year or two younger than me. She was in her last year of school. But she lived in fear of her mother and worked all the time. So I never gave her much thought.

I was in college then. I had scored in the first division in tenth grade and so could proudly put on the uniform and go to the prep college. One of my other uncles paid for all the expenses, thinking I would one day become the big official that he had not been able to become. Instead, I became a new “revolutionary” and would look at my old friends in the mohallah as if to say, “Do you have no idea where the world is going? You are like frogs in a well, and you will remain that way.” On top of that, I had my own separate small room, all to myself, and I told everyone that no one should show their face there. I didn’t mind my own younger brothers so much, but I wanted to scare off all of the Dubai children. All day long I would wander around with my new college friends and come home late.

My foot touched the body lying on floor, and she sobbed a little with pain. I tried to look more closely at her face, but the Dubai woman’s eldest daughter was stretched out, face flat on the floor. She didn’t utter a single word, and I realized that her mother had beaten her severely, and, sobbing, she had fallen asleep here. This sort of thing had happened before, but I hadn’t paid much attention. My mother always chastised the woman for beating her daughter so much. Her mother would say, “God knows where she has come from and how she got stuck to us! Does she look like my daughter? Neither her face nor her forehead. She’s some jinn from the mountains. I wanted a boy so that he could help his father. I say, may she die today! I want to get rid of her, make her go away, far away,”

She did give birth to many boys afterwards. But what animosity she still felt towards her daughter! The girl was at work all day long, cooking, taking care of the younger children, washing their faces and bathing them, cleaning and dusting. If any work was left undone or anything got broken, her mother would beat fear into her. I felt really bad about this, but who could talk sense to that Dubai woman? She paid for our food from her own pocket, and that closed our mouths.

So I understood what had happened. I crouched down on floor near her and slowly passed my hand over her body. She sobbed a little with pain. A wave of fear passed through me, that someone might wake up. I leaned down to say quietly in her ear, “Did your mother beat you badly?” She didn’t reply but caught my hand tightly. I continued to sit like that, on my tiptoes, and then pulled her slowly into my small room. She cried quietly, in pain. Without turning on the light in my room, I brought her to the mat on the floor of my room. A dim glow of the streetlights coming through the open window made it possible to see in the otherwise deep darkness of the room.

Outside, the sharp wind rose and fell. The cold increased and then relented, causing her to shiver. In the faint light coming from outside, I helped her to sit upright and looked at her face. She was still holding my hand tight, and the heat of her burning body reached into my body. It was the first time a girl had caught my hand like that. I was frightened, but the heat coming from her body also burned away my fear. She had cried for so long that her tears had dried, leaving bent, crooked lines across her face.

I caressed her face gently, and again some tears began to fall silently on her face. I don’t know what happened to me that I put my lips on her tears and began to kiss her. She covered her face with shame. I lay down with her and held her tight, kissing her. She pushed me away at first and then finally relaxed her body. I asked her again and again, “How hard did your mother beat you? Where did she beat you? Where is the pain?” She put her hand over my mouth and asked me to be quiet. The wind struck the windows, and then it started to rain lightly. Rain in the middle of Maghar is seldom a downpour. There is just a splash of rain, breathing new life into the old season and causing the cold to increase yet further.

We lay like that for a long time, holding each other tightly. The heat seeping from our bodies was shared between us, breath by breath. If I tried to run my hand along her body, she would clutch it and hold it in place. In the darkness, I could not tell whether her pain had lessened or not. But she was at peace. Only later, after many more years of my life, did I come to understand that touch could bring such comfort to a person, could cleanse someone. I don’t know when we fell asleep, or when I fell asleep. But her touch had made me forget everything, all the cares and exhaustion of the world.

The next day I slept late. I don’t know at what point I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, she was no longer with me. The sun was shinning outside, but because of the night’s rain, there was a touch of cold in the air. Never had my room felt so desolate before, my heart never so empty. It was the first time in my life someone had come so near to me, and then she had disappeared as if in a dream. A pang of yearning arose in my heart, and I wanted to cry. I didn’t know when she had woken and left, so it must have been after I had fallen asleep. The daily routine was that I would get ready and go off to the college after getting a rupee or two from my mother, and then I would return late. I got ready slowly that day, taking a long bath, hoping that I might see her. But she didn’t appear. Sometimes she would go to the bazaar with the other children to bring groceries. She’d be covered in perspiration and would quickly go to wash her face. At first I thought that I should ask her mother why she had beaten her daughter so hard, but then I realized that she would ask how I knew about it, since I always came home so late. So I kept quiet.

I never saw her again. A few days later, the Dubai woman paid a bribe to Ayda, and in this underhanded way she finally got her tenant out and was able to move in. Ayda was notorious for getting things done for people for a price. He would never interfere in anybody’s business unless somebody paid him to. Whenever I ran into the Dubai woman in the neighourhood, she would always invite me to her house, but I avoided it. The one or two times I did visit, I didn’t see her daughter. Then suddenly she was married, and I don’t know where she went. I got busy in politics and lost touch with the mohallah. After a few years, I left it altogether.

That night, like the half Maghar moon, continues to inspire me, at the edges of memories. That night has taken up residence on the silent walls of the empty nights of my life, blossoming and speaking inside my breath.