The Silence of Saints

HE WAS NO SAINT, but he had gone quiet as if he were one—a silence of days, months, years, even centuries. I don’t know, he must be thinking about something; there must be some sort of worry, some kind of care. Why does someone go quiet? What takes their voice away? How can there be no desire to speak, to live?

He had retired after sixty years. But then he was at it again, on contract. He was back, going up those stairs at the office, and after fifteen days, he fell. Ganga Ram hospital was nearby, and so he was taken to the Emergency Room. Afterwards, we got word that they had done all sorts of tests on his heart, and he was fine, but there was something in his brain, they called it a “blood clot.” I don’t know. I heard those words, and it was as if blood started flowing before my eyes, a throbbing red. Then the doctors said, “Take him to the General Hospital.” They did a C. T. scan, and it was confirmed: a clot. After two days, he came home. He said, “I am going to write something against all those high caste people. They are all a bunch of fakes.” So he called his youngest daughter again and again to recite his story to her, because he wasn’t fit to write it down himself. Five decades passed before his eyes like water, with his homespun Salwaar Kamiz, his Peshawar-style sandals, his eyes like torches, and lips thirsty to break the silence. But he died before he could finish.

He was eight or ten years older than me. But he was always in a rush, as if in flight. He was the editor of the newspaper The Farmer then, and Uncle Sam was losing in Vietnam. His essays set things on fire. Then the newspaper closed, and the leader of the party he worked for became a government minister. He got a job and got married. The burning torches of revolution were extinguished, and silence became the law. The country fell into darkness. We accepted the Afghan war, and thence came the call, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” People had terrifying nightmares at night: blood, shredded and bloodied rags, hands coming out of police cars, and screams along the roads. Silence prevailed inside. The ruler of the city said, “There will now be safety and peace in the city.” So there was peace and safety, and not a breath of life.

They say he went silent then. Out of his four daughters and two sons, no one earned anything. Only one daughter was married, and the childhood engagement of another had broken. One was left sitting at home after her divorce. They had taken her dowry. The boy was sitting in Canada, but how to get to him? Then there was so much talk, only God knows. “The boys’ sisters-in-laws had gotten their hands on him,” they said. That simple girl couldn’t make sense of it. After two months, the boy said that he would call her to Canada soon, but then they sent the divorce papers instead. The whole house went silent.

Then after that, no daughter got married, nor any son. There was only the simmering of denial, which burns in all hearts. So many proposals came, and so many relatives and friends fought with them: “How can this come to pass?” But the girls replied as one, “We aren’t going to get married.” In the end, one of them said, “Why is it necessary for us to get married? We can live without being married.” The boys, like their sisters, didn’t get married. Then it was as if they had been extinguished inside. From then, there was just one silence: the silence of the saint, with the silence of the family.

One day I must have been on Circular Road when I met my friend Khaki near Crown station. I told him that the saint was gone. He was surprised. “Yes, yes, I know how it goes,” he said, remembering. “We had been great companions. We spent day and night together. He brought out The Farmer all on his own. Then Zia came to power.¹ Our meetings diminished. That’s when he got married. How much time has passed since I met him.”

“Dear friend,” he brought his mouth near me and spoke, as if he were telling some secret. “There wasn’t anything to bring us together. This is all water under the bridge now. Time has taken its toll, and we’ve been left behind. Look at me, do I look the same?” I looked at him: his face was yellow, and it looked like it had dried up after years of deprivation. It was as if he was talking with something stuck in his throat, and his voice was slow.

We shared so much, once. Who cared for studying? We were all dropouts. I left during my B.A. I had just gotten my high school diploma when the demonstrations against the Ayub government began.² There were demonstrations every day. Then the elections came. Who was going to read schoolbooks then? We wandered every street in the city, fighting for socialism. No party leader could say a single word to us. After the Awami government came to power, no one would meet with us. If they met with us, then they would say, “Leave it to the people, the people’s demands will never end. Take what you want.” I spit on their faces. Then Zia came and the party came looking for us again, and we said, “You take care of it yourselves.” He was a part of it, with us. I kept meeting with him, up to the time of his marriage. Then it all went up in smoke, and there were no more meetings. I heard that he lost his job. He was at home, and babies came. But it wasn’t time for him to go yet.

He moved slowly, and with care. Khaki’s whole world had aged along with him and was ending. He had been a leader of the 1968 student movement, an intellectual, a poet, and an author who had written several books. Who knew him now? I stood watching him go on Circular Road, and then he disappeared among the rickshaws, pushcarts, and people.

Then one day I was sitting in a big N.G.O. A friend of mine had come from London. He was having a party, and he called on us to come. Bava had come there, too. He had been the secretary of the election for the Mozang constituency in the 1970 election, where the big party leader Baba Socialism lived.³ Bava took a loan and built a cloth factory, but nothing came of it. He ended up living on the street. He didn’t earn a thing his whole life, and never did a day of work. He was jailed for his opposition to the Ayub dictatorship, but nothing more ever came of it. I told him that the saint had died. He said, “Hey friend, what is this?” He made a bitter face and threw back a peg.

“You are a few years younger than us; you haven’t seen anything. We demonstrated in ’68 every day. Our names are written on every brick of M.A.O. College. There’s nothing we didn’t do. He travelled all over the city then. He wrote magazines and pamphlets himself, and then he published them. Where did the money come from? Oh my friend, the clerks from offices, shopkeepers, the bus conductors, nurses, professors—they all gave money, and the magazines came out. Now, we don’t even hear that he’s passed on. What is this?”

Far from the headlines of the newspapers, away from the wide shining roads of the big city, and away from the blind glow of the television, and within the tiny little houses, life burns our bare feet, and then we die.

Even though the saint went quiet, he gave the power to refuse, and he gifted that to his family. That which he said to them in silence, gave them a silence that spoke with a clear voice.