The Seat

THE SEAT

SHAFI SHAUQ

“What an ungrateful cur of a son he finally proved to be! He cringes to pay the ransom to save my life, his own father’s life. Even today Javid didn’t turn up with the money. It might be that he did not find apt time to come. But he could somehow have found some way out.… It may be that there is some other hassle at home, he couldn’t be so thick-skinned, I know for sure. It is the twenty-first day of my being in the custody of these undertakers. Gosh! Be kind to me. You alone can save me now.”

Soliloquizing, he changed his posture of crouching for no posture did give his mutilated organs relief from ache. He continued eyeing the path through the rent in the mud wall of the Gojar’s shanty. Nothing but unending bleak mounds and empty fields were there to be seen. Denuded walnut trees and copses of poplars and willows bore yester night’s fresh fluffy snow on their bare shoot. And snow flakes danced up and down in stark air and got stuck to whatever space they found. The descents of the hillock were marked by white lines made of snow behind the ridge of undulating fields; snow on the sun-facing slopes had melted away during the day. The sky was gloomily overcast and it looked like dusk much before the sunset. The chill of winter was readying to stiffen everything. Appallingly shaped dense and dark clouds collided and dissipated into each other forming more fearful forms. The topmost precipice of the Harmokh alone shone with bloody red dazzle of the setting sun.

A look at the bloody red precipice ripping the gloomy sky made Sula Batt shudder.

The monotonous precincts spread on the two banks of the roaring Sindh river looked benumbed by some hex. The snarl of the spurts of the Sindh appeared surfaced from the bosom of the hell; an undecipherable din.

On the yonder bank of the Sindh, a long convoy of military vehicles meandered on the serpentine highway. The convoy of Shaktimans and Ashok Lilands disappeared like a huge black anaconda in the dense forest, leaving behind acrid and thick fumes that got ensnared in the foliages of pines, spruce and deodars.

And on this bank of the river, a band of the BSF troopers, bearing their machineguns, snipers, stein guns and other black arsenal, warily looking around, marched uphill and, ordained to some unknown place, moved ahead through an arroyo.

“It might be that they are deputed to search me out.” Sula Bhat had a hazy hope. “May be, my name, too, has figured on some list of the disappeared people in the files of some office there in the town.”

He would yell to them, but that could be his impending death. The yell that emerged in his chest got stuck in his throat.

During the twenty-one days of his captivity he had many a time escaped from the yawning snout of death, yet he had a faded hope that his only son Javid would come, pay the ransom and save his life. They carried, rather dragged, him from one hidey-hole to another.

“What if they had to sell everything out, God is there to bestow much more upon us. Whether by fraud, deceit or underhandedly, I have built up so much, but of what avail? I own plentiful assets in many villages and the town, yet I rot in here in this dungeon; all rubbish. How hard had I egged him on to do what numerous boys of the villages and towns did___ go across the border, get trained in using weapons and defend himself and his kin, but he, a womanizer, could not be spurred. It is never late even now, he too could join this or that outfit. His life too is not safe. Save him, God! I hope he is safe, all that I own will be grabbed by others otherwise. I wish all important documents were safe in the cabin.”

Bearing killing pain for all these twenty-one days, Sula Bhat persistently remained lost in misgivings like these. He, nevertheless, waited for some miracle to happen that could save him. There was no sign that intimated that he was being remembered; the news of his getting kidnapped was nevertheless broadcast on the first day of his disappearance from the town.

Holding all his organs assembled, he crouched at the sill of the lone window of the Gujar shanty, he took care that no bit of the warmth of his own breath escaped from the besmeared outer woollen garment, worn to shreds, so that his maimed body did not get frozen in the chill. He kept his hirsute face and the running nose covered underneath his woollen. The reek of his septic injuries was felt nasty no more by him. He had pulled down the curls of his woollen cap to cover his wounded neck. His tears silently dripped through his nose and this soaked his filthy shirt and nothing was there to dry it up. He, however, intermittently managed to lift some part of the drenched shirt from his chest and blew his warm breath over it, it gave him a little relief. His congealed right wrist was chained and the chain was tied to a pole of the shanty; a big lock that appeared like a curled slumbering serpent was put on the chain. The key was in custody of Rashid Khan, a Gojar who lived in the shanty on the other side of the corn field.

The very remembrance of Rashid Khan, the wolf of a man, would send chilling tremors in the marrow of his bones. It was, however, Rashid Khan who came in wee hours every morning, unlocked the chain, dragged him out of the dungeon, made him piss and defecate behind the huge boulders, wash his organs at the creek and, using all manner of bad names, dragged him back to his allotted place and kept him tethered as usual. The pitiless bear of a man, Rashid Khan, was thus a God-sent angel to Sula Batt as he alone gave him occasional chance to stretch his mutilated limbs and have the luxury of breathing fresh air. Whether he had any excrement in his entrails or not, he feigned to try for as much time as Rashid Khan could bear until the latter gave him a deadly pull.

Rahman Khan, the owner of the shanty of Sula Batt’s incarceration, was taken away by four boys as their escort. He was ordered to accompany the group to the hamlet that was located on the other bank of the Sindh river where a tyrant like Sula Batt had been looting the people of several villages for the last thirty years and, had, therefore, to be punished for every crime. Rahman Khan alone knew the labyrinthine paths under the copses of walnut trees that linked the hamlets on the banks of the river. All the boys, except the guest from across the border, belonged to Shahbad in the south of the valley. For the last five days, Rahman Bhat, accompanying the group, had been away from his home.

Vazira Gojarni had the permission to make the captive survive till the purpose was fulfilled and thus she fed him with one homemade corn-bread that he took with red salt tea without milk. And when there was no vigil, she secretly placed a little of ghee under a handful of parched corn flour in the cup that she then refilled with hot tea. She had known from her husband abut Sula Batta’s lechery that what a knack he had to entice others’ women. While serving this hamstrung infamous womanizer for over five days, she provided him a little warmth by her occasional smiling glances and rejuvenated him by her sweet Gojri-Kashmiri drivel.

“I shall never forget your favours,’’ he used to elate her in return. “ Just wait and see what I can do for you when I am freed from this hell.”

Sula Batt had made this promise to her a hundred times, and made it again now.

“Keep this hot kangri (a fire pot placed in a knit wicker basket) under the phyaran (a loose outer garment); this will warm you up.”

She took out her own hot kangri from underneath her garments, taking all care, lifted up the captive’s garments, craned out her lean arm that went straight to his bruised tummy; the warmth of her hand sent waves of warmth into his shrivelled sinews. A smile danced on her lips and Sula Batt felt as if his ache had completely vanished.

After doing this act of piety, she was busy with her routine chore of feeding her goat and two staring buffalos. The warmth of the cattle’s breath was now more soothing to Sulla Batt than the luxury of the hamaam of his house.

The kids were still outdoors enjoying the swing that they had made by tying a thick rope to two forked boles of the old leaning elm. They had also made a pivoted whirling pole to get rides on it.

“Vazira!” He passionately called her by her name, and surely she too was waiting for this call. “I have a secret to share with you. But you shall have to take oath on your kids that you do not divulge this to anyone. All right?’

The heat of the kaangri had warmed up the chilled marrow of his bones and , as such, he could not stop telling her the secret.

“What!” pretending nonchalance, Vazira replied in a way as if there was no inquisition in her “what”. “Tell it to me, I swear.” Busying herself she said.

“There is a pouch under the lining of my waistcoat. I had a premonition that something wicked was to befell me, so I had kept it hidden there. I cannot reach to it as the devils have broken my wrist. You may get it out and take some money out of it. It may be of some help to you. Come put your hand under my garments, take out the stitches and get it out.”

Without giving went to her joy, she came near him, looked out through the rent of a window; there was no soul visible.

“Let’s wait a little. May be Rashid Khan comes in.” Saying this, she moved away, giving a soft wipe of her garments on Sula Batta’s face. The whiff of the buffalos’ skin absorbed in her garments pervaded all his veins. The costly perfumes that he once used could not match the enlivening smell. He started panting.

“I shall do that in late night when all the kids are slept.” Vazira gave him a bracing promise and began cooking the beans; she had already made many corn-flour breads.

As usual, Rashid Khan arrived before it as night, dragged the captive to the outdoors behind the boulder fence where he pissed quite quickly. He got him back to his allotted place, kept him tied to the pole and left. The kids, too, were home. They lit up the lantern and ate corn-flour breads and the well cooked beans. Using his aching left hand, Sula Batt also took a little food. Vazira, taking pity on the captive, fed him with loafs of bread made soft by the hot cooked beans.

While chewing the food, he continued gazing with his deadened eyes at the youthful but wrinkled face of Vazira and sought some hope of fresh lease of life there.

The lantern was put out, and the kids with their sated bellies, nestled close to their mother, were soon in deep slumber under the tattered quilt. When all started snoring, Vazira gave a slight cough. Sulla Batt, too, coughed in reply, but he could hardly stop his coughing. And when he really stopped coughing, his nose felt the smell of buffalos in Vazira’s clothes ; she was quite close to him. This made his sinews and ligaments hot that might have relieved him of coughing. Vazira had already come out of her bedding and at a snail's pace moved close to him and was very much there under his quilt.

“Where is the pouch?” Vazira whispered while touching the pinna of his left ear; the warmth of her breath made his heart pound heavily.

Sula Batt took her warm groping hand into his two hands, first, made it touch his hirsute chest and after letting it lie there for a moment he showed it way to the pouch in the under-lining of his waste coat that lay rolled under his lateral ribs. Vazira made him take a turn and lie on his back. It took her a pretty long time to open the stitches with her untrimmed nails; Sula Batt’s hands , too, remained busy all this while.

Taking out the pouch finally, she could see even in the dark that it contained a bundle of thousand-rupee notes. Without moving her body, she hid it under the pillow made of a roll of dry paddy-grass.

And then the unaided Vazira had to perform the whole of the expected act herself. He had no energy to help her. He forgot the pain of the burns caused by cigarette bits and bruises on his back.

While the two buffaloes remained busy with their cud, throughout the dark night, the two bodies remained cuddled under the tattered quilt. The buffaloes made a strange sound by masticating and exhaling heavily intermittently.

The mice romped about in the shanty as if they participated in the festivity.

The low sounds and slow movements continued till Sulla Batt’s body in his fifties was depleted of all vigour. And then a sweet sleep overwhelmed him.

Vazira took out the pouch hid under the hay and returned pussy-footed to her own bedding and snuggled up with her children.

Quite before the set of dawn, a sound was heard outside the hut___ a creak, a long creak, of the log-door of the fence of the compound. It was a doleful creak that startled Vazira. Without wasting a minute, she got out of the bedding and lit up the lantern. Rahman Khan and all the four guys were already there in the room.

“You bloody pimp! Get up, you are finished. Your own son has turned into an informer. You are finished.” One of the guys, foaming with anger, said.

Sula Batt, lay there reclining on his back. His wide aghast eyes were transfixed by the stark vespertilian roof of the dungeon where he could see nothing but cobweb and hanging serpentine threads of soot.

Four of the gang, with mud-spattered clothes, were humming with fright and anger. They sat down propped against a sac filled with their arsenal. Rahman Khan poured out some water from the pitcher placed there on a stand into a tumbler and made each of them moisten his hoarse throat. They guzzled the water. They did not put their mucky shoes off for they had no time to waste there.

“My darling Sula, my son, get up now. It is getting too late.” Sula Batt heard these words in clear voice; he recognized his mother’s voice whose face was visible to him in the thickly tasselled fluffy gloom all around him. She had died some forty years ago, yet her compassionate face shone vividly in the dark.

With a sudden pull they removed the quilt from his half naked body lying motionless like a log. They dragged him out. He could not utter even a whine for he was no better than a sac filled with dry husk.

“You bloody pimp, you are finished. Your own son has turned into an informer.”

How could a sac of husk say anything in reply?

Two of the team lifted their heavy kit and carried it away with them.

Sulla Batt was taken to the nearby ravine, called Ahara Naar where he was shot dead. They axed his head from the body and threw it into the gushing waters of the Sindh. The rest of the dismembered body was hid under the boulders and the heap was covered with the foliage of firs.

At half-past eleven, they had encounter with army in the canyon and all the five of the team were killed. The news was broadcast in the afternoon on the same day

In the evening, on the same day, Javid was dolled up and Kohl was applied to his eyes. With full honours he occupied the seat of his father in the drawing room of his splendid house.

Three Patvaaris of the area waited outside the house; they had all the revenue documents with them.

In the adjacent room there were as many as nine shop-owners of his newly inaugurated shopping-mall, they were waiting there to greet him.

Javid was busy with the members of his own newly constituted team.

(Translated from the Kashmiri by the author)