by Neeman Sobhan

Many years later, Shayla would read somewhere that, according to the Chinese calendar, 1971 had been that dreaded, cataclysmic year symbolised by the Iron Dog. ‘Any year dominated by this animal,’ pronounced the Chinese horoscope book, ‘would be afflicted by worldwide disasters: famine, pestilence, revolutions, war and strife….’ When she mentioned this to her daughter Farzana, the girl had wanted to check the history books to verify that certain world disasters had indeed occurred within these 60 year cycles. Then she lost interest. For Shayla, it seemed easier to just accept fairytale explanations and myths; to say, yes, everything that year had happened because of some cursed cosmic canine, a snarling Rotweiller in the sky.
   That Iron Dog year of 1971, Shayla had witnessed the mad dance of death creating her Bengali motherland out of a former motherland, the ‘Paak Sarzameen’ – sanctified haven for Muslims, which like a Russian Matrioshka doll had come out of yet another motherland, or grandmother-land, the butchered India of 1947. Her grandmother, Bilquees Bano, had often spoken of the Hindu-Muslim bloodletting during those horrifying partition days. Little did the old woman know she would witness yet another partition, and of even greater horrors: in their own land, Muslims would slaughter their own brothers, both as a policy of extermination and as mob-frenzy. Yes, that dog-forsaken year, they had all been bitten by an iron Cerberus guarding the portals of hell-on-earth.
   That book on Chinese years and animals had also revealed that Shayla was born under the Chinese year of the Horse. No wonder she loved horses, at least, in books and pictures and sculpture and… memory.
   Her first encounter with a horse had been on the polo ground in the cantonment enclave of Kharian in West Pakistan. West Pakistan! She smiled. It dated her, this way of referring to Pakistan, just as much as when she spoke of East Pakistan when she meant pre-independence Bangladesh of her childhood. But these verbal structures, East-West Pakistan, or Purbo-o-Pashchim Pakistan in Bangla, and Mashraqi aur Maghrabi Pakistan in Urdu, were some of the keys that unlocked the world in which she had grown up. And anyway, memory could not be corrected and retrained at the behest of political and military history makers. A country might be said to have taken birth on a certain date, but people lived their lives outside its political gestation, or even its demise. The history and geography of the human psyche were different from that of textbooks. Renaming places and regrouping people did not change essential realities of the mind, of human memory, of humanity.
   Her maternal grandmother, Bilquees Bano, constantly harked back to the world of her youth, of pre-partition India of the 30s and 40s, which she remembered almost physically like the taste of the pastries and ice cream she ate at ‘Firpo’s’ tearoom in Calcutta ‘during the British times.’ Similarly, Shayla had caught her own mother, Dilara speaking of the ‘Pakistan aamoley’ or era, but naturally, not with the personal nostalgia that would have existed had it not been extinguished in 1971 when... well, when they had all been bitten by the rabid iron dog.
   Shayla has digressed. Where was she? It was the year 1960, she was seven years old, and at the polo ground in Kharian cantonment, falling in love with Major Rizwan Bukhari and his horse. Her father, an Executive Officer of Military Lands and Cantonments Services, had been posted to this military base, headquarters of the 6 Armoured Division. He had been allotted two adjoining two-room flats in what was really ‘bachelor quarters’ for both army and non-services personnel, who brought their families and lived contentedly in these airy, modern flats.
   Right from the start, Shayla noticed the good-looking, doting young couple who lived next door. The elegant ‘aunty’ had come over to say hullo to Shayla’s mother, and Shayla had been smitten. The next Sunday, Farzana aunty invited them all to come and see her husband Major Rizwan Bukhari practise for a forthcoming polo match in the polo field behind their apartment complex.
   Shayla and her older brother Rashed, then ten, watched with excitement the riders gallop past. Farzana aunty clapped and cheered, and mother smiled. Only father stood a little apart. Instead of watching the riders he turned to Farzana, ‘Do you ride too?’ he asked casually. She shrugged, ‘I used to when my father was at the Quetta Staff College. Also, when my brother went to Aitchison College in Lahore, we would....’ ‘Ah! Yes, a prestigious school. We’ve seen the students ride at the Annual Horse and Cattle Show, remember Dilu…’ Father interrupted. Farzana was going to continue when she shouted, ‘Oh! There goes Rizwan, number four in the team,’ she waved to one of the helmeted riders across the field swinging his mallet. He blew a jaunty kiss in their direction. ‘He plays defence,’ Father explained to Rashed. Aunty looked at father with interest, ‘You know polo? Do they play polo in East Pakistan?’ ‘The Sport of Kings?’ Father laughed in a brittle way, ‘Unlikely!’
   At the end of the game, the good-looking man whom Shayla had glimpsed before in the flat next door, alighted from his horse and sauntered up to them. In his riding boots, taking off his sunglasses and head gear, he struck Shayla as the Prince of Fairytales. He and Farzana aunty made a glamorous couple, and Shayla promptly fell in love with all three of them, which included the horse, Azaad.
   While the introductions were going on, Shayla wrapped herself around her father’s leg and whispered loudly, ‘I want to learn to ride.’ Rizwan uncle tousled her hair, ‘Arrey! Gurriya rani! Lessons immediately from tomorrow, if your father gives permission!’ Father patted Shayla and said, ‘Sure, sweetheart, as long as you remember: “It is not enough to know how to ride; you must also know how to fall.”’ The last was said looking at uncle. There was a pause, then everyone laughed.
   Farzana aunty asked Shayla over one day to measure against her body a sweater she was knitting for a niece.
   Afterwards, her little chest full of aunty’s fragrant proximity, Shayla ran breathlessly back to tell mother about it. ‘Poor Farzana,’ mother said. “Bechari is my age, but no kids, and married so long.’ Shayla was taken aback because she had thought the Bukhari’s were a young, newly married couple, compared to her parents.
   As the friendship between Farzana aunty and mother grew, they were constantly in and out of each other’s flats. Shayla felt shut out of this growing friendship and looked forward to the start of school. Rashed had made friends and was always at the local swimming pool. Now, she spent more time watching the horses being led to the polo ground to be exercised. ‘Cantarrrrr!’ A groom would shout, and the trotting animals would immediately step into a canter. Then as they leapt into a wave of gallop, Shayla would sense the wind in their mane, feel the rush of their freedom course through her.
   Father had told her once: ‘Other animals run when they need to, but the horse runs for its pleasure. Man is privileged to be allowed to share the horse’s speed and grace. He can control it to a point, make it obey, but he cannot disrespect or break the horse’s spirit, its natural right to be a creature of freedom.’ She understood everything when she watched the horses.
   But her desire for riding suffered a setback when she twisted her ankle. Still, she went with Rashed on his cycle to the stables. Inside, the stalls of breathing, snorting animals, the dense smell of hay and sweat, and the sound of hoofs stamping sent tremors of repressed energy through her. They located Azaad. Up close, the shiny brown animal was overwhelming, larger than life. Shayla gingerly touched his shank and almost shrank back. An electric current seemed to pass through her. The horse’s body was vibrating. So this was what ‘alive’ meant! It was a throbbing to launch oneself into the wind fearlessly, freely.
   
   The one drawback in their flats was that there was no kitchen, since food came from the ‘Officer’s Mess.’ The rest of Shayla’s family had no complaints about the food except her mother. Shayla remembers the thrill of opening the large tiffin carrier with its surprise contents at each meal. But every morning mother asked the ‘orderly’ or ‘ardali’ as the batman was commonly referred to, what the menu for that day was. He would announce only what the meat or ‘gosht’ preparation of the day was, cooked with vegetables ranging from cauliflowers, turnips, radishes, potatoes to spinach: ‘Janab, today its “gobi-gosht” or “shaljam-gosht” or “tinda-gosht” or “aloo-gosht” or “saag-gosht”…’
   Mother would groan: ‘God! If that man brings another “shaljam-gosht” I’m going to scream. Oh! For a fish curry – a light jhol of pabda, or just one fried ilish…’ Shayla didn’t know then that her mother was pregnant with her youngest brother Shahed, craving familiar food.
   One evening, Shayla asked her father if he knew how to ride. Father’s face clouded over, ‘Sweetheart, we grew up in a backward province with few facilities. No good schools and colleges, no riding or tennis clubs; no driving around in father’s car, no travelling abroad, no getting suits tailored at the drop of a hat…’ Shayla frowned, not understanding the drift. She saw the same dark cloud gather on her father’s face when the word ‘promotion’ was tossed around by her parents.
   ‘Shaala! You work hard but it’s all pointless! Can you believe it, they promised the post to me and now they have given it to this greenhorn – kaalker chokra, came into the department just the other day! But, of course, he is an Urduwalla, has the right army connections…! Blatant favouritism! They are still “considering” my case…!’
   Soon after, mother went back to Dhaka to have Shahed and by the time she came back to Kharian, the baby was two months old. At first Shayla was jealous to see Farzana aunty so thrilled with the baby, coming over every day to cuddle and play with Shahed, sometimes taking him back with her while mother rested in the afternoons. Shayla was with aunty the first time the baby smiled and gurgled, and Farzana aunty hollered across the verandah, ‘Dilara, jaldi, come quick! See, how my little munna is smiling at his Farri-ammi. Arrey mera bachcha! Alley mela beta!’ She tickled his tummy and he gurgled even louder. Soon, Shahed was spending as much time with the Bukharis as with his own parents. School neutralizsd Shayla’s pangs of jealousy.
   By the middle of the second year of her family’s stay in Kharian, Shayla’s father announced that he had been transferred back to East Pakistan, as compensation for not getting promotion just yet. Mother was content to be going ‘home.’ But when she gave the news to Farzana, both broke down in tears. During the last days, Shahed was ill and cried all night. Farzana would come over, desperately. ‘Haaye mera bachcha, my poor baby, what’s the matter with you, my jaaan?’ When Shahed allowed either of his mothers to put him to sleep, neither moved from his cot side. Later, they sat talking late into the night on the veranda. Shayla lay awake in her bed near the window, listening to them.
   One night she heard Farzana’s choking words, ‘Dilara, how will I live without my Shahed?’ Shayla heard the tears in her mother’s voice, ‘He is yours, Farri. Anyway, it’s not like we are going abroad to some strange country, na? You will visit me in Dhaka, we’ll come to Karachi. And when he grows up a little, I’ll send him to you for long stretches, dekhna? Who knows, maybe he will study in West Pakistan and marry someone like his Farri-ammi…’ Farzana laughed, and mother continued, teasingly, ‘And then maybe he will teach at least one Urduwalli, my daughter-in-law, to speak Bangla and cook fish…’ They giggled and babbled like children, while Shayla, the little old woman, listened gravely to the unsaid finality of the leave-taking that was taking place under the laughter.
   Shayla remembers bits and pieces of the day they left Kharian. Suddenly they were inside the train that would take them to Karachi where they would board the ship HMS Rustam for Chittagong, onto Dhaka. At the sight of the Tanga carriages, lined up at the railway station with the blinkered and tasselled ponies in harness, she realised she hadn’t said goodbye to Azaad. Mother was feeding Shahed his bottle and wiping her tears. Shayla was wearing a sweater made by Farzana auntie. Now she inhaled the sweetness emanating from the sweater. It spelt Kharian, already lost. Her whole being trembled with an emotion she didn’t have a name for, thus she didn’t know how to react. She sat quietly counting the clackety-clack hoof beats of the train while her heart raced back towards a familiar veranda, a beloved face.
   
   SHAYLA never saw Farzana aunty again, but mother and Shahed did. ‘Take care of my baba. He is my amaanat, loaned to you!’ Farzana had said hugging Dilara at their farewell, putting her hand over Shahed’s head, blessing him. Dilara had often recalled those words when she took family pictures at his birthdays to send to Farzana. But when Shahed was three years old, Shayla remembers mother going to Karachi to stay with Farzana aunty for a month. Rashed was envious of the fact that mother was flying PIA’s super constellation aircraft, while Shayla only tried to recall a scent and a voice calling her ‘jaani.’
   Rashed had been studying at Fowjdarhaat Cadet College and that year, 1970, he graduated and joined Dhaka University. Meanwhile, their young uncle, Muneer Mama, unmarried and carefree, who was teaching at the university and living in the staff quarters, often looked up Rashed at his Salimullah Hall room, which he shared with his friend Ahsan. Often all three would come over on holidays to spend a day or two in the peace and quiet of their cantonment house.
   ‘Apa!’ Muneer would shout as soon as he entered the house. ‘Here, I’ve brought your prince safe and sound, now make me some of your excellent daal puri and prawn cutlets. Come on! Jhotpot!’’ ‘Eeesh! Laat Shaheb! As if I can produce it all at the snap of his lordship’s fingers!’ Dilara would slap him playfully, mentally already in the kitchen producing a feast. Shayla knew that her mother Dilara was wrapped around her brother Muneer’s finger just as much as Shayla herself was wound around Rashed’s. Shayla listened to Rashed sing and strum his guitar, or recite his poems; she proofread his editorials for the magazine that he and Ahsan were editing, and most importantly, warned them about father’s arrival if they were smoking.
   Shayla remembers those last golden days: the card sessions while they all sprawled on Rashed’s bed, or the animated ‘adda’ discussing the forthcoming elections and the hope of the Bengalis finally getting some share in the running of this country where they had too long been second class citizens. Sometimes, they strolled to the Garrison cinema to an officer’s film show in the evening.
   In all this Shahed was Rashed’s shadow, gazing at his elder brother with worshipful eyes. The year before, Shahed had been sent to a boarding school in Abbotabad, West Pakistan, and during his first summer holidays he had spent a few weeks with his Farri-ammi before flying back to Dhaka for the rest of his vacation. He never went back. He had loved being at Farzana’s but he just could not stand the life of the boarding school. Father tried to understand what had gone wrong. Shahed shrugged, ‘They called me a bookworm and a bloody Bingo and...’ Father laughed, ‘Well, you are a Bingo bookworm, aren’t you?’ Shahed smiled, but Shayla saw his eyes keep back other things.
   When Farzana heard that Shahed was not coming back to Abbotabad she made a trunk call to Dhaka. It was December 1970, and they were watching the special election programmes on TV, the cultural shows, created to wile away time while votes came in for counting from various parts of the country. Mother was yelling into the phone even as the preliminary results were trickling in. ‘What? Yes, Farri, we are all rooting for the Awami League’s Nouka here! Or as your laadla Shahed says, “We Bengalis are all in the same leaky boat!”’ Expensive laughter ensued across a thousand miles bringing the two women together, for the last time. When the phone was passed to Shayla, all she could say hearing that beloved voice was, ‘Aunty, when will I see you?’ ‘Jaani, I promise I’ll come to Dhaka as soon as all the election hungaama is over.’
   Unknown to everyone, the iron dog was sniffing at the door. How had Shayla not sensed its presence? It could be because there was magic in the air, a vibration under the skin of every Bengali. The stunning election result had electrified the nation. Blandly, she would recount to her daughter in the voice of the newspapers of the times: ‘Mujib and his Awami League won landslide victory in the national election, giving him the constitutional right to form the government. His party bagged 167 out of 169 seats in East Pakistan, while Bhutto’s PPP got only 89 out of 144 in West Pakistan. It was an unprecedented moment of hope for East Pakistanis.’
   Shayla wants to describe what her generation had felt, moving from trot to ‘Cantarrrr’ and awaiting the call to gallop. The reined energy of the electoral triumph was flowing in every vein. ‘But the election results plunged Pakistan into turmoil.’ How calmly she would summarise for her daughter the events of the time, as if she had been just a page inside a history textbook and not breathed and lived those palpable days that marked the beginning of the end for so many things. Even after all these years, how can she find the right words to talk about those loved ones who were like meat thrown to the salivating jaws of history’s iron brutes, the mad dogs of power? The safe, newsprint voice: ‘Bhutto refused to concede premiership to Mujib, creating a political impasse. Betrayed and angered, the Bengali nation reacted with a non-cooperation movement against the government.’
   7 March 1970, at the Ramna Race course: largest political gathering of Bengalis: ‘Ebarer shongram shadhinotaar shongraam…’ She can still hear the passionately galloping horses within Mujib’s words. It was a call for freedom not against a country but against the yoke of injustice. It was the cry for the freedom to be treated not as subjects but partners in power. But no one on the other side was willing to listen to the cry.
   Muneer Mama used to quote from Cervantes: ‘The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.’ But the spurs of power were already dug deep, ready to trample the soft ground of the country, even if the course killed the beast.
   And then? ‘And then, on the night of 25 March, tanks rolled out into a curfew silenced city. “Operation Searchlight” was on, giving soldiers strict orders to teach the rebellious population a lesson they would not forget. A present day General Dyer pronounced: “Kill 3000 of the Bengalis and the rest will fall into line.” Troops took up position in the streets and the university campus. The crackdown started at dawn…”
   Even iron dogs must stink, or is it only her memory – that flesh and blood tissue which lies mangled within her, that smells to this day? Muneer Mama along with many other teachers were dragged out of their university flats by soldiers, led to a wall and their bodies riddled with bullets. When Muneer Mama’s body was recovered and buried, Shayla’s numbness finally passed and she felt the relief of stabbing pains in her heart. She waited for grief to engulf her so she could hold Mama’s books and shirts to her breast and cry with abandon, when Rashed, with bloodshot eyes, broke the news. He and Ahsan were going underground that very night to train as Muktijoddhas to wreak vengeance on those who had visited upon the Bengalis such premeditated carnage just because they had demanded their democratic rights.
   With Rashed gone, Dilara, like her mother Bilquees, took to the prayer rug. Shahed started to have recurring nightmares, while Shayla became a chronic insomniac. The family had by now shifted to the city, to Shayla’s aunt’s house in Dhanmondi. Dhaka, under ‘occupation forces,’ had become a ghost city from which all the young men had vanished. News filtered every day of Bengali men among family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, picked up by the army for questioning, never to return. The muffled crackle of BBC news broadcasts from a radio nestled deep in a closet became the only communication line to the world outside, and the secret sessions of the entire household crowding to listen to the news was almost a religious ritual. Sporadic news of Rashed and Ahsan occasioned prayers of thanks.
   Then the first air raids from India sounded over East Pakistan, announcing India’s entry into the war on the side of the Bengalis. Now life centred on rooftops as people recklessly came up to watch the dogfights of fighter planes. But Shayla’s heart was underground. She hadn’t heard from Rashed in a while.
   She hadn’t heard the barking of iron dogs either, when the morning of December 16 dawned with the surrender of Pakistani forces, and the city erupted into goose-bumps of victory. Shayla’s cousins were making the new flags to wave at the passing army vehicles full of Muktijoddhas, from the rooftop of khala’s house, yelling the triumphant ‘Joy Bangla!’ Ahsan had also returned. He came up to where Shayla was standing and embraced her fiercely. Then gripping her shoulders he broke the news: Rashed had disappeared the day before in a last-minute raid near Sona Masjid. Nobody knew if he was dead or alive.
   Then the rest happened in slow motion. Shahed was nowhere to be found. Later, the newspapers would talk about three Pakistani soldiers who sat on top of a building, refusing to surrender and firing their remaining rounds of bullets on innocent passers-by. When Shahed’s body was recovered from a roadside ditch, and washed and prepared for the funeral, Shayla guided her mother to see her son’s face for the last time. Mother sat at his head, as lifeless as her child. Someone said, ‘Make her cry!’ Shayla shook her and shook her until finally her mother rent the sky with her screams. And in that scream Shayla only heard another voice crying, ‘Dilara! Where is my baby? Haaye mera beta, haaye mera bachcha!’