SHORT STORIES

SHORT STORY 𝒃𝒚 Najam-uddin Ahmad

The Remorse

The Remorse

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Since Khalid Ahmad the Numberdar1 told me that Baba Fazal Din passed away the same day I had met him the last time, I am in a terrible state of agony. He gasped his last breathed during night. When people didn’t find Baba Fazal Din outside his cottage in the morning as usual, they broke the door open and found him lying dead on his cot. Greif, anguish and shame attacked me like a fit of epilepsy. The profound grief has also clamped its claws in my brain like a bat. I get annoyed at myself time and again and mumble something to vent out all of my sentiment.

The first glimpses of Baba Fazal Din appear clearly on the screen of my memory in the times when I was a student of grade 2 at a nearby Masjid Maktab primary school. Usually, he visited me at my school. He was an aging person with an ashen beard. The blend of black and white hair of his beard appeared ash grey. He didn’t look me a stranger as though I was already acquainted with him. He took me with him, put me in his lap and kissed my forehead a lot, sitting at some distance from my class room. Every pore of his body seemed to exude rays of his love which has enfolded me even today. He did give me many sweeties and other edibles and as much money as he could afford. I didn’t know who he was and when, how and where I had met him for the first. My mother told me, though, that soon before the war of 1971 my elder brother got his house repaired and Baba Fazal Din was one among those laborers. I had just started crawling in those days and when he saw me dragging on my hands and knee in the courtyard, he picked me up and carried bricks and kneading for the rest of the day, holding me in his arms. This routine continued for the next 15 or 20 days of his work there. He handed over me to my mother only when I cried with hunger or went to sleep, suspending my head against his shoulder. On the third or fourth day he brought his wife there, too. Amma Sadda’n picked me up gluttonously and started kissing me hard. They loved me as I was their own lost son whom they found after a much long span. Amma Saddaan came to see me three or four times during that duration of the repair work. She was a short woman of wheatish complexion with left eye infected with cataract. 

I am the youngest in a family of three brothers and two sisters. I was born when my father had reached the age of 55. Just a few months before my birth he fell of the slippery floor of bathroom and spent the remaining years of his life in bed until he started his journey to hereafter leaving the administration of our home in the hands of my eldest brother who had inborn ill tempers of stubbornness and anger, suspicions and superstitions. Every person of the world would appear inferior to him. Not only the family members but other relatives also scared of his ill temperament. So, he naturally suspected that Baba Fazal Din and his wife were child abductors. However, he was satisfied after obtaining complete information of their whereabouts. They were childless even after 25 years of their matrimonial life but his negative disposition soon showed him another way a way that indirectly altered the structure of my inner feelings towards them that I’m very mortified today.

Baba Fazal Din and Amma Saddaan were the poor laborers, living in a village named Keru (now renamed as Khalid Abad) situated at about 7 or 8 kilometers in the west of Bahawal Nagar District City. They didn’t leave visiting our home even after the repairing work finished. After a break of three or four days they started from their home before dawn on foot and reached our home by the sunrise. They played with me till the noon and after shopping their commodities, left for their home in the afternoon. I also mingled with them.

The clouds of war arrived heavily with torrents of bomb explosions. It was a border area and when the Indian planes started appearing in the sky, the government ordered inhabitants of the city to move 15 miles back to the safer areas. We also moved to a nearby village Gardhari Wala, 15 miles away to the west. The war remained for a week or so but those days were longer & onerous than centuries. On the 3rd day, when the war was at its peak and tanks were firing massively, Baba Fazal Din reached at our haven in our quest. He had first gone to the city and then asking about our whereabouts reached there. He found himself relieved on finding us safe.

When war ceased and we returned home, their routine also restored. They started their visits to play with me as before at an interval of three or four days. They strongly longed for taking me with them to their village but abstained from due to my infancy. Their love for me grew intensified with my growing age. However, they took me with them for the first time for some days when I was about 3. It happened three or four times but I can’t recall it for being so young at that time.

They were bête noire of my eldest brother. On seeing them early in the morning, he always started calling them names. He would say: they’ll spoil the kid. But they would ignore his bitter words for their profound love for me. When my brother’s harshness crossed all the limits of etiquette and morality, they changed their routine a little bit. Now, they began to pass their time wandering here and there after arriving in the city, or waiting at the corner of our street in a hide until my brother left the house to go to his work-place, and they showed up as soon as he was gone.

They almost gave up visiting our home after my enrolment in the school but kept visiting me there. Often, Baba Fazal would come alone but Amma Saddaan might accompany him sometimes. On sighting me, their faces glowed and their smiles turned so sweet and so soft like honey. They kept hugging me as long as they stayed. They would bring many new things for me and sometimes a toy, too. They didn’t want to leave me and looked back at me again and again while departing. If it were possible for them they really didn’t want away from me, and lose me out of their sight even for a single moment.

It was summer vacations when I went to their place for the first time, on reaching the age of my consciousness. During this long pedestrian travel, Baba Fazal hardly let me walk just a few paces. I covered almost of all the distance on his old shoulders with my legs clutched around his neck. The summer heat had exhausted him but he was as joyous like a kid who finds his favorite toy. Their hut was in the first row in the area reserved for the village laborers, opposite to the Numberdar’s Dera2. It had no boundary wall or courtyard. On the facade wall of the hut, there was a creeper of beetle like leaves, reaching the roof and giving the hut a pleasant look. They had grown some flowering plants and seasonal vegetables on a small piece of land behind the hut. There was a long series of fields beyond this. There stood a shisham tree on the clearing in front of the hut with neat land around it. Amma Saddaan always kept that palace broomed and water sprinkled. When we reached there she was fanning herself with a cloth bordered hand-fan of pointed date-leaves, sitting on a cot beneath the tree.

“Saddaan! Saddaan! Look, whom I’ve brought!” Baba Fazal Din shouted from a distance. His voice was heavy with emotions as he had been thinking all the way about this surprise. Seeing me, she blossomed.

The reeds hut was as clean inside as was the outer surroundings. The floor, walls and ceiling were coated with chaffed clay. There were two fiber ropes cots with cotton mattresses and sheets. On one side, two iron trunks were lying on each other: the bigger one at the bottom and the smaller one on the top with covering sheets of embroidered cloth. A wooden cornice on a wall had washed pottery that gleamed even in the faint light.

They didn’t let me eat even a single morsel with my own hands during the days of my stay with them. They fed me, bathed me, combed my hair and lined my eyes with kohl. They weren’t tired of calling “puttar, puttar” (son). Both of them wanted me to sleep with him or her and on reaching to no decision they would leave it to me. When I pointed to Baba Fazal Din, the smile and glow of Amma Saddaan’s eyes would deepen. Then they would decide to close their cots. I was laid on Baba Fazal’s cot on the side of Amma Saddaan’s cot and she would softly place her hand on my chest. They burnt frankincense in dried cow-dung during the hot nights of summer to ward off mosquitoes so that I may not be disturbed in the slumber. I watched them airing me with hand-fan till I fell asleep and when I woke up in the morning I found either of them still fanning me.

Opposite to their hut, there was a mosque, adjacent to Numberdar’s Dera, where I was sent for learning the Holy Quran. Baba Fazal Din dusted the mosque with broom twice a day, fetched water from a nearby well for the ablutions of the people who offered their prayers there, and lit the lamps of mustard oil after the Maghrib3 congregational prayer. When he left for his labour I remained with Amma during the day hours, playing by myself and doing homework of summer vacations. Some of their relatives also lived in that village. She took me to them. When I visited them for the first time, I felt they already knew me. They treated me with affection and care as I was the real and only son of Baba and Amma.

I would spend most of my summer and winter vacations with them. They also used to take me with them whenever I was sick. Once, I caught acute diarrhoea. I became weedy and no medicine caused any betterment in my condition, making me reedy like a dried staple cotton stalk. Baba came to see me. My condition urged him to take me with him, giving obdurate arguments to my mother. They didn’t cure me with any medicine. They just fed me plainly boiled rice in the evening with their own hands. Amazingly, I recovered within a few hours. When they took me back to my home after a week I was fully recovered. Many memories like these have been glimpsing and pinching me unceasingly.

Baba Fazal Din’s arrival gradually receded and finally ended during the span of my schooling from primary to high. There was a big role of my elder brother’s years’ long hostile attitude, the strict discipline of school, and his aging and wearying health couldn’t bear such long tiring journey any more as well being a pedestrian. His visits to me turned into months apart. On the other hand, constant pouring of my elder brother’s years’ long talks in my mind against them also showed their stimulus and unconsciously I was dissident from them. In the meanwhile, I was sent to my middle brother in another city where I was admitted to 8th grade in the school. This also increased the distance. When after one and a half year my brother was transferred back to our home city, I became much busy in my own activities and forgot those loving people almost entirely.

Those days, I was free after my F.Sc. exams. I didn’t have anything to do except wandering about and reading digests. During one of such nomadic days, my friend and I reached near Keru. With a flash in my mind, I remembered them and had a sudden longing for seeing them. I asked my friend to accompany me to the nearby village of Keru might be 3 or 4 kilometers away from there. I doubted if they were alive. I inquired into one of the peasants working in the fields by the track about Baba Fazal.

He replied questioningly, “Fazlu Jhalla4?”

“No, Baba Fazal Din.” I repeated.

“Yeah, yeah. Fazlu Jhalla. He lives in front of the Dera of the Numberdar. He’s gone mad. Poor creature! He doesn’t recognize anyone anymore.”

“Oh! Since when?” It was difficult for me to believe.

“Since long.”

When I moved my steps towards the village my friend said, “Why do you want to meet a mad man? Let’s walk back. Village is still at some distance. We’ll get fatigue for nothing.”

But I didn’t listen to him. I became more anxious. The village appeared same as before. I was identifying the paths. The mosque by the well was getting worn out but the Dera of the Numberdar had expanded and well reconstructed. Under the same shisham tree a very old man sat on a cot drooping his feet on a side, drowned in his own thoughts.

As I started towards him, someone called me out from behind, “Who are you? Whom do you want to see?” The questions were asked in pure Punjabi.

I turned and found Khalid Ahmed Numberdar standing there. A glimpse of acquaintance appeared in his eyes and he spoke again, “Oh, well! You’ve come to see Baba Fazal Din. He’s sitting there.”

I shook hands with him, “There, a person told me that Baba has gone mad.” I asked, pointing in the direction of the people working in fields.

“Yes. Come and drink lassi5 first then go to meet Baba. He isn’t going anywhere.”

“No, thanks. And his wife, Amma?”

“She has passed away.”

I had another shock.

Baba Fazal Din’s ash like gray beard and eyebrows had turned as white as lime. He was wearing grey colored kurta6 and a square designed tehmad7 tied around his waist. His dress was neat. I recognized him at the first sight. He answered my greetings affectionately. He didn’t appear mad at all.

“Baba, we’ve come from the city to see you.”

“From the city? Ok, ok. Come son, sit! Would you drink lassi?” he made some room for us to sit by sliding a bit on one side.

“No Baba, thank you.” I replied reviewing the surroundings. Now there was neither flower bed nor vegetable patch, nor the crawler of beetle leaf like plant on the roof. The hut also seemed worn out.

“Son! Ramju, too, lives in the city. Do you know him?” he called my childhood nick name in his pure villager accent.

“Baba, I am Ramzan.”

“Ok, ok.” He said carelessly, “Bid my Salam8 if you see him, son.”

My friend looked at me in astonishment. I, too, was shocked on hearing this.

“Take some lassi, son. You’ve come from very far.”

“Just want to drink water, Baba.” My friend said.

I stopped Baba Fazal when he got up to fetch water. I drank water in the earthen bowl from the nearby lying pitcher and gave to my friend as well. Then, I came back and again sat on the cot.

Baba spoke in his drift as I sat down, “Son, give Ramju my love; tell him that Baba misses him greatly.”

“Baba, I am Ramzu.” I once again tried to tell him. He didn’t say anything. Is love such a thing that doesn’t even marred by the madness? If he remembers me, whether did he remembers Amma, too?

“Baba, Amma?”

“She passed away years ago, she passed away. You’ve come from the city?” He inquired again after replying in a sad voice, “Do you know Ramjan? He, too, lives in the city?”

“Baba, I’m and I’ve come to see you.” This time, I said emphatically.

Baba Fazal Din kept quiet for a while. His face and eyes were inexpressive. Then, lying down on his cot and closing his eyes he, said “Tell him, son, if you see, him that Baba misses him desperately. Ask him to see me just for once.”

….

(Translated from Urdu by Munir Fayyaz)

****


[1] Headman of a village, who is nominated by the government to collect revenue from the landowners, cultivators and to solve minor problems of his people.

[2] Lumberdar’s building usually with two or three big rooms and a vast compound, where Lumberdar have meetings with the people of his village.

[3] One of the five daily Namaz (prayers), which is offered as soon as the sun sets.

[4] Mad, insane, one who has gone out of his wits.

[5] A kind of drink which is obtained after churning milk and extracting butter. The remaining water, containing milk and little beads of butter is called lassi.

[6] A loose shirt without cuffs.

[7] An unsown piece of cloth which is tied against the waist in place of trousers.

[8] Greetings.

Since Khalid Ahmad the Numberdar1 told me that Baba Fazal Din passed away the same day I had met him the last time, I am in a terrible state of agony. He gasped his last breathed during night. When people didn’t find Baba Fazal Din outside his cottage in the morning as usual, they broke the door open and found him lying dead on his cot. Greif, anguish and shame attacked me like a fit of epilepsy. The profound grief has also clamped its claws in my brain like a bat. I get annoyed at myself time and again and mumble something to vent out all of my sentiment.

The first glimpses of Baba Fazal Din appear clearly on the screen of my memory in the times when I was a student of grade 2 at a nearby Masjid Maktab primary school. Usually, he visited me at my school. He was an aging person with an ashen beard. The blend of black and white hair of his beard appeared ash grey. He didn’t look me a stranger as though I was already acquainted with him. He took me with him, put me in his lap and kissed my forehead a lot, sitting at some distance from my class room. Every pore of his body seemed to exude rays of his love which has enfolded me even today. He did give me many sweeties and other edibles and as much money as he could afford. I didn’t know who he was and when, how and where I had met him for the first. My mother told me, though, that soon before the war of 1971 my elder brother got his house repaired and Baba Fazal Din was one among those laborers. I had just started crawling in those days and when he saw me dragging on my hands and knee in the courtyard, he picked me up and carried bricks and kneading for the rest of the day, holding me in his arms. This routine continued for the next 15 or 20 days of his work there. He handed over me to my mother only when I cried with hunger or went to sleep, suspending my head against his shoulder. On the third or fourth day he brought his wife there, too. Amma Sadda’n picked me up gluttonously and started kissing me hard. They loved me as I was their own lost son whom they found after a much long span. Amma Saddaan came to see me three or four times during that duration of the repair work. She was a short woman of wheatish complexion with left eye infected with cataract. 

I am the youngest in a family of three brothers and two sisters. I was born when my father had reached the age of 55. Just a few months before my birth he fell of the slippery floor of bathroom and spent the remaining years of his life in bed until he started his journey to hereafter leaving the administration of our home in the hands of my eldest brother who had inborn ill tempers of stubbornness and anger, suspicions and superstitions. Every person of the world would appear inferior to him. Not only the family members but other relatives also scared of his ill temperament. So, he naturally suspected that Baba Fazal Din and his wife were child abductors. However, he was satisfied after obtaining complete information of their whereabouts. They were childless even after 25 years of their matrimonial life but his negative disposition soon showed him another way a way that indirectly altered the structure of my inner feelings towards them that I’m very mortified today.

Baba Fazal Din and Amma Saddaan were the poor laborers, living in a village named Keru (now renamed as Khalid Abad) situated at about 7 or 8 kilometers in the west of Bahawal Nagar District City. They didn’t leave visiting our home even after the repairing work finished. After a break of three or four days they started from their home before dawn on foot and reached our home by the sunrise. They played with me till the noon and after shopping their commodities, left for their home in the afternoon. I also mingled with them.

The clouds of war arrived heavily with torrents of bomb explosions. It was a border area and when the Indian planes started appearing in the sky, the government ordered inhabitants of the city to move 15 miles back to the safer areas. We also moved to a nearby village Gardhari Wala, 15 miles away to the west. The war remained for a week or so but those days were longer & onerous than centuries. On the 3rd day, when the war was at its peak and tanks were firing massively, Baba Fazal Din reached at our haven in our quest. He had first gone to the city and then asking about our whereabouts reached there. He found himself relieved on finding us safe.

When war ceased and we returned home, their routine also restored. They started their visits to play with me as before at an interval of three or four days. They strongly longed for taking me with them to their village but abstained from due to my infancy. Their love for me grew intensified with my growing age. However, they took me with them for the first time for some days when I was about 3. It happened three or four times but I can’t recall it for being so young at that time.

They were bête noire of my eldest brother. On seeing them early in the morning, he always started calling them names. He would say: they’ll spoil the kid. But they would ignore his bitter words for their profound love for me. When my brother’s harshness crossed all the limits of etiquette and morality, they changed their routine a little bit. Now, they began to pass their time wandering here and there after arriving in the city, or waiting at the corner of our street in a hide until my brother left the house to go to his work-place, and they showed up as soon as he was gone.

They almost gave up visiting our home after my enrolment in the school but kept visiting me there. Often, Baba Fazal would come alone but Amma Saddaan might accompany him sometimes. On sighting me, their faces glowed and their smiles turned so sweet and so soft like honey. They kept hugging me as long as they stayed. They would bring many new things for me and sometimes a toy, too. They didn’t want to leave me and looked back at me again and again while departing. If it were possible for them they really didn’t want away from me, and lose me out of their sight even for a single moment.

It was summer vacations when I went to their place for the first time, on reaching the age of my consciousness. During this long pedestrian travel, Baba Fazal hardly let me walk just a few paces. I covered almost of all the distance on his old shoulders with my legs clutched around his neck. The summer heat had exhausted him but he was as joyous like a kid who finds his favorite toy. Their hut was in the first row in the area reserved for the village laborers, opposite to the Numberdar’s Dera2. It had no boundary wall or courtyard. On the facade wall of the hut, there was a creeper of beetle like leaves, reaching the roof and giving the hut a pleasant look. They had grown some flowering plants and seasonal vegetables on a small piece of land behind the hut. There was a long series of fields beyond this. There stood a shisham tree on the clearing in front of the hut with neat land around it. Amma Saddaan always kept that palace broomed and water sprinkled. When we reached there she was fanning herself with a cloth bordered hand-fan of pointed date-leaves, sitting on a cot beneath the tree.

“Saddaan! Saddaan! Look, whom I’ve brought!” Baba Fazal Din shouted from a distance. His voice was heavy with emotions as he had been thinking all the way about this surprise. Seeing me, she blossomed.

The reeds hut was as clean inside as was the outer surroundings. The floor, walls and ceiling were coated with chaffed clay. There were two fiber ropes cots with cotton mattresses and sheets. On one side, two iron trunks were lying on each other: the bigger one at the bottom and the smaller one on the top with covering sheets of embroidered cloth. A wooden cornice on a wall had washed pottery that gleamed even in the faint light.

They didn’t let me eat even a single morsel with my own hands during the days of my stay with them. They fed me, bathed me, combed my hair and lined my eyes with kohl. They weren’t tired of calling “puttar, puttar” (son). Both of them wanted me to sleep with him or her and on reaching to no decision they would leave it to me. When I pointed to Baba Fazal Din, the smile and glow of Amma Saddaan’s eyes would deepen. Then they would decide to close their cots. I was laid on Baba Fazal’s cot on the side of Amma Saddaan’s cot and she would softly place her hand on my chest. They burnt frankincense in dried cow-dung during the hot nights of summer to ward off mosquitoes so that I may not be disturbed in the slumber. I watched them airing me with hand-fan till I fell asleep and when I woke up in the morning I found either of them still fanning me.

Opposite to their hut, there was a mosque, adjacent to Numberdar’s Dera, where I was sent for learning the Holy Quran. Baba Fazal Din dusted the mosque with broom twice a day, fetched water from a nearby well for the ablutions of the people who offered their prayers there, and lit the lamps of mustard oil after the Maghrib3 congregational prayer. When he left for his labour I remained with Amma during the day hours, playing by myself and doing homework of summer vacations. Some of their relatives also lived in that village. She took me to them. When I visited them for the first time, I felt they already knew me. They treated me with affection and care as I was the real and only son of Baba and Amma.

I would spend most of my summer and winter vacations with them. They also used to take me with them whenever I was sick. Once, I caught acute diarrhoea. I became weedy and no medicine caused any betterment in my condition, making me reedy like a dried staple cotton stalk. Baba came to see me. My condition urged him to take me with him, giving obdurate arguments to my mother. They didn’t cure me with any medicine. They just fed me plainly boiled rice in the evening with their own hands. Amazingly, I recovered within a few hours. When they took me back to my home after a week I was fully recovered. Many memories like these have been glimpsing and pinching me unceasingly.

Baba Fazal Din’s arrival gradually receded and finally ended during the span of my schooling from primary to high. There was a big role of my elder brother’s years’ long hostile attitude, the strict discipline of school, and his aging and wearying health couldn’t bear such long tiring journey any more as well being a pedestrian. His visits to me turned into months apart. On the other hand, constant pouring of my elder brother’s years’ long talks in my mind against them also showed their stimulus and unconsciously I was dissident from them. In the meanwhile, I was sent to my middle brother in another city where I was admitted to 8th grade in the school. This also increased the distance. When after one and a half year my brother was transferred back to our home city, I became much busy in my own activities and forgot those loving people almost entirely.

Those days, I was free after my F.Sc. exams. I didn’t have anything to do except wandering about and reading digests. During one of such nomadic days, my friend and I reached near Keru. With a flash in my mind, I remembered them and had a sudden longing for seeing them. I asked my friend to accompany me to the nearby village of Keru might be 3 or 4 kilometers away from there. I doubted if they were alive. I inquired into one of the peasants working in the fields by the track about Baba Fazal.

He replied questioningly, “Fazlu Jhalla4?”

“No, Baba Fazal Din.” I repeated.

“Yeah, yeah. Fazlu Jhalla. He lives in front of the Dera of the Numberdar. He’s gone mad. Poor creature! He doesn’t recognize anyone anymore.”

“Oh! Since when?” It was difficult for me to believe.

“Since long.”

When I moved my steps towards the village my friend said, “Why do you want to meet a mad man? Let’s walk back. Village is still at some distance. We’ll get fatigue for nothing.”

But I didn’t listen to him. I became more anxious. The village appeared same as before. I was identifying the paths. The mosque by the well was getting worn out but the Dera of the Numberdar had expanded and well reconstructed. Under the same shisham tree a very old man sat on a cot drooping his feet on a side, drowned in his own thoughts.

As I started towards him, someone called me out from behind, “Who are you? Whom do you want to see?” The questions were asked in pure Punjabi.

I turned and found Khalid Ahmed Numberdar standing there. A glimpse of acquaintance appeared in his eyes and he spoke again, “Oh, well! You’ve come to see Baba Fazal Din. He’s sitting there.”

I shook hands with him, “There, a person told me that Baba has gone mad.” I asked, pointing in the direction of the people working in fields.

“Yes. Come and drink lassi5 first then go to meet Baba. He isn’t going anywhere.”

“No, thanks. And his wife, Amma?”

“She has passed away.”

I had another shock.

Baba Fazal Din’s ash like gray beard and eyebrows had turned as white as lime. He was wearing grey colored kurta6 and a square designed tehmad7 tied around his waist. His dress was neat. I recognized him at the first sight. He answered my greetings affectionately. He didn’t appear mad at all.

“Baba, we’ve come from the city to see you.”

“From the city? Ok, ok. Come son, sit! Would you drink lassi?” he made some room for us to sit by sliding a bit on one side.

“No Baba, thank you.” I replied reviewing the surroundings. Now there was neither flower bed nor vegetable patch, nor the crawler of beetle leaf like plant on the roof. The hut also seemed worn out.

“Son! Ramju, too, lives in the city. Do you know him?” he called my childhood nick name in his pure villager accent.

“Baba, I am Ramzan.”

“Ok, ok.” He said carelessly, “Bid my Salam8 if you see him, son.”

My friend looked at me in astonishment. I, too, was shocked on hearing this.

“Take some lassi, son. You’ve come from very far.”

“Just want to drink water, Baba.” My friend said.

I stopped Baba Fazal when he got up to fetch water. I drank water in the earthen bowl from the nearby lying pitcher and gave to my friend as well. Then, I came back and again sat on the cot.

Baba spoke in his drift as I sat down, “Son, give Ramju my love; tell him that Baba misses him greatly.”

“Baba, I am Ramzu.” I once again tried to tell him. He didn’t say anything. Is love such a thing that doesn’t even marred by the madness? If he remembers me, whether did he remembers Amma, too?

“Baba, Amma?”

“She passed away years ago, she passed away. You’ve come from the city?” He inquired again after replying in a sad voice, “Do you know Ramjan? He, too, lives in the city?”

“Baba, I’m and I’ve come to see you.” This time, I said emphatically.

Baba Fazal Din kept quiet for a while. His face and eyes were inexpressive. Then, lying down on his cot and closing his eyes he, said “Tell him, son, if you see, him that Baba misses him desperately. Ask him to see me just for once.”

….

(Translated from Urdu by Munir Fayyaz)

****


[1] Headman of a village, who is nominated by the government to collect revenue from the landowners, cultivators and to solve minor problems of his people.

[2] Lumberdar’s building usually with two or three big rooms and a vast compound, where Lumberdar have meetings with the people of his village.

[3] One of the five daily Namaz (prayers), which is offered as soon as the sun sets.

[4] Mad, insane, one who has gone out of his wits.

[5] A kind of drink which is obtained after churning milk and extracting butter. The remaining water, containing milk and little beads of butter is called lassi.

[6] A loose shirt without cuffs.

[7] An unsown piece of cloth which is tied against the waist in place of trousers.

[8] Greetings.

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  • Najam-uddin Ahmad is Urdu novelist and short story writer. He has published three novel: 𝘔𝘶𝘥𝘧𝘶𝘯 (The Burials) in 2006, 𝘒𝘩𝘰𝘫 (The Explore) in 2016, and 𝘚𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘮 (The Partners) in 2019, and two collections of short stories: 𝘈𝘢𝘰 𝘉𝘩𝘢𝘪 𝘒𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘪𝘯 (Brother, Let’s play) in 2013 and 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘶𝘳 𝘋𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘳𝘢𝘺 𝘈𝘧𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘺 (Flee and Other Short Stories) in 2017. Presently, he has been working on his Urdu novel, 𝘔𝘦𝘯𝘢 𝘑𝘦𝘦𝘵. A collection of Urdu Short Stories is also expected soon. He is also renowned for his translations into Urdu. Among other translations, he has recently translated the famous Turk epic “The Book of Dede Korkut” into Urdu, published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. He has also translated a number of Urdu short stories into English. He has been bestowed with Pakistan Writers Guild Award, 2013 (𝘈𝘢𝘰 𝘉𝘩𝘢𝘪 𝘒𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘪𝘯), 7th UBL Excellence Award, 2017 (Translation of selected short stories of Nobel Laureates), and National Award of Translation, 2019 by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His Novel 𝘒𝘩𝘰𝘫 was also short listed for 7th UBL Excellence Award, 2017.

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  • Munir Fayyaz is a prominent poet (Urdu and English), Translator, Critic and serving as Assistant Professor (English) in F. G. Colleges, Islamabad, Paksitan. He gives lectures on Literature and Translation Studies in leading University of the Capital City. He has recently edited special issue of “Pakistan Literature” (Contemporary Short Stories of Pakistan) published by Pakistan Academy of Letters. Munir Fayyaz is also a broadcaster at Radio Pakistan Islamabad and Panelist of Pakistan Television (World) for Literary Programs. He has been translating Pakistani Poetry and Fiction into English since 2009. His debut translations into Urdu are: Contemporary Chinese Short Stories, Kyrgyz Writer Cengiz Aitmatov’s novellas, An Anthology of Nepali Poets as “Nepal ki Aawa” (The Voice of Nepal). Morevoer, He has also written profiles of poets and writers of International fame: Naguib Mahfouz and John Ashberry, and the US Poet Laureates Tracy K. Smith and Juan Philipe Herrera.

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Rehan Islam
9 months ago

Loved reading it.

Fiction
The Remorse
The Last Rain
The Remorse
𝘜𝘳𝘥𝘶 𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦/𝘜𝘳𝘥𝘶 𝘍𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯/𝘜𝘳𝘥𝘶 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝘣𝘺 𝐍𝐚𝐣𝐚𝐦-𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐡𝐦𝐚𝐝 Gabriel García Márquez like magical realism. It is a short story that reveals the powerful emotions of love which even can delay the death. A childless old man temporarily adopts a little boy. Soon after, the boy leaves him and his wife. After many years, the boy goes to his village to see him. He finds him gone mad with a washed memory but he still has remembrance about the boy. The boy returns and the old man dies, leaving the boy in an everlasting repentance. The story begins with these remorseful thought of the boy: 𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘒𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘥 𝘈𝘩𝘮𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘉𝘢𝘣𝘢 𝘍𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺. .... Read full short story in 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓸 𝓛𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓬𝓸𝓷.
Khalid Fateh Muhammad
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