The Knife Hidden in the Sleeve

As in his earlier book,The Storyteller’s Tale,Ahmad delights in nuanced prose and interiority — his characters often confine themselves to a room and confabulate with themselves in the chaotic recesses of their mind. And,finally,Ahmad dangles the question that attaches itself to all stories: what is the truth in all this?

In Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune,there is a line that Ahmad alludes to: What is the son but an extension of the father? So Jamaal’s tale has to be prefixed with Rafiq’s tale. Rafiq,with his Rajesh Khanna hairstyle and intense contempt for his station. Rafiq,who doesn’t want to leave his mohalla but wants to shed his middle-classness. Rafiq,who is fixated on the mansion Shabbir Manzil,its Buicks and mehfils. His “greatest ambition was to have tea there,to sit among the notables of Rasoolpur mohalla and speak of poetry and cricket,perhaps make a learned comment,but casually,on some bit of politics”.

Rafiq finally moves into the Manzil,the one house which “determined where you stood in the ranks of society”,by marrying Shaista,the proud but poor member of the Shabbir household. But when you so easily trespass the boundaries of class,you have to pay a price for it: in that three-room section of Shabbir Manzil,Rafiq is cut off from his family and friends; and he is taken aback by the passion of his bride at night and her indifference by day. As Rafiq blurts out in a sher at one of the evening mehfils,Hamaara haal kuchh aisa hai,jaise ek dhalti hui deewar hai/ Ek jo sahara mila,kisi aur ke ghar ka kona nikla (My condition is like that of a collapsing wall/ The one support I found was the corner of somebody else’s home).

In Shabbir Manzil,Rafiq finds the denial and discovery of love,finds poetry,privileges and patronising and finds himself to be a stranger in his home in the corner of someone else’s house. Finally,exiled from it,Rafiq and his son Jamaal take refuge in a mosque. Rafiq metamorphoses from a wannabe poet to a doomsday prophet,who warns,among other things,about the serial Ramayana: “They are trying to make everybody a Hindu. It is a conspiracy.” Unsheltered,under-privileged,Jamaal faces rejection in his school and watches his only friend Khalid being jailed and Ali Nagar becoming Arya Nagar. The maulana of the mosque who shelters him is burned alive,“making half a Hindu out of the Maulana at his death,cremating him before he was buried.” Jamaal encounters fear — “an invisible,obsequious,unshakeable pet,like a mangy street dog that had adopted him,whose sweat grew rancid and soaked into every part of his life” — and finally Jimmy the terrorist fully formed within himself.

There is politics in the background,from Emergency to Rath Yatra,but Ahmad is not elaborating on them or drawing equations. He is not saying all these will add up to a terrorist,he is saying it could. In a half-blighted land,a confused boy could reach for his knife — and become the poster boy of terrorism.