October 14 , 2011

Anwar Khawaja’s New Book “Sufid Pathar”

 

For students of Urdu literature, Anwar Khawaja is not an unfamiliar name. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines of Pakistan and India over the past four decades. On October1, his new book “Sufid Pathar” (the whitewashed stone) was launched at an impressive ceremony in Cerritos, California under the auspices of the Urdu Writers Society.

The 588-page tome is a gripping potpourri of 23 short stories, sketches of seven of the author’s eminent literary compatriots, and an 87-page novelette Talash-e-Bahar (In Search Of Spring). It took me four days to go through this voluminous compendium; but it was time well spent.

Khawaja is a prolific storyteller. His short stories were published in three volumes before the book under review saw the light of the day. I had read some of his writings almost three decades back. And, I have since carried a positive image of the power of his pen.

With the exception of two, all stories in this compendium were written quarter of a century back. Content-wise they reflect the writer’s revolt against the suffocating environ of his society, cruel suppression of women, and the thick wall of separation between men and women, the sexual maladjustments - all in the name of religion and traditional values held by the conservatives as sacrosanct. In this respect, he is on the same page as Saadat Hasan Manto, perhaps the best short story writer that the Urdu language has produced. While Manto is subtle in the presentation of his views, for instance in his Thanda Gosht, Khol do, and Chughad, Khawaja is outspoken, even blunt and needs no idiomatic crutches. Both writers appear to have been impacted by the thoughts of Sigmund Freud.

His story “Anderkey Darwazay” (the doors within a person) is a forceful portrayal of Khawaja’s views on societal values and the physical urges conflicting with them. When a young man is sexually attracted towards the seductive wife of his friend, he starts pawing her. She allows him to indulge in his overtures till he is fully aroused and then utters: “What are you doing?”

“I am doing what both of us want”, he retorts.

“But, I am the wife of your friend”.

The thought of breach of trust directly brought to surface the values he was nurtured on and caused him to freeze his physical urge. The woman, already aroused, was merely teasing him. She had no intention of stopping him in his tracks. So, she starts to rub her breasts on his chest, but to no avail. He had instinctively sealed himself off - a repeat of Manto’s ‘Thanda Gousht’.

In the story Khushbu Ki Talash (In Search of Fragrance), he points out that beneath all romance lies the overwhelming desire for physical contact. The story unfolds how several romances in the life of a young woman inevitably led to physical submission. She was taught and sincerely believed that love and romance were acceptable as they touched the spirit of a person, while sexual intimacy was something undesirable. Yet, all her romances ended in physical encounters. Finally, she comments, “No one can spend the entire life in a fool’s paradise; no one can live in an illusion all the time.” She decides to marry the first man who appeared sincere in his proposal.

Some stories deal with the ups and downs in the married life of couples. The story Samjotha (Compromise) presents the sanguine theme that married life can remain pleasant and exciting if both parties accept the ground realities instead of living in the dream world expecting an ever-present romance. Marriage calls for constant adjustments to each other’s expectations. This theme is reinforced in the story Shakist-I-Saz. The wife in the story, a highly accomplished artist, a singer and dancer, who loves those art forms, breaks her ‘sittar’ to accommodate her husband’s wish to stop going to and performing herself at musical concerts, as that offended the traditional values of his parents and many others.

Anwar Khawaja rightly feels strongly for the repressed women particularly of his native land. He weaves this theme into several of his stories. In Burda Faroosh, he exposes the revolting practice in some Northern areas of Pakistan of selling daughters to the highest bidders. This pagan practice is still in vogue in some Arab countries too. In the story Check-Coat, he makes the following no-holds barred comment: “The first thing a king or Nawab did on conquering a new territory was to virtually denude women and sell them in auctions. To quench their lust, they have kept women in bondage on flimsy pretexts”. They were degraded as sex slaves. Men looked for ‘salajeet’ instead of accepting, like women, the fact of old age. This is exquisitely described in the story Aab-e-Hayat.

The story Bazyaft describes the feudalistic machinations, unmitigated vendetta against resisting small farm owners, including gang rapes of their women. Such outrageous tyrannies have given rise to extremism and terrorism.

The book contains two murder mysteries too. The first is Sufid Pathar, that name is the title of the book too. The story suffers from some weaknesses. For instance, no reason is given for the fact that the victim of the crime was traveling on the mountain track without an easily available torchlight. That might have avoided his death by a fall in the ravine. The second story “Zarina” is well conceived and composed.

As I have already mentioned earlier, most of the stories were written some 20-30 years back, and the locale in several of them is the northern area of Pakistan. Anwar Khawaja was born in picturesque Abbotabad, some 80 miles by road from Islamabad, and quite well-known now owing to the killing of bin Ladin there early last May.

The author has traveled extensively in the hilly areas of northern Pakistan. The locales of many of his short stories are these idyllic highlands of Pakistan – Abbotabad, Murree, Nathigali, Changlagali, Dongagali and so on. He draws on his rich vocabulary to select the right words to use them as colors to paint the lyrical landscape to serve as background to his tales. One is reminded of the writings of Thomas Hardy. Since life has undergone a revolutionary change with the discovery of cyber space, digital technology, and satellite communication, the profuse use of words and space has been replaced by an economy of words and focus on the thematic contents. I am sure Anwar Khawaja’s new writings will be patterned on this norm.

The novelette, Talash-e-Bahar, also has as its main theme the nature of gender relations. The following sentence of the hero sums it up: “I believe in sexual freedom, am opposed to veil and am an enemy of traditional culture”.

I found the pen pictures of the seven prominent literary figures of Pakistan highly informative. In his narration, the author has often meandered away from the central figure and started talking about some subsidiary characters. But that has added color to the account.

On the whole, the book is a must read even for a person who has but a fringe interest in Urdu literature. For lovers of Urdu, the book is nothing short of a feast.

arifsyedhussaini@Gmail.com