WHAT lies between reality and dream? This question has occurred to me twice. Once, while trying to decipher the enigmatic symbolism of the late Intizar Husain and now again while reading Shafqat Naghmi’s novel.
There is, after all, a difference between spoken words and the printed page. In Naghmi Sahib’s spiritual lineage stood the illustrious Qudratullah Shahab, who recounts an episode of a revered mystic illuminating his disciples’ hearts with divine light. Shahab’s bureaucratic curiosity could not tolerate the mystery. Searching the holy man’s cloak, he produced a battery-powered torch, exposing the secret behind the celestial radiance. Many years later, I find myself in a similar predicament. Among the fortunate few to read SaatJanam before publication, I now find its images and symbols seizing me at every turn. Whether a battery-powered torch or the modern printing press, both possess a kind of magic—the former a source of light, the latter of profound influence, like the acacia tree beneath whose shade a mysterious stranger awaits a traveller, opening before him all his treasures before departing into nonexistence.
This acacia tree, too, is filled with strange enchantment. In forgotten ages, it would fill people’s laps with fruits of every kind, but now it has become the abode of some bloodthirsty spectre, while venomous serpents dwell among its roots. Shafqat Naghmi’s Muhammad Khan repeatedly finds himself drawn towards it, only to return with bloodied hands and feet. The cycle continues because of the honeycombs hanging from its branches, promising healing, and because of the heaps of fruit capable of appeasing both hunger and desire. Thus, the tree emerges as a symbol around which the entire fabric of the novel is woven.
What an extraordinary fabric it is, where the rigidity of belief and devotion coexists with the dreams of human longing. The consequences of these impulses unfold across the novel and are equally visible in the world around me. I leave those described in detail to the reader and instead recall the earthquake that split the protagonist’s dwelling in two. I think of unruly ambitions that became a lust for dominion, manifesting in the occupation of abandoned properties and vast housing societies. Nor can I forget the legal hairsplitting in which the quantity and sound of flatulence become occasions for probing human nature. Within the universe of this novel, when these forces reach their apocalyptic intensity, they lead inexorably to a single outcome: the restless, consuming desire for a Green Card.
The late Ashfaq Ahmad once wrote a drama—perhaps Nangay Paon—in which this same Green Card assumes the form of a sacred object. Once obtained, people arrive barefoot and in large numbers to behold it with reverence. Yet these innocent souls remain unaware of the price that accompanies this coveted document: poverty, hunger, naked deprivation, greed, wars, and countless other afflictions march in its wake. What follows thereafter is nothing short of calamity. Ashfaq Ahmad belonged to a gentler age, one in which the Green Card remained merely a Green Card, along with a few eccentricities that accompanied it. The bloodthirsty witch concealed within the acacia tree and the serpent coiled around its trunk still lay dormant. In later times, however, they were unleashed, and we witnessed rivers of blood flowing through the streets of our own “Behbudi”—our homeland and our dwelling place.
Had Ashfaq Ahmad lived, he might have shown us yet another drama engraved upon the human mind. But he departed, and with him both his critics and his admirers withdrew into their caves of repose. Someone, however, had to record the turmoil of this age. Shafqat Naghmi has fulfilled that responsibility.
It is necessary to explain who Shafqat Sahib is and what he represents. As I have already mentioned, his intellectual and spiritual upbringing took place in the school of Qudratullah Shahab. One hears that he also intends to write a grand chronicle in the spirit of Shahab Nama. Should such an epic ever come into being, we may finally learn whence came the extraordinary powers of those men who, in Karachi’s violent years of fire and steel, could transform the bustling metropolis into a city of silence with the mere gesture of a finger. Yet that is only one story among many—a veritable Alif Laila for our times.
My only fear is that, in anticipation of this future chronicle, readers may neglect SaatJanam. This novel itself is a remarkable achievement. Yet I worry that its most significant symbol—the tree of curiosity, the acacia tree—may be misunderstood. By naming Muhammad Khan’s village “Behbudi” and associating the tree with cool shade, fragrance, and luscious fruit, the author has fashioned his symbolism with great subtlety. If this symbol evokes in your mind some familiar image or association, I must confess that I disagree with you—most emphatically. The rest is not to be spoken aloud; it is meant only to be understood.
—This writer is former advisor to the President of Pakistan, author & mass media theorist.
(farooq.adilbhuta@gmail,com)
