Samandar-e-Bemaina - The Abbasnama

i,who hardly ever write on anything political, found this piece rather interesting. nice justification by the author. i could list a million people who would draw entirely different conclusions.

comments anyone?

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

i've been trying to write a book for the last three years. and the process has given me some insight into how difficult it must be for a mother to rear a child in a way that he fulfills all her dreams for him. writing, my friends, is hard! its harder when you're writing about something thats close to your heart,like the subject of my people is.

the book was intended to be an insight into what must go on in the mind of a suicide bomber. its not supposed to be an advocacy of terror tactics. nor is it an apology for violence. it is simply my opinion of how it must work. i am probably wrong in the assumption that i can even begin to understand the psychological state of a man willing to blow himself up for a cause. i am the guy who didn't go for juma prayers because it was too hot. but this book is as much an exercise into finding my own passion, my spirit and my faith as it is an exploration of the world of today. the world in which i have not only a right but a duty to speak out, to express and to protest.

i am going to use my blog to slowly showcase the book to an poor sap willing enough to read it. chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. maybe the little critiquie i can get will help me in finally finishing the darn thing. i've usld "lack of research oportunity" too long as an excuse.

so here goes

epilogue as a prologue.

june 9, 2004

the roadliner he caught from zahidan pulls into the crowded saddar area and even before the door opens he can smell the unwelcome smell of home. the diesel from the buses mingling with the scent of ripe mangoes on the pushcarts. the sense of controlled chaos, of happy schooldays in the school a few hundred meters away, of the confused adolescence of years ago, the passion of youth, the pain of conversion. he decides there and then he will not stay the night.

the rickshaw ride to mevashah costs fifty rupees. he knows its too much but he's not focussed enough to bargain. he looks with pained eyes at the broken dome of the first mosque he sees on the way. "suicide attack kills 37, injures 143 in m a jinnah mosque blast" the headline flashes before his eyes. the bile rising to his throat as he thinks of the bitter futility of it all.

the potholed roads of mevashah distract him from his reverie. even after all these years he still knows the exact route to the jaffery bagh, a small cemetery within this large acropolis within the metropolis of karachi. the gate is still the same rusty orange, there is still a tanker parked at the broken hydrant right across the narrow street the same way it was when he came here so many years ago. he only difference is in the number of graves. there are so may more now. so many alleys have disappeared to make room for more graves. it takes him a few moments to recognise the peepal tree under which abbaji is buried. "three aisles down, corner plot" was how hadi had described it.

he steps slowly towards the grave. standing by the marble tombstone he is distracted at the realisation that right across the aisle is phuppiamma's old borderless grave. she should be happy, he thinks. haider bhai was always the apple of her eye. and now he's so close. the small smile fades away as he thinks the condition his brother's body must have been in when it was buried and it suddenly seems to him that the wetness on his aunt's grave is not the caretaker's watering but her quiet dead tears. a foolish thought, he knows. an unbecoming dramatization. but he sits down misty eyed on the side of his brother's grave, fingering the week old rose petals left no doubt by mukhtar kirmani who still comes every thursday.

"saheb, its a martyr's grave, don't sit on it".

the child is all of 9 years old, no doubt one of the caretaker's neverending flock. he's carrying a packet in which he's collected half burned incense sticks and disposed metro milan agarbatti boxes and some assorted paper garbage. obviously to sell to the small recycling plant down the road. he waves him off, absent mindedly and the child is obviously in no mood to argue.

the tears come suddenly, with great sobs shaking his chest as he finally reads the name on the tombstone. he musn't cry he knows. its the fulflment of an ambition he knows. its the eternal life he knows. but the name of his brother has too many memories associated with it, too much baggage. the urdu lettering seems to be moving through his tears and the wind blows through his hair he way his brother used to ruffle it in those long ago days of affection. he takes out a handkerchief and gently dusts off the dirt on the red lettering before wiping his tears.

haider sabr-e-abid (shaheed), they read.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

it feels wierd. the way even in your silence you open yourself up to her. the way the three years of not seeing her seem to not matter. the way the eyes you love break your breast bone, go through the ribs straight to the throbbing tired heart. the way it beats as if with renewed hope of succour. the way those eyes hold it, massage it, ease it, make its efforts worthwhile again. you feel again. almost as if for the first time in your life. the way the rest of the crowd disappears for that one brief instant. then you remember she's not yours any more.

you lie in bed alone at night, yearning.

you remember the book you told her to read and understand why jenny had to die.

-------

you're sitting next to each other during the literature tutorial. she's listening as moonface is discussing bathsheba everdene's character with the professor. she's rotating her pen with her left hand, tapping her foot impatiently as she waits for the forty minutes to end. she suddenly glances over at you, your eyes meet and for you the rest of the world disappears. she follows your gaze to her idle hand resting on the armrest. you reach forward, slowly, with a fingertip, oblivious to the professor droning on about hardy's women. she watches as you gently move it over the back of her hand, tracing designs neither of you can understand. she stays still as you play with her fingers, those lovely fingers, gently, tenderly as if they're the most fragile things in the world. as if she's a crystal figurine, as if she'll suddenly break and shatter and you'll wake up.

she's not breathing. neither are you. your finger touches the wrist that’s fallen to her knees, decorum prevailing even when you're both lost in the clouds. touches it as if to see if she's real. as if to test the color of her skin and see if it'll rub off.

"what do you think abbas?" the professor asks.

you both jump, you guiltily pull your wrist away and you say "i think she's the kind of woman who any man could love, and most wouldn't regret loving"

"i was talking about bathsheba" she says

"so was i" you lie.

-----

she sits on the bench in front of you, the sun rays filtering through the grillework throwing shadows of her eyelashes on her cheekbones. she shows you her yesterday's journal entry, a recounting of events from the way she lived through them, not what you built up in your mind. she has to lean really close to show it to you, because she's afraid you'll grab i and read the stuff you're not yet allowed to read. you have to look, and then smile sheepishly in mutual embarrassment as you see the faces of the friends with you whom you momentarily forgot about.

------

you congratulate your friend on his getting engaged to his childhood sweetheart. you're siting at a roadside cafe, everyone teasing him, everyone laughing. the shisha smoke everyone's exhaling, everyone but you because you feel smoking is a betrayal to her because she didn't approve, gets to you again as you think, "this could have been me".

she's saying "qubool hai" to the qazi, 18 kilometres away.

------

you've just come back from a wedding. you can't sleep because you're irritated.

so you write.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

yes i used to listen to ballads once upon a distant time. no that does not mean hip hop/dancehall isn't my genre.

i long for the warmth of days gone by
when you were mine
but now those days are memories in time
life’s empty without you by my side
my heart belongs to you
no matter what i try
when i get courage up to love somebody new
it always falls apart ’cause they just
can’t compare to you
your love won’t release me
i’m bound under ball and chain
reminiscing our love as i watch four season’s change

Boys II Men

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments

ever felt the emptiness that takes over in the split second after you put your tv on standby? that's life nowadays. like im somewhere far away looking at life from above. in the abstract. work pressures, studies, family things all seem to bounce off from just a few feet away. an invisible, insulating forcefield lies between. right now my old urdu shairi scrapbook, from the days when prepping for baitbazees was a serious affair, is my only refuge.

qataa of the day:

ley gae wo saath saree zindagi ki ronaqein
ghar ka yeh alam hai un ke rooth ker jaaney ke baad
jis tarah dihaat ke station-on per din dhalay
ik sukoot-e-muzmahil garee guzar janay ke baad

ahsaan danish. probably the only guy in the world to have recieved an honorary phd in the room which he painted himself as an odd job boy a few years earlier. (or so i recall) and that qataa just shows why.

i have discovered something new about myself. i do not like lewd comments about women i know. women in the abstract, i can take. but not women i know. uh uh. just another example of the hypocrisy that is abbas hussain. but thats the way it is.

N: ha aha ha! is that all you could come up with?

xill-e-ilahi: arghhh! you're incorrigible

N: humouring u?.....killin time is more like it...M BOREDDDDDDDDDDDD

N: and you're funny. there's something about the way you say things


and all i could get was a "you're funny". the comic aspect to an unfunny situation. the way the facade fools all but those who it should. the way i'm read as the man i never was. the man i never want to be.

quote of the day:

you aint no nice guy, larry.
(stephen king. the stand.)


and neither am i.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments

"...no wedding Saturday within the month of june"
stevie wonder (1962)

times sure have changed. not only do i have to attend a wedding on saturday, i also have to go on sunday, monday, tuesday and thursday. and let's not even talk about july. why does everyone have to get married in this heat? and why do people expect other people to follow dress codes? i mean why on earth would i be wearing a black suit at ten thirty pm in a shadi lawn on kashmir road when the temperatures around 31 celsius and humidity is up to 67%?

as abuzar might have said, "shadi mein aye ho kiya?"

ok that was a bad joke.


hino is officially underway and i should get at least half my team from monday so i think its safe to say that the pressure is upon us especially since mango appears to be more or less free these days - which means simply that he'll be drilling holes in my head for the next two months at least. i hope i can tolerate him till then.

as anticipated being in the office is a bore especially since mobeen is in lahore and i havent seen adil around either. being alone at hino these past two days was better - at least i could call fudge, which is always a mood-lifter. even though she's always dissing me. or maybe because she's always dissing me. or maybe because no matter how momentary it might be, she provides a distraction, a brief respite from remembrance for all of twenty minutes before the comparisons start. yeah. i always had a hidden agenda in everything. i always had that underlying motive that made all my relationships false, all my emotions farcial, all my relaities unreal. all except you.

you, and you know that you are the only you i ever refer to, the you who was once the "u" in us, were right. i still don't know myself enough to know what i need. but i know what i want. or wanted. whatever. if life were simple enough to figure out i would be too simple to figure it out. i promised you i'd catch up with you when you get here. but i'm not so sure now. my defences are still way too weak to face you like nothing ever happened. its still happening. and there's no end in sight.

hasrat, and boy can i associate with that takhallus said

nahin aati to un ki yaad maheenon tak nahi aati
magar jub yaad aatey hain to aksar yaad aatay hain

what bullcrap. how can i forget even for a second what you meant to me?

mean to me.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 7:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

if nazia were alive i know she wouldn't have survived this.... and to think its supposed to be a "tribute".

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments

or am i back in remission?

through the stupor of antishstamines and paracetamol, dreams still manage to creep in. dreams of that which was and that which could have been. dreams of that which i couldn't dare to dream. of luminous eyes and mocha skin and silken hair and sudden smiles.

muddat huee is haadsa - e - ishq ko laikin
ab tak hai teray dil kay dharaknay ki sada yaad

why does a memory of that which never was haunt me so? why does forgotten loyalty prevent me from moving on? why does every face i see become just the face i want to see? why does life not allow for a second chance? why does rage still point fingers at you? why do the all my dreams, controlled and uncontrolled, still feature you in them? till when will the hope of a simple how're you doing continue to be my lifeline? when wil i really really get up and move on?

kahoon kis se mein ke kiya hai
shab-e-gham buree bala hai
mujhe kya bura tha marna -
agar eik baar hota

i don't blame you, you know. it wasn't your fault i fell so hard. have a happy life. and pray that i do too - someday.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments

Today marks my first post on the karachi metroblog. and like all my beginnings, it was crappy as hell. there is a masochistic streak in me somewhere that likes the punishment a scathing critical comment can have. but to quote the one and only aitch ell, jub tak khap nahi machti, kuch maza nahin aata.

hino from monday. mango is simultaneously the best and the worst manager i have ever come across. i wonder how this assignment will go.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

most of the following is an extract from an article by a raza zaidi of rutgers university. you can contact him at mzaidi@eden.rutgers.edu

the basic difference between a nazm and a ghazal is that whereas a nazm can be a collection of couplets (or it can have triplets, quatrains, or no rhyming at all), the couplets of a nazm have to be on the same subject and any one couplet is related to all the others and the theme and subject of the nazm, but a ghazal's couplets are independent entities in themselves, they do not have to be on the same subject or even related to any other couplet in any way.

if and when two couplets of a ghazal are related to each other and are on the same subject, they have to be placed right next to each other, and are called collectively a qataa.

the ghazal itself will typically be a love song. indeed, the ghazal form was first used in arabic language, in which it means "to talk to women", more precisely, "love-talk with women". from there it was incorporated into persian language. in persian, ghazal's literary meaning is "the characteristic mating call of a particular persian deer". ghazal in persian retained its basic form and purpose of love-talk. ghazal's essentials include praise of one's beloved, his/her beauty, attitude, love, way of talking, gait, etc. generally a ghazal can not have adverse opinions about the poet's beloved except his indifference, "bay-wafai", "bay-rukhee", etc. while the mode of address always indicates the beloved to be masculine, there is no other hint (unless the poet is a woman)that the person being discussed is female. for instance, ahmed faraz says

bas ek nigaah se lutataa hai qaafilaa dil kaa
so rah-ravaan-e-tamanna bhi dar ke dekhte hain

(with one glance he sends back convoys of the heart
so the wayfarers of hope are also scared when they look at him)

indicating that the guy who does that is in fact exactly that, a guy - but he goes on to say

sunaa hai chashm-e-tasavur se dasht-e-imkaan mein
palang zaaviay us ki kamar ke dekhte hain

(i've heard that in the deserts of chance, with the eyes of imagination
even beds look at the curves of his/her waist)

which pretty much shows that the poet is describing a girl. to me at least. and the examples are endless. (by the way pardon the terrible translations, i'm rusty at this thing)

the best thing about the ghazal though is that it has no english, or more precisely, western equivalent. language was never developed as an art form to the extent that it was cultivated in middle east/south asia region. you've got to love that exclusivity.

and before you ask - ilm-e-urooz is the study of rhyme, metre and other associated technical details in urdu poetry. my urdu tutor's father was considered an expert in this field - which is the only reason that i've ever heard of it in the first place.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

this is another gem. our cultured country cousins, the denizens of the city of kings, conossieurs of art and all things classy - happily doing poondi (and actually recording it) while the babes go wild on the street.

what does the future have in store? charlie's angels in punjabi? hmmmm... charlie dee kuriyaan!

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 1:35 AM | Permalink | Comments

while i'm still bitten by the urdu poetry bug; here's some incredibly sensual (for something written in the Zia regime, by a woman no less) stuff by Parveen Shakir. while i don't like the free verse style - i'm a stickler for rabt and beher when it comes to urdu shairi - i love the flow this pice has got. if Faiz were a woman...

sabz maddham roshni

sabz maddham roshni mein surkh aanchal ki dhanak
sard kamre mein machalatii garm saanson ki mahak

baazuuon ke sakht halqe mein koi naazuk badan
silvatein malboos par, aanchal bhi kuch dhalka hua

garmii-e-rukhsaar se dahki hui thandi hava
narm zulfon se mulaayim ungleeon ki chhair chhaar

surkh honton par sharaarat ke kisi lamhe ka aks
reshamii baahon mein choori ki kabhi maddham dhanak

sharmagaee lehjon mein dheeray se kabhi chaahat ki baat
do dilon ki dharkanon mein goonjti thi ek sada

kaanpte honton pe thi Allah se sirf ek dua
kaash ye lamhe thahar jaayein thahar jaayein zara...

Beautiful.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 1:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

after a brief hiatus, ok not so brief hiatus (i think that might be the only time i've used hiatus twice in one sentence - make that thrice) i'm finally back at my blog. and no it wasn't entirely my fault. you can blame the amazing combo of the newly privatised kesc and the newly privatised ptcl for collaborating on an ultra irritating mission to knock me of the information superhighway. yes i'm the only guy left in karachi with neither a ups for my pc nor a dsl connection for the net. and yes i use windows 98. gives me a classic tinge. the golden oldie a la frank sinatra if you follow my gist. and as usual ive started ramblind when theres so much to report.

first off - exams over. and thats enough said on the subject.

that brings us to the subject of humpty dumpty. from now on we will refer to the man as humpty (mhrih). which means humpty (may he rot in hell).

humpty dumpty has pushed me of the wall
he's pushed so hard i may not get up at all
and mr. boy blames me (he's got some pluck)
to hell with them both. i don't give a f***

the fat freak actually had the nerve to suggest that it was me (me!) who was responsible for the delay in work. i'd like to see him complete it at any deadline himself. boy am i pissed. i'm even more ticked off at mr. boy for believing that crap. i mean ive been working my ass off for 3 years now for mr. boy and it takes one 30 second phonecall from a lazy tub of lard to wash away all the hard work. and while i'm hurt as hell i can't say i have any regret at being more or less losing my place in his paraa. i mean whats the point of working for him when he doesn't value my work at all? anyways for the time being i've been picked up (after a great deal of political football) by mango and aitch-ell for hino. and thats not a bad deal at all. as i mentioned to mobeen, right now i'd be happy if i got gino's. hino is more than good enough. it might even turn out to be one of those haq mein behtar things inshaAllah. i've got my fingers crossed.

what with exams and loadshedding and broken down phones and things i've not been able to mention that my nephew is here!!! yes in karachi!! and while he's not yet mastered "mamoojan" he says "a-bbah-sss" better than several of my gora-ified classmates did back in school. he's busy redefining cuteness. mashaAllah.

by the way keep your umbrellas in handy the monsoon season officially kicks off on the morning of the fifteenth. it might just rain soon...

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

And this is why pathans will always be pathans. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ....

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments