The Marginal Men

In medias res are the people, drawn with the sure hand of a craftsman. Jeera, the troubador and storyteller, is one of the many characters who lives on the fringes of village life (‘Jeera’s Return’). No one remembers who his parents are, or where he disappears to six months at a time. But he is loved for his wit and goodwill, and the sea of stories that he brings to the village, fables and yarns that gather crowds in a thrice and keeps them riveted. Such power always unsettles those who wield power, and sure enough, Jeera’s jaunty comeuppance over Pir Moday Shah does not go unpunished.

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Indeed, oddballs and outcasts, the marginal men of a feudal society are the protagonists of many of these stories. Baba, the One-Eyed Timepiece, is the only barber in the village, who hates the children, who loathe him in return (‘The Male Child’), but whose lonely death brings a strange melancholy. Achoo the Acrobat, in a story of the same name, goes from being the envy of his brighter classmates to a lowly object of their charity. In both the stories, it’s the first-person narrative that reveals the slow, sure, but problematic reinforcement of hierarchy.

The village of this work exists in a tension: between mutiny and obedience, between fiercely individualist characters and the whip-like backlash from society. Others like Ghafoor, the dimwit (‘Jodhpur’s End’), and Nooray, the son of a prostitute (‘Despair’), live their entire lives in abject surrender, till a moment of bloody violence brings liberation. That moment is neither elaborated, nor glorified by the unblinking eyes of the author. It simply exists.

Before he gained renown as an accomplished writer, Natiq was a mason in Okara, building mosques and minarets, and carrying on his education in private. He left the village for Islamabad to seek his life as a writer, but that village has not left his fiction. He draws us into his work with the sharp see-saw of conversations heard at village corners, and clears Gibbons’ test of authenticity (Why are there no camels in the Koran?) by not wasting too many lines on description.

His critique and irreverence for religion and its overseers is apparent in such stories as ‘Jeera’s Return’, ‘The Maulvi’s Miracle’ and ‘The Mason’s Hand’. The last is a story that draws a lot from his own life. Ashgar is a mason, who decides to go to Saudi Arabia for better prospects. In that ancient, hallowed land, he visits the places he has long revered, but his search for an honest living ends in unspeakable violence – sanctioned by the Sharia. This is a land that has been deserted by any power of benediction.

This remarkable collection is a worthy addition to the Urdu short story canon, with echoes of Manto and Premchand. It cannot easily be pinned into ideological positions. Its fealty is to the people Natiq writes of, the violence with which they live, and the fierce passions which drive them. In the best of the work, ‘Qaim Deen’, one man becomes representative of the tragic arc of human life — a hero of his community, Qaim Deen is battered by fate, forsaken by his own, and is left waiting for a deliverance that will not come.