“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)
I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet.
Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.
We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.
Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.
Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul:America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?
This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.
Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.
This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.
Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.
Cry, My Beloved Country (1948) reflected the plight of Africans and the deep divides that created schisms between different groups in South Africa. The book won the author, Alan Paton, a Nobel prize. Another remarkable book that was published in the same year was a non-fiction written by a student of Tagore called Syed Mujtaba Ali. Mujtaba Ali wrote Deshe Bideshein Bengali. This has been translated in recent times by the former BBC editor, Nazes Afroz, as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan. It is an outstanding memoir that demystifies and explains what led to the issues that are being faced by a country repeatedly jostled by varied regimes, a country that seems to be so steeped in problems that worrying about the pandemic remains a far cry for the common inhabitants.
Deshe-Bideshe in Bengali, published 1948
Nazes Afroz’s translation brought out by Speaking Tiger Books (2015)
For many decades this book had been feted by only a small group of readers, though the book is no lesser than Paton’s in crying out against injustices, terrors of violence and starvation, because it was written in Bengali. It was so witty and flavourful that people were afraid to translate it for the fear of losing the nuances of the original. As Afroz tells us in this interview, he had similar reservations. A book written by a scholar, it peppers history and political issues with lucidity and humour, making it an enjoyable experience for the lay reader. The author has a way of turning the mundane or intellectual into an amusing anecdote. During a conversation at an embassy party, the author through the voice of a fellow professor, makes a hilarious observation – but also, one that does convey much about Afghanistan despite its attempts at liberalisation.
“Madame Vorvechievichi argued, ‘But there are mullahs in this country.’
“Dost Muhammad said reassuringly, ‘No need to worry, Madame. I know these mullahs very well. Their knowledge of religion is very little and I can teach you all of it in three days. However, a woman can’t be a mullah.’
“Madame Vorvechievichi said angrily, ‘Why not?’
“With a deep sigh Dost Muhammad said, ‘Because she can’t grow a beard.’”
The book is speckled with multiple such instances. Along with these witticisms, the pathos of the country, the plight of the people is well captured by poignant observations:
“The real history of the country was buried beneath the soil, much like the way that Indian history was hidden in its Puranas, Mahabharata-Ramayana. Afghanistan is a poor country; Afghans do not have the time or the resources for archaeological excavations to write their own history.”
The writer, Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904-1974) a polyglot, scholar, traveller and humanitarian did just that – he recorded the history of the time he spent in Afghanistan, a time when a swift takeover from the liberal king Amanullah (1892-1960) was staged by Bacha-ye-Saqao (1891-1929) during the Afghan Civil War (1928-29). Does this sound familiar, reminding one of the recent August 2021 takeover by Taliban?
A Humboldt scholar, Mujtaba Ali was conversant in fourteen languages, lived in five countries, including Afghanistan, where he had gone to teach. That his erudition never interfered but enhanced without marring the simplicity of rendition is what makes the book an attractive read for all lay persons. His astute observations are laced with wit and realism. The residue of the book lingers as the vibrant narrative flows — vicariously bringing to life, with humour and empathy, a culture that is distinct and yet warm in its uniqueness. His style is reflective of an in depth understanding of the situation and a sense of empathy for the common people with who he interacted daily – like his man Friday and the colleagues he mentions. For the author, everyone, from an uneducated villager to the crown prince (who invited him to play tennis), seemed to grow effortlessly into a rounded persona of a friend. All these have been transmitted by Afroz in the translation too. Translating two cultures across borders in a language that does not have all the words to capture the intimate nuances is not an easy feat, but it has fruited into an unusual and captivating read.
Nazes Afroz
Afroz’s maiden venture at translation was shortlisted for the Raymond Crossword Book Award. Afroz himself has spent a long stretch of time in Afghanistan. He joined the BBC in London in 1998. He was a senior editor in charge of South and Central Asia for a number of years. He has visited Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia regularly for over a decade. In 2013, he moved back to India. A passionate photographer, he writes in English and Bengali for various newspapers and magazines. In recent articles, he has been voicing his own concerns about developments in Afghanistan. In this interview, he reflects on what led him to translate the book, the situation as it was then and as it is now. He dwells not only on the historic civil war as captured in the book but also on current day politics and the Taliban takeover.
You are a journalist. What got you interested in translating a Bengali classic from the last century?
I became a journalist five years after I read Deshe Bideshe. I was still a teenager when I picked up the book from a library rack. Reading Mujtaba Ali at that age had a profound impact on me. The erudition, the smooth sailing between multitude of cultures and languages, the gripping storytelling in his writing mesmerised me. I had never read anything like that in Bangla. Every Bengali reader of Syed Mujtaba Ali had felt the same way as I did. As a child I had the uncontrollable urge for travels and seeing the world. In Mujtaba Ali I found a role model. Deshe Bideshe stayed with me since then. It was one book that I would read two to three times a year from my teenage. So, by the time I decided to translate Deshe Bideshe more than thirty years after I first laid my hands on the book, I had read it for more than a hundred times! I knew its each page, I knew its each story and Afghanistan had seeped inside me permanently as I could relate to all the characters of the book.
While working for the BBC World Service in London, I had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan in 2002 soon after the Taliban were dislodged from power in a short war towards the end of 2001. I visited the country a number of the times in the following few years. As I travelled more, I befriended my BBC colleagues there and met other journalists and people on various walks of life. Some of them became good friends as well. I used to refer to events from the times of King Amanullah while discussing Afghanistan. They were surprised to hear all the details that I mentioned from a time that they said, ‘Even we don’t know!’ So, I mentioned how a Bengali scholar came from Kolkata to Kabul in 1927 and taught here, was a participant of the modernisation project of Amanullah by teaching English and French, played tennis with the crown prince Inyatullah (1888-1946) became an eyewitness of the rebellion against the king, got caught in the anarchy in the winters of 1928-29, and nearly perished starving before managing to go back to India. Hearing my story, they asked if there was any English translation of the book as they were keen to read. I told them that there was none as it was untranslatable!
As years went by and more and more of my Afghan friends got to know about Deshe Bideshe, they demanded that I did the translation. But I had my doubts. Would I be able to capture Mujtaba Ali’s unique language? Would I be able to transpose his wicked sense of humour? Would I be able to convey his erudition?
Eventually in 2011, I had already made up my mind to quit the BBC and move back to India. At that point my day-to-day workload in the BBC was significantly reduced. As I had ample time in hand, I thought I would attempt the translation. At that point I didn’t think of any publication; I wanted to do it just for fun and for my Afghan and non-Afghan friends who knew about the book and were keen to read it. I thought I would give them a taste of Mujtaba Ali’s writing by doing a few chapters. So, I did the first few chapters and shared them with a few friends. After reading those chapters they wanted to read more. I felt encouraged and I carried on with the translation for the following few months. Eventually the whole book was complete in about a year. After completing the translation, I let it sit for a few months before picking it up again and reread it as new text without looking at the original text. That exercise went on several times over the following one year till the final manuscript shaped up.
How many countries have you worked from? You were also in Afghanistan for several years I believe. Can you share your experiences?
My work has taken me to a dozen country or so. But as an intrepid traveller, I have visited more than 40 countries so far across four continents. Apart from my regular visits to Afghanistan, I spent months at a stretch on several occasions. Working in Afghanistan was certainly a unique experience. It wasn’t a country where one could travel and roam around freely. There were always the security alerts. One needed to negotiate security barriers everywhere. The accommodations – hotels, guesthouses were guarded by armed men. In the early years – in 2002 to 2004, there weren’t so much security in the hotels or guesthouses we stayed in. But that started to change from 2010 onwards as the Taliban had at that time started to regroup, and they made their presence felt in the country and in Kabul. Even at that time, cities like Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat were considered lot safer than Kabul. With increased and unpredictable attacks by the Taliban, the country became more and more edgy.
What was it about the book that drew you to it?
As I mentioned earlier, the uniqueness of Mujtaba Ali was that his erudition wasn’t frightening. He penned Deshe Bideshe almost twenty years after he left Kabul. By then, he had completed his PhD in comparative religion from Germany as a Humboldt scholar, did his post-doctoral research from al-Azhar university in Cairo, learned more than a dozen languages, and travelled extensively in Europe. So, even though his narrative of Afghanistan was drawn from what he had witnessed in his mid-twenties while teaching there, when he decided to write the book, he had acquired profound knowledge in philosophy, literature, culture and history of the world in many languages. The multilingual and multicultural references with an oblique yet gripping story-telling style infused with a wicked sense of humour that came in his writing, had been drawing ardent followers, including me, since 1948 when Deshe Bideshe was first published.
The book highlighted a growing divide between the minority with liberal education and the majority without education. Is that true still? Would you call the book relevant to the present-day crisis?
Yes, that divide between the educated and the not educated that Mujtaba Ali elicited in Deshe Bideshe is still there. But the gap has certainly reduced. The years between 1929 to 1978 had been relatively stable and peaceful in Afghanistan. Modern education had spread but without giving a jolt to the conservative society and keeping the clergy more or less content. In Kabul and other major cities, girls and women were getting more and more education; they were also seen in public life more. Following the coup through which the communists – the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan or PDPA came to power in 1978, there was a big push for universal education. This created a much bigger educated class. Women were the biggest beneficiary of that time in terms of acquiring knowledge and finding jobs. Women were joining the police and military as well. Following the capitulation of the PDPA government in 1992, the modern education system collapsed during the Mujahideen civil war years until 1996 and then after the takeover of virtually the whole of the country by the Taliban.
Girl in class
Camerawoman
Afroz’s camera captured women at work in Afghanistan. Courtesy: Nazes Afroz
A large number of Afghans – almost a quarter of the population became refugees in neighbouring countries or elsewhere. When the American led international forces ousted the Taliban from power in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks in the USA, the population got a fresh chance to get education. Schools opened again. Both girls and boys went back to school. Internationally there were many programmes to give scholarships to Afghan women and men who were seeking higher education. As a country with a very young population (the average age of Afghanis is 18), a large number of students joined the public and private universities. So, tens of thousands of young women and men are now educated holding masters or even PhD degrees in the country. But the rural areas lagged behind. So, the gap is more of the city and rural areas.
Do you find similarities between the Afghanistan of then and of now?
The way the Afghan society works, based on its ethnic and tribal identities as witnessed by Mujtaba Ali, still exist. The stranglehold that the clergy had on the uneducated mass about a century ago has possibly changed; it’s been replaced with more political interpretation of their religion. The ethnic divisions have sharpened for multitude reasons – primarily due to the outside interference and the way ethnic groups have been used in the larger geo-political game of the world powers.
One of the issues that tussles through the book is that people were basically poor and lacked education. Syed Mustaba Ali spoke of the vicious cycles of poverty, how much has it changed from what he wrote and what you experienced? Please elaborate.
Mujtaba Ali talked about how poverty contributed to the cycle of unrest in Afghan history. Yes, that poverty still exists but with that, a toxic potion of religio-politics has been added to the cauldron. The conflict of the past four decades is more due to the global religio-political dynamics rather that its own poverty.
Did/ do you find parallels in the political situation where Amanullah and his brother escaped from the invading hardliner, Bacha-ye-Saqao? Would you see Bacha as a precursor of Taliban?
The only parallel that one can draw between 1929 when Amanullah and his brother Inayetullah fled and now in 2021 is that the suddenness of the events. Amanullah’s fall happened in months and Bacha took over Kabul in matter of days – almost the same way the Taliban took control of the country.
I don’t think Bacha-ye-Saqao or Habibullah Kalakani as he called himself, was a precursor of the Taliban. Bacha was more of an opportunist; he grabbed the opportunity that came his way. But the Taliban are more of an organised religio-political force what was the product of the geo-politics of the last decade of the Cold War. So, they two are not comparable.
Did the American or Russian intrusions into Afghanistan serve any purpose? Did they actually help the Afghans?
The short answer is no. Both the superpowers came to achieve their own strategic and foreign policy objectives. The Soviets came to expand their sphere of influence beyond their borders in Central Asia. In the process they were badly bruised and had to retreat. The Americans came to get hold of Osama-bin-Laden and dismantle the al-Qaeda infrastructure. It was never about helping a nation that had been devastated by decades of conflict in which they had no role. They just became pawns in the greater game of geopolitics.
By the descriptions in the book, Afghans seem to be fairly open as humans and yet, they have a distinct identity borne of their culture, their ethos — very different from any other. Was that undermined in any way by the attempts at modernisation?
Like many other rural, traditional and old societies, Afghans are hospitable and warm people. They are bound and governed by their age-old custom and codes of conduct.
Even when they are outside of their own land – in the West too, they extend their hospitality to strangers the same way they would in their own country and their behaviour would not differ much. It is not the question, if modernisation has or will undermine their tradition. They have had encounters with modernisation – the way modernisation is understood from the Western prism. Did that change the people who had experienced that modernisation in the time of Amanullah? Mujtaba Ali saw that the ‘so called’ modern people did not lose their Afghan-ness. The same can be said now. As a people they have largely remained unchanged despite connecting with the outside world like never before.
In the book, the international community was practically chased off Afghanistan. As the US troops left, one felt the same way. Do you feel intervention from the international community is necessary in Afghanistan? Why?
The backdrops of 1929 and the present are not identical. In 1929, the rebellion was against the king who had lost the support of the clergy. The king did not come to power with foreign intervention. So, the international community was not chased out in 1929. The Europeans left because of the chaos and the violence. The rebels didn’t fight with the foreigners. Yes, there was an armed opposition to the presence of the USA since the war in 2001, but that opposition wasn’t big enough to send the USA packing.
The USA left because they had achieved their goals in Afghanistan, and it was becoming hugely expensive for them to stay on. Many are also drawing parallels of the US’s departure from Afghanistan with their hasty retreat from Vietnam in 1975. But they were again not identical. In Vietnam, the USA visibly lost the war. But in Afghanistan they did not lose. They could have stayed on if they wanted but it made no sense to them to spend tens of billions of dollars each year. Hence, they left. They had been talking about withdrawing from Afghanistan since 2012, a year after they killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
The intervention that the Afghans had been experiencing since 1979 – first by the Soviets, then Pakistan and finally the US led Western nations, devastated the country and the ordinary Afghans had been paying for it with all they had. No external intervention is beneficial for any country. It’s not desirable to have; certainly not the way the global powers had been intervening for the past 40 odd years in various corners of the world. But the question is, if unspeakable atrocities are committed on certain sections of a country or society, what does the international community do? Should the international community intervene? The world powers have unfortunately always used these as pretexts to intervene to further and achieve their own objectives not only in Afghanistan but in other countries too.
In the book, only foreigners with work seemed to be in Afghanistan. Is/ Was it possible for tourists to visit Afghanistan, even before the Taliban took over?
In the last twenty years, Afghanistan had been unstable. Violent incidents kept happening. So, it was not advisable for tourist to go there. But the country always issued tourist visa for short visits! For a few years, Japanese tourist used to come to visit the ancient Buddhist sites like Bamiyan. That too waned due to the escalating conflict.
Thank you for this wonderful interview and also for the flawless translation of a classic memoir.
Over the noise, you could hear the shout that ‘Bacha-e- Saqao is coming, Bacha-e-Saqao has arrived.’ Then we heard the bang of a rifle and the crowd lost all sense of reason. Throwing aside everything they were carrying, people started running for their lives, some landed in the roadside ditch, some slipped time and again while trying to run over the ice on the Kabul river. The blind beggar who used to sit by the road, stood up trying to find his way with his hands in the air.
I somehow managed to leave the road, crossed the ditch and stood on the front porch of a shop. I decided that I would rather die from the bullet on which my name was written rather than be trampled by mad horses or in the stampede of the crowd.
Within a minute another man appeared and stood next to me. An Italian colonello or colonel, aged about sixty, with a long corrugated beard.
He was the first person whom I could ask something cogently. I said to him, ‘I heard that the bandit leader Bacha-e-Saqao was coming to fight for Amanullah. But what is really happening?’
The colonello said, ‘Seems like wrong news. He’s coming to take over the city.’
If that was the case, then why were Amanullah’s soldiers not going to the north of the city to fight him? How did Bacha-e-Saqao arrive in Kabul so suddenly? How many men did he have? Were they carrying only rifles or did they have cannons? The colonello could not answer these questions; he only kept saying, ‘What an odd experience!’
I said, ‘I can understand why the ordinary Kabulis are afraid, but why have the foreigners joined them? Where are they going?’
The colonello replied, ‘To their own embassies or legations—for shelter.’
The sound of rifle shots was drawing closer. By then the crowd was moving in waves rather than in a stream. In between two such waves I told the colonello, ‘Let’s go home.’ He said he would not leave without seeing the last act. Military whim—there was no point in arguing.
Abdur Rahman was waiting for me at the door. His worries disappeared at the sight of me. As soon as I entered the house, he closed the door and started to fortify it with heavy rocks. Intelligent man. He had made all the arrangements for fortification when I was out. I asked, ‘Where is Benoit?’ Abdur Rahman informed me that Benoit had left for the French Legation in a tonga carrying only one suitcase.
By that time the sound of the gunfire had been overpowered by the heavy sound of machine guns. Abdur Rahman brought tea. Listening to the sounds carefully, he said, ‘The king’s soldiers have now attacked. From where would Bacha have gotten hold of machine guns?’
I asked him, ‘The king’s soldiers are facing Bacha this late? How could he reach Kabul so easily?’
Abdur Rahman said, ‘I asked many people while waiting for you at the door, but nobody could say anything clearly. It seems he has arrived without any resistance. He comes from the north of the country; my place is also in the north—Panjshir. I would have got some news of troop mobilisation in that region from my fellow Panjshiris in the bazaar, but there was none. The king’s troops have gone to the east under the command of Ali Ahmad Khan to fight the Shinwaris.’
The exchange of fire continued. Abdur Rahman served me dinner early that evening and then he sat down to tend to the fire in the fireplace. From our chat I could make out that he was worried about my well-being in case Bacha won, which would be followed by anarchy and looting. But clearly he was highly excited and curious—much like a small child when the circus came to town.
But who was this Bacha-e-Saqao? I did not have to ask Abdur Rahman, he told me many stories about him of his own accord. I realised that Abdur Rahman had many qualities—a jeweller of snow, a doctor of frostbite, chef-decuisine—but he certainly was no Boswell. You could have constructed an image of a Robin Hood from what he said about Bacha, but much of it was certainly a figment of imagination and myth.
After filtering through all the stories carefully, I had a glimpse of the life of Bacha; he was the leader of a gang of about three hundred bandits; lived in Kohistan, north of Kabul; he looted the rich and distributed a portion of his booty to the poor. When Amanullah was away in Europe, he became so powerful that he started to collect tax from the traders of Kohistan. After coming back, Amanullah proclaimed a price on his head, ‘Five hundred rupees reward on the head of bandit Bacha-e-Saqao.’ Bacha removed all the posters and put up his own proclamation, ‘One thousand rupees reward on the head of Kafir Amanullah.’
Abdur Rahman asked me, ‘But Sahib, help me solve a riddle. The colonel’s son asked me, if I cut off Bacha’s head and my brother cuts off Amanullah’s, then how much money would we make together? I said, one and a half thousand. He nearly rolled on the floor with laughter; he said, “You won’t get a penny.” Please Sahib, explain why wouldn’t we get any money?’
I consoled him, ‘Because neither of them will be alive to give you the rewards. But you can tell the colonel’s son that the throne of Afghanistan will then be bestowed upon your family.’
I had also heard that only a few days earlier Bacha suddenly turned up in front of some high-ranking officials and swore his allegiance to the king in the fights against the Shinwaris by touching the Koran. By doing so he managed to get hold of about a hundred rifles and then disappeared.
Did he turn those rifles against Amanullah?
About the Book
An intrepid traveller and a true cosmopolitan, the legendary Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali from Sylhet (in erstwhile East Bengal, now Bangladesh) spent a year and a half teaching in Kabul from 1927 to 1929. Drawing on this experience, he later wrote Deshe Bideshe which was published in 1948. Ali’s young mind was curious to explore the Afghan society of the time and, with his impressive language skills, he had access to a cross-section of Kabul’s population, whose ideas and experiences he chronicles with a keen eye and a wicked sense of humour. His account provides a fascinating first-hand insight into events at a critical point in Afghanistan’s history, when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls and giving them the choice of removing the burqa. Branded a ‘kafir’, Amanullah was overthrown by the bandit leader Bacha-e-Saqao. Deshe Bideshe is the only published eyewitness account of that tumultuous period by a non-Afghan, brought to life by the contact that Ali enjoyed with a colourful cast of characters at all levels of society—from the garrulous Pathan Dost Muhammed and the gentle Russian giant Bolshov, to his servant, Abdur Rahman and his partner in tennis, the Crown Prince Enayatullah.
About the Author
Born in 1904, Syed Mujtaba Ali was a prominent literary figure in Bengali literature. A polyglot, a scholar of Islamic studies and a traveller, Mujtaba Ali taught in Baroda and at Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan. Deshe Bideshe was his first published book (1948). By the time he died in 1974, he had more than two dozen books—fiction and non-fiction—to his credit.
About the Translator
A journalist for over three decades, Nazes Afroz has worked in both print and broadcasting in Kolkata and in London. He joined the BBC in London in 1998 and spent close to fifteen years with the organisation. As a senior editor in the BBC, Nazes was in charge of South and Central Asia for a number of years. He has visited Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia regularly for over a decade. A passionate photographer and a compulsive traveller, Nazes quit his job in the BBC and moved back to India in 2013 where he is based in Delhi. Currently he writes in English and Bengali for various newspapers and magazines and is working on a few photography projects.
(Excerpted from In a Land Far From Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan by Syed Mujtaba Ali, translated by Nazes Afroz. Published by Speaking Tiger Books)
Kabul is falling
Kabul is falling,
while the rest of us are watching
with knitted brows and furrowed foreheads
as many as hundreds
of thousands lie dead
and the Kabul River runs red
with slaughtered dreams of the Afghans
and trampled actions of the Americans.
Rock by rock, the hilly country crumbles
at the hands of the bearded rebels.
Into a heap of stones collapse the long-fatigued walls
and streets turn blue as district-by-district falls.
Gunshots sound like warning bells--
Death knells
for the men in pakol hats, who confounded stare
unaware
of what is to become of them
amidst the bloody mayhem.
Wide-eyed their rosy-cheeked children
build castles in the dirt; and their women
in chadarees --
can no longer mask their worries
as the turbaned vultures --
circle the city, waiting, to tear open uncured sutures
'Kabul must fend for itself,' the men in uniform say,
and turn their backs and walk away.
Promises made by the top brass bite the dust
on the rugged tarmac of hopes; ‘Ah! The Pashtuns are cursed.’
Onlookers say, ‘Those men-- tall, broad shouldered and strong,
And women-- creamy white, chiselled; what did they do wrong?’
Their children’s faces
in coveted places--
on magazine covers, win the best photograph of the year
for their glassy-grey eyes that glare with fear
which we call, ‘grit’
as on the couch we sit
flipping the glossy pages,
ignoring their pain and rage.
Let’s not bother.
Let’s all look hither
and nod our heads
and look on with furrowed foreheads
and express regret for the misfortune
Of those born in a land where mulberries and apricots are grown.
Let’s thank our stars
for our nation free of wars
while the children of Hades turn the ‘graveyard of empires’ red --
A deep red like the juice of the ‘fruit of the dead’
planted around the sands
on which the Shrine of Hazrat Ali stands
and let’s watch it happen--
Kabul falling-- Falling, fallen.
Pakol: Soft, round-topped hat made of wool
Chadarees: A shawl
Smitha Vishwanath is a banker turned writer. A management professional, she embarked on the writing journey in 2016, with her blog, https://lifeateacher.wordpress.com.Her poems and articles have been published in various anthologies. In July 2018, she co-authored a book of poetry: Roads – A Journey with Verses.
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