By the time we brought Sheikh Mujib to the airport, where Ayooba stuck a pistol into his rump and pushed him on to an aircraft which flew him into West Wing captivity, the buddha had closed his eyes. ('Don't fill my head with all this history,' he
ugg bootshad once told Ayooba-the-tank, 'I am what I am and that's all there is.')
And Brigadier Iskandar, rallying his troops: 'Even now there are subversive elements to be rooted out.'
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy ...
dog-soldiers strain at the leash, and then, released, leap joyously to their work. O wolfhound chases of undesirables! O prolific seizings of professors and poets! O unfortunate shot-while-resisting arrests of Awami Leaguers and fashion correspondents! Dogs of war cry havoc in the city; but although tracker-dogs are tireless, soldiers are weaker: Farooq Shaheed Ayooba take turns at vomiting as their nostrils are assailed by the stench of burning slums. The buddha, in whose nose the stench spawns images of searing vividness, continues merely to do his job. Nose them out: leave the rest to the soldier-boys. CUTIA units stalk the smouldering wreck of the city. No undesirable is safe tonight; no hiding-place impregnable. Bloodhounds track the fleeing enemies of national unity; wolfhounds, not to be outdone, sink fierce teeth into their prey.
How many arrests - ten, four-hundred-and-twenty, one-thousand-and-one? - did our own Number 22 Unit make that night? How many intellectual lily-livered Daccans hid behind women's saris and had to be yanked into the streets? How often did Brigadier
ugg boots clearance Iskandar -'Smell this! That's the stink of subversion!' - unleash the war-hounds of unity? There are things which took place on the night of March 25th which must remain permanently in a state of confusion.
Futility of statistics: during 1971, ten million refugees fled across the borders of East Pakistan-Bangladesh into India - but ten million (like all numbers larger than one thousand and one) refuses to be understood. Comparisons do not help: 'the biggest migration in the history of the human race' - meaningless. Bigger than Exodus, larger than the Partition crowds, the many-headed monster poured into India. On the border, Indian soldiers trained the guerrillas known as Mukti Bahini; in Dacca, Tiger Niazi ruled the roost.
And Ayooba Shaheed Farooq? Our boys in green? How did they take to battling against fellow meat-eaters? Did they mutiny? Were officers - Iskandar, Najmuddin, even Lala Moin - riddled with nauseated bullets? They were not.
Innocence had been lost; but despite a new grimness about the eyes, despite the irrevocable loss of certainty, despite the eroding of moral absolutes, the unit went on with its work. The buddha was not the only one who did as he was told ... while somewhere
ugg boots clearance high above the struggle, the voice of Jamila Singer fought anonymous voices singing the lyrics of R. Tagore: 'My life passes in the shady village homes filled with rice from your fields; they madden my heart with delight.'
Their hearts maddened, but not with delight, Ayooba and company followed orders; the buddha followed scent-trails. Into the heart of the city, which has turned violent maddened bloodsoaked as the West Wing soldiers react badly to their knowledge-of-wrongdoing, goes Number 22 Unit; through the blackened streets, the buddha concentrates on the ground, sniffing out trails, ignoring the ground-level chaos of cigarette-packs cow-dung fallen-bicycles abandoned-shoes; and then on other assignments, out into the countryside, where entire villages are being burned owing to their collective responsibility for harbouring Mukti Bahini, the buddha and three boys track down minor Awami League officials and well-known Communist types. Past migrating villagers with bundled possessions on their heads; past torn-up railway tracks and burnt-out trees; and always, as though some invisible force were directing their footsteps, drawing them into a darker heart of madness, their missions send them south south south, always nearer to the sea, to the mouths of the Ganges and the sea.
And at last - who were they following then? Did names matter any more? - they were given a quarry whose skills must have been the equal-and-opposite of the buddha's own, otherwise why did it take so long to catch him? At last - unable to escape
Uggs Classic Cardy their training, pursue-relentlessly-arrest-remorselessly, they are in the midst of a mission without an end, pursuing a foe who endlessly eludes them, but they cannot report back to base empty-handed, and on they go, south south south, drawn by the eternally-receding scent-trail; and perhaps by something more: because, in my life, fate has never been unwilling to lend a hand.
They have commandeered a boat, because the buddha said the trail led down the river; hungry unslept exhausted in a universe of abandoned rice-paddies, they row after their unseen prey; down the great brown river they go, until the war is too far away to remember, but still the scent leads them on. The river here has a familiar name: Padma. But the name is a local deception; in reality the river is still Her, the mother-water, goddess Ganga streaming down to earth through Shiva's hair. The buddha has not spoken for days; he just points, there, that way, and on they go, south south south to the sea.
A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed Farooq awaking in the boat of their absurd pursuit, moored by the bank of Padma-Ganga - to find him gone. 'Allah-Allah,'
Farooq yelps, 'Grab your ears and pray for pity, he's brought us to this
Uggs Classic Minidrowned place and run off, it's all your fault, you Ayooba, that trick with the jump-leads and this is his revenge!' ... The sun, climbing. Strange alien birds in the sky. Hunger and fear like mice in their bellies: and whatif, whatif the Mukti Bahini... parents are invoked. Shaheed has dreamed his pomegranate dream.
Despair, lapping at the edges of the boat. And in the distance, near the horizon, an impossible endless huge green wall, stretching right and left to the ends of the earth! Unspoken fear: how can it be, how can what we are seeing be true, who builds walls across the world? ... And then Ayooba, 'Look-look, Allah!' Because coming towards them across the rice-paddies is a bizarre slow-motion chase: first the buddha with that cucumber-nose, you could spot it a mile off, and following him, splashing through paddies, a gesticulating peasant with a scythe, Father Time enraged, while running along a dyke a woman with her sari caught up between her legs, hair loose, voice pleading screaming, while the scythed avenger stumbles through drowned rice, covered from head to foot in water and mud. Ayooba roars with nervous relief: 'The old billy-goat! Couldn't keep his hands off the local women! Come on, buddha, don't let him catch you, he'll slice off both your cucumbers!' And Farooq, 'But then what? If the buddha is sliced, what then?' And now Ayooba-the-tank is pulling a pistol out of its holster. Ayooba aiming: both
Uggs Bailey Buttonhands held out in front, trying not to shake, Ayooba squeezing: a scythe curves up into the air. And slowly slowly the arms of a peasant rise up as though in prayer; knees kneel in paddy-water; a face plunges below the water-level to touch its forehead to the earth. On the dyke a woman wailing. And Ayooba tells the buddha: 'Next time I'll shoot you instead.'
Ayooba-the-tank shaking like a leaf. And Time lies dead in a rice-paddy.
But there is still the meaningless chase, the enemy who will never be seen, and the buddha, 'Go that way,' and the four of them row on, south south south, they have murdered the hours and forgotten the date, they no longer know if they are chasing after or running from, but whichever it is that pushes them is bringing them closer closer to the impossible green wall, 'That way,' the buddha insists, and then they are inside it, the jungle which is so thick that history has hardly ever found the way in. The Sundarbans: it swallows them up.
Chapter 25 In the Sundarbans
I'll own up: there was no last, elusive quarry, driving us south south
UGG Bailey Button Tripletsouth. To all my readers, I should like to make this naked-breasted admission: while Ayooba Shaheed Farooq were unable to distinguish between chasing-after and running-from, the buddha knew what he was doing. Although I'm well aware that I am providing any future commentators or venom-quilled critics (to whom I say: twice before, I've been subjected to snake-poison; on both occasions, I proved stronger than venenes) with yet more ammunition - through admission-of-guilt, revelation-of-moral-turpitude, proof-of-coward-ice - I'm- bound to say that he, the buddha, finally incapable of continuing in the submissive performance of his duty, took to his heels and fled. Infected by the soul-chewing maggots of pessimism futility shame, he deserted, into the historyless anonymity of rain-forests, dragging three children in his wake.
http://forum.moasf.com/index.php/topic,4062.0.htmlhttp://forum.moasf.com/index.php/topic,4063.0.htmlhttp://forum.moasf.com/index.php/topic,4064.0.html