Short Story
Godhra Camp*
art work by wasim helal
The wind was blowing in her hair. Her face was distorted with rage and both her hands tightly clenched the barbed wire. Blood trickled from her clenched fists down her wrists. She was staring about her crazily and shouting: "Shams...uddin...Shamsu...ddin." Beyond the barbed wire, a crowd had gathered by the sand dune. In the fenced area, four or five Bengali women were trying to pull her away from the barbed wire, but it was impossible. She was oblivious to everything around her. When she opened her mouth to scream, her big, black eyes flashed with fear and pain. Her haunting cry pierced the darkness of the night: "Shamsu...Shamsu...uddin..." People passing by the dune stopped out of curiousity. Quite a crowd had gathered there. People were whispering and exchanging notes. A young man who looked like a motor mechanic got tired of the speculation. In an unmistakable refugee accent, he told the crowd that the woman was mad. She enacted the same scene every day. Her husband was in the army and posted at Etabaad. One day, he escaped with other Bengalis to Dhaka, joined the Mukti Bahini and died in battle. When the news came home, she lost her mind. She often gets these fits and every time she clutches the barbed wire and shouts. The young man finished his story and looked triumphantly at the people who had been listening to him with rapt attention. "Oh! So she is mad and the wife of Bengali traitor.' "Yes.""Is she really mad?"
"Yes, she is."
"All right, all right." The crowd soon dispersed. In a few moments, all was quiet but for the rustling of the sand in the heat of the sun. The madwoman was gone. The torn end of her sari hung from the barbed wire, swaying like a corpse. But her heartrending screams still seemed to echo in the big, bare maidan. "Shamsu...Shamsuddin..." A colony of flats was being built near the Godhra Camp. Work proceeded at a snail's pace. In the beginning, people were curious about the flats, but they soon lost interest. The bus would drive right past the site and one could scarcely believe that these flats being built in the big, sandy maidan would one day be homes. That this desert would become a hamlet full of people. We used to pass the site without a second glance, and, if it were ever mentioned, we would say in bored voices, "Yes, we do pass the Godhra Camp on our way." But often, things do not happen quite as we imagine. In fact, precisely the opposite happens. I passed that way day after day and had little interest in the place. But one day I gazed at the site, amazed. Two bulldozers were leveling the ground and barbed wire fence was being set up around it. It looked like a POW camp from World War II. A gate and a sentry-post had been set up. Searchlights turned the night as bright as day. Several labourers were hard at work. Surprised, I wiped the lenses of my spectacles and looked more closely. A middle-aged patriotic townsman sitting by my side stroked his bear and said, "By the grace of Allah, the Bengali traitors have been grounded." I couldn't understand what he was saying. The patriot went on to explain, "I work in a bungalow of the Defence Society. The owner is a retired colonel. He told me that for the time being Godhra Camp will house the families of Bengalis who had defected from the Pakistan Air Force. They will be kept in captivity here." Bade Mian cautiously stroked his bear and said, "You know, these people turned out to be snakes. These rascals are Muslims, but they joined the Hindus. They have ruined Pakistan! These little darkies have given us hell. How long could Pakistan put up with them?" Godhra Camp then came to be inhabited by Bengali families. Passing that way, one would see the five blocks of six-storey flats where they were under house arrest. Morning and evening, one would see middle-aged men with unshaven chins sitting on the benches, poring over The Pakistan Times. One could make them out in their lungis and vests from afar. Dark-skinned children ran about, screaming, shouting or playing cricket. Ince in a wile, disturbed by the din, an old man would look up from his newspaper and, pushing his spectacles up on his forehead, shout, "Ai chele, gondogol korona (Hey, boy, stop this bedlam)." Sometimes the widow of a flat would fly open and a woman would lean out and shout, "Taara-taarhi aisho! (Come quickly!)" The barbed wire served as a clothesline. Wet saris, lungis, sheets, vests and children's knickers swayed on it like bullet-riddled bodies. The camp was closely guarded. The armed sentry at the gate would not allow anyone through without a pass. There was a tent by the post where the sentries off duty hung around. When the madwoman appeared, grabbed the barbed wire and bloodied her hands, a sentry would get up and try to send her away. Days passed without any change in this routine. The people around were a trifle disappointed. Now, whenever the discussion turned political among bus passengers, people would lament over the betrayal by the Bengalis. "Bengalis have never been true to anyone, and nor will they ever be. Just wait and watch--they will ruin India too some day." "...Mujib was always a traitor. He was a separatist right from the beginning." "...No, the Bengalis loved the land. East Bengal had taken the lead in supporting the creation of Pakistan. Sher-e-Bangla Fazlul Haq had proposed the creation of Pakistan." "All this is rubbish. The Bengalis had opposed Quaid-e-Azam when he declared Urdu to be the only national language of Pakistan. They had shouted slogans against him. They are the ones who kept saying that West Pakistan had looted East Pakistan. They are the ones who sowed the seeds of hatred and separatism. Everyone knows this!" "Neither is Mujib a traitor, not are the Bengalis treacherous. The people of West Pakistan have not looted the people of East Pakistan. People of both sides are poor and thus victims. Those who loot are in peace on both sides." "Pakistan has Bengal because of the black deeds of the Pakistani politicians. Bengal has torn itself apart because of poverty and injustice," said an educated man. Some nodded in agreement. Others mumbled under their breath, tuning their faces to the windows. "They are Communist swine... Communists." "Bhai main, I feel the blame lies with Yahya. The colourful rascal ruined the whole country." "Why Yahya? Why don't you blame Bhutto? He had said that Khuda had saved Pakistan. Tell me, how has Pakistan been saved? What is left of it? Bhutto destroyed it." "But what did Bhutto do?" "He gave Yahya bad advice. He kept the government in the dark. He humiliated the army, just to gain power." "If Bhutto's advice was bad, why did Yahya Khan and his cronies act on it? Didn't they have any brains? Bhai, why not call it the result of martial law? Anything is possible under martial law. The people in power are to blame. Forget Bhutto, it's Yahya who calls the shots." "And are they your fathers, those people who fly the Bangladeshi flags on their cars going to Dhanmondi?" At this point in the conversation, a quarrel followed. Beginning with verbal abuse, it culminated in fisticuffs. Usually, though, the argument would stop short of that. After a few moments, emotions would subside and people would calm down. People no longer had the strength to quarrel. Sometimes a passenger who had been fast asleep would wake with a start, hearing the loud voices, and try and placate the angry people, "Bhaiyon, why are you fighting? Go after the people who are at the root of all this. Are we to dance to the tune of those in power? Tch! Tch!" The minibus stopped with a jolt near Godhra Camp. Passengers seemed to have been waiting there for quite some time. My eyes wandered toward the camp. It was completely deserted. Not a soul in sight. Even the burly armed guards from Mianwali and Jhelum were missing. The main gate was ajar. Pages torn from books and tufts of cotton from old pillows whirled in the wind in the maidan. The benches were gone. So were the middle-aged, unshaven Bengalis who had once sat there, carefully scanning The Pakistan Times and scolding naughty children. There were no women either--the women who had worked all day in their kitchens and opened their windows to call their children in. All those sweet, dusky children who had played and quarreled all day long in the maidan had gone away too. The doors and windows of the flats looked spooky. No sign of life anywhere. In spite of myself, I turned to the man with a running nose sitting beside me and asked him where everyone had gone. He looked me up and down and then wiped his nose with his thick, ugly fingers. The he said in a choked voice, "They were Bengalis. They have gone off to Bangladesh. Bhutto made a mistake by releasing Mujib and the other Bengalis. He should have first sorted out the issue of the Biharis who are suffering there. Those poor Biharis..." The camp was deserted for a long time, but the flats were bound to be allotted to other people soon. I wanted to go in and see them. The Bengalis had lived there under tremendous stress, and perhaps had left telltale signs behind. It would have been interesting to see them. The new occupants would paint them over. What interest could they possibly have in them? A week went by, and there was no change in the Godhra Camp. I was slowly losing interest, and then one day it took me by surprise. It was like a scene remembered from a film. The camp was teeming with people who looked just like those Bengalis. Sweet, dusky children played in the maidan, dirty and naked. The men had dusty faces and the women seemed tired, burdened with endless household chores. Their eyes betrayed fear and torment, telling the tale of the nightmare they had lived through. I got off the minibus to seen the camp of the Bihari refugees up close. There was only difference between the Bengali and Bihari camps: this time, there were no armed guards. Otherwise, this new camp was exactly like its predecessor. A middle-aged woman sat by the barbed wire, drawing lines in the sand. A Bihari woman always keeps her head covered but this woman's head was bare. Her sari was dirty and patched. She saw me and lifted her head. I cannot describe the anguish in her eyes. She stared at me, her eyes vacant. The she came up to me. "Nihal mila thha--Nihal? Babus, Nihal mil jahe to kahiyo tumhari Ma intezar karat hai...(Did you find Nihal? Young man, if you find Nihal tell him that his mother waits for him.)" The minibus was crowded when I returned in the evening. When the bus reached Godhra, a young man who looked like a vegetable seller opened the window and looked the camp over. A sly smile played on his lips. He turned to his friend and said, "Rashid, we'll come here tomorrow. I've heard that there are many women here. Women without men." *Reprinted with permission from The Little Magazine. Included in Fault Lines: Stories from 1971 reviewed below.
Naeem Aarvi (1946-2003) was born in Bihar and migrated to Karachi, Pakistan in 1947, where he worked as a journalist. He published five volumes of short stories, the last of which was a collection of three novellas.
Nirupama Dutt is a poet/translator who lives in Chandigarh, India. Pratik Kanjilal is the co-editor of The Little Magazine.
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