Those clever and cunning professors kept a sharp eye upon the talented students. They were small people and could not tolerate students who werer superior them. How could those small professors see some students stride over their heads? So they started their dirty tricks against our Shah. But our Shah also rose above them with his ingenious and pure thoughts.
When they gave themselves out as wise, their little sayings and warmed-over truths made the Shah excited like the small child and he could not help saying: “The King is naked!”
Those small-minded people have the same nature everywhere in the world, they are like the wild wolves. When they are hungry they attack each other to tear each other into pieces. But when they have a common threat, they unite against the common enemy. We saw those wild professors sitting together with their empty heads and open mouths, planning against Shah. How could the simplicity of our genius be compared with their diversity? They knew well how to combat knowledge, because knowledge was the greatest threat to their survival.
As normally happened, their evil plans worked out and Shah was expelled from the university.
Later we heard about Shah from newspapers. Yes, he took another great step! He joined the revolutionary political party of our country and became an active political worker against the martial law government of that time. Soon he was arrested, as we were expecting, and was put behind the bars.
In those days, special events for the people of Pakistan were the flogging of ‘political criminals’.
One day there was an announcement of the flogging of one rebel. We went to see that live scene of the justice of our government.
The man in chains was our Shah. He had become thin and pale, yet we did not find any gesture of defeat in his face. A black fat man flogged him. We heard the sounds of whips on his naked body, but there was no crying or screaming. I ran away.
Even in the seclusion of my room, I could not stop his image shining through the window – shining and winking at me, fixed in the pale light of that dark night of my country. I saw him crying: “See! The king is naked.”
In the midnight I retaliated with him loudly: “Yes, the king is naked! You are right but I have very old and poor parents. I love them and I want to act like a normal loving son. My own and my parents’ lives are more precious than my land. If I am here, land is here. If I am perished then what of land or country? Leave me, Shah; go away. Let my conscience sleep. Life is more important than conscience.”
After that we did not hear anything about him for a long time. We were sure that he would have been murdered in a corner of some dirty jail.
But to my surprise, here he was, roaming along the solitary tracks of sea as I wrote a letter, without seeing anything lost somewhere in his internal sea.
“So you are enjoying memories of past?” he spoke out with his everlasting childlike smile.
“Yes, Shahnawaz, but how did you come out of captivity and where did you go after that horrible period?”
He looked on the isolated patch of cloud, threw a stone in the dancing waves, and said: “One night we were thrown out of jail, there was no more space for new criminals. We were thrown on the borderline of a northern country. They asked us to cross the borderline in ten minutes.
“ ‘We will shoot you if you don’t go across the border line,’ one of them shouted. We knew they meant what they said. I was baffled for a moment. But you know, at the brink of death, bravery loses its meanings. So I also ran away like a jackal was twisting my tale.”
I could feel torture on his face. He stopped talking for a while, lighting his cigarette. Then again he started. “And then began a new odyssey of misery, roving and struggling with destiny. No help from anywhere, not even from heaven! I was broken completely with my family. I remained in Russia for six months. The only refuge for socialists like me.
“There I faced another disillusionment. People wanted to get rid of their so-called socialism. They were crying for justice, and soon we saw the statue of Lenin falling on the dust under the feet of mob. These were the death-like days. I had forgotten the taste of food. My rags were too shabby for any occasion. I fed my soul on hunger.
“Then I got a chance and reached the USA. For a while I had a roof over my head and a piece of bread. What was my fault? Only that I dreamed of free land? Well, I still dream of that. But my dream is almost at the deathbed. I was at that time intoxicated by a romantic dream. My heart is now dead; the brutish fire of poverty has burnt its wings. Behold, truth was my crime! I spoke truth and punishment was inevitable.”
I could see his barren wet eyes, in the dim light of moon. “But how did you come here?” I was anxious to know more.
“Due to this belly; due to lack of money. After many years when the dictatorship was over, and the man who claimed himself God on the earth was called upon by the real God, I returned to my land. But there was nothing left behind. My father had died and my mother had become an invalid.
“I returned with hopes as there were new elections, but it was another shock for me, the final disillusionment in my life. I could not find jobs in my own country; my own land refused to give me a livelihood.
“The same people with different faces appear again and started filling their lusty stomachs, I found them eating and vomiting; again eating and vomiting!
“Now I was not alone, I had my wife and small son Wali with me. I could not see my son in hunger, and came here to this country to earn something. So this is my life! For few coins I am away from my wife and son.
“Two years ago when I left, my son had started speaking. When I entered the airport, I saw his hand innocently moving as he had learnt to give the gesture of bye bye and ta ta. I saw those hands and told him: ‘Yes my son we are born to say bye bye!’
“By now he can walk and speak, and when he sees airplanes he starts crying: ‘Baba – Father – bye bye ta ta.’ “
There was a silence again. I had no words to console him. I stood up, said good bye to Shahnawaz, tore that letter into pieces, threw it in the impotent waves of the Dead Sea and said to those sinking pieces: ‘bye bye – ta ta’ . and took my way to face another dirty day.