Healing in the Thick Plaster [i]

Trans­la­tion of Mirza Athar Baig’s sto­ry “Sakht Plas­ter me Inde­maal”

Tonight around six or sev­en o’ clock I have to work on a deci­sion which I made a few months ago. It was that deci­sion; in fact, it is the deci­sion that I had made to con­vince the diary clerk, Anwaar Ahmed to get on my motor bike for a ride. After leav­ing the town I would ride my bike in the direc­tion where the road goes through the giant moun­tains. And then, at the turn of the third mile my bike would reach its ulti­mate speed. I, then, reach the point where there are no safe­ty bar­ri­ers and I will abrupt­ly wheel my bike around and throw the diary clerk, Anwaar Ahmed into the ditch. I know it for sure but I don’t know why: Anwaar Ahmed will scream real­ly high in that moment. An incred­i­ble ter­ror would take over his heart and both of us will be falling down, like a bik­er throw­ing him­self down in one of those stunts in movies. These moments will be the moments of my vic­to­ry. I will try to explain it all to Anwaar Ahmed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, why and how. I will explain him to what­ev­er extent I can; and that too, as quick­ly as pos­si­ble because there will be noth­ing remain­ing of me, Anwaar Ahmed and the motor bike as soon as we are sucked in by the force of grav­i­ty.

I am wait­ing for him right now. The motor bike is parked at the usu­al place out­side the build­ing and I am writ­ing all this. Why? Because, maybe, wait­ing is hell for me and I want to keep myself occu­pied with some­thing. Or per­haps, there is a wish ger­mi­nat­ing in me that what­ev­er is going to hap­pen and, after that what­ev­er will hap­pen should be known not only to the diary clerk. After all he doesn’t have any impor­tant stand­ing at all— it can be any­one today if not him. There are sev­er­al of them whom I would like to take for today’s ride. How­ev­er, Anwaar’s con­sent is just a coin­ci­dence because he is the only one free. Oth­er­wise, it is quite pos­si­ble that the head clerk would have availed this offer of mine. Oth­er clerks would have jumped at the offer of free out­ing as well. What a deli­cious thought it is! It could have been any of them on his way to become his­to­ry with this evening. Any­way, it was Anwaar who want­ed to come over at my apart­ment, if that is the name for this 8x10 size box like thing I live in, and from here we go for the promised out­ing. I think I am writ­ing about it because I want it to be known to oth­er peo­ple as well. After all what is wrong with it if peo­ple find this note when they look for our remains in the deep ditch­es at the turn of the third mile? I think there is noth­ing wrong with that.

At this very moment a thought occurred to me that what if peo­ple think of it as a mere sui­cide note or worse just a piece talk­ing about a mur­der plan… it would be too bad if this act of mine is inter­pret­ed in such lay terms of mur­der and sui­cide. What­ev­er it is that I am going to do today is very com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult. I am feel­ing very com­fort­ed with the thought that what­ev­er I am going to do is noth­ing ordi­nary and it reas­sures me that I am not an ordi­nary man as well.

— And what­ev­er hap­pened to me was not ordi­nary either. In fact it is so unusu­al and uncan­ny that I can hard­ly turn it into any ver­bal expres­sion. But I think the rea­son for it is that I have not writ­ten a word in ages; not even a sin­gle let­ter to any­one. Some­time ago peo­ple made me think that I can write well. Fol­low­ing this belief I man­aged to write some exper­i­men­tal pieces which I want­ed to make avail­able for pub­lic knowl­edge very quick­ly. But then I thought: What a god­damn state of depen­dence I have thrown myself in![ii] And since that day, I did not write. Now I think I should have kept writ­ing. Had I done so, I wouldn’t have to strug­gle so much to write today. How­ev­er I think I have caught some­thing in my heart that was say­ing oth­er­wise. I think like every writer I am try­ing to be immor­tal through my writ­ing. Maybe that is all there to it and it makes me laugh. Oh! But I can’t laugh. I can only smile. I am unable to explain my sit­u­a­tion. Why should I do that? First of all the smile and laugh­ter I men­tioned ear­li­er is not be con­fused as if it were a sim­i­le or a metaphor. I mean it lit­er­al­ly. It is about the mus­cles, tis­sues and the nerves of my face as the con­se­quence of which my bike will be falling into the ditch and Anwar, the diary clerk as well. The fault is of this smile on face which frozen there for past few years. I have always want­ed to enable my face to express some­thing oth­er than this smile. How­ev­er, at this moment I guess the read­er of this text is won­der­ing about what is it that I actu­al­ly want to put across here. That is why I think I should con­tin­ue writ­ing with­out much being both­ered about a par­tic­u­lar word or sen­tence.

I had an acci­dent a few years ago. It was not only me who went through the agony of this event. In fact there were many of them from which a few sur­vived and oth­ers died, as it is the case nor­mal­ly with such acci­dents. How­ev­er, I was nei­ther amongst the alive nor the dead. I was amongst the wound­ed. I found myself at the oper­a­tion table as soon as I gained con­scious­ness. I was told that there was not a sin­gle bone in my body which hadn’t broke and it was a mir­a­cle that I sur­vived. I was amazed at myself for the fact that my mind was work­ing per­fect­ly fine even when my body was in a real­ly pathet­ic con­di­tion. The sur­geons fixed my body parts with the best of their exper­tise and wrapped me in thick plas­ter for fur­ther heal­ing.

Peo­ple who have nev­er expe­ri­enced such an acci­dent can nev­er empathize with some­one being tied up in plas­ter. My pen, too doesn’t seem to have the abil­i­ty to state my feel­ings and it is not going to be of any use any­way.

It used to feel that I am some­where inside the plas­ter but didn’t know where. And then sud­den­ly, it ached some­where inside but would even­tu­al­ly van­ish. In remem­ber that I was con­stant­ly nagged by a thought in those days. I con­fess to play with this thought a lot. I used to imag­ine myself a silk­worm who was still in its shell and wait­ing to become a but­ter­fly. It would dream of death and destruc­tion in those warm and cozy nights of its sound sleep.

My heal­ing was over all very suc­cess­ful. All the body parts were final­ly back in their orig­i­nal place. Every­body was hap­py. My sur­geons were hap­py and I found the whole world hap­py. How­ev­er, in the moments of sheer hap­pi­ness nobody noticed the smile which got frozen on my face due to sur­gi­cal stretch­ing of the facial mus­cles. I was sup­posed to go to the office that day but I was ner­vous. I was sus­pi­cious as well as rest­less on how to answer people’s var­i­ous ques­tions. I looked in the mir­ror and there was no sign of anx­i­ety or sus­pi­cion on my face. There was just a smile. I was full of per­plex­i­ty but there was no such expres­sion on my face. The per­plex­i­ty trans­formed into ter­ror and yet there was no expres­sion of it. I was angry at this state of ter­ror but there was noth­ing of it on my face. There was only this smile. My eyes blast­ed out of their sock­ets on real­iz­ing this facial paral­y­sis but there was noth­ing else but smile on my face.

It was begin­ning of the post thick plas­ter era[iii]. In sim­pler words, the plas­ter had healed all my body parts but my face became some­thing of a liv­ing mask which only por­trayed smile. It was inca­pable of express­ing oth­er emo­tion­al and anx­ious states. How­ev­er, it is not to be con­fused as if I had emp­tied out myself of all these emo­tions. Like every­one else, I used to love some peo­ple and hate some as well.

There was jeal­ousy as well as anger. There was shame­less­ness and desire, chaos and rest­less­ness and revenge and fatigue. There was all of it. In fact I want­ed to smile as well but couldn’t. One can smile only when they haven’t smiled in quite some time, where­as I had this eter­nal smile frozen on my face. The mad­ness would erupt in my eyes but there won’t be any expres­sion of that on my face. My eyes start­ed to look real­ly hor­ri­ble and hence I had to wear dark glass­es to hide them.

The doc­tors and experts had giv­en my case a real­ly seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion and their read­ing of it was quite com­pre­hen­si­ble and agree­able. There are sev­en nerves that con­trol the inner and out­er func­tion­ing of the brain. The sev­enth of them how­ev­er con­trols the facial move­ments includ­ing the emo­tion­al reac­tions. It was this nerve which got dam­aged in my case and that is why my facial tis­sues were stuck at a smil­ing note. Accord­ing to the doc­tors it can be the case some­times. They told me that peo­ple can be affect­ed by this in much weird ways than I have been. There are cas­es in which peo­ple would start shed­ding tears as if they are weep­ing while they eat. Now I think that being stuck on smil­ing note is still bet­ter than weep­ing. One of the sur­geons insist­ed that I for­get all this and move on.

I tried my best to for­get my ‘new’ face or at least learn to live with it. How­ev­er I real­ized soon­er than lat­er that like writ­ing itself a face too is not your per­son­al mat­ter. To a large extent, it is a pub­lic mat­ter. They won’t let you for­get it even if you want­ed to. I don’t blame myself for that and I didn’t give up. I went on to dis­cov­er the world with the new face which was accursed with an eter­nal smile frozen on it; a damned face that con­stant­ly flashed the sig­nal of ‘Everything’s fine’.
[iv]I am get­ting emo­tion­al for no good rea­son. After all what can I do even if I am emo­tion­al? If some­body enters in my room at this moment, he would be delud­ed by an appear­ance of some­one who’s hap­pi­ly sit­ting in his room and enjoy­ing writ­ing and that’s about it. Could he ever look beyond what’s being suf­fered behind that ‘hap­py smil­ing face’ that is the result of the seri­ous dam­age of sev­enth brain nerve? That is why I have cho­sen the diary clerk amongst many of them so that I could tell my sto­ry. It is as if some­one has won the lot­tery. Oth­er­wise, I don’t have any­thing per­son­al against Anwaar Ahmed.

I admit that I’ve not yet come to terms with the world around me regard­ing the mat­ter of my smile. How­ev­er, I had tried real­ly hard before I got around reach­ing this deci­sion. I tried var­i­ous jobs where smil­ing faces are need­ed. Through some con­tacts I man­aged to get a receptionist’s job at some places where the boss­es didn’t like my smil­ing face and instruct­ed me to be a lit­tle seri­ous. ‘Am I telling some kind of a joke’? They would say. Dur­ing this time there hap­pened plen­ty of events which could make peo­ple laugh to the best of their laugh­ing capa­bil­i­ty.

At one point there was sup­posed to be a group pho­to at the office in which, obvi­ous­ly, peo­ple smile. After it was tak­en and every­body got back to the nor­mal face, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er said: “Sir, the pic­ture has been tak­en why you are still smil­ing now?’ My col­leagues broke into laugh­ter say­ing ‘He is our smi­ley.’ ‘Actu­al­ly, he is our Mr. Cheer­ful’. ‘He is always hap­py’. ‘Oh please tell me your secret of being con­stant­ly hap­py. It seems you have no wor­ry in the world at all…’

Such events were usu­al­ly my rou­tine after being healed in the thick plas­ter. Appar­ent­ly it was the sev­enth nerve which got dam­aged in that acci­dent. But that was not all. The remain­ing six nerves start­ed to get affect­ed too, and led me to this deci­sion.

There is anoth­er inci­dent that took place has a sig­nif­i­cant role for me in reach­ing this deci­sion. Some­body whom I knew died. It was his funer­al and I had gone there to attend it. It was all very sad and gloomy. I sat there and expressed my con­do­lences in few appro­pri­ate words. Soon I real­ized that peo­ple are star­ing at me with hatred and anger in their eyes for me. There were also some peo­ple who looked ter­ri­fied as if I were a wolf at this place. My smil­ing face in a sad a crowd was exact­ly sim­i­lar to a bomb blast in a gath­er­ing. I walked out with­out hav­ing said any­thing. And since then I knew it’s not going to be pos­si­ble any­more. I can’t have this face and live in this world simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The deci­sion I am going to exe­cute today has been grow­ing on me since then. An acci­dent can be cured only by anoth­er acci­dent and as I was not alone in the pre­vi­ous acci­dent, why should I be now… it wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence if a wound­ed ox gets a fly killed along with it!

I feel strange right now that it was very dif­fer­ent when I start­ed writ­ing it and now, at its end, it’s alto­geth­er some­thing oppo­site of it was. I don’t know what it is! I don’t think that I have any­thing more to write. And the wait­ing too is almost going to end. The room is filled with evening’s gloom and its soft­ness touch­es me here and here; touch­es my lips as well… where there is that the smile.

I can hear his foot­steps com­ing from the stair­way below. Anwaar has come. First step… sec­ond… third…

And here is the key of my bike.

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[i]The Urdu title for this sto­ry is “Sakht Plas­ter me Inde­maal” which is trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish rather equiv­o­cal­ly. The sto­ry can large­ly be cat­e­go­rized as a frame nar­ra­tive in which anoth­er sto­ry is being told. The cru­cial ele­ment in this sto­ry is the pat­tern of its nar­ra­tiv­i­ty that keeps the read­er on his/her in doubt regard­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the nar­ra­tor. It is, there­fore, the var­i­ous aspects of the nar­ra­tive and its play which is aimed at through this trans­la­tion.

The per­sona, in this case, cre­ates an arti­fice in which death (his own and that of an “insignif­i­cant per­son”) are inher­ent.  Those deaths are fore­shad­owed and push the action ahead. He talks about how he expects some­how to find immor­tal­i­ty as a writer via the cre­ation of this arti­fice. He says he does­n’t want this act to be seen as a sim­ple mur­der sui­cide.  He wants it to be seen as the act that in spite of his life­long fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate will make him suc­cess­ful.  As Yukio Mishi­ma says:

“The Japan­ese can some­times win through sui­cide,” and, indeed Mishi­ma, does just that in high­ly rit­u­al­ized fash­ion.  Two peo­ple die in this rit­u­al whether in Mishi­ma’s fic­tion or in Mishi­ma’s life and the Japan­ese rit­u­al always includes two peo­ple (two Par­tic­i­pat­ing adults).
The nar­ra­tor’s arti­fice is not part of a clas­si­cal rit­u­al.  The nar­ra­tor’s audi­ence will see the nar­ra­tor’s record­ed per­for­mance as too real.  They will be unable to see sui­cide as win­ning and they will cer­tain­ly fail to under­stand the nar­ra­tor’s draft­ing of an unwill­ing par­tic­i­pant into the action.

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[ii] The ital­ics here cor­re­spond to the inte­ri­or state of the char­ac­ter-nar­ra­tor. A translator’s inter­ven­tion in this case hap­pens to be the trans­la­tion which sub­verts the course of orig­i­nal into the present indef­i­nite tense to keep the sus­pense intact.

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[iii] The post thick plas­ter era doesn’t seem viable in the narrative’s flow of the events. How­ev­er, it is delib­er­ate­ly opt­ed for to main­tain the ratio­nal­iz­ing and cat­e­go­riz­ing attempts of the pro­tag­o­nist, which, over here, work as a cat­e­go­riza­tion of a time-span that he divides between before the acci­dent and after the acci­dent.

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[iv] One can see that the nar­ra­tor-pro­tag­o­nist is self-con­scious of the var­i­ous changes in him­self while he nar­rates all the events. There are var­i­ous intra-char­ac­ter and intra-nar­ra­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties to address the issue of Unheim­likheit, the uncan­ny. It is from the Poe-esque nar­ra­tive of sub­tle mad­ness or what can also be under­stood as, too much con­scious­ness, that this char­ac­ter, whose name is absent from the reader’s mind since it is not there in the story’s life-world, resolves with the real­i­ty of death. This opaque tone of the orig­i­nal is kept intact in the trans­la­tion and there has also been an effort to explore the nar­ra­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties of the uncan­ny through engag­ing with it through trans­la­tion.