A New Disease, by Akther Mohiuddin (d. 2001)

He's out of his mind, I said. 

He will get to his house and then not walk through the door. He just stands there, as if in queue, 

sometimes for an hour: standing there, waiting for who knows what; and then, he will not enter. 

He turns at last his back to the door, if you please, and walks away.

No, no, no, he said, there has been some change for the better. He has been to the doctor.

And what did the doctor do?

He said that as soon as he gets home someone ought to perform a search of his person. Then one must wait 

to see whether he will enter his house or no, or even walk through the gate.

And they did, just as the doctor prescribed; and now he will enter. 

The doctor said that ever since we have had searches performed on us at every possible door, 

outside every possible gate, this new disease has proven catching. 

Some, he said, are compelled even to search themselves before they can walk 

through gates, any gate, or enter a house, any house.

NOTES

1. Nav Byamar--there is no way to capture the manner in which this title, with its two words, and three stress cadence, rudely echoes and refuses a title beloved of so many authors before, in what must seem today, but was not necessarily so, a happier time, time when it was possible still to hope for 'new Spring' (Nav Bahaar). (I stress, however, that Nadim already spoke in the fifties of refusing to sing of new spring, youth or idle dreams of one's first, wild longings). Now, no 'New Spring' any longer, but 'A New Disease'. The choice of articles is always a burden for the translator when the source languages have none. I have chosen the indefinite. A vain hope that the condition is not a true disease distinctly its own.

2. This is an adaptation from Kashmiri by Sonam Kachru, a piece long in preparation. Thus far, it is the only example of prose I have wanted to include as a prose-poem in my book of translations from Kashmiri poetry, as Mohiuddin' s voice is simply not to be overlooked in any collection of voices from Kashmir. Hence, this adaptation, prepared before I had the chance to read Abir Bazaz's excellent translation, recently shared via facebook, and through the closed group Kashmir Reading Room. This version is indebted to Abir's translation, and my willingness to share it, to the warm support shown by readers of the group for literature such as this.

I am indebted Abir Bazaz (through conversation, for this as with so much else) and Basharat Peer (through his book, Curfewed Night) for acquainting me with this gem of a short story (what some today would call 'flash fiction', though Sadat Hasan Manto, Mohiuddin's true influence, excelled at this genre before it was a genre). Peer offers a paraphrase of this short story, effectively reproducing Mohiuddin's words, on page 154 of Curfewed Night--whether by design or not, Peer follows his ultimate predecessor, Kalhana, in his concern for documenting literary expression as a form of optic important to history and memoir. The passage reads:

"In "The New Disease" a man waits for a long time, as if in a queue, before entering his own house--and then turns away and leaves in another direction. His family takes him to a doctor. The doctor says, "Ever since frisking has been introduced, a new disease has come up. Some people need to be frisked every time they see a gate; others frisk themselves." He prescribes a body search every time the man reaches a gate. The family follows a prescription, and the man's condition improves."

Peer offers "frisk," and "body search", and Bazaz "search" for Mohiuddin's verb 'talaash' followed by the periphrastic verb, kadun, which means to search for, as it does in Hindustani. All these variants in English help bring out the range of what is resonant in the by now all too familiar idiom in the valley, as are the words "security", "search," "frisk" in English, though the situation in Kashmir is much more extreme, as this piece invites us to see. Thus, I wanted something, that would strike the ear in English as at once routine (in our oh so secured world) and alienating. I wanted a phrase that would help render the body an alien object, the locus for actions that distance the agent and the object of action: hence, my ridiculously anachronistic example of bureaucratic English, "perform a search of one's / his person", which like the Kashmiri idiom, seems to promise and yet leave out a purpose for this activity. It is enough that the person be the locus of search, an environment for an endeavour. But to be adequate, we shall want all these senses, with the tonal possibilities of various idioms, and so, perhaps, as many translations as we can bear to have. It is worth pointing out the distance between talash kadun, and pay kadun, where this latter activity (from pay meaning footprint) means to search for truth on the basis of clues. One respondent to the story thought she heard the echo of laash in talaash. I leave it to readers more skilled in Mohiuddin's work than I am to determine if he was prone to such sly echoes.

3. The echo in the last line to anigati, in Kashmiri, darkness, is my own. It is not Mohiuddin's, nor is the strict repetition, which is my way of stressing the everywhere present occasions for the symptoms of this disease. But the echo I seek to let resound here with the English "any gate" finds its source in this dedication of Mohiuddin's to his book of short stories, Seven One Nine One Seven And Other Stories published in 2001:

Intesaab
Mausoom shaheed Muhammad Yusuf wa Ahmadullah Reshi te timan jawanan handi nawa yim zulmakis ani gatis manz be nau Jayan qatl karne aayi [Emphasis Mine]

Dedication:
To the innocent witnesses through martyrdom, Muhammad Yusuf and Ahmadullah Reshi, and such boys as were destroyed in the unjust, depriving dark of oppression, killed in nameless places

4. The illustration is by the Kashmiri artist Veer Munshi. I will add copyright information and a link to the original as soon as I can remember where I acquired it from.