One day, they decided together that now the cow should indeed be given to the slaughterhouse, it could not earn them even one paisa more.
One of them said, ‘Who will buy this fistful of bones?’
‘But Baba, I am still sure she will still make us something. If she is treated regularly...’
‘Stay silent ji. What a know-it-all.’
Nikka slid silently to the side, and Baba sat down with the others to rack his brains, raking the intelligence in his beard.
Whenever I move my tongue, they become butchers.
Since the day I have known them, I have known Chitkabri, and since that day these people have been thinking of taking her to the slaughterhouse, and since that day, every moment I am becoming an orphan. What should I do, all of them laugh at me for attending to her so well? Why do I love this bag of bones so much, why do I?
‘Why don’t you send her to the hospital instead of the slaughterhouse? ’Nikka could not help asking.
‘Don’t you know that she cannot get well? Why should money be wasted on her treatment for nothing.’
I do not know! Indeed just yesterday, Maan had knotted the thread for the fifteenth time.
‘At least try to treat her.’
‘Do not interfere in the affairs of elders.’
I feel like dragging all of you to the slaughterhouse.
Then everyone held the chain of the cow together. But as if the cow knew what was going on, she refused to budge an inch from her place. Then they beat her, almost to a pulp. Nikka stood to one side, watching with glazed eyes, trying to understand. ‘Shabash, Chitkabri, my cow, my gauu maata, do not move, you do not know what these people are about to do to you. Do not go, do not move, otherwise, otherwise….’
The cow, rooted in her place, kept looking back at him. A bit further away, the cow’s calf tethered with a rope, was sitting unconcerned. It could not hear the shower of sticks on bones.
Nikka’s eyes were gradually shutting.
All the old men, panting for breath, once more sat down to rack their brains. Then it was decided that even if she did move, she could possibly stand still en route. It would be better to take her in the truck.
The next day the truck arrived.
The cow turned around to look at the sound of the truck. She squinted her eyes, then put its mouth in the trough, where Nikka had just filled it with fodder before going to see the truck.
‘You people will really...?’ He could not believe it.
‘Not really, are we joking then?’
One of them had said, ‘Baba, give me this cow, I will...’
‘Son of a hakim.’
The second one had said, ‘Baba, without her, I…’
‘Lover boy.’
A third one had said …
The fourth, and fifth, all the old men, damned ones, birds of a feather and Baba who considers his beard to be the fount of wisdom – what had happened to him?
‘Bete, we will make a good profit even after paying ten rupees to the truckwalla.’
'O wretched merchant, take money from me take it from me but I only have air in my fist, when when I will grow older?'
‘Ha ha ha ha...’
‘When I will start earning?’
‘Ha ha ha ha…’
By then, by then, Chitkabri’s bones would be reduced to powder. I, I, what should I do.
One of them had gone to the trough to fetch the cow. Nikka followed behind him. Badaa unlocked her chains. The cow pressed a bit of fodder down between its teeth after fishing about in the trough. She turned to look at Nikka and lifted a hoof to rise.
‘No, no.’ Nikka screamed.
‘Don’t be foolish.’
The cow stood up.
‘He-he-he…’
Badaa used force.
‘No Chitkabriye. No, no.’
‘Will you shut up or should I pull out your tongue.’
Nikka imprisoned his tongue. Badaa again jerked the chain.
‘Chalo memsahib! The truckwalla is not your father’s servant who will stand all day.’
The eyes of the cow popped out. My tongue had been confined to merely fluttering in captivity. But that handful of bones was right there, unmoving. Nikka smiled, then immediately became dejected.
She has been sold, she will have to go. Even now, I am sure that if she is treated regularly by putting a bit of money into it, then, then … but what should I do with these old men. I wish I was the hakim. This calf has no shame, its mother’s skin is turning blue with all the beating, and it is standing there watching like a great idiot.
The tongue had been confined to mere fluttering.
Then one of them had a brainstorm. He grasped the cow’s tail and gave it three or four twists. She ran with the pain. He laughed, looking towards Nikka. The pain brought the cow very near the truck. Nikka’s heart beat forcefully.
May your mouth burn in hell, a million curses upon you.
The truckwalla placed a plank from the truck to the ground for the cow to board. The cow placed a hoof on the plank.
‘Don’t board.’
‘Cut out his tongue, he misleads the cow.’
‘Frightens her.’
Nikka shut his mouth, backing away.
The cow looked at the plank, then at Nikka.
May your mouth burn in hell … curse you … a million curses…
Nikka’s face lowered with shame.
What else can I do, what can I do?
She was still not afraid. Then she let out a very forceful hiss, looking here and there with suspicious glances.
My Chitkabri knows, knows that she will enter the truck by stepping on the plank. But she does not know why, why, she does not want to climb.
All of them rained sticks on her back, the cow fidgeted but she had not moved from her place at all. When they mounted a second attack together, she was about to run away with the pain, when the wisdom in Baba’s beard swelled and he targeted the stick to hit the cow’s face. The cow had again stood straight, facing the plank.
Baba said, panting, ‘Come, strike.’
And they had together let loose a rain of sticks once more.
Nikka stood far away. Completely unconcerned, insensitive.
‘It won’t happen like this,’ one of them, controlling his breath, had said.
‘Then what?’
They were just thinking, leaning against the truck when the cow, God knows what got into her, turned back running suddenly, and passed by Nikka as if they were complete strangers, kicking up dust.
Nikka, remained paralysed.
‘Look, look, she’s on the left,’ one of them was surprised.
‘It’s natural,’ Baba said, running his fingers through his beard.
The cow was licking her calf. Baba’s eyes lit up with a mean smile.
‘Bring that calf here … we should have used this trick yesterday. We would have saved the money for the truck.’
Nikka … paralyzed.
One of them held the calf’s rope.
Nikka’s tongue trembled. When the cow passed by him behind the calf, thinking, lifting a step, stopping, starting, an abuse had slipped gradually off Nikka’s tongue. The calf entered the truck, prancing up the plank. The cow stopped again upon reaching the plank. She gradually turned her neck to gaze at Nikka, after looking in great amazement at the calf. One of them quickly took out a stack of fodder from under his armpit and placed it before the cow. She took a few stems in its teeth and then thoughtfully, dropped them on the ground, placed a front hoof on the plank, then the other hoof.
God knows what had happened to Nikka.
Suddenly fresh hot blood flooded through his body. His ears turned red and his head began ringing intensely. He ran into the house and lifting baba’s double-barrel gun, filled it with cartridges. He came out in a frenzy, placed the gun at his shoulder and marked his target.
He looked with one eye open. The calf was fishing about outside the truck in the fodder that the cow had dropped. The cow, tied inside the truck, was looking at the calf with her face sticking out. One of them was sitting in the truck to take the cow and Baba, caressing the wisdom in his beard with one hand was shaking hands with the driver standing outside.
Then, I do not know what happened. Who Nikka targeted? The cow, the calf, the driver, Baba, himself, he is still standing marking the target. Someone go there and see and return to tell me what happened then. All I know is that one day, they decided together that…
***
Published in Urdu as ‘Gaae’ in Chauraha, Maktaba Nai Matbu'uat (undated), Lahore
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Translator’s note
The story in translation is a good example of a shift away from the dominant trends of the Urdu short story in the 1960s, which tended to focus on the traditional themes of love and sex. ‘The Cow’ engages with the various conflicts of the 1960s.
The story concludes on a surrealistic note. Indeed it is a fine example of how Sajjad uses realism and fantasy and arranges them in a surrealistic manner.
I wonder if this short-story was inspired by Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui’s masterful film of the same name (Gaav in Farsi), which was made in 1969, the same decade as Sajjad’s story. The film is believed to have set off the New Wave in Iranian cinema. Both the film and Sajjad’s story use the cow as a symbol to depict a near-mythical relationship between a human and an animal; in the film it is a peasant and in the story it is a child. When an attempt is made to sever this relationship, it has profoundly disastrous consequences bordering on the surrealistic. While the film was banned in Iran, it was only released after a disclaimer that the plot had nothing to do with the events of the Shah’s Iran. Sajjad’s story should not require any such preamble, and it is hoped that the readers will understand what is actually being said and left unsaid. Which is why I chose to translate this story as a tribute to the writer who left us on June 6, 2019.
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Enver Sajjad (1935-2019) was a writer, playwright, dancer, translator, activist, actor and director par excellence. Born in Lahore, he was part of the Progressive Writers Association in Pakistan, and in the 1960s, became the founder of abstract and symbolic fiction in Pakistan. He authored the novels Khushiyon ka Bagh (1979) and Janam Roop (1985) and a book of essays Talaash-e-Vujood (1986). He has a highly-rated translation of Emmanuil Kazakevich's account of Lenin's revolutionary days, The Blue Notebook (1982). He passed away on June 6, 2019.
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Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic, and an award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently living in Lahore, where he is the President of the Progressive Writers Association. His most recent work is a contribution to the edited collection Jallianwala Bagh: Literary Responses in Prose and Poetry, Niyogi Books, 2019. His translations have been published previously in Out of Print. He can be reached at: razanaeem@hotmail.com.