In a day and age when cosmopolitanism is an increasingly acceptable cultural norm, if not an economic necessity, the pain of rootlessness and migration does not fail to strike one as plaintively evocative of human misery and struggle over millennia. Intizar Husain’s
The Sea lies Ahead is a provocative reminder of this continuing saga of trial and tribulation marring human existence since time immemorial.
Written originally in Urdu, this edition has been satisfactorily translated by Rakhshanda Jalil and conveys well the rich, idiomatic quality which must be characteristic of the original. The plot fuses the evolving life-history of Jawad, a refugee, with Karachi, the city of refuge, speaking thus of the effect and affect of the Partition of 1947, and the seeds of discordant nationalism and ethnic violence which were sown in newly-born Pakistan by this cataclysmic rupture in subcontinental history.
Of course, what makes The Sea lies Ahead interesting for the contemporary reader, particularly the reader in India, is its broad historical approach to migration, which treats Partition not just as a stand-alone event but as part of a series of such devastations which have marked Muslim history since its earliest days. Memory here is as personal as it is communal and cultural: The trauma and loss experienced by the muhajirs — the Indian Muslims who migrated to Pakistan — who uprooted themselves in a wave and reached helter-skelter to Pakistan is only the latest such event in the cultural life of Muslims as a community. Islamic Spain, al-Andalusia, is evoked consistently as a symbol of lost glory and subsequent rootlessness and the experiences of these 20th century migrants is often placed alongside the trials of those in medieval Islamic history.
However, even as the Partition and its attendant trauma appear in this novel as part of an ostensibly unending cycle of despair and hope, the life-trajectory of Jawad and of his adopted home Karachi seem to indicate otherwise. The narrative is replete with lament, lament for not just the loss of ancestral homes and the touch of native soil but also for the gradual dilution and dissipation of a nationalistic dream. The muhajirs cannot but remember the hopes with which they came to Pakistan against all odds and the growing incidences of terror and crime leave all of them unsettled and disillusioned: As society spirals into violence, life, it seems, is about to come full circle for them. Yet, whereas Jawad cannot but wonder at the manner in which Karachi and the nation at large have deteriorated, at the betrayal of democracy and the rise of fundamentalist and ethnic militantism, Majju Bhai, his constant friend and companion, lives on the quixotically exuberant philosophy of not thinking about the situation. Indeed, his advice to his friend in this regard is simple enough, and is repeated throughout the text: Either leave this city or, if you do wish to live here, do not think about what is happening.
This luxury, of course, the narrator is unable to take for himself, and his mind is presented as a kaleidoscope of events past and present, personal and communal. He journeys to India, to his native town, to gain absolution from his listless life in Karachi, but whatever peace he finds for a while in his ancestral haveli turns short-lived as questions of the future start haunting his interactions with his blood relatives. His childhood companion Maimuna, the first-cousin he was betrothed to, he discovers, is unmarried still, and even as the fondness and camaraderie of the old days comes back, the question of marriage in the future propels him to fly to Pakistan. His return, then, is as sudden and impulsive as his departure there had been earlier, though the heavy load of memories confusing and troubling him increases with the journey.
Ultimately, these memories, which are much of Jawad and of the Muslims as a community as they are of all of humanity, are what remain with the reader too upon the novel’s closure. More than hope and satisfaction, melancholia and misery come across as pervasive hallmarks of the muhajir experience. Vignettes of their lives before Partition appeal with a twinging pathos that compels the heart to ponder upon the loss which has been as much theirs as ours, the evocative quality of the translation successfully delights the reader with glimpses of the zubaan which much of Islamicate North India used to live in.
Jalil’s Introduction, unfortunately, leaves a little to be desired though: More could have been written about the author, his oeuvre, and his narrativity. Nonetheless, this is an eminently readable translation of a compelling book for our troubled times.
The reviewer is a Senior Marketing Editor with Primus Books. The views expressed here are his own