A Disjointed Tale

KARACHI:

In his preface to the book, Asghar Nadeem Syed has drawn some parallels between Farzad Karimi’s Winter Tales—posthumously published in December 2022—and reclusive Shahid Mubashir’s “Qissa Jin Pari Ka”, the latter being a postmodern satire written in the style of a masnavi.

Aftab Husain, in his brief review, has partially agreed with the celebrated playwright while stating that Karimi “has given a new dimension to Pakistani fiction by using the traditional form of a dastan to present the human tragedy in the information age…”

On the inside flap of the book, Dr Shadab Ehsani has reminisced in a rather flowery language about his close relations with the author, while highlighting in a guarded manner how some South American writers—including Jorge Luis Borges—acted as an influence on Karimi’s art.

I respect these views. However, I am not ready to ignore the shortcomings of the author just because he died a tragic and untimely death as the book in question can neither be called a long short story nor a novel or for that matter a dastan in the traditional sense of the word, despite its literary merits.

Winter Tales—which appeared in a slim bilingual edition with the cover art by Feica— is a disjointed narrative comprising twelve different stories of varying lengths linked together through a frame story in the fashion of Boccaccio’s Decameron or Mir Aman’s Bagh-o-Bahar.

The frame story follows a group of twelve young people—all relatives and friends—sitting around a fireplace after a hearty dinner. Winter is at its peak; it is snowing outside and the young people—who fall short of becoming distinct characters—decide to tell stories to pass the time.

All this sounds very prosaic—a clichéd setting that reminds one of dozens if not hundreds of popular stories and films—and while the narrative gets interesting with time at least three stories in Winter Tales can be ignored out of hand due to their weak plots and abrupt endings.

The remaining nine stories are, however, compelling narratives that exude a supernatural grace and reflect a resplendent beauty and mythical energy.

Six of these stories are tragic, culminating in the death or downfall of the protagonists while the last three are comedies, in the Aristotelian sense of the word.

SPOILER ALERT

One of the first tragic stories is about a mirror which lies to its owner—an aging actress— by constantly showing her a reflection of her past self but weeps at night, much to the horror of the woman. The actress gradually loses her mind as the mirror’s nightly crying becomes louder and louder with time.

Like Borges, Karimi is also obsessed with mirrors, which reappear in the very next story as the symbol of a true friend. The protagonist relies on other people’s words to form an opinion about himself. This man lives a dark, lonely and depressed life and “dies without ever knowing how beautiful he was”.

The story about a film star, who does not age—like the protagonist of Oscar Wilde's novel—but who, despite his perennial youth, is relegated to regional cinema after a 50-year stint as a romantic hero deals with the paradox of existence.

This hero continually appears in the regional cinema’s action movies for the next 50 years until he is dumped by that industry as well and he ultimately lands in the country’s porn industry before becoming virtually invisible “like an old piece of furniture, which briefly comes into existence once it is removed.”

One of the best tragic stories in the “collection”—yes, this is what I believe this book should be called—is narrated by Sarah, introduced as a 25-year-old girl with pimples. It is about an artisan whose naivety and passion for his craft spell doom for him.

This artisan, a tailor by the rather suggestive name of Ishaq, is a devoted activist of a religious party which tasks him with making a big flag of Israel. The party’s regional leaders intend to burn this flag at a protest against atrocities of the Jewish state.

Ishaq, who does not know why the party needs the flag, sets about the task with a religious zeal.

He uses his own savings to buy the most expensive and finest of fabrics and continuously works for three days and nights to make the most beautiful hand-made Zionist banner ever created.

The climax of the story comes when on the day of the protest one of the leaders of the party tears open the specially made box—in which Ishaq had placed the flag like a relic after perfuming it—throws it to the ground and stomps on it—to the consternation of the artisan.

Ishaq cannot contain himself when the leader sprinkles fuel over the ensign. Shouting like a madman, he throws himself on top of the flag and covers it with his body before being trampled and burned to death by an angry mob.

Another wonderful story—started by one Kamran in a rather abrupt manner—is about psychological traumas and is very appropriately set in a post-apocalyptic world.

A group of pilgrims embarks on a difficult journey to meet the last man who has seen the Antichrist.

This man lives in a far-flung corner of the world and when the pilgrims finally step into his rustic hut after crossing many rivers, mountains and valleys and losing almost half of their co-adventurers, they find him lying on a bed with his eyes closed.

This long and perilous journey has made the pilgrims impatient.

They cannot lose this last opportunity to find the truth behind the legends of the fearsome beast, who—they have always been told—was repeatedly mentioned in scriptures and religious traditions and who marked the beginning of the end of this world.

Their leader bends down and whispers in the old man’s ear that he and his friends have crossed rivers, mountains and valleys just to meet him and to ask him some questions about the devil incarnate.

The man wakes up with a start. The visitors see a flash of terror in his eyes. Rising from his bed, he welcomes the guests and asks them to make themselves at home.

The pilgrims badly miss the warmth of a house and after having a simple but delightful meal served by the old man in earthen pots they hit the sack in an adjoining hut.

Their leader, however, wakes up from a nightmare. He had seen a pack of big, ferocious hounds tearing the old hermit to pieces. With a sense of impending doom, the pilgrim rushes to the old man’s hut to find his body dangling from a rope in the middle of the room.

The sixth tragic story is also about the power of memories.

Abqari is a corrupt government employee who wants to help his girlfriend Maria—an ambitious investigative journalist—unearth her biggest scoop. He manages to get himself transferred to a non-descript department whose archives section—he reliably knows—is full of classified documents.

The department has a sprawling but dilapidated building in the old area of the country’s commercial hub and its perennially open gate is manned by an old and half-blind concierge.

Abqari, whose job is to procure stationery for various offices, secretly enters the archive section one evening to find himself in the midst of a big library that extends underground.

He later starts sneaking into that section every evening—once everyone is gone—to look for official secrets one shelf at a time. Soon he hits upon a classified report compiled by a judicial commission on the assassination of one of the prime ministers of the country.

While poring through the document and making its photographs, Abqari is suddenly overtaken by memories from a distant but painful past—dim memories of his mother’s infidelity. Disturbed, the protagonist leaves the task unfinished but returns to the library the next day to carry on his search.

As Abqari gradually moves from the ground floor to the underground floors of the library, reading and photographing more and more classified documents, his memories become more vivid.

He starts to remember the faces of each and every man that his mother met—faces smeared with lust, shame and sin; faces that became uglier when they smiled.

Haunted by these memories, Abqari stops his search and tries to take refuge in his lover—only to discover that Maria bears an uncanny resemblance to his deceased mother. The story ends with Abqari becoming mad and killing Maria in her sleep.

The best comic story—about a carpenter’s beautiful but frigid wife—sheds new light on the mysteries of female sexuality and the complex association of some natural phenomena with human behavior.

According to a narrator, the carpenter’s wife “came to life”—a euphemism for becoming sexually aroused—only during peak winter, when the temperature fell below 5 degree Celsius.

The couple eventually moves to a hill station once the carpenter discovers the secret behind his wife’s libido after several years of frustration. This story also calls to mind Manto’s “Garam Suit”, whose protagonist Ganda Singh had also ultimately moved to a hilly resort, but obviously for different reasons.

The story of a business tycoon—the first female chairperson of the city’s poultry farm association—finding her match is full of dark humor.

This millionaire, who saves every penny and eats just one square meal a day, comprising only egg dishes, falls for an equally miserly owner of a transport company who travels on public buses.

This transporter also resembles her father who had started his poultry business with a pair of hens that an elderly woman had given him in gratitude for sleeping with her one cold winter night.

Equally hilarious is the story of a young employee at an illegal gambling den. This young man, Jozi, loves the daughter of the den’s owner, a serial rapist, who tries to force himself on Jozi after having one too many drinks.

The boy runs from the gambling house with the rapist in hot pursuit. At one point during this chase, the boy jumps off a wall—to accidently land on a man who earned a living by weighing people, crushing the vendor to death but managing to protect his own "honor".

These exceptional stories, which are likely to endure the test of time, make one wonder why Karimi failed to create an equally compelling frame story for this book.

I tend to agree with Anwer Sen Roy that Karimi was still working on Winter Tales and that “we would have a great book if a felon had not killed this writer in an unfortunate cell phone-snatching incident.”

Here I want to dismiss Khurram Sohail’s claim that Karimi's entire work including Winter Tales is plagiarized. In a recent article, Sohail says Ahmed Saadi, a writer who was killed during the massacre of non-Bengalis at Santahar town of former East Pakistan in April 1971, had sent the manuscript of a collection of his short stories to Karimi's father Shahid Karimi, who was also an amateur publisher.

"Farzad had come across that treasure trove of stories in an old attaché case of his father after the latter’s death. Unfortunately, my friend reproduced the same stories throughout his life," Sohail writes. In my opinion, these claims should not be taken seriously.

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.