Souls fulfilled and replete

As Captain Malik told Karam Hussain Shah that his only son was dead, he thanked God, who gave & took away their son.

It was April 1959, Brigadier Humayun Malik, then a captain, was the adjutant of the Special Services Group (SSG) battalion at Attock Fort. One Sunday evening, he got a call from the master of Attock Khurd railway station. A young man in army uniform, having fallen off the train, had died. Since this was the nearest military installation, he was informing the adjutant.

At the station, Captain Malik found Nazar Hussain Shah’s body — beheaded, the body lay between the tracks and the head between the rails and the concrete of the platform. The story was that, as the express train he was riding stormed through the station, the young man tried to disembark. He was seen running alongside, stumbling and disappearing into the narrow space between train and platform.

It devolved upon the adjutant to deliver the body to the parents. The dead man’s papers showed that his father Karam Hussain Shah lived in Chhoi, some ways west of Attock (then Campbellpur). They also showed that Nazar was his parents’ only child. Upon reaching their home, Captain Malik found an elderly man engrossed in some work and called out aloud the father’s name. The old man looked up and, seeing the uniformed officer, marched up to deliver a smart salute. This was Karam Hussain Shah, tall and lanky and a retired corporal of the First World War.

Captain Malik had repeatedly rehearsed how he was going to break the terrible news to the elderly parents. But there was something about the man that all the captain’s plans evaporated in a moment. “Karam Hussain Shah, your son is dead,” he said.

As if to be certain of what he heard, the old man asked the captain to repeat himself. And even as Captain Malik readied himself to hold the man as he swooned, he raised up his hands in orison and said, “All praise is yours, Lord. You gave him to us; you took him away. Your will is supreme.”

Meanwhile, the mother inside the two room house heard the carrying on and called to ask what the matter was. “It is Nazar Hussain. He has come home to us,” said the man. Sensing something amiss the mother began to cry. “Why do you cry, Nazar’s mother? It is the evening of our time. What if this had befallen us when we still had more years to go?”

The SSG commanding officer had sent some gifts of money and rations for the grieving couple. But all were turned down. “Captain sahib,” so the old man said, “All our needs are fulfilled. You are very kind, but we have no use for what you bring.” Thereafter, Captain Malik saw the couple nearly every weekend, always making it a point to bring them fruit or other gifts. Always, the couple either shared it with their visitor or kept it until the next week for him. Always, there was the question of why. Why, when they had no want, did he have to spend for them?

Karam Hussain Shah died in 1960. His wife the year after.

Here were two people whose only child begotten after 17 years of wedlock had tragically died. They had not beaten their chests, nor complained of the injustice of Providence. They had exhibited an unshakeable equanimity that comes only from a fullness, a repletion of the soul.

In this country of paraplegic souls, souls riddled through with avarice, souls whose boundless greed can never be fulfilled, Karam Hussain and his wife were noble exceptions. But when they passed away from this life, they were forgotten. This is what I learned in February 1998 in Chhoi. We who celebrate charlatans and fraudsters have no need for the memory of such remarkable human beings.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th,  2011.