[Reader-list] on Swat, Islam, Iqbal, Salman Rushdie, jihad , poetry and lost milk tooth

[Inder Salim]

Yakeen mohkam, amal paihum, mohabat fatihai-aalam
Jihad-e-zindagani mein yeh hein mardoon ki shamshirein

 The above couple by Poet Iqbal roughly translates:

Firm Belief, Action as per belief and Love which wins the world.
These ( three ) things are men’s swords ( guns ) in Life’s Jihad.

 These days one wishes to hear this couplet being sung in every street
and corner in Pakistan. But I wonder if tribal people in Swat valley
know how to read and write Urdu. But I don’t know if  these Jihadis
would find any divine inspiration in the couplet, because the people
are not city dwellers with main-stream ideals of modern life style.
So, ironically, the couplet, or the complete poetry of Iqbal even
might not be of any use in that case.


In 1990, I bought a book in Darya Gung, Delhi for  Rs.20/-  ISLAM by
Alferd Guilliaume . in  that book I learned  how (Swat like people)
Heath Land people existed in pre-Islamic era who asserted against the
established warring Jewish and Christian communities. Allah ( who
already existed ) gifted them a leader to guide them and even teach
them on issues like women, ethics, and politics etc.  It is not
surprising that the achievement made under the able leadership of the
chosen one still impresses the masses in the world.


Then, the first priority of the newly established Islam was of course
NOT to follow the systems (schools ) of the elites that time. That
perhaps included the sophisticated school of Music, Art  and languages
etc. They perhaps felt that people can live without these
sophisticated faculties and so why to let these institutions to outwit
the simple masses with their coded system that generates craft.  How
the folk benefited by this banning is a different debate, but we see
how Islam accepted the ordinary and some popular sacred sounds of the
folk, or existing system within the heathlanders even.


Again,  Alferd Guillaume’s research tells us that Poetry was banned by
the established communities of that period. And poets were seen as
haunted by some ghosts/demons etc so they deserved death if seen
contaminating the masses.  But this gifted man by Allah had a vision
and hence there were outbursts which could have caused him dearly, so
he preferred caves. These caves too were places for a conspiracy to
start a genuine political uprising. And the  rest is history.


Here, I am interested in something different. For example Dr. Iqbal
and Salman Rushdie are poles apart if one brings out a tentative
comparison between the  two. Salman Rushdie offended the masses while
Iqbal intoxicated the same. But when we talk about living a
sophisticated main stream life then we can see them sitting on the
same side of the fence. Satanic Verses is a well known
incomprehensible book after some 30 odd pages, and so is most of
Iqbal’s difficult verse. Both Salman Rushdie and Iqbal are useless in
Swat Valley , although because of different reasons.  Both Salman and
Iqbal lived liked the idea of living in style, not far from a
bourgeoisie with some penchant for words. But are people interested
how efficient is your skill to fit in the appropriate word
appropriately, I doubt. At best it is rhetoric. Iqbal is amazed by the
mysterious understanding between Devil and God, and so is Salman
amazed by characters in MidNight Cildren, who oscillate between so
called good and bad in life, in a just free India.
.

Here, I am interested in one more point: This Allah’s favourite man is
known for his revelations, and we firmly believe that he was down to
earth and truly honest while uttering  the words (verses ) to his
closest circle of friends, who later on wrote it down. Although
Alferd’s research says that the first Quran was written down  200
years after this Allah’s gifted leader passed away.  In that sense he
was merely the conduit between Allah and his people. Everything was
uttered to the masses then , and hence performative in essence, which
is radically different from reading and reciting it in homes or
elsewhere. Now the interpretation of the written ( of uttered words)
is also radically different from what they meant in the past.  Are not
we all  quite familiar with the so called illiteracy of the people
living in Swat Valley and else where? If so, then there is an absolute
possibility of distortion of meaning extracted by  different believers
living in different spaces and in different times.


I know my comment on Iqbal wont be appreciated by many and that
perhaps includes Faisal Devi ji  too. Faisal Devi Ji in  his book
‘Landscapes of Jihad’ tells us that Salman Rushdie is the first person
in Muslim world who united Muslims against a common enemy ‘West’. The
developed and established West has perhaps nothing to offer to these
present day  HeathLanders, so they rebel. Sadly, farcically.


So it is not surprising that all the Jihad is actually helping the
established world to establish more and more. So in future, there is a
possibility that the present day Jihad against  Jewish-Christian
elites would be seen as a genuine uprising. Unfortunately Allah has
not gifted a rebel poet leader  the these rebels this time, but they
are not from another planet.  At the moment, it is all violence which
suits the men in comfort chairs in air conditioned.


Alferd is much informative, although much provocative than Salman
Rushide but I liked Faisal Devi Ji when he says that the fight is on
environment too. The fight is to restore Sufi order too. The fight is
to outwit the greedy corporate consumerist culture too. He agrees that
it is very crude and violent at the moment, but this violence is
temporary.


Well, that is quite political, as most of the Jihadis themselves don’t
abandon scientific tools to boost the aggressive fundamentalist form
of Islam. Ethically, they should not touch guns and bombs because they
have not designed invented them, but as we know in war rationality is
the first causality. But the case is not limited to fundamentalists
alone, for example, what about banning Megaphones in Mosques by the
ordinary believers. Or giving more freedom to women, not as token
representation like in Iran or Kuwait etc but something which brings
about a change. But it is unlikely  to  happen, perhaps, we all, on
both the sides of the fence are somehow a party to the collective
crime against humanity and Earth.  I am personally lost to understand
the argument on who is right and who is wrong in this battle between a
terrorist and non-terrorist.  May I know who is my real enemy ?  May I
know who is my real friend ?


My other point is that what about Allah itself, who blesses the entire
humanity irrespective of colour caste, creed race or religion. But
some Sufi scholars believe that the exact way of uttering the sound
Allah is lost. So we have a memory of Allah which we believe is
absolute, controlling the world and our destinies. The sounds which
Allah’s favourite leader used to utter his revelations are also lost,
perhaps dispersed in the thin air of atmosphere, and hence in the
hidden sub-conscious mind of the man in the present. What is lost is
lost, but what we have, perhaps needs some mixing of dreams to enable
us to read our individual set of desires and ideas of flights
respectively.


An Aritst from Malasiya once told me that whenever he thinks of
Prophet Mohammad he closes his eyes and sees a strange blue, a
different shade from all the shades on his  palette


So is that colour a sign of peace and harmony for all of us in the world.

May be this so called Islamic green is only the mask?

May be we have nothing, but a dream, voice of which falters.

And, perhaps, we all are living in a space, which is like a joke, which shouts

“ I don’t know “ to any curiosity we want to resolve.


Please read the following, may be it is puzzle for many, but it is not, perhaps…

………………………………………………………………………………….

SON: oh, my tooth.

MOTHER: pull it, pull it, slowly, slowly, it will come off.

SON: yes, yes, it has come out.

MOTHER: now, drop that in the rat hole over there.

SON: alright mama, see, see it is done.

MOTHER: now, it is rat’s job to give you a new sharp one, a permanent one

SON: how?

MOTHER: I don’t know my son, but my father told me so

SON: you also dropped your teeth in the rat-hole?

MOTHER: yes,

SON; and my grand mother too

MOTHER : yes, my dear. And all those who lost their teeth at this age
did the same. Now go to bed and sleep well.



Slept he well, dreamt a rain of teeth that night, and woke up, and
dreamt again, and forgot tiny little details of dreams of his
adolescent life. Slept he well, and grew up, learned some bits from
sweet class mates and ignorant teachers at school, got married, saw
his mother’s death, and sired a daughter and a son, moved to Metro
city Delhi from a village in Kashmir.

One day, the daughter came rushing, holding her tiny little milk-tooth
in her hand

DAUGHTER: dady dady, what should I do with this tooth.

                              ( showing a tooth with little blood at one end) .

FATHER: just throw it away ( his sound was listless )

DAUGHTER: but, where? ( his father’s answer confused her )

FATHER: anywhere, in the toilet ( he never meant it but told her )

His dead mother had perhaps told her grand daughter about the
tradition of dropping these milk teeth in the rat holes.

 So, without throwing her tooth in the toilet she held it in her palm,
tightly, and went to bed, and slept, and dreamt


Alphabets of her note book slipping out from the gap between her teeth
in the mouth.

Rats were running after her. She was running faster than the rats. She
ran and ran and crossed over to a different valley through the spaces
between snow clad peaks.

There was darkness all around. She disappeared in the darkness of this
nothingness, which frightened her and she woke up, instantly.

She opened her palm to see her tooth, her own lost tooth which she
held tightly before going to bed. It was not there. She did not ask
anybody, and neither she wanted an answer for that. There were no
rat-holes in the 7th floor of the apartment she lived in.

Lived she in Delhi, forgot tiny little details of her childhood, went
to school, slept and dreamt, and learnt things from  sweet class mates
and ignorant teachers at school, but passed out and went to college to
complete her graduation in Psychology.

And one day she stumbled upon a stanza while casually browsing a book
in library

Nothingness to this abolished Man of the past;

“Memory of horizons, O thou, what is the Earth?”

Shouts this dream, and, voice whose clarity falters.

Space as a joke has this cry “ I do not know?”

Mallarme.

………………………………………………………………………



With love

Inder salim





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