This translation was originally published in The Peshawar Review in January 2026. I am sharing it here because it provides some insight into Pakistan at the beginning of the General Zia era. Fiction also makes a nice change from the usual topics on this blog. The entire story can be read here.
One day, Naveed Bhai hadn’t returned from college by five o’clock. Usually, this wouldn’t have been cause for concern — a slight delay in returning home. But, over the past few days, Naveed Bhai had been behaving in a way that caused Abba to worry that he might be getting involved in something that would land him in trouble with the government of the cartoonish General Zia. Sitting at the dining table one day, Naveed Bhai had said angrily, through clenched teeth, that “we should teach these ignorant student union thugs a lesson.” On hearing this, Abba stared at him and said they had sent him there to study, not to get involved in useless things. Naveed Bhai should go straight to college and come right back. He shouldn’t even think about getting involved in union affairs and getting mixed up with dangerous people. Instead of being quiet after this reprimand, Naveed Bhai started speaking even more loudly:
“They are thugs! Their legs should be broken the way they broke Junaid’s. General Zia is behind them!”
Alarm bells had gone off in Abba’s head once before when Naveed Bhai had said he was going to join an underground group of progressive, pro-democracy students. Abba had only gently rebuked him, saying that future doctors shouldn’t get involved in such nonsense. Student unions were against the law. There was no need to get himself in trouble.
Who knows who he was, poor Junaid, whose legs had been broken. And I didn’t even know what a ‘union’ was but when Abba and Naveed Bhai started arguing loudly, I figured some dangerous people had become members of a student group sponsored by a political party, and now they were hovering around colleges and universities. The party they were affiliated with considered itself the last word on religion, and its sole champion. From Abba and Naveed Bhai’s conversation, I also gathered that these political workers used to beat students and coerce them into obeying strange orders. For example, boys and girls could not walk together on the street. If an emergency forced a boy to talk to a girl, neither of them was to be heard laughing — but such an emergency should never occur. Similar illogical things spewed from their strange minds, like the vomit from Faizan’s mouth. They had always done things like this, on behalf of that criminal general with the cartoon face and never did anything commendable just as that shameless general hadn’t either.
When Abba heard from Naveed Bhai about poor Junaid’s broken legs he became even more worried. Pointing his finger for emphasis, he warned, “Don’t you dare get involved in such things!”
So, on the day Naveed Bhai hadn’t returned by five, Abba initially feigned unconcern and said there wasn’t anything to worry about — he would come home soon. But after another half hour, he said we should go check at the college.
Naveed Bhai was not generally irresponsible. At most, he would sometimes go from college to a friend’s house but even then he would telephone us by dialing the number 50924 which caused our phone to ring. I would be very happy and curious to know who was on the other side striving to transmit his voice to us over the wires.
At 5:30, Ammi flipped open her address book and began calling all of Naveed Bhai’s friends. Only she could do that because she wrote numbers using her own system. The Habib Bank manager’s number, instead of being under ‘H’, was under ‘M’ for manager. And her tailor Ramzan’s number was under ‘T’ (for tailor) instead of ‘R.’ But there was no cause for complaint because she could find numbers at lightning speed. Sometimes when Abba had to find one, he would get frustrated and ask why she couldn’t write them in the right place.
Ammi would reply sharply that the right place was exactly where she had written the number. When Abba argued further, she would tell him to keep his own book and write everything correctly in it and give her back her flawed one. She said she would write in her way till her dying day and if, after death, there were some kind of life in which phones were available and address books were needed, she would still write the same way.
Ammi continued to dial numbers, all the time saying Allah have mercy, Allah have mercy. Abba asked her to stop being melodramatic and just make the call. Then he told me to accompany him to the college to see if we could find out anything. I asked if we should take the gun. Abba looked at me angrily and said:
“Get in the car” and muttered ‘idiot’ as well.
