A Conversation With Abdullah Hussein (Part One)

The novel Udaas Naslein, by Abdullah Hussein was published in 1963 in Lahore, and has always been in print. That and Aag ka Darya by Qurratul Ain Hyder you can find in any Urdu Bazaar in Pakistan. Udaas Naslein, translated by the author into English and recently published, reads a stupendous novel in English. It is called The Weary Generations (Serpent's Tail Press, London 2000). In terms of current fiction in English, South Asian or otherwise no other novel reads better or is more important.
Abdullah Hussein left for England in 1967. He has visited Pakistan frequently since then, and currently spends enough time in Pakistan that it can be said he divides his time between London and Lahore.
Udaas Naslein is a novel I have heard about as I would a rumour. I have never tried to substantiate the claims made for it.
I read Urdu poetry and short prose. But an Urdu novel? If it is that good, and has been around for 30 years, why did no one translate it into English? Over the years I must have shelved this bit of knowledge among the stack of works in Urdu I know should be better known.
Other reasons for coming late to the novel. It was published out of Lahore in 1963 and the thought of a 30 year old Lahori novel would mean yet another wrestling bout with the ghost of the city. Sometimes I don’t look forward to doing that. What if I find another masterly artist that nobody contemporary matches up to?
The publication of The Weary Generations this year and an opportunity to meet the author changed my mind. The writing in English, calling it a translation just does not seem enough credit, thrilled me. The writing intimates a master at work.
The novel is full of dreamscapes. It opens with this scene: a man on horseback laying a line of honey from a jar, in the middle of a field. As he rides on a confusion of ants and bugs settle on the honey making a delineation that retainers following behind the horseman can see and mark out. Later we find out that a nawab rewarded the horseman for services rendered by letting him claim as large a tract of land as he could over the course of an afternoon.
We get the explanation later, but the opening scene is a haunting one for a novel that is about marking out boundaries, patrimonies and other futures.
We met at a hotel in Russell Square in London. He is tall and gaunt, and his eyes have a far away look. We spoke of Lahore of the 60's, his literary influences and partition (the central subject of his Udaas Naslein/The Weary Generations).
R: What did you read when you were young?
AH: In literature I read mostly short stories. Manto, Krishan Chandar, Bedi, Ismat, Hyder, I read all of them. Read Umrao Jaan Ada as well. This was all in school, first years of college, until about 25, and then the boredom was killing me so I thought I might write something (laughs).
R: What about writers writing in English?
AH: Tolstoy and Dostievsky, Chekhov and Maupaussant. Chekhov is my favourite writer. Started reading Proust but couldn’t last (laughs). Not very many English. Read a lot of the Americans: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Steinbeck.
R: Did you read the Beat Writers?
AH: I did. Kerouvac's On the Road.
R: It seems incredible that in the Punjab of the 50s you could get access to contemporary writing in America.
AH: In the 60s I read Mailer. In those days there were good libraries, the British and the Americans. They also had travelling libraries. One or two buses used to come to the cement factories that I used to be posted at, I was a chemical engineer, out there in the wilderness of the Punjab. They had to keep up their cultural imperialism. We benefited (laughs).
R: The British and the American, and the college libraries are simply not well stocked these days.
AH: That is symptomatic of the atmosphere. The cultural space has shrunk. It was diverse then. The American Centre in Lahore has recently closed because of a riot. A mob stormed the premises and broke the windows. Karachi at my time was a very open city as well, liberal and cosmopolitan. The shrinking began in the 80s.
R: I'd like to talk to you about Udaas Naslein . I havent read it in Urdu. I have come across it as a novel in English. Why did you write about partition?
AH: That was the main political and cultural event around the time when I achieved the age of reason. No other event was more significant than the partition. Once I started writing I knew (laughs) that I had put in my mouth more than I could chew. I had to go out and talk to people. I read about the First World War, circumstances of the 20s, the 30s and 40s. Most of these were events that occurred before I was even born.
For my research I sought out this chap, for example, who was the first Indian to receive the Victoria Cross. I took a train, then a tonga and walked and walked to get to his village.
I would talk to someone about their life in say 1929, or 1944 and they would think it was a joke this novel writing.
I myself didn’t know the scope of the project when I started. It expanded. I had never written stories before. I had no short stories published. I was completely unknown. Usually people publish a few stories and get their name known. Then one takes on something on a larger scale.
Punjabi was my mother tongue. I think the Urdu I came up with to write the novel was a new kind of Urdu. It caught on.
R: So it didn’t come out of literary ambition?
AH: No. Not until I finished writing. I had been writing that novel for five years, I didn’t know whether it was any good or whether it would even get published.
R: But you were spending an enormous amount of time on it. The research and the figuring out. I cant imagine that effort as simply a way to pass time.
AH: The fact of my starting to write grew out of leisure. Leisure meant that there was free time in which there was nothing at all to do. The particular places where I lived and worked left me with eight hours of work and eight hours a day with nothing to do. Once I started writing I really got involved. However, no one had heard of me. I took it to a publisher who gave it to a couple of people to read. They said it was good. The publisher said that I must write some stories for their magazine, Savera.
R: Udaas Naslein/The Weary Generations is a partition novel. Where did the scenes for the partition kaflas come from?
AH: I wasn’t there. My family was living peacefully in Gujurat in Punjab in 1947. We never had to migrate. When I was writing the book in the late 50s I sought out people to ask them what happened.
R: Naeem, a major character in the novel, is crossing over with a kafla and he sees these men with spears and knives sitting by the wayside. These men do not attack Naeem's kafla because they are simply exhausted from a recently concluded killing spree.
AH: Yes an eye-witness told me a story about sighting men too tired to attack. These men had spent themselves attacking a kafla that was just ahead of this one.
These scenes are made up from stories told to me. But the context of the novel, small town Punjab life, was my reality. I grew up in a small town and I knew everything about the rhythms of everyday rural life. It was the stories connected with political events that I gathered from other people. Older people who read my novel did not feel that I had made up my story.
R: Did Manto inspire you? Or did you find his stories on partition intimidating?
AH: I knew from the very beginning that I was writing a new kind of novel, the kind of novel that did not exist before in Urdu literature. It existed elsewhere. While writing the novel I was conscious that it was taking a shape no novel in Urdu ever had. That's why I made such an effort. I didn’t know anything about the literary world so at the same time I wasn’t sure whether somebody was going to publish this.
Although I had read Urdu writers I did not take their language, I made mine up. I was doubtful about whether it would be a success. In the end, I was lucky. I do believe that success does not have anything to do with talent. I still believe that it is timing. One does an ordinary thing and the timing brings fame.
However, I do believe my novel had some genuine qualities. My style was fresh and it has stayed fresh since the novel has not been out of print in 35 years. This achievement came out of ignorance for I did not come out of any literary tradition. When I started writing it was as if an uneducated person made up his own diction.
People could not place my writing. For many years they were confused. The next generation took it up and connected with it, and then the next one. There were a couple of firsts with my novel. Nobody had treated the subject in a novel. The prose was fresh.