Khalid Jawed’s short Urdu novel Maut ki Kitab, translated as The Book of Death in English, is unlike any novel written in Urdu. Very ably translated by Abdul Naseeb Khan, the novel, though very original in its conception and execution, reminds one of the writing techniques and the moral universe of the French naturalists, English modernists and Russian greats like Dostoevsky. It also reminded me of Hanif Kureishi’s novel Intimacy in its focus on the amoral life of its narrator, and seeing life and relationships through his perspective. Avoiding any reticence, descriptions of banal incidents and details, the narrator’s cold, cough, pale worm-infested teeth, stream of urine, toilet seat, and sex life are provided in The Book of Death much in the manner of naturalistic novels. A hatred of body and its functions can also be felt in many pages of the novel.
Set in the future and using a frame narrative, the novel presents one Walter Schiller, an archeologist in the twenty-third century, who travels to a city to assess a site for the building of a steel plant. On that site he discovers the ruins of a two-hundred-year-old mental asylum, obviously a reference to our times, and a hard-bound manuscript which has survived the ravages of time. The manuscript is written in a language which is no longer in use in the twenty-third century. Neither is there any trace of this language on the Internet as Schiller writes in his ‘Preface’ signed 1 April 2211, the choice of April Fool’s Day being more than a pun. Suggesting how languages can die, Schiller wonders whether the disappearance of this language was due to ‘national politics, the ill-fortune of this language’, or ‘the apathy and communalism of the community that once spoke and wrote in it’. The three reasons identified by him could well point to conflicts over languages; it could be Hindi and Urdu, and the slow death of many of them in our times.
The language of the manuscript is finally deciphered and read by Schiller’s friend Hugo who is related to the celebrated orientalist, Garcin de Tassy. The manuscript which narrates the story of a supposedly madman who has had varied experiences in his life, some very traumatic, constitutes the main narrative of the book. Narrated in the first person, the entire novel becomes a monologue of the unnamed narrator. He talks about his cold relationship with his wife, his numerous affairs, especially with ‘the woman with pale yellow hands’, his memory of his mother and his hatred for his father. In between the narrative, there are reflections on the difference between love and lust, the human body, sleep and dreams, and myriad other subjects. Sleep eludes him and dreams rarely come. ‘Genuine dreams desire a solitary body. They also require loneliness.’ All kinds of fantastic ideas fill his mad mind: ‘I want to make love with a lioness. My wife and the women around me seem like trivial female-mice scurrying on the ground.’ The hatred for his father referred to in the novel again and again brings it very close to Hanif Kureishi’s world where Kureishi’s father is usually a comic figure in his stories and novels. However, it is not the subjects covered by his rants, but the tone and tenor of his monologue that is the main strength of the novel.
It is a novel without any plot, and without characters in the traditional sense of the word, except for the character of the narrator which is shown through his long monologue. There is a constant flow of ideas, one idea leading to another to form an uninterrupted flow of reflections on life. The Book of Death presents a writerly text in the Barthesian sense of the word which asks the reader to engage with the text and luxuriate in its indulgent use of original similes and metaphors. The last chapter of the novel consists of blank pages, suggesting the open-ended nature of the novel.
The dark and sombre mood of the novel corresponds with the constant thought of suicide nurtured by the narrator. In the first chapter of the novel the narrator says, ‘it is inaccurate to say that Suicide has been consistently following me. It would be more accurate on my part to say that she was born with me, as my inseparable shadow and timeless companion.’ At another place in the novel the narrator asserts that ‘Suicide has been swinging by my knickers ever since my childhood, these days she has started to walk on my clothes.’ And of all forms of suicide, the one on the railway tracks is a carnival for him, ‘a celebration of suicide’. ‘In contrast, other methods just leave your decaying body behind, destined to rot in solitary obscurity.’ Isn’t one reminded of Anna’s famous suicide in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina? Continuing with his morbid thoughts, towards the end of the novel, he hands over his life story ‘to both God and Satan to include in the book of death’.
Metaphors and similes used in the book also conjure up a dismal and unglamourized world. The colour of the hands of a woman he has a relationship with ‘bore a resemblance to the colour of the gravy’. When he comes out of his house, he zigzags his way ‘like a wretchedly lousy pig’. He dwells on the deformed breast of his wife and her red lips which look like ‘two separate slices of an ugly watermelon’.
Creating an absurdist world, it is not love but rather hatred and lust that are the clearer emotions in the novel. ‘The lines of love perpetually spiral into a whirlpool. Hatred and lust are better for they never fall prey to misunderstanding and doubt. Their manoeuvres, principles and rules are transparent…. It is love alone that remains trapped in doubt and suspicion, perpetually soaked in fear.’ The narrator celebrates lust. ‘To me, lust is more fulfilling than sexual acts, just as silence is more profound than sound and darkness better than light.’ His hatred for his father makes him believe that ‘hatred is a complex and esoteric branch of learning.’ Not at all apologetic about his lust or sins, he rather views his sins ‘as the mark of my piety’. A hint of the origin of his strange ideas is provided in his traumatic experiences since his birth. His mother who came from a lineage of mirasis (singers and dancers) and father from the feudal stock, always indulged in violent clashes in his presence. He also appeared to believe his father’s charge of his being a ‘bastard child, a progeny of sin’. After his mother’s disappearance, his father brought him up, thrashing him regularly.
Although there is hardly any external action or use of dialogue in the novel, the division of the novel into short chapters does make it fairly readable. Without characters, plot and definable episodes, and relying on the craft of the novel, it must have been difficult to write for any novelist. But a philosophically oriented and craft obsessed Khalid Jawed has always thrived on writing novels which challenge the intellect of his readers. Naseeb Khan’s English translation captures each turn of Khalid Jawed’s prose, his idiosyncratic imagery and flow of ideas without faltering at any place and doing full justice to Jawed’s prose and narrative.
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is Professor of English at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.