Fire in the Unnameable Country Read Online Free PDF
Author: Ghalib Islam
toothless. Lhereux, he chewed over his name, but by then it was too late. Blood vessels had begun to contract and the body politic grew aware of the indecision in the highest organs of power. In the confusion, the nameless rebels, who had bided their time and honed their skills fighting in the movie sets of La Maga, but who had in the past several years extended their reach throughout the country and garnered wide popular support, broke through the defences of the Presidential Palace.
Nasiruddin Khan, wearing a hunterâs vest, wielding a shotgun he would never have to fire, and chewing on a lit cigar, stayed back while Russian-trained commandos sniped guards, cut fences, scaled walls, and netted the Presidential Palace. For a week, intense fighting flooded the whole country and the rebels managed to kidnap three out of the eight members of the Privy Council, including Grenadier Lhereux and President Anwar. The American military lost fourteen soldiers during their brave attempt to defend against the siege of Victoria, which took them totally by surprise, and the whole of the United States erupted into mourning as moral debates weeded up the television broadcasts whether we should be in this godforsaken part of the world, how many decades has it been, is it about the Gulf of Eden and natural gas resources or defending against the global communist scourge.
As the negotiations between the nameless rebels and the governing party began, Shukriah discovered she was pregnant again. I hope to God this one doesnât talk in the womb; if I hear so much as a peep Iâll abort. Mamun M could not agree more; in fact he was uneasy with the prospect of raising another child, especially since the experience with oneâwhile raising two others who were not his by blood but more orless neverthelessâhad exhausted them. Gita wished quiet congratulations, but trenches dug up her forehead.
So dense was the atmosphere and so wrapped up was the family with the world out there that they totally missed the fact that Chaya would quietly vomit in the bathrooms in the earlymorning and bubbling inside her was another great force of multiplication. Like her sister Shukriah, she was able to perceive the slow knotting of cells, to predict their answers, though the outcome of that story, which now is her tears cried onto shouldercloth, I will tell you later.
Unless I tell you now about Chaya and her child. Should I. What you are reading is less a confessional history than a tale of only the necessary portions (of which there happen to be many); besides, Chaya my dear aunt Chaya: what would she think if I. Should I. The question of her child shall hang in the balance of necessity. At the moment I abstain, your honour, dear reader, whomever whatever the hell, from revealing, I shall seven-year-old mum/ look: there the shapes take up their residence, they console, they hide, and in the gloaming, the hundred candlelight of our little home, under the air-raid sirens there arise new suspicions, silences, new sadness, which bears the weight of unrevealed pain, the pleasures of a bow-legged Archives employee who sprang nimbly onto my fatherâs shoulders and perched there one day while Mamun Ben Jaloun was shelving metal receptacles whose contents he himself never revealed to his children, and about which Hedayat has learned with Niramish in Confectionarayan Babuâs candy store.
Let me say plainly that for years, my father would bear the weight of another man on his back by himself until a telephone conversation with Ministry of Records and Sources officials would verify the existence of a hunchback on my back, turning me hunched also, he wonât let go, he would say, while Shukriah Gita Chaya would suppress laughter, What man father son dear. This man, he would point, here, he would showthem an arm, Gita Shukriah Chaya do you not see, but they would only giggle. But even this story is taking us away from another tale, the one I
Nasiruddin Khan, wearing a hunterâs vest, wielding a shotgun he would never have to fire, and chewing on a lit cigar, stayed back while Russian-trained commandos sniped guards, cut fences, scaled walls, and netted the Presidential Palace. For a week, intense fighting flooded the whole country and the rebels managed to kidnap three out of the eight members of the Privy Council, including Grenadier Lhereux and President Anwar. The American military lost fourteen soldiers during their brave attempt to defend against the siege of Victoria, which took them totally by surprise, and the whole of the United States erupted into mourning as moral debates weeded up the television broadcasts whether we should be in this godforsaken part of the world, how many decades has it been, is it about the Gulf of Eden and natural gas resources or defending against the global communist scourge.
As the negotiations between the nameless rebels and the governing party began, Shukriah discovered she was pregnant again. I hope to God this one doesnât talk in the womb; if I hear so much as a peep Iâll abort. Mamun M could not agree more; in fact he was uneasy with the prospect of raising another child, especially since the experience with oneâwhile raising two others who were not his by blood but more orless neverthelessâhad exhausted them. Gita wished quiet congratulations, but trenches dug up her forehead.
So dense was the atmosphere and so wrapped up was the family with the world out there that they totally missed the fact that Chaya would quietly vomit in the bathrooms in the earlymorning and bubbling inside her was another great force of multiplication. Like her sister Shukriah, she was able to perceive the slow knotting of cells, to predict their answers, though the outcome of that story, which now is her tears cried onto shouldercloth, I will tell you later.
Unless I tell you now about Chaya and her child. Should I. What you are reading is less a confessional history than a tale of only the necessary portions (of which there happen to be many); besides, Chaya my dear aunt Chaya: what would she think if I. Should I. The question of her child shall hang in the balance of necessity. At the moment I abstain, your honour, dear reader, whomever whatever the hell, from revealing, I shall seven-year-old mum/ look: there the shapes take up their residence, they console, they hide, and in the gloaming, the hundred candlelight of our little home, under the air-raid sirens there arise new suspicions, silences, new sadness, which bears the weight of unrevealed pain, the pleasures of a bow-legged Archives employee who sprang nimbly onto my fatherâs shoulders and perched there one day while Mamun Ben Jaloun was shelving metal receptacles whose contents he himself never revealed to his children, and about which Hedayat has learned with Niramish in Confectionarayan Babuâs candy store.
Let me say plainly that for years, my father would bear the weight of another man on his back by himself until a telephone conversation with Ministry of Records and Sources officials would verify the existence of a hunchback on my back, turning me hunched also, he wonât let go, he would say, while Shukriah Gita Chaya would suppress laughter, What man father son dear. This man, he would point, here, he would showthem an arm, Gita Shukriah Chaya do you not see, but they would only giggle. But even this story is taking us away from another tale, the one I