Zakir and his friends

Zakir does not have a home. But the only home he has is in the company of his friends at Shiraz. His friends are an odd lot. One might ask, what binds them together, when they are so different from each other? Irfan and Salamat do not seem to go well together; Afzal likes to dominate conversation and has a habit of judging his friends harshly; Zakir rarely ever has an opinion. There is almost no doubt that all of them are deeply disconnected from the society in which they find themselves. The question is: what do they find in each other? We are told that they like to discuss literature and art, along with politics of course. But they fight, they insult each other, they raise their voices, they ridicule one another. Afzal, in this regard, is especially insufferable. But these ‘mice’ find consolation in each other’s conflicts. The Shiraz is the only space where they are able to speak, to voice their opinions, to be contradicted. And since they seem unable of living up to their own expectations, these friends live in moments of conversation, in the exercise of their minds and their thoughts, in the world of ideas. Salamat is the self-styled revolutionary, Zakir the introspective, Afzal the fake prophet, Zavvar the scholar-turned-hippie, and Irfan the pacifist. Perhaps books have ruined them. After all, these men’s rooms are filled with books and not much of anything else, according to the descriptions of Zakir’s and Afzal’s rooms, and the exposition on Zavvar. They then retreat to the Shiraz to live, when they are unable to breath the air of their homes.