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.
No comments:
Post a Comment