A thousand years ago, when I was a kid of eight or nine, I discovered the wondrous world of high fantasy in Urdu.
I still remember I had a birthday party. I was in class two (I refuse to say 'grade'!). A friend brought me a 5 rupee children's book about a boy who had magical powers bestowed by one 'Bandar baba', the Monkey Man, a dervish living in a tiny hut deep inside a mysterious jungle. Subsequent to that bestowal, the boy, ten years old himself, could fly in the air, walk on water, fight off evil creatures and dark magicians, and was accompanied by a girl witch. The boy of course was Chan Changloo, so called because when he walked he would produce the sound of tinkling bells from his toes, a reminder on each step that these powers be used for the goodness of mankind. And the girl's name was Shamli. This was a series of children's books written by one
Mazhar Kaleem, MA. The same man who was (and probably still is) the most popular torch-bearer of Ibn-e-Safi, the legendary Urdu Spy fiction writer. Imran Series lives on through the pen of Mazhar Kaleem, as millions of Pakistanis know quite well.
That little book was the beginning of my life as a writer, because each night I would enact magical plays and moves in my head and direct and screenwright multiple adventures. Chan Changloo, Tarzan, Chalosak Malosak, Umar (oo!) Ayar, and multiple characters either created or propogated by the hands of multiple writers and publishers, most notably Mazhar Kaleem MA via Yusuf Brothers Publications in Multan were (and sometimes in the dark moments of the night still are) more real to me than anything else happening in my nerdy little life. There would be book exchanges with cousins and friends, piles and sackfuls carried to and from Ravi Road and Allama Iqbal Town, Lahore, and I still remember the excitement in my heart as I would sit in the backseat of my dad's car, looking forward to readig those adventures. Such was the beautiful, innocent reality of my childhood friends and assets.
One of the greatest high fantasy dastans though that captured me for years to come was that of Amir Hamza and Talism Hoshruba. These tales are the Urdu equivalent and, if I may, superior of the Alif Laila (A Thousand and One Nights). They are perhaps the longest epic tales ever written in the history of mankind, passed on orally, oratorially, told and retold in courts of Moguls, the streets of IndoPakistan, to beggars and to emperors, in a day when days were long and the world was vast, mysterious, cruel, but beautiful.
All my life, I have defined myself as a writer. Medicine is my work and my humbling. Writing is my spirit and my fumbling effort to be taller than my five and a half feet. I have lamented all this while the disappearance of Urdu as a medium of magic in childhood. I have wept at the religiopolitical terrorism going on in my country, inflicted at my people, but I have also sighed at the praise showered upon Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, while Hamza and Amar Ayyar sit in a corner, pale and silent like ghosts of dreams past.
Then something happened.
Someone got tired of his own tears and lamentation, someone stronger and more wilful than I will ever be, and penned the translation of the original Dastan-e-Amir Hamza. He sat down, and scribbled line after line, till his electronic quills were drenched with the sweat and blood of his toils, and thus was born The Adventures Of Amir Hamza IN ENGLISH.
Finally, the manuscript that was dying away, that dust was laying a pale film of claim upon, that the monopolising tyrants of English had strangled and almost choked, rises back into the limelight, fresh and gleaming, like a baby pheonix, like Zeus from the cobbled lava of the sun, like Lazarus himself called back from the dead.
It is to
Musharraf Ali Farooqi's credit that he spent years on this labor of love. Who can imagine the long stretches of time, the days and works of hands that rustled on paper, determined in their love for a lover that must have seemed so completely out of reach in this world of iPods, iPhones, ebooks, Eragon ( a wretchedly ill-writ novel by the way in my humble opinion), Potter and LOTR? Who can imagine the self-doubt, the exhaustion of trying to bring a dying world back to life?
I can...and so can millions of others who must be out there, lovers of Urdu and Urdu literature.
But I can't do what Mr Farooqi did. He did it! Dastan-e-Amir Hamza and Talism Hoshruba gleam on the bookshelf in your nearest bookstore, the former actually published by Random House.
Musharraf actually gives a fascinating history of the dastans in the beginning of each series. The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a single volume of almost a thousand pages,a feat of marvel and love and beauty. The Hoshruba series, so I hear, will be a 24 volume series, the longest epic, the most comprehensive saga of magic and mystery in any language in the world.
To anyone who is lucky enough to be able to buy and read both epics, please pass this on. The ancient world is stirring again, the lights in Hogwarts dim, while the torches in Parestan and Mount Kaf whoosh into existence.
Amir Hamza and Amar, undying friends, stand now, smiling upon millions and millions of Urdu-reading souls that ever lived in the last 200 years. They look tired and a little old, but Hamza's mighty steed and Amar's lightning speed whiz by us. The Invisible Cloak and the Neverending Satchel lie in old, skeleton hands, gleaming like Aladdin's lamp.
Welcome to two hundred years ago!
