Daily Times

It was one in the night. On my way back home from the newspaper office, I would often find a dog lay asleep on my track. With the sound of my steps, it would raise its head, look at me and eventually go back to sleep.

My place was not a well-furnished house. Rather it was an old and crumbled room. If someone happened to step in, he would find books and newspapers scattered all over. In one corner sat a pitcher. It was so dried out that if wind passed through it, it would produce a whistling effect. There also stood a decrepit table and a chair on which I used to sit and reproduce the important news from the paper in a diary. Most of the news pertained to death and demise. Either someone had died of hunger or grown sick of life and committed suicide by plunging into the sea.

Similarly, my books were about philosophers and writers who had committed suicide or were killed. My job was to collect news related to death and furnish them to the office every evening.

On that night, when I walked past the dog, I found it awake and alert. It followed me into the house and slept right beside the pitcher.

Along the pitcher, stood my cot with a grimy quilt and a crumpled blanket. I do not remember when I last folded the quilt properly. The pillow was so stained that I could not figure out what its original colour was.

With the dog in the room, I could not sleep at all. I was afraid that it may tear me apart. Fear had divested me of my sleep and I did not feel like shooing the dog out of the room either. I thought that I may be able to shelter the poor creature from the cold winter night. I started peering at the dog and so did the dog at me. It changed its appearance every moment. One moment it appeared that he was my father who sat facing me. I stood up and caressed his face. Yes indeed, it was my father.

My father was shivering in the cold. I took my blanket and covered him and went back to bed. But I could not sleep out of fear.

“No, he cannot be my father. He was an honest and noble man. After death, he must be a tree, a bird or a flower. But he cannot be a dog”.

I got up from the bed again to scan him thoroughly. With his eyes shut he had drifted off to sleep. I was grappled with fear. There was no sign of sleep in my eyes. I sat on the chair and begin to jot down the obituary for the day after’s column:

“Last night, in a small hamlet of Ganjabad, in an old house, the deceased father of an obituary writer associated with the renowned newspaper Zirdaan, incarnated himself into a dog and tore him apart”.

I had just finished the day and was on my way back to Ganjabad. Nobody other than the dog that would always sleep on my way, could be seen along the road. I walked past the dog but today neither did it lift its head up nor looked at me. I turned back a few times to see whether it was following me. It remained frozen in its place. In the meantime, I had drawn closer to my house, leaving the dog behind in the darkness.

This is an English version of a Balochi short story written by A R Dad

Published in Daily Times, December 12^th 2017.