A voice speaks to a man in a chair, as🌟king him bluntly how you have been shifting in that chair, this leg over that, then that leg over this, then this one again and then what. Then he removes the chair from his conversation and tells him that there is nothing between them, not even a chair. The monologue shares ordinary stories--the kind that are part of the daily conversation. Stories about who the town’s pimp is, about old shops shutting down and new ones taking their place. The voice imagines a world free of fear-no anxiet🌜y over blood pressure or diabetes, no pain from haemorrhoids, no dread of someone lurking behind, plotting murder. Then, with unexpected humour, it speaks of a great desire to eat fried lamb testicles.
It talks about Dr Ali Jan, a figure of great respect in Kashmir. He was considered the doctor’s doctor, who could just diagnose a person after looking at him. But then, with biting sarcasm, it turns to the present, labeli🥃ng today’s medical professionals as “kidney thieves of the present day.” This is usual discourse in Kashmir.
The ordinary voice then assumes the role of a philosopher. It says: “In the grave of a tea shop𒈔, trapped in these chairs, reading the news of our own death, choosing between coffee and tea.” And then, almost mockingly, it asks: “🎃How quickly you ate, my friend, as if this were a race, as if all the soldiers in this wretched place were after you alone.”
In Zahid Rafiq’s debut, The World With Its Mouth Open re𝓰leased this month by Tin House in America and to be published by Penguin in India in January, life is not just about conflict--though the conflict is always there. People go about their routines like an existential worry of a mother who wants to see her son home before sunset or like an ordinary desire of a man to have fried testicles of a lamb.
In his book, young and poor fret over jobs, their concerns walk with them even to the bazaars where they haggle over fish. Then there’s the man by the r✅iver, staring at the water as if trying to understand his life lesson from its flow . You watch him, and for a moment, you want to sit by the river too, losing yourself in its endless flow. A newspaper prints the obituary of a man who is still alive, changing his life forever. He walks around muttering about conspiracies. Somehow, he thinks, you were part of a grand plot to see him dead. Young boys dream of love, weaving stories about a girl for whom they don’t even exist. And the author gives their desires for her a vivid description.
Teachers, tired of their own struggles, failing to become do♏ctors, take their anger out on students. Housewives worry about their husbands’ shifting loyalties between their mothers and them, turning their homes into quiet battlegrounds. In a graveyard, 🅺a man searches for the grave of his beloved, wandering without answers. The gravedigger assumes the role of a little philosopher, saying, “War is a thousand plagues in one-it takes the young and leaves the old to bury them.”
There is mystery in the streets too. A man with a suitcase comes and goes without a word. At shopfronts, gossip flows like tea. A father sits by the radio, lost in the news, letting it feed his endless worries. Life in Zahi꧒d Rafiq’s Kashmir goe🌺s on, ordinary yet extraordinary.
Yes, there is conflict, but life persists-at home, in shops, in restaurants, on the roads, and in the hospitals. Politics exists, but it’s not always part of conversation. There is that curiosity of children watching a shopkeeper carrying a mannequin, the shopkeeper funding a mannequin not that beautiful, and a random passenger in a sumo, after seeing a man with the mannequin in his lap, invoking f𝓰ear of doomsඣday when, according to him, the man carrying the mannequin will be asked to breathe life into these images, these idols. It is so Kashmiri.
Yes, soldiers are there, at times watching you through their viewfinders, but they’ve been there for so long that ♒people have grown used to their presence. Life moves on. The daily battles remain: a woman visiting aꦯ hakeem, expecting this time her foetus survives. There is death in the family.
The World with Its Mouth Open is neither a resistance literature, nor is it conflict literature. It is literature. It has been set in Kashmir. It is about those characters that we have either seen or will ౠsee in and around Lal Chowk. If you bother to observe, you might spot any of the characters from Zahid Rafiq's eleven short stories quietly passing by, and you might follow them.
The stories are set in Kashmiri English as well. When a person goes to buy oranges in the neighbourhood and starts bargaining, the shopkeeper asks him, “What are you going to do with all your money?” It feels so Kashmiri. This obsession that “the other person” has a lot of money, and whether he has it or not doesn’t matter to anyone. In your imagination, he has a lot ൲of money, and the other person has no alternative but to say, “He will bury this money with him.”
That little remark when seeing relatives doing well: “Fat has grown on their eyes.” We all understand this sentence: “Fat has grown on their eyes.” We don’t need a dictionary to understand its meanဣing. It’s a different kind of fat, one that has nothing to do with actual fat.
Or take this: “Did the butterhead ask you to leave?” It’s a different butterhea🤡d. It’s a Kashmiri butterhead. It has nothing to do with the English butter. Or this: “Neighbours will burn; fire engines might have to be called.” It’s again not about fire and fire engines. Or consider a person who, after years of serving the government, begins constructing his house on a few square feet, and it spreads through the neighborhood that he is building a “fort.”
It’s about positioning a kitchen window so that you only have to lift your head to see who’s walking in and out of the main gate. That too is so Kashmiri. Our obsession with the kitchen and placing the window in such a way that you can see who enters or exits through the main gate. This is one of the most important decisions in our house construction, especially for ordinary people. O🌌r when a boy spins tales about his imaginary love, the author calls it “listening to his farts.” Or a perꩲson walking out of the office “on fire, with his tail between his legs.”
Or a teacher calling his stude🔯nt “rathead.” Or a student, unprepared for exams, wishing for something no student from any other place would hope for: wishing that soldiers will barge in with their big boots, turning everything upside down, poking through their school bags with long guns. Or two friends talking endlessly, “phis, phis, phis, phis.” Or the husband who falls asleep right after lovemaking even though his wife wanted him to stay awake for a few moments to listen to her.
These are the conversations and the silences that the author gives a voice. The stories he tells don’t end the way you might expect. There are no happy and tragic endings. No mourning. In fact, there are no endings at all. The author leaves all his stories halfway, offering you a chance to complete them in your imagination. This book is a departure from the earlier literature on Kashmi𝔍r, which were dominated by themes of conflict and mourning. Here, however, Rafiq has brought entire focus on the quiet, intimate and little struggles of everyday life in Kashmir.
