When I was growing up in Pakistan, I read the Adventures of Amir Hamza and Tilism Hosh Ruba in Urdu, in the wonderful abridged editions published by Ferozsons that some people might remember. I was eight or nine years old and, for a few summer holidays, I read nothing else except for these belligerent, violent and wonderfully magical romances that had once been the staple of Urdu literature. I loved the rhythm of these books. I loved how the princes wore their hearts on their sleeves; how the fairies were utterly ravishing and the sorcerers truly evil, and the long, epic battles where blood flowed ankle-deep, corpses piled high and cloven heads flew through the air. After reading these passages, I felt so bloodthirsty that I had to recreate the battles myself.
There were two plum trees in our house. While my parents slept in the afternoon, I would gather the plums lying on the ground and count them. If they weren't enough to constitute two respectable armies - or if they had been pecked by birds and were not fit for military duty, I would climb up the trees and pluck more. I would arrange them on the ground in ranks - the legions of the evil, nefarious god-king Laqa on one side, and the allies of Amir Hamza on the other, and then, with a rock in my hand, I would dispatch the evil-doers to the abode of perdition.
The game required a great deal of imagination. I had to recreate the din of battle. I had to imagine how the fire pots from the catapults set alight the trunks of the lead elephants. I had to think of what an elephant scorched by fire, did to a columns of soldiers. Sometimes, I stole cocktail sticks and toothpicks from my father's cabinet so that I could sweep the enemy lines with a torrent of iron darts. In the frenzy of hand-to-hand battle, I had to find compassion for treating casualties. Plums impaled by lances or hacked by swords would be filled with mud, taped up and sent back into battle, so the slaughter could continue. Sometimes the battles went on for weeks. The armies regrouped and mounted new assaults. New campaigns were devised. The arsenal was modified. As long as there were plums, there was war.
I was routinely reprimanded because the plums from our garden never made it to our dining table. Their crushed and cloven seeds lay scattered under the trees instead - in their graveyards - but my battles released a whole lot of energy and gave me enormous satisfaction. And I never cared for plums anyway.
