Hoshruba by Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Author:Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184002690
Publisher: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.

Amar Ayyar and the tricksters were training in the wilderness when they heard the sound of tricksters’ bells and pricked up their ears. When they investigated the source they saw five adolescent beauties armed with tricksters’ contraptions and weapons, springing forward in giant leaps and strides, suspicious even of their own shadows.

Their hair was tied in buns to one side of their heads, their mantles were knotted in front bracing their shoulders, the bottoms of their pants were tightly fastened and they wore warriors’ socks and shoes. Slings were tied to their arms, snare ropes to their heads, and sacks of sling stones hung around their necks. Besides wielding scimitars, daggers, bows, arrows and shields, they were also richly caparisoned with ornaments and jewels.

At their head was Sarsar Swordfighter, sporting the crown of charm and allure, speeding forward with great pomp and splendor. The swellings of her bosom were themselves like two veiled warriors – headstrong and vain. Her gait crushed the hearts of lovers for whom her beauty was like the elephants of calamity and the troopers of catastrophe. Coquetry and dalliance walked in her wake, carrying the skirts of her robe of vanity. She was followed by her minister, Saba Raftar the Quick, whose essence was kneaded with capriciousness, and who had an equal claim on beauty with her dark complexion and conjoined eyebrows.

Beside them were the other three trickster girls, all sprightly and spirited and destroyers of lovers’ lives, names and honor. Before their gait, the elegant cypress hid its face in shame; they even taught the rose the vain airs of a beloved.

Upon sighting them, Amar blew his trickster’s whistle. Qiran heard it and speedily joined Amar and the other tricksters. The trickster girls drew their daggers upon hearing the whistle, made their war cries and charged Amar Ayyar and his companions.

After deciding on secret codes for combat, the tricksters also shouted their war cries. As Amar charged, Sarsar confronted him. Saba Raftar accosted Qiran, Shamima challenged Burq the Frank, Sunubar encountered Jansoz, and Tez Nigah locked her gaze with Zargham’s.

The tricksters were felled by the arrows of love upon beholding their beauty. They were wounded by the darts of their eyelashes and lacerated by the daggers of their eyebrows. Love couplets broke out from their lips.

Amar Ayyar addressed Sarsar, singing,

“As a dispersed army takes to marauding

Your loosened black locks destroyed my faith.”

Sarsar attacked with her dagger, saying,

“Who die not in the fetters of my locks

They die without faith, I proclaim.”

Qiran said to Saba Raftar, “O charming beloved,

“You make my heart your dagger’s target

Injure not yourself, it is but your own home.”

Saba Raftar struck with her dagger like lightning, and replied,

“There’s no remedy for the ill fated ones

None may revoke with a plan what is destined.”

Burq intoned as he confronted Shamima,

“A thousand years later when you return

‘O Beloved! Greetings!’ My grave will call.”

Shamima replied with a smile and a blow of her scimitar,

“I wish my enemy to suffer the fate of a tent peg, ever

Hammered, buried in earth with a noose around his neck.

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