The Partition
A little BOY stands on tiptoes with his back to the audience, hands cupped around his face, which is pressed to a huge stone wall. An older GIRL stands to a side, anxious to leave.
GIRL. Let’s go.
BOY. Hold on.
GIRL. It’s time to go.
BOY. Not yet. Come here and look!
GIRL. I’ve seen it before. Besides, that hole’s not supposed to be there.
BOY turns fearfully away, back against the wall, drawing in on himself as if hiding from the hole in the wall where his face was.
BOY. Are we gonna get in trouble?
GIRL. No… don’t worry. The hole’s been there a long time. I used to look through it too.
BOY. Did you see the same things I was just seeing?
GIRL. What did you see?
BOY. Come here and look.
GIRL. No, I don’t want to.
BOY. (Slowly) You’re afraid.
GIRL. No…
BOY. Is it dangerous?
GIRL. No, it’s fine… I told you not to worry, remember. What did you see?
BOY. Lots. (Pause) Ladies passing by with their hair uncovered. Uncovered! In the street! Some of them walking by themselves – not a kid with them. Not a man.
GIRL. It’s not the same over there.
BOY. It’s a different world!
GIRL. Well, it’s a different country.
BOY pushes himself away from the wall, only to turn and tiptoe and peer through the hole again. A pensive silence.
BOY. It used not to be.
GIRL. What?
BOY. Those people… are our people, aren’t they? Adam told me – we were just one big country, once.
GIRL. Yes. Not terribly long ago. (Pause) But it’s better this way.
BOY. Why?
GIRL. Why what?
BOY. Why’s it better this way? And why… why’s it this way?
GIRL. Those aren’t our people, really. Our people are here, living with us, believing in what we do – we can live together because we believe the same thing. (Crossing over to where BOY stands.) Those people don’t understand us, and we don’t understand them. (Pulling on BOY’s shoulder so he turns away from the hole in the wall, tugging him away by his wrist as she speaks.) You can have fun watching them a while, sure, but you’ll put them out of your mind soon enough.
BOY tries to escape GIRL’s grip, but she tightens her hand around his wrist and marches him directly away from the wall. They come to stand downstage centre, looking out over the audience.
GIRL. You want to look? Look this way. This is your world.
GIRL and BOY look towards their city in the distance.
BOY. (Softly) This is our world.
GIRL. This is where we belong.
GIRL smiles, softening, and turns to regard BOY by her side. She puts her arm around his shoulders.
GIRL. Let’s go home.
They make their way slowly off.
BOY. (As they walk) Mira, what did you mean, we believe the same thing? What about the way our city’s divided into the different Quarters – Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and so on?
They exit. Though empty, the stage remains lit.
GIRL. (Offstage) But we all believe that we have to live absolutely according to the Word of God. We believe in the forbidden and the allowed, in Hell and in making sure we go to Heaven. And we believe in making everyone do the same. Don’t you know, silly boy, that’s what Partition did for us? It gave us this land of our own, separate and safe from those stinking moderates.
Lights down. End of scene.
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In the creative response to this week’s readings, two ideas came together to inspire me: first, that of religious extremism and fundamentalism in societies, second, the history of the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims. Throughout this course, I have been unable to shake the thought that extremists of any religion seem almost to share a more similar mindset than do all members of the nominally same religion. So I tried to depict a world in which, instead of members of the same religion fighting for an independent homeland in which to come together and practice their religion freely, those who believe in living by religious stricture and imposing these beliefs on others (such as Maulana Bijli, whom we saw in the documentary on Salman Ahmad) have fought to live in their own society in which scriptural interpretations must dictate the actions of people. The idea of an inversion, and to present it as a story, was inspired by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream.
Within such a society, when the girl says, “that hole’s not supposed to be there”, the boy’s reaction is immediately to be repelled and fearful; in such a society the question of what is Supposed To Be and Not Supposed To Be holds all the power. When the girl explains the separation between the two societies to the boy, it sounds as if she is saying that they have pulled apart on the basis of religious difference – “we can live together because we believe the same thing.” It is only later, at the end, that it is revealed that the societies have pulled apart on the basis of their difference in levels of religious tolerance, and each lives in harmony that way. Would things be easier if the extremists of different religions and the moderates of different religions decide to split up into two different states? If dogmatic ideologues and their supporters rule over each other, and those who believe in freedom to practise or not practise one’s religion as one wishes (so dangerously liberal, as Bijli might say) were allowed to uphold their own ways of life, could there be more peace in the world? “The Partition” refers to both this fictional historical event, and its embodiment in the Wall that separates, physically and symbolically, two societies and philosophies, the Wall through which the boy peers. The piece is a tiny exploration, a sort of scene-setting, of what it might look like to live in such a world.
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