Author: Nirupama Dutt
Editor(s): Nirupama Dutt
Publisher: Unistar
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 247
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186898336
Description
The brief and turbulent history of Pakistan has seen pygmies in uniform trumpeted in as saviours of the people all too often. The people of the country that is just fifty-seven years young were subjected to martial law from 1958 to 1988 and these were times when the military rulers willfully demolished all the institutions and popular notions of democracy.
The imposition of martial law in 1977 emergence of Zia-ul-Haq as dictator and the execution of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were tragedies that went straight to the hearts of the people. This was the most sorrowful chapter in the country’s history with the never-before onslaught on civil rights and liberties.
This was also the time when poets and writers walked along with the political leaders of the country to fight the gun with the pen. Dreams in the form of forty short stories are encased in Children of the Night and these dreams are of tyranny bred. These dreams the writers bequeath to the generations to come so that they may know that freedom is hard won and not something to be frittered away.
In the times to come these stories will mirror the truth of the times these were written in just as Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories become the source material for the brutal history of the partition. Stories by celebrated writers of resistance literature of Pakistan, Muhammad Mansha Yaad, Mazhar-ul-Islam, Intizar Hussain, Kaleem Lashari, Farkhanda Lodhi, Fakhar Zaman and others, are included in this volume.
Contents
PYGMIES IN UNIFORM
Saeeda Gazdar
The Cuckoo and the General
Qatar Shabbat
The Dacoit
Anwar Zahidi
Death of Another Caesar
WRETCHED OF THE EARTH
Nematuallah Gichki
Such is Life
Anwaar Ahmed
The Broken Heart
Agha Ali Mudassir
Cries of a Cat
Parveen Malik
The Tale of Hunger
Abdullah Jan Jamaldeni
A Poor Man’s Home
WHEN LOVE IS A SIN
Nawaz
The Shade of the Beri
Nurul Huda Shah
We Shall Never Meet Again
Sher Muhammad Mari
The Lunatic
THE JUNGLE AND THE CITY
Ahsan Javed
The Sinking City
Ahsan Wagah
In Meditation
Asad Muhammad Khan
The Lake and the Swine
Enver Sajjad
Endless Journey
CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
Ilyas Ghumman
The Watchman’s Call
Mahmood Ahmed Qazi
Gogs
Khalida Hussain
The Spider
Mustansar Hussain Tarar
The Octopus
Mazhar-ul-Islam
The Pigeon perched on the Shoulder
AGE OF THE MAIMED
Anwaar Ahmed
First Child Patriot of the city
Mansoor Qaiser
The Patients of Trauma
Masood Asher
Prisoners of Dreams
Mirza Hamid Baig
Released!
JOURNEY THROUGH NIGHT
Gohar Sultana Uzma
Where is the Sun?
Ijaz Rahi
Parteners in Darkness
Intizar Husain
The Fortunate Ones of the Morning
Ahmad Daud
The Patient
Rasheed Amjad
A Cold-blooded Scene
VOICES OF THE DEAD
Fakhar Zaman
A Dead Man’s Tale
Amer Jalcel
The Dead and I
Ismail Gohar
The Godfather
Jamal Abro
The Angel
DO AND DIE
Badar Abro
Ordeal by Fire
Farkhanda Lodhi
The Terrorist
Kaleem Lashari
Mercy Killing
Muhammad Mansha Yaad
The Bucket