Kathaein Jadugar Bastiyon Ki
By Abubaker Sheikh
Sang-e-Meel Publications
ISBN: 978-969-55-3557-0
325pp.

It has long been my lament that travel-writing in Urdu was done to death by one fiction writer. Unread about the area he claimed to have travelled in, he produced book after book (at least one travel book a year) which was essentially fiction. It was peppered with stories of young women, mostly Westerners, hitting strongly upon our writer who he, the righteous person that he was, spurned scornfully.

In effect, these books were nothing more than essays of fourth-graders, written in school after the summer vacations. A rapidly dwindling readership, having access to nothing better, lapped it up as travel-writing and, unsurprisingly, many went looking for fairies on moonlit nights at Lake Saiful Malook in Kaghan! Disappointment and, in a few cases, disillusionment was their lot.

A travel-writer is essentially a historian, geographer, environmentalist, a bit of a geologist, sociologist and, last of all, an autobiographer. A travel-writer’s books are to be read, re-read and, subsequently, to be referred to. Two worthy names of the past that shine in the intellectual darkness are Dr Mubarak Ali and Sibte Hasan. Today, it is Abubaker Sheikh of Badin. His first book, Nagri Nagri Phira Musafir [Wanderings of the Traveller], was an impassioned cri de coeur to halt the rapid degradation of Sindh’s natural landscape.

For his second book, Tareekh Ke Musafir [Travellers Through History], Sheikh donned the hat of the master historian and took his reader on a whirlwind tour of Sindh, with history shining clear in the torch he held. Then followed his third work, Sindhu Ghati Aur Samandar [Sindhu River and the Sea], a treatise that was in one chapter a travel tale and in the next a lament for environmental degradation affecting real life characters, be they in the Indus delta or on the shores of Manchhar Lake.

Abubakar Sheikh’s latest book brings travel-writing in Urdu into full form, showcasing history, geography and ecology into something much more than a stifling classroom read

With this book under review, his fourth, Kathaein Jadugar Bastiyon Ki [Tales of Magical Townships], Sheikh has come into full form as a travel-writer. He is part Richard Burton, part Henry, the elder Pottinger, and part Eldred, the son, on their respective travels through Sindh.

When he describes Karachi, he is vastly more empathetic than Alexander Baillie and Herbert Feldman. He is the first to have paused to regard the six simple tombs at Gulbai Chowk, about which we now hear the tale of the fisherman Obhayo of nearby Sonmiani, whose sons were killed by a shark. Their bodies were brought here by a surviving brother, lame in one leg, who crafted a diving bell for the expedition.

Sheikh’s deep love for the land of the Sindhu River is unmistakable, as he turns the dispassionate tale of the Army of the Indus — as described by William Hough and by George McMunn — into a moving account that can make the eyes misty through its vivid imagery. It is almost as if one is actually on the expedition of 1839 that takes the British-backed Shah Shuja under the walls of the fortress of Ghazni, whose fall is described in graphic terms.

The historian and travel-writer comes into full form in his five-part treatise on Ranikot Fort. Despite the book being without a single image, the fort comes alive in vivid detail in the words of our writer. It is almost as if one is walking with Sheikh. However, more than the description, it is the unveiling of the possible history of this remarkable fort, which resembles the Great Wall of China, that grabs attention. There are no fanciful stories, only a very learned discourse on the possible origin of Ranikot that has but only once been mentioned in history in the 19th century.

Abubaker Sheikh was there when, on a cold January morning in 1831, Alexander Burnes sailed out of the port of Mandvi in Gujarat, with his cargo of dray horses and a baroque carriage, a royal gift from the British crown for Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. As Burnes turned northward into the Indus River, it is for the first time the reader of Urdu has access to this journey of subterfuge to map the river. We learn here that it was this voyage that opened the way for the invasion of Sindh, just 10 years later.

Sheikh’s deep love for the land of the Sindhu River is unmistakable, as he turns the dispassionate tale of the Army of the Indus — as described by William Hough and by George McMunn — into a moving account that can make the eyes misty through its vivid imagery.

It is, however, the last part of the book that deals with the decay of the Mughal Empire in the late 17th century, as seen from the eyes of the Venetian Niccolao Manucci, that gives a sad ending to the book. A self-taught physician, Manucci arrived in India during the reign of Shah Jehan and befriended his heir apparent, the philosophic-minded Dara Shikoh.

It is from Manucci’s eyes that we see, through eight chapters, the intrigues and the reactionary mindset and intense hatred for his siblings that Aurangzeb nurtured. And we see how this man eventually imprisoned his father Shah Jehan and murdered his siblings and their children.

To paraphrase the closing lines of the book concerning the last days of the Dara Shikoh-Aurangzeb saga: “[Religious] Extremism has no sub-species; it is of only one colour, which takes it to the end. At the end, there is no other path going forward to bring one into bazaars lively with life and colour. There is only a gaping chasm. Extremism knows no flexibility and nature ordains that that which knows no flexibility must only destroy itself.”

With Abubaker Sheikh, travel-writing in Urdu as it should be has come of age. Here, we do indeed have the genres that make travel-writing worth reading and what turns it into reference work. This writer makes history, geography and ecology into something much more than a stifling classroom read. His writing is truly a gift for the reader of Urdu non-fiction.

The reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and author of several books on travel. X: odysseuslahori

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 27th, 2024