It’s summer in the global south (which is winter in the global north), and for the month of February Literatur.Review is bringing them all together, publishing previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the north and south of our world.

Waseem Hussain was born in 1966 in the Pakistani port city of Karachi and grew up on Lake Zurich. At a young age, he organized cultural events and made the multi-award-winning short film "Larry". As a journalist, he reported from the South Asian region for the Swiss press and was awarded the Prix Mass-Médias by the Fondation Eckenstein in 1998 for his investigative research. He lives as an author and songwriter near Zurich and speaks German, English and Urdu.

Blind friend, why are you sending me a postcard
of my own house, big and empty, where I dream
of dead animals? You write to me that I am
a captain in a shipyard, without ship or land.

I'm told I am Indian. My name is Khemji, they say. That doesn't bother me. I think I know myself. But I am glad that I have no reason to get comfortable. In truth, I love doing nothing, I like peace and quiet, sitting around daydreaming. Then I start feeling hot. Not like a fever, neither my blood boiling nor my breath coming in a rush. My eyes widen, my vision becomes clear, my lower jaw pushes forward and my hands, with the strength of my muscles, feel poised for something new.
   This must be how the captain feels when his ship is finally ready for sea. He stands on the bridge. He has a clear view of the direction in which he wants to set sail. The needle in his compass has been wobbling and shaking ever since the harbour master shook his walking stick at the ship's seaworthiness. But he doesn't have the compass or his broken pocket watch repaired. He knows that the sea is capricious. It reveals its hand on sandbanks and cliffs after high tide.
   The captain who anchors his ship off the coast, climbs into the dinghy and lets himself be rowed through the surf, reaches land as a small captain. He is a sailor who rises to become an upstart. If, on the other hand, he lets himself drift aground, he risks all his belongings. He jumps off the bow, his knees ache, but he is there, treading the land, walking over dunes and through forests, passing through villages, farms and towns. He seeks happiness.
   It is therefore convenient for me to be told that I am someone other than who I thought I was. Discovering new life leaves a wound, as if an entire country had been swallowed up by the ground as soon as you left it. The itch on the stump, like after an amputation, makes you happy. I love being happy.

   To find out what it feels like to be called Khemji, I write a letter to a company in India. I tell them that I am looking for traces of my ancestors, who I am told are from there, and explain that this diamond trading company in Bombay has published an anniversary publication, "India from the Inside", which I would like to buy. I close the letter with my new signature, soft pencil on light-coloured paper. When the reply from a certain Director Mehta arrives and I read the greeting, I jump for joy: "Dear Mr. Khemji". The fact that he announces that he will send me a copy of the book gives me confirmation. He doesn't know me, but he takes me for who I am now. I put the letter aside, unaware of how a Khemji would react to such a thing.
   I am told that Indians are friendly people. That doesn't mean Mr. Director Mehta will send the book. It could be that he just wants to be friendly.
   A few days later the package arrives. In another letter, Director Mehta writes: "In our company, we have always made conscious decisions. Since our humble beginnings we have been building partnerships; we are not solely concerned with business. We are confident that the essays and pictures in this book will take you on a journey through India and evoke emotions that will bring you closer to the spirit of our company and all the people who work for us. With our work, we offer you the essence of what we stand for." The company motto is embossed on the letterhead: "A diamond company with heart".

   I begin to dream as Khemji. Khemji walks through a corridor: silvery grey bushes on brown earth, the sky a purple mauve, the air tart. He reaches a building site. Behind the barriers and a number of warning signs and prohibition notices are machines. Scattered around them on the ground are rolls of cable, pipes, sandbags, paving stones and tools. Workers have dug a large, misshapen hole and gone home. Khemji would like to get to the other side. In the following days, he visited the site again and again. Each time he finds pit has been altered, things moved. Again no one is there, the construction site is impassable. Just as Khemji is about to give up, he notices that someone has erected a bridge made of wooden slats and ropes. Over there, he sees four old men in flimsy white cotton clothes. They are standing in the dappled shade of a tree and wave cheerfully to him: "Come over here, come on!" They have brought ironed, brightly shining clothes with them, a long white shirt with embroidery made of white thread and wide pants, which they swing back and forth before hanging on the lowest branch of the tree. Khemji thinks: they'd look good on me. He hears the leaves rustling. But the leaves don't move. The old men begin to sing, softly with their eyes closed, and Khemji wonders why they are singing in the language that was his mother tongue before he was told he was Indian. He climbs onto the bridge, very slowly. With every step he takes on the swaying slats, the singing and rustling gets louder, the ropes in his hands tremble, violently and ever more violently. He stops in the middle of the bridge.
   In another dream, I live in a large house. It's a peaceful place to live. Old banyan trees line the grounds. The meadow is overgrown with bushes and shrubs, the thorny shikakai and the snow bush, the porcupine flower and the laurel grape. One day, a postman turns up and says "Mr. Khemji, here's a letter for you." When I open the envelope, I find a photograph of a dead elephant in my hand. It's lying there all alone. Admittedly, what's the big deal about photographing a dead elephant? When they sense that they are about to die, they return to their place of origin. Photographing them dead is acknowledging their instinct. Whoever sent me the photograph reminds me that this will happen to me too, whether as Khemji or as the person I was before.
   Perhaps I can return to more than one place.
   Questions arise in every dream. They pile up from time to time, higher and higher. Especially when dead animals appear, such as swamp crocodiles and wild boars. When I wake up, I don't have the words to write them down, no matter how hard I try. They taste of nothing, have no scent, don't float in the air, don't sound. But they are intrusive.

   "India from the inside" is a landscape-format montage of numerous photographs and long texts. It shows men doing gymnastics on slender wooden pillars and women sprinkling water on the memorial plaques of their ancestors. A hand decorated with henna combs children's hair. Murals show men on horseback shooting at game with bows and arrows, tractors crossing cornfields. A wedding party sits on a veranda, the guests eating food from silver bowls and plates and drinking yoghurt from brass cups. Colourful embroidered blankets with sewn-in mirrors hang on the walls. In a corner under the gabled roof is a bird's nest and underneath is the entrance door, its threshold strewn with grains of rice and flower petals. The guests must have sung cheerful songs, teased and hugged each other, told stories about glorious ancestors and praised longed-for descendants. While inside, in the bedchamber, the bride and groom waited to finally smell the scent of rose oil on each other's necks.

   I fly to India and get into a cab. The journey to S., the city I am told I come from, takes three hours. My driver, probably in his forties, short, graying hair, his body round and small, talks a lot.
   "Sir," he starts, "you probably know nothing about this ..."
   I catch sight of my dismissive look in the rear-view mirror.
   "Believe me, this is not a free country. Everyone calls it a democracy, the largest in the world. It's true, people used to live here together as neighbours. But these people have turned our country into a battlefield. Their whisperers from hell, who have taken their seats in the ministerial chairs and pretend that heaven is their home, their thugs, they all hate us. And why?" He can see he has my attention. "Because we don't want India's textbooks to say one thing but not another. They brand us as traitors because we don't eat the same food as them. They slit our shirts in front of everyone to see what symbol is on our necklace. I will spare you all the cases of beatings and rape, of mothers whose unborn children are torn from their wombs. They burn down our shops and our houses. They are not interested in looting; they despise our possessions as much as we do. The policemen just watch, grinning. Those who demand justice are like cattle to the slaughter. The president remains silent, yet he is one of us. Dear sir, we are righteous second-class citizens in our own country. We are practising forbearance and patience. But how much longer are we to let ourselves be kicked in the face?"
   My head, neck and chest become hot and damp, my feet and legs cold and dry. I roll down the window. We speed past fields of cauliflowers, wild dogs jump in front of us, the driver honks his horn, I turn around and see them yapping after us. That calms me down.
   The driver stops at a fork in the road: "This is S." He parks under a blue and white road sign and leads me into the teahouse.
   I ask the landlord: "Is this really S.?"
   "What does it matter," he replies.

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"Khemji – Eine indische Tragödie" (Khemji – An Indian Tragedy) was originally published in German in Waseem Hussain's book Habitus 2025.