CONCLUSIONand shrines of Uch. These were signs embedded by Sufis and mys-
tics. The materiality of outside histories, he asserted, is devoid of an
inner truth and hence detracts, obfuscates, and confuses. These ma-
terial traces are read in error. The materiality of an internal past, on
the other hand, is held together by an inner (batini) truth which can
be only known to the "true historian." The task of the histori~n, he
said, is to read the material objects and signs for their inner truth.
Hence, the Uch of Muhammad bin Qasim, of the Sufi saints, of trees,
of objects, or of walls takes precedence over the Uch which confounded
the British. In his rend~ring of the past, this was the history of Uch,
invisible to many, but nonetheless true.
He reached down and picked up a ball of coarse iron that was nestled
among the shards of baked clay and dyed pottery. "Look," he said to
me. "This is a gola (ball) from the cannon when the .British laid siege
to Uch. They fired these up at us-and like rain they fell. They are still
here, embedded i:μ the soil. The British were not able to conquer us. We
are still here, and they are gone." He handed me the cannonball, and
my arm fell with its weight, I examined it, trying to see it as a histor-
ical object. I had never held a cannonball before and had no clue as to
what one felt like in the hand. The old man began to walk, and I walked
with him, holding the gala.
He continued to talk as we walked: "The British conquered all of
Sind, but they did not conquer Uch, because Uch is protected by these
shrines." He gestured around the graveyard. "Their cannonballs
bounced off the shrines; not one shrine was damaged." I interjected
that Uch was actually taken by General Charles Napier with the loss
of only eighteen British soldiers and was then made the headquarters
of Napier's campaign to rid Sind of "dacoits and terrorists."^2 He held
me in his stare and let the remark stand. I held out the cannonball to
him. "Where do you want me to put this?" I asked. "Just toss it. It fell
here." He gestured toward the side of a small bush. I did as told, gave
my regards, and walked away.
I have s,truggled to understand my conversation with this histori~n
of Uch. At first, my incredulity at his treatment of the cannonball
clouded my thinking. He had dismissed a material piece of history
that I would feel the necessity to put in a museum or to memorialize
with a note. In this man's narrative, Uch had constantly rebuffed