“Fellow! In times like this such things happen,” Afzal said. “Throats become strong, and minds grow weak. When I hear that disgusting man’s voice, it’s as though a huge truck horn had been attached to a scooter. When I look at his head, he seems like one of ‘Shah Dulah’s mice.’* I’ve often thought that I should touch his head and see, but it would nauseate me, it would be like touching something slimy and revolting. I draw back my hand.” He paused, then murmured, “Mouse, you’re not saying anything.” Then he said thoughtfully, almost with fear, “Yar, sometimes when I walk along it seems to me that I’m the only man who’s walking, all the rest are crawling on all fours. And a sound comes, as though someone is gnawing something.” He fell silent. He sat silently, deeply immersed in thought. Then he said, “Yar! Do something about it.”
“Afzal, you’ve had too much to drink.”
“Fellow! Listen carefully to what I say,” Afzal said, holding Irfan’s eyes with his own. Then he slid closer, and said in a low confiding voice, “Pakistan is a trust. You must both become my arms. I’ll safeguard the trust. Otherwise, those mice will gnaw this Pakistan into dust.”
The white-haired man rose from his table, approached, and said, “Afzal Sahib, you’re quite right. Pakistan is a trust.”
Afzal looked steadily at the white-haired man. “White-haired man! Go away at once. I am now imparting instruction to these two virtuous people.”
“All right, all right.” The white-haired man went back to his own table, and busied himself in reading the newspaper.
Afzal stood up.
“What? Are you leaving?”
“Yes, yar! My drunkenness has been spoiled. Now I’ll have to have some more to drink.” He paused, then muttered, “Mice, it seems they’ve all dived into the wine-pitcher, and now they’re standing up on their tails.” He fell silent, thought of something, and went out.
The white-haired man lifted his head from the newspaper, saw that Afzal had gone, and came over. “Well what do you think, will there be war?”
“What do you think?” Irfan said with irritation.
“What do I think?” He fell into thought. “Sir, conditions are very bad.”
“When were they ever good?”
“This too is correct. When were conditions here ever good?”
He fell silent, then muttered, “We’re unlucky people.” He went back to his own table and sat down. Then he called Abdul, paid his bill, and went out.
“He says his hair turned white during Emigration,” Irfan laughed.
He looked soberly at Irfan. “One thing’s for sure. Ever since we’ve seen him, he’s looked exactly like that.”
“And how regularly he comes here.” Irfan laughed a little; he wasn’t ready to be serious about the man.
“He’s been coming here from the earliest days, in just the same style. And in those days his hair was entirely white. We always said that snow had fallen on his head.” Zakir paused, and fell silent as though lost in thought. Then he said, “Yar, some people from those days have absolutely disappeared.” As he spoke, he himself disappeared. What lost, forgotten faces suddenly welled up in his memory! Some so misty that they came before his eyes and then slipped away. Some so clear and bright that they etched themselves on his eyes as though now they’d never leave him. Mulla Binotiya, a small man no bigger than a fist, with a short beard and a compact body. “Well, sir, a small cube of copper saved me.”
“Mulla, how did that happen?”
“When I came away, I left all my property behind me. I only thrust a small cube of copper into my waistband. When the Sikhs attacked, I said to myself, ‘Well, man, today is the test of your skill, and the honor of binot is in your hands.’ I took the copper cube out of my waistband, tied it into the corner of a kerchief — and when I whirled it around a single time, I broke their wrists. So, sir, I gave them what was coming to them.”
And Karnaliya, dried up and scrawny, dreadfully talkative, with a tray of pan supported against his chest. “Well man, I come from the same place as your Liaqat Ali Khan does. I only lack his degree of ripeness. It’s the special nature of Karnal people. If they get completely fired up, they’re Prime Ministers; if they’re a degree short of that heat, they make shoes or sell pan.”
And Nuru the bread-seller, who boasted of being a pure-bred Ambala man. “Sayyid Sahib, there’s not an Ambali among them! All the bastards are from Sadhora, and they’re only Shaikhs by birth. They’ve added ‘Ambali’ to their names just for prestige. I’m the only one from Ambala! That’s why they can’t meet my eyes. Well, sir, that’s how it is in Pakistan. That tall skinny beanpole from Karsi claims to be the Navab of Nucklow!” They had left their cities, but they carried their cities with them, as a trust, on their shoulders. That’s how it usually is. Even when cities are left behind, they don’t stay behind. They seize on you even more. When the earth slips out from under your feet, that’s when it really surrounds you. The grasp of the earth is no doubt strong, but Maulvi Matchbox? Where did he come from? He never spoke to anyone, or even said a word at all; he was lost in himself and in the empty, half-open matchboxes that were spread around him on a cloth. “Maulvi Matchbox, what are these boxes?” “Sir, these are towns.” “Maulvi Matchbox, they don’t even have matches in them, they’re all empty.” “Sir, the towns are empty now.”
He murmured, “People have come from all kinds of places. Like kites with their strings cut, that go flying and come down on a roof somewhere.” He fell silent, and stared at Irfan. “Irfan!”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been here a long time.”
Irfan looked at him intently. “So?”
“So nothing.” After a moment he said, “You laughed off what the white-haired man said. But I was shaken inside. I remembered all the past times. Yar!” He paused, then said, “Now your hair and mine have turned white too.” His gaze was fixed on the white hair at Irfan’s temples.
“But our hair grew white not during Emigration, but in the sun of Pakistan.”
“The sun of Pakistan!” He again felt that he was drowning in memories. “Yar, how much we’ve walked in the sun in this city! In the summer afternoons, there was nothing but the hot pavement of Mall Road, and our footsteps. Our final stop was always the pipal tree on the far side of the bridge; how dense it was, that tree, and what a cool breeze its shade created. Now that tree isn’t even there any more. The bastards have cut it down.”
Irfan made no reply to his words. But they began to affect him, as though he too was inclined to travel through past days.
“Irfan, those days were certainly harsh for us, but I think they were good.”
“Yes, those were good days.”
“The days, and the people too.”
“And now?” Irfan stared at him.
“Yes, and now.” His voice sounded dead, as if he had just collapsed into ruins.
For a long time they sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Then he looked at Irfan. He kept looking, as though he wanted to say something, but hesitated.
“Irfan.”
Irfan looked at him, but he was silent.
“What is it?”
“Yar!” He paused, then said somewhat hesitantly, “Yar, was it good that Pakistan was created?”
Irfan looked at him sharply. “Have you, too, been influenced by Salamat?”
“Not by Salamat, by you.”
“How?”
“Once doubt begins, there’s no end to it.”
Irfan made no reply. He looked at Zakir somewhat angrily, and tightened his lips. Zakir sat in silence.