Prison Life and a Blood Test for Lice
His case was brought to court. The circumstantial evidence suggested he would be convicted and that the sentence would be fairly severe. Every day during the trial there was a lot of crying and carrying on at his house. His friends and loved ones were very worried that such a small matter had grown so out-of-proportion. The police would come to his cell and take him away in handcuffs. They would parade him around town before winding up at the courthouse. Mr Wrestler had paid them to do so. Qibla’s naïve wife couldn’t believe what she heard. She asked each and every person she spoke to, ‘Now, is it true? Do they lead him around town in handcuffs?’ Inside the courtroom and outside as well, Qibla’s enemies gathered — that is, the entire town. His entire family was ashamed. But Qibla never hid his face, and he never covered his handcuffed hands with a hankie. When the police led him around town, he twirled his moustache, and this made the handcuffs jingle. When Ramadan rolled around, someone suggested he start praying and fasting — Maulana Hasrat Mohani from our own little Kanpur5 had used to work at the mill even while fasting during Ramadan. Qibla didn’t think much of this: ‘You’ve got to be kidding! I’m not a poet. People will make fun of me, saying I couldn’t take it.’
His wife kept asking, ‘What now?’
He kept saying, ‘We’ll soon see.’
He never regretted anything he said or did out of anger. He used to say that only then could you glimpse a man’s true character. He thought it beneath himself to worry about whatever missteps he had made when angry — i.e. to worry about his true character. One evening his nephew came to the jail with food and lice medicine. The medicine said that it would blind the lice, which you could then easily find and kill. It also mentioned the traditional way of killing lice and nits, that is, put the louse on the nail of your left thumb and crush it with the nail of your right thumb. Then, if the blood released from the louse’s stomach was black or crimson, immediately take some of their Jalinous Elixir to purify your blood. The instruction sheet also said that you should continue treating yourself until the lice’s blood was pure red. Qibla instructed his nephew to lean toward the iron bars so that he could tell him something. He whispered, ‘Son, you can’t trust life. The world, and this jail too, is fleeting. Listen here. You must do this for me. In my wardrobe, I hid two thousand rupees for a rainy day. It’s underneath the old newspapers. Give it to Allan.’ (He was the town thug.) ‘Try to reassure your aunt for me. Give Allan my blessings, and tell him to beat up the six witnesses so that even their families won’t recognize them.’ Then he gave his nephew a crumpled-up piece of newspaper on which was written the names of the plaintiff’s six witnesses — a plan he had formed while in jail charged with having committed a similar crime.
One Sunday his nephew came for a visit. His nephew reported that it wouldn’t be difficult to befriend the guards. If Qibla wanted something special to eat, like zardah or dahi bade, or if he needed some of Shauq’s sexy masnavi poetry, or any cigarettes or mahva paan, then he would be able to get it at least once a week. His wife was asking after him. Eid was approaching, and her eyes were always swollen from crying. Just then Qibla trapped a bug on his coarse jail shorts. He said, ‘I don’t need anything. But when you come next time, ask Siraj the photographer to take a picture of the mansion, and bring that. I haven’t seen it in months. Try to get him to take the photo so that he gets your aunt’s balcony and its bamboo blinds.’
The guard stamped his boots and banged the butt of his 303 rifle on the ground. He said in a threatening voice, ‘Time’s up.’ Qibla’s nephew thought about Eid, and his eyes welled up with tears. He lowered his head. His upper lip quivered. Qibla pulled on his ear, and drawing it close to his mouth, he said, ‘OK, if you can, slip a knife into some double roti or sewaiyan, but its blade has to be at least six inches long. Also, the Pentangular6 is about to start. If you can find a way to get me the score every day, then, I swear to God, each day will be Eid, and each night, a Shab-e-barat! If I can get news of how Wazir Ali does, that will be really great.’
He was found guilty. He was sentenced to one and a half years of hard labour. While listening to the sentence, he looked up, as though he were asking the heavens, ‘Are you watching? What’s going on? How’s that?’ The police handcuffed him. Qibla didn’t react at all. Right before he was led to jail, he sent a message to his wife: ‘How happy my grandfather’s soul must be! How lucky you are to see your bridegroom…’ (He actually used that word.) ‘… going to jail wearing men’s jewellery after having laid waste to that bastard. I’m not going home with a wooden leg. Pray two rakats to thank God.’ He tasked his nephew with keeping up the mansion and looking after his wife. He told him to pass along the following message: ‘These days will pass too. Don’t be heavyhearted, and make sure to keep wearing your cornflower blue scarf every Friday.’
His wife wanted to know, ‘What now?’
He answered, ‘Let’s wait and see.’
Tarzan’s Return
His shop remained closed for two years. People thought that after being released he would quietly move on. But when he came back, he was exactly the same — he hadn’t changed a bit. Being in jail hadn’t broken him at all. A Japanese idiom goes that a monkey is still a monkey even if it falls from a tree. He came out of the jail screaming like Tarzan, ‘Aauuaauuuu!’ He went straight to his family’s graveyard. Over his head, he sprinkled dirt that he had taken from the foot of his father’s grave; then he prayed the fatiha; and then something came to mind that made him smile. The next day he opened up shop. He installed a pole outside his cabin and hung on it a wooden leg, which he had had made by a carpenter. Each morning and evening he would raise and lower this leg, just like the Union Jack was raised and lowered in those days in military camps. He sent threatening letters to those who hadn’t paid their bills for two years. And after his name, he wrote the phrase ‘ex-con’ in parentheses. Before going to jail, he had used to take special pride in referring to himself as ‘the shame of my forefathers.’ (No one had had the courage to agree with him, but no one had had the courage to disagree, either. They were simply too scared of him.) Now he began writing after his name ‘ex-con,’ and he did so in the way that others write after their names the initials of their degrees and awards. Now jail and the law no longer scared him.
Qibla returned the same man. His intimidating bearing and booming voice hadn’t changed in the least. If things had changed in the outside world in his absence, he didn’t care a whit. His opinions had gone from being very self-assured to being the absolute final word. Previously he had expressed himself with conviction; now he spoke in judicial sentences. He wore his black velvet hat from Rampur at an even more rakish angle. I mean, he pulled it down so severely that he couldn’t open his right eye. When his wife asked, ‘And what now?’ he never said, ‘We’ll see,’ but rather, ‘We’ll soon see’ or ‘You’ll soon see.’ In jail, his beard had grown so thick that it entwined with his bushy mustache so that while eating he had to use one hand to raise his facial hair and the other to stuff food into his mouth. Jail hadn’t made any impression upon him. He said, ‘There was a guy, a clerk, in our cell block, Fasahat Yar Khan. He was in for three years hard labour for embezzlement and fraud. He had gone by the penname of Shola [Flame], but inside he changed it to Hazin [Miserable]. He never shut up. He recited his newly-minted ghazals as he ground grain, which he did poorly, and so got beaten for it. Poetry isn’t much use in milling grain. He thought he was at least on par with Ghalib, but the only similarity was that they both spent time in jail. He called himself a Rohilla. Maybe. He didn’t look like one. He tried to avoid his fellow inmates. He told his son to tell anyone who asked about him that he had temporarily moved away. He never called jail by that name; instead, he said ‘the slammer.’ He didn’t refer to himself as a prisoner but as ‘jailbird.’ Sir, it’s good that he didn’t refer to the guards as Potiphar! He probably would have called a mill something else if he had known a synonym for it. He never said ‘vomit’ or ‘diarrhea,’ maybe because he thought that if euphemisms can’t stop them from happening, at least they won’t smell as bad. He must have known because his father had died of cholera. Sir, I’m not a pickpocket. If you put a lion in jail, he’s still a lion. Release a jackal into a river valley, and you’re going to get jackal behavior. I’m not one of your limp dicks who once in jail shorts turns into a snivelling ninny.’ Actually, it seemed that Qibla thought of his time in jail wearing raggedy clothes as the same as the trials of Joseph. Qibla’s bad humour got worse. A crow’s feathers stay black no matter how much the bird goes through, no matter how old it gets. Unsociable — curt — rough — genuine — fake — whatever he was, you got what you saw, and you saw what you got.