‘I’ve seen every last inch of Lalukhet, Bihar Colony, Chakiwara, and Golimar. A million and a half people must live there. (Journalists are ashamed of this, and so they call these people “individuals” or “beings”!) You won’t find a bookstore or a perfumery there. You won’t even find fake flowers. In Kanpur, in the houses of good families like ours, you would always find jasmine vines here and there. But, sir, the only thing flowering here is depression! It’s too much! In Karachi, the rich and the really rich buy wood as though they’re buying fine brocade! If I sell two feet of wood in a day, the lines for sawdust don’t end! I grew up eating food cooked on cow-dung fires. But food cooked over sawdust fires is fit only for the forty-day memorial services of the hell-bound dead!
‘I’m sick of lumber. Money’s important, but it’s not everything. Money makes things possible. That’s true. But if money is an end in itself, you’ll never be satisfied. I’ve never sold bad wood — not lumber, not firewood. Here carpenters are so forward that they demand a commission. If you don’t give it, you won’t sell a thing. I mean, really! In Kanpur, I would have cut the guy’s nose off with an axe, put it in his hand, and told him to go give it to his bride as a wedding gift! My God! Everything here is out of whack. I’ve heard that as soon as the red lights come on in the red-light district here at the intersection of Napier and Japan Roads, the prostitutes come out to sit behind the windows and advertise their pointy breasts. In films, too, actresses strut their slutty stuff. This is like the saying, “The cultureless don’t know what to do with a partridge — tie it up outside or inside.” The Islamic Republic doesn’t even blink. But if you want to bring in a prostitute to dance for your wedding, well, then, you have to register her at the nearest police station! Only here do you have to have a ration card to get a prostitute. If you can’t get a prostitute when you want one, then what’s the use? What use is a government promissory note in the red-light district?’
Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig has a more elaborate interpretation of these matters. He says that a prostitute has to get an NOC [No Objection Certificate] from the police station so as to reassure them that she’s going about her proper business and not about to go listen to a sermon or participate in politics.
One day Qibla said, ‘A while ago I got to hear a famous prostitute from these parts sing. My God, her pronunciation was worse than her manners! I mean, really? Once upon a time the good families would send their kids to the brothels in Chowk to learn culture and refinement.’
Mirza thinks differently about this. He says, ‘The real reason they sent their sons to brothels was to save them from the bad company of their own grandparents and the bad environment of their home.’
The Running Tree
In no form or fashion did he like Karachi. He often got annoyed, ‘My God, is this a city, or is it hell?’ About this, Mirza has slightly altered the words of a wise man to say, ‘After Qibla leaves this world of sorrows, if, God forbid, he ends up in the place against which he compares Karachi, he’ll take a good look around and then say, “I thought Karachi was a little hell, but it turns out hell is a big Karachi.” ’
Once a good friend asked him, ‘If you think society’s one bad thing after another, why don’t you stop whining and get up and do something?’
He answered, ‘Look, I used to work for the PWD [Public Welfare Department], but I can’t install air conditioners in hell.’
The fact of the matter was that the mirror into which he had used to look for reassurance now reflected back not his authority, customs, and charm, but rather a new land entirely; the passage of time had turned it into a ‘distorting mirror’ that only mocked him.
His business quickly went from bad to worse. Then it ground to a halt. One day I felt very sad when I saw a new piece of calligraphy hanging from his walclass="underline"
Don’t ask about me; I’m the desert’s dried wood.
The caravan lit me on fire, then left.
I tried to cheer him up, ‘How can anyone call you “dried wood”? I’m jealous of your youthful vitality.’ Contrary to all expectation, he smiled. Since his dentures had already broken, he covered his mouth with his handkerchief when he laughed. He said, ‘Yes, well, you’re a young man, but I’m like this…’
My organs have become ‘flaccid.’
Now where’s my old ‘perversity’?
He removed the hankie from his mouth and said, ‘Son, I’m that tree that the passenger on the moving train thinks is running.’
My Own Mind Attacks Me
Qibla tried his best never to let his ire die. He used to say, ‘I don’t ever want to live in a place where I can’t be mad at people.’ And when he found himself in one such place, his ire turned inward. Now he started hating himself.
My own mind attacks me.
I’m the fire. I’m the fuel.
He had used to say, ‘Beware, if you stop being angry, you start being sad. And that’s for cowards.’ Adrift in such cowardice, he began to daydream uncontrollably about his childhood home and the village of his ancestors. The careworn take refuge in their memories. It is as if the photo album of life opens. Blurry, faded pictures start crowding each other out in your mind’s eye. Each picture takes you back to another age. Each snapshot has its own story: the strong odour of horses sweating while they walk down the road, which is glistening with mica; farmers returning home in the evening with lambs draped over their shoulders like scarves; scarves dyed with night-flowering jasmine that hang from the tops of bamboo screens; the paths that part the rich, green fields of arhar lentils; in the dry years, desperate eyes glancing now and then toward the empty monsoon skies; the unlucky sounds of jackals calling out on desolate winter nights; the jingling of cowbells as the cows return at dusk to their pens; the drags on the dying chillum coals getting longer and longer as the pipe is passed through the village assembly hall on pitch-black nights; the fresh scent of young bodies and jasmine bracelets; the coiling smoke rising from incense sticks lit above a new grave in the golden light of the setting sun; nostrils flaring to inhale the scent of chickpeas being roasted in the hot sand; and the stench of government-issue kerosene lanterns. This was what his village had smelled like. And this was the fragrance that overwhelmed him like musk straight from a deer.
The Eaves’ Tap-Tap-Tap
In a seventy-year-old child’s mind, things start to get mixed up.
Smells, tactile sensations, and sounds turned into images: the sound of each raindrop hitting like a drum on the village house’s tin roof; the sharp sound of the rain striking dry leaves; the way the little pools of water collecting on the floor toss up a crown of pearls when the heavy raindrops hit their surface; the roof tiles sizzling when the first rain strikes; the sensation of the shower’s deluge on the baby’s irritated skin, as though someone were bathing the baby in mint; the first rain to fall on a young son’s grave, his mother racing bareheaded to and from the courtyard, looking up at the sky; the first flash of lightning from the clouds that will unleash their water on the waiting, thirsty ground; the sound of bangles chinking and girls’ laughter as the monsoon songs are played on the drums; the rush of water finding the seams in the dry pond’s cracked bottom; the delicate pattering of raindrops fanning out in the arc of light cast by the lanterns that hang on the verandah’s support posts; the sound of the heavy rain on the mango trees clanging like cymbals; and the young girls playing on swings. Then the silence of a restless night, and the tap-tap-tap sound of water dripping from the eaves.7