By the time that Qibla got to this last sound, he was drowned in tears. While I could have introduced him to the rainstorms of Lahore and Nathia Gali that would have made him forget the showers of his past, how was I going to recreate those special eaves? Likewise, I could get him good mangos from Multan — dashari, langara, samar bahisht, or anwar ratol. But in the Punjab, you won’t find any young girls swinging playfully from mango trees.
Whenever he got like this, I sat silently listening to the patter-patter of the rain of bygone years.
Qibla’s Radio Was Hard of Hearing
There is no real harm in swimming against a river’s current. I mean, none for the river. But Qibla didn’t just want to swim against the current; he wanted to scale Niagara Falls.
One day he said to me, ‘Mushtaq, your Karachi is yet another city that doesn’t recognize good men for who they are. Buying is just buying; there’s no art to it. The young don’t know how to behave. And people don’t know how to address their elders. When I was living with Basharat in Bihar Colony, I bought a battery-operated radio. I ran it off a car battery. There was no electricity in Bihar Colony. It was a constant worry. Basharat took it with him to work to charge it on his power saw. If he charged it for eight hours, I could listen to half an hour of the BBC. Then it would start to sound like a power saw. In the backyard, I had installed an antenna on top of a pristine twenty-five-foot wooden pole. But I still couldn’t get any reception. The neighbourhood boys would get their kites entangled on it and then try to wrench them free. Their strings broke, and the antenna did too. Well, you really couldn’t call it an “antenna.” It was more like an aerial kite cemetery. The kites would flutter all day long like the flags on a newly dead saint’s roadside shrine. It was a real pain in the ass to climb up and fix it. Think of it like this — I listened to the BBC from a hanging noose. When I began planning to move to the apartment on Burns Road, I thought I should sell it. Basharat was sick of it too. He said all he heard was the fluttering of kites. Someone from the neighbourhood agreed to pay 250 rupees. Early the next morning, he brought over the cash, and I gave him the radio. When I got home at eleven thirty, what do you think I saw but this man and his two bull-necked sons having a good old time prying up the antenna with the help of a pickaxe and shovel. I yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?” He said, “We’re taking the antenna. It’s ours.” I said, “I sold the radio for 250. Not the antenna.” He said, “Without the antenna, the radio doesn’t work. They go together.”
‘If it had been Kanpur, I’d have ripped the asshole’s tongue out and cut off his bastard sons’ necks in one fell swoop. I’d never met such a scheming and dishonest man. The wretch had already uprooted the pole and laid it on the ground. For a moment I felt like going inside to get my twelve-gauge rifle and then laying him flat like the antenna. But then I remembered that my gun license had expired. And what good was going to come out of arguing anyway? His poor wife would become a widow. But he wouldn’t stop telling me about all his rights, and so I said, “Fine, take it, I don’t care. You think it’s that important to me? Look, we left this to come here.” ’
The three of them hauled off the antenna while Qibla stood holding out the photo of his mansion.
6.
A Disabled Wife and an Old Chillum Pipe
But there was one aspect of his life that he never spoke about, not even obliquely. I alluded to what this was much earlier. His wedding was an event of great celebration. His wife was very pretty, well-mannered, and cultured. Several years after their wedding, she suffered from an illness that rendered her hands useless. Then even her close relatives started to avoid her. She gradually stopped socializing — not only daily interactions with friends and family, and weddings and funerals, but everything else too. Of course the servants couldn’t do all the housework. So Qibla dedicated his life to helping her, and he did so in such a selfless and loving way that it beggared description. Her hair was always braided. Her scarf was always pleated, and on Friday, it was always cornflower blue. With the passage of time, her hair grew grey. But Qibla’s love for her didn’t weaken in the least. You couldn’t imagine that this embodiment of sacrifice and love was the same person who, when out of the house, raged and fumed like a sword cutting through air. If you live with someone your whole life, there will be thousands of moments when your patience and good nature are tested. But not even once did he raise his voice while talking to his poor wife.
Some people trace his vengeful nature back to the incident that crippled his wife. Right afterwards, his wife started praying so fervently that the world slipped away and heaven seemed nearby. No one ever saw Qibla pray. But the way he took care of her for forty years — waking in the middle of the night without complaint — perhaps figured as his prayers, fasts, and charitable deeds. God is merciful. These acts don’t go unnoticed.
There was a time when his wife couldn’t stand to bear her hardships anymore. She said, ‘You should marry some widow.’ He said, ‘Oh, sure, why not? There’s a little bit of land somewhere that’s been waiting for me. My palanquin bearers will take me there. My dear, the earth never lacks for bridegrooms. One day I’ll fall asleep covering myself with dirt for a blanket.’
He noticed tears in his wife’s eyes, and so he changed the subject.
He relied upon lumber, hookahs, and tobacco for all his figures of speech, and so he asked, ‘My dear, why do you restrict me to widows? I agree with what Shaikh Sadi said, “Don’t marry a widow even if she’s a houri.” You probably haven’t heard this bit of Eastern wisdom, “The first smoker’s an idiot, the second knows tobacco, and the third gets the chillum.” Meaning, the first person to smoke is an idiot because he just gets the hookah ready; the second person gets to enjoy the tobacco; and the third person has to make due with sucking on the pipe for whatever he can get.’
I Burn (Like a Fire) Wherever I Go
Although his shop in Karachi was doing OK, Qibla wasn’t. After all, who can escape time’s ravages? He couldn’t. You can’t stop things from happening. But you can lessen their impact by disciplining your senses. If your personality has flaws, they will hurt yourself as well as others. Yet when you try to correct these flaws, they become even more painful. After coming to Karachi, he would often say, ‘I was in jail for a year and a half, but that didn’t change me as much as a week here did. Doing business here is like swimming in a pond full of water chestnuts. Once the rogues of Kanpur got here, they turned into lions and started hunting in the open. And the elite are like jackals hiding in some hole with their tails stuck between their legs. People are going into hiding on their own free will.’
One of Qibla’s friends laid his honor on the line and said, ‘You can’t go back to the olden days. Things have changed. You too have to change.’ Qibla smiled. He said, ‘Even if a cantaloupe finds its way into being round, it’s still not a watermelon.’