The mascot of the Democratic Party has always been the donkey. It’s on the party flag. The entire American people were like this donkey in their single-minded opposition to Iran. I mean, they were numb, dumb, and frozen in place. In the West, the donkey does not inspire any satire. In fact, the French philosopher and essayist Montaigne was so impressed with the noble qualities of this animal that he wrote, ‘Nowhere on earth can you find an animal more certain, decided, disdainful, contemplative, grave, and serious than a donkey.’ We Asians think ill of donkeys because they have some human qualities. That is, they carry loads heavier than their power of endurance and strength will allow; and they are obedient, obliging, and grateful to their master to the same degree that they are beaten.
Don’t Be Found Without a Job
By presenting the pros and cons of different types of transportation, I only meant to show that, after much weighing and reweighing, Basharat reached the conclusion that he had to buy a car; that it was more than a business necessity, it was in fact a logical imperative; and that if he didn’t get one, not only would his business go belly up, but it would also offend reason, and Aristotle himself in heaven (or wherever he is) would cry out in pain. But the truth of the matter was just the opposite. What he wanted wasn’t really a car but a status symbol. When someone takes recourse to philosophy and logic in order to convince others, understand that they themselves are equivocating and that they are searching for a good reason to justify an emotional and rash decision they have already made. Henry VIII severed his country from the Roman Papacy and laid the groundwork for a new religion only because he wanted to divorce one woman and marry another. Mirza says that there’s no better reason to create a new religion in our day and age than that.
2.
The Cost of a Widow’s Smile
Basharat had been going around looking for a secondhand car for a while when he heard that the big, six-cylinder car of an executive at a British company was on sale. Two months previously, this man had suddenly died, and now his young widow wanted to get rid of it for whatever price. As soon as Basharat saw the widow, he fell for the car. (He hadn’t yet seen the car even from a distance.) He had been selling pine packing crates and wood to the company for three years. The Parsi accountant said that he could have the car for 3483 rupees, 10 annas, and 11 paisas. It’s possible that readers will find this figure strange, but Basharat didn’t. That was because this was the very amount that for quite some time the company had refused to pay Basharat on the excuse that he had supplied inferior quality wood and that, due to this, during the floods in Chiniot and Sialkot, all their goods had been turned into mush. Basharat’s argument was that he had sold them wood at twelve annas for each pine crate — he hadn’t sold them submarines or Noah’s Ark — and so the embarrassed executives were blaming him for what was really an act of God.
The beautiful woman — whose widowhood didn’t make Basharat feel sad at all, and whom Basharat couldn’t call a ‘widow’ without feeling sick to his stomach — added one condition to the sale, and that was that in three months when she was to travel back to London on the MS Batory, Basharat should supply free packing crates, along with bananas and a carpenter. Not only did Basharat agree, but he also suggested that he himself could come every day to her house to oversee the packing with his own two hands (and other body parts). Basharat told the chief accountant that the car was so old that they should sell it to him for 2500 rupees. The man accepted on the condition that Basharat lower the amount owed for his bad wood to the same figure. Basharat complained to the woman, ‘It’s a lot of money. Please tell him to lower it a little.’ And, to win over her sympathy, he added, ‘I’m a poor man. I have had seven or eight children, one right after the other. And I have thirteen siblings younger than me.’
The woman reacted with surprise, sympathy, and wonderment. She said, ‘Oh, dear, dear! I see what you mean. Your parents too were poor but passionate.’ Hearing this enraged him. He wanted to shout back, ‘Why do you have to drag my father into this?’ But he couldn’t find an idiomatic way of expressing this in English, and the words that he almost blurted out made him start giggling. Right then, he decided that he would never again exaggerate the numbers of his children and siblings, except when applying for a ration card. The woman explained, ‘It’s really not that much. My husband’s teak coffin cost more.’ Caught up in the zeal of salesmanship, Basharat replied, ‘Madam, in the future I’ll sell you one for half that price!’ The woman smiled, and that sealed the deal. I mean, Basharat got the car for 3483 rupees, 10 annas, and 11 paisas.
The incident made such an impression upon him that he decided he would sell things in the future at the lowest possible price. Then, if he had to recover goods in lieu of cash from a deceased debtor’s beautiful widow, his losses would be less, and his self-regard would escape intact.
I Didn’t Come Here by Myself, I Was Dragged Here!
Basharat was quite proud of having got the car for cheap, but the reality was that he had sold his crates at a loss. But if such optimism, or if a misconception, makes you happy, where’s the harm in that? Mirza says in his philosophical way, ‘We’ve seen fifty-two-foot wells that think that if they turn themselves upside down, I mean, if they were stood on their head, then they would be fifty-two-foot minarets.’ Anyway, Basharat bought the beige-coloured car. He’s a very modest man. So he didn’t brag to his friends that he too now had a car. Instead, he asked each one, ‘Do you know what the colour beige is?’ Each man shook his head. So he said, ‘Sir, the British have invented a strange colour. In Urdu, there’s no word for it.2 I’ll show you what it looks like.’
As soon as he bought the car, he became very social. He started going over to people’s homes that he didn’t even visit on Eid and Bakrid. None of those friends and family members who came over to see the curiosity left without being plied with sweets. A month of congratulations passed. Then one day when he was en route to a friend’s to show off the car, it jerked violently in the middle of the road. Then it suffered a bout of whooping cough. Its pulse was so faint that sometimes there was a little whisper and sometimes absolutely nothing. He thought it was faking it. Then suddenly it recovered. For a second, the headlights went on. The horn wanted to say something, but it was too weak to speak. Then, after sputtering and gasping for a moment, it died right where it was. Steam rose from one end of the radiator, and water started dripping from the other. He had it yoked to a donkey-cart and hauled home. He had a mechanic come, and he showed it to him. As soon as he raised the hood, the mechanic hit himself on the forehead three times with his right hand. Basharat asked, ‘Is everything OK?’ He said, ‘It’s too late. It’s all shot. It’s answered the call of duty for the last time. You should have called me six months ago.’ Basharat answered, ‘Six months ago? I bought it just a month ago.’ The mechanic said, ‘Then you should have called when you were buying it. When you’re buying a pitcher, you rap on it a couple times to see if it’s good. It’s a car, after all. If you don’t want to spend a lot, I can jimmy-rig something for the time being. Our elders have said that when you get cataracts or arthritis, then pot and massages don’t work anymore. Then you get a cane, crutches, or a young wife.’ Basharat didn’t like at all the man’s informality, but, in the end, beggars can’t be choosers.