Once, when they were coming back from Zarif Jabalpuri’s house, right as they passed by the British cemetery, and as he was laying on the horn, suddenly it started to quaver strangely. It sounded like ankle-bells jingling. Then everything went dark; the headlights had gone out. Khalifa said, ‘Dear sir, the battery just died.’ This shocked Basharat because every day as soon as he got to the lumber store he took the battery out of the car and hooked it up to his power-saw so that it would get charged for eight hours. Then, at night, as soon as he got home, he would take the battery out and hook it up to his radio.4 Then, at midnight or one in the morning, when the radio shows stopped, he would unhook the battery and put it back in the car so that Khalifa wouldn’t gripe about it in the morning. So the battery worked three shifts of eight hours and was hooked up to three separate things. No wonder it gave out. It was completely confused. I saw for myself that instead of broadcasting radio shows the machine occasionally growled like a power-saw, and yet he thought these were great ragas and swayed and dipped to their melodies. In the same way, the car’s engine started broadcasting inclement weather updates. It was a strange state of affairs. In the dead of the night when the family members heard strange sounds start up, they didn’t know if they were coming from the radio, the car, or whether a qawwal singer had fallen into the power-saw. But the inability of his family members to figure things out was excusable because the origin of the sounds was Basharat’s throat! (He was snoring!) He said that his throat was permanently sore because of Karachi radio. The other problem was that a number of neighbours hung around until the end of the programming to listen to the shows. Now Basharat really hated this dratted thing. It was probably in such a black mood that English poet Philip Larkin said that a public toilet should be constructed on top of Marconi’s grave.5
Four Wheels with a Crazy and Parochial Temperament
A little while later, when it got really hot, the four wheels turned crazy and parochial. I mean, each wheel wanted to go in a different direction, and they stopped obeying the steering wheel. Not only that, but on many occasions, the steering wheel would actually start to revolve based upon the wheels’ whims. Basharat asked Khalifa, ‘What’s going on?’ Khalifa replied, ‘Sir, it’s called wobbling.’ Basharat sighed deeply: once you know the name of the illness, you rest easier. A little while later, he smiled as he thought that for a car it was called wobbling, for a swan it’s called waddling, for a cobra it’s called wriggling, and for a woman it’s called wiggling.
Was the shore moving or the boat?
Wow — I just had a great idea…
This time he too went along to the auto-body shop. The mechanic said that the muffler was just about to fall off because it was so rusty. Mirza says, ‘There’s so much humidity in the air in Karachi and so much love in the people’s hearts that if you stand with your eyes half closed and palms extended for just five minutes, you’ll get a handful of water and a handful of coins. Then, if you stand there for just one more minute, the money will disappear. Here, hair, mufflers, and libido disappear before their time. Lahore is better because at least there mufflers don’t fall off.’ The mechanic advised, ‘When it’s time to get a new horn next month, then change your muffler as well. Right now it’s working great as a horn!’ Then Basharat got upset and asked whether there wasn’t any part that was working. The mechanic fell silent for a moment and then replied that the odometer was working at double speed! Actually, instead of referring to the car’s performance it was best to say it’s non-performance because it was operating entirely in accordance with Murphy’s Law, which says that what can go wrong will go wrong. In this condition, a government can run, but not a car.
Camel Anthem
Despite the constant repairing, the brakes still weren’t right. But he didn’t feel their lack because he never got to use them: the car always gave out a mile before he reached his destination. Basharat started to learn how to drive; he used electricity poles for brakes. Over this, he got into some fights with some dogs. But now some of these dogs were using his shiny hubcaps as poles. As they peed on the hubcaps, they kept turning around to look at their reflections. Basharat noticed that the car had become even more oversensitive and touchy. Now it pulled up short if someone crossing the street happened to curse at it, provided the curse was in English. The car had passed from elegance, to nimble-footedness, to intoxication, to slowness, to being permanently stationary; now it was passing through the stage of total insubordination. Its gait now resembled that of Rudyard Kipling’s laggard camels that, in their marching song, moan,
Can’t! Don’t! Shan’t! Won’t!
Without a doubt, this true-to-life song should become the national anthem of those Third World countries that absolutely refuse to progress.
Dialogue with ‘A Stupid Cow’
For three months or so, Basharat invested all his time, hard work, earnings, prayers, and curses in this worthless car. His wounds from the wicked horse (Balban) had still not fully healed. Ustad Qamar Jalalvi says,
I still wasn’t on firm ground after my last slip-up when this new slip-up tripped me up.
The car had a mind of its own. When you pressed on its gas pedal, it stubbornly refused to move; when you pressed on the brake, it playfully drove on. I mean, it wouldn’t budge at intersections and when the traffic cops motioned it forward, but it inched forward when any passer-by walked in front of its bumper. The traffic was held hostage by its stops and starts, which gives you something opposite of Faiz’s line:
When we walked, we were a huge mountain; when we stopped, we died.
Basharat gave up and took the car back to the white lady and pleaded with her to take back the car and return him the money, less 500 rupees. She refused. He pleaded fake poverty, and she cited her widowhood. Since justice was now out of the question, each tried to prove themselves the more pitiable and more helpless than the other. Both were in dire straits. Both were aggrieved. Both, afflicted. But each remained cold-hearted to the other. Basharat tried to induce a weepy sound in his voice, and he kept wiping at his nose with his handkerchief. In response to this, the woman actually cried. Basharat opened and closed his eyes rapidly in order to induce tearing, but this only made him feel like laughing. Now he imagined a couple extremely painful but completely fake scenes in order to try to get himself to weep. (For example, scenes of his house and shop falling into foreclosure and being auctioned off; and scenes of his untimely death in a traffic accident, and how his wife, as soon as she heard the news, would immediately start wearing a coarse white scarf and dash all her bangles onto the floor — her crying making her eyes puffy.) But neither did his heart melt, nor his eyes well up with tears. For the first time in his life, he grew extremely upset that he was Sunni. But suddenly he remembered his tax notice, and he started whimpering. He pleaded, ‘I’m telling you the truth. If this car stays in my possession, I’m either going to go crazy or I’m going to die young!’
This turned the tide. Tears welled up again in the white lady’s eyes, and she spoke, ‘What will happen to your children? You don’t even know whether you have seven or eight. Actually, my husband’s heart attack was because of this damn car. He died in it. He collapsed right on top of its steering wheel.’
Hearing this, Basharat inadvertently blurted out that he ought to have put up with the horse. Upon this, the chaste woman enquired with great interest and impatience, ‘You mean a real horse? My first husband died when he fell off a horse. He was playing polo. The horse had a heart attack and fell on top of him. He used to call me very affectionately a “stupid cow.” ’ Now tears were really flowing from her Anglo-Saxon blue-grey eyes.