Basharat was a tenderhearted man. Seeing a young woman in such a sad state, he really wanted to wipe away her tears with his silk handkerchief and end her widowhood right then and there. It would be an understatement to say that he had a soft spot in his heart for beautiful women because each and every spot of his desolate heart was reserved for them.
In waiting for his lover, he never sleeps
… Friends Have Turned into Preachers
Failing at something is never as bad as having to listen to all the unwanted advice from people who don’t know the ABCs of it. A wise man once said that the best thing about success is that then no one dares give you any advice. It’s not my place to propound on things, big or small, and I can’t tell you if I’ve been successful or not; but I can offer this little tidbit that if we were held together with screws and nuts, then all our friends, family, and well-wishers would drop their work and rush toward us with screwdrivers and wrenches. One would try to untwist our round nuts with a square-headed wrench. Another would try to hammer a screw into our oil valve. A third would try to tighten all our screws day in and day out. Then they would all get together and remove all our screws and nuts. And that just to see if, by the force of their will, they could get us to move around and eat and drink, or not. Both sides would pass their days in this worthless conundrum. Something like this happened to Basharat. Each time the car broke down, he was flooded with advice that didn’t address the car’s flaws but rather his own, and none of it was what you might call brilliant. On the other hand, passers-by that had no cars offered thanks to God that they were among the lucky ones to escape having them.
Out of all these advisors, only Haji Abdur Rahman Ali Muhammad of Bantua had anything worthwhile to say: ‘If you ever have to go to a saint’s shrine, an income tax office, or a doctor’s private clinic, then park the car a mile away. A week before going, stop cleaning your teeth after you chew paan. Leave the spittle lines on the corners of your mouth. Don’t change clothes for four days, and don’t shave. If you’re a factory owner, then put a look on your face like those of cart-vendors. Otherwise the bastards will flay you, sprinkle salt and chilli pepper over your naked flesh, and send you to Hawa Bandar. You’ll run around for the rest of your life screaming, “Brother! I tell you, if you ever go to see an income tax officer, to the police, to your young wife, or to see a guru, never go empty-handed and double marching like a soldier. Always take some fruit or money or something. Otherwise the bastards will flay you and stuff your effigy with leftover copies of the newspaper Dawn. After seeing a green, if someone’s eyes don’t shine with 200 candlepower, he must be colourblind or a saint. Or the head of the State Bank who signs the notes himself.” ’
4.
Dialogue Condemning the Neem Tree
Sometimes while talking freely about the car’s infirmities, Khalifa would start recounting his own misdeeds as though he were speaking about the miracles of saints. Only someone familiar with the inner workings of the human mind could tell if he was telling the truth, or if he was running an imaginary horse through the fields of longing. One day he told Fakir Muhammad, the cook, ‘Today in front of the Saeed House, our horse went totally mad. Its every part started chanting, “I am the truth, I am the truth.” At first the engine overheated. Then the radiator, whose leak I’d stopped up with a soap cake, exploded. Then one of the rear tires started leaking. To pump up the tire, I got out a pump that was the same age as the car. And do you know what happened? I found out that the pump itself was leaking! The fan belt got overheated and snapped too. Since she had to drive around British folks, she too got a little crazy. Hakim Fahim-ud-din from Agra used to say that if the woman is crazy, the man should be hot-tempered. Man, “hot-tempered” reminds me of something. Abdur Rahim, the dandy — you know him, he used to be the gatekeeper at the Naz Cinema — got syphilis. The bastard got his just deserts. He said that his blood ran hot from watching English films, eating gazak snacks, and listening to Noor Jahan’s songs. Back in those days, I don’t know if it was the same for you or not, but if someone picked up herpes or syphilis6 from some contact sport or another, he had to wear a high-water lungi and carry around a neem twig. When I was a boy, I saw many of the upper echelon carrying around these green flags in their neighbourhoods. Everyone thought that a neem twig would ward off contagious diseases. But I think they used this excuse just to show off their achievement. To clean their minds and bodies, they had to drink such a bitter concoction that as soon as they swallowed it their eyes rolled back in their heads. Back then there was punishment hidden in the cure. Maulvi Yaqub Ali Naqshbandi used to say that that was the reason they called Unani treatment real wizardry.
‘Man, that fucking neem tree was such a pain in the ass. If you were poor and you happened to get this rich man’s disease — or even if you just had ordinary blisters or warts — then the country doctors would treat you only with neem. All medicine was neem-based. They told you to bathe with neem soap. They prescribed a paste made from neem fruit and bark. They applied neem ointment. They burnt dried neem twigs and leaves and blew the smoke over you. If your young blood was running too hot, they made you drink something made of neem shoots and flowers. They would make you lick a sticky paste made of neem sap. They would force you to ingest a powder made from neem fruit seeds. They would make you brush your teeth with a neem twig before each meal so that all food tasted like neem. Under the excuse of draining the bad blood from your body, they would repeatedly have leeches drink off several kilos of your blood — so much so that you ended up looking like a withered, old mango, and, forget acts of debauchery, if you so much as performed two prostrations in prayer, your knees would start making creaking sounds. Water boiled with neem leaves would be poured over open sores to kill the germs. And if, thanks to the doctor, the patient should die before the germs, then neem leaves would be boiled in a pot and the water used to wash the corpse, which would then be placed beneath a neem tree. They would throw three buckets of water over the fresh grave and stick in a neem twig at the grave’s head. They would go to the home of the deceased man, take out his widow’s gold nose ring, and replace it with a neem twig from the very tree from whose branches she had swung during the rainy season. Then they would make her wear a white scarf, they would put a betel-nut cutter in one hand and a long whip-like twig from a neem tree in the other so that she would be able to fight away the crows, and then they would have her go sit in a neem tree’s shade.
‘When I immigrated to Pakistan, I came across the Wagah Border with nothing but the clothes on my back and a razor — nothing more, I swear. What I have now is due to God’s good graces and to Pakistan. The day after crossing the border, I went with my friend Muhammad Hussain to Shalimar Gardens. He told me there were no neem trees in Pakistan. I swear to God — I fell in love with Pakistan right then! Right there, next to the Mughal fountain, I prostrated in thanks before God.’
Khalifa’s Record of Sin
Khalifa’s problem was that once he got started, he couldn’t find a way to stop. He had grown old, but, in listening to his boasting, you would think that old age had turned his fantasies and carnal desires into absolute fact. And there was nothing unusual about this. There’s an old saying that in old age a person’s carnal powers relocate to the tongue. Whether or not his exaggerated stories had some basis in fact, his manner of storytelling was true and sincere. The simpleminded folks who listened to his tales were so hypnotized that they didn’t think about whether his stories were true or not. They just wanted him to go on. So here is more of Khalifa’s story, unedited. I’ve just given it the new title listed above.