The story of his injured index finger goes back to his childhood. Boys were having a contest to open Codd-neck lemonade bottles. Khan Sahib had pressed his index finger down on top of the marble inside the bottle’s neck and with his other hand he had hit down on his finger with all his might. The impact immediately broke the bottle and his finger. The bottle’s neck latched onto his finger like a wedding ring. They had to use a hammer to break the bottle. His finger went septic. They had to cut it off two weeks later. He considered anaesthesia for wimps. So he had the operation without any. Before the operation, he instructed the surgeons to bind his head by tying a strip of cloth between his teeth.
If he considered what he was going to say as being very scholarly, then, in order to make it seem weighty and dignified, he would first massage his chin as though he had a big beard like Tagore had. He would raise his injured index finger toward the heavens, put on his glasses, and only then would he begin to talk. When he was in the midst of some complicated explanation, if some witty remark suddenly came to mind, then, before he laid into his listeners, he would first wink. And before that, he would take off his glasses so that everyone would be able to see it clearly.
It’s very difficult to describe how he laughed. It seemed as though he wanted to laugh openly, and yet for some reason, he was trying to restrain himself. As a result, certain sounds kept escaping from his mouth that sounded like how a car sounds while you try to restart it after its battery has died. Before laughing, he would usually unbutton his waistcoat because, he explained, he had no one in that foreign land to stitch the buttons back on each and every day.
He had married only once. He believed in marrying only once and never to think about any other woman. His poor wife had requested on several occasions that he might like to take on another, so that she too might experience her good fortune.
From the Limping Cockroach to Shaikh Sadi
If you want, you can call Khan Sahib illiterate. But he was the furthest thing from uncouth and ignorant. He had a pleasant temperament, and he had a lot of commonsense, as well as a keen eye. He was a true gentleman; he had seen everything and had come out the other side. He didn’t read life through the lens of literature, and he didn’t see life through the frame of art. Whatever life puts in front of you, and whatever it teaches you, that is what stays in your heart:
O, Nazir, formal education only gives a man four eyes.
The knowledge that gives you one hundred thousand eyes lies in the heart.
If Urfi called himself ‘his own teacher,’ he knew exactly what he was talking about. Khan Sahib was among the learned men, the graduates, of the School of Life.
For years, he had signed checks with his thumbprint. But when his bank balance exceeded 100,000 rupees, he had learned how to sign his name in Urdu. He said, ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed about signing for withdrawals with your thumbprint at usurious banks. But when it’s hard-earned money, then you should think carefully about it.’ His signature was truly bizarre. It looked like a cockroach had taken a bath in an inkwell and then had walked across a piece of paper. While signing something, he contorted his hand so strangely and, especially whenever he had to make a round shape, his wide-open mouth was locked in a circle that grew and shrank in concert with the letters, that when he was done, not only was his hand experiencing cramps but so were the eyes of anyone who had been watching him! In those days, his account was at the Chauk Yadgar branch of Muslim Commercial Bank, and at this branch the account-holders who signed their names in Urdu had to suffer the indignity of signing a guarantee that if their signatures were forged in the future and so some fraud committed, then the bank would not be responsible for their losses. Moreover, if the bank experienced losses, whether direct or indirect, then the account-holder would have to pay for them. When this was explained to Khan Sahib in Pashto, he almost lost it. He turned back to the accountant and said, ‘There’s a real bad word in Pashto for people like this who accept such absurd stipulations. I’m very upset.’ He went in a huff to protest to the bank’s English manager, Mr A. McClain (who had once been my boss). He said, ‘My signature is so messy that no educated man could possibly fake it. If I sign my name with such difficulty, then who’s going to forge it? You must have two dozen men working here. They all look like thieves, swindlers, and frauds. If any one of them can forge my signature, then I’ll give him a 1000-rupee prize. Then I’ll shoot him.’ Mr McClain said, ‘I can’t change bank policy. It’s the same at Grand Lease Bank. We copied the form from theirs. Not just copied, really, but slavishly followed. The thing is that the printers, due to their carelessness, transferred the name Grand Lease Bank onto our forms! Khan, if you learn how to sign your name in English instead of the vernacular, then you’ll see yourself out of this mess at once.’ In order to colour his command with a shade of entreaty, he offered Khan Sahib tea and pastries. So Khan Sahib was busy for two months in learning how to sign his name in English. Then when it was all ready to go, he went straight into Mr McClain’s office and signed. It went like this: first, with his hand raised in the air, he practiced his signature four or five times, then suddenly he put his pen to the paper, and, bing bang boom, it was done. Mr McClain immediately wrote on a slip of paper to the bank’s accountant: ‘His indemnity is cancelled. I have verified that he has signed the card in English in my own presence.’
What had happened was that for two months instead of writing his Urdu signature right to left he had practiced writing it left to right and he had become very skilled at this. (This eliminated the dots and circles, which give away Urdu.) In front of Mr McClain, this left-to-right signature was what he did, and he kept to this ‘English’ signature afterwards for cheques and business papers. But if he was having a letter written to a friend or relative, or if he had to sign an affidavit, then afterwards he wrote his Urdu signature. Meaning, right to left. Khan Sahib became so proficient that if someone asked him to sign in Japanese, he would have grabbed this cockroach by its whiskers and stood it on its head to fashion it anew.
If Khan Sahib wanted to end a conversation quickly, or if he wanted to throw someone to the proverbial mat, he would say, ‘Shaikh Sadi said…’ For him, Shaikh Sadi was the cat’s meow. For extra emphasis, he quoted Shaikh Sadi all the time, even if it was really his own thoughts that he was conveying.
If anyone contradicted him, however petty the point, Khan Sahib was ready to fight to the death. To forgive and to compromise were unmanly. He often said, ‘There’s a real bad word in Pashto for a man who compromises before tasting blood.’ Once Basharat had the chance to stay in his father’s house in Bannu. He saw that whenever Khan Sahib won a heated argument or became excited because something good happened, he would go outside, mount his horse, ride around an enemy’s house, and come back. Then he would ask his servant to pour him a bucket of cold water over his head because God doesn’t like the arrogant.