The rivers of the four corners meet here
A City’s Elegy and His Brethren, the Humble People of Bannu
Between their quarrels, Khan Sahib would take a walk. He had a dozen or so humble, needy folks from Kohat and Bannu always waiting outside, with pistols in their waistcoats, and they followed him wherever he went. They were not only Khan Sahib’s devotees and companions, but they were also his commandos who, upon the signal of his half-finger, were ready to strap gunpowder to their waists and jump into Nimrod’s fire without a second thought. For lounging about and passing the time, Khan Sahib had set up for them four charpoys and a Kabuli samovar. All day long tea boiled in the samovar, and so Basharat had to build a temporary outhouse from corrugated tin for the men to piss in. He put used blotting paper out there. When the men started to complain about Karachi’s leaky ink, he gave them old issues of a newspaper infamous for voicing its approval of each and every government. It was to be used as toilet paper, and so finally it was being put to good use. All day they would gossip, joke around, and compete against one another in weightlifting competitions. The young guys talked about work, sports, inflation, movies, food and drink, and marksmanship, while the middle-aged men recharged their batteries with sticky sweet tea and obscene jokes. Fuelled with this heat, these men stilled for a moment the chilling onset of old age; they were possessed by a lust that fuelled such outrageous conversation that even young men would blush to hear them. The greyer the man’s beard, and the more he bent at the waist, the more his jokes packed a punch and the more lecherous were his jokes. About this, Mirza once said,
The more bent the bow, the further its arrow will go…
When Khan Sahib told a particularly meaty story, he would put a cube of sugar between his teeth and drink tea through this with a ‘si-si-si’ sucking sound. He would sway and say, ‘Yaraji! They drink tea like this in Samarkand and Fergana!’
Khan Sahib spent all of his free time observing Karachi and its people, and, subsequently, in giving them hell and encouraging others to do the same. He said, ‘In Karachi, you have to make a personal effort just to breathe. In the tribal regions, the air is so light and pure. It goes in without any effort, just like a bullet. This morning, Radio Karachi said that the humidity was 90 percent. The 90 percent water that Karachi milkmen use to dilute their milk comes all from the city’s air. While you all find occasions to shout slogans, recite poetry, and make incantatory offerings, we simply fire bullets into the air — POW POW POW. I’ve been in Karachi for a long time, and I’ve still to see anyone carrying a gun. For us, we pack even during weddings, because you never know if there will be gunplay over disagreements about the bride price. Sometimes brides’ fathers and relatives turn out to be extremely wicked, stingy cuckolds. To be on the safe side, I took a small machinegun to my own wedding. In 1937, my uncle had used it to kill three white men in an ambush in a mountain cave in the Katori Khel region near Khaisora. One was a captain. He looked like a bulldog. That piece of shit had martyred countless disciples of the Fakir of Ipi. My uncle cut off his nose and ears and fed them to the birds. He took out of the pocket of one of the ordinary soldiers a photo of his infirm, old mother and one of his darling, little, 1-year-old girl. The girl was holding a doll. Seeing this, my uncle cried a lot. He replaced the gold watch that he had taken from the man’s wrist. He moved the corpse into the shade. Then, when he was walking away, he had a thought, and so he went back and covered the corpse with his shoulder-wrap.’
Khan Sahib continued, ‘So I was saying how I went to my wedding packing my uncle’s submachine gun. Except for the kids, the officiant, and the barber, no one was unarmed. Right when we were about to exchange vows, someone on the girl’s side raised objections. They said that they wanted 100,000 rupees. My uncle started to argue. He said he wanted it according to sharia law, which meant that the bride price should be equivalent in value to the weight of two-and-three-quarters-rupees’ worth of silver, which was thirteen rupees and five and a half annas. A wise old man of the tribe said that the girl’s side should come down a little, and the boy’s side should go up a little, and when they split the difference, then both sides should be happy. Another wise old man said, “Sir, be reasonable. There’s no reachable average between thirteen rupees, five and a half annas, and 100,000 rupees! In this case, the average is reached with swords.”
‘When the commotion grew, I took off the wedding garland and said, “I raise the bride price to five hundred thousand. Anything less will dishonour my family.” Hearing this shocked my uncle. He whispered in my ear, “Are you high? We could get Calcutta’s Gauhar Jan and one hundred and one dancing prostitutes for that.” I said, “Uncle, please don’t interfere. You sight your enemies down a gun’s barrel, and you look at Queen Victoria on milled-edge rupee coins. You haven’t seen the world. Nor do you understand a man’s honour. If I’m going to have to go bankrupt, it’s best to do so big. Only lowbred men and cuckolds try to do it cheap.”
‘I’ve been in Karachi a while, but I still haven’t seen any street-fights.14 What? Do people here not have relatives? Do you assume everyone’s an orphan? Two days ago I went to meet a friend in Landhi. The bus conductor didn’t give me change. When I was getting off, I swore at him, but he pretended not to hear. I said to myself, “Hey, buddy, I just swore at you. If it was advice, OK, I can see why you wouldn’t care, but a curse is different.” ’
After this joke, he started laughing: noises sprung from his mouth that sounded like a car with a weak battery trying to start, and his body wobbled like jelly for minutes.
But this is not to say that Khan Sahib entirely hated Karachi. He said, ‘If the people weren’t here, and if the sea receded by 250 miles or so, the city wouldn’t be half bad for driving trucks or riding horses.’ He really liked some parts of the city. They were those poor sections with half-made houses that reminded him of the area around Kohat where, in his own words, once upon a time when he was younger he had reigned over the entire area.
O, earth, I like you because you smell like someone I love!
My Friends Are Still Alive, so Ignominy Lives On
Basharat and Khan Sahib’s bickering and squabbling took place only during working hours, meaning, from nine to five, and, without resolving winners and losers, it was set aside for the next day so that they could engage again with a fresh start.