While Basharat was rebuking him, Rahim Bakhsh suddenly wiggled his left ear. Basharat couldn’t believe it. To extinguish his anger, he swore once, drank a glass of water, and then, with the whip still in his hand, set out with Rahim Bakhsh with the full intention of dropping the filthy liar at his house once and for all. When they reached the site of the incident, one of the Cruelty Cops really was standing there with the horse’s reins in hand. Basharat’s kids were scared. They were standing in the sun with their bags and thermoses strung from their necks. Seeing this caused his boiling blood to cool to the freezing point. He felt like a ball of wool had caught in his throat. He had to lean on the whip to stand straight. He took the Cruelty Cop aside and appealed for his compassion. He emphasized in his special shopkeeper way that he was now their permanent client; he wasn’t some gypsy or here-today-gone-tomorrow type. So the man gave him a twenty-rupee discount, and things were settled.
So ‘cruelty week’ began, though it lasted for twenty-one days. Before it ended badly, the three of them — the horse, the vet, and Rahim Bakhsh — were tied up, made to stand around, and forced to eat to stave off boredom, respectively. (It’s necessary to put an asterisk after Rahim Bakhsh’s name because he ate no less than a horse.) While the horse had indigestion every third or fourth day, Rahim Bakhsh’s stomach was not only made of steel but also always seemed as empty as a steel drum. In our culture, we have only one way of spoiling new pets, new brides, and little children: each person thinks it’s their duty to overfeed them. This happened with the horse too. So, as a result, the horse kept getting sent to Richmond Crawford Animal Hospital. Basharat says that one evening he saw Rahim Bakhsh stuff his mouth full of the horse’s purgative powder and swallow it down — no problem.
At the end of the ‘week,’ the kids started to go by cart to school again. Basharat’s shop was not far away, so he walked. Three weeks passed without incident. That is, the horse’s injury grew worse, but the tickets stopped coming. The fourth week had just started when one day Rahim Bakhsh came with the whip raised in the air, sighing and lamenting, and limping heavily on his left side. (He was now limping in imitation of the horse.) He said, ‘Boss, they caught us again. They caught us without even warning us! So I paid them twenty rupees, though I tried to talk them down.’ Basharat threw him the twenty rupees quite reluctantly. Now the tickets came so fast and furious that Basharat had no time to lick his wounds. He gave Rahim Bakhsh strict instructions to proceed very cautiously, to change up his routes, and to keep to the alleys. To these means of concealment, Rahim Bakhsh added one more. That is, he covered himself from head to foot in a red sheet before driving. Only his cigarette could be seen from underneath the sheet’s hood. This made only one big difference. Now instead of having to make out the horse, the inspector only had to see the red sheet from a distance before he began to draw up the ticket.
3.
Basharat’s Father’s Miracle Cures
Now the money spent on bribes and massaging had exceeded the amount spent on the horse and Basharat’s patience. The string of ticketing continued unabated. He became so helpless that he had Rahim Bakhsh tell the inspector to go to his store where he would employ him as an accountant, and that he would pay him more than his current wages. The word came back to say hello to Basharat but that there were three inspectors.
He wanted to sell the horse and cart, but no one offered so much as one hundred rupees. So he ended up mentioning his problem to his father. His father listened to everything and then said, ‘Don’t worry yourself over this. I will pray. Before yoking the horse to the cart, make it drink a glass of blessed milk. If it’s God’s will, the horse’s leg will heal, and so the tickets will stop. Just try it once.’
Then his father asked right then and there for Rahim Bakhsh to bring his harmonium to his bed. Rahim Bakhsh operated the bellows, and Basharat’s father began singing a hymn in a quavering, unsteady voice: Annihilation and salvation are in your hands, O, Your Splendour, Glorious One, O, Your Splendour, Glorious One.
Basharat’s father couldn’t manage to press the keys he wanted to. And then, with his finger on a key, he didn’t have enough strength to lift it. After singing one line, he lay down and said that the harmonium’s keys were jammed. Master Baqar Ali hadn’t fixed a thing.
The next day Basharat’s father’s charpoy was moved into the living room. That was the only room in which the horse could be brought indoors in the early morning to have ‘Allah’ written on its forehead and then holy breath exhaled over it as well. Early the next day, Basharat’s father prayed two nafils, dipped his index finger in rosewater, wrote ‘Allah’ on the horse’s forehead, and then coated its hooves in the smoke of frankincense. A little while later, when the horse was being outfitted, Basharat came running; he said that the horse was not drinking the blessed milk. His father was surprised. Then he closed his eyes and fell deep into thought. After a moment, he opened his eyes a little, ‘No problem. Make the driver drink it. The horse has a toothache.’ After this, the routine became that Rahim Bakhsh would drink the milk. He did this with the aversion that people used to show while taking their huge doses of Unani medicine, which is to say, pinching the nose, making a funny face, and intoning, ‘God forbid! God forbid!’ God knows where Rahim Bakhsh got such a big metal glass for the milk: it reached from his lips to his bellybutton.
And the effects of these miracle cures manifested on the very first day. That day it was a bearded man who gave them the ticket! Rahim Bakhsh lowered the whip to half-mast and said, ‘Boss, nevertheless, they caught us.’ Then he sketched in the scene: ‘A bearded man has just been transferred in from the Jamshed Road area. He’s a very compassionate, pious man, so he took only three and a half rupees, and that as a donation for medicine for a widow’s child in his neighbourhood. If you want, go see for yourself. He’ll be pleased to meet you. He’s always muttering prayers under his breath. A light emanates from the prayer-mark on his forehead that’s so bright that you could thread a needle by it in the dead of night.’ Then Rahim Bakhsh took something from his arm-pouch and said that the man had given him this amulet for the horse.
Just think — from twenty-five to three and a half rupees! What a difference! Basharat’s father attributed the reduction to his miracle-cure prayers. He said, ‘Now wait and see. If it’s God’s will, in forty days or so, the Cruelty Cops won’t be able to see the horse’s leg.’ Now Basharat’s father took up permanent residence in the living room along with all his paraphernalia: medicine, bedpan, hookah, bowl for washing hands before prayer, harmonium, Agha Hashr’s plays, the collector’s edition of Maulana Azad’s Al-Hilal newspaper, enema necessaries, and a picture of the actress Kajjan. The living room was hereby transformed into a space that only the horse, Basharat’s father, and the cleaning lady who came to take away their feces could stand for more than five minutes. Basharat’s friends stopped coming, but he put up with his father for the horse’s sake.
How Many Mouths Can a Horse Feed?
From the day the bearded preacher had been employed, Rahim Bakhsh would appear every fourth or fifth day to say, ‘The donation, please.’ But two and a half or three rupees were enough (five at the very most) to avert disaster. Under cross-examination, Basharat learned from Rahim Bakhsh that, in all of Karachi, horse-drawn carts were in operation in only their neighbourhood, and that the condition of the cart-drivers was actually worse than that of the horses. The sum they set aside each month for the Cruelty Cops was hardly enough to satisfy them. By way of contrast, the donkey-cart drivers — those of naked feet and hungry stomachs — were always ready to fight back. The injured donkey, the hard-working donkey-cart driver, and the wretched Cruelty Cop: it was difficult to decide who was worse off and who was suffering more. It was like one bone-dry leech trying to suck blood from another bone-dry leech. So, consequently, the Cruelty Cops showed up first thing in the morning to wait on the street corner for the cart of their only reliable patron, and once they got their money they would leave. One single horse was feeding the families of all the men. But it was a little different with Karamat Hussain, the bearded preacher. His evident wretchedness made him so pitiful that giving him bribes seemed a virtuous act; his accepting bribes was, thus, him giving you the opportunity to be virtuous. He asked for the bribe in the same way that someone asks for a charitable donation. It seemed as though his entire livelihood descended from heaven via that horse’s lame leg. But Basharat felt no sympathy and no fear for such a sorry bribe-taker.