After this, the car was always breaking down. Nothing worked right. Only the rearview mirror worked. The car was often slower than donkey-carts because it was tied to the cart and dragged slowly home.
I didn’t come here on my own, I was dragged here.
Before leaving the house, he would make sure to have money for a donkey-cart and the necessary ropes and supplies. This funeral procession that wended its way through the alleys (and which he called ‘being towed’) was repeated so often that eventually everybody’s drawstrings and all the tightening ropes of the house’s charpoys were confiscated. And those who slept in the charpoys found themselves swinging around in a loose net all night long. Things got so bad that one night the chain of the goat belonging to Benaras Khan, the night-watchman, was stolen. Mirza protested: ‘The chain couldn’t hold back a scrawny goat that has given birth three times, so how is it going to control your wayward car?’
3.
Jack of All Trades: The Lampless Aladdin3
The problem of who was going to drive the car was solved when Mirza Wahid-uz-Zaman Baig, alias Khalifa, hired himself for this job. But he demanded twice as much money because now he wouldn’t get to buy fodder for the horse at the market. When he saw the car, he was very happy; it was a good three hands longer than the horse. Moreover, he wouldn’t have to bother with curry-combing it every morning and night. He was a barber by birth, but he considered himself a jack — no, a master — of all trades. There wasn’t any job that he hadn’t already done and already messed up at. He used to say that when he was on the Burma Front defeating the Japanese, then whatever time he had off from driving the Japanese into the ground — and that was very little — he did some driving for the army. Not one passenger ever complained about his driving. And there were no fatalities — not even in the worst accidents. That was because he drove around the dead British soldiers. From his boastful stories, it was clear that he had put his life on the line to transport the regiment’s corpses to their shallow graves and to perform his duties as barber for those not yet dead. And that for his bravery, he had received a bronze medal that a Sikh man, baring his kirpan dagger, stole from him during the commotion of 1947.
There’s no real need to puncture the balloons of such egotism, but I can vouch for the fact that it was only when he learned that Basharat was going to buy a car that he got Gul Badshah Khan, the truck driver, to teach him how to drive a car. But that was like serving an apprenticeship under a blacksmith before becoming a goldsmith. At the time, an Anglo-Indian sergeant conducted the driving test; Khalifa had been cutting his entire family’s hair for the last six years. This is Khalifa’s narration of the events: ‘The sergeant conducted the test in the big open field near the Jinnah Court. But you couldn’t call it a test, it was just a formality. The sergeant said, “OK, caliph, make a figure eight, in English, with the car. Do it in front of me. I’ll stand here with this red flag. Don’t cross beyond this line. And do it in reverse.” Hearing this, I got really nervous. I’d never learned to drive in reverse. Once I had asked Gul Badshah Khan to teach me to drive in reverse. But he answered, “My teacher never taught me. And I’ve never had the need for it. My teacher Chinar Gul Khan told me that lions, airplanes, bullets, trucks, and Pathans can’t do backwards.”
‘I cursed out the sergeant under my breath, “You ape, if I could make a figure 8, then I’d hardly have to shave bears like you. I’d be the personal masseur of Ghulam Muhammad, the Governor General.” I’ve done so many things in my life for money. I’ve even been the gardener at GG House. I haven’t grown mustard in the palm of my hand, but in Karanchi, what’s it called, oh, yes, I’ve grown tulips. But no one among the rich looks for long at the flowers planted in their yards. Only the gardener. He plants the flowers, and he alone enjoys them. Hidayatullah, the waiter, told me that every limb of the GG Sahib was paralysed. Even his tongue. But he still manages to slander everyone who comes by. But he’s a real man. He never wastes time cursing out inferiors. As he grows weaker, his curses grow worse. Now only his butler, after putting his ear next to his mouth, listens to him. He translates his Punjabi curses into Delhi Urdu and then relays them to Qurratullah Shabab. Then Shabab translates them quickly into English and tells them to GG Sahib’s American secretary, Miss Ruth Moral. Then this firecracker strides sexily up to the assembled foreigners, ministers, and diplomats and tells them that the GG Sahib is very happy to meet them. Many times I’ve wanted to set him straight with a good massage. In a couple minutes I could wring him out so good that he would start springing around like a deer. But I never say anything because if he should happen to die, and he’s about to, they’ll send me to jail and my oil bottle off to get inspected.
‘So, dear sir, the sergeant drew a figure eight in the dirt with his boot. My God! I was scared for nothing. I figured out that a figure eight in English is only what grooms call breaking a horse. To break a wild horse, and to drain all the lust out of him, they spin him around very quickly in a couple circles. This was what the driving test’s purpose was! So I let it rip. Instead of a figure eight, I slammed it into reverse and started doing a tangled-drawstring sort of thing. Then I heard the sergeant yelling from behind, “Stop! Stop! You idiot!” To save himself, he had jumped onto the car’s bumper while still holding his red flag. He had barely escaped getting knotted up in the drawstring, I mean, getting run over. I said, “Sir, should I come again?” But he didn’t think it right for me to come for another test. I got my license the next day.
‘Thanks to you, I’m a master of all trades. What haven’t I done? I’ve even performed operations. But one went south, so I gave that up. What happened was my friend Allan fell head over heels in love with his cousin. But she wouldn’t agree to marry him — no matter what he tried. Who knows why Allan got it into his mind that the reason she wouldn’t marry him was the mole on his left thigh. So I cut it off. But it got infected. Now he has a limp. From that day on, I stopped doing surgeries. In the end, I married that girl. I’ve a mole on my right thigh.’
To Hell with It, and Marconi’s Grave
The car was suffering from many diseases — both those internal and external, both those secret and obvious. Once one part was fixed, another gave out. The car burned as much Mobil oil as it did gas, and Basharat’s blood burned twice as hot. One day the clutch burned out, and the next, the dynamo went kaput. He switched out the gearbox, but then it felt like someone was banging on the car with a spade from underneath the seats. Khalifa offered this diagnosis: ‘Sir, now, the universal’s acting up.’ Then the brakes started to fail. The mechanic said, ‘This model’s very old. They don’t make parts for it anymore. If you want me to, I’ll fix the brakes. But then you’ll either have to have the brakes pressed down all the time or never touch them again. Tell me what you’d like to do.’ Two weeks later, Khalifa informed him that the shock observers weren’t working. He called shock absorbers by that name. And the truth was that they no longer absorbed any shock. They were like worn-out old-timers who sit in some half-dark corner or lie in some half-dark niche and can only observe. They watch helplessly as their progeny screws up; this is the phase of life of true wisdom and understanding. When a man sees absurd acts being committed, and yet this doesn’t distress him or make him mad (and he doesn’t say to hell with it all), there can only be two reasons for this. I’ll tell you the second reason first: he has become so wise that he’s now tolerant and forgiving. And the first reason is that the stupidity is his own.