A truce is just another instrument of war
The gun is emptied just to be filled again
I’ve heard that neighbourhood women used to fight like this. After yelling at each other all day, implicating their own husbands in far-reaching, lecherous crimes, the women found that their throats had become hoarse. Then as the men were set to come home, they cleared the battlefield but placed at their property lines (meaning, the common wall between the two houses) an overturned pot to signify that the curse-war was temporarily suspended due to darkness. A cursefire was in effect. The next day the hostilities would begin again. The thing is that if you can’t see your enemy, your curses will lack inspiration. At all hours, the store was filled with squabbling and wrestling, and outside the burly supporters sat around the samovar. Of course customers were scared away. According to my first teacher, Maulvi Muhammad Ismail Meruthi, whose school reader taught me my first lessons in self-defense and the art of running away,
When two brigands are fighting,
Think first about how to save yourself.
If a customer did come in, Khan Sahib would lament his losses in such a way that the customer either became scared or his eyes welled up with tears, and in both cases, he ran away.
The arguing proved salubrious for Khan Sahib. His tongue grew sharper, and his appetite picked up. He was in no way ready to accept less money because the price he was asking was exactly what he had paid. For his part, Basharat kept saying, ‘First, the wood had a bad grain, and it was full of burls. Even the sharpest saw went dull from it. Second, it wasn’t seasoned. Many planks were warped. There wasn’t a single plank that was good. Third, there was a lot of “spoilage.”15 Fourth, it was infested with bugs.’
Khan Sahib quipped, ‘Fifth, the wood was stolen. That’s my fault too. Sixth, I gave you wood. I didn’t give you a girl. In that case, it would’ve been fine for you to nitpick her dowry. Whenever you eat too much paan, you start arguing like a woman.’
Basharat didn’t hear the last word right, and he got offended, ‘You really are a man from Kabul!’
‘What do you mean?’
Basharat explained to him the meaning of ‘a man from Kabul.’ He got enraged. He said, ‘My tribe has never been in the usury business. It’s no better than eating pork to us! But you thrust both your hands in, and don’t even care to hide it. Even your homemade gravy is haram. It’s half water, half chillies, and half usury! If you call me that again, watch out!’
Then, in his rage, he slammed his fist down on the table with such force that the cups, spoons, pens, and a dish of roasted peas jumped a foot in the air. The alarm clock on the table started ringing. And then, without saying anything, he took his loaded revolver from his Turkish jacket’s pocket and set it on the table. After a minute, he swivelled the barrel to point toward himself.
Basharat grew scared. He didn’t understand how to take back the poisoned arrow that had not only already left his bow but that had also already punctured the breast of his dear guest. Khan Sahib immediately ordered one of his commandos inside and told him to buy a ticket for him on the next train to Peshawar. He skipped lunch. Basharat begged for forgiveness. Khan Sahib kept getting angry, and so he kept walking out of the shop, although in such a manner that with every step,
He turned back to see if anyone was pleading with him to stay.
At four o’clock, Basharat fell to his feet. Khan Sahib agreed to return to his house if and only if Basharat fed him paan with his own hands.
Then Khan Sahib’s attitude underwent a change for the better.
Basharat was very ashamed of what he had said. Like the English idiom goes, he was dying of shame. But Khan Sahib wasn’t any less ashamed at his overreaction. He tried to make up for it and to console Basharat in a variety of ways. For example, if he saw that Basharat was sad or exhausted, or if suddenly in the midst of their arguing he should flee like a sissy from the battlefield leaving Khan Sahib like Don Quixote brandishing his sword in the air, then, with a unique and kind coquetry, he would say, ‘Sir, the man from Kabul pays his respects and humbly asks you for a paan. Please feed me paan.’ He had never even tasted paan before. Basharat was so ashamed he wanted to bury himself. So, from time to time, either out of embarrassment or in a mock-serious way, he would fold his hands together in supplication and get up. And sometimes he would touch Khan Sahib’s knees. And sometimes Khan Sahib would kiss Basharat’s hands and then put them over his own eyes.
10.
Mr Palangzeb (Bed-warmer) Khan
In the evening, he had a bed brought out into the courtyard and fitted with a mosquito net. For the last little while, he had given up sitting in chairs. He had accused Basharat of leaving nails exposed on the seats of the chairs reserved for his guests so that their shalwars would get caught. At an appropriate distance from his bed, he had four charpoys installed complete with mosquito nets for visitors to sit on. He said, ‘If you put wings on one of our Frontier scorpions, you’ll get Karachi mosquitos.’ All conversing took place from within mosquito nets. But if someone should happen to get excited while talking, they would flick up the net like a bridegroom takes off his wedding garland after the ceremony. From the far-flung parts of the city, his Pathan friends, brothers in arms, and disciples came in droves to see him. He received them as though he was at home. Until late at night, blue enamelware trays were passed around, as well as a hookah. These tea connoisseurs mixed jaggery from Mardan and powdered poppy seeds into their boiling hot tea from Chura. Absolutely everyone brought something or another for Khan Sahib: walnuts; pine nuts; black gulab jamun dessert treats from Peshawar; honeycombs; Talagang and Dera Ismail Khan’s white tobacco; and young, purebred roosters16 from Qaraqul, which Khan Sahib ate with great gusto. The roosters went around the house all day strutting and shitting. The green poo on the red cement looked especially atrocious (if you replace ‘atrocious’ with ‘obnoxious’ the sentence will still be funny). When a rooster crowed at the wrong time or too loudly, that was the first that Khan Sahib slaughtered. In the morning when the full congregation of roosters crowed together, it sent a shock wave through the neighbourhood. One day a young man from Mohmand gave him a hen by mistake. That day, all the roosters fought ferociously against one another. This was the first time that they had fought for a sensible, identifiable reason; otherwise, they fought till the death with one another for no known reason, cause, or purpose. No one tried to stop this, however; that was because if they weren’t fighting amongst themselves, they started biting the family members. The roosters fought so much over the single hen that by morning they were too tuckered out to crow. Instead, they sat silently in the henhouse and listened to the mullah warble the call to prayer.
On Sundays, Khan Sahib reclined on his bed, and, with his eyes half open, resolved the tribal disputes and land claims of Bannu and Kohat. Now instead of Aurangzeb Khan (the King), he seemed more like Palangzeb Khan (the Bed-warmer). But at night he slept on the ground. He said, ‘It’s good for my arrogance and back. During our Frontier winters, the connoisseurs of sleep prefer soft hay. All night long, you smell the sweet scent of the wild expanses and the mountains. Whichever man takes in the sweet scent of the wild and likes it will be someone who can never be subjugated or made a slave.’
On Sundays, he ate lunch and then prayed. If lunch was bland, or if it had too many chillies, then his good mood was ruined, and he didn’t pray. He said, ‘How can I lie in front of the One Who Knows Men’s Hearts? How can I say “God be praised” twelve times?’ Usually there was arguing and backbiting going on in the room; nonetheless, he would go alone to the corner, unfold his prayer mat, and stand ready in prayer. But he kept listening. If, while praying, he heard something that put down him or his argument, he would immediately — right in the middle of bowing — leave off the prayer and start cursing out the offending soul in Pashto. Then he would put his hands on his belly, and with his ears still tuned in the other direction, continue praying.