The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack

by HM Naqvi

  In time, Comrade Bakaullah would find God in the desert—not just any god, mind you, but the tribal God of a tribal people. It was not merely a matter of genetic predisposition or geography, the Bedouin Way. No, he was a wounded man: in the summer of a fateful year, when travelling for the inauguration of a water park, a Dodge Monaco collided with his station wagon. Bakaullah’s wife, my sister-in-law and friend, died immediately, his five-year-old, hazel-eyed heir expired later that night whilst his daughter (known to all and sundry as Princess Surriya), lay in a coma for almost two years. Bakaullah attended to her every day, pacing and praying, but one fine day she left us. Verily, there are matters that pollute and fester and deplete our beings until we are nothing but husks.

  The accident transpired long after that wintery evening when I was summoned bedside by Papa. Bunnet fastened on head, he handed me a blue file bound by string that opened to the following itineraries:

  — PAGE 1 —

  Annual Ball

  Caledonian Society

  Host: Caledonian Society

  Guests: President General Ayub, Mr N.A. Leslie

  — PAGE 2 —

  Evening Party

  Queen’s Road Residence

  Host: Prince of Bahawalpur

  Guests: UK High Commissioner & Lady Symon,

  Austrian Minister & Mrs. Hartlmayr,

  Canadian High Commissioner & Mrs. Moran,

  Mr. HS Suharwardy, Mr. & Mrs. Dinshaw

  — PAGE 3 —

  1Cocktail Party

  PECHS Residence

  Host: Mr. & Mrs. Mobed

  Guests: Mr. & Mrs. Braganza, Mr. Max Koening,

  Dr. Khumbatta, Mr. Dubas, Ms. Patel,

  Ms. Jenny, Mr. Max Koening

  As I held the documents in my hand like vellum, Papa instructed, “Shake the hand of the host when you enter, commend them on the occasion, sample the spread, then slip out. You need not linger. You are attending these events in a professional capacity, in my stead. Do you understand?”

  “Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir,” I saluted. I understood that I had, in effect, been designated Ambassador of the Clan, at age twenty. The nominal nomination would cause certain rifts if not rancor even if the others did not qualify—Hidayatullah was already a serving major and Bakaullah, a card-carrying Communist—but at the time I was oblivious to the ramifications & determined to play the role with requisite serious-mindedness. I selected shoes and socks and a shark-grey suit114 the night before, practiced polite conversation before the mirror: The weather has turned nippy, has it not? Or, Those melons, no doubt, are Central Asian. One had to be prepared. The New Year was upon us so I conducted research about it in the society paper of record, Aunty Zaibunnissa’s Monthly Mirror:

  It’s difficult to believe that [the New Year] is already here, isn’t it? [Last year] is dead and buried [but] dear old December always dies with so much fun and frivolity that there’s no sadness at all … This year, December’s last moments were filled to the brim with merrymaking. Hotels were crowded with enjoyment seekers and everywhere a festive spirit reigned supreme.

  Red & yellow buntings draped the walls at the Annual Caledonian Society Ball, magnificent flower arrangements bedecked the tables. Dames in dresses, in saris, promenaded with men in black tie, smoking pipes, talking about the bloodless coup. Presenting my invitation card at the door, I limply shook hands, wondering, Who on earth are the Caledonians?115 & What to do? Although initially relegated to the periphery of the festivities, I would, in time, find my feet. I might not have known it but Currachee came of age then. So did I.

  Of course, when Papa took to his bed for the second time, the last time, everything had changed: the Caledonian Society had disbanded by ’77, ’78, banking & manufacturing had been nationalized, Mummy had passed, and I had come apart. After spending a couple of years graveside—what’s the point, I reckoned, when you lose sight of essential matters, materfamilias—I spent years drinking vodka until vodka was banned.

  In lucid moments, I attended to the ailing patriarch who, by then, had taken up residence in the Olympus. The edifice was in a state of disrepair, dilapidation: the shingles would get dislodged frequently by a gust or cloudburst, and slide down the slope of the roof to shatter on the esplanade. Pigeons made their homes in the interstices, and mangy strays roamed the ground floor, finding refuge in kitchen cabinets and under the bed. Papa fed them every day out of his leathery hands. They purred and urinated in corners. The feline is a despicable creature. But perhaps he required company. Tony was away, Babu no fun; the Major rarely showed & Comrade Bakaullah sent missives from the desert, suing me for negligence. Sometimes an old-timer, some other broken, bereft captain of industry, would turn up with a story of woe, but by then most of the old-timers were lost to time.

  One night Papa summoned me bedside. I studied my father in the wan light—Adam’s apple bulging, tongue heavy, eyes crusted around the rim. “I want you to remember one thing,” he whispered. “You will be judged by what you finish, not what you begin.” I did not quite understand what he meant—I was a bottle into the evening. “You have not grown up the way I expected,” he continued, “but you have been a good son.” When he handed me the title deed—the Lodge, I learnt, was in Mummy’s name—I stammered, stumbled out. What to do? What to say?

  The next day I found Papa dead.

  109. Many maintain cancer was rare then but I suspect medical science did not have the requisite tools for detection.

  110. For the record, however, my favourite breakfast is paratha & clotted cream sprinkled with sugar. There’s nothing in the world like it.

  111. Arguably, he was ahead of the times: I understand that it is now fashionable to be what is termed Vegan.

  112. When Hidayatullah had pleaded for the navy, Papa exclaimed, “What, what? Rum, buggery, and the lash?”

  113. When I told Bakaullah Marxism predates Marx by hundreds if not thousands of years—the Zoroastrian prophet Mazdak was the first Communist, preaching virtues of common good & community circa 500 CE & Inayat Shah (RA) established a commune in Scinde before the Mughals wiped it out—he growled, “The hell does it matter?”

  114. For all Papa’s bespoke tailoring, he frequented Nawaz & Co.

  115. Conducting research after the fact, I learnt that they serve ample malt refreshments, neeps, tatties & stuffed offal known as haggis & venerate that poet known for his affinity for haggis. How does it go? “Some hae meat but canna eat / And some wad eat that want it …”

  ON THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

  (or MAN WITH A PLAN)

  In the Annals of Man, there have been peoples who have braved the murderous gales of the Arctic & Antarctic, peoples who have defied the bald, blanching sun of the Gobi & Kalahari, those who have inhabited trees,116 those who have populated the open seas,117 but there have never been a People Who Have Lived in the Night. One concedes that the Viking States experience evenings that extend for months, and in lost history books you will find cave dwelling peoples for whom day was night and night was day—the Phruges of Anatolia, for instance, carved subterranean cities into volcanic rock more than a millennium ago—but Cave Life is a different matter, a different Mode of Being altogether.

  I have lived, oft thrived, at night. Indeed, there have been stretches when I have not felt the warmth of the sun on my face but have seen the light: I have probed forgotten crevices of intellectual history, scaled cosmological peaks. Carpe Diem? No, Carpe Noctis! At night, you are indifferent to the diurnal pantomimes that characterize the wakeful multitudes, from the Shaving of the Cheek to the Cataloguing of the Post. You do not have to contend with simpleminded sloganeering, the petty chatter that governs the age: You’re looking healthy, mashallah. How do you keep busy? Take care of yourself. I will take care of nothing! I will devour a bowl of clotted cream with salted caramel ice cream to spite them!

  But the night following the day I received the note from my lost brother, I recall why mankind eschews nightfall: night can be des
olate, night can be absolute. You can hide from others but not from yourself. You are an irredeemably idiotic old man, I admonish myself; you will lose everything, lose everybody, if you do not summon Will to Power. But I cannot even summon the will to turn on my side. There is a tightness in my chest, as if I am girdled by bubble wrap, a throbbing in my left shoulder blade—I am certain I require an ECG, open heart surgery—and I can sense the cosmos conspiring against me: lying in bed long after Bosco has retired, I discern perfidy in the trill of the fruit bats, in the metronomic clicks that break the silence, in Jugnu’s absence. She never showed. Consequently, I had dinner, Chicken à la Kiev, cold.

  Rereading Bakaullah’s note, I recognize the Gods of Modernity amongst the eternal injunctions of the Gods of Yesteryear, cognizant that Comrade Bakaullah, like his God, will do what he is wont. He always has. After attacking me in a series of lawsuits, he stripped me of my shareholdings in the family’s principal business concerns, leaving me with the rump of the faltering empire—a recycling unit in the Industrial & Trading Estate (spun off from our paints & plastics business), a garment-dyeing operation, and a video rental service, known to customers as Sunny Video. Bakaullah claims that I have run each into the ground. That’s bakwas, bavardage.

  There is no doubt that there is great scope in the recycling industry118—we are, as a matter of record, one of the world’s leading recyclers—but Operation Clean-up, the brutal army campaign in the summer of ’92, coupled with power shortages, conspired against success. In the end, the profit from the sale of the real estate barely covered dismantling costs. The video rental business, on the other hand, was a victim of changing dynamics, viz., the demise of the video cassette, rampant piracy, censorship. And though it is not incorrect to assume that I do not possess the patience for dyeing garments, it is no secret that my manager Chambu, that formidable swine, is in cahoots with the land mafia, that I do not see a paisa, that the industry, indeed the entire economy was in disarray after the Tit-for-Tat Nuclear Tests of ’98. At the time I did not understand why Hindoostan pursued the exercise, why we reciprocated, but when I thought about it later, it was as clear as a winter morning: siblings always behave badly.

  Whilst I might have had many matters on my mind—the Childoos’ gifts, carnal congress with Jugnu, the moral and intellectual development of Bosco, the legacy of Abdullah Shah Ghazi (RA)—I am not a dashed fool; I have not forgotten about the matter of the Lodge. I recall phoning our family legal counsel, Kapadia, remember he agreed to meet, and remember he postponed our tête-à-tête due to some legal emergency—an outstanding case at the High Court concerning the scions of This or That Khanate. What to do? I must pull a hare from a hat.

  The light is silvery after six, the clouds turgid and grey. The old crow cackles, a koel calls to his mate.119 Soon the Lodge will stir, indifferent to the auspices: Nargis will rouse the Childoos, lead them to the lavatory, then to the kitchen where Babu will survey the city section—FIRST BATCH OF FEMALE FIGHTER PILOTS INDUCTED, BOXING CHAMPION OPENS FACILITY FOR YOUTHS—before turning to the editorial page. I have stopped taking interest in the news because it causes high blood pressure and who cares what others—people, mind you, no better than you or me—believe about foreign policy?

  As I rise to retire, bleary-eyed and beside myself, I spy a solitary figure loitering at the gate. Is it Chambu? Bua’s husband? The Grim Reaper? No! It’s Jugnu! Sporting dark trousers, a checkered bush shirt & a cap that lends her the appearance of a contractor, she beckons with a wave. In all the excitement, I nearly trip down the stairs and crack my head open like a raw egg on the landing. “This is the last time you will see me,” she announces, sack slung over the shoulder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “And I need money.”

  “You cannot just leave me like this, Jugnu.”

  “My name is Juggan.”

  Digging into my pocket, I produce a handful of notes. “I will pay for your story.” It’s a mercenary ploy. It works: she allows me to drag her up to my lair.

  Clearing her throat, as if poised to recite a ghazal, she begins: “You have heard of Langra Dacoit?” Who doesn’t know the Don of Lyari? “He is known as a gangster, a killer, but I can tell you he took me in when I had nobody, when I had nothing. I have been his keep120 for the last four years. The day before I first saw you he was picked up in an operation. They held him at Garden Station under remand. I was not there at the time—we had a spat that afternoon—otherwise they might have arrested me as well. There is an FIR121 against him but they do not have a case because no witnesses will testify. Last night I learnt they are looking for me. I know things about him—”

  “What?”

  “I have no time to waste time!” she says, viz., Time pass karnay ka time nahin.

  As Jugnu snatches the currency and flees like Taffy the Welshman, I reckon I ought to say something—Come again, come often!—but feel, What to say? What to do? The dame I love has shared the bed of another, a gangster, and is a fugitive from justice! Sitting like a paperweight considering the clutter about me—the rugs, canvases, candelabra, Betamax recorders—it occurs to me that I have nothing, that I cannot afford to let Jugnu go.

  The last time I ran, the bully triad was chasing me on the playground, hurling abuses, swinging fists. I run for my life again, but it’s like swimming against the tide. I can feel phlegm bubbling in my chest, uric acid coursing in my knees. I can feel gravity pulling me down to oblivion. Panting, sweating, thighs chafing, I tell myself I must turn the corner. Somehow I do. I spot Jugnu a furlong away, tarrying at the bus stop under the TouchMe Talcum Powder billboard.

  Clutching my thighs, swallowing mouthfuls of air, I attempt to call out to her but only manage a whimper. I attempt again but a bus noisily speeds past. It’s like howling in a hurricane, a nightmare. Crumpling to the ground, I whisper to the earth like a madman, a majnun: Come back, come back, Oh God, come back. Then I hear a voice speak to me in the darkness: “Tum to sajday main gir gaye,” or You’ve fallen in prayer. I open my eyes to Jugnu squatting on her haunches beside me. “You made me miss my bus.”

  “The express train does not wait for the passenger.”

  Mercifully, the bent neighbourhood raddi-wallah appears on the scene like the volunteer fire brigade, helping me onto his rickety cart (claiming, erroneously, “This can carry a buffalo”). Resting my head on yesterday’s news, I grab Jugnu’s hand and gasp, “Come with me.” Although I have a habit of making promises I cannot keep, this time I actually have a plan. “You need to trust me. Will you trust me?”

  Jugnu squints at the gritty skyline, the slapdash billboards advertising shampoo and serials and prepaid telephone cards, the satellite dishes jutting from rooftops like finials, and tangled telephone wires extending into infinity. “I trust you.”

  The problem is I am not certain I can trust her.

  116. The Korowai & Kombai who inhabit the lowlands of West Papua scramble up & down trees unencumbered, members tucked into scrotums. They’re hounded by missionaries insisting they cover up, bow to their God.

  117. The Sea Gypsies of the Pacific, for example, inhabit the sea, and suffer badly from the bends.

  118. I must mention that the son of my friend S. Sajjad, the world-famous sculptor, invented a contraption that has the appearance of a garden-variety geyser but transforms PET bottles into petrol. It’s marvelous! Imagine: something from nothing!

  119. I am always surprised when I glimpse a koel. Their calls to each other are passionate, emphatic, loud, but they are generally quiet, contemplative creatures that remain camouflaged in the flora and foliage. The males are Moroccan blue, their mates specked black and white, and both have blood-orange eyes. Indeed, they inspire birdwatching. Oh, how I would have liked to be a birdwatcher! So much to do, so much not done. I blame the crows.

  120. For your information, she used the word “rakhayl.” Everybody ought to have one. Recall that old disco number that goes toot-toot, beep-beep.

  121
. Those outside Bangladesh, Hindoostan, Pakistan & Japan might not know that a First Information Report, or FIR, is prepared by the police concerning a “cognizable offense.” An arrest, then, is preceded by an FIR.

  ON HOW TO GET THINGS DONE

  (or LIFE LESSONS)

  Carted on my back like a carcass, I ask Jugnu if she has somewhere she can spend the afternoon. She says she has a friend in Golimar. I tell her to meet me at the tollbooth off Lover’s Bridge at seven sharp. “We leave town. Okay?” “Okay,” she sighs in English. I feel a pang when she boards a passing Victoria and waves like the queen, but for the first time in a long time, I am not anxious. Like Buddha after the Awakening, I know what has to be done: I corner Shafqat, Nargis’ domestic-in-training, upon returning to the Lodge. “I need your uncle, the mechanic.” Stressing supreme discretion with a hundred-rupee-handshake, the last I have to my name, I clamber up to pen the following dispatch:

  Dear Bakaullah Bhai,

  Concerning the note received, which I have read in its entirety, and appreciate for its erudition and unsentimentality, you should be happy to know that appropriate and necessary preparations are being undertaken forthwith.

  I would only humbly submit a request for a reprieve of three days, and three days only. You would understand that there are matters both great and small that require attention.

  I welcome you to the city as your brother and hope you have a fruitful sojourn.

  Your loving brother,

  Abdullah (The Cossack)

  Bidding Barbarossa with the dinner bell, I hand him the envelope and say, “You know Major Sahab’s house?”

  “Yessur, nossur, cocklediddledosur.”