Mirages of the Mind by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi

Author:Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2015-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

14.

When He Was About to Cash Out

It must have been about two months after Khan Sahib left that a dictated letter came from him. It read:

By the grace of God, everything is all right here. But there is something. I didn’t want to tell you while I was staying with you because it would have unnecessarily worried you, and I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy your company. Three weeks before leaving Peshawar, I was diagnosed with cirrhosis. It was Stage 2, which is incurable. The doctors at Jinnah Hospital confirmed this. They said that I should keep myself entertained. They said that I should try to remain upbeat, and to surround myself with cheerful people whose company I enjoy. That’s what their prescription for good living came down to. Yaraji, I could read between the lines. But a tabla player could have told me as much. You didn’t need an MRP or FRCS degree, or to poke around with a stethoscope to say that much!

I thought of all my friends, but I couldn’t think of anyone as loving, cheerful, and intent on making others happy as you. So I bought a ticket and went to Karachi. Everything else was just to pass the time. All the days I spent with you were extra days added to my life. May God keep you so cheerful and attentive to me. Apologizing to you for the hardships I caused would be a type of Lucknavi grace, which is beyond the likes of unsophisticated men like me. These sorts of things happen between friends. My grandfather used to say, ‘There’s a saying in Persian that goes either don’t make friends with mahouts, or build your house so strong that it can withstand the blows of elephants.’

I’m sending with a truck driver ten kilos of fresh jaggery from Mardan with newly harvested walnuts set in them like jewels, three organic honeycombs from Swat complete with their real wax and dead bees, and twenty quails in a thin-necked basket. For Yousufi Sahib, I’m sending in a delicate basket two kilos of his favourite paneer from Peshawar Cantt, along with Pindi’s hunter beef. When I was leaving, he asked me to send a couple good artifacts from the Gandhara Civilization. I got caught up in the commotion of leaving, and forgot to ask him what exactly he wanted. I asked a couple of my ignorant friends here. They sent me to some Gandhara store. They said, ‘We sell top-quality trucks and genuine parts. What are you looking for?’ On Monday, the secretary of a construction foreman came back from the Takht Bhai Mardan site with four exquisite statues of black stone wrapped up in a sheet. But when I asked a big-time smuggler here who sends larger-than-life statues to America, he said that they weren’t the Buddha but they were his lackeys (for them there’s a real bad word in Pashto), yes men, and suck-ups because the Buddha was never so muscular. I’ve heard that the Buddha, after he reached nirvana, looked as bad as Yousufi does now—all skin and bones.

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