The Storyteller

by Adib Khan

  I occupied myself by thinking about the free lunch for the poor at Jama Masjid. I knew the mullah responsible for distributing kichri. He was an old man who accepted my presence among the beggars and the children without a fuss. The first time I turned up for the monthly feed, he looked at me with discerning eyes and asked my name.

  ‘I am hungry,’ I said boldly. ‘I haven’t eaten for two days.’ It was a lie.

  He responded by ladling an extra serving of kichri on my battered tin plate. Ever since (I cannot possibly guess how many months or years have passed), I have been one of a handful of constants in the long line of changing faces that mills around the steps of the mosque. The old man and I never spoke after that first time. A brief ritual had developed between us. He paused in front of me, the bucket of kichri held in his left hand. His eyes widened in recognition, and I was acknowledged with a grunt and a nod of the head. My grin had no effect on him. Under his breath he muttered a blessing for Allah’s forgotten creatures and served me two large scoops of rice and lentil. Regularly I was given a piece of bone with shards of tendon that had not dissolved in the white and yellow mush. I was eager to see the old man and hear his whispered blessing. The words had assumed a special significance for me. For the rest of the day I felt fresh and contented, as if I had been given a bath with soap and holy water.

  The assistant called our number. Lightning Fingers woke Chaman, and we helped her into the hakim’s chamber. It was a hot, airless room without a window. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, illuminating the buckled shelves where the medicine jars were stored. Rows of glass containers were filled with labelled powders. On a table there were several mortars and pestles of various sizes. The assistant took a handful of dried leaves from a wooden box and crushed them into tiny particles. A pungent smell permeated the air and made me sneeze.

  The hakim was younger than I had expected. He was a robust-looking man with a flourishing beard and sparkling eyes. He was out of place in the gloomy room with its threatening shadows.

  Chaman sat quietly on a stool. Lightning Fingers looked at Farishta who nudged Nimble Feet. It was left to me to break the embarrassing silence and describe Chaman’s symptoms—tiredness, rashes all over her body, poor vision, a nagging cough and loss of weight. She had little appetite and found it difficult to sleep at night. The hakim listened politely. He closed his eyes and stroked his beard. Chaman appeared to be uninterested in her condition. She looked demurely at the palm of her right hand, scrutinising the lines as if she were on the verge of figuring out what Fate had determined for her.

  The hakim reached out and felt the pulse in her wrist. He grunted and pressed his index and middle fingers against her throat. With his other hand he prodded the back of her head. Next he checked the inside of Chaman’s mouth and throat. The rashes on her arms occupied him for some time.

  ‘Aah…’ The hakim gulped and paused to give himself an opportunity to find the appropriate words. ‘I would like to…to examine your private parts.’

  ‘Many men fuck me.’ Chaman looked at him without flinching.

  ‘Chaman!’ I was angry, hurt and bewildered by such a frank admission to a stranger.

  Sullenly we filed outside, smarting from the stark vulgarity of her confession. It was as if she had betrayed us all by revealing a communal secret.

  ‘She is very sick,’ Farishta whispered.

  ‘We all are.’

  They turned to look at me with unbridled hostility.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  I chose to examine my fingernails.

  ‘Vamana?’

  ‘The world is a sick place.’

  ‘Oh!’ There was relief that the remark wasn’t directed at them alone.

  We waited until the assistant stuck out his head and called us back inside the chamber where the hakim was busily mixing powders from different jars. He spooned equal quantities on pieces of square, white paper and then folded them into tiny packets.

  ‘Four every day,’ he instructed.

  ‘Will you be able to cure her?’ Farishta asked innocently.

  Chaman laughed. A bitter noise that silenced the questions I was about to put to the hakim.

  He looked at us gravely. ‘I have to be honest. I cannot promise to do the impossible.’ He looked at Chaman who nodded firmly. ‘It is a new illness. A very serious illness. But with my medicine and Allah’s help…’ He raised his hands in the air.

  His gesture irritated me. ‘Words can be the source of happiness. You could have said something different. Sounded more confident.’ Even if someone had smacked me with an ice block on the side of my head, I couldn’t have felt worse. A cold current jagged through me. I coughed and began to shiver. My temples throbbed. I grabbed Chaman’s hand and squeezed it, more to comfort myself than to console her. The temptation passed.

  ‘My religion forbids me to lie. It is not morally right.’

  I went close to the hakim and motioned him to bend down. ‘Is it not moral to make people happy?’ I whispered. ‘To give them hope? Don’t you believe in justifiable lies?’

  ‘Money,’ the assistant intruded, sticking out a hand and snapping his fingers.

  As they haggled over the fee, I flashed my best grin, the one that made me look helpless. ‘Hakim Saheb, can I see you quickly about something?’

  He agreed, but somewhat reluctantly I thought. I encouraged the others to leave without me. Maybe with herbal medicine and the help of his God…

  10

  Knowledge of doubt

  A lone wolf pants in the night. Head lowered, he circles around me, salivating. Moist nostrils sniff the air. He bares his canines and paws the ground. A low growl of unmistakable intention. How does it feel to be ripped open from the inside? To have chunks of flesh torn from the bones and entrails devoured by a fanged predator? To soak in the salty warmth of one’s own blood? Drifting…and then drowning.

  How much do I know? The question remains suspended in darkness. I try to imagine the intensity of pain as consciousness wavers in desperate gasps. Is there anger at the end? A will to fight in such a state of desolate helplessness? A shiver of apprehension. Or could it be anticipation?

  From deep within the bowel of the forest, a sound rises. A slow, prolonged howl of agony. Man? Beast? Or is it God’s anguish over the flaws of creation? Could it be the earth itself, begging forgiveness and denouncing its sins? I cannot tell. I have only approached the dawn of an imperfect understanding. My flesh is not putrid. It does not stink of death. I am still shackled to this world. The animal turns and bounds away into the mist. I can hear the trees. They stand tall, swaying in unison as the cold wind strums the riddles of the night. I am no closer to the silent moon. The possibility of death is snatched away.

  Aaah, there are scorpions in my head, my back and my limbs. Slowly I flex my fingers. I roll on my back. Sharp knives plunge between the shoulder blades. My eyelids are partially open. I wonder if they have blinded me. Are these walls? Above me, a ceiling. The window must be somewhere up there. Perhaps the night is without its cluster of stars…

  Heavy footsteps. A light flickers. That moan again. How did it escape from the nightmare? Familiar sounds. A key turns. The door to the next cell creaks open.

  ‘It’s nothing compared to what we can do to you.’

  The groan is the surrender of a broken man. A harsh laughter penetrates the corners of darkness. A body falls heavily on the floor. Once more I am to be inflicted with company. But this time it is in the next cell. The door clangs shut. The footfalls recede.

  Darkness and laboured breathing. Despite my injuries, there is an alert animal inside me. ‘You are not alone.’ I did not intend to terrify him. He begins to whimper. ‘I, too, have been beaten up.’

  Movement. A cry of pain. I sense that he is trying to prise apart the iron bars separating us.

  ‘My face…they have done something to my face.’

  ‘A few broken bones maybe.’

  ‘My face!’ he howls.

/>   I make no move to comfort him. He is a man unworthy of my attention. One of those who will give in, weep and fall at the feet of the guards and shower them with tearful apologies. Swear on his ancestors’ names and promise never to repeat his mistakes. Bribes, if he can afford them. Offer his bum, if he is young and shapely. I wonder about his looks. Contoured hips…firm buttocks…a moist, hairy cleft, musky and virginal. Despite the heat, I shiver.

  ‘My face…’

  ‘Shut up and get some sleep. You may find another life.’

  There wasn’t any point in wasting a story on him. I touch my cheeks, my chin and forehead.

  My face…

  The hakim looked at me gravely and then helped me to sit up on a high stool under a lantern. I thought I detected the dullness of defeat in his eyes. I contained my anger. The son of a diseased bitch claimed to have a cure for most things that perplexed other doctors. He held my face with both hands and moved it sideways, examining the texture of the skin, pressing the bones, circling his fingers around the sores and pimples. He avoided touching the areas where the skin was pink, wrinkled and peeling. He prodded my forehead and knocked on my skull with the knuckles of his right hand. My head fascinated him.

  ‘It’s like a seasoned gourd,’ he murmured, ‘round and hard. I have never seen such a large head. Not even on the Devil himself—and I have confronted him!’

  ‘My face!’ I hissed.

  ‘I will give you some dawa,’ he said slowly. ‘It will remove a few of the blemishes from your skin. As for the rest…’ He spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. ‘What Allah has given is beyond any human to change.’

  He wrapped a mixture of powders in neatly cut squares of newspaper. ‘Take three of these every day. Keep out of the sun and avoid spicy food. Drink plenty of water and goat’s milk. And…’ He looked embarrassed. ‘And…abstain from sex.’ He strained to look at me. ‘Do you have sex?’

  ‘Every day,’ I replied earnestly. ‘With men, women…whatever is handy.’

  He shrank back against a wall, revulsion contorting his face. ‘La haul valla quwwat illah bi-illah hil ali yul aleem!’ He wiped his face with the sleeve of his kurta. ‘Astak firullah!’ He raised his hands in a prayer for my salvation.

  ‘Can you give me anything to make me tall?’ I ventured boldly.

  ‘I can only cure some diseases,’ he reminded me sternly.

  ‘Something that can shrink my head?’

  He looked at me with undisguised disgust.

  ‘Medicine to remove the warts from my body? Take away the smell from the pores of my skin? Prevent my gums from bleeding? Curb my sexual urges?’

  He shook his head in an admission of defeat. I felt triumphant after exposing his limitations. I was not the only one who was handicapped.

  ‘Will your medicine cure Chaman?’

  ‘She has sinned. She must pray for Allah’s forgiveness.’

  ‘Will the medicine work?’ I insisted.

  ‘Anything is possible with the grace of Allah. Prayers have unlimited power.’

  ‘Can your medicine help me?’

  He avoided my eyes and began to straighten the jars on the shelves.

  Outside the door the assistant was attempting to placate a fat woman who insisted on seeing the hakim immediately.

  ‘What kind of dawa has he given me?’ she snarled, looking into his eyes. ‘The swelling has not gone down, the pain has increased and I spend most of my time in the latrine.’

  ‘It will take a few more weeks!’ the assistant argued. ‘Your condition demands treatment over a long period. Several more visits. More medicine.’

  ‘Is money free? Like shit?’ she yelled, attracting everyone’s attention in the room. ‘Will the treatment be free?’ She spat paan juice at his feet.

  The man jumped sideways. I stepped past his legs without being noticed. I hadn’t thought about payment until I saw the assistant being harangued by the dissatisfied patient.

  Outside, the city burned in the late morning’s heat. A gusty wind slapped my face when I stepped into the lane. A whirlwind of dust swirled past me. I hurled the medicine packets into the air with a sense of immense relief. I preferred to live without the crutches of hope. My face, my head and my size belonged to the disorder of a sick world. Perhaps I was a symptom of an incurable disease. Maybe illness and darkness were the natural state of whatever there was. The world was merely a tiny fragment of the interminable malaise. I found it much easier to believe in the malice of the Devil than in God’s benevolence. I could perceive the effects of evil more readily than the benefits of a divinely guided goodness. And yet, when the hakim was examining Chaman, I mumbled words that I had heard in mosques and temples. I thought of Jesu and eagerly awaited another chat with him. I thought about the inviting coolness inside the church. The vast emptiness had a peculiar attraction for me. I could fill the spaces with angels, animals and birds. If only there was a way of getting Father Daniel out of the church. Somehow I couldn’t rid myself of the impression that he was an impurity in a holy place. As for my presence…well, I wasn’t exactly human, was I? In my more hopeful moments, I preferred to think of myself as a rarity, an exotic creature intended for the landscape of Paradise. I placed my cap on my head, untangled the strap of the satchel and began the walk to Jama Masjid.

  The role of a beggar was not an unfamiliar one for me. Quite often I pretended to be destitute, stocked with tales of hardship intended to evoke pity and generosity among the more affluent members in the community. What did I say? Words of woe about a blind, ageing father and a seriously ill mother. Sometimes I poured out my grief about a deaf and dumb sister, deformed brothers, mutilated uncles and insane aunts—anything to draw attention to the plight of a luckless Delhiwallah.

  And what made it all so believable? Fut! What a question! Me…Me! Me! Who else but seriously defective parents could bear a child so formless, so wrinkled and ugly? I squinted and stuttered, carried a battered aluminium bowl and exaggerated my limp. I whined and wiped away tears. I made certain that my eyes were red from weeping. (A piece of onion held under the eyelids was extraordinarily effective.) I exploited my appearance with astounding success near the large and splendid hotels crowded with gora foreigners. Whether the wealthy, sweaty tourists viewed me as a pitiable novelty or a genuinely distressing sight, a blot on their conscience and a weight on their fat bellies, a damper on their holidays or a shadow to haunt their dreams, I cannot tell. But I found that persistence had its payment. Pursuing and nagging the sahebs and memsahebs with my familial troubles was a crafty piece of work.

  It was not entirely a safe exercise, and eventually it turned into a dangerous challenge. I was flattered that almost the entire police force in the city knew about me. I heard stories and anecdotes about the mad dwarf, the hideous-looking midget, the stunted thief with different faces, the lunatic who bit people, that strange fellow possessed by evil spirits.

  It pleased me to be pointed out in bazaars and have people flocking to my storytelling sessions. But the police gave me no respite. I tried different bazaars, street corners, under the trees and in open fields. It didn’t matter. A khaki-clad man with a stick would inevitably appear like a guilty conscience. Whispered words reached me. The scramble to disappear was often aided by members of the audience. They shoved and jostled to start mock fights. It was a common practice for them to bump into the policeman and then insist on a lengthy apology by holding his arms and mouthing words of contrition.

  I suspected that the intensity of the vendetta against me was due to the growing frustration of the police at their inability to catch me after that initial thrashing I had received from Ram Lal and his helpers. I have to admit that some of my tales about corrupt and bungling policemen must have made them more determined to trap me. What I disclosed to the public in the guise of stories was not entirely untrue.

  A few incidents, revolving around the occasions when I was nearly nabbed for stealing food, were spiced and stretched into episodi
c tales of high-spirited adventure. The daring escapes of Laluah, otherwise known as the one-eyed shrimp, became crowd favourites and bolstered our earnings quite considerably.

  One of my strategies for thwarting the police was fairly simple. When I deliberately set out to tease them on summer nights, I wore nothing except tight underpants and a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses that I had pinched from a shop—an unseemly sight, no doubt. A dark blob moving unsteadily among the mysteries of the darkness. I avoided the streetlights. I scampered through lanes and under stalls, squeezed between narrow walls, crawled under fences and along the sides of gutters. I slathered myself with oil—scalp and hair, arms, legs, groin, torso and back—which made me slippery and almost impossible to grip. The sunglasses? They satisfied a craving to darken the night. Once a policeman managed to grab my legs, only to find his hands greasy and empty the next moment. Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped to dance in the shadows, laugh from a corner and move quickly to a different spot to taunt and abuse the dumb goat-fucker. But who could resist such a moment of nectarine victory? Not me! No, sir! I never pretended to be a saint. There were other near misses, but I outwitted them every time.

  I relished the thought of Ram Lal’s eroding patience and his lack of success. I dwelled on his anger and gloated at his despair. My elusiveness must have affected his appetite, caused him to abandon sleep, shrivelled his bowel and constipated him.

  One day I actually followed him from the police station. He carried a red ball in his hand. From a side alley I threw a stone at him. Startled, he screamed abuses at a group of boys playing marbles on the side of the road. Heh! Heh! What hellish delight to watch the whites of his eyes roll and his face distort with rage. Saliva trickled down the corners of his twitchy mouth as he fingered the shoulder badges on his khaki shirt to display his lawful authority.

  The boys panicked and ran. I somersaulted and cartwheeled down the alley, hysterical with laughter. I became more mischievous as my boldness grew…