No matter how much I say, "Brother Ahmad Ali, may God bless you, and in the end, you will go to heaven, please make some arrangements for my journey too," the more Ahmad Ali replies, "Dear brother, there is a Persian proverb, 'Der Aayad, Durust Aayad' meaning 'Whatever comes slowly comes correctly'; there is also an Arabic saying, 'Al ajalu min as-shaytan,' which means 'Haste is from the Devil.' There is even an English saying..."
I said, "I understand all of that, but I beg you, I cannot follow this Pathan style. I've heard it takes them fifteen days to reach Landikotal from here—a journey of only twenty-two miles."
Ahmad Ali asked calmly, "Who told you that?"
I replied, "Why, it was Ramzan Khan, the one with the curly hair, a very sweet talker, at last night's gathering."
Ahmad Ali said, "What does Ramzan Khan know about the Pathans? His grandmother is Punjabi, and he himself spent three months in Lahore. A true Pathan never crosses the Indus River. It should take at least six months to get from Landikotal to Peshawar. Otherwise, you can assume the man has taken shortcuts through his friends’ and relatives’ houses along the way. According to the Pathan tradition, every relative's home is a place to stay for thirteen days, and all Pathans are brothers. So, you can calculate from that."
There was no paper or pencil. I said, “Please have mercy, I have already signed the contract, I must go.”
Ahmad Ali replied, “What can I do if there is no bus available?”
“Have you tried?”
Ahmad Ali warned me to be cautious and informed me that he was a police inspector. He said that every day, various lawyers and agents interrogate him, and I wouldn’t fare well if I worked in that field.
Then he said, “Take a good look at Peshawar. There is much to see and much to learn. Merchants from Bukhara and Samarkand have come with fur coats, from Tashkent with samovars—”
I asked, “What is a samovar?”
“Haven’t you read Russian stories? A samovar is a metal container placed on the table to boil water for tea. Just like how you all rave about Ming dynasty vases, in Peshawar, Kandahar, and Tashkent, there are fights over samovars to see who can pay the highest price. But that’s a story for another day. Listen, carpets have come from Mazar-e-Sharif, red rubies from Badakhshan, prayer beads from Mashhad, from Azerbaijan—”
I interrupted, “Enough, enough.”
“And there’s more. They are all staying in inns. In the evening, there’s bustling trade, and at night, it’s all feasting, music, and drinking. So much noise, so much chaos, even murders and various sins. Haven’t you heard? Peshawar is the city of a thousand sins. Spend a month wandering in any inn—without any effort, you’ll pick up a dozen languages.”
Learn with effort! It will happen. Start with Pashto, and soon you’ll progress to Persian, then Jagatai, Mongolian, Ottoman Turkish, Russian, Kurdish—everything else will come easily to you. Don’t you have a passion for music? What are you saying? You are Bengali, I’ve read Tagore’s Gitanjali and Gardner’s translations. Ah, how wonderful they are! I’ve read them translated into Persian. You should have a taste for these things. Even if you don’t, how can you leave Peshawar without hearing Idanjan’s songs? The Peshawari beauty can sing in twelve languages. Her patrons stretch from Delhi to Baghdad. If you go, she’ll be very happy—her kingdom will spread from Baghdad to Bengal.
What could I say? I replied, “Everything will happen. But which poem by Tagore do you like the most?”
Ahmad Ali thought for a moment and said, “Aay Madar, Shahzada Imroz.”
I understood—this was the line:
“Oh mother, today the prince will come to take me…”
I said, “What are you saying, Khan Sahib? This isn’t the kind of poem you’d typically like. You are a Pathan. When you’re wounded by love, wouldn’t you stand firm like a tiger? You’d ride a horse at lightning speed, scoop your beloved into your arms, and carry her away to far-off lands. In some remote mountain cave, the first quarrel would begin, and you’d lower your head under her velvet shoes?”
I had to stop because Ahmad Ali remained unusually calm.
Ahmad Ali, being a man of nature, never interrupted anyone while they spoke. When I stopped mid-sentence, he asked, “Why did you stop? Please continue.”
I said, “Why would you Pathans ever whimper or cry with ‘meow meow’ or call out for your mother?”
Ahmad Ali replied, “Hmm, a German philosopher once said, ‘When approaching a woman, don’t forget to take your whip.’”
I exclaimed, “Goodness! Let’s not get into such extreme talk.”
Ahmad Ali said, “No, brother, in love, it’s either this side or that side. Love is like the main road in a city, full of people. There’s no room for the ‘golden mean’ or middle ground. Either you ‘keep to the right,’ meaning you express your heartache with gentleness, or you go ‘left,’ meaning what Nietzsche said with his iron fist. But let’s leave that aside.”
I understood that in matters of love, Pathans are silent doers. We Bengalis, on the other hand, can’t even whisper sweet nothings to our wives in the middle of the night without waking the entire neighborhood. Sensing my discomfort, Ahmad Ali tried to cheer me up by saying, “But in the Peshawar markets, no singer or dancer lasts more than six months. Some young Pathan is bound to fall in love, marry her, and take her back to his village to start a family.”
“Doesn’t society object? Doesn’t the girl start weeping after a few days, missing the city?”
“Why would society object? In Islam, there are no restrictions like that. As for whether she cries after a few days, it’s hard to say. The voice of a Pathan woman in a village wouldn’t reach the city streets so loudly.”
Idanjan doesn’t have it either. If Janaki Bai had it, I wouldn’t have been so troubled searching for her. I can’t say for sure, but I personally believe that most women prefer the peace of the village over the noise of the market. And if they find love on top of that, there’s nothing better.
I said, “One of our famous novelists has expressed a similar opinion—about women being thoroughly explored in the market.”
At that moment, Ahmad Ali’s friend, Muhammad Jan, arrived, pushing his bicycle. Ahmad Ali asked, “What happened to the bicycle this time?”
Muhammad Jan, a Punjabi, turned to me and said, “I don’t understand why you’ve come to this country. If you had ridden a bicycle in this city for even half an hour, you’d know how tricky these Pathans are. Before you cover a mile, you’ll get three punctures—all from tiny pieces of iron.”
The gentleman was catching his breath. Showing concern, I asked, “Where do all these bits of iron come from?”
Muhammad Jan, now even more annoyed, replied, “Why are you asking me? Ask your dear friend Sheikh Ahmad Ali Khan Pathan!”
Ahmad Ali said, “You know, Pathans love to gossip. They can’t walk a mile without stopping for a chat. If they find no one to talk to, they’ll sit by the roadside. They’ll call out to the cobbler, ‘Hey, brother, put a few nails in my shoes.’ The cobbler will hammer in the old iron bits and add ten new ones. That’s how it goes.”
Whether it’s a hat or anything else, it all seems irrelevant to him, as if it’s something forced upon him from the outside. But when you see the turban of a middle-class or wealthy Pathan, it feels like God gave man a head solely to provide a reason to wrap it with that turban.
With his mustache carefully groomed and scented, and with that captivating turban tied, when Khan Sahib steps onto the streets of Peshawar during the evening breeze, who would say he belongs to the same lineage as Zakaria Greet’s Pathans? How could the Hollywood heroes in their evening dresses ever compare to him then?
The cool breeze brushing the treetops, lightly touching Khan Sahib’s turban, causing the flower garlands hanging in the shop to tremble, and finally, gently passing over Ahmad Ali’s well-kept mustache, brought a calming relief to my tired mind—during the evening of a hot summer’s day. It felt like the soothing, cool rain of the Bengali monsoon at the end of Jaistha—like the gentle touch of a mother’s hand instead of a cool stream. As if under the oppression of a cruel Pharaoh during the day, all the living beings of the country had taken shelter underground, counting the hours, and as the sun set behind the western pyramid, the northern wind arrived with Moses’ message of hope—new life awakening everywhere—the shackles of the captives were broken.
But what does a person need most after awakening? Food. And what an incredible rush there was in front of the bread and kebab seller’s shop! Burqa-clad women, children just learning to walk, old men extending their left hands toward death while reaching their right hands toward the bread seller—everyone was rushing to satisfy their hunger. The bread seller struggled to serve the hungry masses.
Calling some people “brother,” others “dear friend,” and yet others “jaan-e-man” (my beloved), and “Agha Jaan” (dear master), she speaks effortlessly in Pashto, Punjabi, French, and Urdu—all at once. Meanwhile, the boys at the tandoor are using long iron skewers to pull out the bread from the oven. The blazing fire casts a bright red glow on their foreheads and cheeks. Their long, thick locks of hair keep covering their faces. They have no time to spare, using both hands to lift the bread, barely able to keep up. The beard of the old baker flutters in the wind, his turban slipping to one side in the rush of work. He urges the boys with shouts of “Jald Karo, Jald Karo” (Hurry up, hurry up) and pleads with the customers, “Oh brother, oh friend, oh my life, my heart, please be patient. We’re giving you fresh, hot bread—that’s why there’s so much commotion. If I had given you stale bread, would I have kept you waiting so long?”
From behind a burqa, a voice—its age impossible to determine—said, “Your fresh bread has killed three generations of the neighborhood. You must be secretly eating the stale bread yourself. So, give us that.”
Even behind a burqa, a Pathan woman still has her freedom.
After bread comes flowers or perfume. I recalled a saying by the great Prophet Muhammad, translated by Satyen Dutta:
“If you have but one coin, Buy food to ease your hunger. If you have two coins, Buy flowers, dear lover.”
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