By Neeman Sobhan

Karachi, West Pakistan, 1962
   MUSTAFA Maali plugs in the iron. A corner of our dining table, now spread with a folded blanket, functions as his ironing board. While the iron heats up to his satisfaction, Mustafa Maali turns to us. From the corner of his lips he wipes some residual juice from the betel-leaf cone trapped within the black, stalactite and stalagmite cavern of his mouth.
   A final lick of lime paste from his finger, a glisten of red, and the storyteller is ready.
   ‘So, children, where was I? Where did I stop yesterday? Haanh, now I remember. Well, the next morning, the prince decided to go hunting.’
   This was not at all the story he had discontinued the day before, but Azeem bhaiyya and I were not about to complain. The new baby, our six-month-old sister Maheen, had just fallen asleep after being carried on Mustafa Maali’s shoulders for a quarter of an hour, and now we had finally managed to get his attention.
   Mustafa Maali – the only evidence of whose title of gardener being his leathery, sun-creased skin – was to us an old man. Amma did not think so, and once, we even overheard her telling Abba that he was a ‘rascal’.
   Abba said, ‘Then why don’t we get someone else?’
   I heard Amma’s laughter in a long time. ‘Are you joking? I couldn’t do without him; besides, the children adore him, especially Faheem. You know, the other day, with that special communication the two share, Faheem finally discovered the sound ‘L’. Oh! Just for that I’d let Mustafa keep all the grocery money!’
   I was relieved to hear that Mustafa Maali would continue to rule this house. On school mornings when Amma had one of her frequent migraine attacks and stayed in bed, Mustafa Maali would still be there to braid my hair, make our tiffin, and take Azeem bhaiyya and me to school on his cycle. I wanted no one else to cover our school books in brown paper; polish our shoes till ‘your face beams through’; take us to Gandhi Garden Zoo; buy us Kulfi ice cream; haggle down the price of a kite; repair our toys, and do a hundred other jobs.
   Further more, only he could lull the new baby to sleep; and our little brother Faheem, when not having speech and lip-reading lessons with Amma, spent happy hours horse-riding on Mustafa Maali’s back.
   But above everything, he was our favourite storyteller.
   ‘Now this king found himself deep in a forest…’
   ‘You said prince.’ Azeem glared.
   ‘But while he was riding he got a telegram, na? It said that his uncle the king had died and now he was the Baadshah.’
   ‘I prefer a prince.’ Azeem always frowned at Mustafa’s dues ex machina solutions.
   ‘Okay, this prince, who now has a kingdom waiting at home, finds himself in a dark forest of tall-tall trees, thick and shadowy with green-green leaves.’ I heard the lushness of the woods from the scent of Mustafa Maali’s half-masticated paan in his mouth. ‘Then the prince went deeper into a wild junggal full of dangerous animals.’
   ‘Like the Sundarban.’ Azeem had learnt about it recently from Abba.
   ‘I don’t know about your fancy, Umrikan or Ufrican Sundarban-wunderban. This forest in my story is cent-percent Pakistani.’ Mustafa Maali spat on a finger to test the temperature of the iron.
   ‘The Sundarban is in Pakistan. East Pakistan.’ Azeem’s voice dripped contempt.
   ‘Oh! That Sundarban! The Bungaali one? Arrey! The prince passed it two and a half hours ago! It was that first one he crossed, na? Pay attention, bhayee, otherwise I can’t tell stories.’
   After that the only sound was the whisper of sprinkled water and the swish of the iron’s steam ship moving across the oceanic shirt-front.
   ‘Then? Phir kya hua? What happened next?’ We rustled and whined to keep the story going.
   ‘Wa-ait! It’s a huge forest, okay? You can’t just cross it like that in a…. chutki.’ The snap-click of his middle finger and thumb was disdain symbolised. It also denoted lightning efficiency on his part when he promised my mother how some errand that she gave him could be done in the flash of this same chutki. I nodded eagerly, silently urging him to move on before Azeem got bored, which he did easily.
   And this was something I could never understand about my brother, how he could get bored when Mustafa Maali was on centre stage. This circus master with his performing troupe of characters that peopled his tent of tales was the best illusionist in the world. He transformed the corner of the dining room into a wild forest. And Azeem and I, sitting on the handle bar of Mustafa Maali’s cycle of stories, would ride along with the prince through betel-green trees towards the clearing where our ‘phir kya hua?’ would take the story in a whole new direction.
   We would give Mustafa Maali a decent interval before both of us piped up: ‘Phir?’
   ‘Arrey bhayee, the prince is crossing the forest, na?’ He would say starting on the tricky corners of the shirt collars of our school uniform.
   ‘Now has he crossed it?’ I can hear myself whisper after an eternity-long minute. Mustafa Maali cups one ear, ‘Listen. Can you hear the tup-tup-tup of the hoofs?’
   ‘Oh! God, will he ever cross the stupid forest?’ Azeem is not amused.
   ‘Sh-sh baba, not so loud, otherwise it will hear.’
   ‘Who?’ My voice is knitted as tight as my eyebrows.
   ‘The Sher, who else?’ One shirt is done and on the hanger.
   ‘What tiger? I can’t hear any Sher-wer, and I don’t want to hear your stupid story.’ Azeem stands up yawning.
   I pull at Mustafa’s sleeve, ‘Forget him. Tell me a story about a princess, with long-long hair like in this book.’ I show him my new Illustrated Book of Fairytales, with Rapunzel on the cover.
   Sniffing competition Mustafa Maali makes a face. ‘That? That’s a lot of bakwaas, concoction of lies. Now, my stories are true: hundred-percent-guarantee. Did I tell you the one about the princess from whose mouth would rain pearls?’ He challenged me, and before we could say anything he started on his story, as well as another shirt.
   ‘Haan-ji, this princess when she spoke produced from her mouth such fat-fat moti…. white and shiny like the boiled eggs you had for breakfast.’
   ‘I’m hungry.’ Azeem’s story hour was over.
   The storyteller knew when he had lost his audience. Unplugging his iron and calling me to him Mustafa Maali put something invisible into my fist. I knew what it was.
   ‘Here, you keep the story and put it away somewhere safe so the princess is unharmed. I’ll finish it for you tomorrow.’ This was our private ritual, his way of ending the story session. I was the custodian of his tales, his living bookmark.
   But Mustafa Maali’s stories were open-ended yarns, skeins of tangled narratives. His tales refused to be contained and kept safe. They germinated and sprouted promiscuously, each story becoming the point of departure for other stories. The frustrating thing was that he sometimes abandoned characters in the middle of their predicament and followed another character’s adventure; and by the time Azeem and I brought him back to the original character, Mustafa had forgotten him.
   ‘But you knew so much about him, how could you just forget?’ I asked.
   ‘Arrey Bebi, one meets hundred-hundred people in a life. You can’t remember every person and take them along in your story. But if they are memorable, you will meet them again. They will join the tale: a-u-t-o-m-a-t-i-c.’
   Then putting an imaginary telescope to his eyes and mine, he says, ‘For example, look who is coming our way. Recognise him? It’s the same farmer we left behind last week on his way to the market, remember? Let’s see if today, bechara, he sells anything or returning home gets eaten by the tiger, which swallowed the princess yesterday, bones and all.’
   ‘No!’ I scream stamping my feet. ‘You promised that she would be safe when you left the story.’ I pound his arm with my little fists, never noticing Mustafa Maali’s teasing smile. A tearful, angry Shehryar in pigtails was commanding the betel-chewing, unshaven Shehrazade:
   ‘Buss! No tigers.’
   And so between Shehryar and Shehrazade, we eliminated from our narrative an entire population of striped Royal Bengals from a distant Sundarban. They did not belong in the story, just as their human equivalents would one day not belong in the other story that would soon unfold around us. Neither they, nor their land would be part of the national narrative.
   That would be in 1970 when general elections would be announced. The results would not agree with the political tale that was being spun at the national level. Two wilful Shehryars would not like the way the election story was turning out.
   ‘Change the ending!’ They would command, stamping their feet.
   And even the grand storyteller, the Great Weaver of the Alif Laila tapestry in Heaven would acquiesce, like some paan-chewing Mustafa Maali. The story would take a whole new twist, and a gruesome tale of a Thousand and One Night of blood would unfold in 1971.
   Excerpted from a work in progress