Narcopolis

Rashid was looking at the street. A beggar woman squatted over a puddle by the garbage pit on the intersection of Shuklaji Street and Arab Gully. She was dark and plump and she wore a fitted kameez that she held up around her waist. Emptying. The correct word for what she was doing. He noticed that her hair had been very stylishly cut, cropped short over the ears, with pointed sideburns and a little tail in the back. The puddle under her expanded and the people on the street stepped over it without comment. Then the woman’s head came up and her eyes met Rashid’s and there was no embarrassment in her face, only intelligence. From the balcony, he could see into Khalid’s khana next door. It was a smaller room, with a single pipe and no customers, no one there at all except for the pipe maker. Rashid’s was already busy, a group of Spanish-speaking hippies around one pipe and students from Wilson College around the other. Waiting their turn were Dawood Chikna, an up-and-coming businessman and gangster, and Bachpan, a pimp, with his friend and associate, the pocket-maar Pasina. Last in line was a fellow called Spiderman for the way he crawled on all fours. Salim was there too, in a new shirt, a starched yellow number with flap pockets and large collars. He was at Dimple’s station, deep in conversation with the kaamvali. Rashid wanted to know what they were talking about but all he could hear was Khalid, who was saying that a businessman should never sample his own merchandise, particularly if his business was drugs, and that a Mussulman did not put his habits before his duty to God, that only kafirs did such a thing. Rashid watched the beggar woman who was tidying up the garbage on the sidewalk and he thought about his system. A man’s reputation depended on never seeming intoxicated. So, in the afternoons, he read Inquilab, squinting at the editorials, some article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s travails in Syria or the Jews’ latest incursions into Lebanon, and he stole a few quick nods. Then he’d give an order to Bengali, whatever order it didn’t matter, a shout for a pipe or for lunch, a summons for the malishwallah, for whisky or cocaine, an audible order to an employee to re-establish the chain of command. In the evening if he’d been drinking a lot he went upstairs for an hour or two to nap. He was always mindful of his reputation, but here was this Khalid, this Kashmiri, casting aspersions. Just then, Rashid noticed something odd. All sound and activity had frozen, as if a giant wave was about to hit the street, and this was the split second of calm before the chaos. The beggar woman was completely still, a black marble statue listening intently to the decades as they passed through her; the salt march to freedom; the years of upheaval and bloodletting and so-called Independence; the years of the Pakistan wars when headlights were painted black to keep automobiles safe from enemy jets; the years of regulation and control and planned socialism; the years of failure. Everything was frozen, even the traffic and the sunlight and the slight still breeze, and then the woman went back to her work and the street too resumed its normal pace and Rashid realized he’d been holding his breath.

*

‘What is she doing, the beggar woman, what is she doing?’ he asked Khalid.

‘It’s already a thing of the past, chandu,’ Khalid said, ‘like these pipes.’

‘Like everything, like us.’

‘That is the nasha talking, not you. Listen, very soon all the khanas will be closed, ours included. Last month, they closed six. In one month. Padlocks and chains courtesy Customs Excise.’

‘There are too many on this street. Let them close.’

‘And then? What will you do for business?’

‘This, that.’

‘You’re a BA pass, educated man, but you’re talking like you don’t know how to read-write.’

Rashid brushed the hair off his face with his hands, letting the thought take shape in his head before he spoke. He said, It’s a funny thing, only the uneducated set so much stock by education. When you go to school you realize how little it means, because the street belongs to whoever takes it. Today it’s ours; tomorrow someone else will take our place. My problem, I don’t like garad heroin. Garadulis put their foot on the accelerator and push all the way to the floor. The car was going five miles an hour and suddenly it’s up to fifty-five. Super fast, then crash. A chanduli can smoke for years and be healthy; garadulis are impatient, they want to die quickly. You say we’re businessmen and we should provide what people want. What kind of a businessman would I be if I supplied heroin to chandu customers? I would be a chooth businessman. I’d be shooting myself in the foot. Why I’m telling you this, it’s my way of saying don’t ask me again to join you in business.