PEOPLE

Images courtesy chatGPT 

A HUMOURLESS OLD FRONTIER

By: Nasser Yousaf

Karl Beckson and Arthur Ganz have described a farce as a play which evokes laughter by such devices of low comedy as physical buffoonery, rough wit, the creation of ridiculous situations, and which is little concerned with subtlety of characterization or probability of plot.

Life in the land of one's existence is little more than a farce. One has to contrive alternate ways to humour or amuse oneself and be done with existence. It wasn't a bad idea, therefore, to read 'The Afterlife' by one of the greatest American storytellers John Updike.

Though not a collection of humourous short stories, 'The Afterlife' is a good companion to hold in hands as the biological end of existence approaches nearer with the rapidly ticking clock.

In the mid nineteenth century, Christina Rossetti, a British poet of Italian origin, wrote a touching sonnet. Undoubtedly, it could be termed as eponymous. Here are four lines from the sonnet:

Slow-speaking when she has some facts to tell,

Silent with long-unbroken silences,

Centred in self yet not unpleased to please,

Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.

We are witnessing one of the biggest exodus in the human history. Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and iran for decades are loathe to returning home. But they can now see the writing on the wall.

After an early dinner, one loves whiling away a few minutes in the company of an Afghan at his vegetable-shop. It has become a habit and habits like sins are inviting, succulent and stubbornly resilient to sermons.

A short walk to the shop, two fags with the magical option of changeover to menthol, and plenty of gossip to exchange as the Afghan requests for latest updates on the imminent repatriation or deportation. He is visbily disturbed now as news of the cops making hay in the streets and roads find its course to his little dwelling.

A Dari-speaker from Kabul and fluent in Pashto with a smattering of Hindko, one would surely miss this guy. He loves cooking a meal for himself in the shop and is literally mad about sharing it with whosoever bumps or barges into his shop. The shop has its plasters coming off, a dirt floor which must once have been cemented and a wooden divan with a carpet spread on it that hasn't been washed or dusted off ever since it was offloaded from the Noah's Ark.

Given his desperate circumstances, it would not be decent to share his name, and neither that of his newest helper, a teenage Dari-speaker. The young lad is perhaps the hundredth one on the payroll; they come and leave behind them fond memories and the kind-hearted owner could then be heard singing priases of the honesty and cheerfulness of each one of them.

The other night he fried greenpeas in minced meat with a screaming mix of green spices. Two roadside carpet-sellers, also Afghans who frequently visit the shop, were to partake of the food served with hot Afghani nans from the nearby shop. Unwashed and unpeeled cucumber lay in a plate on an old discarded newspaper. 

The young lad was cutting a raddish in round shapes with an unsharpened knife that had a noisy broken handle. Each time the young lad touched the hybrid raddish,  with a diameter of at least 10 inches, both the knife and the raddish produced gruesome sounds of complaining, whining and screaming. 

The high-point in the dinner came when the two carpet-sellers asked for raw onion. 'But it's a sin eating onions at night,' the young lad politely admonished the twosome. One couldn't help stop laughing heartily at the repartee, and proposed that perhaps serving spring onions to the two wretched souls might be a lesser and forgivable sin. But the lad had kept a list of all the minor and major sins in his breast pocket.

Being young, the helper rubbishes any mention of returning home to Afghanistan with an unbelievable display of nonchalance. 'man kamtareen muzahimat ra daram' (I am least bothered),' the lad quips in polished Persian before reverting to his TikTok account.

A subtle air of longing, melancholy and undiluted humour hangs in this lovely, dirty little shop.

In the earlier years of the present millennium, a government of mullahs took over the charge of our existential matters in the province which was then called the North West Frontier. Mullahs love wearing their faith on their sleeves. Hence, they decided to speedily dispose of the agenda they had set for themselves for eons. 

A farcical huddle of the clergy was urgently held. It was decided to ban the sale and purchase of alcohol in the province although Pakistan's constitution allowed it to the non Muslim locals on the occasions of their festivals and to the non Muslim foreigners whenever they liked.

Those were really ridiculous times in our land. Militancy was spreading its tentacles all across the country but its epicenter was in the land of Pashtuns. Pashtun tribesmen living on the borders of Peshawar were selling the choicest wines, beers and spirits to a discerning clientele with gay abandon. Cute mud-built pubs adorned the Line that divides Peshawar from the Khyber area. But the mullahs pretended not to know for as long as the pious teetotalers didn't know.

Pashtuns, and in fact people of all ethnic groups inhabiting the erstwhile Frontier, have got their timelines stuck in the month of fasting. If you ask one of us about the happening or occurence of a particular task or event, the reply would undoubtedly be: well, after Ramadan. It matters the least for them if the month of Ramadan is still months away. And as soon as one Ramadan ends, countdown for the next one begins.

This obsession with what is but plainly a ritual has given birth to a wisecrack of sort. With its roots in Punjab, it reverberates all across the country. It says: Ramzan janay thay Pathan Janay (let Pathans deal with fasting). Pashtuns are most obsessive about the sins of others which they have unabashedly inscribed on their own set of the Ten Tablets.

Our fashionistas and degrees-holders occupying top slots are dull, sullen, pretentious and arrogant to a degree. In unfortunate encounters with them, they tend to exhibit an attitude as if they have just returned to their places of comfort and luxury after overseeing the completion of the Pyramids. A ramshackle provincial infrastructure and a very poor delivery of essential services tell a most distressing story.

These nincompoops have a ribald sense of humour in comparison to the ordinary people. Their sense of humour doesn't travel farther than that particular woman tiktoker who has come to be known as Aleesha's mother. 

The said woman is trying to make some quick bucks from her social media posts in which she makes indecent gestures. She posts videos in which she could be seen involved in an imaginary brawl with a man and the man as the butt of her obscene gestures and unprintable abuses. 

One such post landed her in trouble with the self-righteous when she announced the opening of a dancing club in Peshawar. She was taken to a police station with her daughter and her recorded message put on the mainstream media. In the video, she could be seen recanting and pleading that she couldn't even think of polluting the sinless land of the old Frontier.

Everyone, and their aunt's, have now taken a sigh of relief that there was no imminent danger to their households. But they have enjoyed this farce to their hearts' content.

The woman in this episode is a lesser of the farce; society and cops are the biggest manifestation of the farce. Top cops, especially, because they get trained in the country's elite academies, at the taxpayers' expense. Do trainers need comics?