The shop was located in the main commercial centre of Satellite Town, a humble locality in the city of Rawalpindi, not known for any great historical buildings or famous people. The closest anyone came to being famous was one Mr. Shahbaz, owner of a hardware shop at a choice location in the commercial centre.
Given its prime location it should have been a success story, but it was rare to find a customer in the shop. To the indifference of the owner, the shop had turned from a hardware store to a rust-ware store. By nature Mr. Shahbaz was not a businessman, much less a shopkeeper and had little interest in selling anything. He had no patience with any customer who asked more than one question regarding the material he wanted to buy. So if the hapless customer asked if he could buy a pound of three-inch nails, but followed it up an inquiry if four-inch nails were also available, Mr. Shahbaz would start frothing at the mouth and shout at the customer, “If you do not know what to buy, don’t waste my precious time. Now leave before I hammer a six-inch nail in your skull!” The prospect of receiving a six-inch rusted rail in the head persuaded the hapless customer to beat a hasty retreat.
The old Mr. Shahbaz never returned and the broken Mr. Shahbaz never told the story of what was done to him
It seemed that due to his long association with the shop, Mr. Shahbaz had taken the appearance of the goods stored there. His skin had taken on the colour of rusted iron sheet, his teeth seemed to be made of steel nails, and his hair and a grand mustache appeared to be constructed from steel wires. He was, one could say, more a man of rust than a man of steel. However, his eyes had the shine of a diamond. The spark in his eyes, and the spray from his mouth that was emitted whenever he got excited, angry or agitated, gave him a forbidding appearance that kept children, tame adults and the stray dogs at arm’s length.
Mr. Shahbaz’s real calling was politics, or to be more precise, political commentary. He was, for all intents and purposes, a political animal – albeit of an armchair variety. Given Mr. Shahbaz’s passion for politics it was a pity that he could not read or write. But he had worked around this minor handicap by asking the neighbouring shopkeeper to read out the vernacular newspapers aloud to him. The neighbour, also a news junkie, thus got his fix while saving the cost of buying the newspaper.
Public letter writer, Shanghai, early 20th century
Two Urdu language newspapers were delivered to his shop every morning and the reading would start with a religious solemnity. Mr. Shahbaz would be sitting in a chair outside his shop, relishing the winter sun of Rawalpindi, listening with rapt attention while the neighbour read out the news to him. All would be calm and then suddenly Mr. Shahbaz would utter loud invective – indicating that he was displeased with some politician or the other. A thick froth would appear on his lips and his eyes would light up in extreme anger. He would become very agitated. “Bring me a pen and paper NOW!” he would shout, the froth was now emitted like a spray. Fortunately, Arshad Book and Stationery, the premier shop of its kind in Satellite Town, was located just two shops away, so procuring writing material was never a problem. The newspaper would be put away and a letter would be dictated to someone important; usually, the Prime Minister of Pakistan or at least a Minister. Mr. Shahbaz would thunder, “Mr. Prime Minister, I think you are more stupid than the donkey that is tied by the pole across my shop. The donkey, to his credit, does not draw any salary but you, , are robbing the nation of millions of rupees while doing nothing to improve the lot of the poor people. Listen carefully to me now, because golden words are not repeated: you have to ban all cars from the road and replace them with horse- and donkey-driven carriages. This would save the country a huge sum in precious foreign exchange. Also, animals are much better for the environment than the polluting and noise-making cars.” Unlike the owner of Ideal Hairdresser, who would swoon every time a fine car would drive by, Mr. Shahbaz was no friend of technology.
The letter would continue in this vitriolic vein until the complainant had spent his venom. The letter would be promptly sealed in an envelope and someone would be instructed to take it to the nearby post office and send it Registered A/D, which stood for ‘Acknowledgement Due’ that made it mandatory for the Prime Minister to acknowledge the receipt of the letter with a signature. Mr. Shahbaz would resume listening to the rest of the newspaper and continue to make guttural sounds of approval or disapproval. On particularly good days, more than one letter would be composed.
The arrival of an unmarked van cut short Mr. Shahbaz's political letters to the powerful
Life went on its merry way in the commercial centre when, one day, two burly men with short cropped hair came about, asking for Mr. Shahbaz’s shop. Given the fame of the owner, it did not take them long to find him. Mr. Shahbaz was napping in the sun with his eyes half closed and listening to the Daily Jang being read out to him. “Are you Shahbaz Khan?” asked one of the men gruffly. “Yes, but if you want to buy something, come back later. The shop is closed for lunch”. The two men were not there to buy rusted hardware. One of them pulled out a tattered letter from his pocket and asked Mr. Shahbaz to confirm that he was indeed the writer. Proud of his handiwork, the writer had no hesitation in owning it. An ugly scene followed. Mr. Shahbaz’s protestations and torrents of abuse did not dissuade the two thugs, who shoved him up roughly in an unmarked van and drove away. Fear gripped the market and there were murmurs of protest, but no one dared to intervene on the behalf of the abductee.
Days passed and Mr. Shahbaz did not return. The newspapers started piling up outside his shop. The neighbour, the reader, did not have the heart to pick it up and read it himself. It was as if the newspaper was mere wastepaper without Mr. Shahbaz. Attempts at finding the whereabouts of Mr. Shahbaz proved futile as the local police station expressed a complete lack of information on who had taken him away. Mr. Arshad, the proprietor of Arshad Books and Stationery found a stringer for a local newspaper who put the news of Mr. Shahbaz’s disappearance on page three of his newspaper. Pleas to the local member of the parliament proved equally futile. According to the grapevine in the market Mr. Shahbaz had been taken away by the “Secret Agencies” on the behest of the Prime Minister himself, who somehow saw Mr. Shahbaz as a threat to his dictatorial rule.
Then one day a gaunt, wasted man, limped to the hardware store and opened the lock. An untouched pile of newspaper greeted him. He did not even glance at them. The neighbour heard the shop shutter go up and came running. He stopped in his tracks as he saw a man who bore a resemblance to Mr. Shahbaz but was more than a broken rag doll. Uproar went through the market that Mr. Shahbaz had returned. But it was not the same man. This was the physically and mentally shattered remains of Mr. Shahbaz, worse than the rusted hardware. He bent down, picked up the stack of the newspapers and threw it out in the street. As the wind scattered the papers, he sat down in his chair, put his head with his vacant eyes in his lap and wept silently.
The old Mr. Shahbaz never returned and the broken Mr. Shahbaz never told the story of what was done to him. Whenever someone would ask him, he would simply shake his head and sink back into silence.
Mr. Shahbaz moved from the chair outside his shop to his deathbed very soon. His friends Mr. Shami of Shami Glass House and the newspaper reader would visit him and update the rest of the market on his health. It was never good news. His condition kept deteriorating, and early one morning, around the time the newspapers are delivered, Mr. Shahbaz was delivered to his maker. Those who were at his side when he died swear that he let out a roaring invective against the Prime Minister, cursing his five generations before he fell silent forever. The superstitious types in the market believed that the final complaint of Mr. Shahbaz reached God above, without the need for a registered A/D letter.
