Hassan witnesses the junkman negotiating with a frail man, who is trying to sell a bundle of Reader’s Digests, tied together with a thin brown rope.
The traffic is jammed. Hassan’s van crawls a few inches forward and stops. The junkman tries to hand a ten rupee note to the frail man. The frail man jerks away. Hassan listens.
Frail man: “Only ten! I brought you so many magazines.”
Junkman: “They are ten, fifteen years old. If they were this decade’s, let alone this year’s, I would’ve given you five more. Do you even know what decade it is?”
Frail man: “It’s the eighties, twentieth century . . .”
Junkman (laughing): “Good one . . . you are right about that, sweetheart, but for you they are all the same, aren’t they? Here—take another nickel—that should buy you enough hits to last another three days. And get out.”
The frail man looks dejectedly at the money, but decides to take it and leaves.
The day is not cold, but waiting to get cold, lodged between late afternoon and early evening. Everyone is heading back after accomplishing “another day at work.” It’s time to return home, for Hassan and everyone else, but, as Hassan can see, not for the junkman. We know, but Hassan doesn’t know, that work is never done for the junkman.
The junkman, named Irshad, is a skinny man of forty-five. The most prominent feature on his long face is his nose; to be more specific, it is his flaring nostrils, which expand and contract at an extraordinary rate. He is permanently engrossed in observing and sniffing. Furthermore, the object of his examination immediately notices that Irshad is no ordinary observer; he detects and discerns. He is a conscientious sniffer, a responsible observer, well aware of his intermediary position, a relay between two worlds—the world which rejects trash and the world which welcomes it. He trades in abandonment and acceptance. He positions himself carefully between the garbage heap and the living room, snatching certain objects before they are scrapped, endowing them with new life.
Hassan does not know this.
Hassan notices that the junkman has already sorted out the magazines in three smaller piles and is now brushing the dust off an empty vase-shaped alcohol bottle. Irshad does not know about the human world linked to this beautiful Portuguese bottle. For example, he does not know that the man illustrated on the label of this green-tinted bottle—a horseman riding in a scenic valley—is actually an ancestor of the Portuguese family that makes the wine. In the thirteenth century, a brave, young man from this Portuguese family went to Jerusalem to fight in the Crusades. He was riding through the Moors’ lands when he happened to witness a man being flogged to death (or at least to unconsciousness) for the crime of drinking alcohol. The scene terrified this young man, Alfonso Diaz Pizarro, to such an extent that he immediately abandoned the Crusade and returned to Lisbon, wondering what hellish tortures the Moors would invent for an enemy like him when they were so keen to kill their own for no apparent reason! He resolved to spend the rest of his life in perfect debauchery: drinking and making love. For the next fifty years, Alfonso did exactly that, and the leaders of the Pizarro family, for five generations after him, continued the tradition with gusto. When wine-making became a modern industry in the nineteenth century, Gaucho Pizarro, leader of the Pizarro family at the time, paid an artist to make an illustration of Alfonso Diaz Pizarro on his horse, and printed the illustration onto labels, which he then stuck on the manufactured bottles. We know about this legend, even though hardly anyone knows about it outside the Pizarro family.
All the junkman knows is that the person who sells him all these imported alcohol bottles is called Ashraf, who is employed as a driver in a big mansion. He thinks Ashraf must be employed by a foreign white man, or, at least, by somebody who has close ties with foreign white men. The junkman doesn’t know anything about these “close ties,” but we know that Ashraf’s employer has served as an ambassador in many European capitals and he currently occupies a position of high authority in the ministry of foreign affairs. In other words, the junkman’s hunch that Ashraf’s employer has close ties with foreign white men is absolutely correct. The employer is the proud son of a well-known family, a family steeped in the tradition of guiding our nation’s destiny every few years. Ashraf grew up in the village where this family owned most of the land. He is about the same age as the junkman and has an education up to middle school. Fifteen years ago, he was caught along with his brother, Akram, for murdering their sister and her lover after Akram found them sleeping together. Akram was charged, did his time, graduated from jail-training in three years, and found a decent job with a group of dacoits that organized inter-village robberies. Ashraf, on the other hand, was not charged; he came to work as a driver at the prominent family’s mansion in the city. He began to spend his days driving and his nights entertaining himself watching porn on a newly-rented VCR. He could have stayed drunk for many nights simply off the leftovers from his employer’s frequent international parties, but he exercised self-control. He did, however, request the chef to bring him the empty alcohol bottles, which he collected in a sizable brown hemp bag, along with other valuable items from the employer’s house, such as elegant chocolate boxes and colorful, illustrated English magazines. Every few months, the employer and his wife traveled by air to another city where their parents resided. Ashraf was tasked with transporting the bulk of their baggage in the car, so he decided to pack his own brown hemp bag along with the bundles of luxurious imported gifts meant for his employer’s relatives. He would use the drive to drop off the bag at Irshad’s, the junkman from the other city, who always paid an honest amount for his goods.
But the thing that even Ashraf doesn’t know—but we know—is that this particular Portuguese bottle was not collected by the chef after one of the employer’s international parties. Instead, one of the members of the cleaning staff had found it lying empty in the employer’s study and picked it up to discard it. And what only the employer knows is that the wine was actually a birthday gift from an Egyptian friend, but what the employer and his Egyptian friend don’t even know—but we know—is that once the batch of wine to which this particular bottle belonged had been aged for the requisite twenty years in the Lisbon winery’s basement, it was sent off to the distributors and packed into two orders of a hundred bottles each. Both orders were shipped off in different directions the very next day. Why did the distributor pack this particular bottle in the second order and not the first order? Nobody knows. The distributor doesn’t know. Even we don’t know. We do know, however, that if it had been packed in the first order, it would have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to a topless bar in Las Vegas, where it would have watched the ups and downs of gamblers. If the bottle had not been packed in either of those orders, remaining, instead, in storage for a little while longer, anything could have happened to it. It could have become a part of any routine, any mundane matter, or it could have become instrumental in the most dramatic events and places. It could have ended up with the aging alcoholic doctor who lived in the street behind the big mansion where Ashraf worked, or it could have been smuggled into East Berlin moments before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Anything could have happened: it could have helped the people celebrate the decline of the Soviet Empire, doubled the excited anticipation of Western capitalism and its expected benefits. Someone could have taken it and thrown it against the wall, smashing the green glass to innumerable tiny pieces, the bottle’s shrill scream dissolving in the night’s raucous celebrations. Or it could have ended up somewhere else altogether, maybe even in the house of a Marxist professor, a disciplined and passionate believer in the communist doctrine. It could have eased his gloom and confusion, perhaps even helped him grasp the idea that “though the West has successfully manipulated the religious fervor of certain tribes still living in the ‘Middle Ages,’ the West will, in due time, become a victim to the same blind rage it has unleashed on communism.” Clearly, by the time our professor would have reached such an insightful point, the bottle would have been empty. Anything could have happened to the bottle.
But all that could have happened or would have happened, didn’t happen, and instead, in reality, the bottle went through its historical path and ended up in the hands of Irshad, the junkman, who is well aware of the dwindling number of connoisseurs who appreciate such fine bottles: village perfumers; sherbet vendors; merchants of all varieties of real and fake oils that load their merchandise on bicycles and hawk it though lower-middle income neighborhoods; certain young bachelors from rich families who fill the bottles with water and arrange them in their fridges in order to impress their equally rich, unmarried friends with their ability to procure such sought-after, foreign blessings; those who fill the vase-shaped, green-tinted bottles with water and use them to hold small plants; and, of course, there are those mysterious cases Irshad has no idea about. He classifies them as enthusiasts. For example, one youngster bought fifty bottles at once. Irshad didn’t know what the youngster intended to do with them. But we know the youngster was a sculptor, enrolled in the university’s fine arts department. He decided to build a sculpture out of the empty bottles for his final thesis. He used cement, plaster, and other chemicals to link the bottles in a specific order. He then filled some of the bottles with colored water, leaving the others empty, as before. The visitors were caught off guard by the modern sculpture, which resembled a wounded face, the eyes and mouths splashing in red blood. The sculptor named his masterpiece, “Culture of Endurance”; he never got the chance to exhibit the work as part of his thesis because a group of students broke into the department at night and hammered the “Culture of Endurance” to bits and pieces. They scrawled on the opposite wall: “This department will come to the same end as the Somnath temple.” The sculptor had never imagined such an end for his bottles.
We know that Hassan spent many moments passing in front of the junkshop. For now, we will cease to speak of the vase-shaped green-tinted alcohol bottle because Hassan notices that the junkman has placed the bottle back in its place after dusting it. He is now engaged in conversation with two new clients. Both the clients look tremendously vexed, as if catastrophe were looming over their heads. Their voices reflect their anxiety. Hassan wonders about the calamity that must have befallen these gentlemen. He eavesdrops on their conversation, knowing full well that he only has these few moments to gather the conversation, and also knowing that while much can be seen in a few moments, only a few things can be heard.
The traffic stands still.
It is clear the conversation concerns a grave, critical matter. But—Hassan smiles cynically—what momentous worry could possibly be raised at a junkshop? In a place where trash, waste, refuse, litter, junk, rubbish, excess, or in other words, useless, unserviceable, unworkable, inoperable, and inadequate objects are discarded?
But soon, as the very first sentence from the conversation reaches Hassan’s ears, his cynical humor evaporates. The first man talking to the junkman must be between thirty and thirty-five years old. He is clean-shaven, bespectacled; he reaches a medium-height, and carries a curious, long wound on his forehead. He is wearing Western-style trousers and a buttoned shirt. He talks in a deep, impressive voice which is accompanied by the decisive gestures of his hands. The other man is much older, and dressed in a traditional, reddish-brown kurta shalwar, which is made from heavy khaddar fabric. He is also bespectacled. It is the old man’s choking voice which cuts short Hassan’s cynical humor.
Old Man: “Listen—everything thrown in the trash is not trash.”
Junkman: “Sir! Who knows this better than I do? There is nothing wasteful in this junkshop, nothing that is useless for me. Okay, tell me, who came to sell your item?”
The old man and the young man look at each other with strange expressions.
Old Man: “Umm . . . ah . . . younger brother . . . yes . . . my younger brother brought it. My son-in-law was with him. They brought a bunch of stuff. We recently changed residence, so a lot of useless items emerged and we thought we might as well sell them to a junkshop.”
Young man (sighs): “I told you, sir! Wait a little bit. I could’ve noticed it lying around. In fact, I was going to take it for editing and composing soon. I would’ve photocopied it and then . . . then . . . this . . .”
Junkman: “. . . yes . . . that . . . that guy who came in the pick-up truck? Also wearing glasses? He had a bunch of stuff . . .”
Young man: “Yes! Junk. Old newspapers, magazines, notebooks, textbooks, files . . . cardboard boxes . . . bottles. Broken pen and pencil holders . . . It must be stuff like that, right sir?”
Old man: “Yes, old discarded radios, tape recorders, cassettes . . .”
Junkman: “Yes, yes . . . yes, yes . . . yes! Exactly! It was a valuable bunch. A lot of it sold quickly.”
Young man: “Sold? . . . dammit . . . all of it? Tell me . . .”
Junkman: “No, some of it is still here . . . what are you looking for?”
The two men look at each other. Hassan looks at them.
Old man: “Don’t worry, we can look ourselves. We will find it . . .
where is it? . . . the rest of it . . . (mumbling to himself) I told you, don’t do it . . . leave it . . . what did you get?”
Young man: “Where is it? Let’s go . . . c’mon . . .”
Junkman: “What do you mean, sir? It’s not in one place. The newspapers are here, notebooks over there (vaguely gestures in multiple directions), registers, textbooks, cardboard, electronics . . . what are you looking for?”
Old man: “Don’t worry, we will look ourselves . . .”
Young man (to the Junkman): “But if we can’t find it here . . . then . . .”
Junkman: “Then it must’ve left the shop, whatever it is . . . sold . . . your trash is someone else’s treasure . . . some small trader . . . maybe another junkman . . . my respected client, whoever it was, took it and left . . . but what is it?”
Old man: “Whatever it is, if we don’t find it—that will be ruinous,
calamitous . . .”
Young man: “It will be a tremendous loss . . . my god . . . sir, what has happened?”
The junkman’s eyes shift and his nostrils flare rapidly. He gestures to both men to follow him inside the shop.
The conversation goes out of Hassan’s earshot and as the traffic moves ahead, he gradually loses sight of the shop too. But his thoughts remain occupied with the conversation. What is the thing whose loss could bring catastrophe upon these people? But the man never said the catastrophe would concern him and his companion. He had merely given news of an oncoming and almighty catastrophe. Given news . . . ? Expressed a possibility, perhaps a fear? Maybe it was a warning? A warning to the junkman? Why the junkman? A warning to the world? Did the man say that if the lost object was not retrieved, a terrible catastrophe would be unleashed upon the whole world? That is an absurd thought! An unquestionably ridiculous idea! So is it that only a few unnamed, unknowable people would be victims of this catastrophe? . . . In any case, Hassan hopes they find this object, which, though it has already been thrown in the trash, might still be recovered and the catastrophe averted. Obviously, it must be an expensive object. Maybe it is the papers for their house, or some property. Or accounts, perhaps. But why would anyone buy these things from the trash? They can’t be of use to anybody else. Or is it hard cash? Lottery tickets? The result of the lottery was announced yesterday! It must be a lottery ticket . . . They must have thrown the winning ticket in the garbage, or it must have slipped in the garbage hidden amongst other papers. For them (for anyone!) the lottery could have changed everything. But their dreams will probably never become reality now. Judging by the hopelessness with which the old man was rubbing his hands and sighing deeply, the way he kept looking at the young man with a disturbed expression, their hopes are already dead. Will they ever find the lost lottery ticket?
No, never.
The junkman will never let them reach their trash. He perceived the value of the lost object. He will confuse them, lead them astray, before seeing them off and going back to find the object himself. Who knows better than him: not everything thrown in the trash is trash.
This explanation is enough for Hassan. An empty blank has been filled. He continues, satisfied. He imagines the amount of the lost lottery ticket to be half a million, the number appears to him for no reason and then suddenly disappears because his thoughts are distracted by a pile of eggplants scattered on the road. Round, dark-purple eggplants being squished under the rolling traffic. Tuss, tuss—the popping noise of the eggplants dominates the strange scene. What has happened? Did someone overturn a vegetable vendor’s stall, or was it someone possessed by an inexplicable hatred of eggplants who devised this unique revenge? Maybe it was . . . that . . .
