Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

The Mask We Wear

The morning air in Karachi carries a salty, damp chill before the sun fully clears the horizon, but today it felt heavier. I read Daily Kawish’s front-page headline: MQM Calls for Strike.

Outside the window, Karachi’s streets were trapped in a tense, ticking countdown. The tea stalls were still steaming, and a few hurried pedestrians kept their heads down, but the usual chaotic roar of the city was missing. It was a silence born of fear.

The man at the wheel gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. He let out a long, ragged sigh that rattled in his chest.

I leaned forward, resting an arm on the back of the front seat, my eyes shifting from the road to his tense profile. “You look worried.”

I waited, watching the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders, then gently tapped the back of the seat to prompt him. “What happened?”

He released a heavy, shuddering breath, his head shaking slowly side to side. “This morning I picked up a fare from the waiting area outside Civil Hospital. A young man came to me.”

I raised an eyebrow, gesturing slightly with an open hand. “He needed a taxi?”

He nodded once, sharply. “Yes. He offered eight hundred rupees to take a patient to Manzoor Colony. I agreed.”

I nodded slowly, settling back slightly into the vinyl seat. “What happened then?”

He eased his foot off the accelerator as a stray dog crossed the road, his eyes reflecting the pale morning light. “I parked beside the ward. I waited.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged slightly, his voice dropping an octave. “A few minutes. Then, I stepped out. I stood under the shadow of the ward wall. The young man came back.”

“What did he do?”

He raised his left hand from the wheel, pointing a single index finger upward in mimicry. “‘Just a minute.'”

I nodded, a faint, understanding grimace crossing my face. “Hospitals always stretch time.”

He tapped the dashboard with his fingers, the rhythm uneven and anxious. “After some time he returned. He carried a shoulder bag. A clear plastic bag held medicines. There was a discharge file. X-rays. Medical reports.”

I frowned, sensing the sudden shift in his posture. “And the patient?”

His voice thinned to a near-whisper, his eyes reflecting a deep, sudden sorrow. “I saw an old woman. She dragged herself along the wall. She held the posts. She held the wall. Each step looked painful.”

I tightened my grip on my own shoulder bag, waiting. “Who was she?”

He shook his head slowly, his expression hollow. “I did not know. But then I heard one word. ‘Afzal.’ Only one word. It came again. ‘Afzal.’ It was hardly a whisper.”

I frowned deeply, my brow furrowing. “What did the young man do?”

He imitated a dismissive flick of a hand, his face tightening with disgust. “He turned his head. He waved his hand. He asked her to wait. The old woman almost fell.”

I straightened up, my voice hardening. “And you?”

He slapped his open palm gently against the steering wheel. “I called him. ‘Afzal.’ I called again. He never came. I ran to her. I held her arm. I called him again.”

I leaned in closer. “What did he say?”

He pulled a bitter, tragic smile, mocking the young man’s distant, cold tone. “‘Bring her quickly.'”

I stared at him, a wave of respect washing over me. “You really helped her?”

He shrugged, as if compassion were the only logical choice a human could make. “I could not leave her there. I held a woman who looked more than ninety. She felt as light as a child. I think she wore a printed dress—the kind people wore in films from the nineteen-fifties. We walked slowly. She leaned on my arm.”

I watched his eyes soften in the rearview mirror. “Did she say anything?”

He nodded, a soft warmth returning to his voice. “She thanked me again and again. ‘You are a good boy.’ I smiled. ‘It is nothing.’ But when we reached the car, I found Afzal already sitting in the front seat.”

I scoffed, shaking my head in disbelief. “He never helped?”

He glared at the empty road ahead. “No.”

I leaned forward, my voice sharp. “Did you ask him why?”

He nodded slowly. “I did. He looked away and said, ‘She is my mother.'”

I stared blankly, utterly stunned by the revelation. “You asked nothing more?”

His voice rose slightly, carrying the weight of his lingering disbelief. “I asked why he would not help his own mother. He nodded and said he feared for himself. He believed she had a disease that could spread. ‘I have my own family,’ he told me.”

I folded my arms tightly across my chest. “Where did he get such an idea?”

He let out a dry, humorless laugh, shaking his head at the absurdity. “He believed his neighbor’s mullah. The mullah told him the illness only attacked close relatives. I had already held her, so I asked him whether I should also be afraid. He stayed silent.”

I sighed deeply, looking out at the shuttered shops of Manzoor Colony as we neared my destination. “What happened next?”

He gesticulated toward his face, mimicking the pulling on of a mask. “The old lady sat behind me. Afzal wore a face mask. He kept it on all the way. We finally reached Manzoor Colony. I stopped where Afzal pointed. He picked up his bags. He stepped out. He walked to the gate.”

I peered out the window, visualizing the cold scene. “Did anyone meet them?”

He stared blankly ahead, his tone flat. “A child stood there. A young woman waited beside the door. Neither moved. Neither came forward. Afzal only waved his hand. He wanted me to help again. So I opened the rear door. I gave the old lady my arm. She thanked me once more.”

I asked quietly, almost dreading the answer. “Did you ask her about the disease?”

He pulled the vehicle over to the curb, letting the engine idle. He turned his head completely to look back at me, his eyes wet with unshed tears. “I asked her, ‘What illness do you have?’ She smiled. A tired smile. ‘Son, I have no disease that spreads. I simply cannot control my bowels. Sometimes it becomes worse. The hospital helps me when it happens.'”

The engine hummed in the quiet cabin. Outside, the streets of Karachi were now completely barren, surrendered to the fear of the strike. Yet, inside the car, a far more chilling silence lingered—the quiet devastation of a mother abandoned by her own blood, not out of malice, but out of a foolish, manufactured fear.

_____________________

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21, Part-22, Part-23, Part-24, Part-25, Part-26, Part-27, Part-28, Part-29, Part-30, Part-31,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

First Giraeen, Then Friends

The weekend moved slowly. The day held its breath. Cold air came through the window. The sky looked clean. I had no work. I had no hurry. Time hung above the streets like a loose wire.

I wanted to see my friends in Makhdoom Bilawal Village.

A taxi stopped near the curb. The driver leaned across and opened the front door.

“Will you go to Makhdoom Bilawal Village?”

He looked at me in the mirror.

“Three hundred rupees.”

I nodded and sat beside him.

The taxi moved. He took a left turn, then crossed a blind intersection without slowing much. A bus horn broke behind us. He lifted one hand from the wheel and waved it away.

After a while, he looked at me. “You are going to meet friends?”

“Yes.”

“Your friends belong to your village?”

“No.”

He drove for some time. The road ran between shops, broken walls, fruit carts, and men standing under tea stalls.

“You work in the same office?”

“No.”

The taxi grew quiet. A radio played an old Punjabi song, ‘Mera Laung Gawacha.’ The driver tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, then he smiled.

“Relatives?”

“No. Not at all.”

He laughed softly. “In Gulshan and Johar there are buildings.” He paused. “Half-finished buildings.”

I looked at him. “You live there?”

“Yes. I live there with friends.”

“All from the same area?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you from?”

“Kot Addu.”

“So you are friends.”

“No. First we are giraeen. Then we are friends.”

His words stayed in the car.

“What is the difference between giraeen and friendship?”

He smiled. His face carried the calm pride of a man who had answered this question before. “Not every friend can be giraeen. But some giraeen can become friends.”

I looked at him and nodded. “That is a good definition.”

He grinned. “What do your giraeen do in Karachi?”

“Some drive rickshaws. Some work in construction. Some are helpers. Others do tel malsh.” He laughed at the last words, his shoulders shaking. The taxi moved over a broken patch of road.

We passed Makhdoom Bilawal Crossing.

For a moment, I wanted to explain to him about the friends I was going to meet. They were not my giraeen. They were not relatives. We did not work in the same office. We did not come from the same village.

But I kept quiet.

I wanted to tell him we shared a lot of other things. We shared old arguments. We shared anger at injustice. We shared hope for a better city. We shared the belief that people could still stand together.

The taxi entered Makhdoom Bilawal Village.

“Stop here.”

He pressed the brake. The taxi came to rest beside a narrow lane. I paid him. He took the notes and looked at me.

“Meet your friends.”

“I will.”

I stepped out into the cold evening. The taxi moved away.

Ahead of me were my friends. Our friendship had no village behind it. No family name. No office gate.

It stood on goodwill. It stood on a collective dream.

_________________________

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21, Part-22, Part-23, Part-24, Part-25, Part-26, Part-27,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

The Pajero and the Silent Man

In the middle of July, the office told me that the Community Development Officer of an oil company was coming. They wanted to see our work and might support the NGO later.

I went to a transport company. A Pajero waited outside. It had dark glass and clean seats. Inside the office, a clerk pushed papers toward me. I signed where he pointed. The papers already carried my name, but he still asked me to sign again in the margin.

Then he brought the driver out. The man stood near the door. He was broad-shouldered and his clothes were clean. He held the keys tightly in his fist.

“This is Sultan Arain,” the clerk said.

Sultan nodded.

We got into the Pajero, he started the engine, and we left the city. The road ran through dry land. Trucks passed us, leaving clouds of dust behind them. A tea stall stood near a bend in the road, where men sat outside watching the traffic.

After some time, I looked over at Sultan. “How long have you worked for this company?”

He kept both hands firmly on the wheel. “Five years.”

“Only Pajero work—just driving?”

“I drive many people,” he said. “Consultants, foreign organizations, oil companies, private people.” Sultan looked at the road, and then he smiled. “People change when they go home.”

I watched him. “How?”

He moved one hand from the wheel and pulled down the sun visor. “They leave Islamabad laughing. They speak English. They call everyone ‘brother.’ Then, when we get near their village, their faces change. They sit up straight. They open the blinds. They become quiet.”

“Why?”

“They want people to see them in the Pajero.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Yes.”

The road became narrow, and a herd of goats crossed ahead of us. Sultan slowed down. A boy struck the goats with a stick, and the animals moved away.

Sultan cleared his throat. “One man hired this Pajero from Islamabad to Nawabshah,” he said. “His name was Jaffar.”

“What happened?”

“He became nervous before we reached Nawabshah.” Sultan tapped the steering wheel with his thumb. “Jaffar leaned toward me and spoke softly. He said, ‘We are going to a wedding. I will introduce you as my cousin. You work in Saudi Arabia, and we have a partnership in a car showroom in Islamabad.'” Jaffar gave a small laugh. “Then he put five hundred rupees in my pocket.”

“And you agreed?”

“I agreed partly.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I went along with it.” He drove for a while before continuing. “At the wedding, he introduced me to everyone. He said I was his cousin, that I worked in Saudi Arabia, and that we owned car showrooms in Islamabad.”

“What did you do?”

“I just stood there.” Sultan lifted his hand from the wheel and showed me an empty palm. “I held a packet of Gold Leaf cigarettes in one hand and a lighter in the other. I smiled, but I did not speak.”

“Why not?”

“Because a man who speaks too much exposes himself.”

I looked through the window. The land was flat, a line of trees stood far away, and heat waves shook above the asphalt. “Did people believe him?”

“They believed him,” Sultan smiled again. “One man took me aside. He stood close to me and asked if the car showroom business was good.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him everything I knew.”

“What did you know?”

“Nothing.” He laughed, but his eyes stayed fixed on the road. “I told him cars sell, cars need parts, people need transport, Islamabad is growing, and Saudi money comes back. A man can earn if he works.”

“And then?”

“He asked me to speak to my cousin. He wanted to invest and become a partner.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I will tell him.’ Right then, Jaffar came over. He shouted, ‘Come, brother, we must go!'”

“You left the man?”

“I left him right in the middle of his question.”

“What happened after that?”

“The man called Jaffar aside. They spoke near the gate.”

“Could you hear them?”

“Yes.” Sultan bent forward and looked into the side mirror. “The man said he wanted to invest. Jaffar told him not to worry and told him he could increase his money by thirty percent.”

“And you?”

“I started the Pajero. Jaffar came back, sat in the front seat, and asked me how the food was.”

“What did you say?”

“I said it was delicious.”

We reached Hyderabad before sunset. Sultan stopped at a hotel where we ate rice and meat, and he smoked outside after dinner. The next morning, we drove back toward Islamabad. Sultan did not speak much as the Pajero moved north.

__________________

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21, Part-22, Part-23,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

The Bridge and the Border

The last week of June was hot. The concrete buildings trapped the heat, and the road baked. The hot air grew thin and rose straight up into the still sky. There was no wind.

I walked out of the office. The air hit me like an oven, and my shirt stuck to my back. I saw a taxi parked near a tire repair shop. Walking over, I raised my hand. The driver looked up, and I signaled with my fingers. Vacant?

He nodded once. “Yes.”

I opened the door and sat in the front passenger seat next to him. He shifted into gear and turned the wheel toward the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi.

The taxi rolled toward the Kothari Palace roundabout. Suddenly, the air shifted. A cool breeze touched my face. It was faint, but it was there. My skin cooled, my breathing slowed, and I felt good.

“How much to Gulshan-e-Iqbal?” I asked.

He kept his eyes on the road. “Gulshan?”

“Near Kalaboard,” I said.

He nodded. “Six hundred rupees.”

“Good,” I said.

I looked at him. His clothes were clean and well-pressed. He did not look like the regular drivers who spent all day in the dust. I wanted to know his story.

“How long have you driven this cab?” I asked.

“One month,” he said. He paused, checking his rearview mirror. “Less than one month.”

“What did you do before?”

“I drove. I was the personal driver for a Seth.”

“Why did you leave?”

The driver said nothing. He gripped the wheel, and I waited. I expected the usual story—a dispute over money, or perhaps the Seth’s family causing trouble. I thought he would tell me he left to keep his honor.

Instead, he broke the silence. “It is a long story.”

“The drive is long,” I said. “Tell it.”

“It happened on the twenty-ninth of May,” he said. “The Seth told me to drop his friend in PECHS. The friend was an old man, very fat. The Seth lives in the Muhammad Ali Society.”

He turned the taxi down a wider street.

“We entered the lane in PECHS,” the driver continued. “The guest’s house was close; I could see the gate light. I pulled up right in front of it and stopped the vehicle. It was a large double-cabin truck. The fat man struggled to get out. He could not find the running board with his foot, so I left my seat and walked around to help him down.”

He shifted gears, his voice remaining flat.

“When I turned around, three men stood there. They had me surrounded. The engine was still running. They pushed me into the back seat; one man took the wheel, another jumped into the front passenger seat, and the third sat next to me in the back.”

“Did they have a gun?” I asked.

“A pistol,” he said. “He pressed the cold steel into my stomach. The driver sped off. We hit speed bumps, and the truck bounced. Every time we jolted, I felt the trigger. I sweated. I thought his finger would slip from fear or haste. Sometimes he pulled the gun back an inch, then he pressed it in again.”

“Where did they take you?”

“They drove through Sachal Goth. We crossed the Jamali Bridge, then we hit the Super Highway, speeding toward Hyderabad. Near the lights of the Jamali Bridge, they slowed down. They kicked me out onto the dirt.”

He blew the horn at a motorcycle.

“I got up and stopped a rickshaw. I told the driver to go straight to the Muhammad Ali Society. When I arrived at the Seth’s house, the fat friend was already there. He had taken a cab.”

“So the Seth knew everything,” I said.

“Yes. He knew the double-cabin was gone. I told the Seth and his family the rest of it. While I spoke, a servant came in and said there was a phone call for the Seth. The Seth went to the study and stayed inside for fifteen minutes.”

“Who called?”

“The Seth came out,” the driver said. “He told us the call was from the Inspector General’s office—a friend of his. The IG said if the double-cabin turned toward Balochistan from the bridge, it was gone forever. If it went through Shahdadkot, it would rest in Hyderabad or Mehar tonight, then cross the border by sunrise.”

The driver spat out the window.

“The IG told the Seth to contact the political parties—the MQM, its rivals in Hyderabad, and other groups. He said to ask their handlers for help. Then one of the Seth’s guests spoke up. He said the political parties pretend to fight on television, but their armed wings share the same stolen goods.”

“Did you get the vehicle back?”

“No,” the driver said. “The vehicle was gone.”

“And the Seth fired you?”

“No. A few days later, the Seth called me. He told me to drive his other car. I refused.”

“Why?”

“Two things,” he said. “His friendship with police officers and his wealth. They bring too many eyes. I asked a friend who works for the government to hire me. Now, I drop my friend at his office in the morning, and he comes home with his colleagues. I take his car and run it as a taxi until dark.”

“What happened to the Seth’s double-cabin?”

The driver took one hand off the wheel and made a chopping motion in the air. “Cut into pieces. Sold for scrap.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “Three days ago, the Seth called me again. He asked me to help serve tea to his guests. I needed the extra money, so I went. I walked into the drawing room with the tray and heard them talking.”

“What did they say?”

“They said the political parties have their criminal wings, just like the ‘Khakis’ have their political units. It is all the same machine.”

“Did they talk about the vehicle?”

“No,” the driver said. “But I know who took it. A new gang—a mix of Sindhis, Altaf’s old boys, and Balochs. They broke away from the big parties because the bosses took too large a cut. Now they work for themselves.”

The signs for my neighborhood appeared, and the stores were bright.

“Drop me near the General Store,” I said. “I need groceries for tomorrow.”

He pulled the taxi over to the curb and stopped. The engine idled. I counted out six hundred rupees and handed the paper notes to him. He took the money and nodded.

I opened the door, stepped out into the heavy night air, and walked into the store.

________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21, Part-22,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

The Beep and the Heart

The morning air smelled of dust and damp concrete. Nine o’clock on a Sunday. The February sun stayed low behind a gray rim, a short, fleeting Sindhi spring caught between seasons.

I walked down the stairwell of the flats. Outside, the sea breeze came hard from the west-southwest. It felt sharp, colder than yesterday. Overhead, three white clouds moved across the blue like solitary boys kicking a football across a dry field. The wind slowed. The clouds thickened, layered, and turned the sky into a flat sheet of slate.

Winter had come back.

A clean white Mehran sat by the curb. No yellow paint. No taxi sign. I stopped, my boots grinding on the gravel, hesitating. Inside, the driver shifted. A hand lifted, fingers gesturing a brief, silent invitation toward the passenger door.

“Shaheen Public School?”

The driver nodded once. “Yes.”

The interior smelled of fresh vinyl and factory adhesive. Clear plastic crinkled under me on the seats. The dashboard shone, immaculate and new.

“How much?”

“Two hundred rupees.”

“Good.”

The sedan pulled into the stream. The driver kept eyes darting from side mirrors to the swarm of motorbikes, rickshaws, and the high, roaring grilles of minibus transport. He braked hard as a politician’s pickup truck cut the lane.

“New car.”

“Five months and six days,” the driver said. He did not look over. His eyes stayed on the brake lights ahead.

“You count the days closely.”

“The bank counts them.” The driver adjusted his grip. “The bank makes a man exact.”

“A heavy installment?”

“Fifteen thousand. Every tenth of the month. I need seven hundred rupees a day.” He shifted into third. “If the city stays quiet, it is easy. But the city does not stay quiet.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“When the rumours start, or the strikes, I park it. If a brick flies, the glass breaks. If they burn it, I still owe the bank. So I wait. The next day I drive double. I burn the petrol looking for faces on the corners. I burn the profit just to find the fare.”

“Does it pay?”

“It fills the gap. Eighty percent of the time, I am just filling yesterday’s hole.”

The wind buffeted the side windows, a steady, low whistle.

“You look tired.”

“My calves ached yesterday. Like needles. I went to the clinic. The doctor took the blood and told me the sugar had found me.”

“You are too young for diabetes. Your father?”

“No one.” The driver struck the steering wheel with the flat of his palm. The plastic cracked loud. “This did it. Just this.”

The traffic slowed near a roundabout.

“Seven days before the tenth, the messages begin,” the driver said. His voice dropped, losing its edge, turning flat. “The phone sits on the dash. It beeps. First it is a reminder. Then it is a warning. Every time it beeps, my heart jumps against my ribs. My palms wet the leather. My throat tastes like ash.”

He stopped for a crossing school bus. His fingers tapped a rapid, uneven rhythm on the wheel.

“There are two of us from the same block who took the bank’s money for cars. Now both have the sugar. When the first week of the month comes, my wife stays in the kitchen. My little girl looks at me from the doorway and will not come near. I am a different man then. I am sharp, like shattered glass.”

“Karachi is vast,” I said, looking out at the gray sprawl. “There are always people.”

“The city is too big,” the driver said. He turned the corner by the market stalls. “But it is sick. It is a wounded animal now. It bites its own limbs to stay alive.”

“What will you do?”

“Find a buyer. Take a loss. Give the car back to the bank.”

The yellow brick facade of Shaheen Public School appeared beyond the perimeter wall.

“Here,” I said. “Near the flats.”

The sedan slid to the curb and stopped. The engine idled, quiet and smooth.

I reached forward and placed two hundred rupees on the clean vinyl dashboard. The driver took the bills, folded them once without looking, and tucked them into his vest pocket. He gave a single, tight nod.

I shut the door. The plastic inside crinkled one last time. The white car merged back into the dust and the gray February wind, moving toward the next corner.

__________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20, Part-21,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

A City Turned Barracks

The wind came down from the north, sharp and crisp.

Inside the coach from Hyderabad, the glass pane stayed cold against my temple. The long evening with friends had left a quiet ache behind my eyes, a warmth that evaporated the moment my boots hit the gravel at the Al-Asif terminal. It was nine o’clock.

Near the edge of the lot, three young Afghan boys crouched around a small fire. They fed the flame with strips of black plastic, discarded cotton rags, and thick, sweet-smelling grease. The smoke rose heavy and bitter in the frost. They did not speak; they held their palms close to the chemical heat, their faces orange in the dark.

The travel bag felt heavy in my right hand. Fifty yards away, under a yellow streetlamp, a taxi sat idling. A man stood by the fender. A single wave of my hand was enough. The man flicked a half-burned cigarette into the dirt, stepped inside, and let the car roll forward until the bumper nearly touched my trousers.

“Gulshan-e-Iqbal,” I said through the lowered glass.

The driver looked through the dark of the cabin. “Two ways. We can go by the university, down past NIPA. Or we take the bypass—Jamali Pul, Sachal, then down toward the Dow Medical ground.”

“The bypass is better,” I said, lifting my bag onto the back seat. The seat was cold through the wool of my coat.

The driver put the car in gear. He held up a pack of Gold Flake. “You mind?”

I nodded.

The match flared, casting sharp shadows over a lined forehead and a graying mustache. He drew deep, then cracked his window an inch to let the gray smoke slip out into the winter night.

“In weather like this,” the driver said, his voice flat and steady like the engine, “only two things stay loyal to a man on the road. Tea and tobacco.”

The car moved onto the tarmac, the headlights cutting through the haze. The city outside was quiet, shrunk by the cold.

“Exactly where in Gulshan?” the driver asked.

“The Crescent Complex. Near the Accounts General office.”

“Are the link roads open, or is it all alleys?”

I shifted my weight. “Why do you ask?”

The driver smiled into the rearview mirror. His teeth were dark from the leaf. “The gates. Every sector has the iron barriers up now. The MQM boys close them early when the cold sets in. Speed breakers every ten yards. At this hour, if you get caught in the grid of closed gates, you do not get out unless someone finds a sector in-charge and gets permission from him to open the gate.” He glanced back to see if his words landed. I nodded. “It is a tragedy,” the driver said. “Our brothers have turned a city into a barracks.”

He laughed then, a low chuckle that ended in a cough.

“We are strange people,” the driver said. “First, we cry to the municipality. We march. We demand metaled roads. ‘Give us asphalt,’ we say. Then, the day the steamroller leaves, we gather bricks and mix cement to build speed breakers. Because the children are unsafe.”

I watched the dark shopfronts slide past. “You do not talk like a taxi driver.”

“I am a senior clerk at the Sindh Secretariat,” the man said. He did not turn his head. “The car belongs to my brother-in-law. It buys the coal and the flour.”

“You speak with sense.”

“If you have the time,” the driver said, clearing his throat, “there is an old story that resembles the people of Karachi.”

“Tell it.”

“A man lost his way in the high snows of the north,” the driver said, his hands steady on the wheel as they cleared the Jamali Bridge. “A mountain bear found him. The bear was kind and took him into his cave. Before the bear could strike a flint for the hearth, he saw the man blowing onto his hands. ‘Why do you do that?’ the bear asked. ‘My hands are frozen,’ the man said. ‘The breath warms them.'”

The driver shifted into third. The engine whined.

“Then the bear boiled a pot of wild broth. He poured it into a stone bowl and handed it over. The man took it, immediately set it on the dirt, and began blowing hard into the steam. The bear watched him. ‘Why do you blow now? Is it not hot?’ ‘It is too hot,’ the man said. ‘The breath cools it.'”

The driver let the silence hang for a moment as the headlights caught the empty grounds of the Sunday Bazaar.

“The bear stood up,” the driver said. “He told the man to leave the cave. The man wept. ‘Why do you cast me out into the frost?’ and the bear said, ‘I cannot live with a creature who acts the same way for two different things.'”

The driver loosened his grip on the wheel. “That is Karachi. We use the same breath to ask for the road and to ruin it.”

“You tell it well,” I said.

The car slowed. The dark concrete blocks of the Crescent Complex rose against the gray sky.

“What do I owe you?”

“Five hundred,” the driver said. Then he corrected himself. “Four hundred for the distance. One hundred extra for the night.”

I pulled the notes from my pocket and passed them through the gap in the seats. “The extra hundred is for the tea and the tobacco then. The loyal ones.”

The clerk smiled, his mustache twitching in the dim dashboard light. “Yes,” he said. “The ones that do not change.”

I lifted the bag from the seat. The door clicked shut, and the car moved off, its red taillights first shrinking into the cold and then disappearing.

_____________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19, Part-20,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

Honest, All of Them

I have heard this story of gold and wealth many times. Out of every five drivers at the station, one tells this exact tale, each with different shades and details. But one point remains common in all their words: the driver was an honest man.

This is how Farhan tells it.

Farhan rubbed the grime off the steering wheel. The rag was gray and greasy. He reached across the vinyl seat to clean the left side, and his fingers struck hard leather. A pouch lay in the dark footwell. It had the heavy, cold pull of metal. He pulled the brass zipper back. Under the yellow dash bulb, the links gleamed. A heavy bridal set. Pure gold.

His chest tightened. Amanat. A sacred trust.

He dropped the pouch into the dashboard slot box, shut the plastic flap, and went home to sleep.

At dawn, the light hit the glass like a flat palm. The market grew loud around the stationary cab.

A man in a sharp linen kameez rapped on the window. “Sindh Assembly…”

Farhan looked straight ahead. He did not pop the lock.

An old woman with a cane pointed north toward Aga Khan Hospital. Farhan kept his hands flat on the black wheel. Another man came, waving big bills for Tughluq House. Farhan refused them all. The gold sat in the dash. A weak man would have turned the key and driven out of Sindh, rich and cursed. Farhan stayed in the heat.

By evening, the sky turned the color of an old bruise. The vendors crated their melons. Farhan turned the ignition, and the engine coughed, then settled into a low idle.

Then he spotted him.

The passenger from the night before stumbled through the crowd. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. He searched the dirt.

Farhan engaged first gear. He let the clutch out slow, rolling the heavy sedan forward until the front bumper almost touched the man’s shins. Farhan leaned across the seat and flung the door open. He jerked his chin once. Get in.

The man dropped into the seat. Now, he looked at Farhan, realizing this was his driver from the previous night.

“Where do you live?”

The man pointed a shaking finger toward the concrete blocks of Gulshan, Block Four.

Farhan steered through the thick evening rush. He killed the engine in the dark lot of the flats.

Farhan reached into the dash slot, pulled out the leather pouch, and set it on the vinyl between them.

The man grabbed the leather. He let out a dry, choked sob, pulled the zipper, and pressed the gold against his sweating forehead. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a thick knot of thousand-rupee notes to give as a reward.

Farhan reached out, clamped his hand over the man’s fist, and pushed the cash down. He shook his head.

“Just remember me in your prayers,” Farhan said.

The man got out. His boots clicked up the concrete stairwell.

The small room smelled of hot oil and old wood. Farhan kicked off his sandals by the wall. He ran cold water over his face and forearms, rinsing the market dust into the drain.

He unrolled the woven mat toward the west. He knelt and touched his forehead to the floor—once, then twice. Two cycles of gratitude. His hands were clean, and the gold was home.

_____________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18, Part-19,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.]

A Man Carries His Village

The sun was not yet up over Karachi, but the day was already warm.

I left the flat early to catch the Clifton bus. The pavement was grey and cracked. Two blocks down, the Pathan tea stall threw a yellow light onto the dirt road. Next to it, the newspaper stand held the morning editions, hung by small metal clips. No one bought them. Men just stood there in the damp air, leaning close to read the black headlines. When the crowd grew thick at that stand, it meant someone was dead. Usually, it was an ethnic riot or a body left in a gunny bag.

I did not stop. A mini-bus was coming, its diesel engine rattling the road.

At the office, the rooms smelled of old paper and dust. I asked the tea boy for the paper.

“Too early,” he said. He did not look up from his tray. “Ten o’clock.”

He gave me a cup of hot, sweet tea instead. I drank it fast, then walked over to the Social Welfare Office. The clerk there had the registration papers for an NGO based in Khairpur Mirs. We sat through a long meeting in a room with a slow ceiling fan. At around four o’clock, I left the office.

I walked down to Saddar to find a cab. One was parked at Regal Chowk, right across from the Thomas and Thomas bookshop. The paint was peeling off the hood. I tapped the window, and he motioned for me to take the front seat.

“Salam,” the driver murmured. His hands stayed flat on the steering wheel. He was a tall man from the north, his face dark and lined like dry leather.

“Salam,” I responded.

On the plastic dashboard lay three evening newspapers, folded small. The driver stared straight ahead at the traffic, his jaw set hard. He did not look sad; he looked numb.

“Something wrong, Khanji?”

He did not speak. He just flicked his fingers toward the dashboard.

I reached out and took the top paper. A small black box on the front page carried the story. A young couple had gone to the city court for a civil marriage. They were shot dead on the steps. I laid the paper across my knees. In Karachi, these stories came every week.

The taxi rattled as he shifted into second gear. He watched the road, his eyes reflecting the brake lights of the rickshaws ahead.

“Read the rest,” he said. His voice was low, coming from deep in his chest.

I turned the page. The girl was Pashtun. The boy was Urdu-speaking. Both were twenty, studying for their Bachelor of Arts, and living in the same neighbourhood. The boy had asked her parents for her hand. The mother had agreed, but the brother and the cousin refused. The couple ran away. On the day of their first court hearing, the cousin and brother arrived with a TT pistol. The brother fired until the magazine was empty, then shouted Allah-u-Akbar into the crowded corridor until the police tackled him.

The city noise flooded through the open windows.

“The world changes, Khan,” I said, looking out at the billboards. “People live together now. They study together. Love happens. It is normal.”

He let the clutch out slowly. “She was from my village. Back near Peshawar.”

“You knew her?”

“I knew the family,” he said. “They have been in Karachi for ten years. Her uncle has been here thirty. Maybe more. She was a smart girl. Eager to learn.”

The traffic slowed near Hassan Square. The concrete apartments rose up like grey cliffs against the hazy sky.

“They say the cousin shot her,” he continued, “but the brother took the blame. The police will go easy on a brother. They understand Ghairat. Honor.”

“Was the cousin uneducated?”

“Born here,” the driver said. “Educated here.”

We stopped near the Hassan Square flats where I had to drop off the Khairpur registration papers. I reached into my pocket for some five-hundred-rupee notes, but I kept my hand there.

“Why do it then?” I asked. “If they live here, if they are educated here, why the brutality?”

He turned his head then, looking me straight in the eyes. The anger in him had gone cold, leaving only something old and heavy.

“Sahib,” he said, “we carry Peshawar inside our brains and our blood. It does not matter how many years we spend in Karachi. We take the city’s money, but we do not share its joy. We stay inside our own walls because we are afraid to change. Our pride, our Ghairat—perhaps it is the only thing that keeps us safe from becoming nothing.”

I handed him the money. He took it without counting it and slotted the cab into gear. As the taxi pulled away into the dust, his words stayed in the hot air. A man carries his village with him, no matter where he dies.

______________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11, Part-12, Part-13, Part-14, Part-15, Part-16, Part-17, Part-18,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.

On the surface, these pieces appear to be simple narratives. However, beneath the prose, they depict the complex socio-political and cultural landscape of Karachi during those turbulent days. They are the echoes of a city in motion.]

 The Men with Badges

The first winter shower washed the dust from Cheel Chowk. Drops splattered against the rusted metal of an old taxi. The driver stood by the door. He was thickset, heavy-shouldered, with lines cut deep into his face. He looked at the sky, then at the road.

I raised my arm and motioned toward Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

The old man opened the rear door. He climbed into the front seat, gripped the cracked steel steering wheel, and cleared his throat. The engine caught with a low, wet roar.

The cab interior felt safe from the damp chill outside. Heat rose from the floorboards. The driver shifted into first gear, his eyes tracking the mirrors. He leaned back, catching a glance in the rearview mirror.

“Sindhi?”

A nod from the back seat.

The driver tapped the dashboard with a thick index finger. “The Urdu gives it away. Every time.”

The tires splashed through oily puddles along the Lyari lanes. Smoke rose from roadside tea stalls.

“You have driven this city a long time.”

The old man looked at the road. “Since the time of General Zia.”

The car hit a deep trench in the asphalt, bouncing heavily. The chassis groaned.

“The roads are bad for the suspension.”

“Every neighborhood has its own curse,” the driver said, his voice flat like the road. “A Lyari man has his troubles. A Lalukhet man has others.” He shifted to third gear. “Fuel costs money,” he muttered, counting off on his calloused thumb. “The traffic police wait at the circle. The potholes break the axle. The street boys look into the window at the red lights.”

Silence settled inside the warm cabin. Rain streaked the side windows, blurring the concrete buildings of Karachi. The windshield wipers clicked a steady, slow rhythm.

“The parties change things,” the old man spoke up, eyes fixed on the brake lights ahead. “Under the Peoples Party, the traffic police get hungry. They pull you over for nothing. They want the bribe. They threaten to take the license.” He swerved around a stalled, rickety bus.

“And the other times?”

“When the MQM held the sectors, the streets went dark,” he said, his knuckles turning white on the wheel. “The signals stopped working. Men appeared from the shadows. They demanded the toll. They burned the cars if you did not pay.” He shook his head, looking at the gray sky through the glass.

“How does it end?”

The driver tapped his shoulder, right where the brass stars sit on a uniform. “Both parties serve the same masters. The ones with the badges.”

The car slowed near the university campus. The traffic became a solid wall of metal and smoke.

“Three things can happen,” the old man said, staring at the gridlock. “The city runs completely dry. Nothing left to steal or grab. Or the people burn the offices down.” He paused, shifting back to second. “But the drivers will not do it. The Pathans, the Multanis, the Afghanis, the Bengalis—they make their own deals. No one stands together.”

The taxi turned onto the wider avenue, nearing the gray concrete structures of Gulshan.

“You speak like a comrade.”

The old man let out a short, dry laugh. He reached into his vest pocket, pulling out an old, faded plastic card before revealing it in his palm and tucking it back. “I am a worker for the party. Not the new ones. Not Zardari. I belong to the old ideology. Bhutto’s man.”

The car pulled up to the curb, right across from the Auditor General’s Office. The brakes squealed, then went still.

Seven hundred rupees changed hands.

The old man took the paper notes. He did not count them. He folded the money once and slipped it deep into the front pocket of his kameez, nodding once into the mirror as the door clicked shut.

***

The Rest on the Dirt

The autumn wind blew cold leaves across Tariq Road. Dust settled on the bricks of the old cemetery down the lane. The yellow trees dropped their final leaves onto the cracked pavement.

My friend walked back toward his new office on foot. The street was short, and his shadow stretched long under the pale afternoon sun. I turned and walked the opposite way, looking for a ride through the haze.

A taxi sat by the curb. The engine idled with a low, rhythmic rattle. The driver sat straight inside the dim cabin, staring at the crowded street ahead. I bent near the window and tapped the glass.

“Saddar?”

The man waved his hand toward the back seat with a quick, silent motion. The door opened. I got inside, and the smell of cheap tobacco filled my lungs.

The taxi shifted gears with a heavy clunk. The tires rolled past the white dome of Jinnah’s Mausoleum, which stood cold against the gray sky. The driver gripped the steering wheel with tight, white knuckles. His shoulders remained stiff, locked in deep frustration.

I leaned forward slightly. “A long day?”

“A bad day.” The driver stared straight through the windshield. He tapped the plastic dashboard with his knuckles, his fingers trembling slightly. “I drive from dawn until the streetlights come on. Five times today I stopped in the markets. Six times today a man with a ‘parking-fee-receipt-book’ came and asked for the fee, just to let the wheels rest on the dirt.”

He watched the road ahead, his eyes fixed on the brake lights of the cars before us.

“The parking fee in total takes two hundred rupees every single day,” he said, slapping the steering wheel. “The engine burns petrol. The tires wear down to the bare wires on these broken roads. A poor man cannot keep his food money when every corner has a parking-fee book.”

I nodded, looking out at the passing shops. “The parking fees are high.”

“The district Nazims make the parking zones to rob us.” The driver swerved to avoid a pothole. “It is extortion by rule. This country stays together because the corruption runs deep and connects every office. The day justice arrives, the whole machine will break.” He steered through the heavy, lawless traffic. “People know no other way.” His shoulders finally slumped against the seat. “They accept the theft because they never saw a land with real law.”

The car slowed near the crowded shops of Regal Chowk. The brakes squealed loudly on the road.

I reached for my wallet. “How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty.” He extended his right hand backward without turning around.

I put the notes in his open palm. I bolted out into the crisp, smoke-filled air, and the taxi disappeared into the sea of vehicles.

__________________ 

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5, Part-6, Part-7, Part-8, Part-9, Part-10, Part-11,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaffar Junejo

[Author’s Note: I joined a non-government organization in mid-1993. In those days, we were frequent travelers to other Asian countries, and during that period I maintained a diary. I once showed the notes to Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo — the legendary scholar, translator, and intellectual giant of the Sindhi world — who suggested categorizing the entries by theme and getting them published. He recalled that long ago, perhaps in 1955, the Sindhi journal Mehran had launched a similar idea titled ‘Hik Deenh Ji Ghaleh’ (The Story of a Day), even offering a prize for it. He himself had submitted the first story, he told me with a smile, just to set a standard for other writers. Later, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Girami, a scholar of high standing and journalist; Shamsher ul Haidri, a distinguished Sindhi poet, journalist, and playwright; and Siraj ul Haq Memon, an iconic novelist, linguist, and journalist, all contributed their observations of a single day. These writings were published until 1968.

I agreed with Joyo Sahib that I would group the write-ups by subject and get them published, but I failed to do so. Recently, I sat down to organize my notes. I found various entries about the taxi drivers of Karachi city. Some were very brief and incomplete; others were short but held a finished truth. I have chosen five stories from each year, all of them gathered from the drivers of those cars. In total, there will be thirty-five stories covering the period from 1993 to 2000.

On the surface, these pieces appear to be simple narratives. However, beneath the prose, they depict the complex socio-political and cultural landscape of Karachi during those turbulent days. They are the echoes of a city in motion.]

The Land of Others

The sun was hot over Saddar. The air smelled of diesel and dust. I hailed a yellow taxi. It was old, but the engine started with a clean knock.

“Gulshan-e-Iqbal,” I said.

The driver nodded. He did not speak. He took MA Jinnah Road, the one they used to call old Bandar Road. The traffic was heavy. Buses roared, painted in bright, violent colors. We crawled through the heat. Inside the cab, it was quiet.

We passed the white dome of Jinnah’s Mausoleum. It stood tall against the pale sky. The silence in the car felt long, like the road.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Rahim,” he said. Then he looked in the rearview mirror. “Abdul Rahim.”

“You were born here. In Karachi.”

“Yes,” he said. He shifted gears. “I was. But my grandfather and my elder brother were from Delhi.”

“What did they tell you about it? About India?”

The traffic broke. He accelerated. His shoulders relaxed.

“Let it be, Sahib,” Rahim said. “It was all a drama.”

“How?”

“Perhaps not a drama,” he said, turning the wheel. “But a confusion. Last week, I spoke to my taya. My elder uncle. I asked him about home, Delhi. On Eid, or the tenth of Muharram, everyone gathers. The uncles, the aunts, the old acquaintances. They praise Delhi. They talk about the dargahs, the melas, the sweets, the old days. They cry for it. But in the streets, they abuse India. They are ready to fight India.”

He stopped talking. He watched a motorcycle cut in front of the bumper.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“There was a long pause,” Rahim said. “Then my uncle told me, ‘We were cheated. We lived on rumors. On assumptions and propaganda.'”

“What does that mean?”

Rahim glanced at me through the mirror. “Are you Sindhi, Sir?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I only say what my grandfather told us. He said they came to Pakistan, and within one week, they knew. They realized they had landed on the land of others. The Sindhis were already here. My grandfather said it was a hard reality to accept. So they found an escape. They abuse India in the streets to feel common, and they praise it at home because they miss it.”

His voice was smooth. It had the rhythm of the city. He drove with one hand and gestured with the other. On his left wrist, there was a strip, with a design of the letter A.

We passed the Federal Urdu University. The old buildings went by. I wanted to lighten the air.

“The letter A,” I said, pointing casually at the strip. “Is that for a beloved?”

He pulled his arm back. He looked at his wrist the way a man checks his watch to see how much of the day is left. He did not answer.

We crossed the Sadequain Gallery. As we were crossing, the traffic jammed. The engines idled hot, and the noise of the street grew loud around us. Horns blared. Drivers shouted. My stop was near.

“Stop at Kala Board,” I said. “Near the Sindh Technical Board.”

He brought the taxi to the curb through the press of vehicles. The brakes squeaked. The trip had taken less than one hour, but the sun was lower now.

I looked at the meter and paid him his fare. He took notes.

I opened the door and stood in the noise and dust of the roadside.

“Saeen,” Rahim said. He leaned toward the passenger window. “This letter A. It is the first letter of Altaf Bhai’s name.”

He did not wait for me to speak. He smiled, a quick, sharp motion of the lips, and thanked me. Then he drove back into the thick of the traffic, and the gray exhaust hid the car.

***

The Righteous Man

The sun was low over the Press Club. The heat of Karachi hung thick in the air, heavy with dust and the smell of sea salt. I flagged down a yellow taxi. The car was not old, but it had the dull look of a machine that never rested.

“NIPA,” I said.

He did not look back. “Sit.”

“How much?”

“Pay me what you pay the others,” he said. His voice was flat.

“I have never taken a cab from here,” I said. “Tell me your charge.”

“Four hundred and fifty rupees.”

“Three hundred and fifty,” I said.

He shifted into first gear. “Get in.”

The traffic was loud on the main road. The engine hummed evenly under the floorboards. I watched the back of his neck. He looked to be in his late twenties, his hair clipped short, and his shoulders straight against the vinyl seat.

“How is business?” I asked.

“Allah ka shukur,” he said. He raised his left hand from the wheel, touched the lobe of his ear, and pointed one finger toward the sky. Then he went silent.

We drove for a long time without words. The city passed by in a blur of concrete and bright billboards. The silence in the cab felt heavy, like the heat outside. Then, without being asked, he spoke. His tone was monotonous, the tone of a man repeating a truth he had decided upon.

“The world has changed,” he said.

I did not answer. I let him talk.

“Last night,” he said, watching the road ahead. “About ten o’clock. I was parked near Khada Market. I was drinking a cup of tea. The tea was still hot in the cup. Someone knocked on the glass of the driver’s side.”

He turned a corner. The tires squeaked softly.

“I held the cup in my hand,” he went on. “There was a man and a woman. They leaned close to the door. The man was young, maybe thirty. He asked if I could take them for a drive. To Clifton Beach, then Shireen Jinnah Colony, and back to the market. I told them yes.”

He paused, adjusting his grip on the wheel. On his left wrist, a black cloth strip was fastened tight.

“We started,” he said. “We had just passed the Malaysian Consulate. In the mirror, I saw them. They were giggling. Pushing each other. I looked away. I thought, they are young. It is their right to be happy.”

The traffic slowed, then broke. He accelerated.

“Then we reached the beach,” he said. “We crossed the row of dark huts. I looked in the mirror again. I could not see the girl. She was gone from the seat.”

He did not look at me. His eyes stayed on the asphalt.

“I was worried, but I kept quiet,” he said. “Then I heard the sounds from the back. What I suspected was true. I did not like it. I reversed the taxi right there. I took a sharp left turn.”

“What did they do?” I asked.

“They shouted,” he said. “They cried that they wanted to go to Shireen Jinnah Colony. I lied to them. I told them I had an emergency. Something urgent. But I did not take them back to Khada Market. I stopped right there by the sand. I told them to get out.”

The brakes whined slightly as we approached an intersection.

“They wanted to pay me,” the driver said. His left hand gestured in the air, smooth and deliberate. “I refused. Should I take money for that kind of work? For facilitating that?”

He looked at me through the rearview mirror now. His eyes expected something. Praise, perhaps. Or agreement that he was a righteous man. It was a good story. It was the kind of story men tell to feel clean in a city that is not.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He nodded once, satisfied with his own virtue, and turned the car toward NIPA.

***

The Geometry of a Zealot

The sun was brutal over the compound. I came out of the American NGO inside the Church Compound, near where the mobile market stands now. This was before the years of General Musharraf, before everyone talked of good Taliban and bad Taliban. The air smelled of hot dust and old brick.

I walked toward Tower Market. A few yellow taxis stood in the shadow of the church building. The shadow was thin.

I picked one. “Sohrab Goth,” I said.

The driver looked at me. “Five hundred rupees.”

“Good,” I said. “Let us go.”

I got into the back seat. The vinyl was hot. I wanted to make him at ease.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Gul Khan,” he said.

He shifted into gear, and we did not speak for a long time. The city outside was loud, but inside the cab, it was just the heat and the rattle of the old chassis. He took a few haphazard turns, cutting through the press of the traffic, until he hit Ispahani Road. The road was wide and grey.

Gul Khan looked at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes were bright.

“Sahib,” he said. “Can I ask you one thing?”

“Ask,” I said.

“Nawaz Sharif did a good thing with the atomic test,” he said. He nodded once, hard. “A very good thing. Now India will think twice. Now they know what a Muslim is.”

He did not say Pakistan. He said Muslim.

“Do not underestimate India,” I said. “It is a democracy. It is a huge country. Geographically, it is vast.”

He smiled. It was the smile of a man who thought he knew a secret.

“I am an illiterate man, Sahib,” he said. “But I have ideas. I know how to face India.”

“Tell me your ideas,” I said.

He gripped the steering wheel tight with his right hand. He raised his left hand and held up four fingers. He spoke clearly.

“The vastness of India is no issue,” Gul Khan said. “If Pakistan and Afghanistan merge, we become one country. One big land. Then we implement Shariat. Shariat is much better than democracy.”

He watched the road, his four fingers still in the air.

“Then we tell the Hindus and the Christians to migrate to India. If they do not want to live under Shariat, they must leave. Then we give a deadline to the people of India. We tell them to become Muslim.”

“And if they do not?” I asked.

“Then we attack,” he said. “All Muslims together.” He paused to clarify that by Muslims, he meant the Afghans and Pakistanis of before. Then he concluded, “We take India.” I looked out the window. The concrete buildings went by, dry and yellow under the sun. I thought how naive he was. I wondered how many passengers had sat in this seat and listened to his fanaticism. The poison was quiet, but it was there, moving through the streets in the back of small cars.

We crossed the Gulzar-e-Hijri police station. The tires roared on the asphalt.

Gul Khan took a long U-turn under the overhead bridge. He pulled the taxi to the curb in front of Al-Asif Square. The square looked heavy and grey in the afternoon light.

I paid him his five hundred rupees. He thanked me and took the notes.

I got out and stood on the crowded roadside. I watched the yellow taxi pull back into the traffic, disappearing into the dust. I stood there for a while, thinking that how fast society was moving toward nowhere.

_______________

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com 

Read: The Tales of Taxi Drivers – Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5,

The post THE TALES OF TAXI DRIVERS first appeared on Sindh Courier.