“A chicken without feathers! Begum Sahib, this crazy man is telling us that there are bald chickens!” Zafar questioned with a pleading look in his startled eyes. “It isn’t true. Is it?”
I’d dropped in to our favourite Pathan ‘hotel’ in Bhurban looking for a mazdoor to haul a sack of shopping down the mountain for me, and walked into a lively debate. “Bald chickens!” Zafar reiterated with a glare of disgust at a tall stranger sporting a wide grin on his wrinkled face.
Zafar, the locally acknowledged ‘King of Storytelling’, was out of his depth and showing it. His barrel chest bulging out of a far-too-tight baby-pink pullover, heaved in exasperation as he handed me a cup of tea whilst raising his eyebrows and expecting me to confirm his suspicions.
Not wanting to let the side down, I was a little slow in confirming that these ludicrous birds do actually exist and, just as I began to speak, the stranger pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping from the depths of his filthy waistcoat and waved it in Zafar’s face. The colour photograph of a bald chicken, bred in Japan, if I recall correctly, resulted in an enormous “Wah!” from Zafar whose own tea shot out of his mouth in shock.
Before Zafar could think of a story to beat this one, the stranger managed to get in another. “There’s a village, way up North and another in Azad Kashmir, where the springs are so hot that if you hang a chicken over them it is cooked, perfectly, after 10 minutes. And if you tie rice in a cloth and put that there, it cooks in five minutes.” Both the stranger and the now wide-eyed Zafar looked at me for confirmation.
Again, I had to confirm the strangers words. He was so proud of himself that he looked ready to burst.
This challenge to his reputation was more than Zafar could bear. Deep wrinkles furrowed his forehead, he scratched his beard for inspiration, actually looking as if he were about to cry. He sat in total silence for a good five minutes, sipping his renewed cup of tea, obviously trying to come up with something better.
“Wah!” he suddenly exploded, leaping to his feet in excitement. “In my village the spring water is warm in the winter and cold in the summer, and,” taking a pause for effect, “up on the maidan there is a spring with water so sweet it is just like drinking milk. In fact, it is milk.” Seeing the skepticism on the stranger’s face, Zafar went into overdrive. “You’ve been there Begum Sahib, you’ve drunk from the spring of milk and honey. Tell him it’s true.”
“Yes. I’ve seen it and drunk from it,” I said. “It’s an amazing spring. It really is.” The stranger was obviously not impressed with this information, but Zafar was determined to salvage the situation. “You know,” he told his adversary, “when you drink from this spring of milk on a hot summer day, the milk is so cold that it freezes your tongue and it is impossible to talk for at least half an hour!” Grinning in triumph, honour restored, he mischievously threw in, “You know, we have something really incredible right here in our hotel. So incredible that you wouldn’t believe it.”
Even I, knowing Zafar so well, had no idea what was coming.
Lowering his voice and leaning forward conspiratorially, he almost whispered, “A magic degchi!” The look on his face saying, “Beat that if you can!”
“What can be magic about a degchi,” the stranger almost sneered.
Still whispering, eyes totally ablaze with conviction, stomach threatening to erupt from its ridiculous pink casing, he said, “It floats!”
A deep silence followed while the listeners, grown in number to at least half-a-dozen now, waited for further illumination.
“It floats around the hotel all on its own,” Zafar softly continued, holding his audience in complete thrall. “I’ve seen it many a time. It floats from the shelf across to the tandoor, sits for a minute, then floats off again.”
Holding both arms out in front of him, he pantomimed the ‘dance of the floating degchi’. “I bet you have never heard of such a wonderful thing before,” he challenged the holder of the bald chicken picture, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“I can prove it,” he gleefully announced, before plunging into a back room to rummage around.
“Have you seen this thing, Begum Sahib?” the stranger demanded. “It can’t be true. Can it?”
Trying not to laugh, I simply nodded “Yes” and was saved from further illumination by a now-rumpled Zafar, emerging from his lair with a photograph held tightly in his hand. “Begum Sahib took this photograph for us,” he announced.” The degchi doesn’t float on request, only when it feels like it and it floated over to the tandoor when Begum Sahib was sitting here with her camera.” he insisted, shoving the photograph in front of the bewildered stranger’s dubious eyes. “The floating degchi.”
His laurels safely regained, visions of his reputation expanding to previously unimaginable levels, Zafar, and I swear that he could out-story an Irishman, then thought to ask my opinion of his new sweater.
“Wonderful, just wonderful,” I managed to mutter with as much conviction as I could muster. Then, mazdoor arranged for, I giggled to myself all of the long walk home.
“A chicken without feathers! Begum Sahib, this crazy man is telling us that there are bald chickens!” Zafar questioned with a pleading look in his startled eyes. “It isn’t true. Is it?”
