Emboldened by the throng of sympathizers, the man screamed, “You think you’re the only man in Lahore? Who do you think you are anyway! Don’t you glare at me like that! I shall sell my stuff where I wish!”
“I’ll show you who I am!” said Nikka, and cutting swiftly through the crowd, he once again struck the tray to the ground.
The man wrapped himself round Nikka’s waist, and they fell rolling in the mud.
Nikka forced the peddler flat upon his back. With one knee pinning his chest, he twisted the man’s arm brutally.
Two young men tried to hold on to Nikka. “Let go, Pehelwan,” they cried, “let go of the poor man.”
The hawker sobbed pitifully, tears parting the dust on his cheeks. At last he screamed, “Hai, maaf kar—forgive me brother. Leave me, for God’s sake.”
More men fell upon Nikka, trying to wrench him away. Abruptly he let go of his prey and wiggled his powerful, oil-moistened body free of its oppressors. He stood facing them in the alert stance of a wrestler. The young men were moving in cautiously. “Come on, you cowardly suckling heifers. Come, all you effeminate crybabies all . . . ,” he egged them on.
A thickset youth, wearing only a baggy shalwar, flung himself at Nikka’s knees and the others closed in quickly.
Nikka grappled with them expertly. Bloody and hurt, he still punished them. The throng grudgingly acknowledged his skill. Hitting hard, slipping free, hanging on to an arm, twisting a knee, he held his own. Qasim placed Nikka’s tray on the ground and drew his pistol from its holster. Casually he blew specks of dust off it. A man stared in amazement.
The fight was getting vicious. Mean, sweat-filmed eyes and pain-parted teeth flashed through the haze of dust they kicked up as now one face, now another, bobbed up in the tangle.
Qasim watched. Suddenly his attention was riveted to the stooped glistening back of one of the fighters. Nikka held down the man’s head as in a vice and the youth danced and twisted on his thick legs trying to loosen the hold. Qasim saw his arm swivel to his back and his hand grope in the gathers of his shalwar. At once he fired into the sky.
The shot cracked, stunning the onlookers for an instant. There was panic. The wrestlers straightened, aghast and bewildered.
Qasim held the gun aloft and shouted, “Stop the fight. This swine was reaching for a knife!” He stalked through to the wrestlers and contemptuously pushed back the thickset youth. “Nikka Pehelwan has proved himself. Everyone disperse. The fight is over. Move on, come on, move!”
“Your friend is a strong man,” someone said and Qasim glowed with pride.
The crowd broke up reluctantly, leaving a knot of about ten admirers. They brushed the dust from Nikka’s hair and clothes and handed him his slippers. He walked away erect and silent, followed by this group, the undisputed strong man of the camp and the only paan-biri vendor around.
A month later in the seedy neighborhood of Qila Gujjar Singh, Qasim and Nikka secured adjacent rooms on the second floor of a narrow three-storied building. Constricted balconies, floored by sagging planks, ran the full breadth of the facade one above the other. The rent was twenty rupees a month.
Nikka wasted no time in establishing his trade. He set up a wooden platform that projected right out on to the busy pavement. It was nailed to the building at one end and supported by stumps and bricks. Here he sat all day, cross-legged, shaded by a canvas canopy, near-buried under his wares. Trade was brisk, and Qasim hung around, offering occasional help.
They had been in business a week, when immediately after the Friday prayers, a massive customer sauntered up to Nikka’s new stall.
Here comes trouble, Nikka guessed. He had been expecting a confrontation of sorts: a test to establish his trading rights. Glad of the opportunity, he turned to the stranger.
“Packet of Scissors,” the man said, demanding one of the cheaper brands of cigarettes. He opened the packet, removed the silver folder, and sniffed at the cigarettes. Throwing back the packet, he sneered, “Stale!”
Nikka studied the white scars crisscrossing the man’s black, closely cropped head. He bided his time.
“A paan,” the man next ordered, “with crushed tobacco.”
Nikka withdrew a glossy leaf from a sheaf of betel-leaves wrapped in wet cloth and began coating it with a red and white paste.
The man was fingering a careful arrangement of biri bundles and cigarettes with clumsy irreverence. A tower of cigarette packets fell over.
Nikka swore, “. . . lay your leathery hands off my merchandise.”
The man folded his arms with an offensive smirk that appeared to suggest, “Just you wait, you innocent.”
Nikka handed him the paan saying, “Six paisa.”
The man popped the paan into his mouth, chewed, slurped and declared, “Also stale! Not enough tobacco either!” As he turned to go, he said, “Better learn your trade first. I don’t see how I can allow a sloppy cheat like you to settle in my locality.”
“My money!” shouted Nikka, half rising and gathering his lungi up above his knees.
Ignoring the demand, chewing on his paan, the man stepped away.
Nikka leapt down to the pavement and his hand pounced on his huge customer’s back.
The man swung round. “What do you want, shopkeeper?” he sneered.
“My money!” said Nikka, holding out his palm.
“Are you deaf? I told you, the betel-leaf is stale.”
He knocked Nikka’s hand aside.
Nikka slapped him full in the face. “Spit out my paan first,” he said, striking him on the back of his neck so that the red, syrupy mixture shot out of the man’s startled mouth.
The man clawed back in humiliated anger, and the two pehelwans grappled.
The crowd cheered the taller pehelwan, the acknowledged leader among the local roughs. Two policemen stood by watching the fight with professional detachment.
Keeping a wary eye on the shop, stretching on tiptoe, Qasim looked over the heads of the spectators. The stranger was a good wrestler, and the crowd fell silent when they saw Nikka get the better of him. He pinioned him to the pavement with his knees, and he twisted his face, crushing it into the gravel. The man cried out in pain.
Nikka stood up slowly. He looked around cool-eyed and arrogant. Dusting his torn clothes, and wiping blood from his palms, he jumped calmly on to his platform and settled down to business. He sat all evening as he was, victorious and blood-plastered.
News of the fight, of the strength of the new biri-walla in their midst and of the ignominious defeat of the extortionist, spread like a fire in dry leaves. Qasim felt a new admiration for his friend. Nikka, born with the instincts and destiny of a leader, knew just how to entrench himself. Three days later, the stall prominently displayed two intimidating photographs of his person. Clad only in his wrestling briefs, exhibiting the might of his muscle-bound body, Nikka posed before two stiff rows of diminishing cypresses, behind which hung a lavender Taj Mahal. In the other photograph, Nikka’s image scowled handsomely at customers from between a pair of snarling stuffed tigers. Beneath them, inscribed in Urdu, were the captions, nikka pehelwan and tiger nikka.
Qasim, with nothing to do, wandered along the crowded bazaars of Lahore. Perched on his shoulders, captivated by the intriguing odors of fish frying in the Shalmi, of barbecuing liver and kebab, smiling at the colorful pageant thronging the streets and pouring out of cinemas, Zaitoon relished all his interests. They were blissful, absorbed by the shop windows, their noses