Essays in Idleness

Small children are just like puppies, I am told. But they are the opposite, perhaps, of kitty cats. If one does a child a nice turn, it will certainly be repaid with a lifetime of gratitude. (Whereas, cats are only grateful for liver.) In fact, humans can be perverse, and I would never bet on their acceptable behaviour, except in the case of saints.

However, one of my own saintly qualities was exposed, some sixty-six years ago, by some generous Americans. This was actually nearer to Christmas, which comes to Americans shortly after Thanksgiving, and follows them to countries like Pakistan. My family had also arrived in this Asiatic country, where my father had been given a job at the College of Art in Lahore. But he wasn’t going to work at that moment, because he was very ill with jaundice or whatever, and delirious on a charpoy my mama had set up for him, for she was a trained nurse. Papa looked, to a child, and also to his wife, as if he would die of his disease, unless he starved to death first. (Pakistan was not a welfare state; his pay was cut off because he was sick.)

Poor mama was almost hysterically displeased with these circumstances. But she obeyed me when I told her what papa would say: “Be bwave!” She had only come to this theatrically poor country (she didn’t say “shithole”!) a few months before, knew approximately no one in it, and could not speak Urdu or Punjabi. But she located a foreign doctor, who warned her that her husband might die. (His name was memorable: Doctor Seltzer.)

I later learnt how the Americans in that town found out about us. The news was actually carried abroad by our servant, Bill, a loyal Pakistani (Catholic) Christian who, of course, now wasn’t being paid either. He apparently took the news to the Christian servant of an American, met in the labyrinth of Anarkali Bazaar. The response was, my mama told me, shockingly prompt. Several Yanqui Imperialists were mobilized; they suddenly descended upon our little flat in Nedous Hotel.

They swooped in on us, with bundles of cash in rupees, and mountains of expensive Yanqui food. They paid our Bill. My little wee sister got the sort of stuff a three-year-old would appreciate, including a pretty doll wearing shalwar kameez, and I got a pile of Jack-&-Jill magazines. This was nice, but what was nicer, I got a bag of Smarties. It was the size of a pillow.

From that day to this, I have been viscerally pro-American.