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The next afternoon Saleem and Azmat went to weigh the cotton. Azmat insisted upon leaving the canvas roof off the jeep, the Manager protesting for a moment, saying something about the dust. Sahibs didn't drive around in open jeeps, except when hunting. Azmat drove sleepily, for he had not taken a nap as he often did after lunch. As they drove Saleem talked at him, softly, conspiratorially, about the farm, and Azmat in his mind rhythmically deflected the Manager's sallies, simultaneously veering around potholes, his thoughts and movements blended. The hot dust piled inches deep on the road streamed back in a plume behind the jeep, as if a smoke machine were attached to the exhaust.
"I wonder if Munshi Aslam is the right man to run Kawni?" speculated the Manager. "I'm told he has a setting with the wife of the tractor driver; and so the Munshi dances to the driver's tune. He who pays the piper calls the tune. You know all this. You told me yourself you don't trust the man's face. Well, the hell with him. We'll deal with him soon enough."
"The buddy system," thought Azmat, but he couldn't help being warmed by the strength of the man next to him, liking the protection and the knowledge of this place that Saleem represented.
* * *
The cotton factory owner, Chaudrey Zafar, met them at the gate, having been forewarned of Azmat's visit. Almost an albino, he had freckles and carrot-red hair, wore a tight safari suit of heavy gray cloth, and moved his hands restlessly as he talked.
"As salaam uleikum, Mian Sahib," he said. "Mian Sahib, thank you for taking the trouble to visit my poor little hole." He swept his palm around, at the large and well-built factory, the piles of cotton waiting to be ginned, the raw cotton in gunnysacks fresh from the farms and not yet weighed. The cotton gins hummed and bits of spumed lint decorated all the surfaces, the gates, the walls,
the large bricked courtyard. "Please, come into my office." He smiled dotingly.
The office had plastic roses in a vase, the petals thick with dust, a very expensive air-conditioner, two telephones, and a marble pen-holder, from which he removed a pen and began twirling it between thumb and forefinger. The table was covered with green baize, under a glass top.
He pushed a bell-button under the lip of the table to summon the peon. "Come on, you dunce," he said. "Mian Sahib is in a hurry, you fool. Bring tea, the good tea, and some biscuits, the best ones. Hurry up."
Turning his complete attention to Azmat, he began, "With you, Mian Sahib, we have a special relationship, not of businessmen but of old friends, or rather, of family. I was like a son to your father, although I'm not worthy."
The tea came and, since they weren't discussing business, an awkward silence descended.
"But Mian Sahib, you must be very bored here among us," said the factory owner. "You who are used to all the fine things and fine people. City people. Choice manners." He touched his chest with his palm. "Here we wallow in our darkness."
"Mian Sahib looks into everything himself," responded Saleem. "Seeds, sprays, varieties, everything. Everything. He keeps it all in his little notebooks."
They worked together. "Why can't my son be like that?" asked Chaudrey Zafar rhetorically. "But tell us, sir, what is America like? You've had the priciest education possible. What should we know?"
Azmat began talking with rising interest about his experiences at prep school and college, and from time to time the two Chaudries gave each other amazed looks, as if to say, What wonders this young man has seen.
* * *
"And now," said the factory owner, rising briskly, "let's quickly weigh your cotton and get that out of the way."
They emerged from the office, walking among bales of ginned cotton bound with metal straps, ready for market, then came to the piles of burlap sacks each filled at the farm with a hundred kilograms of cotton, more or less. The factory crew, who spent all day weighing cotton, looked with interest at Azmat, at his foreign shoes and haircut, his gleaming white shalvar, the classic landlord shalvar that few people now wore, one of the young man's affectations. Unlike the field workers at Dunyapur, this crew had a piratical spirited look, due to the fact that they spent their days deciding the fates of small farmers, who would come and watch in agony as these men weighed their entire crop, their yearly bread. They were hired for their quickness, mental and physical - to fleece the hicks.
"Which is ours?" asked Azmat.
"Over there, of course, those big stacks." The factory owner seemed to find this funny, and kept smiling paternally, while he played with some car keys that he had taken from his pocket. "Choose any ten and we'll take the average? Is that fair?"
Azmat supposed that it didn't matter which he took. Not wanting to seem as if he cared one way or the other, he pointed to one of the stacks. "Take the top ones from that pile, then."
"These ones?" asked Chaudrey Zafar. "Are you sure? O.K."
One of the men stepped up onto the pile with a metal hook in his hand, thrust it into the burlap, and threw down the cotton. Another man dragged the sack to the balance scale, which hung from heavy wood beams planted in the ground, and two more threw it on.
The weigh master, an enormous man, bare footed, unshaven, wearing a dirty white vest, reached over and steadied the sack, then tossed weights onto the other side of the scale, calling out very loudly and quickly, "Ninety, two kilos, four, up it goes, take it off." In his booming voice he called back to the accountant who sat nearby with a ledger, "Ninety seven, call it ninety eight, the young gentleman's cotton, free, fair and above board." Before the accountant had finished writing another sack flew onto the scale.
Ninety six, ninety three, ninety seven, then ninety two.
Azmat saw himself losing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of rupees. The sacks had been weighed on the farm by his men at a hundred kilos.
"Wait, just a minute," he said, stepping forward, his ears burning. "Could you just explain your method to me."
"Look at that," said Chaudrey Zafar. "Mian Sahib keeps an eye on every kilo of his cotton. A careful man!" Both Zafar and Saleem laughed, and the men joined in.
The weigh master explained to him, as if to a child, the value of the various stones, showed him that when empty the scales hung evenly. "You lost your moisture, that's all."
"And what's that?" asked Azmat, pointing to a weight that had been sewn up in cloth, with a tail to it.
"That's the weight of the sack, isn't it? We don't count that, we always throw that on. It's standard."
Not wanting to give the impression that he mistrusted the factory owner, Azmat stepped back.
"Bring it to me, boys," called the weigh master. "Strap it on."
Ninety six, ninety four, ninety two, ninety seven, one hundred and one. Each sack flew off almost as soon as it settled on the scale, the men moving in concert, two of them throwing it on, one dragging it away, wielding those terrible steel hooks, dragging the sacks as if they were bodies. Chaudrey Zafar took a small calculator from his pocket and added the figures, which the accountant called out to him.
"Ninety five point six. So that makes ninety five."
"But you should round it up, it's closer to ninety six." Azmat's voice cracked, and he felt strained and tearful. He thought, It's not the money, it's the cheating.
"Come, we always round down, it's business," said Zafar. "There's no money in ginning, I do it out of charity, to give these men work. It doesn't matter to you, we're shopkeepers, we buy and sell - and you, you're a lord, a landlord."
"Go on," said Chaudrey Saleem. "Let it go. It doesn't matter."
* * *
Back in the jeep, Azmat drove wildly, raging, through the little bazaar clustered around the factory, grinding the gears as he shifted. Saleem smiled at a man pushing a juice cart, who jumped back and stared at them with rounded eyes.
"How could you? Why didn't you back me up?"
"Why, what was wrong? What could possibly be in it for me?" asked Saleem, offended but unperturbed. "How could I know which sacks you
would choose. Those guys are too clever. In any case, it's a good harvest."
Azmat held his tongue with difficulty. "We just lost a hundred thousand rupees. It's complete bullshit."
"More than that, actually, if we take the farm weight," responded Saleem. "That's the way it is in farming. We'll make it up."
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