The Goat-Spy Letters — III

And Dajjal would come out riding a very large donkey which will cover a mile in a single stride, and daily drink dry three rivers and consume seventy orchards of all vegetation large and small. He will have a distance of one mile between his ears. (Miscellaneous Sources)

Dispatch 3

Dateline: Pakistan

Cher Master,

I will not lie to you. Frankly, I thought someone had taken poetic liberties with the description of the donkey I was supposed to procure for you. Well, last night at a diplomatic reception, where I was serving desserts in a waiter’s disguise, I turned a bend and saw the donkey. He occupied a whole table. I stole close and learned that he is a composite animal, made up of a syndicate of public and private individuals. He grazes in the northern forests and drinks from the local water supply (these days one must drink treated water). But the folk prejudice that labels him as a destructive agent is highly unjust. I found him to be a benevolent beast. He does not destroy forests; he only takes wood from there to make furniture and plywood. The water that he takes, he does not merely pass out like his foul detractors: he sells it to the needy at a modest price. If he wished, he could charge plenty for his goods and services as his industry has earned him what is called a ‘monopological right’ on the resources; but he is not greedy. He makes only a subsistence profit and, therefore, must return to work again the next day. At first I was surprised that his fabled anatomical organs — his ears — were not on his person. Then a very respectable lady told me that they have been contracted out. Called hearing posts, they are set up at every mile and erected in the shape of mustachioed men with a burning itch in their unmentionables. I have seen them since. A great sense of silence and security overwhelms one in their presence.

At the reception I also saw for the first time the Lord Chief of the Crows. He arrived garbed in shining Satan black. It is said that at one time he was the very essence of wickedness and a scavenger and a carrion-eater, like the rest of his species. But he underwent a diet-changing transformation when a sword-wielding mongoose climbed into his perch and asked for the Lord Chief’s tail-feathers for his hat. A chance-medley followed. The mongoose forcibly borrowed the feathers, dispossessed the Lord Chief from his perch, and marched away. Immediately, the Lord Chief began cawing powerfully. Hundreds and thousands of crows answered his call. Some came flying, others came riding on the horns of cows. They drove away the mongoose. In time, the Lord Chief’s tail feathers grew again and he regained his perch but the trauma forever changed him. His diet now consists of scribbled-paper salad and crackling-signals pie. It is prepared under the supervision of the qutubs. I took two large platters of each dish to his table. The Lord Chief ate peevishly, but with appetite.

Later that evening I heard rumours that the crows’ proverbial unity has suffered a setback because of magic. All fingers pointed toward the powerful Magician — a mountain crow, sermonising a select assembly of the qutubs in a segregated section at the reception. His presence occasioned all kinds of rumours because he performs the last rites of the dead and the dying and makes evil spirits from their souls. A crow of many talents, the magician has also ghost-written the famous tract called The Constitution of Infamy. But his chief work remains the lesser-known and privately circulated tome, Kavva Tantar (Crow Magic). It contains a number of formulas, all of which require blood sacrifices of the crows. I hear too that it was the Magician who had shown the Lord Chief’s perch to the mongoose in return for some hair from the latter’s tail. I wonder what cunning use he had in mind for mongoose hair?

Got to go. There’s a knock at the door.

Abruptly,

Jassasa

P.S. O joy! The postman brought Master's letter. A quick correction, though, Master: it’s eschatology, not scatology.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 29^th, 2010.