Translation by Fahad Baloch
A friend told me. “On an evening, three men came to our clinic. One among them held a Tasbeeh; another was dressed in pressed cotton; and one was wearing sunglasses: all three of them had slight potbellies.”
“Assalam-o-Alaikum!”
After the greeting, I asked them. One of them replied, “We are highly educated and know-how individuals, but we are ill.”
I prepared three different [entry] slips for them, so they could go to doctor one by one, but they all insisted on going together.
I sent them. After a while, the doctor came out of the clinic and gone. Very angry, he told me: “What would a doctor need to do with literature? Go and treat them yourself.”
He continued the story and said. “I was astonished. As the doctor asked me to, I reached them, and asked what the issue was.”
The first one said. “I write poetry in Balochi. I recited a poem before the doctor so that the rest of my friends would not know my disease.”
The other one replied. “I am a fiction writer; so I read one of my stories, so that the other two wouldn’t know anything of my disease.”
The third one answered. “I am a fiction writer and a novelist; so I, like them, read out the plot of my novel, in order to keep my disease a secret from companions.”
My friend says. “I threw my arms up, and, after a while, I asked. Are you not the people who say ‘Literature has nothing to do with politics?’ ”
“Yes.” all three, unequivocally, replied.
I handed over the doctor’s equipment to them and said. “I will leave for 10 minutes, and will have a cup of tea with doctor. You all should cure yourselves at your own.”
