When the sun goes down and the battle horns cry over the fallen, as the Milky Way swims unfeeling in its cold path towards the crushing liberation of nonexistence, the warmth of a light nahari as it cools and turns chewy and unfriendly to the strongest teeth, as the songs of love turn to songs of mourning, as wine refills the dusty hourglass and soil turns to dust, Ghazi Jamal rests under the bruised sky, that longs for the return of her lovers, greedy for the sweetness of life, the cool seabreeze that wafts through the muggy tropical air for a fleeting moment, the Nahari that surrounds itself with Daal in the hopes of elevating itself, the elaichi in the cosmic biryani. With weary feet and head, he casts garlic the size of stars into the yawning blackness of a humble pot, and when the aroma of good works slowly emanates from the chasm of the future, he casts chunks of soft fatty meat and the treacherous knuckle bones that harshly remind the momin that he is not in Jannah yet, and covers it with a reddening blanket the colour of the dusk sky of the finest masala, crushed to the beat of the tabla, played by the skilled calloused brown fingers of Ustad Shaan, as he crafts a ghazal for the tongues and teeth of the believers to match Khusro himself. Ghazi Jamal stirs resolutely, knowing little struggles are the ingredients of elevated joy, as he fills his nahari pot with the sweetest water from the embrace of the snowy Himalayas on the blessed and cursed land of Hindustan, the arms that once drove a bloodstained sword now pushing an untainted steel ladle. On his lips are battle songs of old that scatter the steam as it rises to the winking sky, where it will turn into rains and bless and curse the lands of Hindustan once again. When the time comes, familiar to only those who have cooked of the Nahari one thousand times, Ghazi Jamal churns the ashes of golden dancing life with the enticing coolness of a mother's love and more water, before casting them into the blackness before him. From the determined hands of the Father of the Nation, he casts the symbol of his half freedom, the gilded cages and golden chains, for taste, with the symbol of resistance to the Papan, the patient onions that nourished the poor and outcast through the Papan's rule, lightly browned in their bay'ah to Ghazi Jamal, the replacement for the legions he once commanded in battle, as the nahari becomes firm and the meat crumbles to his touch. The spiced roots from home, the noxious fruit from lands he has never seen, lands united only by their conquest by the sons of Yakub's hand, gingerly cut by fingers too familiar with swords, the bittersweet citrus that quietly mingles like a refugee in lands unfamiliar, that fall into Ghazi Jamal's bowl. The Ghazi picks up a roti, and, with a Bismillah, begins to eat. There will be many more battles to be fought, but there will also be many naharis afterwards. And even if the rest of the world is lost, Ghazi Jamal will eat nahari. InshaAllah.
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