My cousin the Maulana is a liar. I realise that we’re all liars, one way or another, one time or another. We’re all living lies, anyway, in the way we interact with the world.
But even among these liars, my cousin the Maulana stands out.
He’s not a real Maulana of course, he’s not even a Muslim. I call him the Maulana because he once grew a beard, allegedly on medical advice, that made him look like someone out of a Kashmiri insurgent group. Since the Kashmir rebellion was then at its height, I cast around for a suitable name and came up with one that seemed to fit – Maulana Sadiq Cheema. It isn’t even too far off from his real name.
So how is he such a special, notable liar?
It’s because he lies without any apparent cause.
Ask the Maulana a simple question, and even if he has no reason to lie, even if a lie will harm his interests in the long run – he will still lie. He does it naturally as breathing, eating, or making love to his wife (if he does that. Knowing his wife, it’s possible he doesn’t).
If, for instance, he’s visiting you, and you ask him to pick up a loaf of bread on his way home, and he forgets – he will never simply say he forgot. He will invent some fantastic excuse about some gigantic accident on the road (apparently there is an accident on each street he’s on) that blocked traffic and delayed him so much that the baker’s shop was already out of bread and closed by the time he returned. If, however, you go to see, you’ll quite naturally find the baker’s up and running and still with shelves loaded with bread, biscuits, rolls, and whatever you need.
He spreads tall tales about everyone. By now people have become inured to them, but he still won’t quit. To listen to him, you’d think every mutual acquaintance or relative is a drug-addicted alcoholic nymphomaniac with kleptocratic tendencies, and more.
The Maulana had a denim jacket once with a sheepskin lined collar. He claimed once to have lost it on a train. He claimed he’d been robbed of it on the train. And the last time he was telling me of how he was robbed of it, he kind of forgot it was, at that moment, hanging over the back of his chair…the very chair he was sitting in.
If the Bush administration wants another spokesperson, they know whom to call.
