Diesel, by Pinaki | because the best stories are our own

Diesel

Diesel, as he is known to everyone in the neighbourhood, was a football player and a thief and a drunkard and a taxi driver and a tow-truck operator and a water carrier before he became a shopkeeper in the warren of little establishments in Bait Talib behind the Muttrah souq.

Mohammed Abdullah Shahu al Balushi used to ferry water from under the mountains in Baluchistan, using donkeys to get to customers in Mandh. But that wasn't good enough and so, 59 years ago, he left for Gwadar on the coast and set off for Oman, leaving behind his donkeys, and the mother from Kichi, settling down in the neighbourhood of Dabagh.

"No one played football here in those days," Diesel says, "only hockey." But Diesel wasn't going to bumble around with a stick. He slips deep into the innards of his dark, one-room shop and unearths an old monotone photograph of him and his football team in Muscat, with mountains in the background. It was 1961 and Diesel was devouring 30 tandoori rotis a day, 6 cloves of garlic and his own concoctions of herbal treatments. He always tried to stay away from meat and potatoes.

He doesn't eat any dinner these days, except for a swig of water heavy with the flowers of the shirish and leaves of the rehan. That, he swears, will keep you going when everyone around is dropping like flies. It might be true: everyone he ever knew from the old days is dead.

But Diesel has burned brighter than those around him. He used to smoke 3 packets of cigarettes back in the days they weren't even allowed, and he'd exhale through his nostrils to be more discreet. He stopped when the bleeding in his ears got too bad. And then there was the drinking. The worst was the night when he, as usual, had gone to the Ghubrah roundabout and was taking his customers to Ruwi. He knew he had drunk too much and had had 2 showers at home before to slap himself back, but they hadn't been enough. He crashed the car at Darsait, and that was the end of his drinking.

Somewhere between living like hell and burning out, Diesel became a thief, earned a lot of money, owned a fleet of 6 cars and had people to drive them for him (he had a staff of 36). But he blew it all on the alcohol and women and the whole package deal. He's been arrested and sick and bankrupt, and now plays it safe with his little shop in a little side alley behind the souq.

He now stops at 12 rotis, and has quit smoking and drinking. The rumour in the neighbourhood is that he's still a rich man, with far more money than you'd guess from his basic establishment. He says he makes RO200 a month from the shop, and another 300 from a business partnership where he lends his name. He opens shop at 6am and stays in it till midnight, cat-napping in the afternoon but always open for business. He will walk for more than an hour in the wee hours of the morning, past the empty waterfront and to his house in Dabagh.

But after a lifetime of excess, after all the money and drink and adventure, after the 14 children (13 from one wife), even Diesel is tired. "Everyone I knew," he says, "is dead." And he barely made it through. The secret, he reveals to me, dead serious, as he flicks over a packet of silver Dunhills to a customer, is this: never, ever listen to the wife.