WEBVTT

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Thank you, Elizabeth.

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That's the nicest introduction
I've ever gotten, and is

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commensurate with how I
felt about having you read

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my stories for the first time.

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And some of the stories that
appear in my book and some

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of the stories that I hope
will appear in other books

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are the ones that
Elizabeth read first.

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So thank you so much.

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And just very briefly, Arizona
for me was this amazing place.

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I had been a lawyer and had been
pretty miserable as a lawyer.

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I was working in a
horrible New York law firm,

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making rich people richer.

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And I hated it.

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And I'd never been
to the southwest.

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And I'd never really
been to the west, even.

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And I came to this place.

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And it was amazing,
the light and the color

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and the air, which is like
in the winter, as you know,

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the air is like champagne.

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It's so light and delicious.

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And to be here and to have every
morning wake up, and it's sunny

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and it's nice.

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And you sit down, and
you write stories.

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That was for me, an
amazing emancipation.

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And so I'm so grateful
to you, Elizabeth.

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I know you were one
of the people who

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helped to shepherd
along my application

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when I wanted to come here,
and who obviously, helped

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me great deal when I was here.

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All right, I'm going to
read you three things.

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I'll try to be relatively brief.

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There's nothing
worse than writers

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who come to these things and
then read for a great length.

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And I think what I'll
do is I'll read to you

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first, a piece from the book.

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So this is from a story
called, "About a Burning Girl."

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And it's about a judge.

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It's told in the first person.

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And the judge is this corrupt
judge in the Lahore high court,

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who is sort of battling
his way through life

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and making money
as and when he can.

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And he has the misfortune to
discover one day, that his cook

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or his bearer, I guess it
would be a bearer, which

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would be like his
majordomo, I suppose

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or his butler, has
gone off on vacation

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and allegedly killed
his wife by burning her

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to death, which in
Pakistan unfortunately,

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is a very common way of
disposing of undesirable wives.

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So he is presented with
the problem of what

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to do about this butler.

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And his wife says to him, no
I want you to get the guy off.

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I want him to go free, because
I want him back as a butler.

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And he thinks about this
problem and realizes

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that the only way he can get the
butler off and get him brought

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home is by sending
his own secretary,

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I suppose you would call
him, to the place where

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their butler lives and to
go and bribe the police

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and talk to the police
and do everything that's

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necessary to get the guy off.

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Having been a lawyer
and not having

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been a judge, but having
lived in that atmosphere,

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that delicious atmosphere.

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I know that, in
fact, the guys on top

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do very little of the work.

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The work is all done by
the guys on the bottom,

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I having been on the bottom,
I resented this mightily.

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And so this is sort of a
thumbnail of the guy who

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is sent, the secretary
of the judge,

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who is sent to make sure
that the butler does not get

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put in prison.

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And it's spoken in the
voice of the judge.

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"The two steeds pulling
my career rapidly forward

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along the treacherous road
of the Pakistani judiciary,

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are my wife and Mia Sarkar.

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Mia Sarkar is the
secretary sent.

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Each is, in a different
sphere, absolutely matchless.

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My wife you already know.

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Mia Sarkar deserves
not merely a thumbnail,

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but a biography in two volumes,
if it were possible to find out

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anything at all about him except
his present rank and station.

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So far as I'm aware, Mia Sarkar
wore a cheap, three-piece suit

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and a pair of slightly
tinted spectacles,

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of an already outmoded
design on the day

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that he emerged from
his mother's womb.

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When he leaves the office in
the evening, exactly at 5:00,

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he doesn't turn a corner
or get into a cab or a bus.

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He simply dematerializes.

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No one knows even what quarter
of the city he lives in,

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much less his address.

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He drinks nothing but
milk, one careful glass

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full each day at lunch.

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And because of his
digestion, he eats each day,

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only a single cheese sandwich
on white untoasted bread,

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with a crust cut off, brought to
him by a boy from a tea store.

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Before speaking, he clears
his throat with a little hum,

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as if pulling his voice box
up from some depth where

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he secretes it for safekeeping.

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His greatest
feature, however, is

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his nose, a fleshy,
tubular object,

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gorged with blood, which I've
always longed to squeeze,

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expecting him to
honk like a bus.

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That would be a fatal act.

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There is nothing connected
with the courts of Lahore

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that he has not absorbed.

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For knowledge in
this degree of detail

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can only be obtained by osmosis.

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Everything about the
private lives of the judges

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and of the staff, down
to the lowest sweeper,

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is to him, incidental knowledge.

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He knows the
verdicts of the cases

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before they have been
written, before they even

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have been conceived.

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He sees the city
panoptically, simultaneously.

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And if he does not
disclose the method

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and the motive and the culprit
responsible for each crime,

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it is only because he is more
powerful if he does not do so.

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Locked in his
impenetrable bosom are

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all the riots and inequities
of the past and perhaps

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of the future.

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And when his mid
figure steps out

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of the law courts
of an evening and is

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lost in the crowds
along the mall,

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I am irrationally reminded
of Lenin disembarking

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at the Finland station in 1917.

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He is a man of secret powers
and a mover of great events.

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This is the bacillus
my wife sent out

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to resolve Haddam's case,
as she wanted it resolved.

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Mightier man than I fear him."

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That's Haddam.