Why, when I might have described how, after Mian Abdullah’s death, Aadam buried himself in his work, taking upon himself the care of the sick in the shanty-towns by the railway tracks — rescuing them from quacks who injected them with pepperwater and thought that fried spiders could cure blindness — while continuing to fulfil his duties as university physician; when I might have elaborated on the great love that had begun to grow between my grandfather and his second daughter, Mumtaz, whose dark skin stood between her and the affections of her mother, but whose gifts of gentleness, care and fragility endeared her to her father with his inner torments which cried out for her form of unquestioning tenderness; why, when I might have chosen to describe the by-now-constant itch in his nose, do I choose to wallow in excrement?