The man who Died recently at Hazrat Shah Aqeeq’s Shrine at Thatta was known to me as Mr. Wahiyo Mir Jat. I have this odd feeling when I call him “Mr” because no one gave him that much respect in his life. He was known to the world as a poor woodcutter who owned nothing but a dying donkey and a cheap axe. He spent most of his life in the jungles in search of a nice quality wood. And he died under the shades of an old Neem tree near the shrine of the Sufi mystic, completely dehydrated and out of hunger, in his rotten cloths. Thus, a no one was once born and died, and no one noticed.

I remember when I was a little child, I used to visit my ancestral village near Khorwah where Wahiyo would suddenly appear like some invisible man unveils his identity and then play with us in the open fields. He learnt magic from his teacher at the Shah Abdul Kareem shrine which is nearby our hometown Khorwah. The teacher who taught him magic instructed him to never wear a shoe or cut his beard in life. As a result, he was a very horrible looking man but his illusions were awesome.

Some of the magic tricks he performed include, going inside his mud house and recite a few words, then come out and lock the door. Then he would ask questions and some unknown, strange voice, would answer all his questions even though the room was empty. He was also the master of walking on the fire and eating all the hot coal as well as burning wood. But his most intense, perhaps the funniest, trick was to attempt exorcism. He would try to pull the ghost or devil out of a human body and people would behave as if they are experiencing it. His way was to play audio cassette from a cheap tape recorder and then dance to complete the ritual. I always doubted his intentions but it was his secondary means of income and I inherently wanted him to earn more. He would always say before the performance, “I’ll buy a better donkey and lots of wood cutting tools after this.”

Perhaps, his greatest illusion was to turn the bricks into gold for a limited period of time. That trick earned him rupees forty thousand cash from a local Hindu Banya, a Mill owner, who then followed him like moth follows the candle. At last, Wahiyo took the businessman to a remote location near Thatta Hills and asked him to dig besides some lonely hill. There the Mill owner found shining treasure of gold under the soil. He filled out his entire car with some of the bricks and returned back to Khorwah. The moon was shining that night and the Banya was so excited that he was driving at nearly the full speed, almost had an accident. But his joy did not last long as the very next morning he found out that nothing in his car resembled gold. They were all ordinary bricks and rocks.

Wahiyo quickly left the town that morning. With nearly forty thousand rupees in hands, he took a vacation from wood cutting for nearly half a year. At last, he spent all his money and returned back to work with a new donkey and tools, fresh and ready to enter the jungle. But the Banya had him arrested. In jail, the police officers tortured the poor illusionist. He gave them offer to return the money on monthly installments but the Banya wanted to extract the money out of his belly. As a result, Mr. Wahiyo performed another trick, probably his second greatest illusion. The blood started flowing out from his body like a fresh water spring. The whole police station floor painted in red color. The policemen became so afraid that they set him free.

Wahiyo was an orphan since childhood. He never found someone to hold his hands and show him a better way to lead his life. Most of his actions indicated a fair amount of desperation. It was all about struggle for survival. The shrines offered him free meals so he used to go there.

He died in a middle age, probably in his late forties, when he visited the shrine of Shah Aqeeq for the last time. He got ill and found a shelter under a tree. He got dehydrated and was hungry. He couldn’t stand up and enter the shrine for help. No one noticed him either. His soul departed but his body laid there for weeks, until someone found a phone number from his pocket and informed his relatives at Khorwah. They did not want to associate with a dead body, so they quickly turned off their number. When his relatives found the body, they recognized him by his feet. His feet were burnt. They knew Wahiyo used to walk on fire, so they assumed it was him. A no one died that day. He left nothing behind. Only here in this post survives a tiny bit of his life. Mr. Wahiyo Mir Jat, a man who died recently near the shrine and under the Neem tree.