SAT OG 2018 Reading - Test 6 reading 1

Another man might have thrown up his

hands—but not Nawabdin. His twelve daughters

acted as a spur to his genius, and he looked with
satisfaction in the mirror each morning at the face of
₅ a warrior going out to do battle. Nawab of course

knew that he must proliferate his sources of

revenue—the salary he received from K. K. Harouni

for tending the tube wells would not even begin to

suffice. He set up a little one-room flour mill, run off
₁₀ a condemned electric motor—condemned by him.

He tried his hand at fish-farming in a little pond at

the edge of his master’s fields. He bought broken

radios, fixed them, and resold them. He did not

demur even when asked to fix watches, though that
₁₅ enterprise did spectacularly badly, and in fact earned

him more kicks than kudos, for no watch he took

apart ever kept time again.
K. K. Harouni rarely went to his farms, but lived

mostly in Lahore. Whenever the old man visited,
₂₀ Nawab would place himself night and day at the door

leading from the servants’ sitting area into the walled

grove of ancient banyan trees where the old

farmhouse stood. Grizzled, his peculiar aviator

glasses bent and smudged, Nawab tended the
₂₅ household machinery, the air conditioners, water

heaters, refrigerators, and water pumps, like an

engineer tending the boilers on a foundering steamer

in an Atlantic gale. By his superhuman efforts he

almost managed to maintain K. K. Harouni in the
₃₀ same mechanical cocoon, cooled and bathed and

lighted and fed, that the landowner enjoyed in

Lahore.
Harouni of course became familiar with this

ubiquitous man, who not only accompanied him on
₃₅ his tours of inspection, but morning and night could

be found standing on the master bed rewiring the

light fixture or in the bathroom poking at the water

heater. Finally, one evening at teatime, gauging the

psychological moment, Nawab asked if he might say
₄₀ a word. The landowner, who was cheerfully filing his

nails in front of a crackling rosewood fire, told him

to go ahead.
“Sir, as you know, your lands stretch from here to

the Indus, and on these lands are fully seventeen tube
₄₅ wells, and to tend these seventeen tube wells there is

but one man, me, your servant. In your service I have

earned these gray hairs”—here he bowed his head to

show the gray—“and now I cannot fulfill my duties

as I should. Enough, sir, enough. I beg you, forgive
₅₀ me my weakness. Better a darkened house and proud

hunger within than disgrace in the light of day.

Release me, I ask you, I beg you.”
The old man, well accustomed to these sorts of

speeches, though not usually this florid, filed away at
₅₅ his nails and waited for the breeze to stop.
“What’s the matter, Nawabdin?”
“Matter, sir? O what could be the matter in your

service. I’ve eaten your salt for all my years. But sir,

on the bicycle now, with my old legs, and with the
₆₀ many injuries I’ve received when heavy machinery

fell on me—I cannot any longer bicycle about like a

bridegroom from farm to farm, as I could when I

first had the good fortune to enter your employment.

I beg you, sir, let me go.”
₆₅ “And what’s the solution?” asked Harouni, seeing

that they had come to the crux. He didn’t particularly

care one way or the other, except that it touched on

his comfort—a matter of great interest to him.
“Well, sir, if I had a motorcycle, then I could
₇₀ somehow limp along, at least until I train up some

younger man.”
The crops that year had been good, Harouni felt

expansive in front of the fire, and so, much to the

disgust of the farm managers, Nawab received a
₇₅ brand-new motorcycle, a Honda 70. He even

managed to extract an allowance for gasoline.
The motorcycle increased his status, gave him

weight, so that people began calling him “Uncle,” and

asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he
₈₀ knew absolutely nothing. He could now range

further, doing a much wider business. Best of all,

now he could spend every night with his wife, who

had begged to live not on the farm but near her

family in Firoza, where also they could educate at
₈₅ least the two eldest daughters. A long straight road

ran from the canal headworks near Firoza all the way

to the Indus, through the heart of the K. K. Harouni

lands. Nawab would fly down this road on his new

machine, with bags and cloths hanging from every
₉₀ knob and brace, so that the bike, when he hit a bump,

seemed to be flapping numerous small vestigial

wings; and with his grinning face, as he rolled up to

whichever tube well needed servicing, with his ears

almost blown off, he shone with the speed of his
₉₅ arrival.