I22 A DEMON WITH RUBY EYESThere came a famous man from Arabia. He was seventeen years of
age at that time. He defeated Raja Dahar and conquered Daybul. After
conquering Sind, he departed to Uch. The young man came from
Arabia; his name was Muhammad Bin Qasim. He conquered Sindfnd
reached Uch. He built a mosque and dug up a well in Uch. The name
of this mosque is "Mosque of Wants." This ancient mosque is also the
place of worship for the "four friends." This is due to kindness and
mercy of Qasim. This is not false but a true story. The water of this
well is likewise "Water of Life" because the saints meditated and
prayed here. A gloomy fellow who drinks water from this well gets rid
of sadness.The archives of cultural ~emory are critical to unravel. I listened
to contemporary accounts of a thirteenth-century Sufi immersed in a
yogic practice crucial to his divination, at a location that is said to
connect him to the eighth century. The simultaneous imagining of
asynchronous pasts with synchronous practices is a regular feature
of stories in Uch. When I inquired how Baba Farid was able to feed
himself while in meditation, I was repeatedly told that he was fed by
Rai Bhag Mal, a Hindu merchant from the town. When Baba Farid
emerged from the well, he blessed the merchant and accepted him as
a disciple; without asking him to convert. It is for this reason, it was
explained to me, that Hindus of Sind and Gujarat continue to venerate
Baba Farid and visit his shrine in nearby Pakpattan.^34
For the people in Uch the placard and the memory of Qasim rep-
resent an. encounter with difference and its resolution. The popular
accounts of Baba Farid relate that after leaving the well, he embarked
on a mission to convert the region of Pakpattan to Islam. His conver-
sion stories feature miracles, acts of kindness, and divine aid. These
stories are often heard at gatherings in Sufi shrines at Uch. At first
hearing, they sound triumphalist and evocative of Islam's victory over
the region. Yet like the story of the Rai Tulsi Das, there are nuances
embedded in the tellings. The stories are collected in various hagiogra-
phies, such as the Siyar al-Aqtab, compiled in 1646 by Shaykh Alhadiya
Chishti 'Usmani. An examination of the structure of an archetypal
encounter would help situate the mental mapping of difference in
medieval Uch. The following account is one I heard in Uch and it