While Jinnah retired to the quiet discipline of his Lahore residence, the Shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh did not rest.
It never truly did.
But tonight, it felt as if the marble itself had awakened.
The courtyard was a breathing sea—rows of bodies kneeling, standing, swaying, rising, folding back into themselves. Oil lamps trembled in the draft. Rosewater and incense fought for dominance in the air, and the smell of langar—hot lentils, fresh bread, ghee—moved through the crowd like a promise.
Every few minutes, the qawwali on the far side of the complex surged, then softened again, like waves hitting a shore that had no edge.
And near the marble steps, where the light fell cleanest, Sohni sat cross-legged and sang.
Her voice was not polished tonight. It was raspy at the edges, roughened by hours of repetition and emotion. But it did not fail.
If anything, the strain made it more believable.
She sang kalam after kalam—one after another—each verse landing differently on different faces. Some men listened with their eyes narrowed, skeptical but trapped by the melody. Some women listened as if the words were washing something heavy off their hearts.
Her father sat close, steady, keeping his posture quiet and dignified. Her uncle's hands never stopped working the dholak. The chimta's metallic clap—clang-chick, clang-chick—cut through the crowd like a pulse. Simple instruments. Honest instruments. The kind that belonged to the soil.
No stage. No curtain.
Just marble and breath and sound.
Balvinder Singh sat a few steps behind her.
He looked less like a feared Sikh soldier tonight and more like a watchful elder brother who had been given a responsibility he did not fully understand but would die before failing.
He did not shout orders. He did not swing his stick.
He simply occupied space correctly.
When boys tried to push forward to get closer to the singer, Balvinder's hand rose—one finger—enough to stop them. When an overeager man tried to edge into the women's side, Balvinder's eyes lifted. The man immediately remembered another appointment and disappeared.
Even his breathing was disciplined, as if he feared noise might disturb the sanctity of Sohni's voice.
Abdullah Shafi sat nearby, eyes closed, swaying gently with the rhythm.
He did not speak.
He did not perform piety.
He simply listened—his lips moving faintly at certain lines, as if the kalam had opened a door inside him that he had not planned to enter tonight. A teacher, a scholar, a man who measured language for a living—now letting the words pass through him like a prayer that required no commentary.
The villagers of Sandalbar mingled with the urbanites of Lahore as if the old wall between countryside and city had been briefly dissolved.
A Lahore shopkeeper, standing near a brass railing with his arms folded, kept glancing toward Balvinder, the curiosity in him winning against pride.
He leaned toward a farmer—thick hands, sun-burnt neck—who had the unmistakable posture of a man used to open fields, not dense crowds.
"Is it true?" the shopkeeper whispered, as if speaking too loudly might invite trouble. "That Sikh… is that the djinn from the radio?"
The farmer smiled. Not politely. Possessively.
"The very same," he said, puffing his chest as if he had personally forged Balvinder out of iron.
The shopkeeper blinked. "But… he's just a man."
The farmer's smile widened.
"Of course he is a man," he said. "But he is also… ours."
The shopkeeper hesitated, then asked what he really meant.
"They say he eats coal."
The farmer nodded solemnly, as if this were a matter of public record.
"He eats coal," the farmer confirmed. "But tonight he is fasting out of respect. Even a djinn knows when he is in the Saint's house."
The shopkeeper's eyes widened, half amused, half convinced despite himself.
"And those guards?" he asked, pointing discreetly toward the Farabis managing the langar lines. "They move like soldiers."
It was true.
The Farabis did not look like shrine volunteers. They did not behave like policemen either. They were something in between—men who had learned control.
They kept the lines clean. They redirected elbows. They prevented fights before they became fights. They did it without screaming, without insults, without the small humiliations that usually accompanied authority in Punjab.
A man tried to cut the line. A Farabi placed one hand on his shoulder—not rough, not gentle—simply final.
The man opened his mouth to protest, then noticed the Farabi's eyes. He fell back into place without a word, as if his pride had been quietly confiscated.
A child stumbled with a hot plate. A Farabi caught it, steadied the child, and handed the food back with a nod that said: continue.
No drama. No charity performance. Just order.
The farmer followed the shopkeeper's gaze and smiled again—this time with full confidence, the confidence of a man whose village had survived something terrible and had decided who to credit.
"They are Farabis," he said, as if naming a known force of nature.
"Farabis?" the shopkeeper repeated.
The farmer's voice lowered. It became reverent, almost conspiratorial.
"They are the Army of the Data's Lawyer," he declared. "Servants of the man who serves the Saint."
The phrase landed clean.
Data's Lawyer.
It did not sound like politics. It did not sound like party slogans. It sounded like a title pulled straight out of Punjab's oldest mental vocabulary: the saint's protector, the poor man's representative, the one who walks into dark places without fear.
The shopkeeper's skepticism wavered.
A second villager—older, with a white beard and watery eyes—joined the conversation, eager to add evidence.
"Today a woman cried at the gate," he said. "They said the police stole her men. And then—" he tilted his head toward the inner courtyard, where the shrine's silver doors glinted under lamplight "—the vakeel walked out like a sword."
The shopkeeper's eyes moved, hungry.
"Which vakeel?"
The old villager's tone turned definitive.
"Jinnah Sahib," he said. "He went to the thana. He did not send a clerk. He did not send money. He went himself."
The shopkeeper swallowed. He had heard stories of Jinnah in assembly, of his cold arguments, of his reputation among the elite. But this—this was a different story.
This was not a man winning debates.
This was a man humiliating a tyrant.
Another urbanite, a young man in a neat kurta, scoffed lightly as if to protect his own sense of superiority.
"You villagers turn everything into a myth," he said. "A barrister is not a saint's soldier."
A woman beside him—perhaps a widow, face lined with hardship—answered without turning her head.
"Maybe not," she said. "But tonight I saw men like you—educated, clever—standing here safely because someone brought discipline into the courtyard."
The young man fell silent.
He looked toward the Farabis again. He looked at Balvinder's steady posture. He looked at Sohni's guardians behind her, keeping her respectable, anchored, protected.
He looked at the crowd listening—not like a mob, but like a community that had been temporarily taught how to behave.
And then he did what Lahore always did when it encountered power it didn't fully understand.
He accepted the story.
The myth was solidifying in the smoke of incense and the heat of shared food.
It did not need Jinnah present.
In fact, his absence made it stronger. Because myths grow best when the subject is unseen—when the crowd must fill the gaps with their own imagination.
Somewhere in the courtyard, a man began whispering the phrase again, testing its taste:
"Data da Vakeel."
Another repeated it, louder.
A third said it with certainty.
And the words moved outward—step to step, mouth to mouth—like a chant that had not yet become official but already felt inevitable.
The Farabis kept the lines moving.
Balvinder kept the crowd at respectful distance.
Sohni kept singing, voice fraying but refusing to stop.
Abdullah kept swaying, eyes closed, as if he had surrendered to a truth he would not admit in daylight.
And above them all, the shrine remained what it had always been: a court that did not require paperwork.
Tonight, Lahore had added a new rumor to its bloodstream.
Not that a politician had visited the Darbar.
Not that a barrister had won another argument.
But that a man had walked from the saint's door to a police station—and returned with justice in his hands.
By morning, the city would not remember the details.
It would remember the title.
And titles, in Punjab, were more durable than facts.