From the balcony of his temporary house near the Mall, Jinnah could see only blurred trees and the faint orange smudges of street lamps.
A servant appeared at the door.
"Sir… Allama sahib has arrived."
Jinnah straightened his tie, tugged his sherwani smooth, and nodded.
"Bring him to the drawing room," he said. "And ask for tea. Strong."
Allama Muhammad Iqbal entered like a man carrying two weights at once: his body, made heavier by illness and age, and his mind, still sharp enough to cut.
His beard was threaded with more white than Jinnah remembered. The eyes, though, were unchanged—restless, piercing, as if they measured the invisible more than the visible.
"Jinnah sahib," Iqbal said, a faint smile in his eyes. "They tell me you have become the Crown's physician now. Healing cities while the rest of us argue in coffee houses."
"I am still only a barrister who hates unnecessary funerals," Jinnah replied. "Please, sit. The tea will pretend to be Kashmiri, I am told, but do not expect miracles."
Iqbal laughed quietly and lowered himself into the armchair.
They exchanged a few pleasantries—health, common acquaintances, a joke about how Mussoorie's air had failed to civilise certain ICS officers—before the conversation curled toward its true subject like smoke finding a crack.
"You called me," Iqbal said at last, "to discuss cholera?"
"Cholera—and what bows to it," Jinnah said. "Habit. Ignorance. Pride."
He leaned forward slightly.
"You know already that Lahore is under an emergency scheme," he said. "Local sanitary councils, isolation rings. It works only when the imams speak, when the people listen. Some cooperate gladly. Others cling to fatalism like a blanket."
Iqbal's gaze sharpened.
"And you want me," he said, "to lend my name so that those imams feel your rope a little more tightly around their necks?"
He will not hand you his influence unless he trusts the hand holding the rope, Bilal murmured.
"I want you," Jinnah replied calmly, "to remind them that their rope's other end is already tied to their own dead."
Iqbal's fingers traced the rim of his cup.
"You speak like a magistrate," he said softly. "Efficient. Admiring the mechanisms. Where is the fire I heard from you when we first spoke of Muslim decline, of separate electorates, of power? Have you forgotten the Muslims' freedom and become a… carefully dressed puppet of the Crown?"
The word "puppet" did not come with malice. It came with disappointment, which was worse.
Jinnah took a breath, let it out slowly.
"You always did prefer falcons, Allama," he said. "You spoke of them in verse until half our youth began to believe that the only noble posture was solitary flight."
Iqbal's eyes narrowed, amused despite himself.
"You object?" he asked. "To the bird that rides storms?"
"It is a beautiful metaphor," Jinnah said. "But a falcon lives alone. It dives alone. It dies alone. It is a creature for peaks and poems, not for villages and drains."
He paused, listening to the quiet footfall in his own mind.
Tell him about the wolves, Bilal suggested gently. He respects predators. Show him a different kind.
"I have learned," Jinnah continued, "that I prefer… wolves."
Iqbal blinked.
"Wolves?" he repeated.
"Yes," Jinnah said. "You may correct my zoology if my law has colonised my head too much. But as I understand it, wolves live in packs. They care for their wounded. They feed their old. Their strength is not in a single heroic dive from the sky, but in coordinated movement, in knowing that if one falls, the others do not just recite poetry over the corpse—they drag meat to his pups."
Iqbal watched him, expression unreadable.
"And their leader?" he asked quietly. "What of the alpha, as your English books call him?"
Jinnah's voice stayed level.
"The pack leader, as I see it," he said, "is not the one who shouts the loudest from a rock. He is the one who finds a path through the snow and walks it first, so the others can place their feet where his have already broken the crust."
He leaned back.
"I am not interested in being a falcon admired for posture," Jinnah said. "I am interested in being a wolf who returns with enough food that the weakest do not starve this winter."
Silence settled between them, thick but not hostile.
Iqbal's fingers stilled on the cup.
"You realise," he said at last, "that the wolf is more frightening to the shepherd than the falcon is."
"Yes," Jinnah said simply. "I suspect that is why the Governor keeps inviting me to tea and then sleeping badly."
Iqbal's mouth twitched.
"And yet," he said, "you sit in his house, accept his letters, coordinate his officers. He will say: 'Look, even Jinnah serves the Crown.'"
"He can say what he likes," Jinnah replied. "I know the terms. This emergency structure is temporary. When cholera retreats, the Control Room closes. I go back to my estate. But in that time, we will have taught a few hundred imams, granthis, and pandits how to link cleanliness with faith—and a few thousand families how to listen to something other than rumour."
You are telling him: use the empire as a scaffolding, not as a temple, Bilal said. He might accept that.
Iqbal's gaze grew distant for a moment.
"You want me to speak to the ulema," he said. "To tell them that obeying your sanitary instructions is not betrayal but Islam."
"Yes," Jinnah said. "You understand the religious vocabulary better than I ever will. They will listen if you tell them that ignoring disease is negligence, not piety."
Iqbal fell quiet, thinking.
"You know they already suspect you," he said. "Of being too English. Too precise. Too fond of rules."
"They are correct," Jinnah said. "I am fond of rules that function. That is why I am here asking for your help, instead of writing a separate set of verses myself."
Iqbal laughed softly.
"Spare us that," he said. "Your Urdu is serviceable when scolding, less so in rhyme."
Then he sobered.
"Very well," he said. "I will write a short note to a few key men. I will remind them that the Prophet instructed washing hands, covering wells, quarantining the sick. I will say that any mullah who calls hygiene a foreign conspiracy has not understood the faith he recites."
He raised a finger.
"But," he added, "I will also remind them that any English magistrate who uses this disease as an excuse to humiliate Muslims in their own mohallas will answer, one day, to a tribunal of history."
"I have no objection," Jinnah said. "I hope to stand as a witness in that tribunal."
Iqbal studied him, then gave a small nod.
"You are still you," he said. "Only… more irritatingly systematic."
"It is the company I keep these days," Jinnah said. "Accountants. Doctors. A disembodied voice that keeps telling me about wolves."
Iqbal raised an eyebrow.
"A what?"
"Never mind," Jinnah said smoothly. "Drink your tea before it grows as cold as the Assembly's courage."
Iqbal chuckled.
"You know," he said, "for someone often accused of having no poetry in him, you are building quite a verse in bricks and drains."
Jinnah's eyes, for a brief second, softened.
"If we succeed," he said, "perhaps one day you will write a better version."
"If we fail," Iqbal replied, "I will have to write elegies. At my age, I would prefer not to."
They drank their tea.
Outside, in the streets of Lahore, the first of Iqbal's letters would soon start moving from madrasa to mosque, folded in clerical sleeves—quiet endorsements of a scheme that smelled of both soap and sovereignty.