He put the chair out before dawn, against the wall to the right of the door, and the chair was for the ones who came in and did not buy. The ones who came in and did not buy were nearly the whole village, because the shop is on the road, and on the road at that hour you stand still and watch to see whether anything is coming up. The man who opened up was Karim Dad, shopkeeper in Reshun, above the Chitral valley, delegate of the electricity committee. The committee had sent him to the provincial capital, from the provincial capital he had come back with the bag he had taken with him, and the bag had stood beside the door since the day he came back, never opened. The strap had the crease of seven nights, always in the same place, and at that hour the buckle was cold to the touch. What they answered him in the provincial capital was never learned from him, since to anyone who asked he said that the file was being processed, that the official had made a note, that they had told him to come back; all of it true, one thing at a time. He greeted people twice, once when they arrived and once when they turned to go, and everyone who had dealings with him tells it that way. In the village they said of him that he was good at getting himself received. Getting himself received was the only trade the committee had in the provincial capital.

That week the shop opened and closed with the people going up to the committee room, two hundred paces higher, on the Zait side. From Zait and from Kuragh they came on foot, and they came early, because the sit-in was announced for nine, because the branches were already cut. The branches were leaning against the wall of the room, still green, cut to the width of the roadway, which the youngest man on the committee had taken with a rope the day before. By the rope they had settled the rest as well, and the rest was that the blockade lasted two hours a day until the twenty-fourth, and after the twenty-fourth it was no longer two hours. The twenty-fourth the committee had said over the loudspeaker in front of everyone, and a date said over the loudspeaker has to be kept even on the day it does not suit. It did not suit, already, the ones who brought in the bill. One was brought in by a man come down from the channel, who laid it on the counter and said it was still fifteen rupees a unit, fifteen rupees the same as when the water carried the power station away, that now the station is repaired and running, four point two megawatts, and the bill is the one from before. The repaired station is there for everyone to see from the road. While he was talking another man came in, moved the bag with his foot to get past, and the bag made the thud that full things make.

In front of the door of the committee room the youngest man on the committee stood with his back against the wood, the saw still in his hand. Behind that wood was the loudspeaker, and there was no other way to reach the loudspeaker. Karim Dad arrived at his own hour, greeted him, and the young man did not move aside. He disputed nothing of what the delegate had reported the evening before; he said that before he let him through he wanted a number, and the number was how many doors had been opened to him in the provincial capital in seven days. A number is a closed thing, and in fifty-eight years Karim Dad had never closed one: to anyone who asked him whether a thing would come in he answered that it was being seen to, then he went and got hold of it himself and sold it on for less than he had paid. That morning the committee had not met. The dawn announcement had no content decided by anyone, and the young man with the saw was standing there waiting for the word like the people outside, not bringing it to him. Outside the people were already on their feet, the branches leaning against the wall. Karim Dad looked at the branches, then at the bag beside the door. Then he went past the young man, went in, put his thumb on the button, and waited the time he always waited. He said: "The file is in the provincial capital, today the road stays open." All of it was true. The file was in the provincial capital, in an office whose number they had not given him, and the road that day stayed open because he had just said it stayed open. Outside somebody repeated the sentence to the ones who had not heard, and from then on, when they asked him what he had brought back from the provincial capital, the answer was the file.

At nine the sit-in took place, and it lasted what it was meant to last, two hours. The two hours went by with the people sitting on the verge and the branches where they were, which nobody took away and nobody laid across. Across they never went, and towards noon a pickup came through on its way to Chitral, loaded, with two men sitting on top of the load; it came through because the road was open. The road open, the shop did the trade of any ordinary day. On any ordinary day, in the middle of the afternoon, a woman came in with the month's electricity bill, laid it on the counter, and asked whether it was still worth paying; Karim Dad said to her again the file is in the provincial capital, the road stays open, and she paid. After her the young man came in, and he had left the saw at home. He was not angry. He asked for the sentence in writing, because they were sending it to the provincial capital, and in the provincial capital things said are not on record. Karim Dad took the accounts notebook, turned it to the clean side, and wrote the file is in the provincial capital, the road open. The hand went slower than the voice. The young man read it, said it would do, tore the page out, and left. When he was alone, Karim Dad took the bag and opened it on the floor; out of the bag came his own things, two shirts and a razor, and nothing more. Nothing more was there to take out, and in the notebook, on the page left under the one torn away, the hand had pressed hard enough to leave the line raised: the file is in the provincial capital, the road open.