Between the Assassinations Read online

  That night Ziauddin dreamt of snow-covered mountains and a race of fair-skinned, courteous men who tipped like gods. In the morning, he returned to the guesthouse, and found the stranger on one of the benches outside, sipping from a yellow teacup.

  “Will you have tea with me, little Pathan?”

  Confused, Ziauddin shook his head, but the stranger was already snapping his fingers. The proprietor, a fat man with a clean-shaven lip and a full, fluffy white beard like a crescent moon, looked unhappily at the filthy porter before indicating, with a grunt, that he was allowed to sit down at the tables today.

  The stranger asked, “So you’re also a Pathan, little friend?”

  Ziauddin nodded. He informed the stranger of the name of the man who had told him he was a Pathan. “He was a learned man, sir: he had been to Saudi Arabia for a year.”

  “Ah,” the stranger said, shaking his head. “Ah, I see. I see now.”

  A few minutes passed in silence. Ziauddin said, “I hope you’re not staying here a long time, sir. It’s a bad town.”

  The Pathan arched his eyebrows.

  “For Muslims like us, it’s bad. The Hindus don’t give us jobs; they don’t give us respect. I speak from experience, sir.”

  The stranger took out a notebook and began writing. Zia watched. He looked again at the stranger’s handsome face, his expensive clothes; he inhaled the scent from his fingers and face. This man is a countryman of yours, Zia, the boy said to himself. A countryman of yours!

  The Pathan finished his tea and yawned. As if he had forgotten all about Zia, he went back into his guesthouse and shut the door behind him.

  As soon as his foreign guest had disappeared into the guesthouse, the owner of the place caught Ziauddin’s eye and jerked his head, and the dirty coolie knew that his tea was not coming. He went back to the train station, where he stood in his usual spot and waited for a passenger to approach him with steel trunks or leather bags to be carried to the train. But his soul was shining with pride, and he fought with no one that day.

  The following morning, he woke up to the smell of fresh laundry. “A Pathan always rises at dawn, my friend.”

  Yawning and stretching himself, Ziauddin opened his eyes: a pair of beautiful pale blue eyes was looking down on him, eyes such as a man might get when he gazes on snow for a long time. Stumbling to his feet, Ziauddin apologized to the stranger, then shook his hand, and almost kissed his face.

  “Have you had something to eat?” the Pathan asked.

  Zia shook his head; he never ate before noon.

  The Pathan took him to one of the tea-and-samosa stands near the station. It was the place where Zia had once worked, and the boys watched in astonishment as he sat down at the table and cried:

  “A plate of your best! Two Pathans need to be fed this morning!”

  The stranger leaned over to him and said, “Don’t say it aloud. They shouldn’t know about us: it’s our secret.”

  And then he quickly passed a note into Zia’s hands. Uncrumpling the note, the boy saw a tractor and a rising red sun. Five rupees!

  “You want me to take your bag all the way to Bombay? That’s how far this note goes in Kittur.”

  He leaned back in his chair as a serving-boy put down two cups of tea and a plate holding a large samosa, sliced into two and covered with watery ketchup, in front of them. The Pathan and Zia each chewed on his half of the samosa. Then the man picked a piece of the samosa from his teeth, and told Ziauddin what he expected for his five rupees.

  Half an hour later, Zia sat down at a corner of the train station, outside the waiting room. When customers asked him to carry their luggage, he shook his head and said, “I’ve got another job today.” When the trains came into the station, he counted them. But since it was not easy to remember the total, he moved farther away and sat under the shade of a tree that grew within the station: each time an engine whistled past he made a mark in the mud with his big toe, crossing off each batch of five. Some of the trains were packed; some had entire carriages full of soldiers with guns; and some were almost entirely empty. He wondered where they were going to, all these trains, all these people…he shut his eyes and began to doze; the engine of a train startled him, and he scraped another mark with his big toe. When he got up to his feet to go for lunch, he realized he had been sitting on some part of the markings and they had been smudged under his weight; and then he had to try desperately to decipher them.

  In the evening, he saw the Pathan sitting on one of the benches outside the guesthouse, sipping tea. The big man smiled when he saw Ziauddin, and slapped a spot on the bench next to him three times.

  “They didn’t give me tea yesterday evening,” Ziauddin complained, and explained what had happened. The Pathan’s face darkened; Ziauddin saw that the stranger was righteous. He was also powerful: without saying a word, he turned to the proprietor and glowered at him; within a minute a boy came running out of the hotel holding a yellow cup and put it down in front of Zia. He inhaled the flavors of cardamom and sweet steaming milk, and said, “Seventeen trains came into Kittur. And sixteen left Kittur. I counted every one of them just like you asked.”

  “Good,” the Pathan said. “Now tell me: How many of these trains had Indian soldiers in them?”

  Ziauddin stared.

  “How-many-of-them-had-Indian-soldiers-in-them?”

  “All of them had soldiers…I don’t know…”

  “Six trains had Indian soldiers in them,” the Pathan said. “Four going to Cochin, two coming back.”

  The next day, Ziauddin sat down at the tree in the corner of the station half an hour before the first train pulled in. He marked the earth with his big toe; between trains he went to the snack shop inside the station.

  “You can’t come here!” the shopkeeper shouted. “We don’t want any trouble again!”

  “You won’t have any trouble from me,” Zia said. “I’ve got money on me today.” He placed a one-rupee note on the table. “Put that note into your money box, and then give me a chicken samosa.”

  That evening Zia reported to the Pathan that eleven trains had arrived with soldiers.

  “Well done,” said the man.

  The Pathan, reaching out with his weak arm, exerted a little pressure on each of Ziauddin’s cheeks. He produced another five-rupee note, which the boy accepted without hesitation.

  “Tomorrow I want you to notice how many of the trains had a red cross marked on the sides of the compartments.”

  Ziauddin closed his eyes and repeated, “Red cross marked on sides.” He jumped to his feet, gave a military salute, and said, “Thanks you, sir!”

  The Pathan laughed: a warm, hearty, foreign laugh.

  The next day, Ziauddin sat under the tree once again, scrawling numbers in three rows with his toe. One, number of trains. Two, number of trains with soldiers in them. Three, number of trains marked with red crosses.

  Sixteen, eleven, eight.

  Another train passed by; Zia looked up, squinted, then moved his toe into position over the first of the three rows.

  He held his toe like that, in midair, for an instant, and then let it fall to the ground, taking care that it not smudge any of the markings. The train left, and immediately behind it another one pulled into the station, full of soldiers, but Ziauddin did not add to his tally. He simply stared at the scratches he had already made, as if he had seen something new in them.

  The Pathan was at the guesthouse when Ziauddin got there at four. The tall man’s hands were behind his back, and he had been pacing around the benches. He came to the boy with quick steps.

  “Did you get the number?”

  Ziauddin nodded.

  But after the two of them had sat down, he asked, “What’re you making me do these things for?”

  The Pathan leaned all the way across the table with his weak arm and tried to touch Ziauddin’s hair.

  “At last you ask. At last.” He smiled.

  The guesthouse proprietor, with the beard like the moon, came out without prompting; he put two cups of tea down on the table, then stepped back and rubbed his palms and smiled. The Pathan dismissed him with a movement of his head. He sipped his tea; Ziauddin did not touch his.

  “Do you know where those trains full of soldiers and marked with red crosses are going?”

  Ziauddin shook his head.

  “Towards Calicut.”

  The stranger brought his face closer. The boy saw things he had not seen before: scars on the Pathan’s nose and cheeks, and a small tear in his left ear.

  “The Indian army is setting up a base somewhere between Kittur and Calicut. For one reason and one reason only-” He held up a thick finger. “To do to the Muslims of South India what they are doing to Muslims in Kashmir.”

  Ziauddin looked down at the tea. A rippled skin of milk fat was congealing on its surface.

  “I’m a Muslim,” he said. “The son of a Muslim too.”

  “Exactly. Exactly.” The foreigner’s thick fingers covered the surface of the teacup. “Now listen: Each time you watch the trains, there will be a little reward for you. Mind-it won’t always be five rupees, but it will be something. A Pathan takes care of other Pathans. It’s simple work. I am here to do the hard work. You’ll-”

  Ziauddin said, “I’m not well. I can’t do it tomorrow.”

  The foreigner thought about this, and then said, “You are lying to me. May I ask why?”

  A finger passed over a pair of vitiligo-discolored lips. “I’m a Muslim. The son of a Muslim too.”

  “There are fifty thousand Muslims in this town.” The foreigner’s voice crackled with irritation. “Every one of them seethes. Every one of them is ready for action. I was only offering this job to you out of pity. Because I see what the Indians have done to you. Otherwise I would have offered the job to any of these other fifty thousand fellows.”

  Ziauddin kicked back his chair and stood up. “Then get one of those fifty thousand fellows to do it.”

  Outside the compound of the guesthouse, he turned around. The Pathan was looking at him; he spoke in a soft voice.

  “Is this any way to repay me, little Pathan?”

  Ziauddin said nothing. He looked down at the ground. His big toe slowly scratched a figure into the earth: a large circle. He sucked in fresh air, and released a hoarse, wordless hiss.

  Then he ran. He ran out of the hotel, ran around the train station to the Hindu side, ran all the way to Ramanna Shetty’s tea shop, and then ran around the back of the shop and into the blue tent where the boys lived. There he sat with his mottled lips pressed together and his fingers laced tightly around his knees.

  “What’s got into you?” the other boys asked. “You can’t stay here, you know. Shetty will throw you out.” They hid him there that night for old times’ sake. When they woke up he was gone. Later in the day he was once again seen at the railway station, fighting with his customers and shouting at them:

  “-don’t do hanky-panky!”

  HOW THE TOWN IS LAID OUT:

  In the geographical center of Kittur stands the peeling stucco façade of Angel Talkies, a pornographic cinema theater; regrettably, when the townsfolk give directions, they use Angel Talkies as a reference point. The cinema lies halfway down Umbrella Street, the heart of the commercial district. A significant chunk of Kittur’s economy consists of the manufacture of hand-rolled beedis; no wonder, then, that the tallest building in town is the Engineer Beedi Building on Umbrella Street, owned by Mabroor Engineer, reputed to be the town’s richest man. Not far from it lies Kittur’s most famous ice-cream shop, the Ideal Traders Ice Cream and Fresh Fruit Juice Parlor; White Stallion Talkies, the town’s only exclusively English-language film theater, is another nearby attraction. Ming Palace, the first Chinese restaurant in Kittur, opened on Umbrella Street in 1986. The Ganapati Temple on this street is modeled on a famous temple in Goa and is the site of an annual pooja to the elephant-headed deity. Continue on Umbrella Street north of Angel Talkies and you will reach, via the Nehru Maidan and the train station, the Roman Catholic suburb of Valencia, whose main landmark is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Valencia. The Double Gate, a colonial-era arched gateway at the far end of Valencia, leads into Bajpe, once a forest but today a fast-expanding suburb. To the south of Angel Talkies, the road goes uphill into the Lighthouse Hill, and down to the Cool Water Well. From a busy junction near the well begins the road that leads to the Bunder, or the area around the port. Farther south from the Bunder may be seen Sultan’s Battery, a black fort, which overlooks the road that leads out over the Kaliamma River into Salt Market Village, the southernmost extension of Kittur.

  DAY ONE (AFTERNOON): THE BUNDER

  You have walked down the Cool Water Well Road, past Masjid Road, and you have begun to smell the salt in the air and note the profusion of open-air fish stalls, full of prawns, mussels, shrimp, and oysters; you are now not far from the Arabian Sea.

  The Bunder, or the area around the port, is now mostly Muslim. The major landmark here is the Dargah, or tomb-shrine, of Yusuf Ali, a domed white structure to which thousands of Muslims from across southern India make pilgrimage each year. The ancient banyan tree growing behind the saint’s tomb is always festooned in ribbons of green and gold and is believed to have the power to cure the crippled. Dozens of lepers, amputees, geriatrics, and victims of partial paralysis squat outside the shrine begging alms from visitors.

  If you walk to the other end of the Bunder, you will find the industrial area, where dozens of textile sweatshops operate in dingy old buildings. The Bunder has the highest crime rate in Kittur, and is the scene of frequent stabbings, police raids, and arrests. In 1987, riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims near the Dargah, and the police shut down the Bunder area for six days. The Hindus have since been moving out to Bajpe and Salt Market Village.

  ABBASI UNCORKED THE bottle-Johnnie Walker Red Label blended, the second-finest whiskey known to God or man-and poured a small peg each into two glasses embossed with the Air India maharaja logo. He opened the old fridge, took out a bucket of ice, and dropped three cubes by hand into each glass. He poured cold water into the glasses, found a spoon, and stirred. He bent his head low, and prepared to spit into one of the glasses.

  Oh, too simple, Abbasi. Too simple.

  He swallowed the spittle. Unzipping his cotton trousers, he let them slide down. Pressing the middle and index fingers of his right hand together, he stuck them deep into his rectum; then he dipped them into one of the glasses of whiskey and stirred.

  He pulled up his trousers and zipped them. He frowned at the tainted whiskey; now came the tricky part-things had to be arranged so that the right man took the right glass.

  He left the pantry carrying the tray.

  The official from the state Electricity Board, sitting at Abbasi’s table, grinned. He was a fat, dark man in a blue safari suit, a steel ballpoint pen in his jacket pocket. Abbasi carefully placed the tray on the table in front of the gentleman.

  “Please,” Abbasi said, with redundant hospitality; the official had taken the glass closer to him, and was sipping and licking his lips. He finished the whiskey in slow gulps, and put the glass down.

  “A man’s drink.”

  Abbasi smiled ironically.

  The official placed his hands on his tummy.

  “Five hundred,” he said. “Five hundred rupees.”

  Abbasi was a small man, with a streak of gray in his beard that he did not attempt to disguise with dye, as many middle-aged men in Kittur did; he thought the white streak gave him a look of ingenuity, which he felt he needed, because he knew that his reputation among his friends was that of a simpleminded creature prone to regular outbreaks of idealism.

  His ancestors, who had served in the royal darbars of Hyderabad, had bequeathed him an elaborate sense of courtesy and good manners, which he had adapted for the realities of the twentieth century with touches of sarcasm and self-parody.

  He folded his palms into a Hindu’s namaste and bowed low before the official. “Sahib, you know we have just reopened the factory. There have been many costs. If you could show some-”

  “Five hundred. Five hundred rupees.”

  The official twirled his glass around, and gazed at the Air India logo with one eye, as if some small part of him were embarrassed by what he was doing. He gestured at his mouth with his fingers: “A man has to eat these days, Mr. Abbasi. Prices are rising so fast. Ever since Mrs. Gandhi died, this country has begun to fall apart.”

  Abbasi closed his eyes. He reached toward his desk, pulled out a drawer, took out a wad of notes, counted them, and placed the money in front of the official. The fat man, moistening his finger for each note, counted them one by one; producing a blue rubber band from a pocket of his trousers, he strapped it around the notes twice.

  But Abbasi knew the ordeal was not over yet. “Sahib, we have a tradition in this factory that we never let a guest depart without a gift.”

  He rang the bell for Ummar, his manager, who entered almost at once with a shirt in his hands. He had been waiting outside the whole time.

  The official took the white shirt out of its cardboard box. He looked at the design: a golden dragon whose tail spread around onto the back of the shirt.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “We ship them to the United States. They are worn by men who dance professionally. They call it ‘ballroom dancing.’ They put on this shirt and swirl under red disco lights.” Abbasi held his hands over his head and spun around, shaking his hips and buttocks suggestively; the official watched him with lascivious eyes.

  He clapped, and said, “Dance for me one more time, Abbasi.”

  Then he put the shirt to his nose and sniffed it three times.

  “This pattern…” He pressed on the outlines of the dragon with his thick finger. “It is wonderful.”

  “That dragon is the reason I closed,” Abbasi said. “To stitch the dragon takes very fine embroidery work. The eyes of the women doing this work get damaged. One day this was brought to my attention; I thought, I don’t want to answer to Allah for the damage done to the eyes of my workers. So I said to them, go home, and I closed the factory.”