Moth Smoke (8 page)

‘So, Murad, old chum, people kill people all the time, and usually with the barest minimum of fuss. You really must keep a sense of humor about it all. There is no moral issue here. Better to laugh at what you do not understand than to take it seriously and end up giggling hysterically in a padded cell off Jail Road.’

Now, I concede that the murderers do have a point. But I was brought up by my mother to have a strong sense of wrong and right, and in the end I can only say, quite feebly I admit: Placing so little value on human life is wrong.

As for myself, I had no choice. The first and only time I killed a man, it was either him or me, and even so the memory of it saddens me immensely.

Let me elaborate.

I was (why deny it?) something of a celebrity in the transportation industry in those days. The wave of yellow-cab robberies by rickshaw drivers had crested, and the sense of empowerment which coursed through my fellow drivers of three-wheeled vehicles was electric. It was widely and correctly believed that I was the originator of the idea that the rickshaw’s salvation lay in erecting a little barrier to the entry of the yellow cab in our market. Entry barriers are common to all industries, and the spree of robberies
of drivers of four-wheeled entrants by drivers of the established three-wheeled holders of market share was simply an example of laissez-faire market economics, as I am sure the good Dr Superb would tell you.

Naturally, the yellow-cab drivers had a different point of view. I was an infamous figure of almost mythical proportions to them, a Redbeard or Red Baron (indeed, my rickshaw sported a little red pennant from her rear mast, a radio antenna), and every second robbery was linked to me in some way. A bounty of ten thousand rupees was placed on my head, soon upped to fifty thousand, and from there to two lakhs. At least three men were killed by bounty hunters and irate yellow-cab drivers in cases of mistaken identity. And I wasn’t always so lucky: two bullets found me out in my hiding places, as I mentioned earlier, and I submit that I shed more than my share of blood.

Eventually, after heavy casualties on both sides, a truce was agreed to, and rickshaw drivers and yellow-cab drivers joined one another in putting an end to the cycle of robbery and reprisal. By this point, most of the robbing was being done by professional thugs who had nothing to do with either side but simply saw a good opportunity and did not discriminate between the types of vehicles they robbed. So both three- and four-wheeled transporters banded together against this common threat.

The bounty on my head was withdrawn, and I came
out of hiding a hero to rickshaw drivers and a feared but respected former adversary to yellow-cab men. All sorts of rumors were circulating: that I had killed six men with my bare hands and eaten their livers, that I could shoot the cap off a bottle of Pakola at twenty paces, that I had once caught a bullet in my teeth and spat it away unharmed. Truth be told, I had never killed anyone, was a fair shot at best, and had teeth so weak I avoided eating sugarcane, but I encouraged the rumors, because they deterred would-be aggressors and, to be frank, flattered my ego.

Now, I was strutting about proudly in those days, and it goes without saying I should have been more careful. Some lad got it into his head that I had killed his father, a yellow-cab driver, and he swore to himself that truce or no truce, he would get revenge. The day before it happened, my sources later told me, he was heard boasting that he would not only kill the great Murad Badshah but would humiliate me besides. And he came after me with his father’s gun.

There are three lessons to be learned from what followed, aside from my general point about death and killing. The first is that the gun of the father is always the undoing of the son. The second is that it is never wise to call someone something which he is not. And the third is that a man’s weakness can at times be his greatest strength.

Gun in hand, the boy arrived at the little depot where I maintain my rickshaws. I was in the small, dimly lit back
workroom, tinkering about with a broken-down engine and holding a fancy Japanese wrench given me by a friend who retired from the rickshaw business when things first began to get rough, not because he was afraid, but because his wife said he was losing his hearing driving a noisy rickshaw all day and ought to be working a register in her brother’s store instead. A few children were playing in the street outside, and our would-be murderer, seeing this audience and rising to the role he fully expected to play, cried out theatrically as he entered my depot, ‘Your time is up, fat man!’

If he had been silent I might well have breathed my last that day.

Instead, I surged to my feet and would have roared, ‘What [obscenities] said that?’ but as so often happens in moments of intense excitement, my stutter locked onto my voice like a fearful lover and prevented me from uttering a sound. I was growing red, my mouth working desperately, when the boy strode purposefully into the workroom with a glint in his eye and the tip of his tongue between his lips. In the dimness, he did not see me beside the door. But I saw his gun, and without thinking, I swung my wrench in a mighty blow that caught him at the back of the head, where the spine meets the skull, and with a sound like stepping on a soft-shell turtle his life was over.

I have many regrets about that day. Perhaps I could have disarmed him. Perhaps I could have struck him with less
force. But life seeks to preserve itself, and I acted as any man who wants to live would have acted. I derived no pleasure from it, and of all the stories you may hear of the men who have died at my hands, only this one is true, and my career as a robber would have been more illustrious were it not.

Perhaps you will now better understand why I, an infamous criminal, was so horrified by the events of that ill-fated robbery, when my friend and colleague Darashikoh revealed his capacity for cold-blooded murder.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Do you smile at this introduction? Allow me to submit for your consideration the saying that tales with unoriginal beginnings are those most likely later to surprise.

So, the night was dark and stormy.

Lightning flickered above the city, a crescent moon sneered through a gap in the clouds. The boutique huddled against the storm, a tiny island of light on an unlit street.

I wore red, the darkest crimson, a color that blends into black in the dark and flatters my figure by day. My kurta fluttered behind me in the breeze, and a concealed revolver itched where it pressed against my hairy belly. Darashikoh was inside, for all the world a tastefully dressed patron of the shop, but he carried death in his undershorts and hunger in his heart. I had done all this before, but the thrill, the excitement, the electricity of anticipation never goes. Yes,
armed robbery is like public speaking. Both offer a brief period in the limelight, the risk of public humiliation, the opportunity for crowd control. And in both, what you wear is an often ignored but vitally important factor.

The signal I awaited was simple: when Darashikoh placed his pistol against the head of the guard standing just inside the entrance of the shop, clearly visible through the window display, I was to come in and fleece the place.

The signal was given and I walked in. If you learn nothing else about violent conflict, learn this: never rush. Take your time, evaluate the situation, then act. When you have multiple tasks to perform, proceed sequentially, or you will make a mess of them all. Think of it as being assigned to read a long, convoluted poem, if that helps you. My tasks at this stage were to enter, control the crowd, rob them, and leave.

The shop guard, a rather sweet fellow with a shotgun and a leather bandolier of cartridges, seemed almost ready to cry by the time I entered, walking purposefully but without undue haste. From my long years in the service profession I have learned both that the customer is always right and that if he steps far enough out of line, threatening him with execution-style murder is a valid although rarely exercisable option. I am told my smile and manner succeed in conveying this duality of knowledge and so it is easy for me to maintain the utmost respect while inspiring terror of bowel-moving proportions.

With a cheery ‘If you please,’ I proceeded to lighten the burden of wealth that bore down so heavily upon this establishment’s clientele. My revolver gleamed with the sweat it had accumulated while pressed against my skin, and it was slippery in my hand. I looked about me as I proceeded, and so I saw the vacant look in Darashikoh’s eyes as he stood with one foot on the guard, who was by now lying flat on the floor.

It happened when I turned my back on him.

I was encouraging an elderly lady to help her husband remove a lovely watch with a complicated clasp when I heard a sound behind me, the sound of feet moving quickly, and I whirled just in time to see Darashikoh raise his gun.

The moment is frozen in my memory: the blank faces above their expensive outfits, the colorful clothing on shiny metal racks, the motionless, impossibly slender mannequins, the gasping inhalation that preceded the woman’s scream, the change in pressure as the door of an air-conditioned space is opened, Darashikoh’s left hand flashing up to steady his aim. And then the scream – shrill – a sound that raises hackles.

And finally, so long awaited that its coming was a shock, the explosion of the gunshot.

And Darashikoh changed before my eyes.

It was unsettling, even for me, a man not easily unsettled.

I had forgotten how much it affected me. I hope you will not mind if I now take my leave.

I wake up sweating, staring at a motionless ceiling fan. Damn. They’ve cut my electricity. I call the power company, hoping that it’s just load-shedding or a breakdown, but a smug voice at the other end tells me that my account is in arrears and my service has been discontinued.

I yell for Manucci, and he sticks his head into my room with a smile. ‘What are you smiling at, idiot? Our electricity is gone.’

‘It will come back, saab,’ he says, still smiling. The boy has no fear of me.

‘No, it will not come back. They’ve cut us off. We’re back in the seventeenth century.’

He nods solemnly.

‘Make my breakfast. I’ll have eggs. No, it’s too hot. I’ll have a glass of milk and a sliced mango. Then run to the bazaar and get some candles. And some hand fans.’

He starts to shut the door to my room and then stops. ‘Saab, money?’

‘What happened to the money I gave you?’

‘It’s finished.’

‘What do you mean, finished? Stop smiling, you crook, this is serious.’ I take two hundred rupees out of my wallet and give them to him. ‘I want a full accounting when you get back.’

I take a shower and plop down on my bed, still wet, with a towel wrapped around my waist. At least I’m not hot this way. Having the power cut is serious. I was a month behind on my payments even before I lost my job, unprepared as usual for the summer spike in my bill that sucks a quarter of my paycheck into the air conditioner, and now I owe them half a month’s salary. Power prices have been rising faster than a banker’s wages the last couple of years, thanks to privatization and the boom of guaranteed-profit, project-financed, imported oil-fired electricity projects. I was happier when we had load-shedding five hours a day: at least then a man didn’t have to be a millionaire to run his AC.

I’m eating the mango when the phone rings. A voice jumps out of the receiver like a snappy salute, and even though I haven’t spoken to Khurram uncle in quite some time, I know at once it’s his. He has an unmistakable tone of command I associate with Sandhurst and the experience of sitting comfortably in an office while ordering men to die.

‘Darashikoh,’ he says, ‘Aurangzeb tells me you’ve encountered a spot of difficulty finding a position.’

So he knows I’ve been fired. ‘Yes, sir,’ I answer.

‘Well, son, I think it’s about time you called in the heavy
guns. I know Aurangzeb has requested your presence at the house this evening. Come by my quarters at twenty-two hundred and we shall see if I can’t straighten things out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very good.’

Khurram uncle was my father’s best friend at the military academy. He occupied a cushy staff position as an ADC in Rawalpindi in ’71, while my father died of gangrene in a prisoner-of-war camp near Chittagong. Then he slipped into the civil service, specializing, it’s said, in overpaying foreign companies for equipment and pocketing their kickbacks.

I have no real memories of my father. I turned two the summer his regiment was sent east. His photos and the stories I’ve heard have built in my mind the image of a quiet, courageous man, a soldier’s soldier. He was the best boxer at the military academy, and he drove a motorcycle. I have his ears, people say. Strange things to inherit, ears. Small and lobeless, like a pair of half-hearts. Otherwise we look nothing alike.

Khurram uncle was the first person to notice the similarity. I must have been seven or eight. Ozi and I had come back to my place from a football match and my knees were bloody. Khurram uncle was paying a visit to my mother. As she cleaned my cuts with Dettol, and I cried because of the stinging, I remember Khurram uncle taking one of my ears
between his thumb and forefinger and saying, ‘Strange ears. Connected to the jaw. Just like his father.’

Khurram uncle visited our house fairly regularly. He always asked if we needed anything, and he often brought me presents. Sometimes he gave me clothes from abroad. I remember my first pair of high-top sneakers. Ozi told the boys in school that they were meant for him but were too small, so his father gave them to me.

I saw less and less of Khurram uncle as I grew older, especially after Ozi left for America. The summer my mother died, I went to a restaurant with some friends and found her having lunch with Khurram uncle. She told me he had found me a job at a bank. I don’t remember being happy at that moment. Maybe no one wants to stop being a student.

The last time I saw him was at her funeral. He was crying. Ozi’s mother was sick and couldn’t come. Khurram uncle told me to contact him if there was ever anything I needed. I never did. But even though we weren’t in touch, I kept hearing about him, that he’d built a mansion in Gulberg, that he was being investigated by the Accountability Commission.