Shantaram (40 page)

"Of course, yes. What are you getting at, Khader?"

"Just that if there are at least two kinds of suffering, quite different to each other, one that we feel, and one that we cause others to feel, they can hardly both be the anger that you spoke of. Isn't it so? Which one is which, would you say?"

"Why... ha!" Abdul Ghani laughed. "You've got me there, Khader, you old fox! You always know when I'm just making an argument for the sake of it, _na? And just when I thought I was being bloody clever, too! But don't worry, I'll think it around, and come back at you again."

He snatched a chunk of sweet barfi from the plate on the table, bit a piece of it, and munched happily. He gestured to the man on his right, thrusting the sweet in his pudgy fingers.

"And what about you, Khaled? What have you to say about Lin's topic?"

"I know that suffering is the truth," Khaled said quietly. His teeth were clenched. "I know that suffering is the sharp end of the whip, and not suffering is the blunt end-the end that the master holds in his hand."

"Khaled, dear fellow," Abdul Ghani complained. "You are more than ten years my junior, and I think of you as dearly as I would of my own younger brother, but I must tell you that this is a most depressing thought, and you're disturbing the good pleasure we've gained from this excellent charras."

"If you'd been born and raised in Palestine, you'd know that some people are born to suffer. And it never stops, for them. Not for a second. You'd know where real suffering comes from. It's the same place where love and freedom and pride are born. And it's the same place where those feelings and ideals die. That suffering never stops. We only pretend it does. We only tell ourselves it does, to make the kids stop whimpering in their sleep."

He stared down at his strong hands, glowering at them as if at two despised and defeated enemies who were pleading for his mercy. A gloomy silence began to thicken in the air around us, and instinctively we looked to Khaderbhai. He sat cross-legged, stiff-backed, rocking slowly in his place and seeming to spool out a precise measure of respectful reflection. At last, he nodded to Farid, inviting him to speak. "I think that our brother Khaled is right, in a way," Farid began quietly, almost shyly. He turned his large, dark brown eyes on Khaderbhai. Encouraged by the older man's nod of interest, he continued. "I think that happiness is a really thing, a truly thing, but it is what makes us crazy people. Happiness is a so strange and power thing that it makes us to be sick, like a germ sort of thing. And suffering is what cures us of it, the too much happiness. The-how do you say it, bhari vazan?"

"The burden," Khaderbhai translated for him. Farid spoke a phrase rapidly in Hindi, and Khader gave it to us in such an elegantly poetic English that I realised, through the haze of the stone, how much better his English was than he'd led me to believe at our first meeting. "The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering."

"Yes, yes, that is it what I want to say. Without the suffering, the happiness would squash us down."

"This is a very interesting thought, Farid," Khaderbhai said, and the young Maharashtrian glowed with pleasure in the praise.

I felt a tiny twitch of jealousy. The sense of well-being bestowed by Khaderbhai's benignant smile was as intoxicating as the heady mixture we'd smoked in the hookah pipe. The urge to be a son to Abdel Khader Khan, to earn the blessing of his praise, was overwhelming. The hollow space in my heart where a father's love might've been, should've been, wrapped itself around the contours of his form, and took the features of his face. The high cheekbones and closely cropped silver beard, the sensual lips and deep-set amber eyes, became the perfect father's face.

I look back on that time now-at my readiness to serve him as a son might serve a father, at my willingness to love him, in fact, and at how quickly and unquestioningly it happened in my life- and I wonder how much of it came from the great power that he wielded in the city, his city. I'd never felt so safe, anywhere in the world, as I did in his company. And I did hope that in the river of his life I might wash away the scent, and shake off the hounds. I've asked myself a thousand times, through the years, if I would've loved him so swiftly and so well if he'd been powerless and poor.

Sitting there, then, in that domed room, feeling the twinge of jealousy when he smiled at Farid and praised him, I knew that although Khaderbhai had spoken of adopting me as his son, on our first meeting, it was really I who'd adopted him. And while the discussion continued around me, I spoke the words, quite clearly, in the secret voice of prayer and incantation... Father, father, my father...

"You do not share our joy at the speaking of English, Sobhan Uncle," Khaderbhai said, addressing the tough, grizzled older man on his right. "So please, permit me to answer for you. You will say, I know, that the Koran tells us how our sin and wrong-doing is the cause of our suffering, isn't it so?"

Sobhan Mahmoud wagged his head in assent, his gleaming eyes nesting under a tufted ledge of grey eyebrows. He seemed amused by Khaderbhai's guess at his position on the theme.

"You will say that living by right principles, according to the teachings of the Holy Koran, will banish suffering from the life of a good Muslim, and lead him to the eternal bliss of heaven when life is at an end."

"We all know what Sobhan Uncle thinks," Abdul Ghani cut in, impatiently. "None of us will disagree with your arguments, Uncle-_ji, but you must permit me to say that you are inclined to be a little extreme, na? I well remember the time that you beat young Mahmoud with a rod of bamboo because he cried when his mother died. It is, of course, true that we should not question the will of Allah, but a touch of sympathy, in these matters, is only human, isn't it? But be that as it may, what I am interested in is your opinion, Khader. Please tell us, what do you think about suffering?"

No-one spoke or moved. There was a perceptible sharpening of focus and attention in the few silent moments as Khaderbhai gathered his thoughts. Each man had his own opinion and level of articulacy, yet I had the clear impression that Khaderbhai's contribution was usually the last word. I sensed that his response would set the tone, perhaps even becoming the answer those men would give, if the question about suffering were asked again. His expression was impassive, and his eyes were modestly cast down, but he was far too intelligent not to perceive the awe he inspired in others. I thought that he was far too human, as well, not to be flattered by it. When I came to know him better, I discovered that he was always avidly interested in what others thought of him, always acutely aware of his own charisma and its effect on those around him, and that every word he spoke, to everyone but God, was a performance. He was a man with the ambition to change the world forever. Nothing that he ever said or did-not even the quiet humility in his deep voice as he spoke to us then-was an accident, a chance, or anything but a calculated fragment of his plan. "In the first place, I would like to make a general comment, and then I would like to follow it with a more detailed answer. Do you all allow me this? Good. Then, to the general comment-I think that suffering is the way we test our love. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God. This is my first statement. Does anyone wish to discuss this point, before I proceed?"

I looked from one face to another. Some men smiled in appreciation of his point, some nodded their agreement, and some others frowned in concentration. All of them seemed eager for Khaderbhai to continue.

"Very well, I will move on to my more detailed answer. The Holy Koran tells us that all things in the universe are related, one to another, and that even opposites are united in some way. I think that there are two points about suffering that we should remember, and they have to do with pleasure and pain. The first is this: that pain and suffering are connected, but they are not the same thing. Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain. Do you agree with this?"

He scanned the attentive, expectant faces, and found approval.

"The difference between them is this, I think: that what we learn from pain-for example, that fire burns and is dangerous-is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. If we do not suffer with our pain, then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. Pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. We do not learn from it what makes us stronger or better or closer to God."

The others wagged their heads at one another in agreement.

"And the other part, the pleasure part?" Abdul Ghani asked. A few of the men laughed gently, grinning at Ghani as he looked from one to the other. He laughed at them in return. "What? What?

Can't a man have a healthy, scientific interest in pleasure?"

"Ah," Khader continued, "I think that it's a little bit like what Mr. Lin tells us this Sapna fellow has done with the words from the Christian Bible. It is the reverse. Suffering is exactly like happiness, but backwards. One is the mirror image of the other, and has no real meaning or existence without the other."

"I am sorry, I do not understand," Farid said meekly, glancing at the others and blushing darkly. "Please can you explain it?" "It is like this," Khaderbhai said gently. "Take my hand, as an example. If I open my hand out like this, stretching the fingers and showing you the palm, or if I open my hand and put it on your shoulder, my fingers stretched out like this-that is happiness, or we may call it so for the sake of this moment. And if I curl my fingers, and close them tightly into a fist, just so, we may call that suffering. The two gestures are opposite in their meaning and power. Each one is completely different in appearance and in what it can do, but the hand that makes the gesture is the same. Suffering is happiness, backwards."

Each man was then given another turn to speak, and the discussion itself moved backwards and forwards, reversing on itself as arguments were embellished or abandoned for two long hours.

Hashish was smoked. Tea was served twice more, Abdul Ghani choosing to mix a small pellet of black opium in his, and drinking it down with a practised grimace.

Madjid modified his position by agreeing that suffering was not necessarily a sign of weakness, but insisting that we could toughen ourselves against it with a strong will; strength of will coming from strict self-discipline, a kind of self-imposed suffering. Farid added to his notion of suffering as an anti toxin to the poison of happiness by recalling specific incidents from the lives of his friends. Old Sobhan whispered a few sentences in Urdu, and Khaderbhai translated the new point for us: there are some things we human beings will never understand, the things only God can understand, and that suffering may well be one of them. Keki Dorabji made the point that the universe, as those of the Parsee faith see it, is a process of struggle between opposites-light and darkness, hot and cold, suffering and pleasure-and that nothing can exist without the existence of its opposite. Rajubhai added that suffering is a condition of the unenlightened soul, locked within the wheel of Karma. Khaled Fattah said nothing more, despite the artful urgings of Abdul Ghani, who teased and cajoled him several times before finally giving up the attempt, visibly piqued by the stubborn refusal.

For his part, Abdul Ghani emerged as the most vocal and likeable of the group. Khaled was an intriguing man, but there was anger- too much anger, perhaps-brooding in him. Madjid had been a professional soldier in Iran. He seemed brave and direct, yet given to a simplistic view of the world and its people. Sobhan Mahmoud was undoubtedly pious, but there was a vaguely antiseptic scent of inflexibility about him. Young Farid was openhearted, self-effacing and, I suspected, too easily led. Keki was dour and unresponsive, and Rajubhai seemed to be suspicious of me, almost to the point of rudeness. Of all of them, only Abdul Ghani displayed any sense of humour, and only he laughed aloud. He was as familiar with younger men as he was with those senior to him. He sprawled in his place, where others sat.

He interrupted or interjected when he pleased, and he ate more, drank more, and smoked more than any man in the room. He was especially, irreverently, affectionate with Khaderbhai, and it was certain that they were close friends.

Khaderbhai asked questions, probed, made comments upon what was said, but never added another word to his own position. I was silent; drifting, tired, and grateful that no-one pressured me to speak.

When Khaderbhai finally adjourned the meeting, he walked with me to the door that opened into the street beside the Nabila Mosque, and stopped me there with a gentle hand on my forearm. He said he was glad I'd come, and that he hoped I'd enjoyed myself. Then he asked me to return on the following day because there was a favour I could do for him, if I was willing. Surprised and flattered, I agreed at once, promising to meet him at the same place on the following morning. I stepped out into the night, and almost put it out of my mind.

On the long walk home, my thoughts browsed among the ideas I'd heard presented by that scholarly group of criminals. I recalled other, similar discussions I'd shared with men in prison. Despite their general lack of formal education, or perhaps because of it, many men I'd known in prison had a fervent interest in the world of ideas. They didn't call it philosophy, or even know it as such, but the stuff of their conversations was often just that- abstract questions of moral and ethic, meaning and purpose.

It had been a long day, and an even longer night. With Madame Zhou's photograph in my hip pocket, my feet pinched by shoes that had been bought to bury Karla's dead lover, and my head clogged with definitions of suffering, I walked the emptying streets and remembered a cell in an Australian prison where the murderers and thieves I'd called my friends often gathered to argue, passionately, about truth and love and virtue. I wondered if they thought of me from time to time. Am I a daydream for them now, I asked myself, a daydream of freedom and flight? How would they answer the question, what is suffering?