Shantaram (63 page)

"It still seems crazy to me. I haven't really... figured it out, yet. But that's exactly what happened. And I did forgive them. I really did. And I'm sure, somehow, that that's what got me through it. I don't mean that I stopped being angry-shit, if I'd gotten free and gotten a gun, I probably would've killed them all. Or maybe not. I don't know. But the point is, I did forgive them, right there and then, in the middle of it. And I'm sure that if I didn't do that-if I'd just hated them-I wouldn't have made it through till Khader got me out. I would've gone under.

The hate would've killed me."

"It's still not the same, Lin. I understand what you're saying, but the Israelis did more to me than that. And anyway, if I was in an Indian prison, and they did that to _me, what they did to _you, I would hate Indians forever. I'd hate them all."

"But I don't hate them. I love them. I love this country. I love this city."

"You can't say you don't want revenge, Lin."

"I do want revenge. You're right. I wish I didn't. I wish I was better than that. But I only want it on one person-the one who set me up-not the whole nation that she comes from."

"Well, we're different people," he said flatly, staring out at the distant fires of the offshore oil refinery. "You don't understand. You can't understand it."

"I understand that hate kills you, Khaled, if you can't let it go."

"No, Lin," he answered, turning to look at me in the faint light of the cab. His eyes were gleaming, and there was a broken smile fixed to his scarred face. It was something like the expression Vikram wore when he talked about Lettie, or like Prabaker's face when he talked about Parvati. It was the kind of expression some men assume when they talk about their experience of God.

"My hate is what saved me," he said quietly, but with an excited, feverish zeal. Softly rounded American vowels blended with breathy, aspirated Arabic in a sound, a voice, that was somewhere between Omar Sharif and Nicholas Cage. In another time, another place, another life, Khaled Ansari would've read poetry aloud, in Arabic and English, moving all those who heard him to joy and tears. "Hate is a very resilient thing, you know. Hate is a survivor. I had to hide my hate for a long time. People couldn't handle it. They got spooked by it. So I sent my hate outside myself. It's weird that I was a refugee for years-I still am-and my hate was a refugee, just like me. My hate was outside me. My family... they were all killed... raped and butchered... and I killed men... I shot them... I cut their throats... and my hate survived out there.

My hate got stronger and harder. And then, I woke up one day, working for Khader, with money and power, and I could feel the hate creeping back into me. And it's here now, inside me, where it belongs. And I'm glad. I enjoy it. I need it, Lin. It's stronger than I am. It's braver than I am. My hate is my hero."

He held that fanatic stare for a moment, and then turned to the driver, who was dozing in the front seat of the car.

"Challo, bhai!" he snapped. Let's go, brother!

A minute later, he broke the silence to ask me a question.

"You heard about Indira?"

"Yeah. On the radio, at Leopold's."

"Khader's guys in Delhi got the details. The inside story. They phoned it through to us just before I came to meet you. It was pretty messy, the way she went."

"Yeah?" I replied, still thinking about Khaled's song of hate. I didn't really care about the details of Indira's assassination, but I was happy that he'd changed the subject.

"At nine o'clock in the morning, this morning, she walked down to a security gate at her residence-the prime minister's residence.

She folded her hands together in a greeting, you know, for the two Sikh bodyguards at the gate. She knew those guys. They were only there, on duty, because she insisted on it. After the Golden Temple, after Bluestar, they advised her not to have Sikhs in her security detail. But she insisted because she couldn't believe that her loyal Sikh bodyguards would turn against her. She just didn't get it-how much hatred she put in them, when she ordered the army to attack the Golden Temple. Anyway, she put her hands together in a greeting, and she smiled at them, and said the word Namaste. One bodyguard, he pulled out his service revolver-it was a.38-and fired three shots. He got her right in the guts, in the abdomen. She crumpled to the pathway. The second bodyguard turned his Sten gun on her. He emptied the whole magazine. Thirty rounds. It's an old gun, the Sten, but it packs a hell of a punch at close range. At least seven bullets got her in the abdomen, three bullets went into her chest, and one went through her heart."

We rode in silence for a while. I was the first to speak.

"So, how do you think the money market will react?"

"I think it'll be good for business," he replied dispassionately.

"So long as there's a clear line of succession-as there is here, with Rajiv-an assassination is always good for business."

"But there'll be riots. They're already talking about gangs going after Sikhs. I saw a morcha, on my way up here."

"Yeah, I saw it, too," he said, turning to face me. His eyes were dark, almost black, and gleaming with the vehemence of his wilful induration. "But even that'll be good for business. The more riots there are, and the more people get killed, the more demand there'll be for dollars. We'll put the rates up tomorrow morning."

"The roads might be tangled up. If there's morchas or riots, it might not be so easy to get around."

"I'll pick you up at your place, seven o'clock, and we'll go straight to Rajubhai's," he said, referring to the mafia's black money counting room in the Fort area, and to Raju, the man who ran it. "They won't stop me. My car will get through. What are you doing now?"

"Right now-after we finish the collections?"

"Yeah. Have you got some time?"

"Sure. What do you want me to do?"

"Drop me off, and keep the cab," he said, resting back against the seat and letting his face and body sag in a sigh of exhaustion or dejection. "Do the rounds of the guys. Tell them to make their way to Rajubhai's early tomorrow. Find as many as you can, and let them know. If it gets real bad, we'll need everyone."

"Okay. I'll get on it. You should get some sleep, Khaled. You look tired."

"I think I will," he smiled. "There won't be much sleep in the next couple days."

He closed his eyes for a moment, and allowed his head to loll and roll with the movement of the car. Then he was suddenly awake, sitting upright, and sniffing the air around him.

"Say, what the fuck is that smell, man? Is that some kind of aftershave or what? I've been gassed with tear gas that smelled better than that!"

"Don't ask," I replied, suppressing a grin through clenched teeth, and rubbing at Prabaker's perfume stain on the front of my shirt. Khaled laughed, and turned his eyes to the starless dark, where night met the sea.

Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn't, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it's impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love. I sat beside Khaled in the darkness as the taxi took us to the business of crime. I sat beside him in the drift of coloured shadows, loving the honesty and toughness in him, and pitying the hatreds that weakened him and lied to him. And his face, reflected sometimes in the night that filled the window, was as drenched in destiny, and as radiant, as the faces found in paintings of doomed and haloed saints.

____________________

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Wherever you go in the world, in any society, it is always the same when it comes to questions of justice," lord Abdel Khader Khan, my mafia boss and my surrogate father, told me when I'd been six months in his service. "We concentrate our laws, investigations, prosecutions, and punishments on how much crime is in the sin, rather than how much sin is in the crime."

We were sitting in the busy, steamy, wondrously aromatic Restaurant Saurabh, in the Sassoon Dock area. The Saurabh served what many regarded as Bombay's best masala dhosas, in a city where five thousand restaurants vied for the honour. Despite that distinction, or because of it, the Saurabh was small and relatively unknown. Its name didn't appear in any of the guidebooks for tourists or the epicure columns in the daily newspapers. It was a worker's restaurant, and it was full, from morning until evening, with working men and women who cherished it and kept its secret to themselves. Accordingly, the meals were cheap and the decor was a functional minimum. Nevertheless, the restaurant was spotlessly clean, and the spectacular, baroque sails of the crispy dhosas, swept to the tables by waiters who worked at a run, housed the most delicious mixes of spices that could be found in any dish, anywhere in the city.

"For me," he went on as we ate, "the opposite is true. For me, the most important thing is the amount of sin that is in the crime. You asked me, just now, why we do not make money from prostitution and drugs, as the other councils do, and I tell you it is because of the sin that is in those crimes. It is for this reason that I will not sell children, or women, or pornography, or drugs. It is for this reason that I will not permit those businesses in any of my areas. In all of these things, the sin in the crime is so great that a man must give up his soul for the profit he makes. And if a man gives his soul, if he becomes a soul-less man, it takes nothing less than a miracle for him to regain it."

"Do you believe in miracles?"

"Certainly, I do. In our hearts, we all believe in miracles."

"I'm afraid I don't," I stated, smiling.

"I'm sure that you do," he insisted. "Wouldn't you say that your rescue from the prison at Arthur Road was a miracle, for example?"

"It _felt like a miraculous thing at the time, I have to admit."

"And when you escaped from the prison in your home country, Australia-was that not a miraculous thing?" he asked quietly.

It was the first time he'd ever mentioned the escape. I was sure that he knew, of course, and I was sure he must've thought about it many times. But by broaching the subject with me he was raising the real nature of the rescue from Arthur Road Prison.

The fact was that he'd rescued me from two prisons-one in India and one in Australia-and I owed him a double debt.

"Yes," I answered, slowly but steadily. "It was something of a miracle, I guess."

"If you do not object-that is, if you do not find it painful-I would like you to tell me about the escape from the prison in Australia. I might tell you that I find it to be fascinating, for my own very personal reasons, and I am deeply impressed by it."

"I don't mind talking about it," I replied, meeting his stare.

"What would you like to know?"

"Why did you escape?"

Khaderbhai was the only person who'd ever asked me that question.

People in Australia and New Zealand had asked me about the escape. They'd wanted to know how I broke out of the prison, and how I stayed on the run. But only Khader asked me why I escaped.

"There was a punishment unit in the prison. The guards who ran it - not all of them, but enough of them-were crazy. They hated us.

They were insane with hate for the prisoners. I don't know why. I can't explain it. That's just how it was down there then. And they tortured us, nearly every night. And I fought back. I had to fight them. It's my nature, I guess. It's just how I am. I'm not the kind of man who could take it from them, without fighting back. Which made it all worse, of course. I got... well, they went to work on me, and it was... pretty bad. I was only down there, in that punishment unit, for a little while. But I had a long sentence, and I knew that sooner or later they'd find a reason to put me down there again, or I'd be stupid enough to give them one-it wasn't hard, believe me. I thought that when they did get me there again, when they got their hands on me, they'd torture me again, and I'd fight them again, and they'd probably kill me. So... I escaped."

"How did you do it?"

"After that last beating, I let them think they'd broken my spirit. So they gave me the kind of job that only beaten men were allowed to do. They gave me a job near the front wall of the prison, pushing a wheelbarrow and making repairs. When the time was right, I escaped."

He listened as I told him the story. We continued to eat while I talked. Khader never interrupted. He watched me throughout, and the smiling light in his eyes reflected the fire in mine. He seemed to enjoy the telling of the story as much as the tale itself.

"Who was the other man-the one with you, when you escaped?"

"The other guy was doing time for murder. He was a good man, with plenty of heart."

"But you did not stay together?"

"No," I answered, allowing my gaze to shift from Khader's for the first time. I looked at the doorway of the restaurant, and watched the rhythmic, unceasing flow of people on the street. How could I explain my reasons for leaving my friend after the escape, and going off on my own? I hardly understood it myself. I decided to give him the facts, and let him make of them what he would.

"At first, we went to stay with an outlaw bike club-a gang of men who rode motorcycles. The leader of the motorcycle gang had a young brother who was in the prison. He was a brave young kid, and about a year before I escaped he'd upset a very dangerous man by doing nothing more than being brave. I got involved, and I saved the kid from being killed. When the kid found out about it, he told his brother. The older brother, who was the president of the motorcycle gang, had let me know that he owed me one. When I escaped, I went to stay with the older brother and his gang, and I took my friend with me. They gave us guns, drugs, and money.

They protected us and gave us shelter, for the first thirteen days and nights, while the cops tore the city up looking for us."

I paused, mopping up the last of my food with a corner of pea flour roti. Khaderbhai ate the last of the food on his own plate. We chewed vigorously, watching one another with thoughts and questions glittering in our eyes.

"On the thirteenth night after the escape, when I was still hiding with the motorcycle gang, I got this overwhelming urge to visit a man who used to be my teacher," I continued at last. "He was a lecturer in philosophy at a university in my city. He was a Jewish intellectual, a brilliant guy, and very highly respected in the city where I grew up. But brilliant and all as he was, I still don't know why I went to see him. I can't explain it-I don't really understand it, even now. I just had to speak to him.

The feeling was so strong, I couldn't fight it it. So I went across the city, risking my life to see him. He said that he'd expected to see me, and that he was waiting for me to come to him. He told me that I had to give up my guns, first of all. He tried to convince me that I wouldn't need them, and that they'd bring me grief if I didn't get rid of them. He told me that I had to give up the crime of armed robbery, and never commit it again.

He said that I'd paid my dues for the crimes I'd committed, but that if I ever did that crime again I would be killed or captured straight away. Whatever else you have to do to stay free, he said, don't ever do that crime again. He told me to split from my friend, because he was sure to get caught, and if I was with him I'd be caught, too. And he told me to travel the world. Tell people as much as they need to know, he said. I remember that he was smiling when he said it, like there was nothing to it. And ask people for help, he said. You'll be all right... Don't worry ... It's a great adventure, your life, and it has only just begun ..."

There was a pause as I lapsed into silence once more. A waiter approached the table to clear away our empty plates, but Khader waved him away. The mafia don stared at me, his golden eyes unwavering, but it was a sympathetic and encouraging stare.

"I left his office-the philosopher's office, at the university- and I knew that everything had changed with just that little conversation. I went back to the motorcycle gang and my friend. I gave him my guns, and I told him that I had to leave. I went off on my own. He was captured, six months later, after a gun battle with the cops. I'm still free, if that word means anything when you're a wanted man with nowhere to go. And that's it. Now you know the story."

"I would like to meet this man," Khaderbhai said slowly. "This lecturer in philosophy. He gave you good advice. But tell me, I understand that Australia is a very different country, not like India-why do you not return there, and tell the authorities about the torture you endured in the prison? Would this not make you safe, and return you to your life and your family?"

"Where I come from, we don't inform on anyone," I replied. "Not even on torturers. And even if I did-even if I went back there and stood in the dock as a Crown witness, and gave evidence against the screws who torture prisoners-there'd be no guarantee it would stop. The system would look after them. No sane man trusts the British justice system. When was the last time you ever heard of a rich man throwing himself on the mercy of the court? It doesn't happen. The system would look after the torturers, and they'd get away with it, no matter what they did and no matter how much proof there was. And I'd go back in jail.

And I'd be in their power again. And they'd make a pretty good mess of me. I think... I think they'd kick me to death down there, in the punishment unit. Anyway, it's not an option. You don't lag people. You don't inform on people, not for any reason.

It's a principle. It's probably the only one we've got left when we get locked up in a cage."

"But you believe that these prison guards are still torturing other men in that prison, just as they tortured you?" he pressed.

"Yes, I do."

"And you are in a position to do something about this, to try to alleviate their suffering?"

"I might be. I might not be. Like I said, I don't think the system would be in any hurry to bring them to justice, or to rush to our defence."

"But there is a chance, just a chance, that they would listen to you, and put an end to the torture of the other men?"

"There's a chance. I don't think it's a big one."

"But still there is a chance?" he insisted.

"Yes," I said flatly.

"So it could be said that you are in a way responsible for the suffering of the other men?"

The question was offensive, but his tone was entirely gentle and compassionate. I stared into his eyes, and was sure that he meant no offence or harm. It was Khader who'd rescued me from the Indian prison, after all and, indirectly, from the Australian prison that we were discussing. "You could say that," I answered calmly. "But that doesn't change the principle. You don't tell on people-not for any reason."

"I am not trying to trap you Lin, or trick you. But you will agree, I think, from this example, that it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons." He smiled again, for the first time since the story of the escape had begun. "This will come back to us, at another time. I have raised it in this way because it is a very important point about how we do live our lives, and how we should live our lives. There is no need to talk of it now, but this question will come back to us in another discussion, I am sure, so I would like you to remember it."

"And what about currencies?" I asked, seizing the opportunity to change the subject away from me, and toward the rules of his moral universe once more. "Don't currencies come under your heading of sinfull crimes?"

"No. Not currencies," he said firmly. The voice was deep, the words surging upwards from the diaphragm into the chest, and passing through the rumbling gemstone-tumbler of his throat. What emerged was a tone of voice that resonated with the hypnotic piety of a sermoner, reading from the Koran, even as he talked of his most profitable crimes.

"And gold smuggling?"

"No. Not gold. Not passports. Not influence."

Influence was Khader's euphemism for the full range of interactions between his mafia group and the society in which it thrived. They began with bribery, in a schedule of venalities ranging from insider trading to the securing of profitable tenders. When bribes failed, Khader's influence extended to debt collection and protection rackets, aimed at businesses that operated in the areas he controlled. Not least in the spheres of his influence was intimidation, through force or blackmail, of political and bureaucratic recalcitrants.

"So, how do you determine how much sin is in any one crime? Who judges that?"

"Sin is a measure of evil," he replied, leaning back to allow the waiter to clear away his plate and the crumbs on the table in front of him.

"Okay. How do you determine how much evil is in any one crime?

Who judges the evil in it?"

"If you really want to know about good and evil, we'll have a walk, and talk further."

He rose, and Nazeer, his constant companion, rose like his shadow and followed him to the sink, tap, and mirror housed in an alcove that was set into the back wall of the restaurant. They washed their hands and faces, hawking and spitting noisily into the sink, as did every other man in the restaurant at the conclusion of his meal. When my turn at washing, hawking, and spitting was complete, I found Khaderbhai talking with the owner of the Saurabh on the footpath outside the restaurant. When they separated, the owner embraced Khader and asked for his blessing.

The man was a Hindu, and his forehead bore the mark of blessing he'd received at a temple only hours before. Yet when Khaderbhai held the man's hands in his own, and softly mumbled a Muslim blessing, the devout Hindu responded with delight and gratitude.