The Association of Small Bombs (14 page)

“That too. You can only invest in Islamic banks.”

“It's the way activists want the endowments of universities to be purified,” Mansoor said, vaguely remembering a discussion he'd had with his friend Alex.

The women were sitting on a Rexine bench in the decrepit VC office, pressed together. One was young and pretty and wore all black and kept her head covered; another had a nose ring, with little fountains of hair visible under her dupatta; the third was toothless, gross featured, henna haired. But Mansoor could not see them, not really. As they spoke, holding their own wrists, as if permanently taking their pulses, they were swallowed up by their stories. One woman told Mansoor how her husband had been pumped with petrol in the anus. Another said her son had been hung from the ceiling of a police station till he lost all feeling in his hands. “He can't write anymore,” she sniffled. The last one narrated an even bleaker story. Her son, Malik, a student from Kathmandu, where he had also worked in his uncle's carpet shop, had been shocked in the genitals and had had some of his tongue scraped off with a blunt knife. “They do it in such a way that you can still talk, but you sound like a stutterer,” she said, displacing the cruelty she'd experienced onto the imaginary stutterer, whom she mentioned with contempt.

The cascade of horrors, the way they were narrated, with fiery intention but also deadness in the eyes, the eyes having turned into shields that guarded the inside rather than bringing light from the outside, reminded Mansoor of how he himself talked about the blast. After a certain point the violence in your life acquires unreality through repetition. What could he really recall of the day of the bombing? The heat, flying swords of metal, pools of blood, deafness, a watery distance from everything. But really what he recalled was getting up and running way, the walk home.

At the end of each story, Mansoor nodded his head—that's all.

After the meeting, Ayub asked, “What do you think?”

They were again in the alley, which was quiet now, evacuated of the schoolkids, broken only by the hiss of the illegal wires hanging overhead.

“It's terrible,” Mansoor said.

M
ansoor became active in the group, going over to the room in Defence Colony two or three times a week for meetings, telling his parents that the NGO worked for “communal harmony.”

His mother was happy that her son had found a source of distraction while he healed. His father, meanwhile, energized by Mansoor's presence, took him around to look at houses. “It's time to buy a new flat,” he told Mansoor. “We need a bigger place and anyway South Ex is so noisy and polluted now.” He had become fixated on this project, even though most of the flats they saw were out of their price range or in colonies like Neeti Bagh where the sellers would never deal with Muslims.

Mansoor was in pain still but felt oddly content. He was healing and would return to the U.S. for his spring semester, which began in January. It was November now.

Peace For All had serious intentions but was also a friendly group. The twenty-odd members knew each other well and were jokey and friendly and relaxed before and after meetings. There was Shahid, a tall man with enormous hands, plastered balding hair, and a goofy grin with gapped teeth, a second-year mass com student from Jamia. Jacob, the only Christian in the group, thin and nervous and colored with pimples, studied chemistry at St. Stephen's. Zeenat was working toward a diploma in computers from NIIT. Tariq had graduated from a forest management institute in Maharashtra but obviously hated forests—you could see it in the way he
cursed whenever a mosquito buzzed near him. They were seekers. They had witnessed what Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, had done in his state in March, how he and his administration had stood by, in localities like Naroda Patiya, Meghaninagar, and Bapunagar, as violent Hindu mobs, armed with swords, petrol bombs, tridents, and water pistols to spray fuel, had set upon Muslims, burning them alive, tearing infants from mothers and fetuses from wombs, raping women, killing a thousand. And they had realized that the Indian government wouldn't protect them, that in fact it had an incentive to demonize and exterminate them. The members of Peace For All were not radicals. They were eminently reasonable people, students engrossed in careers, people who wanted to be Indians but had discovered themselves instead to be Muslims and had started to embrace their identities. In their alienation, their desire to be included in the mainstream, Mansoor recognized himself.

“Do you think they'll let Muslims get away with that?” Zeenat might say, for example, when someone suggested a nonviolent protest.

“The police are the most corrupt. Just yesterday they stopped me and wanted to know where I was driving to at night.”

“Your idea of doing communal harmony workshops is very idealistic, but we need something more extreme to awaken people.”

Everyone had a story of being personally pegged for a Muslim too.

“Why do they always tell us to go back to Pakistan? You're a Hindu—go to Nepal! And why shouldn't I go to Malaysia?”

“The worst is when they say ‘Oh, you don't
look
Muslim!
'”

“I was once at my friend Akhil's house and I made the mistake of touching his father's Ramayan. That man, a baldie, started shouting, ‘You've soiled it! Dharmbhrasht kar diya!' He made poor Akhil pour Ganga water on it from a Bisleri to purify it.”

Mansoor sat cross-legged, bringing his bare feet together anxiously with his hands, pressing his soles together.

The voice of reason, of knowledge, during these raucous meetings was Ayub. Ayub was twenty-seven and from Azamgarh, but seemed older; it was as if he had digested recent history and sociology and philosophy, and
could draw links between subjects without being the least bit pedantic. With his quick-fire noun-laden sentences, he made knowledge
attractive
. “The Brotherhood in Egypt is primarily a social organization. It only became politicized when they were persecuted, when their leaders were locked up in jail. I don't think Qutb was a great thinker as others do, but why martyr him?” People nodded their heads dreamily, not knowing much about Egypt or Qutb. But Ayub's style was inclusive, and Mansoor felt he could understand the problems of Muslims elsewhere too.

Then one Friday morning, after a meeting, as they all got up to leave, Ayub asked Mansoor, “Are you coming to the mosque with us?”

“I don't have my car here,” Mansoor said.

“No problem, yaar, I can take you.”

Mansoor had been hesitant to get involved with the religious aspects of the group; it wasn't that he disliked religion but that he felt it was outside his purview. When he heard the members talk about the rulings of the ulema, or what al-Tabari had written about the fitnah, or the corruption of the Uthman, he instinctively zoned out, the way he did when his mother was overcome with piety two or three times a year, increasing the rakat in her prayers and promising a sadqa for the poor to express thanks to God for Mansoor's continued health.

Now, caught, unable to come up with an excuse, Mansoor walked with Ayub down the stairs and into the service lane before the main road, where leaves were coming unclipped from the dead trees and rattling down on the street, like the tail of a distant dragon. The roads were brightly bisected by newly painted white lines that stood out against the pervasive dustiness of winter. Mansoor inhaled the stink of racing petrol deeply. Growing up in Delhi, one gets addicted to pollution.

Ayub gestured to his motorcycle and Mansoor got on behind him. He was still racking his brain for an excuse when the motorcycle gunned to life. Mansoor clutched Ayub's waist, which was fleshier than he'd expected, and prayed.
Please.
He had never been on a motorcycle before and as it shot through the Delhi streets, the city close and vivid as it had been during that walk home after the bomb, he was sure he would die, and his heart raced
crazily and he pressed his feet on the silver twigs of support jutting out from the chassis. Ayub wasn't wearing a helmet and kept turning around and talking and Mansoor nodded, terrified, his wrists filling with cold liquid. Why hadn't he said no? Because he was congenitally unable to. What would his mother and father think if Mansoor were found with his head smashed in, by a gutter?
Why were you so reckless?
Didn't you learn your lesson?

After a few minutes, the ride became exhilarating, the motorcycle making smooth crests against the road. He had always thought a motorcycle would be bumpy, but it felt instead like you were on a magic carpet. The pain in his wrists reached a sedative high.

When they got to the mosque, Shahid and Tariq were waiting at the entrance, by a row of carts selling sharifas, chatting with other plump young men, who kept their hands behind their backs as they listened. Mansoor was so relieved he embraced them all, and then, walked with them to the back of the mosque and washed and went inside. The mosque, a box of concrete, was simpler than the one his father and he had gone to a few times—usually during Eid—and the crowd was younger, pious, serious, a mixture of office-going people in white shirts and young men with beards wearing kurtas. The alien bubbles of motorcycle helmets broke the flow of bodies. The imam was giving a talk about something vague, like medicine and not betraying others, and after the azaan ended, they all began to pray. Mansoor, who hadn't been in the postures of prayer for years—who'd had to borrow a hankie to place on his head—was in pain, but also in a state of gratitude and relief. He hadn't forgotten how to pray. As he went through the motions, he relaxed as he had during the motorcycle ride.

Afterwards, when the prayers were over, everyone got up quickly and rushed out and Mansoor, Ayub, Shahid, and Tariq were pushed out onto the lawn.

“Oye!” Shahid shouted at a fat fellow who almost knocked him over on the lawn outside the mosque. They stood there and laughed together at the funny, quizzical expression on Shahid's round face.

I
t was during this time that his father almost lost all his money on a property deal.

What happened was this: as the days went by, Sharif had become more and more involved in the property search. He found a duplex flat in Asiad Village and began negotiating with the sellers, a couple who lived in Palam Vihar, to buy it. The couple kept asking for Rs. 50 lakhs, whereas he wanted to pay 40. Finally, predictably, they settled on Rs. 45 lakhs, with some adjustment for black money, and the deal went ahead.

Sharif was happy about the property, relieved; but he also cautioned his family that they shouldn't get too excited. “I've only given a deposit. They might still withdraw.”

“You'll love living there, beta,” Afsheen told Mansoor. “It's right next to the Sports Complex and you can go to the driving range when your wrists get better.”

Mansoor really couldn't imagine moving; he had lived in the same house in South Ex all his life; had grown up there, suffered there, grieved there, recovered from the bomb there. In fact, soon after the blast, the Ahmeds had discussed moving—Afsheen had said the house itself had brought them bad luck; there had been a spate of injuries in the family, culminating with Mansoor's—but they hadn't been able to find anything. Now, years later, this opening appeared.

The couple selling the property were acquaintances of Sharif's college
friend Mahinder; they were liberal and friendly and when they had met Sharif, they had talked enthusiastically about their various Muslim friends. “Do you know Arif Khan? He was the vice chancellor of AMU at one point.” These connections doubled Sharif's relief.

But as the day approached to meet and sign the actual deed and to transfer the full amount, problems began to occur.

The Sahnis, who had been so warm and effusive when Sharif had met them, became hard to pin down. One week they were on vacation in Goa. Another week they were visiting their eldest son in Toronto, then the younger one in Singapore. They returned Sharif's calls erratically, and finally, not at all.

“Do you think they're trying to cheat us?” Sharif asked Afsheen.

“I don't know,” Afsheen said. “You should ask Mahinder.”

“They gave you a chit—so you don't need to worry about the money,” Mahinder said when Sharif called him. “You'll get that back. But the thing we need to find out is if they've found someone else who's offering them a higher price. People are greedy. She's a school principal but people who run schools are no better than anyone else. In fact, sometimes they're even greedier than others because they think they're being corrupt for a good cause.”

“So what should we do?” Sharif asked.

“Let me investigate,” Mahinder said.

During this time, Sharif kept phoning the Sahnis to set up a date. He drove past the house in the Asiad like a despondent lover, wondering why these perfect situations didn't work out for him. And he felt the loss of his money—which he hadn't really lost, but was in limbo—keenly.

Then Mahinder confirmed what they'd both suspected: the Sahnis had found another buyer willing to pay a higher price.

________

Sharif now sprang into action. His lawyer served the Sahnis a show-cause notice for breach of contract. The Sahnis appeared in court, furious, no longer the mild paternal Punjabis they'd pretended to be. But then the Sahnis' lawyer, a young woman in a suit, muddled things and admitted they'd taken money from two parties and the judge, snorting and shaking his head, issued a stay order.

The Sahnis turned out to be horrible, unapologetic people.

“How dare you take us to court,” Mrs. Sahni fumed at Sharif outside the court. “Is this any way to behave? You expect us to sell you our property now?”

Strange woman, thought Sharif—she acts like the property is some kind of business partnership between us. When in fact, as soon as she sells me the property, everything will be over in our relationship.

Sharif told the Sahnis that they had given him no choice. He had called about twenty times and been swatted away with excuses at every turn.

“You're too pushy,” Mr. Sahni said. “We told you it would take time. When you saw the property I told you we didn't want the deposit till we came back from Canada. You only insisted.”

But you accepted the money!
Sharif wanted to say. Still, he kept quiet. He knew how to use silence; his goatee enhanced his impassivity.

For a few days, the Sahnis blustered—on the phone and through their lawyer. Sharif, advised by Mahinder and his lawyer, kept his nerve and refused to respond to these provocations. Finally Mrs. Sahni called and said she would like to meet the Ahmeds at the Golf Club.

“They're trying to show their classiness,” Afsheen observed.

They had underpriced the place, Mrs. Sahni told them when they sat down for coffee and biscuits and fizzing lime soda at the overly slick, cracked Formica table that is the hallmark of all Indian clubs. It was their mistake, she admitted. They had not realized that the scooter garage that came with the place was also worth a good ten lakhs. It was an honest blunder, she said; hence the confusion.

Sharif was enraged. The cheek of these people! Caught red-handed trying to sell it to someone else, and now, instead of apologizing, they ask for more!

“I'm very firm,” he said. “I've given the deposit.”

But then Afsheen interjected. “We'll think about it,” she said, putting her hand on Sharif's.

________

“What do you mean—we'll think about it!” Sharif thundered at her in the car. “They're wrong.”

“You do have a temper,” she said. “And you put people off with your pushiness. What's ten lakhs in the long term? We like the property; we don't want to fight—might as well pay it and get it over with.”

Mansoor, when he heard both sides of the argument, agreed with his mother.

But Sharif couldn't accept it. He raged against his wife and son, against the Sahnis, and consulted his lawyer. Finally he decided that it would be cheaper to pay this ransom than to pay lawyers' fees for decades.

________

The money was exchanged; the deal was completed in a urine-soaked registrar's office in Bijwasan on a cold December day.

It was only when it was all over that the lawyer noticed a problem in the paperwork.

The property came with a lien, a debt, on it. For Rs. 20 crores. Rs. 200 million.

________

Mr. Sahni, when Sharif had first met him, had said he was in the export business—had boasted about how well he was doing, how he had two sons settled abroad, one in Toronto, another in Singapore. But there had been something
off
about the Sahnis from the start, Sharif realized. They owned this duplex in Asiad, in the heart of the city, but lived in a strange farmhouse-cum-bunker in Palam Vihar, an incomplete colony on the outskirts of Delhi, a crisscross of plots overgrown with thorny scrub and grass and keekar trees. There was something provisional about the house too—the furniture heavy and Punjabi, with no carpets covering the terrazzo floor and no art on the walls and twenty balloons up against the ceiling of the drawing room, the detritus of their granddaughter's birthday, they'd said. But Sharif, who had been introduced to these people through Mahinder, was so grateful to have found a good house for himself, to find Hindus who would deal with Muslims, that he'd ignored all these signs and justified it to himself. And the Sahnis had justified it to Sharif too. “We want to give
the money to our sons,” Mrs. Sahni had said in her sweet convent-educated voice. “It's more useful to them, now that they're living abroad. As for us, we like living in this greenery, away from the rush of Delhi. The drive to my school is just twenty minutes from here.”

Now, of course, Sharif saw it anew. A couple pushed into bankruptcy, pushed to the edge of Delhi, plotting an escape to Canada, seeking to offload the huge debt they'd taken on when the man's export business went under. And they had found a sitting duck in Sharif but gotten greedy and tried to lure another duck. But Sharif in his pushy way had insisted that
he
be the victim. It didn't help that he had a shitty lawyer and bad instincts with property. And so he had landed himself in the biggest financial trouble of his life—sinking under a debt of twenty crores.

________

The lawyer told him he could win the case in court. Sharif fired the lawyer and hired another one and settled in for a long legal battle. But he knew even before it had started that he would lose one way or another. After all, he should have looked at the papers before he signed. He had clawed his way into this tragedy.