Shantaram (29 page)

"These people are dying," Abdullah concluded, with the colourful turn of phrase that I was learning to expect from him, "and they steal life for themselves, and then they sell life to others who are dying."

When Abdullah finished speaking, there was a dense and ponderous silence. Everyone looked at me. They seemed to want some response, some reaction, to the story of their sadness and skill, their cruel isolation and violent indispensability. Whistling hisses of breath came through the clenched teeth of lipless mouths. Patient, serious eyes fixed me with expectant concentration.

"Can I... can I have another glass of water, please?" I asked, in Hindi, and it must've been the right thing to say because the whole crowd started laughing. Several children rushed off to fetch the water, and a number of hands patted me on the back and shoulder.

Ranjitbhai explained, then, how Sunil, the boy who'd showed us the canvas bundle of medicines, would make deliveries to my hut in the slum as and when I required them. Before we could leave, he asked that I remain seated for a while longer. Then he directed every man, woman, and child in his group to come forward and touch my feet. It was mortifying, a torment, and I entreated him not to do it. He insisted. A stern, almost severe expression burned in his eyes, while the lepers hobbled forward, one by one, and tapped their leathery stumps or the blackened, curled claws of their fingernails to my feet.

An hour later, Abdullah parked his bike near the World Trade Centre. We stood together for a moment, and then he reached out impulsively and enclosed me in a warm, bearish hug. I laughed as we came apart, and he frowned at me, clearly puzzled.

"Is it funny?" he asked.

"No," I reassured him. "I just wasn't expecting a bear hug, that's all."

"Bare? Do you mean it is naked?"

"No, no, we call that a bear hug," I explained, gesturing with my hands, as if they were claws. "Bears, you know, the furry animals that eat honey and sleep in caves. When you hold someone like that, we say you're giving them a bear hug."

"Caves? Sleeping in caves?"

"It's okay. Don't worry about it. I liked it. It was... good friendship. It was what friends do, in my country, giving a bear hug like that."

"My brother," he said, with an easy smile, "I will see you tomorrow, with Sunil, from the lepers, with new medicine."

He rode off, and I walked alone into the slum. I looked around me, and that place I'd once regarded as grievously forlorn seemed sturdy, vital, a miniature city of boundless hope and possibility. The people, as I passed them, were robust and invigorated. I sat down in my hut, with the thin plywood door closed, and I cried.

Suffering, Khaderbhai once told me, is the way we test our love, especially our love for God. I didn't know God, as he'd put it, but even as a disbeliever I failed the test that day. I couldn't love God-anyone's God-and I couldn't forgive God. The tears stopped after a few minutes, but it was the first time I'd cried for too long, and I was still deep in the mud of it when Prabaker came into my hut and squatted down beside me.

"He is a danger man, Lin," he said without preamble.

"What?"

"This Abdullah fellow, who came here today. He is a very danger man. You are better not for any knowing of him. And doings with him are even worsely dangerous, also."

"What are you talking about?"

"He is..." Prabaker paused, and the struggle was explicit in his gentle, open face. "He is a killing man, Lin. A murdering fellow.

He is killing the people for money. He is a goonda-a gangster fellow-for Khaderbhai. Everybody knows this. Everybody, except of you."

I knew it was true without asking any more, without a shred of proof beyond Prabaker's word. It's true, I said in my mind. In saying it, I realised that I'd always known, or suspected it. It was in the way other people treated him, the whispers he inspired, and the fear I'd seen in so many of the eyes that looked into his. It was in the ways that Abdullah was like the best and most dangerous men I'd known in prison. That, or something like that, had to be true.

I tried to think clearly about what he was, and what he did, and what my relationship to him should or shouldn't be. Khaderbhai was right, of course. Abdullah and I were very much alike. We were men of violence, when violence was required, and we weren't afraid to break the law. We were both outlaws. We were both alone in the world. And Abdullah, like me, was ready to die for any reason that seemed good enough on the day. But I'd never killed anyone. In that, we were different men.

Still, I liked him. I thought of that afternoon at the lepers' slum, and I recalled how self-assured I'd been there with Abdullah. I knew that a part of whatever equanimity I'd managed to display, perhaps most of it, had really been his. With him I'd been strong and able to cope. He was the first man I'd met, since the escape from prison, who'd had that effect on me. He was the kind of man that tough criminals call a
hundred-percenter:
the kind of man who'll put his life on the line if he calls you his friend; the kind who'll put his shoulder beside yours, without question or complaint, and stand with you against any odds.

Because men like that are so often the heroes in films and books, we forget how rare they are in the real world. But I knew. It was one of the things that prison taught me. Prison pulls the masks away from men. You can't hide what you are, in prison. You can't pretend to be tough. You are, or you're not, and everyone knows it. And when the knives came out against me, as they did more than once, and it was kill or be killed, I learned that only one man in hundreds will stand with you, to the end, in friendship's name.

Prison also taught me how to recognise those rare men when I met them. I knew that Abdullah was such a man. In my hunted exile, biting back the fear, ready to fight and die every haunted day, the strength and wildness and will that I found in him were more, and better, than all the truth and goodness in the world. And sitting there in my hut, striped with hot white light and cooling shadows, I pledged myself to him as brother and friend, no matter what he'd done, and no matter what he was.

I looked up into Prabaker's worried face, and smiled. He smiled back at me, reflexively, and in an instant of unusual clarity I saw that, for him, I was the one who inspired something of that confidence: as Abdullah was to me, so was I to Prabaker.

Friendship is also a kind of medicine, and the markets for it, too, are sometimes black.

"Don't worry," I said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. "It'll be all right. It'll be fine. Nothing's going to happen to me."

____________________

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The long days, working in the slum and grinding commissions from the hard, jewelled eyes of tourists, unfolded one upon another through the tumble of crowded hours like lotus petals in a summer dawn. There was always a little money, and sometimes a lot of it.

On one afternoon, a few weeks after that first visit to the lepers, I fell in with a party of Italian tourists who planned to sell drugs to other tourists at some of the bigger dance parties in Goa. With my help, they bought four kilos of charras and two thousand Mandrax tablets. I liked doing illegal business with Italians. They were single-minded and systematic in the pursuit of their pleasures, and stylish in the practice of their business. They were also generous, for the most part, believing in a fair minute's pay for a fair minute's work. The commission on that deal gave me enough money to retire for a few weeks. The slum absorbed my days, and most of my nights.

It was late April then, only a little more than a month before the monsoon. The slum-dwellers were busy making preparations for the coming of the rain. There was a quiet urgency in the work. We all knew what troubles the darkening sky would bring. Yet there was happiness in every lane, and excitement in the easy smiles of the young ones because, after the hot, dry months, all of us were hungry for clouds.

Qasim Ali Hussein appointed Prabaker and Johnny Cigar as the leaders of two teams who were responsible for helping widows, orphans, disabled people, and abandoned wives to repair their huts. Prabaker won the assistance of a few willing lads to gather bamboo poles and small lengths of timber from the piles of scrap at the construction site beside our slum. Johnny Cigar chose to organise several street kids into a marauding band of pirates who plundered the neighbourhood for pieces of tin, canvas, and plastic. All manner of things that might be used as weatherproofing materials began to vanish from the vicinity of the slum. One notable expedition by the tiny pilferers produced a huge tarpaulin that, from its shape, had clearly been the camouflage cover for a battle tank. That piece of military software was cut into nine pieces, and used to protect as many huts.

I joined a team of young men who'd been given the task of clearing the drains and gullies of snarls and snags. Months of neglect had filled those places with an accumulation of cans and plastic bottles and jars-everything that rats wouldn't eat and that scavengers hadn't found. It was dirty work, and I was glad to do it. It took me to every corner of the slum, and introduced me to hundreds of people I might otherwise never have known. And there was a certain kudos in the job: humble and important tasks were as esteemed in the slum as they were reviled in the wider community. All the teams who worked to defend the huts from the coming rain were rewarded with love. We only had to lift our heads from the filthy drains to find ourselves in a luxuriant garden of smiles.

As head man in the slum, Qasim Ali Hussein was involved in every plan and decision in those preparations. His authority was clear and unquestioned, but it was a subtle, unobtrusive leadership. An incident that occurred in those weeks before the rain brought me into the ambit of his wisdom, and revealed to me why it was so widely revered.

A group of us had gathered in Qasim Ali's hut, one afternoon, to hear his eldest son tell stories of his adventures in Kuwait.

Iqbal, a tall, muscular twenty-four-year old with an honest stare and a shy smile, had recently returned after six months of work as a contract labourer in Kuwait. Many of the young men were eager to gain from his experience. What were the best jobs? Who were the best masters? Who were the worst ones? How did you make extra money between the flourishing black markets of the Gulf States and those of Bombay? Iqbal held impromptu classes every afternoon for a week in the main room of his father's hut, and the crowd spilled out into the forecourt to share in his precious knowledge. On that day, however, his discourses were interrupted abruptly by shouts and screaming.

We rushed out of the hut and ran towards the sound. Not far away, we discovered a noisy mob of men, women, and children. We pushed our way to the centre, where two young men were wrestling and punching at one another. Their names were Faroukh and Raghuram.

They were from the team that was helping Prabaker to gather poles and lengths of wood. Iqbal and Johnny Cigar separated the combatants, and Qasim Ali stepped between them, his presence quieting the raucous crowd at once.

"What is happening here?" he asked, his voice unusually stern.

"Why are you fighting?"

"The Prophet, may Allah grant him peace!" Faroukh shouted. "He insulted the Prophet!"

"And he insulted the Lord Ram!" Raghuram countered.

The crowd supported one or the other with shrieks and condemnations. Qasim Ali gave them half a minute of noise, and then raised his hands for silence.

"Faroukh, Raghuram, you two are friends, good friends," he said.

"You know that fighting is no way to settle your differences. And you both know that fighting between friends and neighbours is the worst fighting of all."

"But the Prophet, peace be upon him! Raghu insulted the Prophet.

I had to fight with him," Faroukh whined. He was still angry, but Qasim Ali's hard stare was causing him to wilt, and he couldn't meet the older man's eye.

"And what of insulting the Lord Ram?" Raghuram protested. "Isn't that also a reason to-"

"There is no excuse!" Qasim Ali thundered, silencing every voice.

"There is no reason that is good enough to make us fight with each other. We are all poor men here. There are enemies enough for all of us outside this place. We live together, or we die.

You two young fools have hurt our people, your own people. You have hurt all of our people, of every faith, and you have shamed me terribly."

The crowd had grown to more than a hundred people. Qasim's words caused a stir of rumbling comments that rippled through them, as heads touched together. Those closest to him, at the centre, repeated what he'd said, relaying the message to others at the edges of the group. Faroukh and Raghuram hung their heads wretchedly. Qasim Ali's charge that they'd shamed him, rather than themselves, was a telling blow.

"You must both be punished for this," Qasim said, a little more gently, when the crowd was quieter. "Your parents and I will choose a punishment for you tonight. Until then, you will work for the rest of the day at cleaning the area around the latrine."

New murmurs buzzed through the crowd. Conflicts based on religion were potentially dangerous, and people were glad to see that Qasim took the matter seriously. Many of the voices around me spoke of the friendship between Faroukh and Raghuram, and I realised that what Qasim had said was true-the fighting between close friends of different faiths had hurt the community. Then Qasim Ali removed the long green scarf that he wore around his neck, and held it aloft for all to see.

"You will work in the latrine now. But first, Faroukh and Raghuram, I will bind you together with this, my scarf. It will remind you that you are friends and brothers, while cleaning the latrine will fill your noses with the stink of what you have done to each other today."

He knelt then, and tied the two young men together at the ankle, Faroukh's right to Raghuram's left. When it was done, he stood and told them to go, pointing with outstretched arm in the direction of the latrine. The crowd parted for them, and the young men tried to walk, but they stumbled at first, and soon realised that they had to hold on tightly and walk in step if they were to make any progress at all. They clasped their arms around one another, and hobbled away on three legs.

The crowd watched them walk, and began to chatter in praise of Qasim Ali's wisdom. Suddenly there was laughter where a minute before there'd been tension and fear. People turned to speak to him, but discovered that Qasim was already walking back to his hut. I was close enough to him to see that he was smiling.

I was lucky, and shared that smile often in those months. Qasim visited my hut two and sometimes three times a week, checking on my progress with the increasing number of patients who came to me after Doctor Hamid began to accept my referrals. Occasionally, the head man brought someone with him-a child who'd been bitten by rats, or a young man who'd been injured at the construction site beside the slum. After a while, I realised that they were people he'd chosen to bring to me, personally, because for one reason or another they were reluctant to come alone. Some were simply shy. Some had resentments against foreigners, and refused to trust them. Others were unwilling to try any form of medicine other than traditional, village remedies.

I had some trouble with the village remedies. In the main I approved of them, and even adopted them wherever it was possible, preferring some of the ayurvedic medicines to their western pharmaceutical equivalents. Some treatments, however, seemed to be based on obscure superstitions rather than therapeutic traditions, and they were as contrary to common sense as they were to any notions of medical science. The practice of applying a coloured tourniquet of herbs to the upper arm as a cure for syphilis, for example, struck me as particularly counter-productive. Arthritis and rheumatism were sometimes treated by taking cherry-red coals from the fire with metal tongs, and holding them against the knees and elbows of the sufferer. Qasim Ali told me, privately, that he didn't approve of the more extreme remedies, but he didn't prohibit them. Instead, he visited me regularly; and because the people loved him, they followed his example and came to me in greater numbers.

Qasim Ali's nut-brown skin, stretched over his lean and sinewy body, was as smooth and taut as a boxer's glove. His thick, silver-grey hair was short, and he sported a goatee beard one shade lighter than his hair. He most often wore a cotton kurtah and plain, white, western-style trousers. Although they were simple, inexpensive clothes, they were always freshly washed and ironed, and he changed them twice every day. Another man, a less revered man with similar habits of dress, would've been considered something of a dandy. But Qasim Ali raised smiles of love and admiration wherever he went in the slum. His immaculately clean, white clothes seemed to all of us a symbol of his spirituality and moral integrity-qualities we depended on, in that little world of struggle and hope, no less urgently than we depended on the water from the communal well.

His fifty-five years sat lightly on his taller-than-average frame. More than once, I watched him and his young son run from the water tanks to their hut with heavy containers of water hoisted onto their shoulders, and they were neck-and-neck all the way. When he sat down on the reed mats, in the main room of his hut, he did so without touching his hands to the ground. He crossed his feet over and then lowered himself to a sitting position by bending his knees. He was a handsome man, and a great part of his beauty derived from the healthy vitality and natural grace that supported his inspirational and commanding wisdom.

With his short, silver-grey hair, lean figure, and deeply resonant voice, Qasim reminded me often of Khaderbhai. I learned, some time later, that the two powerful men knew each other well, and were in fact close friends. But there were considerable differences between them, and perhaps none more significant than the authority of their leadership, and how they'd come by it. Qasim was given his power by a people who loved him. Khaderbhai had seized his power, and held it by strength of will and force of arms. And in the contrast of powers, it was the mafia lord's that dominated. The people of the slum chose Qasim Ali as their leader and head man, but it was Khaderbhai who'd approved the choice, and who'd allowed it to happen.

Qasim was called upon to exercise his power frequently because his was the only real day-to-day authority in the slum. He resolved those disputes that had escalated into conflicts. He mediated claims and counterclaims concerning property and rights of access. And many people simply sought his advice about everything from employment to marriages.

Qasim had three wives. His first wife, Fatimah, was two years younger than he was. His second wife, Shaila, was younger by ten years. His third wife, Najimah, was only twenty-eight years old.

His first marriage had been for love. The two subsequent marriages were to poor widows who might not otherwise have found new husbands. The wives bore him ten children between them-four sons and six daughters-and there were five other children who'd come to him with the widowed wives. To give the women financial independence, he bought four foot-treadle sewing machines for them. His first wife, Fatimah, set the machines up under a canvas canopy, outside the hut, and hired one, two, three, and eventually four male tailors to work at making shirts and trousers.

The modest enterprise provided living wages for the tailors and their families, and a measure of profit, which was divided equally among the three wives. Qasim took no part in the running of the business, and he paid all the household expenses, so the money made by his wives was their own to spend or save as they wished. In time, the tailors bought slum huts around Qasim's own, and their wives and children lived side by side with Qasim's, making up a huge, extended family of thirty-four persons who looked upon the head man as father and friend. It was a relaxed and contented household. There was no bickering or bad temper.

The children played happily and did their chores willingly. And several times a week, he opened his large main room to the public as a majlis, or forum, where the slum-dwellers could air their grievances or make requests.

Not all the disputes or problems in the slum were brought to Qasim Ali's house for a timely resolution, of course, and sometimes Qasim was forced to take on the roles of policeman and magistrate in that unofficial and self-regulating system. I was drinking tea in the foreground of his house one morning, some weeks after Abdullah took me to the lepers, when Jeetendra rushed up to us with the news that a man was beating his wife, and it was feared that he might kill her. Qasim Ali, Jeetendra, Anand, Prabaker, and I walked quickly through the narrow lanes to a strip of huts that formed the perimeter of the slum at the line of mangrove swamp. A large crowd had gathered outside one of the huts and, as we neared it, we could hear a pitiable screaming and the smack of blows from within.