The World We Found (10 page)

The man’s eyes widened. Adish surmised that the shop didn’t sell this kind of quantity in a month. “I’m not for sure, sir,” the man mumbled. “But I can find out, quickly-quickly.”

Iqbal opened his mouth to say something but Adish spoke over him. “Great. I will phone you in a few days to get your quote.” He smiled broadly. “In the meantime, can you spare this fellow for an hour or so? He’s an old friend of mine.”

Iqbal was shaking his head no but his uncle was on his feet. “Of course, sir. This is family business, you see. He come and go as he wishes.” He turned toward Iqbal. “Go. Go. Your old friend has come to see you.” He gave the reluctant man a slight push. “For Allah’s sake. What you standing here for?”

D
espite the fact that Iqbal hadn’t said a word since they had begun to walk, Adish could feel him seething with anger. He felt a sense of disappointment at Iqbal’s obvious distaste for his presence. He could well understand his companion’s outrage at having been tricked into accompanying him. But Iqbal had not displayed the slightest pleasure at seeing Adish after all these years—and that stung. It made him question the years when they had all been so close. He remembered the night of Nishta and Kavita’s arrest, when a distraught Iqbal had knocked on his door and they had walked the nighttime streets for hours, both of them bound together by their love for women who barely acknowledged their presence in public. He remembered now that Iqbal had told him that night that he had asked Nishta to marry him and that he was willing to convert to Hinduism if it helped with her parents.

“Wow,” Adish had said. “When was this? And what did she say?”

“She said she’d talk it over with her three friends. And let me know her answer at an appropriate time.”

They had looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Could we have found two more difficult women to fall in love with?” Adish had said.

But the man walking beside him retained no vestige of the openhearted, lovesick boy from that night. He had no idea how to talk to this man. Adish’s heart sank at the realization.

Still, for Lal’s sake, for Armaiti’s sake, he had to try. “Iqbal?” he said softly. “It’s good to see you again, yaar. How long has it been?”

He had misjudged the depth of Iqbal’s anger. He stopped walking and turned to face Adish. “What do you want? Why are you here? Why are you people interfering with my family?”

Adish felt his face flush. Mortifyingly, he felt his eyes fill with tears. He looked away, embarrassed. He had always prided himself on being more practical than the others. Over the years, he had come to think of their college days as a spot of sweetness, when their youth had burned as bright as their idealism, but as a period that inevitably had to end. He had not remained stuck in the past as he sometimes thought Laleh and Kavita were and was proud of the fact that he had grown up and changed with the times. He had never shared Laleh’s romanticism about their socialist past, and as he’d grown older he felt he had a lot more in common with his father-in-law, the pragmatic, solid Rumi Madan, and less with Rumi’s impetuous daughter. He was often impatient with Laleh’s theatrics, the constant self-recriminations, her expressions of solidarity with the poor, even while she enjoyed the fruits of his success. He had come to believe that his way was cleaner, more honest, less hypocritical—yes, he had once believed in a different system, and then, when he’d seen the difficulty—the impossibility—of the path he had chosen, he had gotten off that path. When free-market reforms came to India, he had freed himself along with them, and when the old regulations loosened, he felt something loosen within himself. He didn’t believe for a minute that he had made a pact with the devil or sold his soul in doing so. That was the essential difference between him and Laleh—when she thought back on their college days, she saw them as a template for the rest of her life; Adish looked back on those days as a lovely dream from which it was difficult, but essential, to wake up.

And yet. Standing in the middle of a busy street, being bumped and run into by passersby, blinking away the tears that had inexplicably filled his eyes, Adish had to confront a new truth—Iqbal’s dismissal of him hurt more than it had any right to. Which meant that those college years and the friendship that had seen them through a thousand cups of tea and countless political discussions had meant something after all. That the years were not pieces of paper that one could ball up and throw away. And that Iqbal—Iqbal, whose faint air of superiority had always made him bristle—even Iqbal was dear to him, was a brother to him in ways that no other friend had been since—not his friends at the club, not his tennis partners, not the men who had sat on the same boards that he did. Laleh had known some essential truth about their lives that had eluded him until now.

“I wish you no harm, Iqbal,” he heard himself say. “And I’m sorry if I—if we . . .” He shook his head impatiently. “Forget it. I told Laleh this was a stupid idea. Listen, you go back to work. I—I should get going, too.” He held out his hand. “Nice seeing you, yaar.”

To his surprise, Iqbal took his hand. And held on to it. “Think I’m going to release you from buying me lunch that easily?” And Iqbal smiled, and even though his teeth were more yellow than Adish remembered, the middle-aged man in the pious garb fell away and in his place stood the long-haired, impish boy with the ever-present grin.

Something tightened in Adish’s chest. He understood that Iqbal had noticed his hurt reaction and was trying to correct the situation. He suddenly felt crazily, triumphantly happy. But Iqbal was a feral cat he didn’t want to scare off with a sudden move. So his face was impassive and his voice neutral as he said, “Where would you like to go?”

Iqbal shrugged. “I don’t care. Zoha usually packs my lunch. You decide.”

Some instinct told Adish to steer clear of the expensive restaurants he normally patronized. “There’s a small Irani joint around the corner from here,” he said. “Shall we go there?”

“Wherever, yaar.” Iqbal smiled again. “You’re paying.”

Chapter 9

T
hey had finished lunch and it had been surprisingly easy chatting with Iqbal. I’d forgotten how charming the fellow can be, Adish thought. Iqbal had listened attentively as Adish had described his business, and laughed at the appropriate moments when he’d described the antics of his gangly, clumsy son. So far, Adish had shied away from asking Iqbal too many personal questions and had tiptoed around the reason why he had come calling. But now, looking at the big clock that hung behind the cash register, he knew he didn’t have much time.

He leaned back in his chair as he cast an appraising glance at Iqbal. “So, saala,” he said. “What’s with the beard and stuff?”

Iqbal stiffened for a second and then broke into a faint smile. “You haven’t changed, Adish. As blunt as ever.” He waved away Adish’s apology. “No. It’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ve always liked that about you.”

“Thanks.” The dimples widened in Adish’s face. He waited.

Just when he thought Iqbal had forgotten his question, he spoke. “In 1993, I became a Muslim. A real one, I mean. Devout.” Iqbal waited, as if expecting Adish to react. When he didn’t, he continued. “My religion calls for all good Muslims to grow a beard.” He paused. “Muslim
men
, that is.”

Adish smiled politely at the joke. He had the feeling that any wrong move on his part would shut Iqbal up, would make him withdraw into silence. But Iqbal didn’t seem ready to say anything more.

Adish cleared his throat and started again. “So. I’m assuming that Nishta told you—”

“Zoha,” Iqbal corrected.

“Pardon me. Zoha told you that Laleh had stopped by your house?”

“Of course.” Iqbal’s eyes were now shiny, attentive.

“And she told you why?”

“Yah. She wants my wife to accompany her to America.” Iqbal’s voice was flat.

Adish felt a small wave of irritation. “Well, you know why, right? It’s because Armaiti is dying. And it’s her wish to see her friends before . . .”

Iqbal raised his hand to cut him off. “Zoha can’t go.”

Adish waited for him to continue. When it became clear that he wouldn’t, he said, “Bas? That’s all? No explanation?” He didn’t try to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Neither did Iqbal. “I’m surprised by that question, Adish, I must say. ‘No explanation?’ I need to explain my family mammala to you, someone I haven’t seen in, what? Over twenty-five years?”

“That’s not what I meant, Iqbal,” Adish said softly. Don’t lose your temper, he told himself. It won’t help anything. “I meant that Armaiti was a dear friend. And . . . and in six months’ time she might be dead. I just thought that you’d respect that memory enough—that, you know, for old time’s sake, you’d at least attempt to explain your position.”

“I only explain my position to one person, Adish. And that is to Allah.”

Adish felt his right hand twitching with anger. He bit down on his lip and looked away, not wanting Iqbal to see the anger he was feeling. “You sound like a fanatic, yaar,” he said finally. There was a dry, hollow feeling in his mouth, like he’d smoked too many cigarettes.

Iqbal’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a sadra I see, Adish? Under your shirt?” He was referring to the thin, muslin-cloth undergarment that Adish wore as a sign of his Parsi faith.

“Yes.”

“So you’re no longer an atheist, either, right? But you don’t hear me calling you a fanatic. Only us Muslims are fanatics in this world? Whereas you Parsis, why, you don’t even allow a non-Parsi into your fire temples or to convert into your faith, but you’re not fanatics, correct? I’m a fanatic because I wear my faith on my face. But you hide yours under a shirt.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Iqbal.” Adish realized with dismay that they were quarreling, that he had upset Iqbal, which was the last thing he’d planned on doing. Still, there was no stopping now. “I was referring to your dismissal of your own wife’s wishes to see her dying friend.”

“Did Zoha say that? That she wanted to visit America?”

“Not exactly,” Adish stammered. “That is, I’m not sure. I wasn’t there.”

“She doesn’t want to go,” Iqbal said flatly. “She told me so herself.”

“Then why doesn’t she tell Laleh that herself? Why is she not allowed to come on the phone?”

Iqbal’s face flushed. “You’re poking your nose in my family business, Adish.”

“I’m just explaining what I meant when I called you a fanatic, Iqbal. It has nothing to do with your religion. It has everything to do with how you’re treating your wife, as if she’s some nineteenth-century chattel.”

Iqbal slammed his fist on the wooden tabletop. “Don’t you lecture me about how I treat women,” he said. “And don’t judge me until you’ve lived my life, Adish. You and Laleh—your wealth has always protected you. You people . . . you think because you’re Parsis you’re a minority in this damned country. You try living as a Muslim for one day. And then you talk.”

Adish watched in horror as Iqbal’s eyes glittered with tears. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not trying to insult you, Iqbal. I’m just saying—I’ve known you for years, yaar. I just don’t know how to reconcile all this with who—”

“You don’t know shit.” Iqbal’s eyes were wild. “That stupid boy that you used to know? Forget him. He died in 1993. He’s finished.”

“What happened in 1993?” Adish asked cautiously.

The waiter came up to them with the bill. In order to delay him, Adish said, “Two cups of chai.” He glanced at Iqbal. “You’ll have a cup of tea, yes, boss?”

They waited until the waiter returned a minute later with the milky tea. “So what happened?” Adish asked again after he’d left.

Iqbal looked around him. The café was almost empty. “The Hindu-Muslim riots happened. In 1993. You remember? Or were you living in your golden cage, then?”

Adish let the insult pass. “Of course I remember, Iqbal. You couldn’t live in Bombay then and not be aware of it. It was horrible.” A memory of that time stirred in his mind but he pushed it away.

Iqbal was watching him closely and with sudden interest. “Why? Did you know anyone who died in the riots?”

“No. Thank God.”

“Anyone who was injured?”

Adish shook his head. “No.”

“Anyone who lost their home? Their business? Their relatives?”

“No. Not personally.”

“Then why do you say they were horrible?”

Adish threw his hands in the air. “Because they were. It was a blot on Bombay’s reputation. The secular, easygoing city that I had known changed forever during that time.”

“Ah, Adish. So it was all—what was that term we used to use?—all theoretical for you, right? Something to talk about over dinner.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair? Not
fair
? Let me tell you what’s not fair, Adish. What’s not fair is that my parents had to give up their beautiful flat and move to the shit-hole neighborhood that we now live in. You remember the apartment Zoha and I were renting? It was tiny but we loved it. We gave that up, too. We sold my parents’ flat in a hurry for a pittance just so that we could live among our own people. Safety in numbers, in case those Hindu butchers decide again to spill more Muslim blood.”