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‘How about this one, sir? It’s the best place in town.’ He put a hand on his heart. ‘I give you my word.’
The Hotel Decent had a good deal with all the railway porters: a ‘cut’ of two and a half rupees for every customer they brought in.
The stranger lowered his voice confidentially. ‘My dear fellow, is it a good place, though?’
He emphasized the critical word by saying it in English.
‘Very good,’ Zia said with a wink. ‘Very, very good.’
The stranger crooked his finger and beckoned Zia closer. He spoke into Zia’s ear: ‘My dear fellow: I am a Muslim.’
‘I know, sir. So am I.’
‘Not just any Muslim. I’m a Pathan.’
It was as if Ziauddin had heard a magic spell. He gaped at the stranger.
‘Forgive me, sir… I…didn’t… I… Allah has sent you to exactly the right porter, sir! And this is not the right hotel for you at all, sir. In fact it is a very bad hotel. And this is not the right…’
Tossing the foreign bag from hand to hand, he took the stranger around the station to the other side – where the hotels were Muslim-owned and where ‘cuts’ were not given to the porters. He stopped at one place and said: ‘Will this do?’
HOTEL DARUL-ISLAM
BOARDING AND LOGING
The stranger contemplated the sign, the green archway into the hotel, the image of the Great Mosque of Mecca above the doorway; then he put a hand into a pocket of his grey trousers and brought out a five-rupee note.
‘It’s too much, sir, for one bag. Just give me two rupees.’ Zia bit his lip. ‘No, even that is too much.’
The stranger smiled. ‘An honest man.’
He tapped two fingers of his left hand on his right shoulder.
‘I’ve got a bad arm, my friend. I wouldn’t have been able to carry the bag here without a lot of pain.’ He pressed the money into Zia’s hands. ‘You deserve even more.’
Ziauddin took the money; he looked at the stranger’s face.
‘Are you really a Pathan, sir?’
The boy’s body shivered at the stranger’s answer.
‘Me too!’ he shouted, and then ran like crazy, yelling: ‘Me too! Me too!’
That night Ziauddin dreamed of snow-covered mountains and a race of fair-skinned, courteous men who tipped like gods. In the morning, he returned to the guest house, and found the stranger on one of the benches outside, sipping from a yellow teacup.
‘Will you have tea with me, little Pathan?’
Confused, Ziauddin shook his head, but the stranger was already snapping his fingers. The proprietor, a fat man with a clean-shaven lip and a full, fluffy white beard like a crescent moon, looked unhappily at the filthy porter, before indicating, with a grunt, that he was allowed to sit down at the tables today.
The stranger asked: ‘So you’re also a Pathan, little friend?’
Ziauddin nodded. He informed the stranger of the name of the man who had told him he was a Pathan. ‘He was a learned man, sir: he had been to Saudi Arabia for a year.’
‘Ah,’ the stranger said, shaking his head. ‘Ah, I see. I see now.’
A few minutes passed in silence. Ziauddin said: ‘I hope you’re not staying here a long time, sir. It’s a bad town.’
The Pathan arched his eyebrows.
‘For Muslims like us, it’s bad. The Hindus don’t give us jobs; they don’t give us respect. I speak from experience, sir.’
The stranger took out a notebook and began writing. Zia watched. He looked again at the stranger’s handsome face, his expensive clothes; he inhaled the scent from his fingers and face. ‘This man is a countryman of yours, Zia,’ the boy said to himself. ‘A countryman of yours!’
The Pathan finished his tea and yawned. As if he had for -gotten all about Zia, he went back into his guest house and shut the door behind him.
As soon as his foreign guest had disappeared into the guest house, the owner of the place caught Ziauddin’s eye and jerked his head, and the dirty coolie knew that his tea was not coming. He went back to the train station, where he stood in his usual spot and waited for a passenger to approach him with steel trunks or leather bags to be carried to the train. But his soul was shining with pride, and he fought with no one that day.
The following morning, he woke up to the smell of fresh laundry. ‘A Pathan always rises at dawn, my friend.’
Yawning and stretching himself, Ziauddin opened his eyes: a pair of beautiful pale blue eyes was looking down on him: eyes such as a man might get when he gazes on snow for a long time. Stumbling to his feet, Ziauddin apologized to the stranger, then shook his hand and almost kissed his face.
‘Have you had something to eat?’ the Pathan asked.
Zia shook his head; he never ate before noon.
The Pathan took him to one of the tea-and-samosa stands near the station. It was a place where Zia had once worked, and the boys watched in astonishment as he sat down at the table and cried: ‘A plate of your best! Two Pathans need to be fed this morning!’
The stranger leaned over to him and said: ‘Don’t say it aloud. They shouldn’t know about us: it’s our secret.’
And then he quickly passed a note into Zia’s hands. Uncrumpling the note, the boy saw a tractor and a rising red sun. Five rupees!
‘You want me to take your bag all the way to Bombay? That’s how far this note goes in Kittur.’
He leaned back in his chair as a serving-boy put down two cups of tea, and a plate holding a large samosa, sliced into two and covered with watery ketchup, in front of them. The Pathan and Zia each chewed on his half of the samosa. Then the man picked a piece of the samosa from his teeth and told Ziauddin what he expected for his five rupees.
Half an hour later, Zia sat down at a corner of the train station, outside the waiting room. When customers asked him to carry their luggage, he shook his head and said: ‘I’ve got another job today.’ When the trains came into the station, he counted them. But since it was not easy to remember the total, he moved further away and sat under the shade of a tree that grew within the station; each time an engine whistled past he made a mark in the mud with his big toe, crossing off each batch of five. Some of the trains were packed; some had entire carriages full of soldiers with guns; and some were almost entirely empty. He wondered where they were going to, all these trains, all these people…he shut his eyes and began to doze; the engine of a train startled him, and he scraped another mark with his big toe. When he got up to his feet to go for lunch, he realized he had been sitting on some part of the markings and they had been smudged under his weight; and then he had to try desperately to decipher them.
In the evening, he saw the Pathan sitting on one of the benches outside the guest house, sipping tea. The big man smiled when he saw Ziauddin and slapped a spot on the bench next to him three times.
‘They didn’t give me tea yesterday evening,’ Ziauddin complained, and he explained what had happened. The Pathan’s face darkened; Ziauddin saw that the stranger was righteous. He was also powerful: without saying a word he turned to the proprietor and glowered at him; within a minute a boy came running out of the hotel holding a yellow cup and put it down in front of Zia. He inhaled the flavours of cardamom and sweet steaming milk, and said: ‘Seventeen trains came into Kittur. And sixteen left Kittur. I counted every one of them just like you asked.’
‘Good,’ the Pathan said. ‘Now tell me: how many of these trains had Indian soldiers in them?’
Ziauddin stared.
‘How-many-of-them-had-Indian-soldiers-in-them?’
‘All of them had soldiers… I don’t know…’
‘Six trains had Indian soldiers in them,’ the Pathan said. ‘Four goi
ng to Cochin, two coming back.’
The next day, Ziauddin sat down at the tree in the corner of the station half an hour before the first train pulled in. He marked the earth with his big toe; between trains he went to the snack-shop inside the station.
‘You can’t come here!’ the shopkeeper shouted. ‘We don’t want any trouble again!’
‘You won’t have any trouble from me,’ Zia said. ‘I’ve got money on me today.’ He placed a one-rupee note on the table. ‘Put that note into your money-box and then give me a chicken samosa.’
That evening Zia reported to the Pathan that eleven trains had arrived with soldiers.
‘Well done,’ said the man.
The Pathan, reaching out with his weak arm, exerted a little pressure on each of Ziauddin’s cheeks. He produced another five-rupee note, which the boy accepted without hesitation.
‘Tomorrow I want you to notice how many of the trains had a red cross marked on the sides of the compartments.’
Ziauddin closed his eyes and repeated: ‘Red cross marked on sides.’ He jumped to his feet, gave a military salute, and said: ‘Thanks you, sir! ’
The Pathan laughed; a warm, hearty, foreign laugh.
The next day, Ziauddin sat under the tree once again, scrawling numbers in three rows with his toe. One, number of trains. Two, number of trains with soldiers in them. Three, number of trains marked with red crosses.
Sixteen, eleven, eight.
Another train passed by; Zia looked up, squinted, then moved his toe into position over the first of the three rows.
He held his toe like that, in mid-air, for an instant, and then let it fall to the ground, taking care that it not smudge any of the markings. The train left, and immediately behind it an -other one pulled into the station, full of soldiers, but Ziauddin did not add to his tally. He simply stared at the scratches he had already made, as if he had seen something new in them.
The Pathan was at the guest house when Ziauddin got there at four. The tall man’s hands were behind his back, and he had been pacing around the benches. He came to the boy with quick steps.
‘Did you get the number?’
Ziauddin nodded.
But when the two of them had sat down, he asked: ‘What’re you making me do these things for?’
The Pathan leaned all the way across the table with his weak arm and tried to touch Ziauddin’s hair.
‘At last you ask. At last.’ He smiled.
The guest house proprietor with the beard like the moon came out without prompting; he put two cups of tea down on the table, then stepped back and rubbed his palms and smiled. The Pathan dismissed him with a movement of his head. He sipped his tea; Ziauddin did not touch his.
‘Do you know where those trains full of soldiers and marked with red crosses are going?’
Ziauddin shook his head.
‘Towards Calicut.’
The stranger brought his face closer. The boy saw things he had not seen before: scars on the Pathan’s nose and cheeks, and a small tear in his left ear.
‘The Indian army is setting up a base somewhere between Kittur and Calicut. For one reason and one reason only…’ – he held up a thick finger. ‘ To do to the Muslims of South India what they are doing to Muslims in Kashmir.’
Ziauddin looked down at the tea. A rippled skin of milk-fat was congealing on its surface.
‘I’m a Muslim,’ he said. ‘The son of a Muslim too.’
‘Exactly. Exactly.’ The foreigner’s thick fingers covered the surface of the teacup. ‘Now listen: each time you watch the trains, there will be a little reward for you. Mind – it won’t always be five rupees, but it will be something. A Pathan takes care of other Pathans. It’s simple work. I am here to do the hard work. You’ll—’
Ziauddin said: ‘I’m not well. I can’t do it tomorrow.’
The foreigner thought about this, and then said: ‘You are lying to me. May I ask why?’
A finger passed over a pair of vitiligo-discoloured lips. ‘I’m a Muslim. The son of a Muslim, too.’
‘There are fifty thousand Muslims in this town.’ The foreigner’s voice crackled with irritation. ‘Every one of them seethes. Every one of them is ready for action. I was only offering this job to you out of pity. Because I see what the Indians have done to you. Otherwise I would have offered the job to any of these other fifty thousand fellows.’
Ziauddin kicked back his chair and stood up.
‘Then get one of those fifty thousand fellows to do it.’
Outside the compound of the guest house, he turned around. The Pathan was looking at him; he spoke in a soft voice.
‘Is this any way to repay me, little Pathan?’
Ziauddin said nothing. He looked down at the ground. His big toe slowly scratched a figure into the earth: a large circle. He sucked in fresh air and released a hoarse, wordless hiss.
Then he ran. He ran out of the hotel, ran around the train station to the Hindu side, ran all the way to Ramanna Shetty’s teashop, and then ran around the back of the shop and into the blue tent where the boys lived. There he sat with his mottled lips pressed together and his fingers laced tightly around his knees.
‘What’s got into you?’ the other boys asked. ‘You can’t stay here, you know. Shetty will throw you out.’ They hid him there that night for old times’ sake. When they woke up he was gone. Later in the day he was once again seen at the railway station, fighting with his customers and shouting at them:
‘—don’t do hanky-panky!’
HOW THE TOWN IS LAID OUT
In the geographical centre of Kittur stands the peeling stucco façade of Angel Talkies, a pornographic cinema theatre; regrettably, when the townsfolk give directions, they use Angel Talkies as a reference point. The cinema lies halfway down Umbrella Street, the heart of the commercial district. A significant chunk of Kittur’s economy consists of the manufacture of hand-rolled beedis; no wonder, then, that the tallest building in town is the Engineer Beedi Building on Umbrella Street, owned by Mabroor Engineer, reputed to be the town’s richest man. Not far from it lies Kittur’s most famous icecream shop, The Ideal Traders Ice Cream and Fresh Fruit Juice Parlour; White Stallion Talkies, the town’s only exclusively English-language film theatre, is another nearby attraction. Ming Palace, the first Chinese restaurant in Kittur, opened on Umbrella Street in 1986. The Ganapati Temple in this street is modelled on a famous temple in Goa and is the site of an annual pooja to the elephant-headed deity. Continue on Umbrella Street north of Angel Talkies and you will reach, via the Nehru Maidan and the train station, the Roman Catholic suburb of Valencia, whose main landmark is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Valencia. The Double Gate, a colonial-era arched gateway at the far end of Valencia, leads into Bajpe, once a forest, but today a fastexpanding suburb. To the south of Angel Talkies, the road goes uphill into the Lighthouse Hill, and down to the Cool Water Well. From a busy junction near the Well begins the road that leads to the Bunder, or the area around the port. Further south from the Bunder may be seen Sultan’s Battery, a black fort, which overlooks the road that leads out over the Kaliamma river into Salt Market Village, the southernmost extension of Kittur.
Day One (Afternoon): THE BUNDER
You have walked down the Cool Water Well Road, past Masjid Road, and you have begun to smell the salt in the air and note the profusion of open-air fish stalls, full of prawns, mussels, shrimps and oysters; you are now not far from the Arabian Sea.
The Bunder, or the area around the port, is now mostly Muslim. The major landmark here is the Dargah, or tomb-shrine, of Yusuf Ali, a domed white structure to which thousands of Muslims from across southern India make pilgrimage each year. The ancient banyan tree growing behind the saint’s tomb is always festooned in ribbons of green and gold and is believed to have the power to cure the crippled. Dozens of lepers, amputees, geriatrics, and victims of partial paralysis squat outside the shrine begging alms from visitors.
If you walk to the other end of the Bunder, yo
u will find the industrial area, where dozens of textile sweatshops operate in dingy old buildings. The Bunder has the highest crime rate in Kittur, and is the scene of frequent stabbings, police raids, and arrests. In 1987, riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims near the Dargah, and the police shut down the Bunder area for six days. The Hindus have since been moving out to Bajpe and Salt Market Village.
Abbasi uncorked the bottle – Johnnie Walker Red Label blended, the second-finest whisky known to God or man – and poured a small peg each into two glasses embossed with the Air India maharajah logo. He opened the old fridge, took out a bucket of ice, and dropped three cubes by hand into each glass. He poured cold water into the glasses, found a spoon and stirred. He bent his head low and prepared to spit into one of the glasses.
Oh, too simple, Abbasi. Too simple.
He swallowed spittle. Unzipping his cotton trousers, he let them slide down. Pressing the middle and index fingers of his right hand together, he stuck them deep into his rectum; then he dipped them into one of the glasses of whisky and stirred.
He pulled up his trousers and zipped them. He frowned at the tainted whisky; now came the tricky part – things had to be arranged so that the right man took the right glass.
He left the pantry carrying the tray.
The official from the State Electricity Board, sitting at Abbasi’s table, grinned. He was a fat, dark man in a blue safari suit, a steel ballpoint pen in his jacket pocket. Abbasi carefully placed the tray on the table in front of the gentleman.
‘Please,’ Abbasi said, with redundant hospitality; the official had taken the glass closer to him, and was sipping and licking his lips. He finished the whisky in slow gulps, and put the glass down.
‘A man’s drink.’
Abbasi smiled ironically.
The official placed his hands on his tummy.
‘Five hundred,’ he said. ‘Five hundred rupees.’