Shantaram (97 page)

"Was Prince Ayub killed?"

"No. He escaped. Then the British put his close kinsman Abdul Rahman Khan on the throne of Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman Khan, also an ancestor of mine, ruled the country with such a special wisdom that the British had no real power in Afghanistan. The situation was exactly the same as it was before-before the great soldier and great killer, Bobs your uncle, forced his way through the Khyber Pass to fight the war. But the point of this story, now that we sit here and look at the fires of my burning city, is that Kandahar is the key to Afghanistan. Kabul is the heart, but Kandahar is the soul of this nation, and who rules Kandahar also rules Afghanistan. When the Russians are forced to leave my city, they will lose this war. Not until then."

"I hate it all," I sighed, sure in my own mind that the new war would change nothing: that wars can't really change things. It's peace that makes the deepest cuts, I thought. And I remember thinking it-I remember thinking that it was a clever phrase, and hoping for a chance to work it into our conversation. I remember everything about that day. I remember every word, and all those foolish, vain, unwary thoughts, as if fate had just now slapped my face with them. "I hate it all, and I'm glad we're going home today."

"Who are your friends here?" he asked me. The question surprised me, and I couldn't guess at his intention. Reading my baffled expression, and clearly amused, he asked me again. "Of those you have come to know here, on this mountain, who are your friends?"

"Well, Khaled, obviously, and Nazeer-"

"So, Nazeer is your friend now?"

"Yeah," I laughed. "He's a friend. And I like Ahmed Zadeh. And Mahmoud Melbaaf, the Iranian. And Suleiman is okay, and Jalalaad - he's a wild kid-and Zaher Rasul, the farmer." Khader nodded as I ran through the list, but when he made no comment I felt moved to speak again.

"They're all good men, I think. Everyone here. But those... those are the men I get on with the best. Is that what you mean?"

"What is your favourite task here?" he asked, changing the subject as quickly and unexpectedly as his portly friend Abdul Ghani might've done.

"My favourite... it's crazy, and I never thought I'd ever say this, but I think tending the horses is my favourite job."

He smiled, and the smile bubbled into a laugh. I was sure, somehow, that he was thinking about the night I'd ridden into the camp hanging from the neck of my horse.

"Okay," I grinned, "I'm not the best horseman in the world."

He laughed the harder.

"But I really started to miss them when we got here and you told us to stable the horses down the mountain. It's funny-I sort of got used to them being around, and it's always made me feel good, somehow, going down to see them and brush them and feed them."

"I understand," he murmured, reading my eyes. "Tell me, when the others are praying and you join them-I've seen you sometimes, kneeling behind them and not very close-what words are you saying? Are they prayers?"

"I'm... not really saying anything at all," I replied, frowning.

I lit two more beedies, not for the need of them, but for the distraction they provided, and their little warmth.

"What are you thinking, then, if you're not speaking?" he asked, accepting the second cigarette as he tossed away the butt of the first.

"I couldn't call them prayers. I don't think so. I think about people, mostly. I think about my mother... and my daughter. I think about Abdullah... and Prabaker-I've told you about him, my friend who died. I remember friends, and people I love."

"You think about your mother. What about your father?"

"No."

I said it quickly-too quickly, perhaps-and I felt him watching me closely as the seconds passed.

"Is your father living, Lin?"

"I think so. But I... I can't be sure. And I don't care, one way or the other." "You must care about your father," he declared, looking away again. It seemed such a condescending admonition to me then: he knew nothing about my father or my relationship to him. I was so caught up in resentments, new and old, that I didn't hear the anguish in his voice. I didn't realise, as I do now, that he, too, was an exiled son talking about his own father.

"You're more of a father to me than he is," I said, and although I felt it to be true, and I was opening my heart to him, the words came out sounding sulky and almost spiteful.

"Don't say that!" he snapped, glaring at me. It was the closest he ever came to showing anger in my presence, and I flinched involuntarily at the sudden vehemence. His expression softened at once, and he reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. "What about your dreams? What are you dreaming about here?"

"Dreams?"

"Yes. Tell me about your dreams."

"I'm not having many," I replied, trying hard to recall. "It's weird, you know, but I've had nightmares for a long time-pretty much since the escape from jail. Nightmares about being caught, or fighting to stop them catching me. But since we've been up here, I don't know if it's the thin air, or being so damn tired and cold when I get to sleep, or maybe just worry about the war, but I'm not having those nightmares. Not here. I've had a couple of good dreams, in fact."

"Go on."

I didn't want to go on: the dreams had been about Karla.

"Just... happy dreams, about being in love."

"Good," he murmured, nodding several times, and taking his hand from my shoulder. He seemed satisfied with my reply, but his expression was downcast and almost grim. "I, too, have had dreams here. I dreamed about the Prophet. We Muslims, you know, we are not supposed to tell anyone, if we dream about the Prophet. It is a very good thing, a very wonderful thing, and quite common among the faithful, but we are forbidden to tell what we have dreamed."

"Why?" I asked, shivering in the cold.

"It is because we are strictly forbidden to describe the features of the Prophet, or to talk about him as someone who is seen. This was the Prophet's own wish, so that no man or woman would adore him, or take any of their devotions away from God. That is why there are no images of the Prophet-no drawings, or paintings, or statues. But I did dream of him. And I am not a very good Muslim, am I?

Because I am telling you about my dream. He was on foot, walking somewhere. I rode up behind him on my horse-it was a perfect, beautiful white horse-and although I didn't see his face, I knew it was him. So I got down from my horse, and gave it to him. And my face was lowered, out of respect, all the time. But at last, I lifted my eyes to see him riding away into the light of the setting sun. That was my dream."

He was calm, but I knew him well enough to see the dejection that hooded his eyes. And there was something else, something so new and strange that it took me a few moments to realise what it was: fear. Abdel Khader Khan was afraid, and I felt my own skin creep and tighten in response. It was unimaginable. Until that moment I'd truly believed that Khaderbhai was afraid of nothing.

Unnerved and worried, I moved to change the subject.

"Khaderji, I know I'm changing the subject, but can you answer this question for me? I've been thinking about something you said a while ago. You said that life and consciousness and all that other stuff comes from light, at the Big Bang. Are you saying that light is God?"

"No," he answered, and that sudden, fearful depression lifted from his features, driven off by a look that I could only read as a loving smile. "I do not think that light is God. I think it is possible, and it is reasonable to say, that light is the language of God. Light may be the way that God speaks to the universe, and to us."

I congratulated myself on the successful change of theme and mood by standing up. I stamped my feet and slapped at my sides to get the blood moving. Khader joined me and we began the short walk back to the camp, blowing warmth into our frozen hands.

"This is a strange light, speaking about light," I puffed. "The sun shines, but it's a cold sun. There's no warmth in it, and you feel stranded between the cold sun and the even colder shadows."

"Beached there in tangles of flicker..." Khader quoted, and I snapped my head around so quickly that I felt a twinge of pain in my neck.

"What did you say?"

"It was a quote," Khader replied slowly, sensing how important it was to me. "It is a line from a poem." I pulled my wallet from my pocket, reached into it, and took out a folded paper. The page was so creased and rubbed by wear that when I opened it the fold-lines showed gaps and tears. It was Karla's poem: the one I'd copied from her journal, two years before, when I went to her apartment with Tariq on the Night of the Wild Dogs. I'd carried it with me ever since. In Arthur Road Prison the officers had taken the page from me and torn it into pieces. When Vikram bribed my way out of the prison I wrote it out again from memory, and I carried it with me every day, everywhere I went. Karla's poem.

"This poem," I said excitedly, holding the tattered, fluttering sheet out for him to see. "It was written by a woman. A woman named Karla Saaranen. The woman you sent to Gupta-ji's place with Nazeer to... to get me out of there. I'm amazed that you know it. It's incredible."

"No, Lin," he answered evenly. "The poem was written by a Sufi poet named Sadiq Khan. I know his poems by heart, many of them.

He is my favourite poet. And he is Karla's favourite poet also."

The words were ice around my heart.

"Karla's favourite poet?"

"I do believe so."

"Just how well... how well do you know Karla?"

"I know her very well."

"I thought... I thought you met her when you got me out of Gupta's. She said... I mean, I thought she said that was when she met you."

"No, Lin, that is not correct. I have known Karla for years. She works for me. Or at least, she works for Abdul Ghani, and Ghani works for me. But she must have told you about it, didn't she?

Didn't you know this? I am very surprised. I was sure that Karla would have talked to you about me. Certainly, I have talked to her about you, many times."

My mind was like the screaming jets that had screeched over us in the dark ravine: all noise and black fears. What had Karla said as we lay together, struggling against sleep, after fighting the cholera epidemic? I was on a plane, and I met a businessman, an Indian businessman, and my life changed forever... Was that Abdul Ghani? Is that what she meant? Why hadn't I asked her more about her work? Why didn't she tell me about it? And what did she do for Abdul Ghani?

"What does she do for you-for Abdul?"

"Many things. She has many skills." "I know about her skills," I growled at him angrily. "What does she do for you?"

"Among other things," Khader answered, slowly and precisely, "she finds useful and talented foreigners, such as you are. She finds people who can work for us, when we need them."

"What?" I asked, gasping out the word that wasn't really a question, and feeling as if pieces of myself-frozen pieces of my face and my heart-were falling splintered around me.

He began to speak again, but I cut him off quickly.

"Are you saying that Karla recruited me-for you?"

"Yes. She did. And I am very glad that she did."

The cold was suddenly inside me, running through my veins, and my eyes were made of snow. Khader kept walking, but when he noticed that I'd stopped, he halted. He was still smiling when he turned to face me. Khaled Ansari approached us at that instant, and clapped his hands together loudly.

"Khader! Lin!" he greeted us with the sad, small smile that I'd come to love. "I've made up my mind. I gave it some thought, Khaderji, just like you said, but I've decided to stay. At least for a while. Habib was here last night. The sentries saw him.

He's been doing so much crazy stuff-the things he's done to Russian prisoners, and even some of the Afghan prisoners near here on the Kandahar road in the last couple weeks are... well, it's grisly shit-and I'm hard to impress in that way. It's so weird, the men are going to do something about it. They're so spooked, they're gonna shoot him on sight. They're talking about hunting him down like a wild animal. I have to... I have to try to help him, somehow. I'm gonna stay, and try to find him, and try to talk him into coming back to Pakistan with me. So... you go on without me tonight, and I'll... I'll come through in a couple of weeks, on the next trip out. That's... that's it, I guess. That's... what I came to say."

There was a cold silence after the little speech. I stared at Khader, waiting for him to speak. I was angry, and I was afraid.

It was a special fear-the kind of arctic dread that only love can inspire. Khader stared back at my face, reading me. Khaled looked from one to the other of us, confused and concerned.

"What about the night I met you and Abdullah?" I asked, speaking through teeth clenched against the cold and the even colder fear that ripped through me like spasms of cramp.

"You forget," Khader Khan replied a little more sternly. His face was as dark and determined as my own. It never occurred to me then that he, too, was feeling deceived and betrayed. I'd forgotten about Karachi and the police raids. I'd forgotten that there was a traitor in his own circle, someone close to him, who'd tried to have him and me and the rest of us captured or killed. I never saw his grim detachment as anything but a cruel disregard for what I felt. "You met Abdullah a long time before the night that we met. You met him at the temple of the Standing Babas, isn't it true? He was there to look after Karla on that night. She did not know you well. She was not sure of you, not sure that she could trust you, in a place that she did not know.

She wanted someone there who could help her, if you had no good intention with her."

"He was her bodyguard..." I muttered, thinking she didn't trust me...

"Yes, Lin, he was, and a good one. I understand it that there was some violence, on that night. Abdullah did do something to save her-and perhaps to save you. Isn't that true? This was Abdullah's job, to protect the people for me. That is why I sent him to follow you when my nephew Tariq went to stay with you in the zhopadpatti. And on the very first night, he did help you to fight some wild dogs, isn't it true? And for the whole time that Tariq was with you, Abdullah was close to you, and to Tariq, just as I told him to be."