How much time passed I do not know, but there comes a moment when I hear voices and start calling for help, people come running. Some men lift Aliya off my back and carry her while I fetch along behind on my blisters.
When we reach the clinic I’m all done in. Miriam Joseph takes one look at Aliya and runs for Elli, who’s furious with me. “You should have phoned, she could have died,” says angry Elli.
I cannot look at her, who must at this moment be play-acting, for how else could she so badly betray us? I say nothing. I have nothing to say. What use to say there is no phone in the Nutcracker? Without a word I turn and go across the road to Nisha’s house where I can bathe my hands and feet in cool water.
It’s evening before Somraj brings news. Aliya was so bad that Elli said she must go to hospital. This of course terrified Aliya. Like all Khaufpuris she believes that if she goes into the hospital she will never come out again, so Elli kept her in her own bedroom all day with ice and fans and medicine to take away the fever. By evening Aliya’s temperature was down. Elli took her home in Bhoora’s auto and ordered him to bring her and her granny Huriya to the clinic each morning without fail for the next seven days. She’s sent word for me to go over and have my hands and feet looked at.
“It’s too late.” No fucking way am I going there.
“Elli’s waiting,” says Somraj.
“Sir, I have to get home or Ma won’t eat tonight.”
“Don’t be silly,” Nisha says, “how will you get home like that?”
I tell her I am feeling much better. My hands and feet are pretty tough, any time other than Nautapa it would have been no problem.
Nisha says, “No, you must go to Elli. After our meeting Zafar will take you home. I’ll send food for Ma.”
Well, is there ever saying no to Nisha? To keep her sweet, I promise to go to Elli’s, but what I actually do is sit outside Somraj’s house and listen to the voices inside.
“No violence,” Zafar says. “This I insist, there must be no violence.”
I’m sitting eavesdropping outside Somraj’s house, plus at the same time worrying that a whole day has gone since I caught Elli kissing the lawyer. It’s more difficult to speak now because I’ll have to explain why I didn’t pipe up straight away. Maybe I will tell Zafar when he takes me home. Right now he’s busy talking. I can hear his voice. He’s telling them what he has found out from his spies.
“Only blanks in the air, sir,” this is what the police chief told the CM, who was livid, the firing was a big embarrassment. Already he’d issued a statement, regrets, response to provocation, glad no injuries, restraint needed all round, enquiry, appropriate action. Zafar says that he and others only escaped arrest because with the Amrikans in the city and a deal to hatch, last thing the CM wants is further protests plus jarnaliss asking questions. Trouble he cannot avoid. A stone-throwing crowd had stormed the Narayan Ganj police station. Somraj and the committee had sent people out into the bidonvilles to calm things down.
“When it starts,” repeats Zafar, “there must be no violence.”
“Can’t guarantee,” says someone else. “There’s fury out there.”
A woman’s voice. It’s Nisha. “Why won’t people be furious? Twenty years they’ve waited. For what? This betrayal?”
Zafar says, “Friends, it’s like this. If we allow anger to rule us, if we break the law, we place ourselves in the same situation as the Kampani. Listen, it’s we who have suffered injustice, and the Kampani which has committed it. We are the ones who are asking for justice, let’s not ourselves break the law. Friends, the Khaufpuri media, or some of them, may be sympathetic to us, but in the world the Kampani is powerful. The Kampani has armies of lobbyists, PR agencies, hired editorialists. We must be impeccable, or else we make it easy for them to say, ‘these people are extremists,’ from there it’s a short step to ‘these Khaufpuris are terrorists’…”
He then relates how the Kampani in Amrika had staged a mock-attack on one of its own factories. “It was a drill. Police, FBI, fire service, all were involved. The Kampani invited the newspapers to watch and said, look, this is how we’ll deal with terrorists. Can you guess who these ‘terrorists’ were? In the story given out by the Kampani they were Khaufpuri protesters. In the Kampani’s fantasy the Khaufpuris took hostages and demanded coffee, then executed one of the hostages because the coffee was not to their liking.”
“What was wrong with it?” someone asks.
“Not enough cardamom, probably,” says someone else.
In typical Khaufpuri fashion a debate starts about how much cardamom or clove should be used in coffee, and whether adding a few grains of salt improves the flavour.
“It was not hot enough,” says Zafar.
Silence, a moment’s incredulity, then a rose of laughter blossoms in the room. Says Zafar, “Friends, for a moment think what’s really going on here. What is terror? The dictionary says it’s extreme fear, violent dread, plus what causes it. On that night our people knew terror beyond what a dictionary can define. Who caused it? Our people continue to feel extreme fear, violent dread, because they don’t know what horrors might yet emerge in their bodies. Who refuses to share medical information? Our people want justice in a court of law. Who sneers at justice by refusing to appear in court? Terrorists are those who cause terror, who endanger innocent lives, who don’t respect law. The only terrorists in this case are those who run the Kampani.”
“It’s a strange world,” says one, “where a Kampani does acts of terror and then calls us, its victims, terrorists.”
“Bastards should be executed,” says another. More voices pour out anger.
“No violence,” says Zafar. “Not now, not ever. Listen, it might be that we’ll never win against the Kampani. Maybe we won’t ever get justice. But even if those evil ones escape punishment, they will still be just as bloodstained, just as wicked, in their hearts they themselves know it. Whatever happens they are ruined beings, their souls are already dead.”
Hail, Saint Zafar. What a fucking hero. Champion of the good and true, he’d even spare our enemy. No way do I buy it. Eyes, I’ve said I admire the Kampani but thinking of what those people have done, how they hideously took my parents’ lives and left me in this world alone, I’m filled with such hatred, I think my skin will burst. Wicked are they beyond all limits, didn’t I see the proof myself last night in the gardens of Jehannum? An animal isn’t subject to the laws of men, I will slit their eyeballs, I will rip out their tongues with red hot pliers, I will shit in their mouths. Blood’s shaking my heart, I’m giddy with rage. Then it’s just as quickly gone, leaving me limp, body’s like a goatskin filled with grief.
Nisha is speaking. “Zafar my love, when grief and pain turn into anger, when rage is as useless as our tears, when those in power become blind, deaf and dumb in our presence and the world’s forgotten us, what then should we do? You tell us to put away anger, choke back our bitterness, and be patient, in the hope that justice will one day win? We have already been waiting twenty years. And when the government that is supposed to protect us manipulates the law against us, of what use then is the law? Must we still obey it, while our opponents twist it to whatever they please? It’s no longer anger, Zafar, but despair that whispers, if the law is useless, does it matter if we go outside it? What else is left?”
After this there is a long silence. No one is saying anything. No one can speak. At last comes Zafar’s voice, sounding weary.