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 midair, 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 another 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 guesthouse 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 after 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 guesthouse 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-discolored 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 guesthouse, 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 tea shop, 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 center of Kittur stands the peeling stucco façade of Angel Talkies, a pornographic cinema theater; 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 ice-cream shop, the Ideal Traders Ice Cream and Fresh Fruit Juice Parlor; White Stallion Talkies, the town’s only exclusively English-language film theater, is another nearby attraction. Ming Palace, the first Chinese restaurant in Kittur, opened on Umbrella Street in 1986. The Ganapati Temple on this street is modeled 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 fast-expanding 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. Farther 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, shrimp, 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, you 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 whiskey known to God or man-and poured a small peg each into two glasses embossed with the Air India maharaja 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.