Mayukh's father was a senior government officer and he had grown up surrounded by people ready to do his father's bidding, never having to work too hard at anything. For his parents to suddenly wake up and demand that he miraculously become independent was more than a bit unfair. He was now old enough to realize that his father's connections had got him into the best schools, and had ensured that he never had to join a queue to do anything. But he was not yet old enough to realize that one day, when his father retired, he would have to learn to fend for himself without that safety blanket.
However, for now, he was content to sit at the nearby shop and drink some Coke and curse the unfairness of it all. He asked the man for a cigarette, and he hesitated as if sizing up how old Mayukh was. At close to six feet tall, Mayukh was very tall for his age and together with a physique that came from four years of playing football on the school team meant that nobody could guess he had just turned seventeen. That was till they looked closer at his face-for his eyes were still the open, trusting eyes of a kid. But the shopkeeper was not interested in such subtleties and passed on a Marlboro.
Mayukh puffed away, imagining what his mother would do when she found out he smoked on the sly once in a while. He didn't like it much, and usually coughed his guts out, but none of his friends would ever know that.
His mobile phone beeped and he picked it up. It was his best friend, Shiv.
'Dude, are we on for our session tomorrow?'
'Of course!'
Then, Mayukh remembered the mood his mother had been in, and added.
'Hey Shiv, is it okay if we meet at your place instead?'
Many things brought the two boys together-a love for cars, a fair distaste for studies and above all else, a passion for gaming. They could spend hours in front of their PS3s, joining forces in myriad online battlegrounds, blasting away at whatever villains it threw at them. With the mood his mother was in, Mayukh figured this time, it might be more prudent to go over to Shiv's place instead of sitting in front of the PS3 in his room.
Mayukh noticed the TV playing in a corner of the shop. There was a banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen. One or two other people who had come to buy cigarettes at the shop had stopped to watch. One of them said aloud what was on all their minds.
'That is one screwed up country, isn't it? First the Taliban, then bloody Osama, then the American war, and now this. They should just nuke it and end the misery.'
Mayukh never spent too much time in front of the TV, least of all watching news, but over the last twenty-four hours, there was no avoiding the news that had been coming out of Afghanistan. It was all over the Net, and all over every news channel. He could hear the newscaster read out her lines.
'The US military has repeated that the sudden upsurge in violence following the reported deaths of Mullah Omar and Ayam Al-Zawahiri is not a cause for concern and represents the death throes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.'
The screen cut away to a balding, white man in a military uniform.
'We won a major battle in our ongoing war on terror two days ago with the strike that took out the top leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban are now little more than disorganized rabble and the spate of suicide bombings yesterday just show how desperate they are getting in their attempts to destabilize Afghanistan and the progress the democratically elected government has achieved. Our mission is on track and I am confident that the day is not far when peace returns to Afghanistan.'
Mayukh's phone rang again. It was Shiv.
'Dude, what do you want to play-Medal of Honor or Dead Rising?'
Mayukh sniggered.
'Come on, Shiv, don't try and change the game just because I keep wasting you on Medal of Honor.'
There was a pause before Shiv responded.
'But I want to kill some zombies. I was reading this amazing book in which zombies come to life. Wouldn't that be cool?'
Mayukh took a deep breath. Shiv was cool, but sometimes he just took everything too literally.
'Shiv, zombies exist only in frigging video games. Speaking of which, we are on for tomorrow and I am going to whip your ass.'
***
Abu Jindal, who had once been known as Nadir Dedoune, felt like crap. His head hurt, he kept throwing up every hour or so, and his skin had taken on a strange yellow complexion. As he looked at his reflection in the window of a Duty Free shop at Karachi airport, he wondered what bug he had picked up. Perhaps this had all been a stupid idea after all. Growing up as an Algerian immigrant in a poor ghetto outside Paris, he had never known anything other than grinding poverty. There were no jobs, no opportunities, only the condescending and spiteful looks of the rich white French. That was till he met Mullah Amir, who preached to small groups of young men at the local mosque, and had opened Nadir's eyes to the atrocities being committed against Muslims around the world. He had found a new meaning and purpose to his life-to wage Jihad against these infidels. He had made the trip to Afghanistan to take part in some mission that he had supposedly been chosen for. The running around and firing of guns in a camp inside Pakistan had been fun enough, but then he had been totally terrified by what he had seen after the Predator strike that had killed Mullah Omar, Al-Zawahiri and the others. His mission on hold, he had been told to leave immediately.
'Emirates Flight 605 to Paris via Dubai is now ready for boarding.'
It was 5:30 in the morning, and Nadir bought a cup of coffee. No sooner had he taken a sip than he rushed to the bathroom, emptying the contents of his stomach into the sink. When he had retched himself dry, he washed his face, and then looked down to see clumps of hair in his hand. There were a couple of bald patches on his head where the hair seemed to have just come off.
What was happening to him?
All he wanted to do now was to somehow get home and see a doctor. He took out a cap and put it on to cover his hair. He tried sleeping through the flight, though he had to get up three times even before the flight reached Dubai to throw up. On the third occasion he saw blood in the sink. The flight was delayed in Dubai by several hours, which made his life even more miserable. A couple of hours after the flight had left Dubai, the woman sitting next to him, bored of watching the Sun gradually set over the horizon, turned to order a drink. She saw him start to shake, as if having a fit.
'Sir, are you okay?'
Nadir couldn't hear her. His eyes were glazed over and as he shook even more violently, his cap fell off. He was now nearly hairless, his hair lying in clumps all over his seat. As she watched in horror, boils seemed to break out all over his body, oozing pus and blood. He then retched all over the seat in front of him. Passengers screamed, and a Flight Attendant shouted out whether there was a doctor on board. By the time a doctor got to him, Nadir was lying lifeless, a ghastly apparition, covered in his own vomit, pus and blood, a deformed, hairless yellowed being where there had once been a handsome young man. The French doctor felt for his pulse and then shook his head sadly at the Flight Attendant.
'Il est mort.'
There were horrified gasps from several of the passengers who had gathered around to see what was happening. They all began to move back to their seats as the Flight Attendant wondered what to do with the body. Suddenly one of the passengers exclaimed to the doctor.
'Doctor, he's speaking.'