The Mountain Shadow

Deep within the streets and narrower gullies, clogged with commerce and the clamour for cash, we parked our bikes outside a shop that sold Ayurvedic remedies and silk pouches filled with secret herbs, offering protection against love curses. I wanted to buy one, but Abdullah didn’t let me.

‘A man’s protection is in Allah, honour and duty,’ he growled, his arm around my shoulder. ‘Not in amulets and herbs.’

I made a mental note to go back to the shop, alone, and fell into step with my stern friend.

We entered a shoulder-wide lane, and as the lane darkened, further from the street, Abdullah led us beneath an almost invisible arch bearing the name Bella Vista Towers.

Beyond the arch we found a network of covered lanes that seemed, at one point, to pass through the middle of a private home. The owner of the home, an elderly man wearing a tattered banyan and sitting in an easy chair, was reading a newspaper through over-large optical sunglasses.

He didn’t look up or acknowledge us as we passed through what seemed to be his living room.

We walked on into an even darker lane, turned the last corner in the maze and emerged in a wide, open, sunlit courtyard.

I’d heard of it before: it was called Das Rasta, or Ten Ways. Residential buildings and the many lanes that serviced them surrounded the roughly circular courtyard, open to the sky. It was a private public square.

Residents leaned from windows, looking down into the action of Das Rasta. Some lowered or pulled up baskets of vegetables, cooked food, and other goods. Many more people entered and left the courtyard through wheel-spoke alleys leading to the wider world beyond.

In the centre of the courtyard, sacks of grain and pulses had been heaped together in a pile twice the height of a man. The sacks formed a small pyramid of thrones, and seated on them at various levels were the Cycle Killers.

In the topmost improvised throne was Ishmeet, the leader. His long hair had never been cut, according to Sikh religious tradition, but his observance of Sikhism stopped there.

His hair wasn’t held in a neat turban, but fell freely to his narrow waist. His thin, bare arms were covered in tattoos, depicting his many murders and gang war victories. There were two long, curved knives in decorated scabbards tucked into the belt of his tight jeans.

‘Salaam aleikum,’ he said lazily, greeting Abdullah as we approached his tower of thrones.

‘Wa aleikum salaam,’ Abdullah replied.

‘Who’s the dog-face you’ve got with you?’ a man sitting close to Ishmeet asked in Hindi, turning his head to spit noisily.

‘His name is Lin,’ Abdullah replied calmly. ‘They also call him Shantaram. He was with Khaderbhai, and he speaks Hindi.’

‘I don’t care if he speaks Hindi, Punjabi and Malayalam,’ the man responded in Hindi, glaring at me. ‘I don’t care if he can recite poetry, and if he has a dictionary shoved up his arse. I want to know what this dog-face is doing here.’

‘I’m guessing you have more experience with dogs than I do,’ I said in Hindi. ‘But I came here in the company of men, not dogs, who know how to show respect.’

The man flinched and twitched, shaking his head in disbelief. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the challenge I’d thrown, or the fact that a white foreigner had spoken it in the kind of Hindi used by street gangsters.

‘This man is also my brother,’ Abdullah said evenly, staring at Ishmeet. ‘And what your man says to him, he says to me.’

‘Then why don’t I say it to you, Iranian?’ the man said.

‘Why don’t you, by Allah?’ Abdullah replied.

There was a moment of exquisite calm. Men working to bring sacks of grain, pots of water, boxes of cold drinks, bags of spices and other goods still moved into and out of the courtyard. People still watched from their windows. Children still laughed and played in the shade.

But in the breathing space between the Cycle Killers and the four of us, a meditation stillness rippled outwards from our beating hearts. It was the deliberate stillness of not reaching for our weapons, the shadow before the flash of sunlight and blood.

The Cycle Killers were only a word away from war, but they respected and feared Abdullah. I looked into Ishmeet’s smiling eyes, schemed into slits. He was counting the corpses that would lie around his throne of sacks.

There was no doubt that Abdullah would kill at least three of Ishmeet’s men, and that the rest of us might account for as many again. And although there were twelve Cycle Killers in the courtyard, and several more in the rooms beyond, and although Ishmeet himself might manage to live, the loss would be too great for his gang to survive a revenge attack by our gang.

Ishmeet’s eyes opened a little wider, crimson betel nut staining his smile.

‘Any brother of Abdullah,’ he said, staring directly at me, ‘is a brother of mine. Come. Sit up here, with me. We’ll drink bhang together.’