The Mountain Shadow

And something was pulled from my chest, some inner thing that wasn’t mine any more, and I felt the connection blur. I felt love slip away, draining from me, as if sorrow cut a vein. And I was afraid, for all of us.

Ravi rode off and I started my bike, swinging after him.

Sometimes, in those years, the call to die was as strong as the will to live. And sometimes I climbed the mast of fear on my heart, that boat on the sea, and opened my arms to the tempest, breaking the world.

Chapter Sixty-Six

Ravi was fast, but I was only a few beats behind him. We rode easily along the dragon spine of Mohammed Ali Road at first, but finally hit a wall of cars, trucks and buses, all of them with their engines turned off.

We had to use the footpaths, filled with people who couldn’t walk on the blocked road. I was glad that Ravi was in front, as he nudged people out of the way with the wheel of his motorcycle. He negotiated the legs and arms and children’s bobbing heads with fluid respect, harming no-one, but maintaining a walking pace. And he repeated only one word, as he rode.

Khaderbhai!

He shouted it again and again, as an incantation. And people moved out of the way each time they heard it.

The Company that Khaderbhai created had become the chrysalis of the Sanjay Company and the calyptra of the Vishnu Company, but when blood was in the fire, only Khaderbhai’s name had the colour of instinct, and the power to part waves of hurrying people.

I was so afraid of losing contact with Ravi, and having my own wave of people to negotiate, that I rode too close to him and bumped his fender several times.

He sounded his horn calmly, to tell me to calm down, and then he went back to shouting that unforgotten name.

Khaderbhai!

We reached a corner close the mosque, but a high wall of motorcycles, handcarts and bicycles blocked the way forward on the footpath. The tide of people surged away, branching off through gaps in the cars on the road.

Through the arches of the pavement awnings we could see smoke, flames and fire trucks. The road beside us was a solid building made of cars and buses.

We shoved our bikes into a doorway, used my chain to lock them together, and climbed the accidental wall of bicycles, baskets and carts, dodging under signs strung outside shops.

We tumbled down the steep metal fall, landing behind a police line, where the jam ended. There was a piece of rope, suspended by the police between the fender of an Ambassador car and the handle of a handcart. It was all that had stopped the flood of people. We lifted the rope and slipped around the shops at the base of the mosque, heading to Khaderbhai’s mansion.

Fire trucks were training powerful hoses on the walls of the mosque, trying to stop the fire from spreading. The mosque seemed to be intact, but when we threaded our way through the black snakes of leaking fire hoses, we saw that Khaderbhai’s mansion was finished.

A lone unit of firemen was trying to slow the fire, but most of the resources had been diverted to stopping the fire from taking the mosque, and becoming a wider catastrophe in the street.

Men from several mafia Companies were already there, standing across the narrow street, staring at the flames painting rage on their faces. They were Hussein Company men, mostly, but there were a few Vishnu men and gangsters from other Companies. There were about twenty of them. Abdullah was in the centre, his eyes savage with fire.

Firemen were holding the gangsters back, pleading with them to withdraw and let them do their job. Abdullah broke ranks. He brushed three firemen aside and knocked out another, who’d tried to stop him entering the building. He disappeared in the flames.

Company men looked at the firemen, wondering if they were going to fight. Firemen wear uniforms. As far as the Company men were concerned, anyone who wears a uniform works for the other side.

The firemen backed away, taking their colleagues with them. They were paid to save people, not fight them. The men who were paid to fight people, the police, rushed toward the retreating firemen.

Fighting the cops is a tricky business. Lots of cops like to fight, but they’re sticklers for rules. No disfigurements, and no weapons: just fair, square, kick the shit out of each other. That pretty much covers it, except for two things. First, they have very long memories: longer than most criminals I’ve met, who are considerably more forgive-and-forget. And second, if things get out of hand, they can shoot you and get away with it.

The Company men put their weapons away, or threw them away, and stood in front of the burning building. The cops kicked in with everything they had, and the gangsters kicked back.