The Mountain Shadow

‘I didn’t call you to this meeting, and I didn’t permit you to sit through it. I wouldn’t do that. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. It was Tariq who called you, and Tariq who insisted that you be allowed to stay.’

Together we turned to look at the boy.

‘If you have the time, Lin?’ Tariq said, quietly but firmly.

It wasn’t a request.

‘Well,’ Sanjay said, in a louder voice, slapping me on the shoulder, ‘I’ll be going. Don’t know why you came back, Lin. Me, I fucking love Goa. If it was me, I’d have disappeared, man, and stayed on the beach forever. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.’

Sanjay walked from the meeting room. I sat down beside Tariq again. I was angry, and it took me a while to look directly into the boy’s expressionless eyes. A full minute passed in slowly breathing silence.

‘You’re not going to ask me?’ Tariq began at last, smiling faintly.

‘Ask you what, Tariq?’

‘Why I called you to the Council meeting today.’

‘I’m assuming you’ll get around to it, sooner or later,’ I smiled back at him.

Tariq seemed about to laugh, but regained his severe composure.

‘You know, Lin, that’s one of the qualities that my uncle liked most about you,’ he said. ‘Deep down, he said to me a few times, you’re more Inshallah, if you know what I mean, than any of us.’

I didn’t respond. I assumed that using the term Inshallah, meaning The will of God, or If God wills it, meant that he considered me to be fatalistic.

It wasn’t true. I didn’t ask questions about what we did, because I didn’t care. I cared about people, some people, but I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care what happened to me in those years after escaping from prison. The future always looked like fire, and the past was still too dark.

‘When my uncle died,’ Tariq continued, ‘we all worked according to the instructions in his will, and divided his many assets.’

‘I recall.’

‘As you know, I myself received this house, and a considerable sum of money.’

I glanced around to look at Nazeer. The old soldier’s scowl remained, fierce and immutable, but one shaggy eyebrow twitched a flicker of interest.

‘And you,’ Tariq continued. ‘You never received anything from Khaderbhai. You were not mentioned.’

I’d loved Khaderbhai. Damaged sons have two fathers: the wounded one they’re born with, and the one their wounded hearts choose. I’d chosen Khaderbhai, and I’d loved him.

But I was sure, alone in that room inside where truth is a mirror, that even if he’d cared for me, in some way, he’d also seen me as a pawn in his great game.

‘I never expected to be mentioned.’

‘You did not expect to be remembered?’ he insisted, inclining his head to emphasise his doubt.

It was exactly the same gesture that Khaderbhai had used when he was teasing me in philosophical discussions.

‘Even though you were so close to him? Even though he acknowledged you, more than once, as a favourite? Even though you, and Nazeer, were with him in the mission that cost him his life?’

‘Your English is getting damn good,’ I observed, trying to change the direction of the conversation. ‘This new tutor’s doing a great job.’

‘I like her,’ Tariq replied, but then his eyes flickered nervously, and he amended his hasty reply. ‘I mean, I respect my teacher. She is an excellent tutor. Rather better, I might say, than you were yourself, Lin.’

There was a little pause. I put the palms of my hands on my knees, signalling that I was ready to leave.

‘Well –’

‘Wait!’ he said quickly.

I frowned, looking hard at the boy, but relented when I saw the pleading crouched in his eyes. I sat back once more, and crossed my arms.

‘This . . . this week,’ he began again, ‘we discovered some new papers of my uncle. Those papers had been lost in his copy of the Koran. Or not lost, but simply not found, until this week. My uncle placed them there, just before he went to Afghanistan.’

The boy paused, and I glanced back at the brawny bodyguard, my friend Nazeer.

‘He left you a gift,’ Tariq said suddenly. ‘It is a sword. His own sword, that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and that twice has been used in battle against the British.’

‘There must be some mistake.’

‘The papers are quite specific,’ Tariq said stiffly. ‘In the event of his death, the sword was to go to you. Not as a bequest, but as a gift, from my hands, directly to yours. You will honour me now, by accepting it.’

Nazeer brought the sword. He unwrapped layers of silk cloth protection, and presented the sword to me in his upturned palms.

The long sword was in a wide silver scabbard, chiselled to show a flight of hawks in relief. The apical portion of the scabbard showed an inscription from the Koran. The hilt was made of lapis, inlaid with turquoise to cover the fixing rivets. A hand guard of beaten silver swept in a graceful curve from the pommel to the cross guard.

‘It’s a mistake,’ I repeated, staring at the heirloom weapon. ‘It should be yours. It must be yours.’

The boy smiled, grateful and wistful in equal measure.