The Mountain Shadow

I looked once more at Nazeer, who gazed back at me, a softly burning diamond of pride in his eyes. I began to walk away.

‘The letter!’ Tariq said quickly.

Suddenly angry, I spun round to face him again. I was about to speak, but Tariq raised the letter in his hand.

‘It begins with a mention of Sri Lanka,’ Tariq said, offering me the silver envelope. ‘I know that it was his wish. You gave your word to go there, isn’t it so?’

‘I did,’ I said, taking the letter from his slender fingers.

‘Our agents in Trincomalee tell us that the time will soon be right for you to fulfil your promise.’

‘When?’ I asked, holding the twin legacies, letter and sword.

‘Soon,’ Tariq said, glancing at Nazeer. ‘Abdullah will let you know. But be ready, at any time. It will be soon.’

The interview was over. A cold courtesy kept the boy in his seat, but I knew that he was anxious to leave: even more anxious, perhaps, for me to leave him.

I walked toward the door leading to the courtyard. Nazeer accompanied me. At the door, I looked back to see the tall boy still sitting in the emperor chair, his face supported by his hand. His thumb extended downwards against his dimpled cheek, and the fingers fanned out across his forehead. It was exactly the gesture I’d seen when Khaderbhai was lost in thought.

At the street door of the mansion, Nazeer retrieved a calico pouch, complete with a shoulder strap. The sword fitted neatly inside, concealed by the cloth, and could be worn across my back as I rode my bike.

Slipping the pouch over my shoulder, Nazeer adjusted the sword fussily until it hung to just the right aesthetic angle. He hugged me quickly, furtively and fiercely, crunching my ribs in the hoop of his arms.

He walked away without a word or a backward glance. His bowed legs waddled at his fastest pace, hurrying him back to the boy, the young man who was his master and his only love: Khaderbhai, come back to life, so that Nazeer might serve him again.

Watching him leave, I remembered another time when the mansion had been filled with plants and the music of falling water, and tame pigeons had followed Nazeer’s every step through the huge house. They loved him, those birds.

But there were no birds in the mansion, and the only sound I heard was a metal-to-metal stutter, like teeth chattering in a freezing wind: cartridges, being inserted into the magazine of a Kalashnikov, one brass burial chamber at a time.

Chapter Eight

Outside on the street early evening glowed on every face, as if the whole world was blushing to think what the night would bring. Abdullah was waiting for me, his bike parked beside mine. He gave a few rupees to the kids who’d stood guard over our bikes. They shouted their delight, and ran to the sweet shops on the corner to buy cigarettes.

Abdullah swung out beside me into the traffic. At a red light, I spoke for the first time.

‘I’m picking up Lisa, at the Mahesh. Wanna come?’

‘I’ll ride with you that far,’ he replied solemnly, ‘but I will not join you. I have some work.’

We rode in silence along the shopping boulevard of Mohammed Ali Road. The allure of the perfume bazaars gave way to the sugared scents of firni, rabri, and falooda sweet shops. The glittering splendour of bangle and bracelet shops surrendered to the gorgeous fractals of Persian carpets, displayed side to side for a city block.

As the long road ended in a thatch-work confusion of handcarts, near the vast Crawford Market complex, we took a short cut, riding the wrong way into streams of traffic, threading through the wide eye of another junction.

Back in the right flow of traffic again, we paused for the long signal at Metro theatre junction. A movie poster covered the first floor of the cinema. Bad Guy and Good Guy faces, drenched in green, yellow and purple, told their story of love and anguish from behind a thorny hedge of guns and swords.

Families jammed into cars and taxis stared up at the movie poster. A young boy in a car near to me waved, pointed at the poster, and made his hand into a gun, to fire at me. He pulled the trigger. I pretended that a bullet had struck my arm, and the boy laughed. His family laughed. People in other cars laughed.

The boy’s kindly faced Mother urged the boy to shoot me again. The boy pointed his finger-gun, aimed with a squinting eye, and fired. I did the-Bad-Guy-coming-to-a-bad-end, and sprawled out on the tank of my bike.

When I sat up again everyone in the cars clapped or waved or laughed.

I took a bow, and turned to see Abdullah’s ashen mortification.

We are Company men, I heard him thinking. Respect and fear. One or the other, and nothing else. Respect and fear.

Only the sea on the coast ride to the Mahesh hotel finally softened his stern expression. He rode slowly, one hand on the throttle, one hand on his hip. I rode up close beside him, resting my left hand on his shoulder.