The Mountain Shadow

But wars are good for bad business, and we didn’t just work for good guys. The Sanjay Company was an equal opportunity exploiter. There were crooked businessmen wanting to hide their profits, and thugs who needed a new reputation to ruin, and runaway generals, and people who faked their own deaths, and they always bought their way to the front of the line.

And to one side, there was another passport. It was a Canadian book, bearing my photograph, and with a new visa stamp for Sri Lanka. It had a Reuters News Agency press card attached.

While I was preparing documents that enabled others to escape from wars and vicious regimes, I was making the document that would carry me into a conflict that had cost tens of thousands of lives.

‘Do you actually read all this?’ my new assistant asked, picking up the pages of biographical notes that had been prepared for us by the Ogoni activist.

‘Yeah.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Really? I mean . . . it’s pretty gruesome stuff, man.’

‘That it is, Farzad,’ I said, not looking up.

‘I mean, stuff like this, it’s worse than the newspapers.’

‘It’s all in the newspapers, if you look past the stock market reports and the sports pages,’ I said, still not looking at him.

‘I’m not surprised. This is some damn depressing shit, yaar.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I mean, a guy could get himself well and truly into a state of depression with stuff like this, day after day, and really need a break. Count on it.’

‘Okay,’ I said, pushing away the file I’d been reading. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Problem?’

‘If there’s an ocean at the end of this stream of consciousness, you should start flowing into it. Right about now.’

‘The ocean?’ he asked, mystified.

‘The point, Farzad. Get to the point.’

‘Oh,’ he smiled. ‘The point. Yes. There’s definitely something quite like a kind of a point, that’s for sure. Count on it.’

He stared at me for a few moments, then lowered his eyes and began making circles on the surface of the wooden desk with his fingertip.

‘Actually,’ he said at last, still avoiding my eyes, ‘I was trying to find a way to ask you to . . . to come to my house for . . . for lunch or dinner, and to meet . . . to meet my parents.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’

‘Well,’ he said, the little circles becoming smaller and smaller, ‘you’ve got a reputation, you know?’

‘What kind of a reputation?’

‘A reputation for being kind of a grouchy guy, yaar.’

‘Grouchy?’ I snarled. ‘Me?’

‘Oh, yes.’

We stared at one another. In the factory below, one of the large printing machines grumbled to life, dropping quickly into a chatter of metal clamps and rollers, advancing and retreating, rumbling and turning on a barrel drum.

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re completely crap at this inviting-people-to-dinner thing?’

‘Well,’ he laughed, ‘this is really the first time I’ve ever asked anyone to my parents’ house in years. We’re kind of . . . private, if you know what I mean.’

‘I know private,’ I sighed. ‘Private is what I had, before you.’

‘So . . . will you come? My parents are really dying to meet you. My Uncle Keki used to talk about you a lot. He said you were –’

‘Grouchy. I know.’

‘Well, yes, that, too. But he also said you were big on philosophy. He said you were Khaderbhai’s favourite for arguing and talking philosophy. My pop is a great one for that. My Mom’s even worse. The whole family have these big philosophical discussions. Sometimes there’s thirty of us, arguing at the same time.’

‘Thirty of you?’

‘We have this . . . kind of . . . extended family. I can’t really describe it. You have to see it. I mean, see us. But you won’t be bored, that I can promise you. No way. Count on it.’

‘If I agree to visit your indescribable family, will you leave me alone and let me get back to work?’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Yes, one of these days.’

‘Really? You’ll come?’

‘Count on it. Now get outta here, and let me get these books done.’

‘Great!’ he shouted, dancing a few steps left and right with his hips. ‘I’ll talk to my pop, and set it up for one day this week. Lunch or dinner! Great!’

He gave me a last smile and a wag of his head, and then closed the door behind him.

I pulled the file back toward me, the Nigerian’s file, and began to draw out the basic elements of the man’s new documented identity. A much kinder but completely artificial life began to develop on my sketchpad.

At one point I opened a drawer full of photographs of clients who wanted passports: the survivors, the lucky ones who weren’t shot, drowned, or imprisoned in the attempt to find a better life.

Those faces from war and torture, brushed and cleaned and smeared with artificial calm for our passport photo studio, held my eyes. Once we wandered a free Earth, carrying a picture of our God or king to ensure safe passage. Now the world is gated, and we carry pictures of ourselves, and nobody’s safe.