Red Birds

by Mohammed Hanif

  In the top drawer of her desk is a stack of filled-out forms, her comments in the margins, scribbled in a hurry, as if she is listening to people and scribbling her own thoughts rather than theirs. I shuffle the forms, looking for something familiar. At the bottom there is a form with my name on it and it’s completely blank. It’s strangely reassuring that she is still so curious about me that she has left my form blank. And there under the stack of papers I find her little pack of dark chocolates. One is open, half eaten, leftover bits wrapped in silver foil. I take it out of the foil, roll it in my fingers, a bit too moist, probably melting in the desert heat. I put it in my mouth and wait for that bitter and sweet darkness to spread. It’s dark and bitter alright, it’s so bitter that I feel I have swallowed a whole neem tree. It gets stuck on my palate, I try to spit it out and in the process somehow manage to swallow the whole thing in one go. I pick up another file and flick through it, trying to ignore the bitter taste in my mouth.

  Words float up from the paper, my head first feels heavy then light. Mutt is outside the door whining, probably thinking I am having a snack without sharing it with him. I pull the chair from under the table and try to sit, I keep sinking and sinking. The stack of paper slips from my hands and covers the floor under me. My land, my people, I mutter and look up. My heart is a soaring eagle. The roof on the shack dissolves and I can see a pink-hued sky with a large black moon, the size of Mother Dear’s bread-maker, dangling in the sky. Mother Dear and Father Dear are framed in the moon, rubbing their cheeks, even smiling. In the distance an old plane with twin propellers floats towards the moon. As I look closely I feel airsick. Bro Ali is flying the plane, wearing a leather helmet and massive aviators. I am not sure if he can see me or not. I try to raise my hand and wave towards him, he wiggles the wings of his plane like a clumsy dancer. Behind his plane comes Mutt, floating in the air like a champion swimmer.

  There is something wrong with this. Mutt is supposed to be here, outside the door, on lookout, he is supposed to warn me if anyone approaches the shack. What is he doing up there in the sky? For that matter what am I doing here on this chair? What a mess I have made in this neat little makeshift office.

  Why do I care about this office? My heart suddenly sinks, it’s somewhere between my knees. I look up again and Father Dear and Mother Dear are still framed in a full moon, now wagging their fingers at each other. My heart swoons, I feel I am flying, I want to go up there and give Mother Dear a hug and tell Father Dear to calm down, I have got everything under control. Centuries pass, our Camp turns into a lush valley, this very shack becomes a tourist attraction, Mutt is driving my brand-new Range Rover Vogue and I am running after the vehicle, my heart is a frantic criminal trying to get away from the crime scene.

  That thing that I gulped down probably wasn’t a piece of dark chocolate. I have polluted my young pure body with some unheard-of intoxicant. How am I ever going to come back to earth?

  Breathe.

  Read. Bro Ali used to say, read, what are you afraid of? That you might learn something?

  I pick up another file and try to concentrate. Breathe. Newspaper clippings. ‘Colonel Slatter: desert sucks in our hero’. Planes have been disappearing and the government is wasting taxpayers’ money and getting the people killed for what? Camp gets a mention: ‘evil has been wiped out’.

  It’s a bit sickening to be described as evil. We are entrepreneurs, not evil.

  Why is she investigating this? Is she interested in our feelings or their feelings? I throw the file away and rummage in her drawer. A silver box with a picture of a woman clutching her skirt. Inside a variety of painkillers. I wonder if any of these pills will help me with my nausea gathering in the pit of my stomach. There is no warning, no yelping Mutt, no sound of a door creaking, she is just standing there, looming over me like a giant with lipstick. My nausea disappears, I try to wave my hand to say hi. My hand is heavy.

  She says something and her voice is coming from a distance. Are you OK? What are you doing in my office? You look ill.

  I am OK, I say. I just needed some pen and paper. I was making notes for your research. I can only describe my feelings by writing.

  She takes the silver foil from the table and puts her hand on my shoulder.

  You didn’t take this, did you? Are you OK? Should I call the doctor?

  No, no, I am fine. I just feel hot and cold at the same time.

  She picks up a file and fans me. Calm down, she says, breathe, I’ll make you some tea.

  Another century passes as she puts on her kettle and keeps looking back at me with grave eyes.

  Young minds, my ass, I take a sip. Well, let’s say it is sweet and I don’t puke. She takes my hand in her hand, which is unexpected and probably a violation of her researcher’s contract but nice. But I am not gonna fall through the chair and I am not gonna fall for a honey trap. History is full of tragic stories about people who try to mix up their business targets with matters of the heart.

  Do you need a list? Do you really believe that Alexander the Great fell to a poisoned arrow? No sir, he fell to a Hindu temple girl who said if you are such a conqueror, here’s my heart, have a go. Do you think Warren Buffett goes around with a broken heart? No sir, for me business is always gonna be my first pleasure. Matters of the flesh should wait in the queue. And it’s a long queue.

  That tea was a good idea.

  We sit quietly and look at each other furtively as if to see who is gonna lose their brains first. My jaw relaxes, I notice a mole on the left side of her neck which I hadn’t noticed before, I look up and the sky is clear and a single white bird streaks through it and I look at it with satisfaction as if the bird has taken off on my orders and is headed to a destination predetermined by me. For the first time since she arrived in the Camp, I feel relaxed; better than relaxed, I feel still, for the first time I am in no rush to get into my Cherokee and rush to a business meeting, I can just sit here forever staring at the sky or looking at that mole on her neck. I mean what exactly is the point, the sky is the same everywhere; all you need is a piece of bread and a cup of tea and a companion. Mutt doesn’t like tea so I am sure he doesn’t mind.

  She seems to have some answers in those files.

  I feel I have everything a man needs. Somewhere in the distance, Mutt yelps thrice. I think he approves. In fact if she has something to tell me I’ll listen, but I am not nervous in this silent moment, I am not thinking about what she is thinking or what she might tell me. I would like it if this could last forever.

  But even forever doesn’t last forever.

  ‘Feeling better? Nice,’ she says, ‘isn’t it?’

  I nod my head and realize my eyelids are heavy. ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘The thing that you just had that you thought was chocolate. Opium.’

  I should panic but my heart is tired of panicking. I am averse to herbs of all kind, Class A drugs are for movie stars or people with poor upbringing. I don’t pollute my body with chemicals.

  Drugs kill your ambition, unless your ambition is to do drugs.

  ‘I don’t feel anything,’ I say defensively. I realize that my voice is low, almost a whisper. ‘Why do you take it?’

  ‘I take it for my migraines.’

  ‘What are migraines?’

  ‘It’s a headache with many heads. But otherwise it’s the preferred drug of the kings,’ she says, as if trying to make me feel better; distressed drug-dealer talk.

  ‘What kings?’ I say. ‘We don’t have kings anymore.’

  I have seen people on Nat Geo Late Night who make so much money through drugs that they are called narco-barons. I prefer to call them businessmen who make money off junk. I am always gonna support the free market but I am gonna stay away from the drug trade because let’s not forget that there is way more money in weapons and oil and do-goodery and it’s all legal. Apparently there is money to be made by going around asking people how they are feeling about their missing siblings.

  She shak
es her head slightly, disagreeing with me but not with too much enthusiasm. If she ran the world there would never be any wars, only post-war reconstructions. ‘There are things about substances that you need to know. It’s part of my research to discuss things they would never talk about in school. It’s good to avoid drugs for reasons of faith or because your parents disapprove, but you must know what you choose not to do. You drink alcohol and you are a depraved man, you talk nonsense, you don’t notice the traffic lights, every girl or boy it seems is willing to go to bed with you, you cry because your mom loved your sister more than she loved you, and then in the morning you wake up with a dry throat and pulsating shame. It doesn’t matter whether you drink fancy, fruity cocktails or cheap whisky straight from the bottle, you end up behaving like an ass.’

  For a moment or two it feels she is warning me, telling me stuff that Father Dear should have told me instead of the stuff he told me about sticking my penis into rubber balloons. There is no chance I’m ever gonna turn into a drunkard.

  I am in a place far far away, her voice comes from underwater, she is trying to prepare me for the facts of life, she is trying to prepare me for a fight. But what side of the battle is she gonna be on?

  ‘Take a sliver of this and what happens? Nothing. It makes you normal. It makes you rational. You put one foot after the other as you are supposed to, you pour tea into a cup without your hands shaking or the cup running over; when the doorbell rings you think it’s the courier bringing you the goodies you ordered, not an unknown assassin who has been sent to finish your meaningless, miserable life. You become the man that you should be.’

  One of her eyes is slightly red. Her lips quiver. The beginning of madness must look like this. She needs help. How am I gonna help her? I wanna tell her that it almost made me puke. But she is not finished with me yet.

  ‘You know why the Mughals ruled for so long?’

  I have no clue who the Mughals were or for how long they ruled, or the reasons for their long rule. Taj Mahal, I remember, they built that white palace for a dead princess. Seventh or sixth wonder of the world or some such nonsense. They were probably good at ruling and killing their princesses and building palaces for them.

  ‘Because they discovered this. Before making life or death decisions they swallowed a bit of this and it gave them the clarity to send their armies to slaughter their brother’s armies. You need a steady heart to send one hundred thousand men to do a job when you are certain that most of them will not return. I am always surprised that our government can do it without using this. They sit around a table in a conference without taking any opium and still manage to start wars that kill millions.’

  ‘All I see is unopened bottles of Perrier. It’s like sitting in a boardroom. Restructuring their business. War is business, no? Or is there more business after war? The business you are in?’

  She looks at me as if the invisible thread connecting us has snapped.

  And then I know what needs to be done. With the clarity of a king who sends an army to slay his brother, I realize I don’t need an army to bring Bro Ali back.

  ‘Why are you going around collecting the records of missing boys?’

  ‘Because that’s central to my research. I have told you that their people are missing. Your boys are missing.’

  ‘What have we got to do with their people?’

  ‘See,’ she says, as if I have already proved her point. ‘They say the same thing. It’s a deadlock.’

  ‘What deadlock? They had planes in the sky, tanks in the Hangar, guard dogs on chains, what did we have? How can you even compare?’

  ‘So tell me, what did you guys have?’

  ‘What you see is all we have. Not even our own roof over our head. But tell me, whose side are you on?’ I say, finally feeling the clarity that her drug is supposed to induce.

  ‘I am just researching trends, really, and hoping to bring about some kind of closure.’

  ‘Closure? They already closed the Hangar, what else they gonna close now?’

  ‘No, closure as in putting things in the past. Moving on with our lives.’

  ‘You are moving on with your life?’ I point at the paperwork and files surrounding us.

  ‘Look, closure means that after something bad has happened you accept that that bad thing has happened and you get on with your life.’

  ‘I am gonna get on with my life as soon as Bro Ali comes back. I have plans, he can have his jeep back. I was gonna get a new one anyway.’

  ‘And how are you going to find him?’

  ‘We need to find a way to get into the Hangar,’ I say.

  ‘Why haven’t you tried so far? Definitely not because you are not authorized to go in? You do a lot of things you are not allowed to do.’

  ‘They used to have tanks and planes and guns that mow down entire cities. I don’t know what they have there now. You don’t go into a battle without knowing your enemy. The gates are shut. There are probably booby traps.’

  ‘So you are afraid to go in?’

  ‘I was,’ I say. ‘Now I have got one of their own. I am going to put him in my jeep and find a way to get in.’

  ‘Have you asked him? It doesn’t seem like he wants to go anywhere.’

  ‘What are his choices? I am gonna put him in my jeep and drive right in. What’s he gonna say? And if you really wanna see my young mind, then you need to see this young mind at work. You are gonna come with us. I am gonna give you some real meat for your book.’

  And that’s an offer even a pretend researcher scholar is never gonna refuse. The alarm from the Hangar starts to ring. And it rings forever. That’s where we are gonna have to go.

  CHAPTER 20

  Mutt

  Last summer it rained, some dancing peacocks descended from nowhere and Bro Ali got chickenpox. This was a time when Momo had to have whatever Ali had. Slashed jeans, bad breath, double entendres, Vin Diesel accent. He did it without much effort, he pretended as if he had thought of it first but was a bit slow in implementing it. If Bro Ali started making a figure of eight while peeing, Momo would pretend to write the first letter of his name. I pretended to applaud their juvenile actions. I don’t believe in piss artistry, I just relieve myself at any suitable place when I need to. This was a particularly auspicious time, new electric poles had gone up, high-strung wires shimmered when lightning struck. You could go from pole to pole and celebrate the impending end of darkness from our lives. Electricity is coming, we were told again and again by Father Dear, who single-handedly tried to take credit for the compulsive philanthropy of the Norwegians who had donated poles and wire.

  In retrospect anyone could see that these poles were a series of tragedies waiting to happen. There was a freak monsoon, peacocks flashed their amber wings and did their ridiculous dance, big, fat, grey electric transformers sat on pylons like big, fat omens. And everyone was happy.

  Mother Dear finally managed to lay her hands on Bro Ali. She brought out an old cotton dupatta of hers, it was so soft and so white that I didn’t even go near it, worried that even my breath would soil it. She went to work, making a paste of turmeric and fennel and goat’s milk. From a distance it smelled like the promises of a compulsive, cheating lover. Bro Ali lay face down as she scooped up her cure and applied it to his back, covering the hundreds of little red dots that had bloomed on his torso. Momo joined in applying the paste, alternately pinching him when Mother Dear was not looking. Bro Ali giggled and then sighed as the paste burned the dots on his body. Bro Ali’s torso was covered in the white dupatta that he had wrapped around himself.

  Momo took off his shirt and showed some red bruises on his chest. He was certain that these were early symptoms of a superior variety of chickenpox. The bruises were from my paws, my daily struggle to wake him up. But when Momo insisted that he must get his share of chicken pox cure, who was going to say no? A black cotton dupatta was produced, Momo wrapped it around himself and lay down. Now Mother Dear and Bro Ali took turns looking fo
r non-existing red spots on his torso and kept dabbing the paste on his body randomly. Momo giggled and sighed and pretended he was really sicker than Bro Ali.

  ‘Don’t wear any clothes, your body needs fresh air but don’t go too far from the house,’ Mother Dear warned, but there were dark clouds in the sky, there was a gentle drizzle, the desert sand was sending out all kinds of dizzying smells, bright red velvety insects were on the march everywhere, it would have been a sin to stay indoors. So we all ran out ignoring Mother Dear’s warnings, as she shouted, ‘Don’t get my dupattas wet.’ Ali in white, Momo in black, yours truly clad in monsoon carelessness, we ran around, frightening peacocks, disrupting the long march of the armies of velvety red insects. Momo jumped into the Cherokee, Bro Ali in the passenger seat, both bare-chested, with their bodies daubed in their mother’s home cure for chickenpox, we drove around aimlessly from pole to pole. We counted eleven, stopped at the twelfth, got down. Momo and Bro Ali started their piss artistry, I decided to baptize the twelfth electric pole.

  The moment of my misfortune. The worst moment in the worst day of my life.

  As I lifted my leg, unknown to me, about eight hundred miles away the gates of a dam, the largest earth-filled dam in the world, opened. According to conservative estimates about six million cusecs of river water, monsoon muddy, wild and foamy, dropped like a native Niagara onto the eight waiting turbines, each weighing more than thirty tons of metal and blades. As the turbines span the generators converted it into the electricity that the Camp had been waiting on for years; the electricity travelled through eight-gauge, substandard copper wires and, travelling at the speed of 1,860,000 miles per second, arrived in the pole exactly at the moment when my clear, healthy urine made contact with it. Of course the bastards had forgotten to earth the pole, as they were sure from their past experiences that this whole pole-wires-transformers business was just a showpiece to steal more money. But someone had a bout of seasonal goodwill and released the electricity. It travelled through my piss stream through my blood veins and straight to my brains. This is how my brains got fried.