Rain spattered lightly, pock-pock on the ship's hull, a vast, riveted wall before them. The vessel had been driven aground three weeks earlier, and the scavenging crews were just finishing the easy salvage—furniture and fittings and anything loose they could find inside.
"Cables,” said Farid, and a sigh rustled through the men. Hauling the monstrously heavy steel plates, nearly a metric ton on fifteen shoulders, was hard enough. Dragging the metal hawsers up the beach, one man every four meters along the cables—which could be a kilometer long—was agony, as the sharp, pointy bits of galvanized wire shredded their skin.
"Soonest started, soonest done.” Farid began to chivvy them into a line, beginning where the first cable descended from far above, so distant it disappeared threadlike into the mist.
But Mohit's mood could not be broken. He took his place cheerfully, glancing around while the others trudged into position.
Far down the ship's length he saw a trio of cutters examining the base of the stern. Squinting in the rain, Mohit thought he recognized Hasan, which made sense. Before dismantling could begin, the enormous fuel tanks had to be vented. They'd been almost empty when the ship grounded, naturally, and reclamation crews had pumped out the remainder for recycling, but sludge remained. If the fumes weren't released, someone's torch would ignite an explosion.
Of course, the vents had to be opened somehow, and even chisels could strike a spark. The experienced cutters knew how to do so safely, their years of knowledge allowing them to avoid nooks and joints where the gas accumulated. Hasan was the best, the most skilled, so Mohit was not surprised to see him leading the task. He felt a surge of pride—he would be working with Hasan, working with the finest cutter in all Chittagong.
"Aste," said Farid, calling from down the line, and Mohit bent to grasp the cable, ready to heave it up with the others. He shifted his feet in the mud, seeking stable purchase.
CRUNNK!
The blast sounded like the ship collapsing on itself, a hammer blow and a scream of metal. Voices cried out. Mohit spun around to see the dark hull buckle slightly, an enormous rent in the side. Torn steel gaped outward, a dark tangle littering the strand before it.
The cutters were gone, shredded in an instant. Mohit stared for a moment, before the shock hit him and he dropped to his knees and vomited into the mud.
* * * *
Work halted. Men converged, uselessly, and stopped at the edge of the destruction, where gore spattered the twisted metal. Mohit, weak on his feet and wiping his mouth, stepped up. He saw a shoe atop a jagged piece of steel wreckage—he looked more closely and realized the foot was still inside, bone and skin sticking out. Then the rain sluiced it away.
Mohit had seen death before. Not so often as he'd imagined, but fatalities were inevitable in the breaking yards. Men fell from heights, were crushed beneath their loads, died instantly when towline cables snapped and whipped viciously across the beach, severing anything in their paths. The essential fragility of the human body was no surprise to him.
But this was Hasan—senior among the elite cutters, who had agreed to take Mohit on, and who, most importantly, had received his 25,000 takas.
And now ... nausea rolled over Mohit again.
The deal was undocumented, of course. Bhatiary had no banks with stone pillars and armed guards, nor bureaucratic functionaries to seal and file the terms, in careful typewritten copies. Farid had arranged the negotiations, Mohit standing straight as he and Hasan talked. Hasan spoke quietly, soberly, then he smiled at Mohit and they bowed and called for a blessing from God, and no more was necessary. Farid had transferred the money later, discreetly.
Now Mohit had, quite possibly, nothing at all—no cutter's job, no position, no money. All gone, incinerated in the flash of one errant spark.
"Go,” said Farid. “We will not work this morning. Recover yourself."
"But I—"
"We will stay and help.” Farid nodded toward the road, where trucks had slowed and a desultory police flasher could be seen in the distance. “The master will be here soon, he'll handle it."
"Yes. All right."
Farid's shoulders slumped. “He'll need to find a new cutting team,” he said softly. “I'm sorry, bhai."
Mohit said no more. He trudged up the beach, drenched in sheeting rain. Voices called to him, the curious and the idle wanting details to repeat, but he ignored them all.
Though it was still early, a few tea sellers were setting up at the roadway's edge, blackened pots under flimsy plastic awnings. For five years Mohit had passed them by, unwilling to spend a single taka that could be put toward his future instead. Now he slowed. What did it matter, now? What did anything matter? Abruptly he sat down, jerking his head at the vendor, and when the tea came he drank the cup off, hot and so sweet it stung his throat.
"Dhonnobad, saheb," said the tea seller. He was younger than Mohit, but one arm hung useless and twisted at his side, half his hand missing. He'd probably been a breaker, before. “The ship—the tanks exploded?"
"Yes."
"You were there?"
Mohit looked at him. “It is bad."
"I am sorry.” The man accepted his cup back, and rinsed it in a pan of rain-water. “What will you do now?"
Ah, thought Mohit.
A truck roared past, horn blaring, water spraying off its massive load of black metal. The splash spattered the tea stall, causing the vendor to mutter and glare.
"Go back,” Mohit said finally, answering the question for himself. “What else?"
But when he rose he turned away from the sea and the beach and the ships, and continued on into the shantytown. He had one more stop. One last possibility, before he abandoned the shining life he'd almost, almost achieved.
* * * *
As a senior cutter, Hasan had been able to afford that most extraordinary of luxuries, his own house. It sat at the far edge of Bhatiary, where the encroaching sprawl of shacks was still tentative, and open fields began. The paddies were worked by the very old and the very young—men in their prime went off to the factories, or the beach, or the city. Glancing at the fields of water, where people in straw hats waded and tended the new plantings entirely by hand, Mohit thought he might be looking back a thousand years.
Or at Ghorarchar. A wave of despair flowed over him.
A group of schoolgirls went past, blue-and-white uniforms under plastic umbrellas, faces concealed by black veils. Mohit counted alleys and waded up the rushing torrent that had replaced a pathway to the street. Closer, he could hear a high, keening wail, even over the rainfall's din. The door to Hasan's house hung slack.
"Maf korun," he called. "Hasan bhabi? Are you home?"
Hasan's widow sat in the room's single chair, leaning on the table, sobbing. The sparse furnishings were in disorder. A shelf was pulled loose from the wall, with clay cups on the hardpack dirt floor below; a pack of Star cigarettes lay torn open on the table; and several photographs on the wall hung crooked, in broken frames.
"Who are you?” A teenaged boy held the woman, one protective arm around her shoulders. Two older men stood assertively on either side, glaring.
Mohit explained, with as much deference as he was capable. “Perhaps Hasan saheb mentioned me..."
"Your sympathy is welcome,” said one of the men brusquely. “One more tragedy granted us today."
"I'm sorry?"
"As if it was not enough that Hasan—” he broke off. “Some gunda heard what happened, and decided to take advantage. He broke in here, so soon he must have run over straight from Hasan's death."
His widow raised her face to Mohit, and he saw a dark, swollen bruise from one cheekbone to her nose.
"Keno?" she cried. “Why?"
"He did not—” Mohit stuttered. “What did he do?"
"He took,” said the man bitterly, “everything Hasan had saved. His life and his livelihood, and all his money too."
"You!” The woman shouted at Mohit. “It was your fault!"
> Shocked, Mohit said nothing, standing with his mouth open. The boy turned his mother away. The men looked at each other, uncomfortable, and the talker beckoned Mohit to the next room. It was the kitchen, cramped under a low ceiling, with walls of woven bamboo darkened by smoke and soot.
"The money, she means,” the man said.
"I had just paid him,” said Mohit. “To become his apprentice. It was—"
"I know. So much ... the thief came for the money, of course. She thinks, perhaps you told too many people, and he heard of it."
"No.” But Mohit had talked, among his friends, in the streets. How could he not, after such an accomplishment?
"It is unbearable,” the man said. “The gunda burst in even before she had heard herself, only minutes before we arrived. But it was long enough for him to uncover Hasan's lockbox and flee.” He hesitated. “She had to tell him."
"Yes."
"It is gone. All of it. Nothing remains."
Mohit thought he might fall, dizzy and weak. He forced himself straight. “Who was it?"
"She does not know, and no one else saw him. But he surely worked at the beach.” The man eyed Mohit's scars and ragged clothing. “She says his left hand was missing four fingers, only the thumb remaining. He used rough language."
"Dukkhito," Mohit whispered. “I'm sorry."
"And I.” The man's face sagged. “It is an awful day for us all."
* * * *
An hour before dusk Mohit returned to the room he shared with another laborer. In the afternoon, with no money and nothing else to do, he'd gone back to the beach to haul cable. Life went on. A government inspector had come by, picking an annoyed path through the mud, to frown at the blast debris and threaten the master. Mohit had watched them talk, too far away to hear, as they left together, an assistant following five steps behind with the inspector's document case. The master seemed to be telling jokes; the inspector laughed. Money would be passed, the discreet transaction as natural as the rains bucketing down. Mohit had felt numb, glad he wasn't carrying steel plates, where a missed step could mean death rather than a little more cable burn.
At the hostel he squatted outside with his roommate, beneath an overhang of corrugated roofing. Sohel shared out the khichari he'd prepared. Usually they were so hungry that the dish was a feast, even when reduced by necessity to nothing but rice, dal, chili and salt. Today Mohit let it go cold.
"An accident, yes, naturally, that is what they say.” Sohel talked more than anyone and still finished his food first. “Was not Hasan the best cutter from here to Patenga? Had he not opened the tanks of twenty-five ships with never even a flare? How likely that he would slip, this once?"
Mohit looked up slowly. “Cutters are well paid not just for their skill. The torches are dangerous."
"And the weather—rain! Mohit, it was pouring down, no?"
"Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was raining."
"So,” said Sohel with satisfaction, always keen to find plots and conspiracy in any event. “How, then, could the spark ignite?"
Mohit glanced at the charcoal fire, now extinguished to conserve fuel, and raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, yes, surely, with a match.” Sohel ran his fingers around his bowl, cleaning it, and nodded. “Are you even listening? I think you need to ask questions."
Mohit considered. “Why?"
"Not of me! Ask, who gained by Hasan's death?"
"No one.” Mohit sank back. “But many lost."
"No.” Sohel raised a finger. “Someone has Hasan's money.” He paused. “Your money."
"My money,” Mohit repeated. He felt again the accusing glare of Hasan's widow.
Darkness came with its accustomed quickness. The men rinsed their plates in streams of water coursing off the corrugated iron and entered their room, five square meters of packed dirt and a rough, splintery platform on which they slept. A murmur of other tenants came through the woven mats that served as interior partitions.
Standing, taking a few steps—the movement had stirred something inside Mohit. He looked at his bare pallet for a long moment, then turned back to the door.
"Where are you going?” Sohel sounded surprised.
"You are right.” Mohit acknowledged Sohel's gratified expression, just visible in the murk. “The dacoit who robbed Hasan's house—perhaps he simply took advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps it was organized, somehow. Either way, he took what is mine."
"But ... how will you find him?"
Mohit hesitated. Men drifted through Bhatiary by the tens of thousands, and missing fingers distinguished someone no more uniquely than missing teeth.
"I don't know,” he said finally. A sense of resolution grew within him, at first faint and now increasing. “But I have nothing else to do."
Sohel reached out to hold his arm, a light, hesitant gesture. “You are—I am sorry to say this, but you are behaving oddly. I know, the shock, Hasan's death, your money, yes. Please.” He paused. “Do not make this worse for yourself. I should not have suggested absurd theories."
Mohit grunted and pulled away. He felt Sohel watching him as he stepped back out into the rain.
It's my life, he felt like saying. It's not the money, it's my life.
* * * *
When Mohit first arrived at Chittagong, he would sometimes spend a few takas gambling—a casual wager on a kabaddi match, or maybe a numbers bet, bought from the same fellow who sold Bangla Mad moonshine. He stopped after seeing another Ghorarchari, a few years older, lose his entire savings on a national cricket test. The man disappeared two days later, either just ahead of his Thuggee creditors or a few unfortunate steps behind. Conveniently, the fasting month of Ramadan had just begun, and Mohit foreswore all games as well as the usual food and drink. He was not often tempted after that.
But he knew where to go. In the jammed lanes of Bhatiary no one had privacy or secrets. Organized vice was run out of a shack alongside the “cinema,” where members of the same gang screened Bollywood DVDs on a television screen before roughmade wooden benches. Along with others too poor to pay the admission, Mohit occasionally loitered in the lane alongside, underneath a bedraggled string of colored lights illuminated when the generator was running. Sometimes a gap might appear in the blackout plastic tied to the walls. When the police were absent, pornographic videos slipped into the schedule, their indistinct soundtracks both fascinating and embarrassing to the eavesdroppers.
Tonight Mohit ignored the moviehouse and went straight to the entrance next-door, which was overseen by a well-fed thug who nodded him to the door.
"I would see Chauhan saheb,” Mohit said.
The man's gaze, which had wandered away, flicked back. “Would he know you, then?"
"No."
"Well.” The man shrugged.
Yesterday Mohit would have retreated; yesterday he would never have come this far. Now, in the dark, his future demolished as thoroughly as one of the broken ships themselves, he found himself not just emboldened but reckless.
"It is about the men who died,” he said.
The gunda frowned. “Dead men,” he said. “So many of them, no?"
"The cutter, Hasan."
"Ah.” After a long pause, the man stepped back and pushed open the door with one hand.
"At the carrom table,” he said. “Don't interrupt the game."
Inside benzene lamps cast dull light on a scattering of tables and perhaps twenty men. Several sat along one wall, drinking tari from unlabeled, recycled bottles. Rain pattered on the metal roof, eased, came down hard again. A roistering group in the corner laughed loudly, arms around each other's shoulders. Mohit smelled sweat and oil and faint, bitter smoke.
A battery-powered lantern hung above the carrom table, spotlighting the meter-square surface and its black and white stones. As Mohit approached, one player flicked his striker, and a piece flew across the board to land cleanly in the pocket. His opponent grunted. Two more stones went in, and the men gathered around the table made noise
s of appreciation or dismay.
Chauhan would have been unmistakable even if Mohit were straight off the bus from Ghorarchar. Short and broad, he stood at brooding ease, arms crossed, watchful. But it was the obvious respect of the others around him—distance, deference, careful glances—that made his status clear.
The match ended when one player ran five consecutive tiles, then pushed back from the table with a broad smile. The loser looked away and scratched under one arm.
Mohit stepped forward. “Chauhan saheb, ektu somoy hobe?"
"Apni ke?"
"I am Mohit Kadir, a gang laborer for Syed Abdul Farid. I have ... an inquiry."
"Ki?"
Chauhan did not sound impatient or aloof, as Mohit had expected from someone whose name was always mentioned in low and wary tones. The carrom players were setting up another round, while spectators drifted away. Two men in polo shirts appeared at Mohit's side. He tried to ignore them.
"You have heard of the explosion today, and the death of three workers. I was there, and I later visited Hasan-mia's house.” Chauhan said nothing, and Mohit explained his arrangement with Hasan. “But a thief had already arrived, taking by violence all of Hasan's worth."
"We know.” Chauhan nodded once.
"They said he was—that he had a bad arm, and missing fingers.” Mohit swallowed. “I wonder ... do you know who he might be?"
Chauhan's gaze narrowed, though his voice remained quiet. “Why would you ask me?"
"He might have come here, to spend his new riches.” Mohit paused. “He might have done similar things before, and boasted of them. Perhaps rumors started. Perhaps you have heard something."
Hilarity rose from the party in the corner, and one man lurched off the bench to land on the dirt floor. His mates thought this even funnier, hauling him back up and reseating him. His shirt was now crusted with a swath of mud, which he didn't notice.
EQMM, March-April 2009 Page 5
