Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  He laughed the harder.

  ‘But I really started to miss them when we got here and you told us to stable the horses down the mountain. It’s funny—I sort of got used to them being around, and it’s always made me feel good, somehow, going down to see them and brush them and feed them.’

  ‘I understand,’ he murmured, reading my eyes. ‘Tell me, when the others are praying and you join them—I’ve seen you sometimes, kneeling behind them and not very close—what words are you saying? Are they prayers?’

  ‘I’m … not really saying anything at all,’ I replied, frowning. I lit two more beedies, not for the need of them, but for the distraction they provided, and their little warmth.

  ‘What are you thinking, then, if you’re not speaking?’ he asked, accepting the second cigarette as he tossed away the butt of the first.

  ‘I couldn’t call them prayers. I don’t think so. I think about people, mostly. I think about my mother … and my daughter. I think about Abdullah … and Prabaker—I’ve told you about him, my friend who died. I remember friends, and people I love.’

  ‘You think about your mother. What about your father?’

  ‘No.’

  I said it quickly—too quickly, perhaps—and I felt him watching me closely as the seconds passed.

  ‘Is you father living, Lin?’

  ‘I think so. But I … I can’t be sure. And I don’t care, one way or the other.’

  ‘You must care about your father,’ he declared, looking away again. It seemed such a condescending admonition to me then: he knew nothing about my father or my relationship to him. I was so caught up in resentments, new and old, that I didn’t hear the anguish in his voice. I didn’t realise, as I do now, that he, too, was an exiled son talking about his own father.

  ‘You’re more of a father to me than he is,’ I said, and although I felt it to be true, and I was opening my heart to him, the words came out sounding sulky and almost spiteful.

  ‘Don’t say that!’ he snapped, glaring at me. It was the closest he ever came to showing anger in my presence, and I flinched involuntarily at the sudden vehemence. His expression softened at once, and he reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. ‘What about your dreams? What are you dreaming about here?’

  ‘Dreams?’

  ‘Yes. Tell me about your dreams.’

  ‘I’m not having many,’ I replied, trying hard to recall. ‘It’s weird, you know, but I’ve had nightmares for a long time—pretty much since the escape from jail. Nightmares about being caught, or fighting to stop them catching me. But since we’ve been up here, I don’t know if it’s the thin air, or being so damn tired and cold when I get to sleep, or maybe just worry about the war, but I’m not having those nightmares. Not here. I’ve had a couple of good dreams, in fact.’

  ‘Go on.’

  I didn’t want to go on: the dreams had been about Karla.

  ‘Just … happy dreams, about being in love.’

  ‘Good,’ he murmured, nodding several times, and taking his hand from my shoulder. He seemed satisfied with my reply, but his expression was downcast and almost grim. ‘I, too, have had dreams here. I dreamed about the Prophet. We Muslims, you know, we are not supposed to tell anyone, if we dream about the Prophet. It is a very good thing, a very wonderful thing, and quite common among the faithful, but we are forbidden to tell what we have dreamed.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, shivering in the cold.

  ‘It is because we are strictly forbidden to describe the features of the Prophet, or to talk about him as someone who is seen. This was the Prophet’s own wish, so that no man or woman would adore him, or take any of their devotions away from God. That is why there are no images of the Prophet—no drawings, or paintings, or statues. But I did dream of him. And I am not a very good Muslim, am I? Because I am telling you about my dream. He was on foot, walking somewhere. I rode up behind him on my horse—it was a perfect, beautiful white horse—and although I didn’t see his face, I knew it was him. So I got down from my horse, and gave it to him. And my face was lowered, out of respect, all the time. But at last, I lifted my eyes to see him riding away into the light of the setting sun. That was my dream.’

  He was calm, but I knew him well enough to see the dejection that hooded his eyes. And there was something else, something so new and strange that it took me a few moments to realise what it was: fear. Abdel Khader Khan was afraid, and I felt my own skin creep and tighten in response. It was unimaginable. Until that moment I’d truly believed that Khaderbhai was afraid of nothing. Unnerved and worried, I moved to change the subject.

  ‘Khaderji, I know I’m changing the subject, but can you answer this question for me? I’ve been thinking about something you said a while ago. You said that life and consciousness and all that other stuff comes from light, at the Big Bang. Are you saying that light is God?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, and that sudden, fearful depression lifted from his features, driven off by a look that I could only read as a loving smile. ‘I do not think that light is God. I think it is possible, and it is reasonable to say, that light is the language of God. Light may be the way that God speaks to the universe, and to us.’

  I congratulated myself on the successful change of theme and mood by standing up. I stamped my feet and slapped at my sides to get the blood moving. Khader joined me and we began the short walk back to the camp, blowing warmth into our frozen hands.

  ‘This is a strange light, speaking about light,’ I puffed. ‘The sun shines, but it’s a cold sun. There’s no warmth in it, and you feel stranded between the cold sun and the even colder shadows.’

  ‘Beached there in tangles of flicker…’ Khader quoted, and I snapped my head around so quickly that I felt a twinge of pain in my neck.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It was a quote,’ Khader replied slowly, sensing how important it was to me. ‘It is a line from a poem.’

  I pulled my wallet from my pocket, reached into it, and took out a folded paper. The page was so creased and rubbed by wear that when I opened it the fold-lines showed gaps and tears. It was Karla’s poem: the one I’d copied from her journal, two years before, when I went to her apartment with Tariq on the Night of the Wild Dogs. I’d carried it with me ever since. In Arthur Road Prison the officers had taken the page from me and torn it into pieces. When Vikram bribed my way out of the prison I wrote it out again from memory, and I carried it with me every day, everywhere I went. Karla’s poem.

  ‘This poem,’ I said excitedly, holding the tattered, fluttering sheet out for him to see. ‘It was written by a woman. A woman named Karla Saaranen. The woman you sent to Guptaji’s place with Nazeer to … to get me out of there. I’m amazed that you know it. It’s incredible.’

  ‘No, Lin,’ he answered evenly. ‘The poem was written by a Sufi poet named Sadiq Khan. I know his poems by heart, many of them. He is my favourite poet. And he is Karla’s favourite poet also.’

  The words were ice around my heart.

  ‘Karla’s favourite poet?’

  ‘I do believe so.’

  ‘Just how well … how well do you know Karla?’

  ‘I know her very well.’

  ‘I thought … I thought you met her when you got me out of Gupta’s. She said … I mean, I thought she said that was when she met you.’

  ‘No, Lin, that is not correct. I have known Karla for years. She works for me. Or at least, she works for Abdul Ghani, and Ghani works for me. But she must have told you about it, didn’t she? Didn’t you know this? I am very surprised. I was sure that Karla would have talked to you about me. Certainly, I have talked to her about you, many times.’

  My mind was like the screaming jets that had screeched over us in the dark ravine: all noise and black fears. What had Karla said as we lay together, struggling against sleep, after fighting the cholera epidemic? I was on a plane, and I met a businessman, an Indian businessman, and my life changed forever … Was that Abdul Ghani? Is that what she meant? W
hy hadn’t I asked her more about her work? Why didn’t she tell me about it? And what did she do for Abdul Ghani?

  ‘What does she do for you—for Abdul?’

  ‘Many things. She has many skills.’

  ‘I know about her skills,’ I growled at him angrily. ‘What does she do for you?’

  ‘Among other things,’ Khader answered, slowly and precisely, ‘she finds useful and talented foreigners, such as you are. She finds people who can work for us, when we need them.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, gasping out the word that wasn’t really a question, and feeling as if pieces of myself—frozen pieces of my face and my heart—were falling splintered around me.

  He began to speak again, but I cut him off quickly.

  ‘Are you saying that Karla recruited me—for you?’

  ‘Yes. She did. And I am very glad that she did.’

  The cold was suddenly inside me, running through my veins, and my eyes were made of snow. Khader kept walking, but when he noticed that I’d stopped, he halted. He was still smiling when he turned to face me. Khaled Ansari approached us at that instant, and clapped his hands together loudly.

  ‘Khader! Lin!’ he greeted us with the sad, small smile that I’d come to love. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I gave it some thought, Khaderji, just like you said, but I’ve decided to stay. At least for a while. Habib was here last night. The sentries saw him. He’s been doing so much crazy stuff—the things he’s done to Russian prisoners, and even some of the Afghan prisoners near here on the Kandahar road in the last couple weeks are … well, it’s grisly shit—and I’m hard to impress in that way. It’s so weird, the men are going to do something about it. They’re so spooked, they’re gonna shoot him on sight. They’re talking about hunting him down like a wild animal. I have to … I have to try to help him, somehow. I’m gonna stay, and try to find him, and try to talk him into coming back to Pakistan with me. So … you go on without me tonight, and I’ll … I’ll come through in a couple of weeks, on the next trip out. That’s … that’s it, I guess. That’s … what I came to say.’

  There was a cold silence after the little speech. I stared at Khader, waiting for him to speak. I was angry, and I was afraid. It was a special fear—the kind of arctic dread that only love can inspire. Khader stared back at my face, reading me. Khaled looked from one to the other of us, confused and concerned.

  ‘What about the night I met you and Abdullah?’ I asked, speaking through teeth clenched against the cold and the even colder fear that ripped through me like spasms of cramp.

  ‘You forget,’ Khader Khan replied a little more sternly. His face was as dark and determined as my own. It never occurred to me then that he, too, was feeling deceived and betrayed. I’d forgotten about Karachi and the police raids. I’d forgotten that there was a traitor in his own circle, someone close to him, who’d tried to have him and me and the rest of us captured or killed. I never saw his grim detachment as anything but a cruel disregard for what I felt. ‘You met Abdullah a long time before the night that we met. You met him at the temple of the Standing Babas, isn’t it true? He was there to look after Karla on that night. She did not know you well. She was not sure of you, not sure that she could trust you, in a place that she did not know. She wanted someone there who could help her, if you had no good intention with her.’

  ‘He was her bodyguard …’ I muttered, thinking she didn’t trust me …

  ‘Yes, Lin, he was, and a good one. I understand it that there was some violence, on that night. Abdullah did do something to save her—and perhaps to save you. Isn’t that true? This was Abdullah’s job, to protect the people for me. That is why I sent him to follow you when my nephew Tariq went to stay with you in the zhopadpatti. And on the very first night, he did help you to fight some wild dogs, isn’t it true? And for the whole time that Tariq was with you, Abdullah was close to you, and to Tariq, just as I told him to be.’

  I wasn’t listening. My mind was all angry arrows, whistling backward to a much earlier time and place. I was searching for Karla—for the Karla I knew and loved—but every moment with her began to give up its secret and its lie. I remembered the first time I’d met her, the first second, how she’d reached out to stop me from walking in front of the bus. It was on Arthur Bunder Road, on the corner near the Causeway, not far from the India Guest House. It was the heart of the tourist beat. Was she waiting there, hunting for foreigners like me, looking for useful recruits who could work for Khader when he needed them? Of course she was. I’d done it myself, in a way, when I’d lived in the slum. I’d loitered there, in the same place, looking for foreigners just off the plane who wanted to change money or buy some charras.

  Nazeer walked up to join us. Ahmed Zadeh was a few paces behind him. They stood together with Khaderbhai and Khaled, facing me. Nazeer screwed his face into a scowl, and scanned the sky from south to north, calculating the minutes before the snowstorm hit us. The packing for the return journey was complete and double-checked, and he was anxious to leave.

  ‘And the help you gave me with the clinic?’ I asked, feeling sick, and knowing that if I unlocked my knees and let my legs relax, they would crumple and fold beneath me. When Khader didn’t speak, I repeated the question. ‘What about the clinic? Why did you help me with the clinic? Was that part of your plan? Of this plan?’

  A freezing wind blew into the broad plateau, and we all shuddered, unsteadied, as the force of it whipped at our clothes and faces. The sky darkened swiftly as a dirty, grey tide of cloud crossed the mountains and tumbled on toward the distant plain and the shimmering, dying city.

  ‘You did good work there,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s not what I asked you.’

  ‘I don’t think this is the right time to talk of such things, Lin.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I insisted.

  ‘There are things you will not understand,’ he stated, as if he’d thought it through many times.

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Very well. All of the medicine that we brought here to this camp, all of the antibiotics and penicillin for the war, was supplied to us by Ranjit’s lepers. I had to know if it was safe to use here.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus …’ I moaned.

  ‘So I used the opportunity, the strange fact that you, a foreigner, with no connection to a family or an embassy, set up a clinic in my own slum—I took that chance to test the supplies on the people in the zhopadpatti. I had to be sure, you understand, before I brought the medicines into the war.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Khader!’ I snarled.

  ‘I had to be—’

  ‘Only a fuckin’ maniac would do that!’

  ‘Take it easy, Lin!’ Khaled snapped back at me. The other men tensed on either side of Khader, as if they feared that I might attack him. ‘You’re way outta line, man!’

  ‘I’m out of line!’ I spluttered, feeling my teeth chatter, and struggling to make my numb limbs obey my mind. ‘I’m out of fuckin’ line! He uses the people in the slum as guinea pigs or lab rats or whatever the fuck, to test his antibiotics—using me to trick them into doing it, because they believed in me—and I’m the one who’s out of line!’

  ‘No-one got hurt,’ Khaled shouted back at me. ‘The medicines were all good, and the work you did there was good. People got well.’

  ‘We should get out of the cold, now, and talk about it,’ Ahmed Zadeh put in quickly, hoping to conciliate. ‘Khader, you’ll have to wait for this snow to clear before you leave. Let’s get inside.’

  ‘You must understand,’ Khader said firmly, ignoring him. ‘It was a decision of war—twenty lives risked against the saving of a thousand, and a thousand risked to save a million. And you must believe me, we knew that the medicines were good. The chance of Ranjit’s lepers supplying impure medicines was very low. We were almost completely sure that the medicine was safe when we gave it to you.’

  ‘Tell me about Sapna.’ There it was, out in the open, my deepest secret fear about him, and about my
closeness to him. ‘Was that your work, too?’

  ‘I was not Sapna. But the responsibility for his killings does come back to me. Sapna killed for me—for this cause. And if you want me to tell you the whole of the truth, I did make a great benefit from Sapna’s bloody work. Because of Sapna, because he existed, and because of their fear of him, and because I made a commitment to find him and stop him, the politicians and the police allowed me to bring guns and other weapons through Bombay to Karachi and Quetta, and to this war. The blood Sapna spilled—it did oil the wheels for us. And I would do this again. I would use Sapna’s killings, and I would do more killings, with my own hands, if it would help our cause. We have a cause, Lin, all of us here. And we fight and we live and perhaps we will also die for that cause. If we win this fight, we will change the whole of history, forever, from this time, and in this place, and with these battles. That is our cause—to change the whole world. What is your cause? What is your cause, Lin?’

  I was so cold, as the first flakes whirled about us, that I shivered and shook and couldn’t stop my jaw from shuddering.

  ‘What about … what about Madame Zhou … when Karla got me to pretend I was an American. Was that your idea? Was that your plan?’

  ‘No. Karla has her own war with Zhou, and she had her own reasons. But I approved of her plan to use you, to get her friend out of the Palace. I wanted to see if you could do it. I had the thought, even then, that you would one day be my American in Afghanistan. And you did well, Lin. Not many people do so well against Zhou in her own Palace.’

  ‘One last thing, Khader,’ I stammered. ‘When I was in jail … did you have anything to do with that?’

  There was a hard silence, the kind of deadly, breathing silence that insinuates itself into the memory more deeply than the sharpest sound.

  ‘No,’ he replied at last. ‘But the truth is that I could have taken you out of there, even after the first week, if I chose to do it. I knew about it almost at once. And I had the power to help you, but I did not. Not when I could have done it.’

  I looked at Nazeer and Ahmed Zadeh. They stared back evenly. My eyes shifted to Khaled Ansari. He returned my stare with an anguished and angrily defiant grimace that pulled his whole face into the jagged lash of the scar that divided his features.