Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  The day was dying. Each jewelled shimmer, dazzling from the waves in the bay, turned from glittering white to pink, and weak, blood red. Sweat ran into my eyes as I stared back at Mukul. My jaws ached, and my lips quivered with the strain of it: the strain of not responding, not speaking, not nodding my head. I heard a voice or remembered it: All you have to do is nod your head, that’s all you have to do, and it’ll all be over … And grieving tears boiled up in me, relentless as the gathering tide that slapped against the sea wall. But I couldn’t cry them, those tears, and I felt that I was drowning in a sorrow that was bigger than the heart that tried to hold it. I pressed my hands down on the little mountain range of the faceted bluestones on the top of the sea wall, as if I could drive my fingers into the city and save myself by clinging to her.

  But Mukul … Mukul smiled, promising peace. And I knew there were so many ways to find that peace—I could smoke it in a cigarette, or chase it on a piece of foil, or snort it, or puff it in a chillum, or spike it into my vein, or just eat it, just swallow it and wait for the creeping numbness to smother every pain on the planet. And Mukul, reading the sweating agony like a dirty page in a dirty book, inched his way closer to me, sliding along the wet stone wall. And he knew it. He knew everything.

  A hand touched my shoulder. Mukul flinched as if he’d been kicked, and backed away from me, his dead eyes dwindling to nothing in the burning splendour of the setting sun. And I turned my head to stare into the face of a ghost. It was Abdullah, my Abdullah, my dead friend, killed in a police ambush too many suffering months before. His long hair was cut short and thick like a movie star’s. His black clothes were gone. He wore a white shirt and grey trousers with a fashionable cut. And they seemed strange, those different clothes—almost as strange as seeing him standing there. But it was Abdullah Taheri, his ghost, as handsome as Omar Sharif on his thirtieth birthday, as lethal as a big cat prowling, a black panther, and with those eyes the colour of sand in the palm of your hand a half-hour before sunset. Abdullah.

  ‘It is so good to see you, Lin brother. Shall we go inside and drink some chai?’

  That was it. Just that.

  ‘Well, I … I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’ the ghost asked, frowning.

  ‘Well, for starters,’ I mumbled, shielding my eyes from the late-afternoon sun with my hand as I stared up at him, ‘because you’re dead.’

  ‘I am not dead, Lin brother.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘No. Did you speak to Salman?’

  ‘Salman?’

  ‘Yes. He arranged it, for me to meet with you, in the restaurant. It was a surprise.’

  ‘Salman … told me … there was a surprise.’

  ‘And I am the surprise, Lin brother,’ the ghost smiled. ‘You were coming to meet me. He was supposed to be making it a surprise for you. But you left the restaurant. And the others, they have been waiting for you. But you didn’t come back, so I went to find you. Now the surprise is really a shocks.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ I snapped, remembering something Prabaker had once said to me, and still reeling, still confused.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter! Fuck, Abdullah … this is … this is a fuckin’ weird dream, man.’

  ‘I am back,’ he said calmly, a little frown of worry creasing his brow. ‘I am here, again. I was shot. The police. You know about it.’

  The tone of the conversation was matter-of-fact. The fading sky behind his head, and the passers-by on the street, were unremarkable. Nothing matched the blur and streak of a dream. Yet it had to be a dream. Then the ghost lifted his white shirt to reveal his many wounds, healed and healing into dark-skinned rings, whirls, and thumb-thick gashes.

  ‘Look, Lin brother,’ the dead man said. ‘I was shot, yes, many times, but I did live. They took my body from the Crawford Market police station. They took me to Thana for the first two months. Then they took me to Delhi. I was in hospital for one year. It was a private hospital, not far from Delhi. It was a year of many operations. Not a good year, Lin brother. Then it was almost another year to become well, Nushkur’allah.’

  ‘Abdullah,’ I said, reaching out to hug him. The body was strong. Warm. Alive. I held him tightly, clamping my hand to my wrist behind his back. I felt the press of his ear against my face, and smelt the soap on his skin. I heard his voice passing from his chest to mine like ocean sonancies, sounding and resounding, wave on wave through shores of tight-wet sand at night. Eyes closed, and clinging to him, I floated on the dark water of the sorrowing I’d done for him, for both of us. Heart-crippled with fear that I was mad, that it really was a dream, a nightmare, I held him until I felt the strong hands push me gently to the length of his extended arms.

  ‘It is okay, Lin,’ he smiled. The smile was complex, shifting from affection to solace, and a little shocked, perhaps, at the emotion in my eyes. ‘It is okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay!’ I growled, breaking away from him. ‘What the fuck happened? Where the fuck have you been? And why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘No. I could not tell you.’

  ‘Bullshit! Of course you could! Don’t be so stupid!’

  ‘No,’ he insisted, running a hand through his hair and squinting his eyes to fix me with a determined stare. ‘Do you remember, one time, we were riding the motorcycles, and we saw some men? They were from Iran. I told you to wait at the motorcycles, but you did not. You followed me, and we fought those men together. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They were enemies of mine. And they were Khader Khan’s enemies, also. They had a connect to the Iran secret police, the new Savak.’

  ‘Can we—wait a minute,’ I interrupted, reaching backwards to support myself against the sea wall. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  I flipped open the box to offer him one.

  ‘Did you forget?’ he asked, grinning happily. ‘I do not smoke the cigarettes. And you should not also, Lin brother. I only smoke the hashish. I have some, if you would like?’

  ‘Fuck that,’ I laughed, lighting up. ‘I’m not getting stoned with a ghost.’

  ‘Those men—the men we fought—they did some business here. Mostly drugs business, but sometimes guns business and sometimes passports. And they were spies against us, reporting about any of us from Iran who ran away from the Iraq war. I was one man who ran away from the Iraq war. Many thousands ran away to here, India, and many thousands who hate Ayatollah Khomeini. The spies from Iran, they made reports about us to the new Savak in Iran. And they hate Khader because he want to help the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and because he did help so many of us from Iran. You understand this business, Lin brother?’

  I understood it. The Iranian expatriate community in Bombay was huge, and I had many friends who’d lost their homeland and their families, and were struggling to survive. Some of them worked in existing mafia gangs like Khader’s council. Others had formed their own gangs, hiring themselves out to do the wet work, in a business that got a little bloodier every working day. I knew that the Iranian secret police had spies circulating among the exiles, reporting on them and sometimes getting their own hands a little damp.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, taking a gulp of smoky air from my cigarette.

  ‘When those men, those spies, made their reports, our families in Iran had very bad suffering. Some mothers, brothers, fathers, they put them into the secret police prison. They torture people in that place. Some of the people, they died. My own sister—they torture and rape her because of the reports about me. My own uncle, he is killed when my family cannot pay to the secret police quick enough. When I find out about that, I told to Abdel Khader Khan that I want to leave him, so I can fight them, those men who are spies from Iran. He told me not to leave. He said to me that we will fight them together. He told me that we will find them, one by one, and he promise me that he will help me to kill them all.’

  ‘Khaderbhai …’ I said, breathing smoke.

  ‘An
d we found them, some of them, Farid and me, with Khader’s help. There was nine men, at the start. We found six men. Those men, we finished. The other three of them did live. Three men. And they knew something about us—they knew that there is a spy in the council, very close to Khader Khan.’

  ‘Abdul Ghani.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, turning his head to spit at the mention of the traitor’s name. ‘Ghani, he came from Pakistan. He had many friends in the Pakistan secret police. The ISI. They work in secret with the Iran secret police, the new Savak, and with CIA, and with Mossad.’

  I nodded, listening to him, and thinking about something Abdul Ghani had said to me once: All the secret police of the world work together, Lin, and that is their biggest secret.

  ‘So, the Pakistan ISI told the Iranian secret police about their contact on the Khader council.’

  ‘Abdul Ghani. Yes,’ he replied. ‘In Iran they were very worried. Six good traitors gone. Nobody ever can find the bodies of those traitors. Only three were left. The three men from Iran, so then they work with Abdul Ghani. He told them how to make a trap for me. At that time, do you remember, we did not know it, that Sapna, he was working for Ghani and planning to move against us. Khader did not know. I did not know. If I knew that, I would put the pieces of those Sapna men into Hassaan Obikwa’s hole in the ground myself. But I did not know. When I came into the trap, near to Crawford Market, the men from Iran fire the first time from a place near me. The police, they think that I am firing my gun. They fire at me. I am dying, I know, so I take my guns and I shoot at the police. The rest, you know.’

  ‘Not all of it,’ I grunted. ‘Not enough. I was there that night, the night you got shot. I was in the crowd at Crawford Market police station. It was wild. Everyone said you were shot so many times that your face was unrecognisable.’

  ‘There was so much blood. But Khader’s men, they did know me. They make a riot and then they fight step and step into the police station, and they take my body out of there and away to the hospital. Khader had a truck near there, and he had a doctor—you know him, Doctor Hamid, do you remember him?—and they saved me.’

  ‘Khaled was there that night. Was he the one who rescued you?’

  ‘No. Khaled was one of the men who make the riot. It was Farid who took my body.’

  ‘Farid the Fixer got you out of there?’ I gasped, stunned that he’d said nothing about it in all the close months we’d worked together. ‘And he’s known about it all this time?’

  ‘Yes. If you have a secret, Lin, put it in the heart of Farid. He is the best of them, my brother, now that Abdel Khader is gone. After Nazeer, Farid is the best of them. Never forget that.’

  ‘What about the three guys? The three Iranian guys? What happened to them after you got shot? Did Khader get them?’

  ‘No. When Abdel Khader killed Sapna and his men, they ran away to Delhi.’

  ‘One of the Sapna guys got away. You know that?’

  ‘Yes, he went to Delhi also. When I was strong again—not completely fix up yet, but strong enough to fight—just two months ago, I went to look for the four men and their friends. I found one of them. One from Iran. I finish him. Now there are only three left from that time—two spies from Iran, and one Sapna killer from Ghani.’

  ‘Do you know where they are?’

  ‘Here. In the city.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I am sure. That is why I have come back to Bombay. But now, Lin brother, we must return to the hotel. Salman and the others, they are waiting for us, upstairs. They want to make a party. They will be happy I can find you—they did see you leaving, hours before, with a beautiful girl, and they told me I will not find you.’

  ‘It was Lisa,’ I said, glancing unconsciously over my shoulder at the bedroom window on the first floor of the Taj. ‘Do you … want to see her?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled. ‘I did meet someone—Farid’s cousin, Ameena. She has been looking after me for more than a year. She is a good girl. We want to be married.’

  ‘Get the fuck outta here!’ I spluttered, more shocked by his intention to marry than I was by his survival of the killing fusillade.

  ‘Yes,’ he grinned, reaching out to give me an impulsive hug. ‘But come on, the others are waiting. Challo.’

  ‘You go ahead,’ I answered him, smiling to match his happy grin. ‘I’ll be with you soon.’

  ‘No, come, Lin,’ he urged. ‘Come now.’

  ‘I need a minute,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll be there … in a minute.’

  He hesitated a moment more but then smiled, nodded his head, and walked back through the domed arch toward the Taj Hotel.

  Evening dimmed the afternoon’s bright halo. A haze of dusty smoke and vapour misted the horizon, sizzling soundlessly, as if the sky at the distant wall of the world was dissolving into the waters of the bay. Most of the boats and ferries were safely tied to their mooring posts at the dock beneath me. Others rose and fell and rose again, swaying on the secure tethers of their sea anchors. High tide pushed the swollen waves against the long stone wall where I stood. Here and there along the boulevard, frothy plumes, like gasps of effort, slapped up, over, and onto the white footpaths. Strollers walked around the intermittent fountains, or ran laughing through the sudden boom and spray. In the little seas of my eyes, those tiny blue-grey oceans, waves of tears pushed hard against the wall of my will.

  Did you send him? I whispered to the dead Khan, my father. Assassin grief had pushed me to that wall where the street boys sold heroin. And then, when it was almost too late, Abdullah had appeared. Did you send him to save me?

  The setting sun, that funeral fire in the sky, seared my eyes, and I looked away to follow the last flares of cerise and magenta streaming out and fading in the ocean-mirrored sapphire of the evening. And staring out across the rile and ruffle of the bay, I tried to fit my feelings within a frame of thought and fact. Strangely, weirdly, I’d re-found Abdullah and re-lost Khaderbhai on the same day, in the same hour. And the experience of it, the fact of it, the inescapably fated imperative of it, helped me to understand. The sorrowing I’d shunned had taken so long to find me because I couldn’t let him go. In my heart, I still held him as tightly as I’d hugged Abdullah only minutes before. In my heart, I was still there on the mountain, kneeling in the snow and cradling the handsome head in my arms.

  As the stars slowly reappeared in the silent endlessness of sky, I cut the last mooring rope of grief, and surrendered to the all-sustaining tide of destiny. I let him go. I said the words, the sacred words: I forgive you …

  And it was good. And it was right. I let the tears fall. I let my heart break on my father’s love, like the tall waves beside me that hurled their chests against the wall, and bled onto the wide, white path.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE WORD MAFIA comes from the Sicilian word for bragging. And if you ask any serious man who commits serious crimes for a living, he’ll tell you it’s just that—the boasting, the pride—that gets most of us in the end. But we never learn. Maybe it’s not possible to break laws without boasting about it to someone. Maybe it’s not possible to be an outlaw without being proud in some way. Certainly, in those last months of the old mafia, the brotherhood that Khaderbhai had designed, steered, and ruled, there was plenty of boasting and no less pride. But it was the last time that any of us in that corner of Bombay’s underworlds of crime could’ve said, with complete honesty, that we were proud to be gangsters.

  Khader Khan had been dead for almost two years, but his precepts and principles still dominated the day-to-day operations of the mafia council he’d founded. Khader had hated heroin, and he’d refused to deal in the drug or permit anyone else but desperately addicted street junkies to trade in it within the areas he’d controlled. Prostitution had also appalled him. He’d seen it as a business that injured women, degraded men, and blighted the community where it occurred. The hemisphere of his influence had extended to all the streets, parks, and buildings across sev
eral square kilometres. Within that little kingdom, any man or woman who hadn’t kept their involvement with prostitution and pornography to very low, very discreet, levels of activity had risked his condign punishment. And that situation prevailed under the new council headed by Salman Mustaan.

  Old Sobhan Mahmoud, still the nominal head of the council, was gravely ill. In the years since Khader died, he’d suffered two strokes that had left his speech and much of his movement severely impaired. The council moved him into Khader’s beach house in Versova—the same house where I’d gone through cold turkey with Nazeer. They ensured that the aged don had access to the best medical treatments, and arranged for his family and his servants to attend him.

  Nazeer slowly groomed Khader’s nephew, young Tariq, for what most on the council assumed would be a leading role Despite the boy’s pedigree, his maturity, and his unusually solemn demeanour—there was no-one, man or boy, whose dour, fervent intensity reminded me so much of Khaled—Tariq was deemed to be too young to claim a council position or even to attend the council meetings. Instead, Nazeer gave him duties and responsibilities that more gradually acquainted him with the world he might one day command. In all practical senses, Salman Mustaan was the don, the new Khan, the leader of the council and the ruler of Khaderbhai’s mafia. And Salman, as everyone who knew him testified, was Khaderbhai’s man, body and soul. He governed the actions of the clan as if the grey-haired lord was still there, still alive, advising and cautioning him in private sessions every night.

  Most of the men supported Salman unquestioningly They understood the principles involved, and agreed that they were worth upholding. In our area of the city, the words goonda and gangster weren’t an insult. Local people knew that our branch of the mafia did a better job than the police at keeping heroin and salacious crimes from their streets. The police, after all, were susceptible to bribes. Indeed, Salman’s mafia clan found itself in the unique position of bribing the police—the same cops who’d just been paid off by pimps and pushers—to look away whenever they had to run a recalcitrant heroin dealer into a brick wall, or take a mash hammer to a pornographer’s hands.