by Tabish Khair
Ravi, who could have easily got a role as a star in any Bollywood film on the basis of his looks alone—not to mention the contacts that his surgeon father and his socialite-actress mother had in that city of connections—never dated girls he did not consider “plain.” He had a theory about it, which he had explained many times to me (and once, to her great irritation, to my ex-wife). One evening, with the February Århus sky blanketing all desire to go out, he explained it to Karim. We had been drinking gin—Ravi and I, that is—in his room, where he had installed a small bar with a fridge. While my room was filled with Ikea furniture and Karim’s with secondhand stuff bought over a number of years, Ravi’s room had an expensive four-poster bed, a small ivory-topped table, a revolving Victorian book rack, and this bar, leaving just enough space to walk from the door to the window at the other end.
Despite his legendary spat with his father, Ravi’s mother still sent him hundred-dollar bills in unregistered envelopes—something Karim Bhai was shocked at, for he was afraid the money would be lost in transit and did not realize how small these sums were for Ravi’s family. Consequently, Ravi usually had more money than he needed. The bar had been purchased to enable us to drink in his room when Karim Bhai was around. When Karim Bhai was in the flat, for some reason, even though he never forbade it, we never took a drink into the kitchen. We never even entered Karim Bhai’s room if we had been drinking, but we would sometimes go to the kitchen for a coffee, and then Karim Bhai, if he was around, joined us and pretended not to notice our slightly inebriated state.
“You see, Karim Bhai,” Ravi said that evening in the kitchen, more drunk than usual, “plain girls are the salt of the earth: they do things to you. Beautiful girls expect you to do things to them.”
“Do things for you?” Karim Bhai corrected him hesitatingly. He had just handed Ravi one of his carefully rolled cigarettes, after I had declined.
“No, Karim Bhai. To you. You know, they do things to you. They do not just lie under you or straddle you and expect their beauty to do all their work for them. If you want real sex, Karim Bhai, you know, the stuff that sends the world whirring for a minute like a ceiling fan, go for the plain women of the world.”
Karim Bhai was already blushing behind his beard. He had the pink complexion of some north Indian men, as did Ravi. I am much darker, and Ravi had on occasions pointed out, given his ironic penchant for stereotypes, that the two of them, despite being “bloody Indians,” would pass for any “frontier Pashtun,” while I, being “a bloody Paki,” disgraced my nationality and looked like a “darkie Hindoo.” That’s because, Ravi would add, this bastard is not a real Paki; he is a fucking mohajir.
That is true. My grandparents had left India with their children during the partition years. I sometimes meet mohajirs in Pakistan who wax eloquent about all they lost in India and lament the partition. In my case, I am grateful to Jinnah, Patel, Nehru, Mountbatten, Lady and Lord, whoever it was that fucked up in 1947 and sent millions of people to their graves or across invisible borders. Huge tragedy, sure, don’t misread me; but in my case, only good came out of it. I once, just once, visited the town—home, they called it until their death—that my grandparents had left in India. It was a desolate, dingy, dry little landlocked place called Phansa in Bihar. I returned to lovely, vibrant, seaside Karachi, relieved to be a mohajir. Since then, I have always been thankful to the whole blind bickering gang of them for their fuck-ups in 1947.
Ravi was blind to Karim Bhai’s blush. When Ravi got going on his theories, especially if he was a bit drunk, he seldom noticed their effects. All of Our Forcibly Shared Great Western Civilization, he once explained, is evidence of the fact that great men are never aware of the effects of their theories on others.
What Ravi claimed was not entirely true. Not all of Ravi’s “plain” girls did things “to” him. He himself divided them up into those with whom he had a Platonic relationship, those with whom he had a Gandhian relationship and those who joined him in a Marxist relationship. The Platonic ones were to contemplate and forget; the Gandhian ones were to fumble with, to hug and huddle, but nothing more; the Marxist ones were, as he put it, to screw and get screwed by.
Why Marxist, I had questioned him, for I considered myself more or less a Marxist.
“Because Marx had an illegitimate daughter, O Ignorant Son of the Bourgeoisie, because Engels had a series of mistresses, and, above all, because, as any True Marxist will tell you, history is merely the progress of the classes fucking each other up,” he had explained on that occasion.
But even when it came to his Marxist relationships, Ravi sometimes encountered women who either did not do things “to” him or who withdrew their initiative unexpectedly. At first, I had expected Ravi to take these setbacks in his stride; after all, it was seldom that he was not dating, openly and unabashedly, at least two women. And he did take them well, but not without a lurch. I knew one of his girlfriends had broken up with him unexpectedly, or vice versa, when Ravi would requisition me and march us to the nearest bar; he would proceed to get so drunk that I had to tuck him into his bed that night.
The last week of February was a particularly remarkable one on these counts. On Thursday, Ravi broke it off with one of the three women he was having his cultural revolutions with at the time.
“She is getting too emotional, you know, yaar,” he explained to me. “A bit like one of your purdah-shrouded khatoons probably got with you in Pakistan.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about, Ravi,” I countered.“Have you ever crossed the gates of any of those Muslim girls’ colleges? The kind of comments our gals in purdah aim at a good-looking man would drive any civilized Paleface to turn reddish Indian and scalp himself.”
“Anyway, yaar: not part of the deal. I cannot be responsible for emotions; I love these women, but I don’t think I can love anyone forever.”
This was one of Ravi’s refrains. I had come to suspect, through occasional lapses on his part—for Ravi was unusually secretive about these matters—that this had to do with his parents’ marriage. There was a kind of cynicism in Ravi that either denoted too much knowledge or too much innocence. Only much later did I realize that it could denote both.
Having broken off with Ms. Emotional that Thursday evening—it is not something Ravi did without remorse—he was given his marching slips by the other two girlfriends on Friday.
When I finished teaching around two that afternoon, I had a text message waiting on my mobile. It was from Ravi. “Need to drown hat-trick in hooch,” it said. “Meet at Unibar 1600.”
Unibar is Århus University’s only half-hearted attempt to exorcize the ghost of Denmark’s Calvinist past that occasionally stalks the land even today. University canteens close by four, and the campus area doesn’t have any decent bar or pub, something that Ravi found impossible to reconcile with his idea of campus life.
Even I, growing up in the more austere environment of post-Zia Pakistan, was used to cafés and restaurants that stayed open and crowded with students late into the night: what could be drunk was only tea, coffee or lassi, but it was drunk with gusto and the debates and arguments did not suffer from the lack of openly served alcohol.
Such places do not seem to exist on Danish campuses, though there are occasional Friday night bars organized by students here and there, where loud music and cheap alcohol make conversation impossible. Unibar, tucked into the basement of a building in the campus, is an exception: not only does it stay open well beyond midnight, it even stocks one of the best collections in town of Ravi’s beloved German and Belgian beers and plays (good) music softly enough to permit conversation.
Ravi was already into his second Chimay—2009, he liked to move back from the most recent year—beer when I joined him. He took his break-ups quite seriously, one of the things that was surprising and endearing about him, at least in my eyes. He appeared almost disappointed in himself and the world every time one of his relationships—invariably proclaimed imper
manent by him—actually failed. For an evening or two, he did a fairly good imitation of Rajesh Khanna or Dilip Kumar in one of their tearjerkers, sometimes even singing songs of heartbreak in his mellifluous voice, with just enough irony in the rendition to prevent one from taking him too seriously. Then he bounced back and was off dating another “plain” woman.
“Why don’t you date only one at a time?” I asked him that evening. “You would avoid these double and triple whammies in that case.”
By then Ravi was on to Chimay 2007.
“I am being kind to them, O Dense One,” he replied. “If I date only one, she is liable to invest more in the relationship, and anyone who invests in relationships is heading for bankruptcy.”
“But why, Ravi,” I pressed the matter, mostly to humor him.
“Why are all relationships doomed in advance?”
“Look who is talking. Dr. Once-divorced-and-still-bindaas!” Ravi sneered.
Then he sobered up a bit, probably realizing that he had gone too far. My divorce had not been a flippant matter for me or my ex-wife.
“Did I tell you, bastard,” he continued, “about my years in Switzerland?”
“I know you finished your high school in Switzerland. You told me your parents sent you there for three years or so.”
“Did I tell you why?”
“I don’t recall if you did.”
“Oh, you would, if I had told you. It is an unforgettable story, the kind of story that gets made into TV serials five times a day. See, bastard, you obviously did not peruse Indian film magazines in high school. I wonder what you used to jerk off to, probably Billy Shakespeare: cabin’d, cribb’d, confined in Karachi, bound to saucy fears… Now, if you had employed your time fruitfully with Cineblitz, Filmfare and the like, you would have read in their issues of the 1980s and early 1990s about this very handsome celebrity Bombay surgeon who was having a roaring affair with one of his star patients, a famous actress. They carried something about it in almost every issue. It was good for circulation. You might also have read of this celebrity surgeon’s wife, herself a once-celebrated actress and socialite, being seen on the arms of various film stars and cricketers, including the great Imran, in the same period. There were rumors of impending divorce. I was sent to Switzerland when the rumors were at their height. When I returned, hallelujah, the rumors had evaporated.”
He took a deep draft from his glass, draining it. Then he got up to fetch himself Chimay 2006. Before he left the table, he added, as if to himself, “But, strangely, only the rumors had disappeared.”
“Why do you call each other ‘bastards’?” Karim Bhai asked us one day. “It is not a nice word, you know.”
“We went to a missionary school, Karim Bhai,” Ravi responded.
“Not the same one, true. In two different countries, yes. Enemy nations even. But Jesuit schools, so it hardly mattered.”
Karim Bhai, who had been educated in government schools, did not get the joke.
“Immaculate conception, Karim Bhai,” Ravi explained. “There is no greater term of honor than bastard in those circles.”
Karim Bhai still did not understand. But Ravi had moved onto other topics. Which was just as well, I thought; it was obvious that Karim Bhai took Jesus—Isa Masih to him—very seriously as a prophet who was destined to return and restore the world to Islam and righteousness.
It had by now become clear to us that we had underestimated Karim Bhai’s religiosity. His flat was a hub for informal Quranic studies every Friday evening, when young men, mostly bearded, and women, mostly shrouded, would descend on it for long discussions over coffee, tea, nimki and other snacks that Karim diligently stocked. These ended at nine sharp, when Karim went off to ply his taxi, unwilling to let religion deprive him of the lucrative Friday-night custom.
In the first few weeks, we had missed these sessions. We had hit town early on those Friday evenings. But when Ravi discovered the sessions, he started making a conscious effort to attend them. I would either stay in my room or go out with friends. Sometimes he would join us much later in the night.
Once I ribbed him about it. I did not understand his interest in such sessions.
“You underestimate them, bastard,” he replied. “They are far more pertinent and political than almost all the academic seminars that I have attended. They discuss matters of significance and do it honestly: how to make sense of the world, how to make it a better world. They still have a conscience, these young men and women, not just a bank account like the rest of these people.”
He waved his hand at the young people drinking and dancing in the Irish pub we were in.
“I know all about the politics,” I retorted. “I grew up with politics beating down on me. Basically, it all boils down to three points: the Quran is the final hand-autographed word of God; the West is fucking us; the Jews are fucking us via the West.”
“You know, bastard, that I would not let that kind of racism go unchallenged. Actually, while they are probably very anti-Israel, they do not really discuss the matter much.”
“Yes, because you are there.”
“Listen to yourself, yaar. You sound like a Danish tabloid. What do you think they are? The secret Århus cell of Al Qaeda?”
“Who knows?”
“Karim Bhai, a terrorist! Really, have you ever come across a person with more seriousness of purpose, more consideration for other people’s space, you fanatic? He lets us drink in his flat, and you know what alcohol means to people like him.”
“Perhaps he needs the money more than he hates alcohol.”
“Oh yes, perhaps he is the main funder of Al Qaeda? That’s why he needs the money so badly!”
“Who knows? He works all the time; he disappears suddenly; he gets strange phone calls; you cannot deny he needs the money for some reason.”
“The same reason as all immigrants except fucking privileged ones like us. He probably sends money home to his family. You know, bastard, you have been in the West too long; go back home. You need a shot of sanity.”
“Sanity was banned in Pakistan by Zia, bastard,” I replied. “And that is one ban no one is going to lift.”
But Ravi was right. I was arguing just to irk him. I did not really suspect Karim of being a radical Islamist, let alone a terrorist. Not yet.
I think it was soon after this conversation that Ravi started growing a beard: a stylish, French-cut beard, but still. “Don’t tell me Karim Bhai has converted you,” I remarked to him. “It is an experiment, bastard,” he replied mysteriously.
Karim’s days were patterned. He worked as many shifts as he could. It was Friday afternoons and evenings that he kept free: for his weekly trip to the mosque, which was a room in a private house, and for his Quranic sessions. When he was not working, he was usually home, reading some commentary on the Quran, praying, telling his blue-speckled-with-black beads or watching TV in his room. He would tidy up regularly, even offering to tidy up in our rooms if we were around. Cleanliness was a mantra with him. He was not too orderly, though, leaving things lying about as long as they were not dirty.
Once in a while, his routine existence would be disturbed by a phone call. Looking back, when suspicion gripped me towards the end of our stay in Karim’s flat, I identified two kinds of phone calls. Most of them were the normal kind: Karim would pick up the phone and talk into the receiver, in Danish, English or Urdu, about various mundane matters. If one of us picked up the phone, there would be a voice at the other end identifying himself or (very rarely) herself and asking for Karim. Then there were the usual wrong numbers. Perhaps too many, I suspected later on, though some of them—like the woman who called asking, in slurred Danish, to be connected to her “mand,” or the child who dialed incorrectly—seemed innocuous enough.
But the second kind of phone call was different and much rarer. So rare that we paid it sufficient attention only in retrospect, when suspicion left us with no choice. The phone would ring. If Ravi or I picked it up, somet
imes it would go dead. It would ring again, and usually Karim Bhai would pick it up with alacrity if he was in the flat. If he wasn’t, it might go dead again and not ring for the next six hours, which was the usual duration of Karim Bhai’s shifts. When Karim Bhai picked up the phone, his conversation was restrained, seldom going beyond yes or no. Once I heard him say in Danish, in a tone of irritation, “Why do you always forget to call me on my mobile?” Though he was immediately contrite after that. He started apologizing, but then the phone went dead. A few seconds later Karim Bhai got a call on his mobile, which he answered in his room after, unusually, closing the door.
All this went unremarked by me then, as did the young men and (fewer) women who came to Karim Bhai’s Friday sessions. Later, when I mentioned these calls to the police, the interrogating officer looked visibly pleased. He was less pleased by my inability to give him a full description of most of the young men and women. But, like the phone calls, I had not noticed them then. If I had noticed them, I had noticed the resemblance between them: beards and veils.
On faces of different colors—mostly South Asian, occasionally European, African, or Indonesian- or Malaysian-looking—but framed by the same seriousness of purpose, the same solemnity, the same sparse or full growth of hair on their chins, the same wrap of cloth around their head… I could not have described them if I had wanted to. The only one I could have described was Ali. Or Ajsa. But of course, the police knew all about Ali and Ajsa by then. And, to be honest, Ajsa, as far as Ravi and I could recall, had attended only one of the sessions.
It had been a morning in March. I am certain about that because, after relenting in February, the cold had returned with a vengeance so that, when the bell rang and I opened the door, the chill cut me to the bone, although the flat was on the third floor. Standing outside, all wrapped up, with just some wisps of her blonde hair showing, was a young woman. For a moment I thought she was one of Ravi’s new girlfriends, but she was by no means “plain,” even by Ravi’s standards. A tall, willowy woman, blue-eyed, blonde, almost my height: she was evidently Danish. I was surprised when she asked for Karim Bhai. She called him “bhai” too, which was just as surprising.
