The media partners had not met for more than eight days—since the coming of Miss Jebeen the Second. When Tilo called Dr. Bhartiya to tell him about the police notice, he dropped his voice to a whisper. He said they should speak as little as possible on the mobile phone, because they were under constant surveillance by International Agencies. But after that initial moment of caution, he chatted away sunnily. He told her how the police had beaten him and confiscated all his papers. He said it was quite likely that they had picked up the trail from there (because the publisher’s name and address were given at the bottom of the pamphlet). It was either that or her flamboyant signature on his plaster cast, which they had forcibly photographed from several angles. “No one else signed in green ink and put their address,” he told her. “So you must be the first person on their list. It must be just a routine check-up.” Still, he suggested that she immediately transfer Miss Jebeen and herself, at least temporarily, to a place called Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services in the old city. The person to contact there, he said, was Saddam Hussain, or the proprietor herself, Dr. Anjum, who, Dr. Bhartiya said, was an extremely good person and had met him several times after the incident (of the said night), inquiring about the baby. Due to the honorific he had arbitrarily bestowed on himself (even though his PhD was still “pending”), Dr. Bhartiya often called people he liked “Doctor” for no real reason other than that he liked and respected them.
Tilo recognized the name of the guest house as well as the name Saddam Hussain from the visiting card that the man on the white horse who had followed her home from Jantar Mantar had dropped into her letter box (on the said night). When she phoned him, Saddam told her that Dr. Bhartiya had been in touch, and that he (Saddam) had been waiting for her call. He said he was of the same opinion as Dr. Bhartiya, and that he would come back to her with a plan of action. He advised her that she should on no account leave her house with the baby until she heard from him. The police could not enter her house without a search warrant, he said, but if they were watching the house, as they might well be, and they caught her with the baby on the street, they could do anything they liked. Tilo was reassured by his voice and his friendly, efficient manner on the phone. And Saddam, for his part, was reassured by hers.
He called her a few hours later to say that arrangements had been made. He would pick her up from her home at dawn, probably between 4 and 5 a.m., before “Truck Entry” closed in the area. If the house was being watched, it would be easy to tell at that hour, when the streets were empty. He would come with a friend who drove a pickup for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. They had to pick up the carcass of a cow that had died—burst—from eating too many plastic bags at the main garbage dump in Hauz Khas. Her address would not be much of a detour. It was a foolproof plan, he said. “No policeman ever stops an MCD garbage truck,” he said, laughing. “If you keep your window open you’ll be able to smell us before you see us.”
—
So, once again she was moving.
Tilo surveyed her home like a thief, wondering what to take. What should the criterion be? Things that she might need? Or things that ought not to be left lying around? Or both? Or neither? It vaguely occurred to her that if the police were to make a forced entry, kidnapping might turn out to be the least of her crimes.
Most incriminating of all the things in her apartment was the stack of bright fruit cartons that had been delivered to her doorstep, one at a time, over a few days, by a Kashmiri fruit-seller. They contained what Musa called his “recoveries” from the flood that had inundated Srinagar a year ago.
When the Jhelum rose and breached its banks, the city disappeared. Whole housing colonies went underwater. Army camps, torture centers, hospitals, courthouses, police stations—all went down. Houseboats floated over what had once been marketplaces. Thousands of people huddled precariously on sharply sloping rooftops and in makeshift shelters set up on higher ground, waiting for rescues that never happened. A drowned city was a spectacle. A drowned civil war was a phenomenon. The army performed stunning helicopter rescues for TV crews. In live round-the-clock bulletins news anchors marveled at how much brave Indian soldiers were doing for ungrateful, surly Kashmiris who did not really deserve to be rescued. When the flood receded, it left behind an uninhabitable city, encased in mud. Shops full of mud, houses full of mud, banks full of mud, refrigerators, cupboards and bookshelves full of mud. And an ungrateful, surly people who had survived without being rescued.
During the weeks the flood lasted, Tilo had no news of Musa. She did not even know whether he was in Kashmir or not. She did not know whether he had survived or drowned, his body washed up on some distant shore. On those nights, while she waited for news of him, she put herself to sleep with heavy doses of sleeping pills, but during the day while she was wide awake she dreamed of the flood. Of rain and rushing water, dense with coils of razor wire masquerading as weeds. The fish were machine guns with fins and barrels that ruddered through the swift current like mermaids’ tails, so you could not tell who they were really pointed at, and who would die when they were fired. Soldiers and militants grappled with each other underwater, in slow motion, like in the old James Bond films, their breath bubbling up through the murky water, like bright silver bullets. Pressure cookers (separated from their whistles), gas heaters, sofas, bookshelves, tables and kitchen utensils spun through the water, giving it the feel of a lawless, busy highway. Cattle, dogs, yaks and chickens swam around in circles. Affidavits, interrogation transcripts and army press releases folded themselves into paper boats and rowed themselves to safety. Politicians and TV anchors, both men and women, from the Valley as well as the mainland went prancing past in sequined bathing suits, like a chorus line of seahorses, executing beautifully choreographed aqua-ballet routines, diving, surfacing, twirling, pointing their toes, happy in the debris-filled water, smiling broadly, their teeth glimmering like barbed wire in the sun. One politician in particular, whose views were not dissimilar to those of the Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany, cartwheeled in the water, looking triumphant, in a starched white dhoti that gave the impression of being waterproof.
It recurred, day after day, this day-mare, each time with new embellishments.
A month went by before Musa finally called. Tilo was furious with him for sounding cheerful. He said there was no safe house left in Srinagar where he could store his “recoveries” from the flood, and asked whether he could keep them in her flat until the city got back on its feet.
He could. Of course he could.
They were excellent quality, the Kashmiri apples that were delivered in custom-made cartons, red ones, less-red ones, green, and almost-black ones—Delicious, Golden Delicious, Ambri, Kaala Mastana—all individually packed in shredded paper. Each carton had Musa’s calling card—a small sketch of a horse’s head—tucked into a corner. And each carton had a false bottom. And each false bottom contained his “recoveries.”
Tilo reopened the cartons to remind herself what was in them and work out what to do with them—take them or leave them behind? Musa had the only other key to the apartment. Garson Hobart was safely parked in Afghanistan. In any case he did not have a key. So leaving them where they were was no great risk. Unless, unless, unless—was there an off-chance that the police would break in?
The “recoveries” were few and had obviously been hurriedly dispatched. When they first arrived some of them were caked with mud—thick, dark river silt. Some were in fine shape and had obviously escaped the flood waters. There was a ruined album of water-stained family photographs, most of them barely recognizable, of Musa’s daughter, Miss Jebeen the First, and her mother, Arifa. There was a stack of passports in a plastic Ziploc—seven altogether, two Indian and five other nationalities—Iyad Khareef (Musa the Lebanese pigeon), Hadi Hassan Mohseni (Musa the Iranian wise man and guide), Faris Ali Halabi (Musa the Syrian horseman), Mohammed Nabil al-Salem (Musa the Qatari nobleman), Ahmed Yasir al-Qassimi (Musa the rich man from Bahrain). Musa clean-shaven, Musa with a salt-and-pepper beard, Musa with long hair and no beard, Musa with close-cropped hair and a clipped beard. Tilo recognized the first name, Iyad Khareef, as a name that Musa had always loved, and which they had both laughed about during their college days, because it meant “the pigeon who was born in the autumn.” Tilo had a variation on the theme for people she was annoyed with—Gandoo Khareef. The asshole who was born in autumn. (She had been exceptionally foul-mouthed as a young woman, and when she first started learning Hindi, took pleasure in using newly learned expletives as the foundation on which she built a working vocabulary.)