Mansoor had never been to the courts before—those barracks of Indian life crammed behind the colonial facades of Lutyens’s Delhi—but he had a chacha who was a lawyer and had heard a great deal about the institution. When his parents rang him on his mobile, he silenced it. He wanted time to himself.
He got out of the car and, after lightly acknowledging the guard at the entrance, walked through the open bricked corridors with their searching blind fingers of dead trees, their groggy supplicants in red and white sweaters. Through his swimming nervous vision he saw signs indicating the names of the courtrooms. Finally, he entered a courtroom the size of a classroom. At the front of the room, two lawyers in their penguinlike garb, their backs turned to the audience, were murmuring to the judge, who bent his head down from his high boatlike desk. When Mansoor sat down in the last row, his wrists almost spiritual with pain, one of the lawyers twisted around for a second and then went back to talking. A few moments later, several hassled-looking men with sweat-soaked shirts appeared at the door, carrying what seemed to be a Chinese changing screen, the type behind which naked women are always banished in old movies. Now the lawyers turned around completely. The men began to set up the screen near the front of the room.
“The proceeding is in camera,” the judge said suddenly.
There was a commotion and throat-clearing in the aisles next to Mansoor.
“In camera,” he repeated, irritated.
People began to rise.
“You have to get up,” a woman in a smart pantsuit instructed Mansoor.
Perplexed, having exited, Mansoor lingered now by the tea stall outside the Sessions Court, watching the dhaba-wallah fry samosas in a deep wok. He was in a philosophical mood, thinking back to the stories the Khuranas had told about the adjournments.
“You good name?” a voice interrupted him.
Mansoor turned around to see himself facing a man with a squashed, eager look about him; a neckless fellow with crooked teeth bejeweling his gums. Mansoor recognized him from the courtroom.
Mansoor mumbled, “Hello.”
“My name is Naushad,” the man said quickly, placing a palm on his chest. “I work for an NGO, Peace For All.” Peace For All, according to Naushad, focused on “communal harmony” and was looking to provide a just, speedy trial for the men arrested for the 1996 blast. “You’re a journalist?” he asked Mansoor.
“No, no—just a visitor,” Mansoor said, smiling slightly, now understanding the reason for his forwardness.
“You have a relative in the case?” Naushad asked in Hindi.
“No.” Mansoor smiled again. He crushed the paper cup and chucked it into a bin, where it parachuted into a ridge between other crushed cups. “I just wanted to watch. Anyone can come. But I should go.”
“But people don’t really come just like that—that’s why I was asking. But you’re a Muslim, no?”
“Yes,” Mansoor said, amazed at this religious clairvoyance. But he was gifted with it too; he had somehow known Naushad was a Muslim before he announced his name. “Actually I was a victim of the blast,” Mansoor said. “But I don’t have any connection with the case.”
“You were injured in the blast?” Naushad said, pointing a finger down at the ground in surprise.
Mansoor nodded. “I was small. But I got shrapnel in my arm.”
At that moment, Mansoor felt he had pulled out a trump card; that he had absolved himself of suspicion in the eyes of the dhaba-wallah, who had been listening to the exchange in an absent way; sopping up the conversation the way his samosas were sopping up oil.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Naushad said, clearly excited. “But you can really help us.” He launched into an explanation. “We’ve been working for two or three years for people to give attention to the locked-up men. Everyone knows—even the judges—that the wrong men have been arrested. You can read it in the documents: there was no independent witness present when they were arrested. That’s why they keep adjourning. But the issue is that after 9/11 and the Parliament attack, no one wants to help these people. ‘They’re bloody terrorists; let them rot,’ they say. But, bhai, they haven’t even been proven to be terrorists! One is a papier-maché artisan. Another was a student in class eight when he came to Delhi to stay with his brothers. And the last one, he used to work with his family in a carpet shop in Kathmandu. These people’s lives have been ruined, and now six years have passed without a trial. So we’re making an effort to bring out the story in the press. And look, if someone like you, an educated person, a victim—if you say something, imagine how much more of a difference it’ll make. Let me write my name and e-mail and phone on a chit”—he had already taken out a tattered lined paper and was pressing a pen into it against a timber column in the tea shop—“and if you want to help please phone us or e-mail us. Here you go.” He handed Mansoor the chit. “As salaam aleikum,” he said.
“Wa aliekum as salaam,” Mansoor said.