“Ustad, how many years it’s been!” Zunaid said. “Tell me, how can I help you?” He was a big man in an impeccable kurta.
“I want to buy a gun,” Ayub told Zunaid after some preliminaries. “We have a big monkey problem in the field. They come and tear our plants every afternoon. We’ve tried to use a spade and a scarecrow, but nothing works. I thought using a pistol might help.”
“A pistol, is it?” Zunaid gauged Ayub’s face. Ayub had been one of the golden boys of the town, with a legendary academic record, and Zunaid was curious about this shift. “You sure you don’t want me to do it for you?”
“Monkeys multiply very fast.”
“I see.” Zunaid paused. “Eight hundred rupees.”
“Five hundred.”
“Very good, boss.”
A few days later, when Zunaid brought Ayub the pistol, Ayub said, “What is this nonsense? Are you sure this won’t explode in my face? This is the sort of gun the student union leaders carry in Shibli. One lost his hand shooting this kind of gun.” It looked like a tin imitation of a pistol, the metal corrupted by holes. It had a handle ripped from a cooking knife and a barrel fashioned from the steering shaft of a rickshaw. The nails on its sides were poking out.
Zunaid explained patiently, pedantically, why it worked well regardless.
“Come, let’s go try it,” Ayub said.
In a field, Ayub took a long lead bullet from Zunaid, slid it into a hole at the back of the pistol, rocked back on his heels, and took aim at an old family-planning advertisement up along the road that ran into the town. “Shit!” he shouted, dropping the overheated weapon.
Zunaid looked at Ayub and marveled at how gaunt he seemed, how ringed his eyes were. Then he sighed, took the gun back from Ayub, and, while explaining its qualities, shot within the inverted red triangle of the family-planning sign. “You just have to practice,” he said. “Can you tell me what you need it for? If you’re trying to kill someone it’s better if you hire one of our sharpshooters. Doing it yourself will only lead to trouble.” As he spoke he was proud that he might be spotted with Ayub, and he went on. “For you, bhai, because I respect and admire you, I’d even give you a special rate.” When Ayub said nothing, strange tears came to Zunaid’s eyes and he said, “We’d even do it for free.”
Ayub—standing in the field, with this man, days from Delhi, the country vast and unbending around him, the bullet in the gun small, the heart of the man he wished to kill even smaller—was overcome with despair. It was the kind of despair he felt often in Azamgarh when he walked through the alleys at night or watched the burqa-clad women cower in their homes or when he fell out of step with the pleasant mood of manual labor.
He told the pesky gang member he didn’t need his help, paid him five hundred rupees, and left with the pistol tucked rakishly into his trousers.
Ayub now began practicing—first with bottles and then with pieces of wood, dead plants, mongooses, stray dogs. His aim got better; he grasped the wayward path of the shotgun bullet. He often chewed tobacco when he shot the pistol and sometimes swallowed an entire wad in excitement, experiencing a deep, watery high, the bullet magically standing still in its cape of smoke and the bottle exploding into shards moments later. There was no shortage of things to shoot in Azamgarh. It was a town made of trash.
As his aim got better, he laughed his high-pitched laugh. His parents, who were going blind from diabetes, groped around in the single room of the hut, worrying, not saying anything.