The two men talked for a while and then Ayub went home. He was light-headed from excitement, the heat, the wood fires at dusk, the mosquitoes, the angle at which the sunlight pushed dust motes into his room through a small window, making him think again of jail. Maybe the thing to do is to run away from Azamgarh right now, he thought. Before Zunaid tells the police. But the same strangling pleasant inertia, which had been his constant companion these past few months, took hold of him and the next day he returned to work at the farm. He was reminded, watching the farmers in the field, of the opening of his favorite novel, Raag Darbari, the first novel he’d read about his type of town, in which a man dressed in khadi hitches a ride on a truck on the way back to town and is mistaken for a CBI agent. Ayub felt that he too, with these conversations, had turned himself into an agent—an agent for an imaginary organization, yes, but one that, on the edge of this field, verging on madness, he could summon into existence just by thinking about it. And who was to say such an organization didn’t exist? There were thousands of groups trying to kill Modi—yes, one reason he had acted so quickly was because he was afraid of being beaten to it. Yet the presence of these groups gave him the confidence that this work would be completed—if not by him, then by someone else. There would be justice eventually. He didn’t feel alone. The field grew smaller. The branches of the trees seemed to reach out, brown and hard, carved with footholds. There are times in the day when every plant seems to breathe openly.
He had never hated anyone with the passion that he brought to his hatred of Modi. He’d often wondered why, tried to examine how this bearded fellow had infiltrated his imagination, and could only chalk it up to one thing: Modi’s arrogance. There had been so many killers in Indian history but none as unrepentant or shameless as this capitalist politician pig. None had operated in public view. And none seemed so above the law, so beloved by Hindus of all kinds—yes, he hated the Chief Minister because he represented the worst in Hindus, a belief in their own invincibility that always sprang up when they were doing well, making money hand over first, a belief that you could get away with anything if only you had money. Forget Modi: he hated money too, money of all kinds, stripes, and currencies. He hated what the country had become, a capitalist stooge of America. In his mind he carried an image of India’s pure precapitalist past: a water pump by a paddy field unreeling a stream of electrified water. Where this image had come from he didn’t know—he’d never actually seen it; all he’d seen was the trash of Azamgarh and the crush of Delhi, where all the garbage was generated. Still, the image was powerful, and Tara and he had discussed ways in which it could be achieved, how India could shake off the shackles of Western capitalism. But the economy was a large, inexorable machine. There seemed to be no way to turn it back. “Not till lots of people are miserable and poor,” she’d said.
“But the rich will never be miserable,” he’d said. “And they rule the country.”
Zunaid came and told Ayub that he had someone he wanted him to meet. It was Shockie.
CHAPTER 26
Shockie had been reluctant to meet Ayub; he had learned, from years of experience, that no one could be trusted when it came to the work of revolution.
So, when he met Ayub near Zunaid’s house, he asked Ayub basic questions about himself: his age, his birth place, his work background.
When he heard that Ayub had worked with inmates, people wrongly jailed for terrorist attacks, including the blast in 1996, he fell silent. “And you were doing this for free? Who was paying you?” Did Ayub know his friend Malik?
Ayub, meanwhile, was confused by Shockie. He must have been in his mid-or late thirties, but looked older: there were prominent worry lines on his forehead and something permanent-seeming about his small, black, tough mustache, as if it had been there from the beginning of time to assert his avuncular place in the world. His questions too, these worried, careful questions about money, were the questions of an uncle. Still, Ayub, who was used to being interviewed, said, “Sir, I worked for an NGO—they paid me. The condition in the jails is very bad, as you can imagine. There are no human rights.”
Shockie’s resolve, in the warm evening air, diminished. He’d waited so many years for news of Malik, for access to him—had even considered disguising himself and visiting him in jail—and now here was someone who had not only met Malik but also worked with him.
How would this fellow feel if he knew I was behind the blast? How would he respond? But this was the terrible thing about the profession—you could take credit for nothing. When blasts were mentioned, Shockie tried to clear his mind completely and respond with the mild shock of a civilian. He saw that he was on dangerous turf. “You will have to leave your family,” he said suddenly.
“Yes, sir.”
“No contact with your mother or father.” (He himself had never followed this rule, but that had been a different, less brutal time. The internationalization of terror, the increased scrutiny in the press, had changed everything.) “You can’t even know if they die. For you, they are dead from this moment.”
“Yes, sir,” Ayub said, surprised at how quickly the man’s tone had shifted, how he had gone from a harmless middle-aged uncle to a priest, delivering well-worn mantras and cleaning his nose occasionally by squeezing his nostrils with his fingers. He might have been stating the prayers for a marriage. There was something practical, nasal, and strict about it.
“You give up money, drinks, happiness. You give up everything. You’re ready for that?”
“Yes,” Ayub said.
Shockie paused, still testing him out. What was that expression on his face—that ready, watchful, but resigned expression?
“Why do you want to do this?” he asked him directly.
“To take revenge,” Ayub said.
“On who?” asked Shockie.
“On Modi,” said Ayub.
“For who?” said Shockie.
“For Muslims.”
“Why do you hate him so much?” Shockie asked. “He’s just a man.”
“He’s not a man; he’s a symbol.”