The men traveled to a forest outside the city of Hubli, in Karnataka—a dry, arid region famous for its sweets and reddish rotis. At this time Shockie’s position in the group became clearer to Ayub. He was a handler, an uncle who watched his reckless wards with his hands behind his back and eyes slightly absent till danger presented itself. Always dressed in a sleeveless sweater, whatever the weather, he wore dusty black pants with astonishingly sharp pleats. Later, Ayub would learn that Shockie, the son of a presswali, took a dandy’s pride, despite his thinning curly hair, in wearing ironed clothes. Shockie kept a distance as they practiced and conducted training drills in the forest. The practice, Ayub had imagined, would be easy, a way of killing time before the actual killing. But it was exhausting. He was made to run through the bramble and brush till he collapsed. He lay in a puddle of his own vomit. Screaming, he hung for an hour from a branch on a tree, a branch that refused to spare him by breaking off, despite his prayers. He was left in a forest with a compass and no Odomos or light and made to find his way back to the camp in the forest. How could such training be possibly useful in the jungles of urban India?
Later, when they were exhausted out of their skulls, sitting dead-eyed around a fire at night, the fire like a performer throwing its hands this way and that, someone would pass a packet of biscuits and the others would accept and a warm, happy communal feeling would engulf them. Shockie remained standing off to the side.
“What is his position?” Ayub asked one particular night after he’d proved himself during training, shooting straight while running. All that practice with his country pistol had paid off.
“That’s Shaukat Guru. You’ve heard of him,” Rafiq said.
Ayub was blank.
“Yaar, he’s one of the most dangerous men in India. He’s set off bombs in every Indian city.”
“And now he is—?” asked Ayub.
“He’s like a coach.”
Yes—that’s exactly what he looked like—a sports coach. He even had that bulky avuncular look under the sweater.
“He’s stopped doing it himself?” said Ayub.
“He’s sick,” Rafiq said. “Has a bad heart. Afraid of going phut with the bombs. Said he didn’t take care of himself when he was younger and that’s why he’s turned out this way. You know, back in the day, even for militants, they didn’t believe in training physically. You were given your guns, your equipment, and you had to figure it out yourself. Given all that, he did very well. One of his bombs in Delhi killed hundreds, they say. Do you know Lajpat Nagar market?”
Ayub froze. He nodded without betraying anything.
Shockie stood in the distance, swaddled and sentry-like in the fulminating firelight. Was it possible that Malik Aziz, Shockie’s friend in prison, was guilty? Ayub wondered. He had thought a lot about the silent inmate over the years and had come to the conclusion that, despite his brave silence, he must be suffering from a mental illness, that he had been arrested precisely because he was somewhat retarded. Talking to his relatives in Anantnag had confirmed this—though, being village people they were eager to agree with whatever Ayub said, and anyway they changed their minds on any subject a million times. Village people had no central conception of truth or time or even of other people’s memories; they always just played dumb when he told them they’d changed their stories. What if Malik was a terrorist after all? Ayub was seized by rage. If he were a terrorist it would have been helpful if the behnchod had admitted it and let other innocents go. Ayub had even tried to reason with him on trips to the prison. “Just say something. If you have done it, you can save the lives of others.” But nothing. Ayub really did think prison was the worst way to spend one’s life. This made the sacrifice he was making all the more grand, of course. If he were arrested, he would be able to help people inside, apply his leadership skills. Unless he were kept in isolation.