Despite the fact that he had almost given himself up for arrest at the rally, he had a total fear of solitary confinement, believed it would absolutely break him. He was a person who thrived on company, who desired camaraderie, even in its lowest, most base form; he felt that just seeing other people, no matter the circumstances, even if the people were enemies, filled you with health, gave you a reason to live (we are monkeys). Without other faces it would be over; he’d be thrown down the well of madness.
In the forest now, he prayed. They were all delivering their evening prayers—Tauqeer carried a stopwatch so they could pray at the exact time every day for the exact duration. Please, God, spare me if I end up there, Ayub muttered, pressing his forehead against the root of a tree. Give me an infection. Gangrene. Put ice and bacteria in my chest. Let me go off, like a switch. I know what I am doing is wrong, but know that this mistake was made in the spirit of goodness, sacrificing short-term happiness for long-term change, out of a desire to establish your empire on earth. (He had never stated it like this before; it sounded too grandiose, but not when said directly to God.) Most men think in years and days. Allow a few of us to think in eons. Spare us.
Soon after, Ayub’s talent for speaking was discovered. He lectured the other revolutionaries on world history, American politics, Marxism, concurrent events in Bosnia and Chechnya. But he could never grip them in quite the way he had gripped the members of Peace For All. These were men of action, impressed by action.
“What was Malik like before the blast?” Ayub asked Shockie one day, during a break in the afternoon in the forest. “You know, he never spoke once he went in. He was the only prisoner I dealt with who refused to speak. A man even made a documentary about him. When this filmmaker threatened to kill him, he shouted no. So it wasn’t that he couldn’t speak or hear.”
“Don’t tell me this,” Shockie said.
Ayub saw there were tears streaming down his face even as he kept his hands behind his back.
Was Malik his brother? An innocent sacrificed at the altar of terror?
Then Shockie told him the story. How they’d been best friends. How he’d been tortured at a young age by Indian soldiers. How Malik was part of the group but had renounced violence just before he was taken in. “That’s the sad part,” he said. “He had given up that way of life when he was arrested.”
“Why didn’t he speak?”
“I don’t know. He must have been trying to protect us. He used to love to talk.”
Watching Shockie cry, Ayub thought, Something is not right about this man. You can’t be a terrorist and be so emotional and unguarded.
“It’s normal,” Rafiq told him later. “He’s always been an emotional person. Used to cry freely about his mother, his brother, Kashmir—he lost everything, you know. But don’t underestimate how dangerous he is. When he’s making bombs he’s another person. He’s possessed. His personality when he’s making bombs has nothing to do with how he is normally. His speed changes too. He moves fast. It’s almost as if by crying and being slow, he’s saving up all his energies for the bomb.”
“I thought maybe he had recently lost someone.”
“Unlikely,” Rafiq said. “He has no one.”
“Who do you know in Delhi?” Tauqeer asked Ayub one night.
Tauqeer was sitting on his knees with the stopwatch open on his palm, watching the seconds go by till it was time to pray.
Ayub, on his knees next to him, gave him an informal list of people. “And there’s Mansoor Ahmed,” he said finally. “He was injured in the 1996 blast—the one that Shockie bhai carried out.” Then quickly, “I know him because of that, actually. He’s from a rich, well-known family; he came back from abroad and became very idealistic and wanted to help release the accused in that case. He’s a good friend. I didn’t want to tell Shockie bhai because I didn’t know how he would feel.” Now he realized there was something suspicious about protesting. “Generally, I never get to meet victims, especially Muslim ones.”
Tauqeer didn’t appear to notice the shifting registers of Ayub’s tone. “Can he be trusted?” he asked, the digital numbers on the stopwatch dissolving.
“Hundred percent.”
“Good. Might be good to stay with a victim.” Tauqeer looked at Ayub with the full skeletal form of his gaunt face, all the straight lines and dark indentations revealing themselves the way the sides of an octagonal satellite might shimmer melancholically in moonlight. “Because you’ll be going in five days.” There was something about the way he said it, with his whole testing gaze fixed on Ayub’s face, that made Ayub feel Tauqeer had reached the decision right then, that it was revenge for the crime of being handsome and eloquent.
Then they put their heads down and prayed.
CHAPTER 27