When his mother saw Ayub on TV minutes later, the news segment recycling itself, she shook her head sadly, but also, Mansoor felt, not urgently or empathetically enough.
“I’ve had a feeling that something bad was about to happen,” Afsheen said. “I’ve been having headaches.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Do his mother and father know?”
“I don’t know if anyone knows,” Mansoor said. “If he knows. I should go right away to the hospital. But it’s good that Vikas Uncle and Deepa Auntie are there. Poor fellow—he’s about to get married, and Papa said he came only two days ago to the office and was wondering why he hadn’t phoned.” He could understand now, in a way he couldn’t before, the point of Vikas Uncle and Deepa Auntie’s association. He hadn’t known they got involved this early in a bomb’s unraveling.
His mother insisted on coming along with him to the hospital and he didn’t refuse.
In the car, Mansoor, resting against the door, marveled at the oddness of the situation—the way in which life had come full circle, so that he was the well one now, with strong arms, a skullcap on his head, a prayer on his lips, visiting someone else who’d been injured in a blast. He must have met thousands of people over the course of his life and none, save for Tushar and Nakul, had been injured or killed in a blast. Ayub, as the poorest of his friends, was the most likely to end up in a public space overrun with flames.
Of course, by the time Mansoor got to the hospital, propelled forward in his car by the driver, the city comforting him with its exciting colors and music—the soundtrack to Godzilla on the stereo casting its own spell—he’d forgotten all about this circularity and was taken up with parking, finding the reception desk, moving to the right ward, behaving like an adult to the correct degree. His mother was beside him, covering her mouth, put off by the hospital.
“I was also in a hospital like this and I was OK,” Mansoor said, referring to his first visit to the hospital after the blast to get the shrapnel out of his arm.
“But you didn’t stay in the hospital, beta. We took you home. These days a lot of antibiotics are being dumped in our rivers—I’ve read drinking river water is like drinking Crocin. All the bacteria are resistant to medicine. You should cover your nose. Most people die in these hospitals from staph infections and pneumonia.”
You should have been a bloody doctor, he thought, but kept his mouth shut. He noticed people staring at him because of the skullcap and broadened his chest in defiance.
Passing through the ICU, they found Ayub lying on his own bed (most of the other victims were doubled or tripled, head to foot, on beds). “Ayub bhai,” Mansoor said.
Ayub smiled weakly from his metal bed and held out a bandaged hand. He did not actually feel so weak anymore but knew it was crucial to act the part. After the explosion, the pain, the loss of his left eye, which had sliced the world in half, tunneled it, he’d woken up in the hospital surprised and frightened—though he’d been told, during training, that such an outcome was far from extraordinary. Terrorists were always being blown up by their own bombs; if he were injured, he’d been told, he was to play a confused victim and supply a Hindu name.
Now he waited, in panic, for communication from Shockie or Tauqeer.
“Do you know they’re calling you Mr. Galgotia?” Mansoor asked. (Ayub had named himself after his favorite bookstore, Galgotia & Sons.)
“They’re confused about everything.” Ayub waved it away. “Hello, auntie.”
“Hello, beta,” she said. After ascertaining he hadn’t talked to his parents, she said, “Do you have your mummy and papa’s phone number? We should call them. Otherwise your pain’s under control? We can make arrangements to transfer you to a private room.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mansoor said. “The state you’re in, it might take you ten more days, and you’ll feel better if you have a room of your own.” He felt self-conscious offering this privilege to his Gandhian friend. He sighed. “I couldn’t believe you were in a blast, yaar. I thought I was imagining it. But your eloquence was undiminished.”
“It’s like what you had said. One remembers nothing.”