The Association of Small Bombs(14)
So now, back in his Manila flat, Yousef—invincible, a genius of terror, perhaps the greatest terrorist who ever lived—cooked a virulent soup of chemicals on the stove. Or no. He was cooking to get rid of the evidence. But as the chemicals vanished, huge clouds of smoke appeared and his comrades and he fled the apartment in fright, leaving behind chemistry books, canisters of fertilizer, passports, wires, Rough Rider condoms.
Yousef escaped to Pakistan but was arrested later in a hotel in Islamabad as he puffed his hair with gel and stuck explosives up the ass of a doll.
A genius of terror. Shockie’s heart pounded. He wanted to be like Yousef, the Kashmiri Yousef, but even Yousef, who had shocked America—who had almost toppled a building that seemed to snick heaven like a finger, who had tried to blow up jetliners over the Pacific and kill the Pope—even Yousef was fallible.
Shockie prayed as he attached the wires in the corroded belly of the car. Like so many rich people’s cars, it was poorly maintained.
He blew the dust from the machinery with his mouth and inhaled the rich petroleum blackness. He made the other two men stand with him as he risked his face.
The bomb did not explode during assembly. But afterwards he was tired; he had a headache and his arms hurt—more so than when he had violently tugged the scab of the petrol cap from the rump of the Maruti—and he stayed up all night on the bed of the spinsters, his head throbbing and the city mocking him with its million nocturnal honks, wondering: What will it be for? Am I ruining it by not sleeping? Will my nerves be too shot to pull off the blast?
They drove the car to the market the next evening. They were all bathed, and they had all gone to the mosque and prayed—even Shockie, who found prayer distasteful and feminine. They were in good clothes and disguised with thick spectacles and false mustaches (Meraj wore dark glasses, for contrast). If anyone asked them, they were to say they had come to buy clothes and gifts for their sister’s wedding. They’d even brought pictures of a woman in a fake marriage album (not one of Taukir’s sisters but a random pinup girl ripped from the walls of a seedy photography studio) to show how they were trying to buy wedding bangles that matched her dupatta.
Shockie, in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, had masturbated to this woman, completing the fantasy that had begun with the dhaba owner’s bride.
The market was packed—just as he had hoped. It was a Sunday. Driving carefully through the obstacle course of pedestrians and cyclists and thelas, they entered the central square of Lajpat Nagar Market—if you could call it a square. Encroachment had softened the sides and the corners of the market; there were buildings and shacks on all sides, and a park in the middle with a rusted fence and rubbish collecting on the brown mound where grass had once grown. Shockie was pleased with this choice of venue. He’d visited Lajpat Nagar on his previous trip to Delhi and had decided, with his friend Malik, that it would make an excellent target.
They parked the car in front of Shingar Dupatte, a women’s clothing shop.
Afire with nervous tics, they came out of the car. Shockie smoothed his hair, Meraj put on his dark glasses, and Taukir dusted off his tight black jeans.
Quite suddenly, a man appeared before them. “You can’t park here,” he said.
“Sir?” said Shockie.
“My son has to park his car here.” The man was the owner of Shingar Dupatte—a short bald fellow with a mustache and a granitic head that appeared to hold every shade of brown.
“And who’s your son—the king of Delhi?” Taukir asked.
“Come on, it’s OK,” Shockie said.
At first he was appalled that Taukir would risk searing himself into the man’s memory with an argument, but later he was grateful: Taukir had behaved as any rude Delhiite would, and besides, they were disguised.
Now, getting back into the car and reversing it, Shockie said, “Next time be quiet.” This was already the worst mission he’d ever been on, he decided; his mind swarmed with images of the police, of torture, of life coming to a sudden end in Delhi. The only way out was to park close enough to Shingar Dupatte so that the nosy, rude proprietor—and his son—were killed. “You guys get out now and I’ll park. That guy is going to come after us again and ask us to move.”
They did as he instructed, and Shockie maneuvered the car in front of a framing shop.
Within the shop, he caught sight of oil paintings of mountains—things yellowy and oozy with paint; a golden Ganesh; a Christ on a cross; a Rajasthani village woman. It was like a flashback a man might have as he dies, all the odd significant objects swirling into view over the heads of humming, commercially active humans.
He parked, jumped out, and walked away. He pressed a small jerry-rigged antenna in his hand and activated the timer, set to go off in five minutes. The proprietor of the framing shop looked at him but Shockie smiled and waved back—as if he were a regular customer—and the man, seated fatly behind a counter, one of those counters that have a money drawer, looked confused and then smiled and waved back.
Shockie walked away from the central square. “Don’t look; keep moving,” he told the other men as he came across them in an alley. After a while they made it to the main road.
But the market—the market was noisy in its normal way. There was no disruption, no blast, nothing. “Shit,” Shockie said. “But let’s wait.”