The Association of Small Bombs(71)
On the day of the blast, Ayub went to the local mosque and prayed, worrying the entire time that he was being noticed. He wanted to phone his parents, but he’d been expressly forbidden from making contact. He was to play it safe, treat it like any other day, and for this reason, after he’d prayed and the sun was up and the day had begun in its thousand polluted particularities, he called Mansoor and told him that he had thought about it some more and he would like to talk to his father about the job after all.
“OK, boss,” Mansoor said, his heart leaping at how far his friend had sunk. If Ayub worked for his father, then he was truly not competition anymore; he had been removed from the nervy world of activism. “Just remember, he’s a little brusque sometimes. He shouts at people who work for him but he’s well meaning. And because of the court case, I’m not sure how much he’ll be able to pay you.” Actually the case was beginning to go well. After a year of threatening and frothing and refusing to show up for hearings, the Sahnis had phoned Sharif the other day and asked if he would consider settling out of court. At first, Sharif, injured and doubly cautious, refused to engage with them. “How do we know it’s not a trick?” he asked Afsheen. “Last time we trusted them you know what happened. And this must mean we’re winning—that they’re coming to us with their tails between their legs. No. I don’t want to talk to them. Let them spend their money on the case.”
“You’re spending your money too,” Afsheen said. “We should at least talk to them.”
“What, so you can accuse me of being pushy? I don’t want to. I want to follow the law of the land this time.”
But he was only being petulant, both Afsheen and Mansoor knew. He would come around eventually. He was famous for always saying no and then coming around. So the family was in a good mood when Ayub called.
“Tell him to come today itself,” Sharif said when Mansoor informed him about Ayub’s request. Even he, Sharif, could barely suppress his good mood.
How guilty he’d felt in the past few months! Guilty about having made such a big mistake with the family savings and guilty about not letting Mansoor return to the U.S. Actually, the reasons for making Mansoor stay were not only financial. Had they wished to continue his education abroad, they would have found a way—Sharif had enough goodwill with his fellow Muslim businessmen to take loans—no, he’d kept Mansoor back for the sake of his wife. Though she had always been eager for her son to study in the U.S., she’d become distraught after his departure, and this despairing state had been exacerbated by the news that Muslims were being targeted and mistreated in the U.S. “But he’s on the West Coast,” he said. “And on a campus what can happen?” To which his wife had responded by finding a clipping in a newspaper of a Muslim student beaten up in Berkeley. “It’s one incident,” he said, though he knew he was losing the debate.
Over time, though, he had begun to regret sending Mansoor to the U.S. He had one son. He’d almost died at the age of twelve—suffered a trauma few people experience in their lifetimes. Why set out to lose him again? So, when Mansoor came back quite suddenly one winter, he thought of ways to broach the subject with him, considered (to use the language of consulting) presenting him with a package of incentives to stay. The unfolding of the property drama was propitious in at least one way, then: he could act as if he were leaning on his son, as if he needed his help in this difficult emotional and financial time—oh, it was underhanded, opportunistic; he knew that nothing came of such behavior, but what could he do? He didn’t feel guilty except late at night when he feared he might be punished in some exceptional way for keeping his son home: Mansoor might die in a car crash, or some other tragedy more obviously native to India rather than the U.S. Twenty-five years of marriage and Afsheen and her hypochondria have rubbed off on me! And he banished the thought from his head and tried, in the way he knew best, to be close to his son, squeezing his shoulders, mussing his hair, hearing him talk. Unlike his wife, he had no desire to interfere in Mansoor’s development; he felt only that he should be present for the stages his son was passing through.
He considered Mansoor’s friendship with Ayub, a young intelligent boy from the provinces, another stage. “Send him over today itself,” he told his son. “I’m in the office all day. My meetings with the PearlPET people got canceled.”
When Ayub heard the news from Mansoor, he was overjoyed, and yawned with a weird, thrilling happiness. Which terrorist interviews for a job on the day he sets off a bomb? He left the hotel in a DTC bus, drowsing in the mottled sunlit look of the city. It was early afternoon and it appeared that afternoon might never end. Everyone dropped beneath trees or awnings, the bus was puffed full with people like a patila of rice, young men hung out of every opening, and God only knew how they were holding the hot metal—instinctively, Ayub remembered moments spent on swings as a child when he’d come to Delhi on visits to see relatives. These swings were among the most exotic things about Delhi—entire structures made for play! Nothing of the sort existed in Azamgarh, even in those days when the buildings outnumbered the mountains of trash and slush. And yet, when he remembered the swings and the playgrounds of Children’s Park, with their rectangular rusted ladderlike fixtures, what he recalled was the feeling of burning metal against his skin and a lacerating jolt of static that sent him leaping off the jungle gym. The bus lurched like a person weighed down with bags. The muscles of the people in the vehicle were aligned, rippling in unison.