The Association of Small Bombs(80)

Ayub, left alone in the ward, began to palpitate and lose his nerve. He’d always had a weakness for mothers, feared their telepathic abilities and felt that no matter what he said, Mrs. Ahmed would see through it. “She knows,” he thought. “That’s why she wasn’t smiling, and that’s why she came—out of curiosity.”

Before, for all his planning, he was an innocent, pure potentiality. Now, he was a murderer and a terrorist—worst of all, he was injured and in pain, which prevented him from thinking clearly about what he’d done. Why had the bomb gone off so quickly? He’d been told Shockie was the greatest bomb maker of his time.

Thinking of Shockie, he got inexplicably angry for a second and clutched the rusted nail.

Then he turned over on the bed. He knew that the people around him were here because of his efforts, that their wounds and tears were his doing—he’d heard the fat man who’d been talking on the mobile in the market moaning—but for that reason, it was satisfying that he too was hurt. He hadn’t exempted himself from the suffering he’d caused others.

The doctor had told him he would make it out with a slight limp if he did the right exercises. Ayub had smiled through his comments, aware of having hardened. So this is how it feels to be bad. Cold and sober.

Riding the flare of this feeling now, he got out of bed and started walking away. “Where are you going?” a nurse asked, calming another patient, but when he put up his pinky in the universal salute of wishing to pee, she looked away and he kept trudging. He came to a door that led out of the ward, amazed at the blindness of the doctors and the patients—a blindness like that of the shoppers he’d killed. He slipped out of the main entrance into the shameless afternoon light.

Buses, angry and green and gray, with oleaginous windows and robotic grimacing grilles, were blowing lightly down the road.

Originally, he was supposed to meet Shockie at the park after the bombing; he wondered how Shockie had responded when he, Ayub, hadn’t shown up. Did they think I was a double agent, that I went to the police? But, then, the bomb did go off—surely they heard about that. Would a double agent really set off a bomb?

The bomb had only killed fifteen and injured thirty. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it, except to say to himself, “It’s Indian propaganda. It was much bigger.”

Ayub passed a phalanx of dozing ambulances. But when he got to the lip of the hospital complex and hailed a rickshaw, he realized, with the despair of a man who has almost escaped, that he had no money. Someone had taken it from his pocket when he was lying in the mud, bleeding.



Mansoor came again in a few hours with his father, who fussed over Ayub and had him moved to a private room (Ayub had come back to the ward). “They’ve started making arrests already,” Sharif told Ayub. “The Indian Mujahideen has taken credit.” It pained Sharif to have to talk about yet another group of Muslims responsible for terror. He really did feel, as they moved Ayub to his room, that the world was closing in on him and his family, that it was bad luck to be back here again.

Ayub was frightened to hear about the arrests. “Did they say who did it?”

“You think there’s a reason?” Sharif said, mishearing. “They hate everyone, especially themselves.”

“You’ll appreciate this, uncle,” Ayub said, settling into his new bed, now echoing Mansoor’s statement to his mother. “I fought for the rights of people arrested for terror but I’ve never been on this side.” Suddenly, seeing his body, the whole injured extent of it, he was comforted. “One understands how the victims must feel about terrorists. They’re looking for revenge. They don’t want to listen to reason. What happened is so irrational that it makes people irrational.”

“Which is exactly what the terrorists want,” Sharif said. “How’s your eye?”

“It’s OK, uncle. One eye is nothing.”

“Better than the brain, I suppose.” He smiled weakly, saying the wrong thing as usual. “I should have had you start work that day itself—then you wouldn’t have had time to do shopping.” Sharif smiled again.

“I only went because I had to buy gifts for my family. They all like brands. Maybe this is a lesson for me not to buy brands,” he said, smiling.

“My missus called your parents,” Sharif said, remembering what he’d been told to say. “They said they’re coming. I made a booking for them through my travel agent.” He didn’t mention how surprised Mr. and Mrs. Azmi had been to hear their son was in Delhi, how they hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

“They’re both becoming blind,” Ayub said sadly, his eyes curdling with tears. “They won’t be able to come.”

“They didn’t tell me that.”

“They’re very polite.”

Seeing them now in his mind’s eye—seeing the disappointment they would feel if they ever discovered he was a terrorist, his heart crumpled. I hope the train crashes and they die happily, he thought.



When Sharif went out to make a call—he was always making calls on his mobile—Ayub said to Mansoor, “I have to tell you something. Close the door for a minute.”

Mansoor lowered his big head and shut the door.

Ayub said, “I’m going to be arrested.”