“That grave doesn’t belong to my mother,” he said.
Af-Laawe said, “Does a grave belong to the person in it, or to those claiming it with an authoritative apostrophe, as when someone says, ‘My mother’s grave’?”
Jeebleh wasn’t sure which Af-Laawe was getting wrong, his pronoun or where to place the apostrophe. Nor did he like Af-Laawe’s lip. But then what could he do about it, considering that there were two muscles who would kick him to death if he challenged him?
The woman came to him now, and towered above him. With her head inclined, her smile diffuse, she took his hand and led him to a mound that had collapsed on itself. And pointed at it. “Here she is!” She picked up a strip of zinc with his mother’s name recently inscribed in the hand of an autistic child. “Your mother’s here!” she said.
“My mother doesn’t belong in here!” he insisted.
With mouthy rudeness, Af-Laawe said, “She may not belong in the grave herself anymore, given her condition, but her bones do.”
One of the musclemen moved into Jeebleh’s field of vision, blocking it. He pretended to help Jeebleh to his feet, while his companion prodded Jeebleh sharply with the professional accuracy of a nurse giving an injection.
Jeebleh’s stomach turned, and he dropped deeper and deeper into nausea. He could not get up, and was so weak that he felt almost lifeless. By the time he managed to crawl closer to the mound and lay his head on it, the squeamishness had disabled his knees. Finally he fell, forehead first, as though he were dead.
PART 3
“. . Murderers and those who strike in malice,
as well as plunderers and robbers…
A man can set violent hands against
himself or his belongings….
Now fraud, that eats away at every conscience,
is practiced by a man against another
who trusts in him, or one who has no trust.”
(CANTO XI)
Who, even with untrammeled words and many
attempts at telling, even could recount
in full the blood and wounds that I now saw?
Each tongue that tried would certainly fall short
because the shallowness of both our speech
and intellect cannot contain so much.
(CANTO XXVIII)
24
HOW DID HE GET HERE?
He was in a restaurant, sitting by himself at a table, and before him was a cup of tea — which, he found by dipping in his finger and touching it to his lower lip, was highly sugared. There was a huge gap in his memory. He couldn’t recall what had happened between the moment his knees gave way, after the jab from the muscleman-cum-medico, and now.
He studied the curious faces surrounding him and concluded that he didn’t know who they were, and hadn’t the slightest idea how or why he had been brought to this place, or by whom. His memory had run out, abandoning him at the mound. But in his mind he replayed Af-Laawe’s rude remarks, which he hoped Af-Laawe would pay for sooner rather than later. Jeebleh remembered the supposed housekeeper pointing at a grave, her forefinger extended, and saying, “Your mother’s here!” Then Af-Laawe’s sass. . and then what? Did the jab come before or after he had had enough of Af-Laawe’s lip and the woman’s lies?
The mystery was now cast in a framed moment that was difficult to define. He had been on his knees when he felt the jab; he had smelled something noxious, although he couldn’t determine its nature. He had seen the shadowy presence of the muscleman in the corner of his vision, then a second muscleman’s hand insinuating itself into the lamp of his consciousness, making him go out as quickly as the flames of a fire extinguished with a miasmic liquid. He had heard the voices of the two men in shades, before a needle pricking him on the upper thigh interfered with his thinking. Now he felt his stomach to make sure that he hadn’t undergone a surgery in which an organ of his had been removed. He touched where the needle had prodded, and it ached. He hoped he wasn’t developing an exaggerated sense of paranoia, in which, like Shanta, he would detect the hand of the cartel everywhere.
What would become of him now, he wondered, as he listened to a miscellany of male voices. Af-Laawe was somewhere near, he was sure. And he was damned if he knew the purpose to all this, or where his new reality began and where it might end. But why did “they” have to resort to these crude methods?
He heard someone calling his name.
TALL, BUCKTOOTHED, THIN AS A CANE, FAAHIYE STOOD BEFORE HIM. DISSOLVING into the shadow he cast, he was as elusive as a mirror reflected in the image of its own shiftiness. Jeebleh stared up at him, and he wouldn’t take a seat. Jeebleh focused on the toothpick in the corner of Faahiye’s mouth, which his tongue was busying itself with, moving it here and there, back and forth. He had the drawn-in cheeks of a man of advanced age. Jeebleh made sure that he was seeing no visions. He thought it safe to assume that Faahiye, who had come out of hiding, should be the one to say something first.
And that was how it came to be. Faahiye took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, “I’m surprised you recognize me.”
“Where am I?” asked Jeebleh.
“I was told you’d be here.”
“Who told you that I’d be here?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose that particular detail.”
Jeebleh said, “Sit down anyhow,” and Faahiye did so. Then, because they hurt, Jeebleh closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then exhaled, counting to thirty, and praying that he wasn’t hallucinating, seeing things and thinking weird thoughts at this most crucial moment of his visit. Faahiye sat close to him, their thighs touching, Jeebleh’s itching. How he wished he could scratch the spot! But uncertain what to make of Faahiye, he did not dare.
“We’ve all been through it!” Faahiye said.
“We’ve all been jabbed, have we?”
“Jabbed?” Faahiye asked.
“Poisoned!”
“I meant that all of us who’ve lived in this civil war have become someone other than ourselves for brief periods of time, in which we’ve entertained moments of doubt, or dropped into a deep well of despair. Have you too become someone other, in spite of yourself?”
Listening to Faahiye was working positively on him, and he was managing to take it easy, despite himself. Faahiye’s words had taken him to a comfort zone, where he didn’t mind dwelling for as long as they were in the teahouse. Jeebleh would have been the first to admit that it would be unwise to meet up with Af-Laawe, after he had been told about him; Af-Laawe would put him through a grinder, he suspected. But now he was looking at the brighter side of things: at least he had gotten to meet Faahiye, never mind his dissipated condition. Who knows, he might even get to meet Raasta and take her home shortly, back to Shanta and Bile!
“We’ve all learned to be someone other than ourselves, and have relaxed ourselves into accepting our perverse condition,” Faahiye was saying. “This makes living easier, less tedious.”
Jeebleh felt as naked as a cat with singed hair. Were Af-Laawe and his cohorts making him jump through hoops of humiliation in order to warn him that worse things were to come unless he stopped being a nuisance? His tongue was now in a tangle, in part because he didn’t know whether it was wise to confide in Faahiye. After all, if trusting Af-Laawe had gotten him to where he was now, jabbed and in pain, then where would trusting Faahiye lead him?
“I know I am someone other than myself,” Faahiye said. “At times it’s pretty hard to figure out who I am, especially when I am by myself. This gets a lot more challenging when I am with others, who are themselves others!”