I look at him, at his good-natured face, his chin streaked with motor oil. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you know what you’re talking about? Have you done this sort of thing before?’
He looks offended. ‘You doubt my qualifications?’
‘It’s a reasonable question. Don’t look at me like I’ve demanded a copy of your c.v.’
He pulls up his kurta, revealing the long, slow roll of his belly. Dead center, a scar the size and shape of a large bird dropping on a car window.
‘Polio vaccination?’ I ask.
He turns around and bends forward, revealing another, larger scar. ‘Polio vaccinations don’t leave exit wounds.’
I’m relieved. Impressed, even. Exaggerated or not, there’s obviously some truth behind his stories. But one thing still bothers me. Why does Murad Badshah need me if his plan is so good? ‘I don’t know anything about robbing boutiques. I don’t even know how to use a gun.’
‘You can walk into a boutique without arousing suspicion,’ Murad Badshah says. ‘If someone like my mechanics, or my drivers, or even myself showed up, the guard would watch him like a hawk. No offense, but you blend in with those boutique-going types. When you walk in and act like a customer, no one will look at you twice. Then you put a gun against the guard’s head, I come in, we generate some revenue and implement our exit strategy. No violence, no profanity, suitable for viewing by young children, and potentially extremely lucrative.’
‘Let’s do it,’ I say, extending my hand.
We shake. Surprisingly, I don’t feel the slightest tremor of doubt or worry. Must be the hairy. Which reminds me. ‘Do you have any more heroin?’
He’s quiet for a moment, looking at the rickshaw lying on its side. ‘My supplies have been cut off by the rain. The Jamrod-Lahore trucking circuit has been disrupted.’
Just my luck. ‘That’s bad news. I’m completely out.’
‘Don’t do any more. I’m being very serious now, old chap.’
‘How do you know I’ve done any?’
‘You look awful. Besides, I can see you’re on it right now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your eyes. And you keep scratching yourself.’
I have to remember not to do that. ‘Are you sure you don’t have any?’
‘I have a little. But I’m not going to give it to you.’
‘I don’t need your protection.’
He looks at me, surprised at the tone in my voice. Then he shakes his head.
As I wade back to my car, excitement builds inside me. I’m finally taking control of my life. I keep waiting for the fear to come, but it doesn’t. In fact, I’m walking taller, grinning, empowered by the knowledge that I’ve become dangerous, that I can do anything I want.
I get behind the wheel and point my finger at a passing Pajero.
Bang bang.
In the morning, the smell of something burning brings me out of the house and onto the street in search of its source. Neat mounds of rubbish in front of the neighbors’ houses smolder, trash smoke rising only to be beaten down by the rain.
I walk closer.
Definitely an odd smell. Maybe there’s plastic in the heaps. Or maybe the rain does something to the way they burn.
I kick one. Sodden refuse, half-burnt, flies off. Underneath it’s more dry, but I see no fire, no embers even. Just smoke coming out of fissures in the black heart of a trash pile, like steam from the cooled crust of lava.
The stench released is unbearable.
Like burning skin.
I walk inside. But the smell stays with me. On my shoes maybe, on my clothes. It lingers even after I shower.
Even after I dump my clothes in a tub of soapy water.
It clings to me. Wafts over the wall. Makes me want to retch.
I wish Murad Badshah would give me some more hairy. But we’re partners now, and I need him, so I never ask him for any when he comes by. Wouldn’t want to worry the old boy. Instead, we discuss strategy: the boutiques he’s scoped out, the gun he’s going to buy for me (the cost will be deducted from my share of our eventual take), when we’re going to do target practice, et cetera. I want to get on with it, but he keeps telling me to be patient, saying that planning is nine-tenths of the work.
‘I’m running out of things to sell,’ I tell him. ‘Yesterday someone bought my television.’
He adjusts himself inside the folds of his shalwar. ‘I wish I could help, old chap, but the rickshaw business has been dead since the tests. My customers are worried about food prices. They prefer to walk.’
Luckily, I have another idea where I can get some hairy. I’ve seen fellow aficionados chilling out in the old city near Badshahi Mosque.
I wait until late at night. The last prayer of the day has been prayed, and there isn’t much traffic in the area except for revelers and diners on their way to Heera Mandi. I park my car and walk down the street, the walls and minarets of the mosque towering up to my left. Scattered beneath them, sitting or staggering about in their moon shadows, are the very people I was hoping to meet: junkies.
I know I’m in the right place by the smell, and by the faces floating in the great womb of the drug, content to stay there until they die. Which shouldn’t be long, by the looks of some of them.
I hunt for someone to buy from, but he finds me before I find him.
‘Heroin?’ he asks from behind me.
I turn. He has awful teeth, a rotting smile. But he’s clean, unlike the addicts. Without waiting for an answer he puts out his hand and says, ‘One hundred.’
I give it to him, and he passes me something that I slip into my pocket.
‘How do you know I’m not a policeman?’ I ask him.
‘It doesn’t matter if you are. Same price, same price.’
I grin, but he seems to find nothing funny in what he’s said and wanders off, prowling around the addicts like a shepherd tending to his flock.
At home I’m apprehensive until I try the stuff, wondering if he’s sold me rat poison, but it turns out to be fine. I spend much of the night smoking and wake up exhausted the next evening. The curtains are wide open. A murder of crows flaps around the gray sky, coming to land one by one on power lines across the street. Somewhere a dog offers up a token bark, but they ignore him and go about their business in silence.
I know I need a meal, even if my stomach isn’t bothering to say it’s hungry, so I fry myself a couple of eggs and toast some bread over the gas flame. Sometimes hairy kills my appetite.
The other thing hairy kills is time, and that’s good, because when Murad Badshah isn’t visiting, which is most of the day, I have nothing to do. My only fear is that some relative or unwanted visitor will drop by and see me and my house in the state we’re in, which is filthy. So I keep the gate locked and don’t answer unless I hear the right open sesame: beep beep bee-bee-beep.
I’m getting good at moth badminton. I now play sitting down, and I try to be unpredictable so the moths will never know when it’s safe. Sometimes they whir by my face or even land on me and I leave them alone. At other times they fly at full velocity several feet away and I slam them with an extended forehand.
Here are my rules. I play left hand versus right hand, squash-style. That is, I switch hands whenever I try to hit a moth and fail to connect. At first, I gave a hand a point just for hitting a moth. Then I made it more difficult by adding the ‘ping’ test. According to the ‘ping’ test, a hand scores only when the moth makes a ‘ping’ as it’s struck by the racquet. If I hit a moth but there’s no ‘ping,’ it’s a let and the hand must ‘ping’ a moth on its next attempt, or the racquet switches to the opposing hand. Three factors come into play here: moth size (small moths rarely ‘ping’), stroke speed (only delicate swings produce ‘pings’), and racquet position (most ‘pings’ come from the racquet’s sweet spot). My racquet is made of wood, and I’ve managed to misplace its racquet press, so it’s beginning to warp in the humid monsoon air. As a result, finding the sweet spot and successfully ‘pinging’ becomes increasingly difficult. Scores drop rapidly, until a good evening ends with a tally of left four versus right two, or something like that. I’m right-handed, but my left seems to win more often than not, which pleases me, because I tend to sympathize with underdogs.