Between the Assassinations Read Free Page B

around the benches. He came to the boy with quick steps.
    “Did you get the number?”
    Ziauddin nodded.
    But after the two of them had sat down, he asked, “What’re you making me do these things for?”
    The Pathan leaned all the way across the table with his weak arm and tried to touch Ziauddin’s hair.
    “At last you ask. At last.” He smiled.
    The guesthouse proprietor, with the beard like the moon, came out without prompting; he put two cups of tea down on the table, then stepped back and rubbed his palms and smiled. The Pathan dismissed him with a movement of his head. He sipped his tea; Ziauddin did not touch his.
    “Do you know where those trains full of soldiers and marked with red crosses are going?”
    Ziauddin shook his head.
    “Towards Calicut.”
    The stranger brought his face closer. The boy saw things he had not seen before: scars on the Pathan’s nose and cheeks, and a small tear in his left ear.
    “The Indian army is setting up a base somewhere between Kittur and Calicut. For one reason and one reason only—” He held up a thick finger. “To do to the Muslims of South India what they are doing to Muslims in Kashmir.”
    Ziauddin looked down at the tea. A rippled skin of milk fat was congealing on its surface.
    “I’m a Muslim,” he said. “The son of a Muslim too.”
    “Exactly. Exactly.” The foreigner’s thick fingers covered the surface of the teacup. “Now listen: Each time you watch the trains, there will be a little reward for you. Mind—it won’t always be five rupees, but it will be something. A Pathan takes care of other Pathans. It’s simple work. I am here to do the hard work. You’ll—”
    Ziauddin said, “I’m not well. I can’t do it tomorrow.”
    The foreigner thought about this, and then said, “You are lying to me. May I ask why?”
    A finger passed over a pair of vitiligo-discolored lips. “I’m a Muslim. The son of a Muslim too.”
    “There are fifty thousand Muslims in this town.” The foreigner’s voice crackled with irritation. “Every one of them seethes. Every one of them is ready for action. I was only offering this job to you out of pity. Because I see what the Indians have done to you. Otherwise I would have offered the job to any of these other fifty thousand fellows.”
    Ziauddin kicked back his chair and stood up. “Then get one of those fifty thousand fellows to do it.”
    Outside the compound of the guesthouse, he turned around. The Pathan was looking at him; he spoke in a soft voice.
    “Is this any way to repay me, little Pathan?”
    Ziauddin said nothing. He looked down at the ground. His big toe slowly scratched a figure into the earth: a large circle. He sucked in fresh air, and released a hoarse, wordless hiss.
    Then he ran. He ran out of the hotel, ran around the train station to the Hindu side, ran all the way to Ramanna Shetty’s tea shop, and then ran around the back of the shop and into the blue tent where the boys lived. There he sat with his mottled lips pressed together and his fingers laced tightly around his knees.
    “What’s got into you?” the other boys asked. “You can’t stay here, you know. Shetty will throw you out.” They hid him there that night for old times’ sake. When they woke up he was gone. Later in the day he was once again seen at the railway station, fighting with his customers and shouting at them:
    “— don’t do hanky-panky!”

HOW THE TOWN IS LAID OUT:
     
    In the geographical center of Kittur stands the peeling stucco façade of Angel Talkies, a pornographic cinema theater; regrettably, when the townsfolk give directions, they use Angel Talkies as a reference point. The cinema lies halfway down Umbrella Street, the heart of the commercial district. A significant chunk of Kittur’s economy consists of the manufacture of hand-rolled beedis; no wonder, then, that the tallest building in town is the Engineer Beedi Building on Umbrella Street, owned by Mabroor Engineer, reputed to be the