On the way back, she had been more exuberant than he had ever seen her, going on and on about how innovative modern Indian art was, too, with Muslim artists like Raza and Husain in the forefront. She had made him feel stupid because he had never heard of these so-called artists, not even the one with the same last name as his. In retaliation, he had listed for her all the things he had hated about India from his duty visits there. She was angry; he could tell that from the way her nostrils flared quickly, once. She said, “It’s easy to see the problems India has. But do you even know what America ’s problems are?”
He was stung into that hackneyed retort: if America had so many problems, she was welcome to go back home. Right now. She had turned her face to the car window. After a few minutes, her hand had sneaked up to her face to wipe away tears. Her fingertips came away kohl-streaked. He hadn’t felt like such a jerk in a long time, though he said far worse things to the girls he went out with. Perhaps it was that Farah didn’t carry tissues, which he translated as meaning that she had not expected him to hurt her. He stopped the car and apologized. She didn’t reply, but she gave a stiff little nod. The thin, curved rod of her collarbone reminded him, illogically, of a fledgling bird. That was when he started to fall in love.
Once when he was recovering from the flu, she had come into his room with a glass of barley water Ammi had boiled for him. She felt his forehead to check his temperature, and then touched the two-day growth of beard. “Looks good,” she said. His defenses eroded by fever, he was caught in the inflection of her voice. Something ancient in it reached out and reclaimed him. He stopped shaving after that. When at the dinner table his parents pelted him with questions, asking him why he wanted to do something so controversial now, when it was absolutely the wrong time, Farah lowered her eyes demurely. The beard had become a code between them. Even now, a year and a half after she had returned to India (India, where she was waiting for him to come to her), he had only to close his eyes to feel her cool, approving fingers on his jawbone.
“FOLKS, PLEASE, I NEED YOUR ATTENTION!”
Cameron’s voice crashed against Tariq’s eardrums, shattering the memory and jolting him back to the present. He found that he was kneeling with his forehead to the floor. He had gone through the entire evening prayer without paying attention to the sacred words. This realization, along with losing Farah all over again, made him angrier with the African American.
“We need to eat and drink a little,” Cameron was saying. “It’ll keep hunger and thirst from overwhelming us later on. If you come up to the counter and make a line, I’ll hand each of you your portion. It’ll be small, I’m afraid-”
Tariq jumped up from the prayer mat, banging his knee on a piece of furniture because the African American had turned off the big flashlight and was, instead, holding up the pencil light-another part of his strategy for controlling them.
“Why should you decide what we’re going to do?” he said. “Why should you order us around?” Even to his own ears, his voice bounced off the walls, too loud. He could see faces turning toward him in consternation. He bit his tongue to silence himself. They needed to realize that he was right. That way, he could have them on his side at the right time. “This is an Indian office. If anyone is to give orders, it should be the visa officer.”
But Mangalam, hair hanging limply over his eyebrows, shook his head. Even in the thin light, his face was haggard. He had been trying the phones every five minutes and had come to the conclusion that service was unlikely to be restored any time soon. He did not want the responsibility for all these lives. In his youth, before marriage and the diplomatic service had snared him with false promises of glamour and ease, he had been a student of chemistry. It seemed to him that each person in this room-and the young man in front of him was a prime example-was like a simmering test tube that might explode if the minutest amount of the wrong element were added to it. He did not want to be in the forefront when the blasts came. He was no hero. Wasn’t that why he had escaped to a post abroad rather than battling it out with Mrs. Mangalam?
“Mr. Cameron Grant here has been in the United States Army,” he said. “He is used to handling emergency situations. He knows better than I do what precautions must be taken. I vote that we follow his strategy and offer him every cooperation.” Other voices joined him, leaving Tariq stranded.
Tariq’s mouth filled with a rusty taste. Fool, he thought, glaring at Mangalam. The man was typical of the worst kind of Indian. Let a foreigner appear, even a dark-skinned one, and immediately they bowed and scraped in front of him. He weighed the cost of isobeying the African American. But first he needed allies. Patience, he told himself. After he ate and got the girl with the broken arm to fetch him more aspirin, he would undertake his own reconnaissance. Inshallah, maybe he would discover an opening the other man had missed, a possibility for escape. With God’s guidance, he might be the one to lead his companions to safety.
4
Cameron portioned out the perishables: a turkey sandwich; three hard-boiled eggs, accompanied by salt in a little twist of paper; and most of a salad that Mrs. Pritchett had left uneaten. He set out nine napkins (bon voyage! they proclaimed cruelly) and placed a few spinach leaves on each. He cut the eggs into nine pieces with a butter knife, trying hard to make the pieces the same size. He arranged them over the spinach, and sprinkled them with salt. He cut up the sandwich, too, but set it to the side because he wasn’t sure if everyone ate meat. His movements were meticulous and gentle, as though that might make a difference.
Malathi had emerged from Mr. Mangalam’s office after Lily, whose help Cameron had enlisted in this matter, had knocked on the door (but carefully, so she wouldn’t jar any fragile structures). “Get over it and come eat!” she had said sternly. Perhaps being rebuked by a teenager had made Malathi rethink her conduct. Or perhaps she did not trust Cameron to save her share of the food. She maintained a sulky countenance and kept her arms crossed over the go bears! sweatshirt she was wearing. Cameron, who had been reading up on India in preparation for his trip, understood that she felt embarrassed. It was ironic; the sweatshirt covered far more of her body than the midriff-baring blouse and thin sari had. But the ways in which cultural habits operated were mysterious.
Malathi’s petticoat, pale blue and edged with ruffles, looked rather elegant. She had lost her red bindi-it must have been a stick-on-and that, along with the stray hairs that had escaped from her bun to curl around her face, made her seem younger. Though she was still not speaking to Cameron, she had provided him-without being asked-with the napkins and the knife.
Cameron asked Lily to hand out the food-partly to keep her occupied. She had been unusually calm through events that must have been terrifying for a young person. Her hand, holding the flashlight as he bandaged her bleeding grandmother and set Uma’s broken bone, had been steady. She had asked only once if the old woman would be okay. But he felt a restlessness stirring under her skin, feelings she had tamped down. Some of the younger soldiers had been the same way. It was imperative to keep them occupied, to make them feel that they were central to the operation. Otherwise they could come unglued.
He’d put Lily in charge mostly because of Tariq’s accusations. He had felt a bitter laugh spiraling inside as he listened to him. So the boy thought he was the Establishment, trying to take over! He wanted to hold his arm up against Tariq’s, his far darker skin. He wanted to tell Tariq how it had been growing up with no money and skin that color in inner-city Los Angeles. Still, the accusations had cut into him.
Why did he feel guilty? Was it for having knocked Tariq out? For using violence when he should have found what the holy man called a better way? The word
To keep the memories away, Cameron checked the water supply: four pint-size bottles, none of them full. If he gave everyone a half cup-and how could he give less?-it would be gone.
Mr. Mangalam was taking tiny bites of his egg with his eyes closed, savoring every morsel. Cameron asked him if there was anything else to drink. Maybe something they had overlooked? A gallon jug in the back? Some leftover tea? Mr. Mangalam opened his eyes reluctantly and shook his head.
Then Malathi said, “There is a bathroom.” In the pencil light, her eyes gleamed, chips of unforgiving, as she pointed at Mangalam. “His.”
