Narcopolis

The Russian he was supposed to meet was sitting alone in a lounge area near the rest rooms, an area designed for men or women who were waiting for their partners. And what were their partners doing? The skinny women and buff men he saw around him looked like they wasted no time on ordinary activities such as pissing and shitting. They took their time in the toilets and returned with sniffles and frozen smiles. The smile on his own face was genuine enough. He knew what he was looking at, a vast opportunity made up of many separate smaller opportunities. He tried not to let his excitement show as he negotiated with the Russian, a big man in a coat who never smiled. They did the deal right there at the table, Jamal handing the Russian the coke and the Russian giving him cash. Then the man said he was going to try a little taste. Did Jamal want some too? Jamal replied that he didn’t do coke because it wired him and if he wanted to be wired he preferred coffee, which was cheaper and more reliable. The Russian looked at him in surprise and said Jamal was probably right but it was a good idea to keep such opinions to himself, since he wouldn’t want the word to get out among his customers.

‘Are you Russian?’ Farheen asked the man.

‘Yes, Russian,’ he replied.

‘I never met a Russian before,’ Farheen told him.

‘I’m Boris,’ said the man, ‘like Boris Yeltsin, except I don’t drink so much.’

Farheen said she didn’t know who Boris Yeltsin was.

Boris said, ‘When I was growing up I watched Indian movies, Awara, Mera Naam Joker. I like Raj Kapoor.’

Farheen didn’t know who Raj Kapoor was, and said so.

Jamal smiled and said, ‘She’s never heard of those movies, she’s too young.’

The Russian didn’t smile. He said, ‘Young or old, you should know Raj Kapoor. He is great Indian artist.’

‘We have great actors too, have you heard of Dilip Kumar? Great, great, better than Raj Kapoor. You know Dilip Kumar’s real name? Guess.’

The Russian got up and gathered his cigarettes and cellphone and heavy silver lighter. He hesitated for a minute before he left the table.

‘Yusuf,’ Jamal shouted as the man shouldered his way through the crowd. ‘Yusuf Khan!’

*

Farheen was wearing jeans, because he’d asked her to, and her shoes were so high she was almost as tall as he. She said she wanted a drink, because that’s what people did when they went to a club, wasn’t it? She spoke as if she expected an argument. Get me a nice one, she said, pointing to a black woman in a dress, who held a pink cocktail in a long-stemmed glass. When he came back with Farheen’s drink, she took a sip and smiled her thanks. She looked at the lights on the ceiling, which turned from gold to blue, and she looked at the crowd of people around them, dancing, or moving where they stood. She asked if he felt bad about giving drugs to people who had never learned how to say no, who were paying for their own destruction. Jamal fixed her with a look. He said, Look around, these are my customers. Do you see any Muslims? She said, How do you know there are none here? Look at us, we don’t look Muslim but we are. This wasn’t strictly true. Jamal had started to grow his beard, though he still shaved his cheeks and upper lip. And though she wasn’t wearing a burkha, she was covered up, she was decent, which was more than could be said for the women around her, women of many colours and ages, who came alone and danced alone. They danced and watched themselves in the mirrors. Men bought them drinks and told them jokes. They spoke very little Hindi and some English, but they were fluent in unidentifiable other tongues.

‘There are no Muslims here,’ Jamal told her, ‘which means there’s nothing wrong in selling them drugs.’

Farheen laughed.

‘In fact,’ she said, ‘it’s your duty.’

*

He didn’t like to dance: it made him feel foolish. Come on, soldier, Farheen said, I’ll show you how. If he refused, she would have danced alone. So he let her lead him to the floor. The dance was crazy and beautiful, people of all races and classes, all moving to one beat. Some swayed as if they were too high to stand, others hardly moved, or they moved only their hips. The metallic light fell around him in washes. It was like being on a stage with nobody looking. He felt a woman’s breasts against his back, and other bodies against his hips and thighs. Then Farheen kissed him. She put her tongue in his mouth and her lips were cold and wet from the cocktail. They stood absolutely still for a moment, but she pulled away to shout in his ear. Dance, she said, dance or we die.

Chapter Three The Enfolding

I went back the next day and found Rashid in his room, sitting in his chair by the window with the prayer beads in his hands. I asked if he was feeling better.

‘I’ll never be good or better, I’m past the age for it. Now there’s only bad and worse.’

I said I had come to pay my respects.

Rashid said, ‘I’m an old man. I don’t want to talk about the old days.’ But he brought it up himself.