Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

I congratulated myself on the successful change of theme and mood by standing up. I stamped my feet and slapped at my sides to get the blood moving. Khader joined me and we began the short walk back to the camp, blowing warmth into our frozen hands.

"This is a strange light, speaking about light," I puffed. "The sun shines, but it's a cold sun. There's no warmth in it, and you feel stranded between the cold sun and the even colder shadows."

"Beached there in tangles of flicker..." Khader quoted, and I snapped my head around so quickly that I felt a twinge of pain in my neck.

"What did you say?"

"It was a quote," Khader replied slowly, sensing how important it was to me. "It is a line from a poem." I pulled my wallet from my pocket, reached into it, and took out a folded paper. The page was so creased and rubbed by wear that when I opened it the fold-lines showed gaps and tears. It was Karla's poem: the one I'd copied from her journal, two years before, when I went to her apartment with Tariq on the Night of the Wild Dogs. I'd carried it with me ever since. In Arthur Road Prison the officers had taken the page from me and torn it into pieces. When Vikram bribed my way out of the prison I wrote it out again from memory, and I carried it with me every day, everywhere I went. Karla's poem.

"This poem," I said excitedly, holding the tattered, fluttering sheet out for him to see. "It was written by a woman. A woman named Karla Saaranen. The woman you sent to Gupta-ji's place with Nazeer to... to get me out of there. I'm amazed that you know it. It's incredible."

"No, Lin," he answered evenly. "The poem was written by a Sufi poet named Sadiq Khan. I know his poems by heart, many of them.

He is my favourite poet. And he is Karla's favourite poet also."

The words were ice around my heart.

"Karla's favourite poet?"

"I do believe so."

"Just how well... how well do you know Karla?"

"I know her very well."

"I thought... I thought you met her when you got me out of Gupta's. She said... I mean, I thought she said that was when she met you."

"No, Lin, that is not correct. I have known Karla for years. She works for me. Or at least, she works for Abdul Ghani, and Ghani works for me. But she must have told you about it, didn't she?

Didn't you know this? I am very surprised. I was sure that Karla would have talked to you about me. Certainly, I have talked to her about you, many times."

My mind was like the screaming jets that had screeched over us in the dark ravine: all noise and black fears. What had Karla said as we lay together, struggling against sleep, after fighting the cholera epidemic? I was on a plane, and I met a businessman, an Indian businessman, and my life changed forever... Was that Abdul Ghani? Is that what she meant? Why hadn't I asked her more about her work? Why didn't she tell me about it? And what did she do for Abdul Ghani?

"What does she do for you-for Abdul?"

"Many things. She has many skills." "I know about her skills," I growled at him angrily. "What does she do for you?"

"Among other things," Khader answered, slowly and precisely, "she finds useful and talented foreigners, such as you are. She finds people who can work for us, when we need them."

"What?" I asked, gasping out the word that wasn't really a question, and feeling as if pieces of myself-frozen pieces of my face and my heart-were falling splintered around me.

He began to speak again, but I cut him off quickly.

"Are you saying that Karla recruited me-for you?"

"Yes. She did. And I am very glad that she did."

The cold was suddenly inside me, running through my veins, and my eyes were made of snow. Khader kept walking, but when he noticed that I'd stopped, he halted. He was still smiling when he turned to face me. Khaled Ansari approached us at that instant, and clapped his hands together loudly.

"Khader! Lin!" he greeted us with the sad, small smile that I'd come to love. "I've made up my mind. I gave it some thought, Khaderji, just like you said, but I've decided to stay. At least for a while. Habib was here last night. The sentries saw him.

He's been doing so much crazy stuff-the things he's done to Russian prisoners, and even some of the Afghan prisoners near here on the Kandahar road in the last couple weeks are... well, it's grisly shit-and I'm hard to impress in that way. It's so weird, the men are going to do something about it. They're so spooked, they're gonna shoot him on sight. They're talking about hunting him down like a wild animal. I have to... I have to try to help him, somehow. I'm gonna stay, and try to find him, and try to talk him into coming back to Pakistan with me. So... you go on without me tonight, and I'll... I'll come through in a couple of weeks, on the next trip out. That's... that's it, I guess. That's... what I came to say."

There was a cold silence after the little speech. I stared at Khader, waiting for him to speak. I was angry, and I was afraid.

It was a special fear-the kind of arctic dread that only love can inspire. Khader stared back at my face, reading me. Khaled looked from one to the other of us, confused and concerned.

"What about the night I met you and Abdullah?" I asked, speaking through teeth clenched against the cold and the even colder fear that ripped through me like spasms of cramp.

"You forget," Khader Khan replied a little more sternly. His face was as dark and determined as my own. It never occurred to me then that he, too, was feeling deceived and betrayed. I'd forgotten about Karachi and the police raids. I'd forgotten that there was a traitor in his own circle, someone close to him, who'd tried to have him and me and the rest of us captured or killed. I never saw his grim detachment as anything but a cruel disregard for what I felt. "You met Abdullah a long time before the night that we met. You met him at the temple of the Standing Babas, isn't it true? He was there to look after Karla on that night. She did not know you well. She was not sure of you, not sure that she could trust you, in a place that she did not know.

She wanted someone there who could help her, if you had no good intention with her."

"He was her bodyguard..." I muttered, thinking she didn't trust me...

"Yes, Lin, he was, and a good one. I understand it that there was some violence, on that night. Abdullah did do something to save her-and perhaps to save you. Isn't that true? This was Abdullah's job, to protect the people for me. That is why I sent him to follow you when my nephew Tariq went to stay with you in the zhopadpatti. And on the very first night, he did help you to fight some wild dogs, isn't it true? And for the whole time that Tariq was with you, Abdullah was close to you, and to Tariq, just as I told him to be."

I wasn't listening. My mind was all angry arrows, whistling backward to a much earlier time and place. I was searching for Karla-for the Karla I knew and loved-but every moment with her began to give up its secret and its lie. I remembered the first time I'd met her, the first second, how she'd reached out to stop me from walking in front of the bus. It was on Arthur Bunder Road, on the corner near the Causeway, not far from the India Guest House. It was the heart of the tourist beat. Was she waiting there, hunting for foreigners like me, looking for useful recruits who could work for Khader when he needed them? Of course she was. I'd done it myself, in a way, when I'd lived in the slum. I'd loitered there, in the same place, looking for foreigners just off the plane who wanted to change money or buy some charras.

Nazeer walked up to join us. Ahmed Zadeh was a few paces behind him. They stood together with Khaderbhai and Khaled, facing me.

Nazeer screwed his face into a scowl, and scanned the sky from south to north, calculating the minutes before the snowstorm hit us. The packing for the return journey was complete and double-checked, and he was anxious to leave.