Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

Nazeer interrupted him, impatient with the English that he despised. I thought I understood what he'd said, and I translated his words, looking to Sanjay for confirmation that my guess was correct.

"Khader told Nazeer to keep the truth about Abdul Ghani a secret.

He said that if anything happened to him in the war, Nazeer was to return to Bombay and avenge him. Was that it?"

"Yeah," Sanjay wagged his head. "You got it. And after we did that, we had to fix the rest of the guys who were on Ghani's side. There's none of them left now. They're all dead, or they got the fuck out of Bombay."

"Which brings us to the point," Salman smiled. It was a rare smile, but a good one: a tired man's smile; an unhappy man's smile; a tough man's smile. His long face was a little lopsided with one eye lower than the other by the thickness of a finger, a break in his nose that had settled crookedly, and a mouth that hitched in one corner where a fist had split the lip and a suture had pulled the skin too tightly. His short hair formed a perfectly round hairline on his brow like a dark halo that pressed down hard on his slightly jugged ears. "We want you to run the passports for a while. Krishna and Villu are very insistent. They're a little..."

"They're freaked out of their fuckin' brains," Sanjay cut in.

"They're scared stupid because guys were getting chopped all over Bombay-starting with Ghani while they were right there in the fuckin' cellar. Now the war's over, and we won, but they're still scared. We can't afford to lose them, Lin. We want you to work with them, and settle them down, like. They're asking about you all the time, and they want you to work with them. They like you, man."

I looked at each of them in turn, and settled my eyes on Nazeer.

If my understanding was correct, it was a tempting offer. The victorious Khader faction had reformed the local mafia council under old Sobhan Mahmoud. Nazeer had become a full member of the council, as had Mahmoud Melbaaf. The others included Sanjay and Salman, Farid, and three other Bombay-born dons. All of the last six spoke Marathi every bit as well as they spoke Hindi or English. That gave me a unique and very significant point of contact with them because I was the only gora any of them knew who could speak Marathi. I was the only gora any of them knew who'd been leg ironed at Arthur Road Prison. And I was one of the very few men, brown or white, who'd survived Khader's war. They liked me. They trusted me. They saw me as a valuable asset. The gangster war was over. In the new Pax Mafia that ruled their part of the city, fortunes could be made. And I needed the money. I'd been living on my savings, and I was almost broke.

"What exactly did you have in mind?" I asked Nazeer, knowing that Sanjay would reply.

"You run the books, the stamps, all the passport stuff, and the licences, permits, and credit cards," he answered quickly. "You get complete control. Just the way it was with Ghani. No fuckin' problem. Whatever you need, you get it. You take a piece of that action-I'm thinkin' about 5 per cent, but we can talk about that if you don't think it's enough, yaar."

"And you can visit the council whenever you want," Salman added.

"Sort of an observer status, if you get my meaning. What do you say?"

"You'd have to move the operation from Ghani's basement," I said quietly. "I'd never feel happy about working there, and I'm not surprised the place has got Villu and Krishna spooked."

"No problem," Sanjay laughed, slapping the table. "We're going to sell the place anyway. You know, Lin-brother, that fat fuck Ghani put the two big houses-his own one and the place next door-in his brother-in-law's name. Nothin' wrong with that-fuck, man, we all do that. But they're worth fuckin' crores, Lin. They're fuckin' mansions, baba. And then, after we sliced and diced the fat fuck, his brother-in-law decides he doesn't want to sign the places over to us. Then he gets tough, and starts talking lawyers and police. So we had to tie him up over a big dubba of acid, yaar. Then he's not tough any more. Then he can't wait to sign the places over to us. We sent Farid to do the job. He took care of it. But he got so fucked up, yaar, with the disrespect Ghani's brother-in-law showed us, and he was real angry with the madachudh for making him set up the acid barrel and all. He likes to keep things simple, our brother Farid. The whole hanging-the cunt-up-over-the-acid thing, it was all a bit-what did you call it, Salman? What was the word?"

"Tawdry," Salman suggested.

"Yeah. Taw-fuckin-dry, the whole thing. Farid, he likes to get respect, or cut to the chase and gun the motherfucker down, like.

So, angry as he is, he takes the brother-in-law's own house as well-makes him sign over his own house, just for being such a big madachudh about Ghani's houses. So now he's got nothing, that guy, and we got three houses on the market instead of one."

"It's a vicious and bloodthirsty racket, that property business,"

Salman concluded with a wry smile. "I'm moving us into it as soon as I can. We're taking over one of the big agencies. I've got Farid working on it. Okay, Lin, if you don't want to work at Ghani's place, where would you like us to set it up for you?"

"I like Tardeo," I suggested. "Somewhere near Haji Ali."

"Why Tardeo?" Sanjay asked.

"I like Tardeo. It's clean... and it's quiet. And it's near Haji Ali. I like Haji Ali. I've got kind of a sentimental connection to the place."

"Thik hain, Lin," Salman agreed. "Tardeo it is. We'll tell Farid to start looking right away. Anything else?"

"I'll need a couple of runners-guys I can trust. I'd like to pick my own men."

"Who've you got in mind?" Sanjay asked.

"You don't know them. They're outside guys. But they're both good men. Johnny Cigar and Kishore. I trust them, and I know I can rely on them."

Sanjay and Salman exchanged a glance and looked to Nazeer. He nodded.

"No problem," Salman said. "Is that it?"

"One more thing," I added, turning to Nazeer. "I want Nazeer as my contact on the council. If there's any problem, for any reason, I want to deal with Nazeer first."

Nazeer nodded again, favouring me with a little smile deep in his eyes.

I shook hands with each man in turn to seal the deal. The exchange was a little more formal and solemn than I'd expected it to be, and I had to clench my jaw to stifle a laugh. And those attitudes, their gravitas and my recusant impulse to laugh, registered the difference between us. For all that I liked Salman, Sanjay, and the others-and the truth was that I loved Nazeer, and owed him my life-the mafia was, for me, a means to an end and not an end in itself. For them, the mafia was a family, an infrangible bond that held them from minute to minute and all the way to the dying breath. Their solemnity expressed that kin-sacred obligation from eye to eye and hand to hand, but I knew they never believed it was like that for me.

They took me in and worked with me-the white guy, the wild gora who went to the war with Abdel Khader Khan-but they expected me to leave them, sooner or later, and return to the other world of my memory and my blood.

I didn't think that, and I didn't expect it, because I'd burned all the bridges that might've led me home. And although I had to stop myself from laughing at the earnestness of the little ceremony, the handshake had, in fact, formally inducted me into the ranks of professional criminals. Until that moment, the crimes I'd committed had been in the service of Khader Khan. As difficult as it is for anyone outside that world to understand, there was a sense in which I'd been able to say, with sincerity, that I'd committed them for love of him: for my own safety, certainly; but, beyond every other reason, for the father's love I'd craved from him. With Khader gone, I could've made the break completely. I could've gone... almost anywhere. I could've done ... something else. But I didn't. I joined my fate to theirs and became a gangster for nothing more than the money, and the power, and the protection that their brotherhood promised.