Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

Salar and Azim were street guys, who’d spent years on the lowest tier of Company condescension. While favoured sons died, they survived there in the shallows long enough to find higher positions in the new Khaled Company, desperate to replace its fallen soldiers.

They wore new Company clothes, and fidgeted with their new gold chains and bracelets, still finding the right place to carry the burden of obedience.

They’d known Karla since before my time with the Company, and liked her. They told her a scary-funny gangster story, because they knew she’d like it. She did, and responded with a scary-funny bad-girl story. They laughed, throwing their heads back, their gold necklaces catching the evening light.

‘So long, guys,’ I said. ‘ Allah hafiz .’

‘Where you going?’ Salar asked.

‘Back to the bike, on Mohammed Ali Road.’

‘We’ll walk with you. There’s a short cut, through here. We’ll show you.’

‘We’re going this way,’ I said. ‘Might do some more shopping. Allah hafiz .’

‘ Khuda hafiz ,’ Azim replied, waving goodbye.

I didn’t want to walk anywhere with Khaled Company men, or any soldiers, from any Company. I didn’t want to reminisce. I didn’t even want to remember.

For the thousandth time, I thought about leaving the Island City with Karla, and setting up somewhere else on a remote beach. You can’t escape the Company in the city. The Company is the city. You can only escape the Company in a place where there’s nothing left to own.

We walked through thin crowds, and we were about to cross the cobbled entrance to a side alley, when screams ripped silken peace, and people ran panicked from the entrance to the alleyway.

I glanced at Karla, wanting to be somewhere else. We both knew, or suspected, that Salar and Azim must be involved. We’d known them for years, but Company street wars weren’t my problem any more, and I was ready to leave.

Karla wasn’t: she urged me forward, and we edged closer to look. A man came staggering out of the alley and stumbled into me. It was Salar. He was bloody, all over. He’d been stabbed several times in the chest and stomach. He collapsed against me, and I held him in my arms.

I glanced past him and saw Azim, face down, and pulsing the last of his blood into the stones of the alley.

‘I’ll get a cab,’ Karla said, darting away.

Salar lifted his hand, with effort, and tugged at his gold neck-chain until it broke.

‘For my sister,’ he said, pressing it against me.

I put the chain in my pocket, and took a firm grip around his waist.

‘I can’t let you lie down, brother,’ I said. ‘I wish I could, but I’ll never get you up again in one piece, if I do. Karla’s got a taxi coming. Hold on, man.’

‘I’m done for, Lin. Leave me. Y’Allah , the pain!’

‘I don’t know how, but they missed your lungs, Salar. You’re still breathing air. You’re gonna make it, man. Just hold on.’

Karla arrived in two minutes, swinging the door of the taxi open. We bundled Salar into the back with me, while Karla gave instructions from the front seat.

I don’t know how much she paid the taxi driver, but he didn’t blink at the blood, and got us to GT Hospital in record time, driving against the flow of traffic.

At the hospital entrance, orderlies and nurses put Salar on a gurney, and wheeled him inside. I started to go with them into the hospital, but Karla stopped me.

‘You can’t go anywhere looking like that, my love,’ she said.

The shirt and T-shirt under my cut-off vest were smothered in blood. I took the vest off, but it only made the splash of blood across my T-shirt look worse.

‘To hell with it. We’ve gotta stay with Salar until the Company gets here. The guys who did this might try again, and we can’t call the cops to help.’

‘Just a minute,’ Karla said.

She stopped a lawyer, walking toward us briskly, his white court-collar stiff with presumptions and his client papers bunched against his arm to prevent escape.

‘I’ll give you ten thousand rupees for your jacket,’ Karla said, waving a fan of notes.

The lawyer looked at the money, squinted at her, and started emptying the pockets of his one-thousand-rupee jacket. Karla dressed me with crossed lapels, and a turned-up collar. She cleaned the smudges off, licking her fingers and wiping them over my face.

‘Let’s go see how Salar is doing,’ she said, leading me into the hospital.

We waited in a corridor, near the operating theatre. Black and white tiles, begging for a pattern unsquared, met grey-green walls showing low-tide marks from the hypnotic mops of tired cleaners. Function is servant or master, and wherever it rules, suffering sits in corridors purged of consideration.

‘Are you okay, kid?’

‘I’m good,’ she smiled. ‘You?’

‘I’m -’

Four young Khaled Company gangsters clamped along the corridor, pushing attitude. Their leader, Faaz-Shah, was a hothead, and for some reason it got hotter when he saw me.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he demanded, stopping a few paces away.

I stood up in front of Karla, my hand on a knife. She knew most of the older gangsters in the Company, but not many of the young volcanoes.

‘ Salaam aleikum ,’ I said.

Faaz-Shah hesitated, looking for something he couldn’t find in my eyes. I’d fought beside two of his older brothers, in battles with other gangs. And I’d fought beside Khaled, their new leader. I’d never fought beside Faaz-Shah.

‘ Wa aleikum salaam ,’ he said more softly. ‘What happened to Salar? Why are you here?’

‘Why weren’t you here?’ I asked. ‘How did you hear about it?’

‘We have people in the hospital,’ he said. ‘We have people everywhere.’

‘Not in the alley, where Azim and Salar got knifed.’

‘Azim?’

‘He was gone, bled-out, when I saw him.’

‘Where was this?’

They were hard young gangsters, the kind who always find a bad mood, no matter how hard you try to hide it, and they were angry. I was safe, because I was the guy who simply did the right thing, and sooner or later they’d know that. But none of them were safe, if they got angry enough to get mouthy with Karla.

‘Karla,’ I said, smiling her with me, ‘can you please find out if there’s some tea, somewhere?’

‘Be a pleasure,’ she said, smiling back mystery as she walked past the young gangsters.

‘It was the first open gully, on Mohammed Ali,’ I said, when Karla left. ‘Coming from the perfume bazaar, heading back to the city. I met them, just before it happened.’

‘You what?’

‘We were in the bazaar, and we ran across Salar and Azim. We talked, and we kept walking. They took a short cut, through the alleys. By the time we walked around to the open gully, it was all over. Salar fell into my arms. Someone was waiting for them.’

I opened the black jacket, showing the blood, and closed it again. They were abashed, as gangsters are, when they realise that they’re in a debt of honour.

‘We got him here in a taxi,’ I said, sitting down. ‘We’ve been waiting, to see if he’s okay, after surgery. You can join us, if you like. Karla’s bringing tea.’

‘We’ve got things to do,’ Faaz-Shah said.

‘We’ve also been waiting for someone from the Company to sit with Salar. He’s not safe here. Leave a man with him, Faaz-Shah.’

‘I need every man I’ve got. And you’re here. You’re still loyal to the Company, aren’t you?’

‘Which Company is it now?’

He laughed, and then stopped hard on a different thought.

‘I really do need all my men tonight. He’s family, you know.’