"Wherever you go in the world, in any society, it is always the same when it comes to questions of justice," lord Abdel Khader Khan, my mafia boss and my surrogate father, told me when I'd been six months in his service. "We concentrate our laws, investigations, prosecutions, and punishments on how much crime is in the sin, rather than how much sin is in the crime."
We were sitting in the busy, steamy, wondrously aromatic Restaurant Saurabh, in the Sassoon Dock area. The Saurabh served what many regarded as Bombay's best masala dhosas, in a city where five thousand restaurants vied for the honour. Despite that distinction, or because of it, the Saurabh was small and relatively unknown. Its name didn't appear in any of the guidebooks for tourists or the epicure columns in the daily newspapers. It was a worker's restaurant, and it was full, from morning until evening, with working men and women who cherished it and kept its secret to themselves. Accordingly, the meals were cheap and the decor was a functional minimum. Nevertheless, the restaurant was spotlessly clean, and the spectacular, baroque sails of the crispy dhosas, swept to the tables by waiters who worked at a run, housed the most delicious mixes of spices that could be found in any dish, anywhere in the city.
"For me," he went on as we ate, "the opposite is true. For me, the most important thing is the amount of sin that is in the crime. You asked me, just now, why we do not make money from prostitution and drugs, as the other councils do, and I tell you it is because of the sin that is in those crimes. It is for this reason that I will not sell children, or women, or pornography, or drugs. It is for this reason that I will not permit those businesses in any of my areas. In all of these things, the sin in the crime is so great that a man must give up his soul for the profit he makes. And if a man gives his soul, if he becomes a soul-less man, it takes nothing less than a miracle for him to regain it."
"Do you believe in miracles?"
"Certainly, I do. In our hearts, we all believe in miracles."
"I'm afraid I don't," I stated, smiling.
"I'm sure that you do," he insisted. "Wouldn't you say that your rescue from the prison at Arthur Road was a miracle, for example?"
"It _felt like a miraculous thing at the time, I have to admit."
"And when you escaped from the prison in your home country, Australia-was that not a miraculous thing?" he asked quietly.
It was the first time he'd ever mentioned the escape. I was sure that he knew, of course, and I was sure he must've thought about it many times. But by broaching the subject with me he was raising the real nature of the rescue from Arthur Road Prison.
The fact was that he'd rescued me from two prisons-one in India and one in Australia-and I owed him a double debt.
"Yes," I answered, slowly but steadily. "It was something of a miracle, I guess."
"If you do not object-that is, if you do not find it painful-I would like you to tell me about the escape from the prison in Australia. I might tell you that I find it to be fascinating, for my own very personal reasons, and I am deeply impressed by it."
"I don't mind talking about it," I replied, meeting his stare.
"What would you like to know?"
"Why did you escape?"
Khaderbhai was the only person who'd ever asked me that question.
People in Australia and New Zealand had asked me about the escape. They'd wanted to know how I broke out of the prison, and how I stayed on the run. But only Khader asked me why I escaped.
"There was a punishment unit in the prison. The guards who ran it - not all of them, but enough of them-were crazy. They hated us.
They were insane with hate for the prisoners. I don't know why. I can't explain it. That's just how it was down there then. And they tortured us, nearly every night. And I fought back. I had to fight them. It's my nature, I guess. It's just how I am. I'm not the kind of man who could take it from them, without fighting back. Which made it all worse, of course. I got... well, they went to work on me, and it was... pretty bad. I was only down there, in that punishment unit, for a little while. But I had a long sentence, and I knew that sooner or later they'd find a reason to put me down there again, or I'd be stupid enough to give them one-it wasn't hard, believe me. I thought that when they did get me there again, when they got their hands on me, they'd torture me again, and I'd fight them again, and they'd probably kill me. So... I escaped."
"How did you do it?"
"After that last beating, I let them think they'd broken my spirit. So they gave me the kind of job that only beaten men were allowed to do. They gave me a job near the front wall of the prison, pushing a wheelbarrow and making repairs. When the time was right, I escaped."
He listened as I told him the story. We continued to eat while I talked. Khader never interrupted. He watched me throughout, and the smiling light in his eyes reflected the fire in mine. He seemed to enjoy the telling of the story as much as the tale itself.
"Who was the other man-the one with you, when you escaped?"
"The other guy was doing time for murder. He was a good man, with plenty of heart."
"But you did not stay together?"
"No," I answered, allowing my gaze to shift from Khader's for the first time. I looked at the doorway of the restaurant, and watched the rhythmic, unceasing flow of people on the street. How could I explain my reasons for leaving my friend after the escape, and going off on my own? I hardly understood it myself. I decided to give him the facts, and let him make of them what he would.
"At first, we went to stay with an outlaw bike club-a gang of men who rode motorcycles. The leader of the motorcycle gang had a young brother who was in the prison. He was a brave young kid, and about a year before I escaped he'd upset a very dangerous man by doing nothing more than being brave. I got involved, and I saved the kid from being killed. When the kid found out about it, he told his brother. The older brother, who was the president of the motorcycle gang, had let me know that he owed me one. When I escaped, I went to stay with the older brother and his gang, and I took my friend with me. They gave us guns, drugs, and money.
They protected us and gave us shelter, for the first thirteen days and nights, while the cops tore the city up looking for us."
I paused, mopping up the last of my food with a corner of pea flour roti. Khaderbhai ate the last of the food on his own plate. We chewed vigorously, watching one another with thoughts and questions glittering in our eyes.
"On the thirteenth night after the escape, when I was still hiding with the motorcycle gang, I got this overwhelming urge to visit a man who used to be my teacher," I continued at last. "He was a lecturer in philosophy at a university in my city. He was a Jewish intellectual, a brilliant guy, and very highly respected in the city where I grew up. But brilliant and all as he was, I still don't know why I went to see him. I can't explain it-I don't really understand it, even now. I just had to speak to him.
The feeling was so strong, I couldn't fight it it. So I went across the city, risking my life to see him. He said that he'd expected to see me, and that he was waiting for me to come to him. He told me that I had to give up my guns, first of all. He tried to convince me that I wouldn't need them, and that they'd bring me grief if I didn't get rid of them. He told me that I had to give up the crime of armed robbery, and never commit it again.
He said that I'd paid my dues for the crimes I'd committed, but that if I ever did that crime again I would be killed or captured straight away. Whatever else you have to do to stay free, he said, don't ever do that crime again. He told me to split from my friend, because he was sure to get caught, and if I was with him I'd be caught, too. And he told me to travel the world. Tell people as much as they need to know, he said. I remember that he was smiling when he said it, like there was nothing to it. And ask people for help, he said. You'll be all right... Don't worry ... It's a great adventure, your life, and it has only just begun ..."
There was a pause as I lapsed into silence once more. A waiter approached the table to clear away our empty plates, but Khader waved him away. The mafia don stared at me, his golden eyes unwavering, but it was a sympathetic and encouraging stare.
"I left his office-the philosopher's office, at the university- and I knew that everything had changed with just that little conversation. I went back to the motorcycle gang and my friend. I gave him my guns, and I told him that I had to leave. I went off on my own. He was captured, six months later, after a gun battle with the cops. I'm still free, if that word means anything when you're a wanted man with nowhere to go. And that's it. Now you know the story."
"I would like to meet this man," Khaderbhai said slowly. "This lecturer in philosophy. He gave you good advice. But tell me, I understand that Australia is a very different country, not like India-why do you not return there, and tell the authorities about the torture you endured in the prison? Would this not make you safe, and return you to your life and your family?"
"Where I come from, we don't inform on anyone," I replied. "Not even on torturers. And even if I did-even if I went back there and stood in the dock as a Crown witness, and gave evidence against the screws who torture prisoners-there'd be no guarantee it would stop. The system would look after them. No sane man trusts the British justice system. When was the last time you ever heard of a rich man throwing himself on the mercy of the court? It doesn't happen. The system would look after the torturers, and they'd get away with it, no matter what they did and no matter how much proof there was. And I'd go back in jail.
And I'd be in their power again. And they'd make a pretty good mess of me. I think... I think they'd kick me to death down there, in the punishment unit. Anyway, it's not an option. You don't lag people. You don't inform on people, not for any reason.
It's a principle. It's probably the only one we've got left when we get locked up in a cage."
"But you believe that these prison guards are still torturing other men in that prison, just as they tortured you?" he pressed.
"Yes, I do."
"And you are in a position to do something about this, to try to alleviate their suffering?"
"I might be. I might not be. Like I said, I don't think the system would be in any hurry to bring them to justice, or to rush to our defence."
"But there is a chance, just a chance, that they would listen to you, and put an end to the torture of the other men?"
"There's a chance. I don't think it's a big one."
"But still there is a chance?" he insisted.
"Yes," I said flatly.
"So it could be said that you are in a way responsible for the suffering of the other men?"
The question was offensive, but his tone was entirely gentle and compassionate. I stared into his eyes, and was sure that he meant no offence or harm. It was Khader who'd rescued me from the Indian prison, after all and, indirectly, from the Australian prison that we were discussing. "You could say that," I answered calmly. "But that doesn't change the principle. You don't tell on people-not for any reason."
"I am not trying to trap you Lin, or trick you. But you will agree, I think, from this example, that it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons." He smiled again, for the first time since the story of the escape had begun. "This will come back to us, at another time. I have raised it in this way because it is a very important point about how we do live our lives, and how we should live our lives. There is no need to talk of it now, but this question will come back to us in another discussion, I am sure, so I would like you to remember it."
"And what about currencies?" I asked, seizing the opportunity to change the subject away from me, and toward the rules of his moral universe once more. "Don't currencies come under your heading of sinfull crimes?"
"No. Not currencies," he said firmly. The voice was deep, the words surging upwards from the diaphragm into the chest, and passing through the rumbling gemstone-tumbler of his throat. What emerged was a tone of voice that resonated with the hypnotic piety of a sermoner, reading from the Koran, even as he talked of his most profitable crimes.
"And gold smuggling?"
"No. Not gold. Not passports. Not influence."
Influence was Khader's euphemism for the full range of interactions between his mafia group and the society in which it thrived. They began with bribery, in a schedule of venalities ranging from insider trading to the securing of profitable tenders. When bribes failed, Khader's influence extended to debt collection and protection rackets, aimed at businesses that operated in the areas he controlled. Not least in the spheres of his influence was intimidation, through force or blackmail, of political and bureaucratic recalcitrants.
"So, how do you determine how much sin is in any one crime? Who judges that?"
"Sin is a measure of evil," he replied, leaning back to allow the waiter to clear away his plate and the crumbs on the table in front of him.
"Okay. How do you determine how much evil is in any one crime?
Who judges the evil in it?"
"If you really want to know about good and evil, we'll have a walk, and talk further."
He rose, and Nazeer, his constant companion, rose like his shadow and followed him to the sink, tap, and mirror housed in an alcove that was set into the back wall of the restaurant. They washed their hands and faces, hawking and spitting noisily into the sink, as did every other man in the restaurant at the conclusion of his meal. When my turn at washing, hawking, and spitting was complete, I found Khaderbhai talking with the owner of the Saurabh on the footpath outside the restaurant. When they separated, the owner embraced Khader and asked for his blessing.
The man was a Hindu, and his forehead bore the mark of blessing he'd received at a temple only hours before. Yet when Khaderbhai held the man's hands in his own, and softly mumbled a Muslim blessing, the devout Hindu responded with delight and gratitude.
Khader and I strolled back towards Colaba. Stocky, ape-like Nazeer walked a metre or so behind us, scowling at the street. At Sassoon Dock we crossed the road and passed beneath the arch at the main entrance to the old dockyard. The smell of prawns, drying in the sun in pink mountains, made my stomach flip, but when we caught sight of the sea the stench was lost in the strong breeze. Nearer to the docks we threaded our way through crowds of men pushing handcarts, and women carrying baskets on their heads, all bearing crushed ice and a burden of fish. Factories that produced the ice and processed the fish added their industrious clangour to the wailing of auctioneers and salesmen. At the edge of the dock itself, there were twenty large, wooden fishing boats, built to the same designs used for vessels that had sailed the Arabian Sea, on the Maharashtrian coast of India, five hundred years before. Here and there between them were larger, more expensive metal boats. The contrast between those rusted, graceless hulks and the elegant wooden boats beside them spoke a history, a modern saga, a world story that moved from life at sea, as a romantic calling, to the profiteer's cold, efficient lusting for the bottom line.
We sat on a wooden bench in a quiet, shaded corner of the dock where fishermen sometimes rested to share a meal. Khader stared at the vessels, which were shifting and genuflecting at their moorings on the lapping tide.
His short hair and beard were almost white. The tight, unblemished skin of his lean face was tanned to the colour of sun-ripened wheat. I looked at the face-the long, fine nose and wide brow and upward curving lips-and wondered, not for the first time, and not for the last, if my love for him would cost me my life. Nazeer, ever watchful, stood near us and scanned the dock with a glowering expression that approved of nothing in the world but the man who sat beside me.
"The history of the universe is a history of motion," Khader began, still looking at the boats nodding together like horses in harness. "The universe, as we know it, in this one of its many lives, began in an expansion that was so big, and so fast that we can talk about it, but we cannot in any truth understand it, or even imagine it. The scientists call this great expansion the Big Bang, although there was no explosion, in the sense of a bomb, or something like that. And the first moments after that great expansion, from the first fractions of attoseconds, the universe was like a rich soup made out of simple bits of things. Those bits were so simple that they were not even atoms yet. As the universe expanded and cooled down, these very tiny bits of things came together to make particles. Then the particles came together to make the first of the atoms. Then the atoms came together to make molecules. Then the molecules came together to make the first of the stars. Those first stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of new atoms. The new atoms came together to make more stars and planets. All the stuff we are made of came from those dying stars. We are made out of stars, you and I. Do you agree with me so far?"
"Sure," I smiled. "I don't know where you're going yet, but so far, so good."
"Precisely!" he laughed. "So far, so good. You can check the science of what I am saying to you-as a matter of fact, I want you to check everything that I say, and everything you ever learn from anyone else. But I am sure that the science is right, within the limit of what we know. I have been studying these matters with a young physicist for some time now, and my facts are essentially correct."
"I'm happy to take your word for it," I said, and I was happy, just to have his company and his undivided attention.
"Now, to continue, none of these things, none of these processes, none of these coming together actions are what one can describe as random events. The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements. And this fact about the way that our universe works, this moving towards order, and towards combinations of these ordered things, has a name. In the western science it is called the tendency toward complexity, and it is the way the universe works."
Three fishermen dressed in lungis and singlets approached us shyly. One of them carried two wire baskets containing glasses of water and hot chai. Another grasped a plate bearing several sweet ladoo. The last man held a chillum and two golis of charras in his extended palms.
"Will you drink tea, sir?" one of the men asked politely in Hindi. "Will you smoke with us?"
Khader smiled, and wagged his head. The men came forward quickly, handing glasses of chai to Khader, Nazeer, and me. They squatted on the ground in front of us and prepared their chillum. Khader received the honour of lighting the pipe, and I took the second dumm. The pipe went twice around the group and was tipped up clean by the last man, who exhaled the word _Kalaass...
_Finished... with his stream of blue smoke.
Khader continued talking to me in English. I was sure that the men couldn't understand him, but they remained with us, and watched his face intently.
"To continue this point, the universe, as we know it, and from everything that we can learn about it, has been getting always more complex since it began. It does this because that is its nature. The tendency toward complexity has carried the universe from almost perfect simplicity to the kind of complexity that we see around us, everywhere we look. The universe is always doing this. It is always moving from the simple to the complex."
"I think I know where you're going with this."
Khader laughed. The fishermen laughed with him.
"The universe," he continued, "this universe that we know, began in almost absolute simplicity, and it has been getting more complex for about fifteen billion years. In another billion years it will be still more complex than it is now. In five billion, in ten billion-it is always getting more complex. It is moving toward... something. It is moving toward some kind of ultimate complexity. We might not get there. An atom of hydrogen might not get there, or a leaf, or a man, or a planet might not get there, to that ultimate complexity. But we are all moving towards it- everything in the universe is moving towards it. And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I choose to call God. If you don't like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity.
Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward it."
"Isn't the universe a lot more random than that?" I asked, sensing the drift of his argument, and seeking to head it off.
"What about giant asteroids and so on? We, I mean our planet, could get smashed to fragments by a giant asteroid. In fact, there's a statistical probability that major impacts _will occur.
And if our sun is dying-and one day it will-isn't that the opposite of complexity? How does that fit in with the movement to complexity, if all this complex planet is smashed to atoms, and our sun dies?"
"A good question," Khaderbhai replied. A happy smile revealed the run of his slightly gapped, ivory-cream teeth. He was enjoying himself in the discussion, and I realised that I'd never seen him quite so animated or enthused. His hands roved the space between us, illustrating some points and emphasising others. "Our planet may be smashed, it is true, and one day our beautiful sun will die. And we are, to the best of our knowledge, the most developed expression of the complexity in our bit of the universe. It would certainly be a major loss if we were to be annihilated. It would be a terrible waste of all that development. But the process would continue. We are, ourselves, expressions of that process.
Our bodies are the children of all the suns and other stars that died, before us, making the atoms that _we are made of. And if we were destroyed, by an asteroid, or by our own hand, well, somewhere else in the universe, our level of complexity, this level of complejxity, with a consciousness capable of understanding the process, would be duplicated. I do not mean people exactly like us. I mean that thinking beings, that are as complex as we are, would develop, somewhere else in the universe.
_We would cease to exist, but the process would go on. Perhaps this is happening in millions of worlds, even as we speak. In fact, it is very likely that it is happening, all over the universe, because that is what the universe does."
It was my turn to laugh.
"Okay, okay. And you want to say-let me guess-that everything that helps this along is good, right? And anything that goes in the other direction-your spin on it is that it's evil, na?"
Khaderbhai turned his full attention on me, with one eyebrow raised in amusement or disapproval, or both. It was an expression I'd seen on Karla's face more than once. He might've thought that my slightly mocking tone was rude. I didn't mean it to be. It was defensive, in fact, because I couldn't find a flaw in his logic, and I was profoundly impressed by his argument. Perhaps he was simply surprised. He told me once, much later, that one of the first things he liked about me was that I wasn't afraid of him; and my fearlessness often took him by surprise with its impudence and its folly. Whatever the cause for his little smile and arched eyebrow, it was some time before he continued.
"In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good," he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he'd spoken the phrases many times. "Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective and universally acceptable."
"Is anything really objective?" I asked, believing myself to be on surer ground at last.
"When we say that this definition of good and evil is objective, what we mean is that it is as objective as we can be at this time, and to the best of our knowledge about the universe. This definition is based on what we know about how the universe works.
It is not based on the revealed wisdom of any one faith or political movement. It is common to the best principles of all of them, but it is based on what we know rather than what we believe. In that sense, it is objective. Of course, what we know about the universe, and our place in it, is constantly changing as we add more information and gain new insights. We are never perfectly objective about anything, that is true, but we can be less objective, or we can be more objective. And when we define good and evil on the basis of what we know-to the best of our knowledge at the present time-we are being as objective as possible within the imperfect limits of our understanding. Do you accept that point?"
"When you say that objective doesn't mean absolutely objective, then I accept it. But how can the different religions, not to mention the atheists and agnostics and the just plain confused, like me, ever find any definition universally acceptable? I don't mean to be insulting, but I think most believers have got too much of a vested interest in their own God-and-Heaven franchises, if you know what I mean, to ever agree on anything."
"It is a fair point, and I am not offended," Khader mused, glancing at the silent fishermen sitting at his feet. He exchanged a broad smile with them and then continued. "When we say that this definition of good and evil is universally acceptable, what we mean is that any rational and reasonable person-any rational and reasanable Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Jew or any atheist, for that matter-can accept that this is a reasonable definition of good and evil, because it is based on what we know about how the universe works."
"I think I understand what you're saying," I offered when he fell silent. "But I don't really follow you, when it comes to the... physics, I guess, of the universe. Why should we accept that as the basis of our morality?"
"If I can give you an example, Lin, perhaps it will be clearer. I will use the analogy of the way we measure length, because it is very relevant to our time. You will agree, I think, that there is a need to define a common measure of length, yes?"
"You mean, in yards and metrss, and like that?"
"Precisely. If we have no commonly agreed criterion for measuring length, we will never agree about how much land is yours, and how much is mine, or how to cut lengths of wood when we build a house. There would be chaos. We would fight over the land, and the houses would fall down. Throughout history, we have always tried to agree on a common way to measure length. Are you with me, once more, on this little journey of the mind?"
"I'm still with you," I replied, laughing, and wondering where the mafia don's argument was taking me.
"Well, after the revolution in France, the scientists and government officials decided to put some sense into the system of measuring and weighing things. They introduced a decimal system based on a unit of length that they called the metre, from the Greek word metron, which has the meaning of a measure."
"Okay..."
"And the first way they decided to measure the length of a metre was to make it one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole. But their calculations were based on the idea that the Earth was a perfect sphere, and the Earth, as we now know, is not a perfect sphere. They had to abandon that way of measuring a metre, and they decided, instead, to call it the distance between two very fine lines on a bar of platinum iridium alloy." "Platinum..."
"Iridium. Yes. But platinum-iridium alloy bars decay and shrink, very slowly-even though they are very hard-and the unit of measure was constantly changing. In more recent times, scientists realised that the platinum-iridium bar they had been using as a measure would be a very different size in, say, a thousand years, than it is today."
"And... that was a problem?"
"Not for the building of houses and bridges," Khaderbhai said, taking my point more seriously than I'd intended it to be.
"But not nearly accurate enough for the scientists," I offered, more soberly.
"No. They wanted an unchanging criterion against which to measure all other things. And after a few other attempts, using different techniques, the international standard measure for a metre was fixed, only last year, as the distance that a photon of light travels in a vacuum during, roughly, one three-hundred-thousandth of a second. Now, of course, this begs the question of how it came to be that a second is agreed upon as a measure of time. It is an equally fascinating story-I can tell it to you, if you would like, before we continue with the point about the metre?"
"I'm... happy to stay with the metre right now," I demurred, laughing again in spite of myself.
"Very well. I think that you can see my point here-we avoid chaos, in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality."
"I'm with you."
"At the moment, most of our ways of defining the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details. So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them. And everybody who is involved in the killing, says that he has God on his side. There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others." "And you're putting the physics of the universe up as a kind of platinum-iridium bar?"
"Well, I do think that our definition is closer, in its precision, to the photon-second measure than it is to the platinum-iridium bar, but the point is essentially correct. I think that when we look for an objective way to measure good and evil, a way that all people can accept as reasonable, we can do no better than to study the way that the universe works, and its nature-the quality that defines the entire history of it-the fact that it is constantly moving towards greater complexity. We can do no better than to use the nature of the universe itself.
And all the holy texts, from all the great religions, tell us to do this. The Holy Koran, for example, is often telling us, instructing us, to study the planets and the stars to find truth and meaning."
"I still have to ask the question, why use this fact about the tendency toward complexity, and not some other fact? Isn't it still arbitrary? Isn't it still a matter of choice as to which fact you choose to use as the basis for your morality? I'm not trying to be obtuse here-I really think it still seems quite arbitrary."
"I understand your doubt," Khader smiled, raising his eyes to the sea-sky horizon for a moment. "I, too, felt very sceptical when I first began along this road. But I am now convinced that there is no better way to think of good and evil, at this time. That is not to say that it will always be the best definition. With the measure of the metre, as well, there will be another, slightly better way to measure it, in the future. As a matter of fact, the current best definition uses the distance travelled by a photon of light in a vacuum, as if nothing happens in a vacuum. But we know that all sorts of things are happening in a vacuum. There are many, many reactions taking place in a vacuum, all of the time. I am sure that in the future an even better way to measure the metre will be found. But, at the moment, it is the best way that we have. And with morality, the fact of the tendency toward complexity-that the whole universe is doing this all the time, and always has-is the best way we have to be objective about good and evil. We use that fact, rather than any other, because it is the largest fact about the universe. It is the one fact that involves the whole universe, throughout the whole of its history. If you can give me a better way to be objective about good and evil, and to involve all the people of all the faiths, and all the non-believers, and the whole history of the whole universe, then I would be very, very happy to hear it."
"Okay. Okay. So the universe is moving along toward God, or toward some Ultimate Complexity. Anything that helps it along is good. Anything that holds it back is evil. That still leaves me with the problem of who judges the evil. How do we know? How do we tell whether any one thing we do will get us there or hold us back?"
"A good question," Khader said, standing and brushing the creases from his loose, linen trousers and his knee-length, white cotton shirt. "In fact, it is the right question. And at the right time, I will give you a good answer."
He turned away from me to face the three fishermen, who'd stood with him and were waiting attentively. For a moment, I teased myself with the conceit that I'd stumped him with my question.
But that prideful hope dissolved as I watched him talk with the barefoot fishermen. There was such apodictic certitude in Khader's every pronouncement, such a decisive, incontrovertible assurance in the man, that it informed and composed even his stillnesses and silences. I knew that there was an answer to my question. I knew that he would give it to me when he judged the time to be right.
Standing near him, I eavesdropped on his conversation. He asked them if they had any complaints, if there was any bullying of the poor men on the dock. When they told him there was none, just at that time, he asked them about the available work, and if the jobs were fairly distributed among those with greatest need.
Reassured on that point as well, he asked them about their families and their children. The last of their conversation was about the work on Sassoon Dock's fishing fleet. They told him about the mountainous, stormy waves, the fragile boats, the friends made at sea, and the friends lost at sea. He told them about the one and only time he'd sailed the deep water, during a violent storm, in one of the long, wooden fishing boats. He told them how he'd tied himself to the boat, and how fervently he'd prayed until they'd sighted land. They laughed, and then tried to touch his feet in a respectful goodbye, but he lifted them by the shoulders and shook hands with them, one by one. When he parted from them, they walked away with their backs straight and their heads high.
"How was your work with Khaled?" Khader asked me when we walked back through the dock.
"Very good. I like him. I liked working with him. I'd still be with him if you hadn't put me to work with Madjid."
"And how is that? How is it, with our Madjid?"
I hesitated. Karla once said that men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, she said, it's the other way around.
"I'm learning what I need to know. He's a good teacher."
"But... you made a more personal connection with Khaled Ansari, isn't it so?"
It was true. Khaled was angry, and there was a part of his heart that was always hate-filled, but I liked him. Madjid was kind and patient and generous with me, yet I had no feeling for him at all beyond a vague, premonitory unease. After four months in the black-market currency business, Khaderbhai had decided that I should learn the gold-smuggling trade, and he'd sent me to Madjid Rhustem. In his house overlooking the sea, among the affluent elite at Juhu, I'd discovered the many ways in which gold was smuggled into India. Khaled's formula of greed and control applied to the trade in gold. Strictly enforced government controls on the import of gold crashed head-on with India's insatiable demand for the yellow metal.
Grey-haired Madjid controlled Khader's substantial gold imports, and had been running the business for almost ten years. With inexhaustible forbearance, he'd taught me everything that he thought I needed to know about gold and the smuggler's arts. His dark eyes had stared at me from beneath his bushy grey brows, hour after hour in the lessons. Although he commanded a large number of strong men, and could be ruthless with them when it was required, his rheumy eyes only ever showed me kindness. Still, I felt nothing for him but that bodeful uneasiness. When I left his house, after any lesson, a sense of relief flooded into me: a relief that washed the sound of his voice and the sight of his face from my mind, just as water might wash a stain from my hands.
"No. There's no connection. But he's a good teacher, as I say."
"Linbaba," Khader replied, his deep voice rumbling over the name that the slum-dwellers used, "I like you."
My face flushed with emotion. It was as if my own father had said the last three words to me. And my own father never did. The power that those simple words had-the power that Khader had over me-made me realise how neatly and completely he'd come to fill the father's role in my life. In my innermost, secret heart, a small boy that I used to be was wishing that Khader was my father-my real father.
"How's Tariq?" I asked him.
"Tariq is very well, nushkur Allah." Thanks be to God.
"I miss him. He's a great kid," I said. Missing him, I missed my own daughter. I missed my family. I missed my friends.
"He misses you, too," Khader said slowly, and with what seemed to be regret. "Tell me, Lin, what do you want? Why are you here?
What do you really want here, in Bombay?"
We were approaching his parked car. Nazeer ran ahead on his short, thick legs to open the doors and start the engine. Khader and I stood close together, holding a stare.
"I want to be free," I said.
"But you are free," he replied.
"Not really."
"Are you talking about Australia?"
"Yes. Not only that. But mostly that."
"Don't worry," he said. "Nothing will ever harm you in Bombay. I give you my word. No harm will come to you, now, while you wear my name on the medal around your neck and while you work for me.
You are safe here, Inshallah."
He held both my hands in his and murmured a blessing, just as he'd done with the owner of the Saurabh. I walked him to his car, watching as he stooped to sit. Someone had daubed the name Sapna on a grubby wall nearby. The paint was reasonably fresh, no more than a week old. If Khader had noticed, he gave no indication of it. Nazeer slammed the door, and ran around to the other side of the car.
"Next week, I want you to start with my friend Ghani on passports," Khader said. Nazeer revved the engine, awaiting the instruction to leave. "I think you will find the passport business interesting."
He was smiling at me as Nazeer drove away, but it was Nazeer's scowl, behind him, that lingered longest in my mind. The man hated me, it seemed, and sooner or later I would have to settle the matter with him. It was a measure of just how lost and lonely I was, in my exile, that I looked forward to fighting him. He was shorter than I was, but every bit as strong, and perhaps a little heavier. I knew it would be a good fight.
I filed that future violence away under pending and impending, hailed a cab, and made my way to the Fort area. The commercial district of printers, stationers, warehouses, and light manufacturers, known simply as the Fort, served the office districts that surrounded it. The buildings and narrow streets of the Fort were some of the oldest in the city. The atmosphere of another age, an age of starched and formal courtesies, remained in those law firms, publishing houses, and other cerebral enterprises that had been fortunate enough to boast a Fort address for several decades.
One of the newer businesses in the Fort was the travel agency owned through proxies by Khaderbhai and managed by Madjid Rhustem. The agency handled the travel arrangements for thousands of men and women who worked on contracts in the Gulf States. On the legitimate side, the agency organised plane tickets, visas, work permits, and hostel accommodation in the Gulf. On the black market side, Madjid's agents arranged for most of the returning workers to wear from one to three hundred grams of our gold, per person, in chains, bracelets, rings, and brooches. The gold arrived in the Gulf ports from many sources. Some of it was obtained in legal bulk purchases. Much of it was stolen. Junkies and pickpockets and housebreakers from all over Europe and Africa stole gold jewellery and then sold it to their drug dealers and fences. A percentage of that gold, stolen in Frankfurt or Johannesburg or London, found its way through black marketeers to the Gulf ports. Khader's men in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and every other Gulf capital melted the gold into thick bracelets and chains and brooches. For a small fee, the contract workers wore the gold jewellery on their return to India, and our men collected it from them at the international airport in Bombay.
Each year, the travel agency in the Fort area handled travel arrangements for at least five thousand contract workers. The gold they carried in was re-worked, when necessaiy, at a small workshop near the agency and then sold throughout the Zhaveri bazaar, or jewellery market. The profit from that one part of the gold operation was greater than four million American dollars a year, tax free, and Khader's senior managers were all wealthy, well-respected men.
I checked in with the staff at the Transact Travel Agency. Madjid was out, but the three managers were busy. When I'd learned how the gold-smuggling operation worked, I suggested that Khader's agency should computerise its files, and maintain a database on the contract workers who'd successfully completed one mission for us. Khader had approved the suggestion, and the men were busy transferring hard copy paper files onto the computers. I looked over their work, and was satisfied with their progress. We talked for a while, and when Madjid didn't return I went to look for him at the small gold workshop nearby.
Madjid looked up with a smile when I entered the factory, and then concentrated on the scales once more. Gold chains and bracelets, sorted into various grades, were weighed as individual pieces and weighed again in lots. The amounts were entered into a ledger and crossed-checked against a separate ledger kept for sales in the Zhaveri bazaar.
On that day, not two hours after Khaderbhai had talked to me of good and evil, I watched the heaps of gold chains and heavy home made bracelets being weighed and catalogued, and I felt myself plunging into a dark mood that I couldn't shake off. I was glad that Khaderbhai had directed me to leave Madjid and to begin work with Abdul Ghani. The golden-yellow metal that excited so many millions, in India, made me uneasy. I'd enjoyed working with Khaled Ansari and his currencies. I knew that I would enjoy working with Abdul Ghani in the passport business: passports were, after all, the main game for a man on the run. But working with gold in such huge quantities was unsettling. Gold fires the eyes with a different kind and colour of greed. Money's almost always just a means to an end; but, for many men, gold is an end in itself, and their love for it is the kind of thing that can give love a bad name.
I left Madjid for the last time, telling him that Khaderbhai had other work for me. I didn't volunteer the information that I was set to begin work with Abdul Ghani in the passport business.
Madjid and Ghani were both members of Khader's mafia council. I was sure they knew the substance of every decision affecting me before I knew it myself. We shook hands. He pulled me toward him in a clumsy, stiff-armed attempt at a hug. He smiled, and wished me luck. It was a false smile, but there wasn't any malice in it.
Madjid Rhustem was simply the kind of man who thought that smiling was an act of will. I thanked him for his patience, but I didn't return the smile.
When I made my last round of the jewellers at the Zhaveri bazaar, there was a quivering, agitated restlessness in me. It was the random anger that attaches itself to a sense of futility: the wide-eyed, fist-clenching anxiety that flares up often in a wasted life. I should've been happy, or at least happier. I had Khader's assurance of safety. I was making good money. I worked every day with hoards of gold a metre high. I was about to learn everything I needed to know about the passport business. I could buy whatever I wanted. I was fit and healthy and free. I should've been happier.
Happiness is a myth, Karla once said. It was invented to make us buy things. And as her words rippled on the stream of my dark feelings, as I remembered her face and her voice, I thought that maybe she was right, after all. Then I recalled those moments, earlier that day, when Khaderbhai had spoken to me as if he was speaking to his son. And there'd been happiness in that; I couldn't deny it. But it wasn't enough: true, and profound, and somehow pure as that feeling had been, it wasn't strong enough to lift my spirits.
My training session with Abdullah that day was intense. He accepted my taciturn mood, and we worked through the strenuous exercise-routine in silence. After a shower, he offered to give me a ride to my apartment on his motorcycle. We cruised along August Kranti Marg on our way inland from the coast at Breach Candy. We had no helmets, and the breeze of hot dry air streaming through our hair and loose silk shirts was a river of wind.
Abdullah's attention was suddenly taken by a group of men standing together outside a cafe. I guessed them to be Iranian, as he was. He wheeled the bike around, and pulled up about thirty metres from them.
"You stay here with the bike," he said, killing the engine and kicking out the side stand. We both climbed off. He never took his eyes off the group. "If there is any trouble, you take the bike, and leave."
He strolled along the footpath toward the men, pulling his long black hair into a ponytail and removing his watch as he walked. I snatched the keys from the ignition of the bike and set out after him. One of the men saw Abdullah and recognised him just as he approached. He gave a warning of some kind. The other men turned quickly. The fight started without a word. They swung wildly, flailing at him, and crashing into one another in their frenzy to land a punch on him. Abdullah stood his ground, covering his head with his fists held tightly to his temples. His elbows protected his body. When the fury of their initial attack abated, he struck out left and right, connecting with every punch. I ran up and joined him, dragging a man from his back. I tripped the man, forcing him against the straight edge of my leg until he fell. He tried to twist free of my grip, and dragged me down with him. I landed sideways to his body, with my knee on his chest, and punched him in the groin. He started to get up, and I swung round to hit him again, four or five times, on the cheek and the hinge of his jaw.
He rolled over onto his side, and curled his knees into his chest.
I looked up to see Abdullah drive off one of his attackers with a textbook right cross that splattered the man's nose in a sudden explosion of blood. I jumped up to put my back against Abdullah's, and shaped up in a karate stance. The three men who remained standing backed off, unsure of themselves. When Abdullah made a charge at them, shouting at the top of his voice, they turned and ran. I looked at Abdullah. He shook his head. We let them go.
The Indian crowd that had gathered to watch the fight followed us with their eyes while we walked back to the bike. I knew that if we'd fought Indians-from any part of India, and any ethnic, religious, or class divide-the whole street would've joined in against us. Since the fight was between foreigners, the people were curious and even excited, but they had no desire to get involved. As we rode past them, heading for Colaba, they began to disperse.
For his part, Abdullah never told me what the fight was about, and I never asked him. The one time we did talk of it, years later, he told me that he began to love me on that day. He loved me, he said, not because I joined the fight, but because I never once asked him what it was about. He admired that, he said, more than anything else he ever knew about me.
In the Colaba Causeway near my home, I asked Abdullah to slow down. I'd noticed a girl who was walking on the road, like a local, to avoid the crowds on the footpath. She looked different, changed somehow, but I recognised the blonde hair, the long, shapely legs, and hip-roll walk instantly. It was Lisa Carter. I told Abdullah to pull up just in front of her.
"Hi, Lisa."
"Ah," she sighed, lifting her sunglasses to rest them on the top of her head. "It's Gilbert. How's things at the embassy?"
"Oh, you know," I laughed. "A crisis here, a rescue there. You look great, Lisa."
Her blonde hair was longer and thicker than when I'd last seen her. Her face was fuller and healthier, but her figure was trim and more athletic. She was wearing a white halter-neck top, a white mini-skirt, and Roman sandals. Her legs and slender arms were tanned to a golden chestnut. She looked beautiful. She _was beautiful.
"I stopped being a fuck-up, and took the cure," she snarled, scowling through a bright, false smile. "What can I tell ya? It's either one or the other, and you can't have it both ways. When you're sober and fit, it's the world that's fucked."
"That's the spirit," I replied, laughing until she laughed with me.
"Who's your friend?"
"Abdullah Taheri, this is Lisa Carter. Lisa, this is Abdullah."
"Nice bike," she purred.
"Would you like to... ride it?" he asked, smiling with all of his white, strong teeth.
She looked at me, and I raised my hands in a gesture that said, You're on your own, kid. I got off the bike and joined her on the road.
"This is my stop," I said. Lisa and Abdullah were still staring at one another. "There's a free seat, if you want it."
"Okay," she smiled. "Let's do it."
She hitched up her skirt and climbed onto the back of the bike.
The two or three men, out of several hundred on the street, who weren't already looking at her, joined in the chorus of stares.
Abdullah shook hands with me, grinning like a schoolboy. He kicked the bike into gear, and roared off into the meandering traffic.
"Nice bike," a voice behind me said. It was Gemini George.
"Not real safe, though, those Enfields," answered another voice, with a strong Canadian accent. It was Scorpio George.
They lived on the street, sleeping in doorways and foraging for commissions among the tourists who wanted to buy hard drugs. And it showed. They were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in appearance. They were also intelligent, honest, and unconditionally loyal to one another.
"Hi, guys. How's it going?"
"Well, son, very well," Gemini George answered, the song of Liverpool in his accent, "We've got a client, you know, at about six o'clock tonight."
"Touch wood," Scorpio added, his dour frown already focusing on the troubles the evening might bring. "Should do all right out of it," Gemini said cheerily. "Nice client. Nice little earner."
"If it all goes okay, and nothing goes wrong," Scorpio mused fretfully.
"Must be something in the water," I muttered, watching the tiny white speck of Abdullah's shirt, or Lisa's skirt, disappear in the distance.
"How's that?" Gemini asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just, everyone seems to be falling in love lately."
I was thinking of Prabaker, Vikram, and Johnny Cigar. And I knew the look I'd seen in Abdullah's eyes as he'd ridden off. He was a long way more than interested.
"Funny you should mention that-what do you make of sexual motivation, Lin?" Scorpio asked me.
"Come again?"
"In a manner of speakin'," Gemini innuendoed, winking indecently.
"C'mon, be serious for a minute," Scorpio scolded. "Sexual motivation, Lin-what do you make of it?"
"What, exactly, do you mean?"
"Well, we're having a debate, you know-"
"A discussion," Gemini interrupted. "Not a debate. I'm discussin' with you, not debatin' you."
"We're having this discussion, about what it is that motivates people."
"I give you fair warnin', Lin," Gemini said, sighing mightily.
"We've been having this discussion for two weeks, and Scorpio still won't see reason."
"As I said, we're having this discussion about what it is that motivates people," Scorpio George pressed on, his Canadian accent and professorial manner combining in the documentary voice-over style that most irritated his English friend. "Y'see, Freud said we're motivated by the drive for sex. Adler disagreed, and said that it was the drive for power. Then Victor Frankl, he said sex and power were important drives, but when you can't get either one-no sex and no power-there's still something else that drives us on and keeps us goin'-"
"Yes, yes, the drive for meaning," Gemini added. "Which is really just the same thing in different words. We have a drive for power because power gives us sex, and we have a drive for meaning because that helps us to understand sex. It all comes down to sex in the end, no matter what you call it. Those other ideas, they're just the clothes, like. And when you get the clothes off, it's all about sex, innit?"
"No, you're wrong," Scorpio contradicted him. "We're all driven by a desire to find meaning in life. We have to know what it's all about. If it was just sex or power we'd still be chimpanzees.
It's _meaning that makes us human beings."
"It's sex that makes human beings, Scorpio," Gemini put in, his wicked leer working even harder, "but it's been so long, you've probably forgotten that."
A taxi pulled up beside us. The passenger in the back seat waited in a band of shadow for a moment, and then slowly leaned closer to the window. It was Ulla.
"Lin," she gasped. "I need your help."
She was wearing black-framed sunglasses, and there was a scarf tied around her head, covering her ash-blonde hair. Her face was pale and drawn and thin.
"This... has a vaguely familiar ring to it, Ulla," I replied, not moving toward the cab.
"Please. I mean it. Please, get in. I have something to tell you ... something you want to know."
I didn't move.
"Please, Lin. I know where Karla is. I will tell you, if you help me."
I turned and shook hands with the Georges. In the handshake with Scorpio, I passed over an American twenty-dollar bill. I'd taken it from my pocket when I first heard their voices, and I'd kept it ready to hand over when we parted. In their world, i knew, it was enough money-if their _nice _little _earner client fell through-to make them rich men for the night.
I opened the door and got into the cab. The driver pulled away into the traffic, checking me out often in his rear vision mirror.
"I don't know why you're angry with me," Ulla whined, removing her sunglasses and stealing glances at me. "Please don't be angry, Lin. Please don't be angry."
I wasn't angry. For the first time in too long, I wasn't angry.
_Scorpio's _right, I thought: __it's meaning that makes us _human. There I was, with just the mention of a name, diving into the ocean of feeling again. I was looking for a woman, looking for Karla. I was involving myself in the world, taking risks. I had a reason. I had a quest.
And then I knew, in the excited moment, what it was that had caused my desolate mood at Madjid's, and put so much anger in me that day. I knew with perfect understanding that the momentary dream-the little boy's dream that Khader really _was my father- had plunged me into that restless, tide-rip of despair that fathers and sons too often let their love become. And seeing it, realising it, remembering it, I found the strength to lift the darkness from my heart. I looked at Ulla. I stared into the blue labyrinth of her eyes and I wondered, without anger or sorrow, if she'd played a part in betraying me, and having me put in prison.
She reached out to put a hand on my knee. The grip was strong, but her hand was shaking. I felt the scent-filled seconds expand around us. We were trapped, both of us, held fast, each in our different ways. And once again, we were about to set the web of our connection trembling.
"Relax. I'll help you if I can," I said, calmly and firmly. "Now, tell me about Karla."