A beautiful woman? I didn’t think so. And a range of less than lovely impressions stared from that face-haughty, spiteful, frightened, spoiled, self-obsessed. The photograph said she was all of those things, and more. And worse. But there was something else on the photograph, something more repugnant and chilling than the unlovely face. It was the message she’d chosen to stamp in red, block letters, across the bottom. It said: MADAME ZHOU IS HAPPY NOW.
‘COME IN, Mr. Lin. No, please, sit here. We have been expecting you.’ Abdel Khader waved me to a place at his left hand. I kicked off my shoes at the doorway, where several other pairs of sandals and shoes had been discarded, and sat down on the plush, brocade cushion he’d indicated. It was a large room-nine of us, seated in a circle about a low marble table, occupied no more than a corner of it. The floor was surfaced with smooth, cream, pentagonal tiles. A square of Isfahan carpet covered the tiles in our part of the room. The walls and vaulted ceiling featured a mosaic of pale blue and white miniatures, presenting the effect of a sky with drifts of cloud. Two open arches connected the room to wide passageways. Three picture-seat windows overlooked a palm-filled courtyard. They were all framed with sculptured pillars and topped with minaret-shaped domes inscribed with Arabic lettering. The spill, splash, and stir of water in a cascade fountain came to us from beyond those windows, somewhere in the courtyard.
It was a room of diligently austere splendour. The only furniture was the low marble table and our nine cushions evenly arranged around the carpet. The only decoration was a framed black and gold-leaf depiction of the Kaaba at Mecca. The eight men who sat or reclined there seemed comfortable in that inornate simplicity, however, and certainly they were free to choose any style that they wanted, for there was the wealth and power of a small empire between them: an empire of crime.
‘Are you feeling quite refreshed, Mr. Lin?’ Khaderbhai asked.
When I’d arrived at the building beside the Nabila Mosque, in Dongri, Nazeer had shown me at once to a large, well-appointed bathroom, where I’d used the toilet and then washed my face and hands. Bombay, in those years, was the most voluptuously dirty city in the world. It wasn’t only hot and cloyingly humid: in the eight rainless months of the year it was constantly aswirl with grimy dust clouds that settled on and smeared every exposed surface with a catholic variety of filths. If I wiped my face with a handkerchief after only half an hour’s walk along any street, the cloth was streaked with black.
‘Thank you, yes. I felt tired, when I arrived, but now I’m revived by a combination of politeness and plumbing.’ I was speaking in Hindi, and it was a struggle to carry the humour, sense, and good intentions in the small phrase. We can’t really know what a pleasure it is to run in our own language until we’re forced to stumble in someone else’s. It was a great relief when Khaderbhai spoke in English.
‘Please speak English, Mr. Lin. I am very happy that you are learning our languages, but today we would like to practise yours. Each of us here can speak and read and write English, to some extent. In my own case, I have been educated in English, as well as in Hindi and Urdu. In fact, I often find myself thinking first in English, before other languages. My dear friend, Abdul, sitting near you, would call English his first language, I think. And all of us, no matter what our level of learning, are enthusiastic about the study of English. It is a critical thing for us. One of the reasons why I asked you to come here, this evening, was so that we might enjoy the speaking of English with you, a native of the language. This is our monthly discussion night, you see, and our little group talks about-but wait, let me first introduce you.’
He reached over to lay an affectionate hand on the bulky forearm of the heavy-set, elderly man who sat on his right. He was dressed in the green pantaloons and long tunic of Afghan traditional dress.
‘This is Sobhan Mahmoud-let us use first names, after our introductions, Lin, for we are all friends here, yes?’
Sobhan wagged his grizzled, grey head at me in greeting, fixing me with a look of steely enquiry, perhaps to make sure that I understood the honour implied in the use of first names.
‘The very ample and smiling gentleman next to him is my old friend from Peshawar, Abdul Ghani. Next to him is Khaled Ansari, originally from Palestine. Rajubhai, next to him, is from the holy city of Varanasi-have you seen it? No? Well, you must make the time to do so before too long.’
Rajubhai, a bald, thick-set man with a neat, grey moustache, smiled in response to Khaderbhai’s introduction, and turned to me with his hands joined together in a silent greeting. His eyes, above the gentle steeple of his fingers, were hard and wary.
