Shantaram полностью

It was hot, hotter than usual for the mild month of November, and a light, unseasonable rain had left the streets hazy with a thickened, steamy air. Karachi was a tense and dangerous city then. For several years the military junta that had seized power in Pakistan and executed the democratically elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had ruled the nation by dividing it. They’d exploited genuine grievances between ethnic and religious communities by inciting violent conflicts. They’d pitted the indigenous ethnic groups-particularly the Sindis, the Pashtuns, and the Punjabis-against the immigrants, known as Mohajirs, who’d streamed into the newly founded nation of Pakistan when it was partitioned from India. The army secretly supported extremists from the rival groups with weapons, money, and the judicious application of favours. When the riots that they’d provoked and fomented finally erupted, the generals ordered their police to open fire. Rage against the police violence was then contained by the deployment of army troops. In that way the army, whose covert operations had created the bloody conflicts, were seen to be the only force capable of preserving order and the rule of law.

As massacres and revenge killings tumbled over one another with escalating brutishness, kidnappings and torture became routine events. Fanatics from one group seized supporters from another group, and inflicted sadistic torments on them. Many of those who were abducted died in that fearsome captivity. Some vanished, and their bodies were never found. And when one group or another became powerful enough to threaten the balance of the deadly game, the generals incited violent conflict within their group to weaken it. The fanatics then began to feed on themselves, killing and maiming rivals from their own ethnic communities.

Each new cycle of violence and vengeance ensured, of course, that no matter what form of government emerged or dissolved in the nation, only the army would grow stronger, and only the army could exercise real power.

Despite that dramatic tension-and because of it-Karachi was a good place to do business. The generals, who were like a mafia clan without the courage, style, or solidarity of genuine, self-respecting gangsters, had seized the country by force, held the entire nation hostage at the points of many guns, and looted the treasury. They lost no time in assuring the great powers, and the other arms-producing nations, that Pakistan’s armed forces were open for their business. The civilised nations responded with enthusiasm, and for years Karachi was host to junketing parties of arms-dealers from America, Britain, China, Sweden, Italy, and other countries. No less industrious in their pursuit of a deal with the camarilla of generals were the illegals-the black marketeers, gunrunners, freebooters, and mercenaries. They crowded into the cafés and hotels: foreigners from fifty countries who had crime in mind and adventure in their hearts.

In a sense, I was one of them, a ravager like the rest of them, profiting from the war in Afghanistan like the rest of them, but I wasn’t comfortable in their company. For three hours I drifted from a restaurant to a hotel to a chai shop, sitting near or with groups of foreigners who were searching for a quick buck. Their conversations were dispiritingly calculating. The war in Afghanistan, most of them conjectured cheerily, had a few good years left in it. The generals were, it had to be admitted, under considerable pressure. There were rumours that Benazir, daughter of the executed prime minister, was planning to return to Pakistan from exile in London to lead the democratic alliance opposed to the junta. But with a little luck and skilful connivance, the profiteers hoped, the army might remain in control of the country-and the well-established channels of corruption-for some years yet.