Abdul Ghani stood there, listening to the music and singing that thundered from an expensive sound system built into the wall of books. The voices and the music were familiar, and a few moments of concentration brought them back to me. They were the Blind Singers, the same men I'd heard as Khaderbhai's guest, on the first night that I met him. The song wasn't one I recalled from that concert, but I was struck, at once, by its passion and power. As the thrilling, heart-wrenching chorus of voices finished, we stood in a throbbing silence that seemed to resist the noises of the households within the building and of the street below us.
"Do you know them?" he asked, without turning around.
"Yes. They're the Blind Singers, I think."
"Indeed, they are," he said in the mix of Indian lilt and BBC newsreader's tone that I'd come to enjoy. "I love their music, Lin, more than anything I have ever heard, from any culture. But in the heart of my love for it, I have to say that I am afraid.
Every time I hear them-and I play them every day, when I am at home here-I have the feeling that I am hearing the sound of my own requiem."
He still hadn't turned to face me, and I remained standing near the centre of the long room.
"That... that must be unsettling."
"Unsettling..." he said softly. "Yes. Yes, it is unsettling.
Tell me, Lin, do you think that one great act of genius can allow us to forgive the hundred flaws and failures that bring it into being?"
"It's... hard to say. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I guess it depends on how many people benefit by it, and how many people get hurt."
He turned to face me, and I saw that he was crying. Tears rolled quickly, easily, and continuously from his large eyes, and spilled across the plump cheeks to the belly of his long silk shirt. His voice, however, was calm and composed.
"Did you know that our Madjid was killed last night?"
"No," I frowned, shocked by the news. "Killed?"
"Yes. Murdered. Slaughtered like some beast, in his own house.
His body was torn to pieces, and the pieces were found in many different rooms of the house. The name Sapna was daubed on the walls with his own blood. Police are blaming fanatics who follow this Sapna. I'm sorry, Lin. Forgive my tears, please. I'm afraid that this bad business has taken its toll on me." "No, not at all. I'll... I'll come back at another time."
"Of course not. You're here now, and Khader is anxious for you to begin. We'll drink tea, and I will pull myself together, and then we'll examine the passport business, you and I."
He walked to the hi-fi set, and extracted the cassette tape of the Blind Singers. Sliding it into a gold plastic case, he approached me and pressed it into my hand.
"I want you to have this, as a present from me," he said, his eyes and cheeks still wet with tears. "It's time I stopped listening to it, and I feel sure that you will enjoy it."
"Thank you," I muttered, almost as confused by the gift as I was by the news of Madjid's death.
"Not at all, Lin. Come, sit with me. You were in Goa, I believe?
Do you know our young fighter, Andrew Ferreira? Yes? Then you know he is from Goa. He goes there, often, with Salman and Sanjay, when I have work for them. You must all go there together, some time-they will show you the special sights, if you get my meaning. So tell me, how was your trip?"
I answered him, trying to give my whole attention to the conversation, but my mind was thick with thoughts of Madjid; dead Madjid. I couldn't say that I'd liked him, or even that I'd trusted him. Yet his death, his murder, shook me, and filled me with a strange, excited agitation. He'd been killed-slaughtered, Abdul had said-in the house at Juhu where we'd studied together, and he'd taught me about gold and golden crimes. I thought of the house. I remembered its view of the sea, its purple-tiled swimming pool, its bare, pale-green prayer room where Madjid had bent his ancient knees, five times every day, and touched his bushy grey eyebrows to the floor. I remembered sitting outside that room, near the pool, waiting for him as he took time out to pray. I remembered staring at the purple water as the murmured syllables of the prayers buzzed past me into the swaying fronds of palms leaning in around the pool.
And once again I had the sense of a trap, of a destiny not shaped by my own deeds and desires. It was as if the constellations themselves were just the outlines of an immense cage that revolved and realigned itself, inscrutably, until the single moment that fate had reserved for me. There was too much that I didn't understand. There was too much that I wouldn't allow myself to ask. And I was excited, in that web of connections and concealments. The scent of danger, the smell of fear, filled my senses. The heart-squeezing, enlivening exhilaration of it was so powerful that it wasn't until an hour later, when we entered Abdul Ghani's passport workshop, that I could give my full attention to the man and the moment that we shared.
