His eyes found me, and he smiled in greeting.
"Linbaba, so good to see you!" he shouted back at me.
"You look good, man!" I called out. He did look well. I knew how hard it was to look well in that place. I knew what an effort he'd put into it, cleaning body lice from his clothes every day and washing in the worm-infested water. "You look real good!"
"Arrey, you look very fine, Lin."
I didn't look fine. I knew that. I looked worried and guilty and tired.
"I'm... a bit tired. My friend Vikram-you remember him? He got married yesterday. The day before yesterday, actually. I've been walking all night."
"How is Qasim Ali? Is he well?"
"He's well," I replied, reddening a little with shame that I didn't see the good and noble head man as often as I used to, when I'd lived in the slum. "Look! Look at this newspaper.
There's an article in it about the sisters. It mentions you. We can use this to help you. We can build up some sympathy for you, before your case comes to court."
His long, lean, handsome face darkened in a frown that drew his brows together and pressed his lips into a tight, defiant crease.
"You must not do this, Lin!" he shouted back at me. "That journalist, that Kavita Singh, she was here. I sent her away. If she comes again, I will send her away again. I do not want any help, and I will not allow any help. I want to have the punishment for what I did to Rasheed."
"But you don't understand," I insisted. "The girls are famous now. People think they're holy. People think they can work miracles. There's thousands of devotees coming to the zhopadpatti every week. When people know you were trying to help them, they'll feel sympathy for you. You'll get half the time, or even less."
I was shouting myself hoarse, trying to be heard above or within the clamouring din. It was so hot in the crush of bodies that my shirt was already soaked, and clung to my skin. Had I heard him correctly? It seemed impossible that he would reject any help that might reduce his sentence. Without that help, he was sure to serve a minimum of fifteen years. Fifteen years in this hell, I thought, staring through the wire at his frowning face. How could he refuse our help?
"Lin! No!" he cried out, louder than before. "I did that thing to Rasheed. I knew what I was doing. I knew what would happen. I sat with him for a long time, before I did it. I made a choice. I must have the punishment."
"But I have to help you. I have to _try."
"No, Lin, please! If you take this punishment away, then there will be no meaning for what I did. There will be no honour. Not for me, not for them. Can't you see it? I have earned this punishment. I have become my fate. I am begging you, as a friend.
Please do not let them write anything more about me. Write about the ladies. The sisters. Yes! But let me have the peace of my fate. Do you promise me? Linbaba? Do you swear it?"
My fingers clutched at the diamonds of the wire fence. I felt the cold rusty metal bite at the bones within my hands. The noise in that wooden room was like a wild rainstorm on the ragged rooftops of the slum. Beseeching, entreating, adoring, yearning, crying, screaming, and laughing, the hysterical choruses shouted from cage to cage.
"Swear it to me, Lin," he said, the distress reaching out to me desperately from his pleading eyes.
"Okay, okay," I answered him, struggling to let the words escape from the little prison of my throat.
"Swear it to me!"
"All right! All right! I swear it. For God's sake, I swear... I won't try to help you."
His face relaxed, and the smile returned, burning my eyes with the beauty of it. "Thank you, Linbaba!" he shouted back happily. "Please don't be thinking I am ungrateful, but I don't want you to come back here again. I don't want you to visit me. You can put some money for me, sometimes, if you think of it. But please don't come back again. This is my life now. This is my life. It will be hard for me, if you come back here. I will think about things. I thank you very much, Lin, and I wish a full happiness for you."
His hands released their hold on the wire fence. He held them together in a praying gesture of blessing, bowing his head slightly, so that I lost contact with his eyes. Without that strong grip on the fence he was at the mercy of the crowd of prisoners, and in seconds he fell back, vanishing into the bubbling wave of faces and hands at the wire. A door at the back of the room opened behind the prisoners, and I watched Anand slip through into the hot yellow light of day with his head high and his thin shoulders bravely squared.
