Khader enrolled Salman in a Catholic college run by Jesuit priests, and every day the boy from the slum dressed in a clean, white uniform and took his place among the sons of the rich elite. It was a good education-Salman's spoken English was eloquent, and his general knowledge roved through history and geography to literature, science, and art. But there was a wildness in the boy and a restless hunger for excitement that even the strong arms and the hard canes of the Jesuits couldn't tame.
While Salman struggled with the Jesuits, Sanjay had found a job in Khaderbhai's gang. He worked as a runner, carrying messages and contraband between mafia offices throughout the city. In the first weeks of that service, Sanjay was stabbed during a fight with men from a rival gang who'd tried to rob him. The boy fought back and evaded his attackers, delivering his contraband parcel to Khader's collection centre, but his wound was serious and he took two months to recover from it. Salman, his lifelong friend, blamed himself for not being with Sanjay, and he left school immediately. He begged the Khan for permission to join his friend and work with him as a runner. Khader agreed, and from that day the boys worked together at every crime in the council's catalogue.
They were just sixteen then, at the beginning. They both turned thirty in the weeks before our meeting in the Mocambo. The wild boys had become hard men who lavished gifts on their families, and lived with a certain gaudy, aggressive cool. Although they'd supported their sisters into prestigious marriages, both men were unmarried, in a country where that was unpatriotic at the least, and sacrilegious at worst. They'd refused to marry, Salman told me, because of a shared belief or presentiment that they would die violently and they would die young. The prospect didn't frighten or worry them. They saw it as a reasonable tradeoff: excitement and power and wealth enough to provide for their families, balanced against short lives that rushed into the dead end of a knife or a gun. And when Nazeer's group won the gangster war against Ghani's group, the two friends found themselves on the new council; young mafia dons in their own right.
"I think Ghani did try to warn Khaderbhai what was in his heart,"
Salman said thoughtfully, his voice clear and his English rounded to the nearest decibel point. "He talked about that hero curse thing for a good year or so before he decided to create Sapna."
"Fuck him, yaar," Sanjay snarled. "Who the fuck was he to be giving Khaderbhai warnings? Who the fuck was he to get us all in the shit with Patil, so he had to have his guys cut up old Madjid? And then, after everything, he went and sold everybody out to the fuckin' Pakistani cops, yaar. Fuck him. If I could dig the madachudh up and kill him again, I'd do it today. I'd do it every day. It would be my fuckin' hobby, like."
"Who was the real Sapna?" I asked. "Who actually did the killings for Abdul? I remember Khader told me once, after Abdullah was killed, that he found the real Sapna. He said he killed him. Who was he? And why did he kill him, if he was working for him in the first place?"
The two younger men turned to face Nazeer. Sanjay asked him a few questions in Urdu. It was an act of respect toward the older man: they knew the facts as well as Nazeer did, but they deferred to his recollection of them and included him in the discussion. I understood most of Nazeer's reply, but I waited for Sanjay to translate.
"His name was Jeetendra. Jeetudada, they called him. He was a gun and machete guy from Delhi-side. Ghani brought him down here, with four other guys. He actually kept them in five-star hotels, like, the whole fuckin' time-two years, man! Bahinchudh!
Complaining about Khader spending money on the mujaheddin and the war and all, and meanwhile he was keeping these psycho fuckers in five-star hotels for two fuckin years!"
"Jeetudada got drunk when Abdullah was killed," Salman added. "It really got to him, you know, that everyone was saying Sapna was dead. He'd been doing the Sapna thing for nearly two years, and it had started to twist his brain. He started to believe his own - or Ghani's-bullshit."
"Stupid fuckin' name, yaar," Sanjay cut in. "It's a girl's name, Sapna. It's a fuckin' girl's name. It's like me calling myself fuckin' Lucy, or some such. What kind of a bad fucker calls himself a girl's name, yaar?"
"The kind who kills eleven people," Salman answered, "and almost gets away with it. Anyway, he got completely drunk the night Abdullah was killed and everybody was saying that Sapna was dead.
And he started shooting his mouth off, telling anyone who would listen that he was the real Sapna. They were in a bar in the President Hotel. Then he starts shouting that he was ready to tell it all-who was behind the Sapna killings, you know, and who planned it all and paid for it all."
