Chef. Part 13

'The biggest officer of your military.'

'The General?'

'I think so.'

'How do you know?'

'I heard it in the village. Please save him. His car must never pa.s.s the Zero Bridge.'

'Not a word more.'

The nurse was angry with Irem when she returned. There was Rogan Josh on the carpet, and its long trail was visible on Irem's pheran. She asked me to step out for a minute, and when I re-entered the room Irem had changed into a striped kurta-pyjama. She looked uncomfortable in the oversize pyjama-kurta. The drawstring dangled. I turned my gaze downwards and focused only on the carpet, her feet, and her words.

Next morning I woke up with the enemy's pheran under my pillow. It had a mysterious odor. I sent my a.s.sistant to the bazaar and washed the pheran along with my clothes, and dried it on the line in my room, hidden between my clothes. While ironing I was very careful not to break the b.u.t.tons at the back. Two were missing. While ironing I thought, isn't it funny that in the Hindi language the word for iron iron and the word for and the word for woman woman is one and the same. I sprinkled water on the garment and ironed till all the wrinkles disappeared. is one and the same. I sprinkled water on the garment and ironed till all the wrinkles disappeared.

In the evening I looked at the mountain again. The plane trees were turning color. The mountain carried no memory of the falling elephants. If there was something falling it was a red leaf, falling very slowly, without a shriek. I cycled down the mountain with the neatly folded pheran in my kit. When I see her, I thought, I must tell her to stand by the window again, and look at the slopes in the light of the evening. What makes some leaves linger on trees in autumn? I wanted to ask many questions. I wanted to know what was she like before she got married? What was she like as a girl?

How did other strangers respond to her? What were the foods she disliked? Did she have enough to eat? Who taught her to cook? I wanted to ask her all these questions and know all the answers.

When I got to the hospital I parked my bike and walked into the ward. But she was gone. I did not know what to do. So. I cycled to the Hazratbal Mosque via the Zero Bridge. There were people on the bridge. Two cops were guarding the structure, the green trusses. The river was muddy and overflowing. The mosque was in the low-lying area just six hundred yards from the bridge. Flooding was a possibility. An old woman was feeding pigeons inside the compound of the mosque and I removed my shoes and walked barefoot on marble towards her. She was old, but still beautiful. Women in Kashmir were always beautiful. I had no idea how to buy a Qur'an and as I proceeded towards her I noticed the men looking at me suspiciously as if perhaps in my turban I had come to steal the relic. Their eyes were fierce. Their bodies were wet and dripping; it seemed as if they had just stepped out of the hamaam. The old woman pointed her finger towards the store in the street. You do not buy Qur'ans inside the mosque, she said. Then she resumed feeding the pigeons. Patiently she tore the bread into tiny morsels. There were thousands of them, pigeons, s.h.i.tting in the same compound where they were being fed.

Allah u AkbarAllah u AkbarAllah u AkbarAllah u AkbarAsh-hadu Alla Ilaha-ill-allahAsh-hadu Alla Ilaha-ill-allahAsh-hadu Anna Mohammadan Rasul-allahAsh-hadu Anna Mohammadan Rasul-allahHayya-Alas-SalatHayya-Alas-SalatHayya-Alal-FalahHayya-Alal-FalahAllah u AkbarAllah u AkbarLa-ilaha ill-allah The boy at the store was not paying attention to azan azan. He was solving math problems. His Philips radio was playing qawalis, Shahbaz Qalandar, and to this day I am able to recall the problem he was struggling with. Years before I, too, had to deal with the same complicated equation in school.

X3 + Y + Y3 = L = L3 + M + M3 = 1729 = 1729.

I coughed. He looked up. His nose was running.

'Do you sell the Qur'an?'

'How many?' he asked as if I was going to buy them by the dozen.

'Kid,' I said, 'first explain to me the proper way to give respect to the Qur'an.'

'Are you buying?'

'Of course,' I said. 'One.'

'Then I will teach you,' he said.

The boy wrapped the book in a velvet cloth.

'Wash your hands before praying,' he said.

'Same thing,' I said. 'We do the same in Sikhism.'

He didn't seem interested in learning about my religion and returned to math. I almost told him the correct answer, but changed my mind. 1729. The smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.

X = 1.

Y = 12.

L = 9.

M = 10.

The man who first solved this problem was the South Indian mathematician Ramanujan. He was a genius and he solved this problem on his deathbed at the age of twenty-nine. In school the teacher used to tell us many stories about math. She also told us that zero the most important ingredient of math was invented in our own country, only later the concept migrated to Arab countries.

It was getting dark. I cycled back to the camp with the Qur'an in the front carrier. In my kit there were apples and a trout wrapped in a paper. Nearing the camp I noticed something I had seen several times before but had never thought to be important. Not far from the bridge the road rises sharply, and from an elevated spot, while pedaling breathlessly, I saw sudden points of light, I witnessed the precise moment the electric lights were being turned on in our country and in the enemy's country. The enemy turned on their lights (on the brown mountains it had occupied) at precisely the same time, I realized, we turned on the lights on our mountains. Both sides declared night at the same time, I thought, despite the time difference. I stopped my bike and waited by the railing for a long time, and thought about the kitchens on both sides of the border, the culinary similarities and differences, and I thought about rain, which was now falling, too, on both sides, making the lines fuzzier and fuzzier.

General Sahib's residence hummed with its yellow lights. It was the second brightest place on our side of the border, I noticed. The brightest was the Governor's mansion on the hill, shimmering with mystery.

That night as I served tea in Sahib's room, I felt I was at two places at once. I was on the Zero Bridge looking at the bright lights of Sahib's residence and I was inside as well, inside the residence holding a tray. The General was back from his travels. Perhaps he, too, felt he was in two places at once. I knocked at the door.

'Come in.'

Sahib separated himself from the book he was reading.

'Kip!'

'Sir.'

He requested me to switch on the fluorescent light.

'I must tell you,' he said, 'the turmeric you add in the tea is helping my stomach ache.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'And Kip '

'Sir.'

'More on the enemy woman?'

'She is clean, sir.'

Sahib took slow sips of tea as I told him Irem's drowning story.

'Something else?'

I wanted to, but I could not reveal the bombing story because I was afraid for Irem.

'No, sir.'

'Why are you trembling?'

'Sorry, sir. Been cycling in the rain, sir.'

'Any knowledge of terrorist activity?'

'No, sir,' I lied. 'But, we must investigate more.'

'Why?'

'Sahib, perhaps if we slow down the investigation.'

'Slow?'

'So far I have investigated very fast, sir. But I plan to proceed slowly from now on. The way it is with the golf b.a.l.l.s, sir.'

'Kip. Sunno. Your a.s.signment is over.'

'Over, sir?'

'No need to interrogate the enemy any further.'

'But, sir, I have just started.'

'Kip, we have excavated enough information. Now the interrogation must stop.'

I kept my eyes fixed on the spine of the book now shut on the table top.

'Sir.'

'The colonel will soon issue a commendation certificate to you.'

'But, sir '

'You may go now.'

'Sir.'

Every morning I would check with Sahib's car driver about the routes he was planning to follow. The Zero Bridge, because of the rain, was never on the route and this was rea.s.suring. But I was really worried, and for that reason I cycled in civilian clothes to the city post office and mailed an unsigned note to the army HQ warning about a possible attack on General k.u.mar. The letter had immediate effect. The army beefed up security around the bridge, interrogated the locals and raided many Kashmiri houses in the area. A journalist wrote confidently in the national paper, Peace has returned to the valley. Days later when the General's black military car (with a flag and four stars) pa.s.sed the Zero Bridge nothing happened. Three seconds later the bridge exploded.

The river carried away the ripped parts, the blown-up arches, and for days the waters looked high and muddy and black, and not just because of the rain.

The driver of the car told me later: Major, the moment the bridge exploded I felt as if my heart had leaped out of my chest. But I also felt the invisible hand of G.o.d protecting us. I cannot forget the roar, the rain of wood and metal and fire. The car started flying. Then booom, it fell. I kept driving. The General shouted (from the back seat): Tej. Tej. Fast. Faster Tej. Tej. Fast. Faster. My foot was on the gas, hammering it. Look at this hole in the body of the car, Major. G.o.d gave us only a little hole in the rear, and a few damaged parts inside. G.o.d made me drive fast. Are you with me, Major?

Yes, yes, I said.

G.o.d is great, Major.

She is clean, I said to myself. Irem is clean.

18.

In the kitchen the trout stared at me for many days. Fish can be cut any which way. So it is better than meat, I thought. No quarrel about halal or non-halal. Trout I had thought was the best way to have conversation conversation with the enemy. But Sahib asked me to stop all with the enemy. But Sahib asked me to stop all conversation conversation.

Outside, it kept raining against the window, corroding the cutlery inside. The rain mocked me, for many days rain lashed. The eyes of that fish mocked me. But. The inclement weather had a reverse effect on my cooking. The mushiness in the air prevented the drying. I sprinkled fresh coriander and roasted caraway seeds on the tender, moist fish. The orderly, who was my friend, delivered the tiffin-carrier in the hospital. He delivered the holy book as well. She did not send any message for me. But she had kissed the Qur'an, the orderly told me.

'She refused to eat the fish, Major.'

'Did she say something?'

'The nurse was standing close to the bed and the enemy woman said (using signs and gestures) that she had no intention to eat for the next forty days.'

'Why don't you say it is Ramadan?' I raised my voice.

'Did I do something wrong, Major?' he apologized.

'No,' I said.

'Major,' he said.

'Please leave me alone.'

'She said one thing else, Major.'

'What?'

'When she is eating normally she feels hungry around noon. But now that she is eating abnormally, I mean now that she is fasting, at noon she feels thirsty only.'

'What else?'

'That's all, Major,' he said. 'Now I will go away.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Don't show me your face again.'

I see myself unable to sleep, waking up with a dry throat. In my dream I am hungry, I have not eaten for days and I am in a cla.s.sroom in Pakistan and the teacher (who is eating a kebab) is angry with me. On the blackboard words are written in Urdu in thick chalk, I notice as the teacher walks towards my bench, holding a stick in his right hand. The sound of his boots approaching me is growing louder. Now we are standing face to face, his kebab breath gets trapped in my nostrils. The teacher is wearing a military uniform, medals on his breast. General President Musharraf? I ask. Open your palm, he says. What's my crime? You are sitting next to a female student, he says. I turn my neck: the girl. I survey quickly her face. She is absolutely silent, her lips sealed tight. She is not eating. I feel sick to my stomach. Open your palm, he says. The General hits my palm with the stick. The girl shuts her eyes, her body shakes. The stick keeps. .h.i.tting me over and over. Suddenly the girl starts laughing. Don't laugh, I say. Don't laugh at me, I request. Not here.

All through rain (and Ramadan) there were dinners. The kitchen grew very busy because of a stream of visitors who came to congratulate Sahib for having survived the explosion. The chief of security was suspended and four other officers responsible for the protection of the bridge were imprisoned. Many more local houses were raided to hunt the terrorists.

Gen Sahib had little time for himself. He was also preoccupied with a high-level court martial. The court martial would bring its own stream of officers to the residence. I found myself a bit stressed, sleeping barely four or five hours. The ADC instructed me to cook Punjabi karhi-chawal, mitha shalgum, and saag maki-di-roti for Brigadier Pash, the presiding officer of the court martial. Pash's nickname was BapuGandhi BapuGandhi; the Brigadier was renowned for his honesty and vegetarianism.

'Here comes the famous Brigadier Pash.' Sahib shook his hand in the drawing room.

From behind the curtain I overheard the conversation between the two men.

'Is there an evidence?'

'Not on paper '

The gla.s.ses tinkled and plates clattered and spoons rattled, but I can't forget the syllables of Gen Sahib's crisp voice.