Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

  ACT I

  A man playing an important tribesman is secretly drugged, then commanded to chug a keg of booze on the orders of a man playing a stranger. The tribesman is then given a Kalashnikov and asked to drive a Range Rover over another man who plays Mahmoud the Pathan. Mahmoud’s legs will break. The man playing a stranger then hands the tribesman a wooden plank with a protruding nail. The tribesman will use this to beat Mahmoud until the plank snaps in two. The stranger then orders the tribesman to pour sand into Mahmoud’s eyes, down his throat. Mahmoud’s eyes and throat are forced open. Fine sand is poured like liquid from a terra-cotta jug. Once this horror concludes, the stranger will order the tribesman to fire the Kalashnikov. Over Mahmoud the Pathan. Which the tribesman does. On further prompting, the tribesman pours lighter fluid on Mahmoud’s clothes. The stranger offers the tribesman a Zippo. This is where the first act ends.

  INTERMISSION

  Fifteen minutes. The actors smoke. Some miracle salve is rubbed on the man playing Mahmoud. The organizers provide refreshments. The assembled men help themselves to dates, cold fruit, bitter coffee, sweet tea, water or Laban Up. Portable lavatories fulfill other needs.

  ACT II

  On the last day of April, the assembled men of my city are expected to attend a play profiling an incident in the life of Mahmoud the Pathan. We not only witness the play; in the second act, we are also expected to participate. We will all play tribesmen, replacing the actor who played the tribesman in the first act, and repeating his deeds.

  The second act begins as soon as we consume drugs. Then every one of us drinks a whole keg of booze and each picks up a working Kalashnikov, donated every year by an arms dealer, before taking turns driving the sole Range Rover over sands near the former oasis where Mahmoud the Pathan’s legs will be broken once again. Multiple times.

  Under supervision of the man playing a stranger, the assembled men of my city, fed drugs, then booze, one at a time, drive over Mahmoud the Pathan. Over. Over. Over.

  Under supervision of the man playing a stranger, the assembled men of my city beat Mahmoud the Pathan with a wooden plank with a protruding nail, then one at a time pour sand into his eyes, down his throat. Over. Over. Over.

  Afterwards, doped out of our minds, ignoring the night moon, we call on the sun to assemble over the sands. “Witness Mahmoud the Pathan’s broken legs! Fire the Kalashnikovs!” we shout. Then, like men, we fire the Kalashnikovs. We fire our guns like men. We cheer. Now what’s left is to burn the man who plays Mahmoud.

  It is almost dawn when I pour lighter fluid on Mahmoud’s clothes. I notice the man playing him is exhausted. I am the penultimate person to set him on fire. There have been hundreds before me, traipsing in after mandated ten-minute intervals. Once the man playing a stranger puts my fire out, he administers the miracle salve, before the last person in line sets Mahmoud on fire again. This is where the second act ends. Then the man playing Mahmoud the Pathan can go home, along with the assembled men of my city, who will also be permitted to return.

  EPILOGUE

  In April. On the last day. After the required demonstration of a significant moment in the life of Mahmoud the Pathan comes to a close, the man playing him is in some pain. His legs are broken in many places. Fine shards of wood stick to his back. He has gravel in his belly, multiple lacerations to both corneas, second- to third-degree burns. To numb the pain, he requires booze and drugs. And he needs a Range Rover on loan. Someone to drive him. To be able to return to the city center. Next year he may reprise his role or they may find someone else. But this is the routine. This is what happens once a year. Every year.

  CHABTER SEVEN

  IN MUSSAFAH GREW PEOPLE

  Like the crow, Kerala’s much-maligned bird, Malayalees adapt well anywhere. Only our language Malayalam, a palindrome, is difficult.

  —WANTED CRIMINAL RAMJI RAO (1989)

  NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW that sixty-seven and a half kilometers to Dubai’s west sits an island, a little sultanate ruled by an envious little grump, Sultan Mo-Mo.

  MAY 3, 2006

  The sultan had enormous eyebrows, fibrous like angora wool. In moments of strife, his eyebrows twitched violently. Like now!

  His Excellency’s royal blood boiled. Once again another mesmerized American news anchor gushed about Dubai’s vision, hailing the imagination of the al-Maktoum family.

  “Where is this vision coming from?” probed Katie Couric.

  “Ignorant Yankee!” Sultan Mo-Mo’s British twang bore traces of Basil Fawlty.

  The sultan wanted to retch. Dubai’s showboating gave him indigestion, but he continued helping himself to more chips and fiery salsa, downing cold Guinness, smoking excellent hash, humming the theme song of The Wonder Years.

  Thinking.

  Plotting.

  Watching TV.

  There was so much envy in his royal blood he had been peeing green for several days. Dr. Ranasinghe, his physician, had warned him about that and advocated reincorporating the stress-ball exercises into his routine. Otherwise, the sultan would stink of petrol. And he did. The palace reeked.

  But Mo-Mo couldn’t harness his rage. No matter where he turned, there was no escaping Dubai, the oil bloc’s Mr. Fabulous, flexing its international credentials, cocksure, so very %#$%& cocksure.

  It was infuriating! Mo-Mo couldn’t watch the news anymore. Every day Dubai’s smug finance minister, Sheikh “Mind Boggler” Salman, as the networks dubbed him, claimed another first for his country.

  Camera crews shot him like Brando. His oblong forehead descending from the heavens. Slowly, like E.T.’s mother ship. Announcing another “world’s first,” just when regular folk thought Dubai’s ideas men had finally succumbed, having extinguished every possible permutation the word “crazy” embodied.

  “Marhaba, everyone,” Mind Boggler would say. Dapper in Tom Ford. His customary grin. Then he would begin.

  Broadcast by TV and radio stations, the man’s baritone hypnotized homes on at least three continents. When the sound bites ended, cyberspace pundits dissected the presentation. B-school faculty pored over averages and indexes, made a few calls. The Economist published a special report.

  Dubai’s audacity made Mo-Mo stink of petrol. When, on February 3, 2006, Dubai authorities apprehended a Senegalese man for hiding and raising a pregnant hyena in his home, the animal was taken in an air-conditioned trailer to a secret location, where the exhausted mother gave birth to a healthy litter. Immediately, the government announced plans “long overdue” for the largest game reserve Asia had ever known. That, for Sultan Mo-Mo, was the proverbial straw that broke his corpulent back. He reached for the red phone.

  JUNE 22, 2006

  After security checks, endless tea, a plateful of dates, and more waiting, three Malayalees—Pinto, Tinto, and Vimto—were ushered into Sultan Mo-Mo’s chambers. Here, Tinto gingerly produced a bagful of seeds he passed on to the sultan, who inspected the goods by sniffing them. The stuff looked like Nescafé instant-coffee crystals. Smelled like parboiled rice.

  The sultan’s trusted advisor, Ali al-Thani, “Able Ali” in British diplomacy circles, had set up the rendezvous. “You are not going to believe this,” he told Mo-Mo excitedly on Skype. “I have three men who tell me Dubai grows its labor. Sprouts workers like sheaves of corn.” Sultan Mo-Mo asked his most trusted minister to call him back when the Moroccan hash had worn off. “They will be there tomorrow, Your Excellency,” Ali responded, suggesting the sultan check his e-mail before going to bed.

  “Ali wrote me,” the sultan mumbled to the fidgety trio. “Plantains and hammour, eh? Be back here on July 16. And by the way, fellows, if this is a joke, need I say much else?”

  The men had taken a big risk.

  A cousin of Tinto’s told him one afternoon there were rumors that since the late eighties a Malayalee scientist, Moosa, “Agro Moosa” to friends, had been helping the al-Nahiyan and the al-Maktoum families grow Malayalees on secret farms cocooned inside industrial-size
greenhouses in Musaffah, around forty-five minutes away from Abu Dhabi’s city center. The Canned Malayalee Project was born after the labor ministry realized in 1983 that the country would have to multiply its workforce by a factor of four if the sheikhs were to accomplish the growth they envisioned in the time they wanted it. Employing more white men was not an option. They wilted in the sun. Then the head of intelligence stepped in. A trusted lieutenant, he shared, had noticed the hardiness of a certain kind of man, native to soil where thousands of years ago King Mahabali ruled. “They call this man ‘The Malayalee,’” the head of intelligence explained, “and many of them operate grocery stores.” Thus they began observing The Malayalee. Field agents took notes, studied his temperament, his vulnerability to weather. Then they began studying cadavers. And when intelligence found the Czech, Dr. Petr—his reputation cemented after cloning two-legged mice, then training them to locate land mines, before being apprehended for trying to grow a human brain in a crystal ball and getting his license revoked—the project had its head researcher.

  Laboratories were set up. Experiments conducted, results noted. Early breakthroughs involved growing nostrils in a petri dish. Then some hair, the wrong-colored toes. They grew a little man without a brain, and he lived for a week before he succumbed to an algae infection. Efforts to grow women were eventually abandoned. The first female prototype germinated stark naked, which made handling the specimen cause for concern. She died of loneliness in her little petri dish. Then Moosa, assistant to the head researcher, made his breakthrough. From a seed, he grew a miniature baby with two limbs and a brain. Within two weeks, the baby reached adolescence. It sulked, then died. In a year, Moosa perfected the technique, taking over the project from Dr. Petr. Instead of petri dishes, Moosa favored flowerpots packed with earth. Moosa’s first batch only managed to yield dwarfs, but after adjusting the crop’s exposure to light, giving the soil some air, sizes improved. He also began making his own fertilizer in order to have absolute control over the process. For the testing phase, Moosa switched operations to a greenhouse. Insisted on a climate-controlled environment. And somehow what he grew came out fully clothed.

  Moosa’s special seeds, fertilized by imported plantains from the Malabar Coast and breaded hammour fillets, hosed with tap water, beef liver, human feces, and imported toddy, was rumored to have grown into oak-dark heat-resistant five-foot-seven Malayalees in twenty-three days. These fruits, MALLUS (Malayalees Assembled Locally and Lovingly Under Supervision), or canned Malayalees, were picked and washed in concentrated Dettol, before being checked out or “cerebrally customized,” as Moosa called it, by trained personnel in the briefing chambers. Then they were put to work.

  MALLUS spoke excellent Arabic since the greenhouses piped in Umm Kulthum records and old Egyptian films as the fruits matured. The gardeners, hand-picked Malayalee scholars, were instructed to speak Malayalam in the greenhouses as much as possible. This was to encourage camouflaging and avoid raising suspicion once the MALLUS began to mingle with the expatriate population, especially Malayalees. MALLUS were also designed to have an average life span of twelve years, after which each would report back to headquarters like a dying pachyderm and be driven to the desert for the final chapter in its cycle.

  But Moosa was now standing trial on corruption charges.

  After years of being feted by his patrons, Moosa woke up one day and had a change of heart. He doctored his seeds and didn’t tell a soul. The new formula produced canned Malayalees designed to prioritize reason, with minds difficult to tame. “Cantankerous twits,” observed leaked ministry memos. Moosa also improved their immune systems, increasing their life spans. In March 2006, a large number of these redesigned canned Malayalees took to the streets near what was going to be the tallest structure in the world, and went on strike in a country where dissent is not tolerated. As the men rioted, on-lookers, startled by actual rioting, fished out their cameras and took pictures.

  Moosa’s hand might have gone undetected if word hadn’t gotten out; tipsy laborers were overheard boasting in a roadside cafeteria that some men in an undisclosed labor camp were discussing overthrowing the present regime and forming the newly independent nation of Mallu Landoo, Proud Nation of Malayalee Man. “Think about it,” urged one of their leaders, Puncture Daniel, on clandestine MALLUS Radio “If every Malayalee stopped work in this country!” The men were apprehended by alarmed authorities in a sting operation and in no time discovered to be fruits. A calm Moosa confessed when the secret police brought him in for questioning. However, he refused to explain why he did what he did.

  Quickly, an executive decision was made by the labor ministry to abandon using MALLUS in the workplace. The head of intelligence got demoted. Large consignments of seeds were ordered to be driven to the desert and destroyed. Vociferous MALLUS were captured in droves and driven to the desert to join comrades who had died of natural causes.

  *

  For six years Pinto, Tinto, and Vimto worked as truck drivers in Dubai for a Pakistani manager they called General Zia in the city’s Jebel Ali Free Zone. They put in fifteen-hour shifts, six days a week. Once a month, they waited in line with chums to bang Sri Lankan hookers smuggled into their camp for entertainment. The afternoon following the workers’ riot, the trio was ushered into General Zia’s office along with other colleagues. They were briefed and told to make the journey to Musaffah, driving top-secret cargo into the desert where waiting workers would unload the trucks’ contents and destroy the seeds in a massive bonfire. The three men were paid six hundred dirhams each, a princely sum for a day’s work. They also decided to keep one crate a piece. Why? Vimto had a plan.

  Vimto’s old schoolmate, Mukundan, had worked at Sultan Mo-Mo’s palace as an electrician for five months, and over a plate of chicken biryani and Kingfisher beer one Friday night told Vimto he thought the sultan would be willing to do anything to ruin Dubai: “Because of its proximity to Dubai, people don’t even know Mo-Mo’s country exists. He’s embarrassed.” Vimto asked Pinto and Tinto if they wanted to make a little extra money.

  JULY 16, 2006

  11:00 a.m.

  “What will you do with all this wealth?” a beaming sultan asked the three men.

  “Purchase bling from Gold Souk. Then leave. Start a business back home, stay indoors, wipe the sun off my face” grinned Pinto, his knees rattling.

  “I have four girls, another baby’s on the way, Your Excellency. Must talk to wife, make plans,” confessed Tinto. He felt embarrassed, thinking the sultan had caught him staring at those famous eyebrows.

  “See Yourope, Disneyland” shared Vimto. “Taste women,” he whispered in Malayalam to his mates. “Bathe the first-born, hold him.” Vimto also admitted to his friends a turquoise yacht was on top of his wish list.

  “Half the money’s here, gentlemen, wiring the rest, my staff will take care of the extra crates you have for me,” concluded the sultan, gesturing with a wave of his fat right palm that there was nothing left to discuss. “Rahmat will drive you. Rahmat!”

  As the men bid adieu, joined by his chauffeur Rahmat, Mo-Mo thought about the future. He recalled with glee Able Ali’s face when he walked into the greenhouse a few days ago, almost a month after the trio’s visit. Maturing laborers hung from plant stalks like napping bats. Two weeks prior, the sultan had watched larvae poke their little bodies out of the soil, before inching up fifteen-foot plant stalks like pudgy worms, a two-day climb only the fittest could complete. Mo-Mo told Able Ali how he would wait for every seed to mature and then have his men smuggle the MALLUS in batches to the heart of Dubai, where they would set them free to roam undetected. To fester. “Mallu Landoo,” His Excellency purred, “let’s help them get it.”

  Now if only Rahmat would hurry up with the special stuff he got from his Pashtun dealer—hash smuggled through the Afghan-Iran border on stoned donkeys. But he had requested that Rahmat take the new highway that had just been built, the one that bisected the desert, and then make a detour. Towa
rds Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter. Rahmat had special instructions and would be late. Mo-Mo would wait. No longer would any of the palaces stink of petrol.

  6:00 p.m.

  Rahmat drives the happy trio over the new highway. Balkan music turned up high. Goran Bregović in total command over his orchestra. Trumpets, accordion, two-headed drums, Bulgarian chorus. Rahmat, singing along, channeling Roma blood. His passengers join in. They turn into an impromptu quartet, singing:

  Gas, gas

  gas, gas, GAS

  Allo allo eh

  ritam ritam

  allo allo eh sexi ritam!

  Windows rolled down, voices bouncing off dunes. The rum-gold Toyota Land Cruiser heads towards the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter, the greatest of the sand deserts. Rahmat’s driving keeps time to the orchestra’s manic pace, until he detours, driving into the desert itself at top speed, startling the men. Rum-gold Land Cruiser trampolines! Like off-roaders at Dakar.

  The men protest, but Rahmat drives on. By now, Bregović’s Balkans have gone bonkers. The stereo explodes. Rahmat goes ballistic. “Ka-lash-nee-kov, Ka-lash-nee-kov, Ka-lash...” he sings. Driving another fifteen minutes, he brakes suddenly, turning off the ignition. Then stepping outside, he begins releasing air from the tires, in order to climb and descend dunes safely, he explains. In the men’s presence, Land Cruiser mutates into Off-Road Beast.

  He then turns towards the nervy trio. “Seen the sun set over dunes?”

  JULY 18, 2006

  Tinto and Vimto have hours left to live. They walk aimlessly, past terrain British explorer Wilfred Thesiger discovered during his crossing of the Empty Quarter. Twice. “Umbarak,” the Bedu christened the tall Brit. Timto and Vimto could use a bit of help from the Bedu. Any of Umbarak’s trusted companions, young Salim bin Ghabaisha or Salim bin Kabina, would do. Both handsome, long-maned, worthy travelers. Guides. Tinto and Vimto need guides.

  Rahmat had spiked their refreshments. When they woke, the 4x4 was gone. He didn’t take all the money. He left half, in case they survived. He also left behind a roast chicken, which a fox would steal, a watermelon now populated by flies, and two liters of water. By twilight the water was gone. Pinto couldn’t help it. He was thirsty; he finished the water as his friends slept. A fight ensued, and Pinto separated from the duo.