Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

  Pinto was nearing death when he spotted a herd of grazing camels. Milk, he knew, milk! Desperate to feed, he tried approaching a nursing she-camel. She refused. Frustrated, he kicked the resting mother. The animal bit his kneecap off, then kicked him in the head.

  For a day or two, Pinto had money to his name. He had danced the hora atop a Land Cruiser with a stoned Rahmat. Bregović’s orchestra blared proud and loud. Friends Vimto and Tinto drank beer, singing along:

  Sa O Roma babo babo

  Sa O Roma o daje

  Sa O Roma babo babo

  Edelrezi, EDELREZI

  Sao o Roma daje...

  They sang as the sun went to sleep. Swallowed by dunes. Temperature switching from hot to cold. Warming hands over wild bright fire.

  The camel herder buried Pinto in the sands. Then recited the prayer for the dead. The sky turned to cinder.

  *

  Vimto collapsed first. They, on Tinto’s insistence, had taken off their shoes, wrapped their shirts around their heads, but there was no food to be found, no water. The watermelon had been eaten.

  Tinto saw the rust-colored structures then—dots in the sand, some movement. People? He started to run, then, exhausted, began to crawl. “Here!” he yelled, “here!” The dots ran towards him. The dots were speaking. Oak-dark men, five-foot-seven, hung upside down when little. The dots brought water.

  The Commander was tucking into dinner when Chandu interrupted him.

  “Problem?”

  “On patrol, sir, we found two men.”

  “So?”

  “Drivers, they assisted burning consignments last month.”

  “They told you this?”

  “Recognized them, I was there. Salvage Ops.”

  “They are here now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Platoon thought they were us.”

  “And?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “They participated? In burning any of us? Executions?”

  “Just ferried seeds.”

  “OK.” The Commander started to rise.

  “But...”

  “Yes?”

  “Could be a third person?”

  “Missing?”

  “Looking.”

  “Find him.”

  “We are looking.”

  “And—”

  “What else?”

  “We found money.”

  JULY 19, 2006

  As the men recovered in the sick ward, they told similar but different lies. Vimto mentioned a fight. Tinto’s story spoke of booze, their morning hangover clouding direction, and the men would only discover each other’s version minutes before their meeting with The Commander. But they weren’t too concerned.

  “Sun muddles the brain,” said Vimto. “Right?”

  “Agreed,” smiled Tinto.

  They had both judiciously avoided mentioning the sultan or the money.

  Vimto ventured out for some air. He observed his surroundings.

  Shipping containers lined the land, strung like beads, camouflaged by colors mimicking desert dunes, stacked like cargo, holes punched in to enable circulation, acting as dormitories. Inside, little cities. Inside, grocery stores. Inside, laboratories. Inside, many graves.

  Vimto and Tinto were unregistered visitors in an unregistered MALLUS camp, nonexistent on maps, its inhabitants answerable to no one, but Vimto couldn’t know any of this. A month ago, a truck was parked near the camp’s main square. In the truck bed were burn victims, gunshot-wound sufferers, survivors. Lying next to them were five singed crates, the last of the lot, with three hundred seeds per crate. Not all viable to plant. Another truck was parked away from the campsite. There, volunteers washed bodies, others they wrapped in shroud. Pieces went into bags. Before they brought the dead over to the main square. Where some were buried, others burnt over palm fronds. For days, the prayers for the dead tore holes in the wind.

  “What are you building here?” Vimto had asked Chandu, one of his rescuers.

  “Dreams,” Chandu quipped, laughing.

  Vimto laughed, too. “But no, seriously.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A game reserve for hyenas.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  *

  The Commander rose, adjusted his shirtsleeves, and checked for stains.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Orders...”

  “Well, they know, don’t they?”

  “I—”

  “They’ve seen the operation?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Leaves us little choice. Fix it.”

  “I said we were saving hyenas.”

  “Hyenas? Ah, Senegalese! They buy that?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “They leave, people find out, can’t have that—”

  “The money—”

  “Ours now. Invest.”

  As The Commander rose, his frame obscured a fading color photograph given a place of prominence in the office. A bald mustachioed man faced the camera, his hand resting on a little girl’s shoulder. The man was average looking, in gardening attire. On his shirt lapel was stenciled his name, Moosa Kutty. Behind him were plant stalks balancing little brown babies hanging upside down like napping bats. A sign in the foreground said “BATCH 24, July 2003.”

  The sun steamed the morning sky. Out of the corner of his eye, Vimto spotted The Commander. Chandu was with him. So the requested meeting had been arranged. The rescued men wanted to thank The Commander in person for the camp’s hospitality. They didn’t want their rescuers to get in trouble with management, whom they hadn’t seen yet. They also wanted to know when they could expect to get on the next bus to the city. And Vimto toyed with the idea of asking The Commander why this labor camp looked older than others, worse than any Vimto had been in, and why the men seemed unperturbed to be housed inside shipping containers.

  Vimto nudged Tinto, who had recovered and joined him outside, cheese-sandwich crumbs sticking to his mustache. They both waved.

  CHABTER EIGHT

  LE MUSÉE

  Ba, now Chief, no longer rebel, observed the din his men had caused. Homes smoldered, parted female legs ceased kicking in the fields. Dogs ate dogs, dogs ate horses. A defeated nude leader hung from a rotting banyan tree.

  This, Ba knew, was war. And war was not meant to be beautiful. His people had won, and Ba allowed his men to enjoy the spoils of battle. He was a wise man and understood the merits of celebration, but what Ba truly yearned for was his army’s triumph to live on after his passing.

  “Go amidst the vanquished,” Ba commanded his most trusted lieutenant. “Seek eleven, the finest eleven among the hundreds left of this tribe. Choose four fine men, choose them for their youth. The men need mates. Find three proud dames, prized for their intellect and their beauty. When this has been done, seek three infants, two girls and a boy. Finally, snatch an old warrior with a wrinkled neck, bald like the fowl circling above. Bathe them all after you find them, dress them in clean attire, then bring them to me.”

  Ba then ordered four good homes to be built next to each other, some land to grow crop, circled by stone fences, near what would be his palace grounds. “Practical, not gaudy dwellings,” he cautioned. Three of the new homes would house one man, his chosen woman, and an infant. The fourth home would house the young man Ba would select to look after the old warrior. When the eleven had been found, bathed, clothed, they were sent to his chambers.

  “I want you to live as you would live if we weren’t here,” Ba addressed them. “Live as a family, as neighbors, continue your customs, but within the confines of your homes. If you plot your escape, I promise you, we will find you.”

  Ba explained the other rules. They were to be given produce (some seeds to encourage self-reliance) and livestock, which they would use to cook, grow their own
food, but they would not be permitted weapons. Their homes would also be devoid of privacy. His subjects, he told the assembled eleven, would be permitted to observe the vanquished living their lives by peering through windows, or inviting themselves in “whenever the need arises to watch you, to smell you, to observe how you speak, how you bake bread, and to be there when you die.” In a week, these people had a name: “Les Exposés”. And soon, sentries would be posted to control the house visits, unannounced or otherwise.

  Ba also announced a decree, hammered onto a stone totem outside palace premises in the village square: “Here, the vanquished! Guarantee them respect until Death arrives riding his black bull. Bring children. ‘Observe their ways!’ tell them. ‘Bring your own children here,’ tell them. Then tell these young bloods, ‘Remember the enemy, remember what our warriors did.’ Before Death arrives atop that black bull.”

  The eleven listened to Ba’s pronouncements. Then the old man came forward. “And if we refuse, Lord Ba, what then?”

  “If you refuse,” Ba told him calmly, “let me tell you what will happen.”

  —”LE MUSÉE” EXCERPT, FIRDOSE MOOSA (TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH)

  I

  About Father, little to tell. When he lived, he worked as a scientist for a government-owned company that manufactured people in the Gulf, one of the first produce firms to do it right on petrol-infested soil. But Father’s dead. What he was, how he smelled, walked, moved—hard to recall. Suppressed somewhere in the folds of my brain. I loved him dearly. One day he disappeared. To remember his face now, I require photographs.

  I must have been eight.

  Father’s running an important errand, Mother (“Amma,” henceforth) said at first. Gone, she corrected a few weeks later. Then six months to the day after Father’s disappearance, us subsisting in Uncle’s house (nervy adults sleeping, or bickering, by the telephone), Amma sat me down as I crunched cornflakes for breakfast: Dead, she confirmed, for weeks now. Year? 2007. Month? December. Day? When Romania eliminated the Ceaușescus.

  I went numb. The milk tasted sour. In a week, we boarded a plane for Kerala, no dead body, no belongings, no plan. That was twenty or thirty years ago. Amma’s been long dead. And then, last week, a message arrived, in the mouth of that man with the overbite.

  Yes? I said, impatient to get back to work. He didn’t say much at first, only repeating my name, confirming the woman who opened the door was indeed Sabeen. Which would be me.

  Can I help you? is what I asked.

  Private investigator, Madam, I have something for you, he said, flashing ID, showing himself in, then handing me an envelope. Inside was a piece of paper, with two words underlined in ballpoint cursive, a rarity these days: Moosa’s Mouse.

  Miss Sabeen, right? Writer Sabeen? Writer Sabeen, of Brooklyn fame? Overbite repeated.

  Yes, I confirmed again. I avoided photographs; the book jackets never featured any.

  Then he asked me if “Moosa’s Mouse” was a term I had heard before.

  Yes, I know it, I told him, a while—

  Arabic coffee would be super, Overbite interjected. Beaming.

  *

  You know it because? Overbite probed, sipping lukewarm tap water. By now, I was livid.

  Uncle Salman used to call me that, I said somewhat curtly, when I was little. They were friends, Father and Uncle Salman. Back in the day, in Abu Dhabi. Then Uncle Salman ratted him out to ministry intelligence. Accused Father of sedition, Amma confessed in my teens, so ministry goons came for Father. I was in school, Amma was home. They took him, Amma said, then I guess after a week, without informing us, executed him. All public record.

  Apologies, offered Overbite.

  Amma died last year, I digressed. What’s this about?

  Overbite, unperturbed, burrowed for details, fingering his cleft chin. In touch with Uncle Salman since?

  Listen, Mister, I told him, it was after Father’s murder. Maybe six, seven years later. Uncle Salman and a bunch of top Emirati officials, along with their wives, mistresses, and children, were abducted from their homes; the ministry looked for them, I mean, really looked for them. Nothing came out of the searches. They didn’t even find bones, a drop of blood. Almost seven families gone! The rebel workers called what they did retribution, but even after the failed coup attempt, the insistence on the creation of Mallu Landoo, its discovery, bombing, and annihilation by the defense forces, the war, the death of their leader, The Commander. Even after all that mayhem, they still didn’t find them; I know because ministry men came for Amma when they took Uncle Salman, questioned her in front of me. We survived the barrage. Who sent you again? The ministry? Look—

  Overbite excused himself. To pee?

  Down the corridor, to your left, I said. Flush twice!

  *

  I lit up, inhaled, recalling Amma’s and my surprise at finding ministry men in our tiny paying-guest flat the week Uncle Salman disappeared—us bothering no one in Pondicherry, Amma apprenticing at a French patisserie, us listed under Amma’s middle name, “Sanam.” They still found us!

  I exhaled. Then I recalled The Commander’s public execution. We watched it on bootleg, Amma and I, even though the ministry banned unauthorized videotaping.

  Then there were the photographs in the papers. Proof the man was gone, that in his last moments he had bitten off his tongue, even soiled himself. They denied him everything, a bath, a shave; he died resembling a bum.

  Headlines back then reveled in The Commander’s defeat: “Modern-Day Guevara Hangs!” mentioned Al Khabr; “Victorious! Conflict Put to Rest After Commander’s Execution” trumpeted Gulf Times. A friend sent Amma cut-outs, which she preserved. Why, I was never sure.

  Who would have thought?! In the Khaleej, where Allah’s teachings were first orally told, no one.

  Shipping containers in the middle of the desert, a little city populated by renegade laborers and runaways. An army fueled by rage, propelled by the charisma of one man, The Commander. Who would have thought they would have endured for so long?! No one.

  The scale of the rebels’ enterprise boggled the world: greenhouses, a commercial square, a functioning police force, a munitions factory, a movie theater, mosques/temples/churches built out of packed mud, underground tunnels to every emirate (and even Oman!), and a whorehouse. This, all of this, in the desert, in the Empty Quarter. But what astounded ministry intelligence was the presence of a national anthem, a flag, as well as an in-progress constitution. The rebels were in the process of making a country. Before—

  Overbite emerged from the bathroom, wringing wet palms, dabbing his mustache with tissue. Two months ago, he said, in a little Indian town called Irinjalakuda, a man with old Gulf Return connections bought a house.

  People buy houses all the time, I told him.

  Business minded, Overbite continued, this fellow planned to tear the place down since it was somewhat run down. It was one of those nineties-style Gulf properties: BIG, a five-bathroom, five-bedroom enterprise, unoccupied—

  So? I interjected, exhaling curlicued smoke.

  If I may, Overbite insisted, before contracted laborers wreck such houses, they do a once-over.

  Meaning? I mumbled.

  Strip its timber, doors, iron bars; they take everything: circuit boards, wires, even soap from the bathrooms, and abandoned pups, which they resell. Then they check to see if the owners forgot or misplaced valuables. It happens. Loot equals profit, split sixty-forty between the laborers and their immediate bosses. Some of these houses have trapdoors, safes, cash taped to the backsides of faux walls. In some Malayalee’s house in Allapey in the eighties, workers—allegedly, of course—found a beam of solid gold ensconced inside a hollowed-out teak pillar. You never know—

  I reminded Overbite his ministry banter was wasting my fucking time. Afternoons I need to write, I told him.

  Ministry doesn’t give a shit, he barked, not involved. Besides, I work solo.

  That house in Irinjalakuda, Overbite conti
nued, had a cellar, where they found an iron door, painted to look like rock, enough tonnage to require four men. Solid, solid, solid. It couldn’t be budged, Miss Sabeen. No key in sight, but even a fool could tell picking that lock required a master locksmith; they needed old-school knowhow. But little to be done; you see, they were on deadline, so they went about their business acting all cool. But at night, spawns of Shaytaan, they snuck back in to try their luck. Armed with homemade dynamite and sledgehammers, they went at that door for hours. Only to dent it somewhat. So they took a break, drank arrack, told stories—

  LOOK, I—

  LISTEN! The fools then fell asleep right there, worn out. In their line of work, discretion was prized, as was loyalty. But in the morning, sober now, the men thought they heard noises, screeching or hissing they reported. Scavenging for treasure in homes bereft of life breeds tales rife with jinns, so, troubled and hungover, they confessed. Boss, they told their boss, the house is haunted.

  Mister—

  It was a stroke of luck, actually, Overbite carried on. Cats in heat were fooling around nearby, he guffawed, but the men couldn’t have known that. So their boss called the police. Sixteen hours later, they were inside this this this house within a house. How? W’allah I swear, Miss Sabeen: They hauled in a seventeenth-century Portuguese cannon, owned by the police superintendent’s in-law, a collector of historical paraphernalia and munitions. They used that thing to bust open that door. The device fired three times, producing a hole big enough for a small man to crawl through. Inside—

  People? Bound and gagged, too, I interrupted, annoyed. Maybe dead. Treasure?

  Yes, people, Miss Sabeen, remnants of people. No trafficking den, this place. Something different.

  Different?

  Folks in Indian intelligence on our payroll had confirmed with ministry intelligence the house was a safe house purchased by The Commander’s abductions unit. They had been using it for years. The rebels’ benefactors held meetings there, fundraised, continuing to do so after The Commander’s execution, but that wasn’t what made the discovery interesting. The police found prisoners’ quarters, five rooms. The furniture was sparse—a double bed, a table, a chair—but the rooms were barricaded by locks, reinforced concrete bars, and an alarm system. There were clear traces, ministry intelligence confirms, of a museum-like setting: photographs, recordings, journals, pamphlets, installations.