Gun Island

by Amitav Ghosh

  This should have set her mind at rest but it didn’t. The specificity of the details in the message worried her; the fact that there was a mention of a time, ‘soon after daybreak’, not to speak of a place. Garjontola was a small and little-known island; it was not the kind of detail that would crop up at random.

  She read the message again and saw that she’d made an error with the dates: the mass beaching was still a week away. She realized now that this wasn’t a report of something that had already happened.

  It was a prediction.

  That raised the possibility that the message had been sent by a crank or a troll. Ever since she’d started speaking out against the refinery upstream of the Sunderbans her social media feeds had spilled over with angry messages: ‘Why u trying to stop poor people getting jobs bitch? Who paying u to stop development? Go back where you came from foreign whore.’

  But this message didn’t look as though it had been sent by a troll: for one thing, it had appeared in the mailbox she used for private correspondence, not on her publicly available university account or any of her social media feeds. Piya could not rule out the possibility that it had been sent by a whistle-blower in the refinery, someone who had advance knowledge of an upcoming dump of effluents. If so, she might be able to prove her hunch about animal die-offs in the Sundarbans being linked to the dumping of toxic effluents. And that in turn might help to shut down the refinery.

  As it happened, Piya was due to attend a conference in Berlin soon. Checking her schedule she discovered that by juggling a few flights, and leaving earlier than she had planned, she would be able to make it to the Sundarbans in time for the predicted beachings. She logged on to a travel website and was able to book flights that would get her to Lusibari the day before the date mentioned in the message.

  During a layover in Frankfurt, Piya had a moment of in- spiration. She remembered a journalist who had been asking to be taken along for a field trip in the Sundarbans. Piya sent her a carefully worded message, inviting her to come along; she made it sound like a routine field trip and made no mention of a possible beaching. The journalist jumped at the chance and wrote back to say that she would bring along a photographer.

  Piya arrived in Lusibari to find that everything had been set up according to her instructions. The journalist and photographer were already there and her assistants had loaded their equipment into one of Horen’s steamers. The steamer set off as soon as Piya had boarded and reached Garjontola at sunset. Anchoring near the shore they began to collect water samples, to be sent to Hyderabad for testing with the latest solid phase adsorption toxin tracking technology.

  Sunrise next morning was at six.

  Piya made sure that she was up in time but she didn’t wake the others. Armed with her binoculars and GPS monitor she went on deck to keep watch.

  A half-hour went by, and then another, with no dolphins in sight. Soon her assistants began to stir and come on deck; everyone was surprised to find Piya already up and on watch. What was the matter? Was she expecting something?

  She deflected the questions with smiles and shrugs. She had got up early because of jet lag, she told them, and rather than lying awake in her bunk she had decided to collect some more water samples.

  As sunrise gave way to morning, Piya felt increasingly conflicted. On the one hand it was a huge relief that nothing terrible had happened. Yet, here she was, waiting, binoculars in hand, having travelled halfway around the world on tickets that she had bought with her own money.

  Breakfast was served and cleared away and there was still no sign of any dolphins. Fortunately Piya had prepared a briefing for the journalists, on the long-term impacts of the refinery; it took her the better part of an hour to get through all her maps, charts and slides. Then her assistants took turns describing the mass mortality events that they had recently witnessed: shoals of dead fish; the decline of crab populations, and so on.

  Piya wrapped up her talk at 8 a.m. Then, thinking that she might as well kill a little bit more time, just in case, she asked Horen to speak to the journalists: he was the oldest person present, and a good storyteller to boot, so she guessed that he would be able to give them the kind of material they needed (the science communication department in her university had long been urging the faculty to focus on ‘human interest’ stories).

  Horen was still talking when a dolphin was spotted in the distance. Piya immediately snatched up a record sheet and noted the time: it was 8.35 a.m. She made a mental note that this was a good two and a half hours after the time predicted by the whistle-blower.

  Soon more dolphins appeared, dozens of them. They were swimming not in their usual meandering fashion but almost in straight lines, heading directly for Garjontola.

  Up to this point Piya’s voice had held steady over the phone. But now she broke down and began to sob.

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Deen: it was the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen. So many of them, throwing themselves up on the shore. I’ve heard of other cetaceans doing this but never Orcaella.’

  Soon after the beachings started Piya and the others went ashore in a dinghy. She and her assistants managed to put half or more of the animals back in the water, but around twenty were beyond saving.

  The writer and photographer were not idle either; they took notes and shot a ton of footage. Knowing that they had a scoop, they insisted on racing back to Kolkata. Their paper ran the story the next day, placing it prominently on the front page.

  The article, and especially the pictures, had already had a huge impact.

  ‘I just heard from an environmental lawyer,’ said Piya. ‘She’s putting together a coalition of groups to file a case in the Supreme Court in New Delhi. She thinks that on the basis of this story there’s a good chance that we can get a court order to shut down the refinery. She’s planning to show clips of the dead dolphins lying on the beach. Some of the judges are vegetarians; they get really upset when they see stuff like that – maybe even enough to rule against corporate interests.’

  She swallowed a sob.

  ‘She – the lawyer – kept saying how lucky we were to be there just at that time…’

  ‘Did you tell her about that anonymous email?’

  ‘No! I haven’t told anyone, except you. I don’t want it to get out that there’s a whistle-blower in the refinery.’

  ‘Are you sure that it was a whistle-blower who sent you that message?’

  ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘But how did this whistle-blower get your private email address? Do you have any idea?’

  There was a moment’s silence and then she said: ‘Actually that’s what I was just getting to – it’s why I needed to talk to you.’

  * * *

  Everything had happened so fast that Piya had neglected to let Moyna know that she was coming to Lusibari. But Moyna got to hear anyway and she had barged in on Piya, at the trust’s guest-house.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Lusibari?’ Moyna said accusingly. And then, much to Piya’s surprise, she proceeded to dissolve into tears – something that was very rare for Moyna.

  ‘Don’t you know how lonely I am here, without Tipu?’

  Suddenly guilt-stricken, Piya put everything aside and sat down to spend time with Moyna. They talked about her health, about the hospital, and about Tipu. When Piya asked whether Tipu was still being good about keeping in touch with her, from Bangalore, Moyna shook her head. No, she said, Tipu hadn’t called in a while; the last time she’d heard from him was two weeks ago, when he’d sent a picture of himself in Bangalore, with his colleagues.

  Pulling out her cellphone Moyna handed it to Piya: ‘Look, here’s what he sent.’

  The picture was a group photo, taken in front of an office building. Three rows of young men and women were looking solemnly into the camera.

  ‘Which one is Tipu?’ said Piya.

  Moyna pointed him out: he was in the back row, wearing a suit and tie, like the other me
n.

  ‘Doesn’t he look ever so grown-up?’ said Moyna proudly.

  Piya agreed – but there was something about the picture that didn’t seem quite right. She forwarded the photograph to herself and pulled it up on her computer. When it appeared on the screen she knew that the image had been doctored. A tiny picture of Tipu’s face had been photoshopped on the image.

  Moyna was thunderstruck when Piya told her this; she had never heard of photoshopping.

  ‘It’s not difficult to do, Moyna. For someone with Tipu’s skills it’s very easy.’

  The two of them then went through Moyna’s phone and social media logs to see if they might reveal anything of Tipu’s whereabouts.

  Piya saw that for the most part Tipu had been careful to communicate with Moyna through social media accounts. But every now and then he’d also made phone calls and sent text messages, from numbers that were preceded by international dialling codes.

  Piya showed some of these codes to Moyna: + 880, + 92, + 98 and + 90.

  ‘Moyna, didn’t you notice that these calls and messages were coming from foreign numbers?’

  ‘I did,’ Moyna protested. ‘I even asked Tipu about that. He said he was using some kind of dialling service that was routed through foreign servers. It’s cheaper that way he said.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘What else could I do?’ said Moyna, sounding uncharacteristically helpless. ‘Tipu knows so much about these things. And I know so little.’

  ‘Have you tried calling any of these numbers?’

  ‘No,’ said Moyna. ‘Tipu doesn’t like me to call him in Bangalore. He says that he has to work odd hours and his office has strict rules against receiving private calls. If I want to speak to him I send him an email and he usually calls back within an hour or two – but not these last two weeks. I’ve sent message after message and I still haven’t heard from him.’

  Piya was now both mystified and alarmed. She asked Moyna to show her the other pictures that Tipu had sent. They were all group photos taken inside offices, or in parks, or in what seemed to be a hostel. After looking at a few images Piya knew that they were all doctored. Tipu must have found them on the Net, on someone else’s social media feed.

  It was clear now that Tipu had put a lot of thought into deceiving his mother. Instead of taking a job in Bangalore, he appeared to have made his way to Bangladesh. On the evidence of the dialling codes that he had used, it seemed that from Bangladesh he had travelled to Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. But to what end? And how had he got the money for these travels? Piya could not believe that his sources of income, from the work that he did on the Net, would enable him to finance the journey.

  Tipu’s last message to Moyna did not show a country code. But Piya noticed that it had been sent on the same day, and almost the same time, as the anonymous message about the beachings. That was when she began to think that Tipu might have had something to do with that anonymous email.

  At Piya’s insistence they had gone to Moyna’s house and entered Tipu’s room. Glancing around it Piya noticed a locked closet. ‘Have you looked inside that?’ she asked Moyna.

  ‘No,’ Moyna replied, ‘but I know what’s in there. Tipu keeps all his electronics in that almirah, including all the things you’ve given him over the years.’

  ‘Let’s make sure they’re all there,’ said Piya. ‘Do you have the key?’

  ‘No.’

  Fetching a hammer, Piya knocked off the lock. When the almirah’s doors swung open they saw that it had been cleaned out: the shelves were empty except for a few discarded odds and ends. The gifts from Piya – the old computers, monitors, keyboards, gaming consoles and all the rest – were gone. Piya guessed that they had been sold to raise money for Tipu’s journey.

  On the bottom shelf there was an old plastic bag, stuffed with paper. The bag looked as though it had been hastily filled and forgotten. Piya ran her eyes over a few sheets and saw that they were random printouts, from the Internet.

  Putting the bag aside, Piya said to Moyna: ‘Does Tipu have a passport?’

  ‘No,’ said Moyna, ‘not as far as I know. He never bothered to renew the one you got him before he went to America.’

  It was clear to Piya now that Tipu had set off on a clandestine journey, with forged papers, and had somehow ended up in Turkey. The journey had evidently taken many months, through which time he had been careful to stay in touch with Moyna. At no stage had he fallen completely quiet as he had in these last two weeks. Piya could not help feeling that there was something ominous about this long silence: Tipu was probably in some kind of trouble.

  Through a friend Piya contacted an NGO that dealt with refugees and migrants. She talked to someone who told her that Tipu’s was not an unusual story; over the last couple of years there had been a huge increase in reports of teenage boys and young men leaving home without informing their families. She also confirmed that the overland route from Pakistan through Iran to Turkey was a major conduit for migrants. But as for helping to find Tipu, the woman said there was very little any NGO could do; they were all overwhelmed and under-staffed. Piya’s best hope lay in finding people who could tap into migrant networks, to see if something could be learnt through informal channels.

  The image of Tipu, stranded in Turkey, made Piya frantic: it was as though she were witnessing another stranding. She made many more calls over the following hours but to no avail. Only when she was at her wits’ end did she think of delving into the plastic bag that she had found in Tipu’s almirah.

  Going through the stack of papers, she made a startling discovery.

  ‘The bag was full of printouts, as I had thought,’ she said, ‘but they weren’t random. You’ll never believe it, Deen, but a lot of the material was about Venice, of all places! I think Tipu had been doing research on the Net, taking printouts of all kinds of stuff – history, geography, even fauna. (Can you imagine that? What fauna could there be in Venice?) I’d never have imagined that Tipu would be interested in stuff like that. There were even detailed maps of neighbourhoods, which he’d drawn on with a pencil. It’s like he’d developed an obsession with Venice. And it wasn’t just a passing thing, either. I checked the dates – you know how printouts from the Net usually have a date at the top? – and I saw that he’d been at it for two years.’

  ‘Two years?’ I said. ‘So then he must have started gathering this material soon after he was bitten by that snake?’

  ‘I guess so. And he’d also been doing research on the overland routes from Iran to Turkey and Europe. He’d even filled out some forms for passports, not just for himself but also for Rafi. That could only mean that they had decided to travel together, so I called Horen and asked if he knew where Rafi was. He told me that Rafi had left Lusibari a year ago and gone abroad – he had sold everything he owned, including his boat, and then he had disappeared. There had been no news of him until recently, Horen said, but a month ago Rafi had sent a friend a picture of himself from somewhere in Europe. So then I asked Horen: “Do you know where exactly the picture was sent from?” Horen said no, but he would ask the guy to forward the picture. I said, “Please do,” and within an hour I had the picture on my phone – it was of Rafi, standing on a bridge with a canal behind him.’

  Piya paused to catch her breath. ‘I’m more or less certain, Deen, that the picture was taken in Venice. That was when I sent you that text, asking you to call: I was hoping you’d be able to look out for Rafi while you’re over there. I mean, of course, I know there’s only a very remote chance…’

  * * *

  The word ‘chance’ hit me with such force that I lost track of what Piya was saying. Shutting my eyes I silently embraced the word, clinging to it as though it were my last connection with reality.

  Yes, of course, it was all chance, these unlikely encounters, these improbable intersections between the past and present; that almost fatal accident that had brought me face to face with Rafi in the Ghetto: all of this
was pure coincidence, of course it was. To lose sight of that was to risk becoming untethered from reality; chance was the very foundation of reality, of normalcy. There was absolutely no reason to imagine, as I had done, that such an encounter, in such a place, was outside the range of the probable. Because no such thing existed; nothing was outside the range of the probable – wasn’t that why I had insured myself against the possibility of living till the age of one hundred and three? Because that too might happen no matter how fractional the chances?

  But even as this was going through my mind a tremor of doubt crept through me. How could one know? Was there some kind of abacus somewhere that allowed one to determine whether an experience fell within the realm of chance? No, of course not, because any number of inexplicable things could happen without disproving the possibility of their being connected by chance. In this, chance was like God – nothing that happened, no event or eventuality, could either prove or disprove its immanence. And at the same time, like God, chance provided reassurance, safety, cleanliness, purity. Wasn’t that why chance was so often said to be ‘pure’? – because it flowed over the world like a fresh mountain stream cleansing everything that it touched. To cease to believe in it was to cross over into the territory of fate and destiny, devils and demons, spells and miracles – or, more prosaically, into the conspiratorial universe of the paranoiac, where hidden forces decide everything.

  I could not permit myself to go that way. I had to have faith – that was the thing that had been missing in my life of late, faith. I had to cling to my faith in chance, at all costs. It was almost as though my fidelity were being tested, through trials and ordeals, like the Buddha by the demoness Mara; like St Anthony in the desert; like Yudhishthira on his final ascent.

  All of this was spooling through my mind when I became aware of Piya’s voice. She was saying, probably not for the first time: ‘Hello? Are you still there, Deen? Hello?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Piya,’ I said.

  I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself.