“You sound like a door to door salesman.” Nil smiles. Of course he didn’t get the reference. He doesn’t know Springsteen.
Ferang leans a little towards Nil. “These people need all the help we can give them, Nil. If only you saw his eyes, the pain—only by living it you would understand.”
“I can imagine—”
“You can’t. You can live it only if you understand it first. And this beauty,” he says, pointing at the package, “well, this sweeps all the pain away.”
Nil stares at it. A thin layer of plastic divides his thumb from the brown powder. A very thin layer.
“Come on,” goes Ferang, “give it back. Don’t get too attached.” He chuckles. “You know you can’t hold this kind of stuff too well. If you’d do it, I’m sure you’d end up setting yourself on fire in a field somewhere outside the city.”
Nil returns the packet. Ferang puts it back in the cabinet and locks it. He holds the keys in his hand, right in front of Nil’s face, then closes his fist.
“So, thank you for coming,” he says. “You are the reason why coming back to this shit place is not totally unbearable.”
“You mean the Pit?”
“I mean outside the Pit. My place is with these people.”
“They need you.”
Ferang nods. “Let me know if you get your hands on something new.”
“Phone?”
“You know I turn it off when I’m with my kids.”
“So—”
“I’ll be back soon.” Ferang is silent for a second, simulating contemplation. He adds, “Maybe.” Boy, does he love suspense. His life is a show, and the world is watching 24/7.
But Nil gives no sign of wanting to piss off. A silence punctuated by the cacophony of the activity outside the open windows floods the corridor turned bedroom.
“He’s coming here now,” Ferang says.
A shadow crosses Nil’s eyes.
“But if you want, you know,” Ferang adds, “you’re free to stay.”
“I think I’ll go,” goes Nil, stumbling over the words. “Manuj’s been waiting in the car for a while.”
Ferang laughs. But then the fear that his laugh might sound forced stabs him. His performance must be a work of perfection.
“Say hello for me.”
“Sure,” says Nil, as if he’d ever tell his driver anything that didn’t concern driving or alcohol. “Well, then...” He seems to shrink with each passing second.
Ferang knows how to appear relaxed. Mode on. But then, in spite of himself, he looks at the mirror in the corner. He needs Nil out of here.
“Good luck,” goes Nil.
“Don’t wish me luck.” Pushing him towards the front door, Ferang bares a dazzling smile. “Wish me courage.”
Nil steps out. It seems like he’s about to say something, but out he goes. He’s gone.
Ferang leaves the door ajar behind him. A breath of warm wind caresses his face, and Ferang curls his lips at the rotting stench. He walks back across Suresh’s room. The sheets. He takes the sheets from under his mattress. It’s brocade sheets. They’re in contrast with his cheap sponge mattress which is mottled with everything possible. He uses the sheets to cover the mirror, and the sheet swells in the stale air before settling on it like a glove. He covers it carefully, making sure the whole thing is concealed. He feels better. Back to packing.
He keeps an ear out. He heard Nil coming with his uncertain step, his left foot landing slightly askance, but despite his efforts he can’t hear Gabriel arrive, and then without looking he knows he’s standing behind him. Feigning ignorance he shoves a toothbrush wrapped in toilet paper, toothpaste, headphones in a pocket of his backpack, and then throws a purple t-shirt on top of his MacBook, before turning around.
“Gabs,” Ferang exclaims. He’s not surprised, yet he’s happy to see him. He hugs him. Gabriel stands stiff, almost troubled by physical contact. “I’m yet to make you a fan of hugs, huh?” Ferang moves back, but still holds him by his shoulders. “We’ll work on that.”
“Old sport,” says Gabriel, a delicate smile on his lips.
Ferang lights up. “You said it,” he goes. “Old sport!”
Gabriel laughs. His laughter is hoarse like that of a middle-aged man. But when he speaks, his voice is that of a boy. “You’re leaving, then.”
“Yes, and, fuck, I cannot wait.”
“I’m sure they too are on the pins and needles.”
Ferang feels his heart swell. “You really think so?”
“You know them more than I do, now.”
“It always feels like a century since the last time I saw them.”
“It feels longer to them, believe me.”
Ferang smiles, beaming.
“What you have in your hands is very valuable.”
“I know, I—” Ferang hesitates, thinking of one of his children in particular. “Santhosh?”
“All of them. But yes, Santhosh especially. He needs guidance.”
“We all do.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Nothing. That is—nothing.”
Gabs waits in silence.
Ferang starts folding his underwear again. He pauses and stares at his underpants. “Are you tense?” he says, changing the subject. He has to.
“For what?”
“For... I mean, for the great day, you know.”
Gabriel laughs. His eyes disappear into the folds of his eyelids. “You can say it, it’s not a dirty word,” he says. Ferang relaxes a little. “I’m going to undergo a sexual transition, and no, I’m not too tense.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll be fine.”
“Do you know that statistics play against me?” Gabriel strokes his scarlet sari.
“This is not the Middle Ages.”
“You know it makes no difference in the Pit.”
“There are hospitals in Ayodhya.”
“Not in the Pit, not the good ones, and if I have to be admitted outside the Pit, you know that if complications don’t finish me, Ameen will.” He smiles a sad smile. “Going out of the Pit, may it be even for just a few minutes, is a serious risk for me. I mean, look at me, I can’t even cross the Breach without an escort or using long forgotten roads.”
Ferang takes a step toward him. “It’ll be okay.” Liar.
Gabriel holds his gaze. “Of course it will.” He touches the sheet covering the mirror with his fingertips, his nails polished, cut to form an almost perfect semicircle. Ferang shudders.
“I keep on asking myself why would I do it?” says Gabriel. “Why now?”
“To unify the slum.” Textbook answer. “To free the Pit.”
Gabriel shakes his head. “Because I am a hijra, and a hijra I remain. Yes, I lead the Pit and I do my best to do a good job at it, but in the end I am and remain a transgender, and I know what it means to grow up as such. For the first time someone like me is in such an important position, and so this is the time for me to make a statement before the world, before it’s too late. I owe it to my community.” Gabriel motions as if to lift the sheets but then lets it go. “And yeah, maybe this will even unite the seven communities further. Keeping my word in front of my people is going to be a declaration of political leadership the other leaders can’t ignore, but what matters the most is my own kind.” Gabriel gives him a cold glance. “If we succeed, tough times will follow. But if we fail, there will be no tomorrow ahead of us.”
Ferang observes his face carefully. His beauty resides in the harmony of his double nature. Gabriel isn’t a man trying to be a woman nor a woman denying her being a man. He simply lies in the middle, balancing with spontaneity the best of both sides.
“I admire you a lot, Gabriel.”
“Don’t. Everyone harbors their own demons. The solution is to work around them, make them our weapons.”
Ferang hesitates. Throwing a glance at the sheet-covered mirror, he rea
lizes Gabriel is following his gaze, and to distract him, he blurts out, “I’m afraid.”
Gabriel smiles. The room lights up when he does. “He needs you, Ferang. Santhosh needs someone who cares. And that person happens to be you.”
“What if I can’t? What if I’m not good enough?” Careful now.
“You must be. You can be. You know the alternative. The Pit has a big mouth and its stomach is deep and dark.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.”
“Santhosh is little, there is still time. We can understand his anger, but anger shouldn’t define the rest of his life. And you, your commitment can change his life forever.”
Ferang closes his eyes. “And what if I don’t want to?” he says.
“What?”
Ferang casts yet another glance at the mirror wrapped in the sheet.
“What if I’m not Clark Kent but Lex—”
“Don’t—”
“Gabs, this not me. He’s not—”
“Drugs. Do you understand that?” Gabriel interrupts him, perfectly calm. “Whether you first sell them or use them, it makes no difference in the Pit, the one and the other activity always mix up at some point. And then the crimes come. Petty theft followed by armed robbery. So your Santhosh, eight years of age, will become a drug addict and a criminal. And you know, then comes marriage, and Santhosh becomes a husband and then a father. An addict and a criminal, a violent and alcoholic husband and father, because why not. And the problem is that maybe he’ll remember something you said about a better tomorrow existing beyond the Fence, and he will feel like crap for failing at it. Perhaps, then, he will turn to the Cartel. They always need manpower, don’t they? So he becomes a mobster, how about that?”
“We have to stop him.” Ferang swallows his doubts, grits his teeth. “Ameen.”
“You must.”
“But—he’s unreachable. Every time it seems like we cornered him, there comes the political support, the multinationals, or the banks covering it all up, legalizing everything. Sometimes I’m afraid we’ll never get him.”
“It’s not him you need to get.”
Ferang furrows his highbrows. Gabriel looks up at the ceiling as if to read his next words on spider webs. For the first time Ferang glimpses something off on his face, but it’s only a moment before Gabriel opens his perfect lips.
“It means that you’re knocking on the wrong doors, breaking the wrong windows. You’re looking at the janitor’s house, ignoring the castle behind it.”
Silence. The air becomes stale, heavy. From the windows left ajar, a sewer’s stench breathes in. Rotten meat. Urine.
The sweat on Ferang’s body a thick coat, he runs a hand through his hair. Despite the recent shower, his hair falls thick on his forehead. Some of them get stuck between his fingers. Ferang looks at his hand, three brown hairs lying on his flushed skin. He blows them off. They fall and get lost on the dirty floor. When he looks up, Gabriel has kept his eyes on him all along. His eyes look like river pebbles. Like bronze coins. Ferang has a hard time deciding whether Gabriel is a handsome guy or a gorgeous girl. His sari exposes his cocoa coloured skin. Touch him. His neck. His arms. His right hip. His skin reminds him of chocolate milk, and it glows as if some kind of heat source were pulsing from the inside.
The entrance door opens. It opens with urgency. An old, balding transgender with saggy tits appears. He says something in a secret language. Over the years, his biological masculine features have dispelled the feminine ones. The long-awaited identity, once acquired, is now lost forever.
“It’s time,” Gabriel says. “I think this will be the last time we’ll meet.” He points at himself. “At least, in this state.”
“So you made up your mind?” Ferang says, “You’ll go for it—the transition, I mean?”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
Ferang feigns puzzlement.
“Like you said,” Gabriel adds, “it’s the only way out.” Then he looks deep into his eyes. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To the station?”
“But—are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen you leaving for your adventures in the thick of the Pit. I want to be there this time.”
Ferang grabs the green backpack. Sliding it onto his shoulders he gets the terrible yet familiar feeling of having forgotten something. He feels the need to free the mirror from the sheet before leaving the room. But Gabriel’s presence makes him give no fucks. Gabriel is the only person on this world to make him feel like he could break free from the lies. The door. The street. The night outside.
The old saggy-titted transgender is waiting for them in the alley. He is nervous. Fingering a deep pink, almost purple veil encrusted with fake diamonds, he wraps it around his hands over and over. Then, as if in an afterthought, he hands it to Gabriel. Gabriel thanks him sweetly. He drapes the veil around his face, covering his mouth, his small ears, the fabric brushing over his crew cut skull. The veil falls back on his shoulders and down to his thin waist. Large shoulders. Thin waist.
They walk in silence to the bus station. The old transgender forces himself not to speed up his pace, but his presence there is enough to fill the air with tension. Ferang looks at Gabriel with one eye. To his surprise, for a moment he reminds him of Nil, for how he glances around, as if all he sees were new to him. But the similarity ends here. There is no fear or revulsion in his eyes, only the curiosity of someone who visits the world after a long period of captivity.
The bus station looks like an anthill.
Ferang greets a fruit vendor whom he stops to meet every time he leaves. The man nods back but doesn’t seem to recognize him. This hurts, though Ferang laughs it off, looking away. The people staring at him multiply with every step. They look at me. At me. Ferang follows their gaze. No, they look at him. Two buses collide in a simultaneous attempt to exit the station. One of the drivers is honking crazily. The conductor leans out screaming insults. Then one bus moves along, and the other follows, like nothing happened. Seven other busses do the same. The scene is repeated over and over. All eyes on Gabriel. Gabriel walks. His steps silky light.
People go out of their way to bend and touch his feet.
Ferang, craving to leave, finds the right bus in the multitude. But sellers and beggars and commuters, all similarly clothed, each of them involved in similar movements, jostle between the vehicle, trapping him in this attention-less hell. With ostentatious self-confidence, Ferang cleaves the crowd. A bus, appearing from nowhere, stops abruptly, honking half a meter from him. Ferang keeps walking. He owns the place. Do you?
Standing before the bus steps, Ferang turns. Gabriel is standing beside him, and the old transgender next to Gabriel. Ferang feels the physical need to take refuge on the bus. Taking in the liveliness of the station like a child to the museum, Gabriel doesn’t seem to notice his restlessness. He turns his eyes back to Ferang.
“About what you said before,” he says. “Do you really think I’ll be alright?”
Smile, please. Ferang smiles. Good boy. Despite the almost unbearable noise, the silence between them is palpable. Part of him is hunting for words, the other has already found them and would want to tell him to run away as far as possible. But Ferang meets Gabriel’s eyes like an actor on a stage. And to those black, ocher-fringed eyes, those eyes that turn vermilion where flecks dot the iris, those eyes he loves, today he is ready to lie.
Before Ferang can answer, though, Gabriel places his right index and middle fingers on the recess of his neck, while his with his left thumb and forefinger he lowers Ferang’s eyelids. His touch is almost imperceptible. His breath, a weak blow in his face, smells of paan. It hides a pungent aftertaste. Mint, probably. Ferang counts in his head, slowly, to seven. He opens his eyes. Gabriel is still there. He looks at him for a moment. He nods. He breaks eye contact. Walks away. His steps muffled in the dust.
The dust. The old transgender trailing behind him. Both are swallowed up by th
e crowd.
Ferang climbs onto the bus. He finds a seat in the middle. Two seats, actually, next to each other. He places his backpack under one seat. He opens the torn curtains. Outside, a street seller with a large basket under his arm hands him yellow roses. Ferang shakes his head.
“Two, please,” he tells the conductor.
The man gives him two tickets. Porous paper, low quality.
Ferang waits. He thinks about reading a paperback, but his own story is more compelling afterall. He waits. The bus fills up. People stare at him as they walk through. They cast their gaze on the empty seat beside him.
“It’s occupied,” Ferang says, somewhat apologetically.
The engine starts and the entire vehicle trembles as if shaken by the hands of a giant. The old tires start chewing their way out of the station. Once at the exit, another bus tries to cut through, and they both stop with a jerk. The drivers honk.
“Bhenchod,” shouts the conductor, leaning out.
Tic-tac goes the clock.
Sitting down in the empty seat, the Bear rests his chainsaw to the side of the seat. The bus starts moving again.
Ferang hesitates before speaking and hesitates as he talks. “The truth is that I—”
“That you’re special,” the Bear barges in, “but not enough. Are we already at that point in the conversation?”
Ferang doesn’t reply.
“Look at me,” goes the Bear in a fatherly tone.
Ferang feels the urge to turn toward him but continues to look straight ahead. “I crossed the world to be different,” he mumbles. “And I ended up being exactly who I was.”
“No one changes, it is known. The only thing you can do is polish one of our facets, choose to wear our best mask.”
Ferang takes a deep breath. He does so slowly, minimizing the noise. He exhales. He grips his septum between his thumb and forefinger.
“I didn’t appreciate that trick at home,” says the Bear in a condescending tone. As if talking to a child. “The sheet on the mirror, I mean.”
“Gabriel already knows too much.”
The Bear laughs. He sounds like a broken gramophone. “Do you think he can’t handle this?”
“I know I can’t.” Ferang bites the inside of his cheek.
Objects in the Mirror Page 13