How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (4 page)

“Anyway, yaar: not part of the deal. I cannot be responsible for emotions; I love these women, but I don’t think I can love anyone forever.”

This was one of Ravi’s refrains. I had come to suspect, through occasional lapses on his part—for Ravi was unusually secretive about these matters—that this had to do with his parents’ marriage. There was a kind of cynicism in Ravi that either denoted too much knowledge or too much innocence. Only much later did I realize that it could denote both.

Having broken off with Ms. Emotional that Thursday evening—it is not something Ravi did without remorse—he was given his marching slips by the other two girlfriends on Friday.

When I finished teaching around two that afternoon, I had a text message waiting on my mobile. It was from Ravi. “Need to drown hat-trick in hooch,” it said. “Meet at Unibar 1600.”

Unibar is Århus University’s only half-hearted attempt to exorcize the ghost of Denmark’s Calvinist past that occasionally stalks the land even today. University canteens close by four, and the campus area doesn’t have any decent bar or pub, something that Ravi found impossible to reconcile with his idea of campus life.

Even I, growing up in the more austere environment of post-Zia Pakistan, was used to cafés and restaurants that stayed open and crowded with students late into the night: what could be drunk was only tea, coffee or lassi, but it was drunk with gusto and the debates and arguments did not suffer from the lack of openly served alcohol.

Such places do not seem to exist on Danish campuses, though there are occasional Friday night bars organized by students here and there, where loud music and cheap alcohol make conversation impossible. Unibar, tucked into the basement of a building in the campus, is an exception: not only does it stay open well beyond midnight, it even stocks one of the best collections in town of Ravi’s beloved German and Belgian beers and plays (good) music softly enough to permit conversation.

Ravi was already into his second Chimay—2009, he liked to move back from the most recent year—beer when I joined him. He took his break-ups quite seriously, one of the things that was surprising and endearing about him, at least in my eyes. He appeared almost disappointed in himself and the world every time one of his relationships—invariably proclaimed impermanent by him—actually failed. For an evening or two, he did a fairly good imitation of Rajesh Khanna or Dilip Kumar in one of their tearjerkers, sometimes even singing songs of heartbreak in his mellifluous voice, with just enough irony in the rendition to prevent one from taking him too seriously. Then he bounced back and was off dating another “plain” woman.

“Why don’t you date only one at a time?” I asked him that evening. “You would avoid these double and triple whammies in that case.”

By then Ravi was on to Chimay 2007.

“I am being kind to them, O Dense One,” he replied. “If I date only one, she is liable to invest more in the relationship, and anyone who invests in relationships is heading for bankruptcy.”

“But why, Ravi,” I pressed the matter, mostly to humor him.

“Why are all relationships doomed in advance?”

“Look who is talking. Dr. Once-divorced-and-still-bindaas!” Ravi sneered.

Then he sobered up a bit, probably realizing that he had gone too far. My divorce had not been a flippant matter for me or my ex-wife.

“Did I tell you, bastard,” he continued, “about my years in Switzerland?”

“I know you finished your high school in Switzerland. You told me your parents sent you there for three years or so.”

“Did I tell you why?”

“I don’t recall if you did.”

“Oh, you would, if I had told you. It is an unforgettable story, the kind of story that gets made into TV serials five times a day. See, bastard, you obviously did not peruse Indian film magazines in high school. I wonder what you used to jerk off to, probably Billy Shakespeare: cabin’d, cribb’d, confined in Karachi, bound to saucy fears… Now, if you had employed your time fruitfully with Cineblitz, Filmfare and the like, you would have read in their issues of the 1980s and early 1990s about this very handsome celebrity Bombay surgeon who was having a roaring affair with one of his star patients, a famous actress. They carried something about it in almost every issue. It was good for circulation. You might also have read of this celebrity surgeon’s wife, herself a once-celebrated actress and socialite, being seen on the arms of various film stars and cricketers, including the great Imran, in the same period. There were rumors of impending divorce. I was sent to Switzerland when the rumors were at their height. When I returned, hallelujah, the rumors had evaporated.”

He took a deep draft from his glass, draining it. Then he got up to fetch himself Chimay 2006. Before he left the table, he added, as if to himself, “But, strangely, only the rumors had disappeared.”

“Why do you call each other ‘bastards’?” Karim Bhai asked us one day. “It is not a nice word, you know.”

“We went to a missionary school, Karim Bhai,” Ravi responded.

“Not the same one, true. In two different countries, yes. Enemy nations even. But Jesuit schools, so it hardly mattered.”

Karim Bhai, who had been educated in government schools, did not get the joke.

“Immaculate conception, Karim Bhai,” Ravi explained. “There is no greater term of honor than bastard in those circles.”

Karim Bhai still did not understand. But Ravi had moved onto other topics. Which was just as well, I thought; it was obvious that Karim Bhai took Jesus—Isa Masih to him—very seriously as a prophet who was destined to return and restore the world to Islam and righteousness.

It had by now become clear to us that we had underestimated Karim Bhai’s religiosity. His flat was a hub for informal Quranic studies every Friday evening, when young men, mostly bearded, and women, mostly shrouded, would descend on it for long discussions over coffee, tea, nimki and other snacks that Karim diligently stocked. These ended at nine sharp, when Karim went off to ply his taxi, unwilling to let religion deprive him of the lucrative Friday-night custom.

In the first few weeks, we had missed these sessions. We had hit town early on those Friday evenings. But when Ravi discovered the sessions, he started making a conscious effort to attend them. I would either stay in my room or go out with friends. Sometimes he would join us much later in the night.

Once I ribbed him about it. I did not understand his interest in such sessions.

“You underestimate them, bastard,” he replied. “They are far more pertinent and political than almost all the academic seminars that I have attended. They discuss matters of significance and do it honestly: how to make sense of the world, how to make it a better world. They still have a conscience, these young men and women, not just a bank account like the rest of these people.”

He waved his hand at the young people drinking and dancing in the Irish pub we were in.

“I know all about the politics,” I retorted. “I grew up with politics beating down on me. Basically, it all boils down to three points: the Quran is the final hand-autographed word of God; the West is fucking us; the Jews are fucking us via the West.”

“You know, bastard, that I would not let that kind of racism go unchallenged. Actually, while they are probably very anti-Israel, they do not really discuss the matter much.”

“Yes, because you are there.”

“Listen to yourself, yaar. You sound like a Danish tabloid. What do you think they are? The secret Århus cell of Al Qaeda?”

“Who knows?”

“Karim Bhai, a terrorist! Really, have you ever come across a person with more seriousness of purpose, more consideration for other people’s space, you fanatic? He lets us drink in his flat, and you know what alcohol means to people like him.”

“Perhaps he needs the money more than he hates alcohol.”

“Oh yes, perhaps he is the main funder of Al Qaeda? That’s why he needs the money so badly!”

“Who knows? He works all the time; he disappears suddenly; he gets strange phone calls; you cannot deny he needs the money for some reason.”

“The same reason as all immigrants except fucking privileged ones like us. He probably sends money home to his family. You know, bastard, you have been in the West too long; go back home. You need a shot of sanity.”

“Sanity was banned in Pakistan by Zia, bastard,” I replied. “And that is one ban no one is going to lift.”

But Ravi was right. I was arguing just to irk him. I did not really suspect Karim of being a radical Islamist, let alone a terrorist. Not yet.

I think it was soon after this conversation that Ravi started growing a beard: a stylish, French-cut beard, but still. “Don’t tell me Karim Bhai has converted you,” I remarked to him. “It is an experiment, bastard,” he replied mysteriously.

Karim’s days were patterned. He worked as many shifts as he could. It was Friday afternoons and evenings that he kept free: for his weekly trip to the mosque, which was a room in a private house, and for his Quranic sessions. When he was not working, he was usually home, reading some commentary on the Quran, praying, telling his blue-speckled-with-black beads or watching TV in his room. He would tidy up regularly, even offering to tidy up in our rooms if we were around. Cleanliness was a mantra with him. He was not too orderly, though, leaving things lying about as long as they were not dirty.

Once in a while, his routine existence would be disturbed by a phone call. Looking back, when suspicion gripped me towards the end of our stay in Karim’s flat, I identified two kinds of phone calls. Most of them were the normal kind: Karim would pick up the phone and talk into the receiver, in Danish, English or Urdu, about various mundane matters. If one of us picked up the phone, there would be a voice at the other end identifying himself or (very rarely) herself and asking for Karim. Then there were the usual wrong numbers. Perhaps too many, I suspected later on, though some of them—like the woman who called asking, in slurred Danish, to be connected to her “mand,” or the child who dialed incorrectly—seemed innocuous enough.

But the second kind of phone call was different and much rarer. So rare that we paid it sufficient attention only in retrospect, when suspicion left us with no choice. The phone would ring. If Ravi or I picked it up, sometimes it would go dead. It would ring again, and usually Karim Bhai would pick it up with alacrity if he was in the flat. If he wasn’t, it might go dead again and not ring for the next six hours, which was the usual duration of Karim Bhai’s shifts. When Karim Bhai picked up the phone, his conversation was restrained, seldom going beyond yes or no. Once I heard him say in Danish, in a tone of irritation, “Why do you always forget to call me on my mobile?” Though he was immediately contrite after that. He started apologizing, but then the phone went dead. A few seconds later Karim Bhai got a call on his mobile, which he answered in his room after, unusually, closing the door.

All this went unremarked by me then, as did the young men and (fewer) women who came to Karim Bhai’s Friday sessions. Later, when I mentioned these calls to the police, the interrogating officer looked visibly pleased. He was less pleased by my inability to give him a full description of most of the young men and women. But, like the phone calls, I had not noticed them then. If I had noticed them, I had noticed the resemblance between them: beards and veils.

On faces of different colors—mostly South Asian, occasionally European, African, or Indonesian- or Malaysian-looking—but framed by the same seriousness of purpose, the same solemnity, the same sparse or full growth of hair on their chins, the same wrap of cloth around their head… I could not have described them if I had wanted to. The only one I could have described was Ali. Or Ajsa. But of course, the police knew all about Ali and Ajsa by then. And, to be honest, Ajsa, as far as Ravi and I could recall, had attended only one of the sessions.

It had been a morning in March. I am certain about that because, after relenting in February, the cold had returned with a vengeance so that, when the bell rang and I opened the door, the chill cut me to the bone, although the flat was on the third floor. Standing outside, all wrapped up, with just some wisps of her blonde hair showing, was a young woman. For a moment I thought she was one of Ravi’s new girlfriends, but she was by no means “plain,” even by Ravi’s standards. A tall, willowy woman, blue-eyed, blonde, almost my height: she was evidently Danish. I was surprised when she asked for Karim Bhai. She called him “bhai” too, which was just as surprising.

As Karim had been on a night shift and was expected to return any moment, and as we were going to have breakfast in the kitchen, I asked her to join us. She did, though just for a coffee. When I introduced her to Ravi, she looked unsurprised—both by his looks, which seldom went unnoticed, and by his presence.

“It is good to meet both of you,” she said. “Karim Bhai was so happy when you rented the rooms after Babo and Mama vacated in such a huff. He was uncertain he would be able to rent out the rooms again, at least not both of them. You know how Danes are.”

It was then that we understood who she was. She was not Danish. She was the young Bosnian woman whose elopement with a religious Somali man had cost Karim Bhai his previous tenants. She introduced herself as Ajsa and kept out of our conversation, absentmindedly sipping from the mug that I had handed her. I could now see that she had a smart veil wrapped around her blonde hair. It was there for propriety, not to keep out the cold.

She spoke a bit more when Karim Bhai came in and joined us for breakfast. It was mostly about her husband. Much of it was too cryptic for me to follow, but I could sense that she was worried about the Somali. His name, I gathered, was Ibrahim. I remember that towards the end of the conversation, she said:

“You know how Ibrahim feels about the cartoons. You know how he is.”

At this, Karim Bhai said to her, glancing surreptitiously at us, “Perhaps we can talk about it some other time. I will call on both of you.”

I knew he could not take Ajsa to his room: his understanding of his religion prohibited him from being alone in a room with her, and for all I knew, she shared those values too. She was a young woman who had discovered Islam as a reaction to both her parents and the place that history had confined her to: a place where her Nordic looks would probably efface her more easily than if she had been dark-haired and dark-eyed. But it was also obvious that they wanted to talk about matters without Ravi or me overhearing.