Then the phatphat came through the mayhem, klaxon buzzing, weaving a course of grace and chaos, sweeping in to the traffic island. The plastic door swiveled up and there, there, was Salim.
“Come on come on.”
Kyle bounded in, the door scissored down, and the driver hooted off into Varanasi’s storm of wheels.
“Good thing I was looking for you,” Salim said, tapping the lighthoek coiled behind his ear. “You can find anyone with these. What happened?” Kyle showed him the Cantonment pogs. Salim’s eyes went wide. “You really haven’t ever been outside, have you?”
Escaping from Cantonment was easier than anything. Everyone knew they were only looking for people coming in, not going out, so all Kyle had to do was slip into the back of the pickup while the driver bought a mochaccino to go at Tinneman’s. He even peeked out from under the tarpaulin as the inner gate closed because he wanted to see what the bomb damage was like. The robots had taken away all the broken masonry and metal spaghetti, but he could see the steel reinforcing rods through the shattered concrete block work and the black scorch marks over the inner wall. It was so interesting and Kyle was staring so hard that he only realized he was out of Cantonment entirely, in the street, the alien street, when he saw the trucks, buses, cream-colored Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows close behind the pickup and felt the city roar surge over him.
“So, where do you want to go then?” Salim asked. His face was bright and eager to show Kyle his wonderful wonderful city. This was a Salim Kyle had never seen before; Salim not-in-Cantonment, Salim in-his-own-place, Salim-among-his-own-people. This Mansoori seemed alien to Kyle. He was not sure he liked him. “There’s the NewBharatSabhaholydeerofSarnathDoctor SampunananandcricketgroundBuddhiststupaRamnagar FortVishwanathTempleJantarMantar. . . .”
Too much too much Kyle’s head was going round all the people, all the people, the one thing he never saw, never noticed from the rooftop lookout; under all the helicopters and cranes and military RAV drones, there were people.
“River,” he gasped. “The river, the big steps.”
“The ghats. The best thing. They’re cool.” Salim spoke to the driver in a language Kyle had never heard from his mouth before. It did not sound like Salim at all. The driver waggled his head in that way that you thought was
no
until you learned better and threw the phatphat around a big traffic circle with a huge pink concrete statue of Ganesh to head away from the glass towers of Ranapur into the old city. Flowers. There were garlands of yellow flowers at the elephant god’s feet, little smoking smudges of incense, strange strings of chillies and limes, and a man with big dirty ash-gray dreadlocks, a man with his lips locked shut with fishing hooks.
“The man, look at the man . . .” Kyle wanted to shout, but that wonder/horror was behind him, a dozen more unfolding on every side as the phatphat hooted down ever narrower, ever darker, ever busier streets. “An elephant, there’s an elephant and that’s a robot and those people, what are they carrying, that’s a body, that’s like a dead man on a stretcher oh man . . .” He turned to Salim. He wasn’t scared now. There were no bodies behind him, squeezing him, pushing him into fear and danger. It was just people, everywhere just people, working out how to live. “Why didn’t they let me see this?”
The phatphat bounced to a stop.
“This is where we get out, come on, come on.” The phatphat was wedged in an alley between a clot of cycle rickshaws and a Japanese delivery truck. Nothing on wheels could pass, but still the people pressed by on either side. Another dead man passed, handed high on his stretcher over the heads of the crowd. Kyle ducked instinctively as the shadow of the corpse passed over the dome of the phatphat; then the doors flew up, and he stepped out into the side of a cow. Almost Kyle punched the stupid, baggy thing, but Salim grabbed him, shouted, “Don’t touch the cow, the cow is special, like sacred.” Shout was the only possible conversation here. Grab the only way not to get separated. Salim dragged Kyle by the wrist to a booth in a row of plastic-canopied market stalls where a bank of chill-cabinets chugged. Salim bought two Limkas and showed the stallholder a Cantonment pog, which he accepted for novelty value. Again the hand on the arm restrained Kyle.
“You have to drink it here. There’s a deposit.”
So they leaned their backs against the tin bar and watched the city pass and drank their Limkas from the bottle, which would have had Kyle’s mom screaming germs bacteria viruses infections, and felt like two very very proper gentlemen. In a moment’s lull in the street racket Kyle heard his palmer call. He hauled it out of his pants pocket, a little ashamed because everyone else had a newer better brighter cleverer smaller one than him, and saw, as if she knew what dirty thing he had done, that it was his mom calling. He stared at the number, the jingly tune, the little smiley animation. Then he thumbed the off button and sent them all to darkness.
“Come on.” He banged his empty bottle down on the counter. “Let’s see this river then.”
In twenty steps, he was there, so suddenly, so huge and bright Kyle forgot to breathe. The narrow alley, the throng of people, opened up into painful light—light in the polluted yellow sky, light from the tiers of marble steps that descended to the river, and light from the river itself, wider and more dazzling than he had ever imagined, white as a river of milk. And people: The world could not hold so many people, crowding down the steps to the river in their colored clothes and colored shoes, jammed together under the tilted wicker umbrellas to talk and deal and pray, people in the river itself, waist deep in the water, holding up handfuls of the water, and the water glittering as it fell through their fingers, praying, washing—washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their children and their sins. Then the boats: the big hydrofoil seeking its way to dock through the little darting row-boats, the pilgrim boats making the crossing from Ramnagar, rowers standing on their sterns pushing at their oars, the tourist boats with their canopies, the kids in inflated tractor tires paddling around scavenging for river scraps, down to the bobbing saucers of butter-light woven from mango leaves that the people set adrift on the flow. Vision by vision the Ganga revealed itself to Kyle. Next he became aware of the buildings: the guesthouses and hotels and havelis shouldering up to the steps, the ridiculous pink water towers, the many domes of the mosque and the golden spires of the temples and little temples down at the river leaning into the silt; the arcades and jetties and galleries and across the river, beyond the yellow sand and the black, ragged tents of the holy men, the chimneys and tanks and pipes of the chemical and oil plants, all flying the green white and orange wheel-banners of Bharat.
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Oh man.” And: “Cool.”
Salim was already halfway down the steps.
“Come on.”
“Is it all right? Am I allowed?”
“Everyone is allowed. Come on, let’s get a boat.”
A boat. People didn’t do things like that, but here they were, settling onto the seat as the boatman pushed out, a kid not that much older than Kyle himself with teeth that would never be allowed inside Cantonment, yet Kyle felt jealous of him, with his boat and his river and the people all around and a life without laws or needs or duties. He sculled them through floating butter-candles—
diyas
, Salim explained to Kyle—past the ghat of the
sadhus
, all bare-ass naked and skinny as famine, and the ghat where people beat their clothes against rock washing platforms and the ghat where the pilgrims landed, pushing each other into the water in their eagerness to touch the holy ground of Varanasi, and the ghat of the buffalos—
where where?
Kyle asked and Salim pointed out their nostrils and black, back-curved horns just sticking up out of the water. Kyle trailed his hand in the water, and when he pulled it in, it was covered in golden flower petals. He lay back on the seat and watched the marble steps flow past and beyond them the crumbling, mold-stained waterfront buildings and beyond them the tops of the highest towers of New Varanasi and beyond them the yellow clouds, and he knew that even when he was a very old man, maybe forty or even more, he would always remember this day and the color of this light and the sound of the water against the hull.
“You got to see this!” Salim shouted. The boat was heading in to shore now through the tourists and the souvenir boats and a slick of floating flower garlands. Fires burned on the steps, the marble was blackened with trodden ashes, half-burned wood lapped at the water’s edge. There were other things among the coals: burned bones. Men stood thigh deep in the water, panning it with wide wicker baskets.
“They’re Doms, they run the burning ghats. They’re actually untouchable, but they’re very rich and powerful because they’re the only ones who can handle the funerals,” said Salim. “They’re sifting the ashes for gold.”
The burning ghats. The dead place. These fires, these piles of wood and ash, were dead people, Kyle thought. This water beneath the boat was full of dead people. A funeral procession descended the steps to the river. The bearers pushed the stretcher out into the water, a man with a red cord around his shoulder poured water over the white shroud. He was very thorough and methodical about it; he gave the dead body a good washing. The river boy touched his oars, holding his boat in position. The bearers took the body up to a big bed of wood and set the whole thing on top. A very thin man in a white robe and a head so freshly shaved it looked pale and sick piled wood on top of it.
“That’s the oldest son,” Salim said. “It’s his job. These are rich people. It’s real expensive to get a proper pyre. Most people use the electric ovens. Of course, we get properly buried like you do.”
It was all very quick and casual. The man in white poured oil over the wood and the body, picked up a piece of lit wood, and almost carelessly touched it to the side. The flame guttered in the river wind, almost went out; then smoke rose up and out of the smoke, flame. Kyle watched the fire take hold. The people stood back. No one seemed very concerned, even when the pile of burning wood collapsed, and a man’s head and shoulders lolled out of the fire.
That is a burning man
, Kyle thought. He had to tell himself that. It was hard to believe, all of it was hard to believe; there was nothing that connected to any part of his world, his life. It was fascinating, but it was like a wildlife show on the sat; he was close enough to smell the burning flesh, but it was too strange, too alien. It did not touch him. He could not believe. Kyle thought,
This is the first time Salim has seen this too
. But it was very very cool.
A sudden crack, a pop a little louder than the gunfire Kyle heard in the streets every day, but not much.
“That is the man’s skull bursting,” Salim said. “It’s supposed to mean his spirit is free.”
Then a noise that had been in the back of Kyle’s head moved to the front of his perception: engines, aircraft engines. Tilt-jet engines. Loud, louder than he had ever heard them before, even when he watched them lifting off from the field in Cantonment. The mourners were staring; the Doms turned from their ash-panning to stare too. The boat boy stopped rowing; his eyes were round. Kyle turned in his seat and saw something wonderful and terrible and strange: a tilt-jet in Coalition markings, moving across the river toward him, yes
him
, so low, so slow, it was as if it were tiptoeing over the water. For a moment he saw himself, toes scraping the stormy waters of Alterre. River traffic fled from it; its down-turned engines sent flows of white across the green water. The boat boy scrabbled for his oars to get away, but there was now a second roar from the ghats. Kyle turned back to see Coalition troopers in full combat armor and visors pouring down the marble steps, pushing mourners out of their way, scattering wood and bones and ash. Mourners and Doms shouted their outrage; fists were raised. The soldiers lifted their weapons in answer. The boat boy looked around him in terror as the thunder of the jet engines grew louder and louder until Kyle felt it become part of him, and when he looked around, he saw the big machine, morphing between city and river camouflage, turn, unfold landing gear, and settle into the water. The boat rocked violently, Kyle would have been over the side had not Salim hauled him back. Jet-wash blew human ash along the ghats. A single oar floated, lost down the stream. The tilt-jet stood knee-deep in the shallow water. It unfolded its rear ramp. Helmets. Guns. Between them, a face Kyle recognized, his dad, shouting wordlessly through the engine roar. The soldiers on the shore were shouting, the people were shouting, everything was shout shout roar. Kyle’s dad beckoned, to me to me. Shivering with fear, the boat boy stood up, thrust his sole remaining oar into the water like a punt pole, and pushed toward the ramp. Gloved hands seized him, dragged Kyle out of the rocking boat up the ramp. Everyone was shouting, shouting. Now the soldiers on the shore were beckoning to the boat boy and Salim, this way this way, the thing is going to take off, get out of there.
His dad buckled Kyle into the seat as the engine roar peaked again. He felt the world turn, then the river was dropping away beneath him. The tilt-jet banked. Kyle looked out the window. There was the boat, being pulled in to shore by the soldiers, and Salim standing in the stern staring up at the aircraft, a hand raised: Good-bye.
Gitmo part three.
Dad did the don’t-you-know-the-danger-you-were-in /trouble-you-caused/expense-you-cost bit.