Read Online The Mountain Shadow by Gregory David Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

advised, hoping that Fate or the Company would give him the years he wanted.
    ‘Oh, sure, I always –’
    The phone on my desk rang, cutting him off.
    ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Farzad asked, after a few rings.
    ‘I don’t like telephones.’
    The telephone was still ringing.
    ‘Well, why do you have one?’
    ‘I don’t. The office does. If it agitates you so much, you answer it.’
    He lifted the receiver.
    ‘Good morning, Farzad speaking,’ he said, then held the phone away from his ear.
    Gurgling sounds, like mud complaining or big dogs eating something, rumbled from the phone. Farzad stared at it in horror.
    ‘It’s for me,’ I said, and he let the phone fall into my hand.
    ‘ Salaam aleikum , Nazeer.’
    ‘Linbaba?’
    It was a voice I could feel through the floor.
    ‘ Salaam aleikum , Nazeer.’
    ‘ Wa aleikum salaam. You come!’ Nazeer commanded. ‘You come now!’
    ‘Whatever happened to How are you, Linbaba ?’
    ‘You come !’ Nazeer insisted.
    His voice was a growling thing dragging a body on a gravel driveway. I loved it.
    ‘Okay, okay. Keep your scowl on. I’m on my way.’
    I put down the phone, collected my wallet and the keys to my bike, and walked to the door.
    ‘We’ll talk more, later on,’ I said, turning to look at my new assistant. ‘But for now, I think this is gonna work out okay, between you and me. Watch the store while I’m gone, thik ?’
    The word, pronounced teek , brought a wide smile to the young, unblemished face.
    ‘ Bilkul thik! ’ he replied. Absolutely okay!
    I left the office, forgetting the young MBA making false degrees, and pushed the bike to speed on Marine Drive, sweeping up onto the narrow cutting beside the Metro flyover.
    At the Parsi Fire Temple corner I saw my friend Abdullah riding with two others across the intersection in front of me. They were headed for the narrow streets of the commerce district.
    Waiting for a break in the almost constant flow of vehicles, and checking to see that the traffic cop on duty was busy accepting a bribe from someone else, I cut the red light and set off in pursuit of my friend.
    As a member of the Sanjay Company, I’d pledged my life to defend others in the gang: the band of brothers in arms. Abdullah was more than that. The tall, long-haired Iranian was my first and closest friend in the Company. My commitment to him was beyond the duty of the pledge.
    There’s a deep connection between gangsters, faith and death. All of the men in the Sanjay Company felt that their souls were in the hands of a personal God, and they were all devout enough to pray before and after a murder. Abdullah, no less than the others, was a man of faith, although he never showed mercy.
    For my part, I still searched for something more than the verses, vows and veneration I’d found in the books of believers. And while I doubted everything in myself, Abdullah was always and ever certain: as confident in his invincibility as the strongest eagle, soaring above his head in the hovering Bombay sky.
    We were different men, with different ways to love, and different instincts for the fight. But friendship is faith, too, especially for those of us who don’t believe in much else. And the simple truth was that my heart always rose, always soared in the little sky inside, whenever I saw him.
    I followed him in the flow of traffic, waiting for the chance to pull in beside him. His straight back and relaxed command of the bike were characteristics I’d come to admire. Some men and women ride a horse as if they’re born to it, and something of the same instinct applies to riding a motorcycle.
    The two men riding with Abdullah, Fardeen and Hussein, were good riders who’d been on bikes since they were infants, riding on the tanks of their fathers’ bikes, through the same traffic on the same streets, but they never achieved the same riverine facility as our Iranian friend, and never looked as cool.
    Just as I sensed a gap opening