Story

There was bombing a week after we moved here. Here is a story about the same.....

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Oh, no. We just moved to Hyderabad with the kids a week ago and now the place is being bombed. There's no way..... This is huge. There's no way, this cannot be. No freaking way.

I have heard different estimates of the killed, but I think it is around forty people. All innocent. They made a choice to eat some cheap food at Gokul Chat, to buy cheap text books for their college courses, or to see a lazer light show at Lumbini Park. Some group of sociopaths deemed these an offense worthy of death. The first thing that you think of is Islamic terrorists seeking to punish those of us who won’t join the “Ummah”. It is not only 9/11 that cojoins the bombing of civilians with Islam, it is the seemingly constant flow of such crimes committed by one jihad group or another throughout the globe.

The Indian government believes that these events were in fact perpetrated by Islamic radicals. The story that has been attached to these events is that Bangladesh-based radicals have been filtering into India through the Maldives Islands, which has weak policies when it comes to validation of proper travel documents. Apparently, going into India-proper through the Maldives is a ticket right into the country for anyone who wants to enter.

Being in close proximity to a terror attack is a harrowing experience, and we had never been this close to one before. This was just a few miles from us, maybe five miles. We watched the news to learn more. Most of our stations are in Telugu or Hindi, so we had to zoom past various reports that were coming out about the bombings in languages we did not understand. When we finally got to CNN IBN, we knew something really, really bad had happened. The US media, despite its many faults, generally has the good taste not to show a great deal of gore on the evening news. Not so in India. They were showing bodies slumped over stadium seats, blood splattered over a tile floor, people being dragged around by screaming friends and family members. It was absolutely hideous.

“Shit,” Tara said.

It captured the mood well.

I just kept thinking, how are we going to live here? One simple phrase kept echoing through my head - we’ll have to approach life here differently now. It was a ridiculous understatement. Tara’s sentiments seemed to capture the events more clearly.

Shit.

******

I got into the car two days after the bombings. It was after work, and I asked Wajid, our driver, what he thought of the events. We like Wajid, we want him to stay around as our driver. But, in the final summation, we are Americans and Christians and Wajid is a Muslim. I needed to figure out his thinking on the events of the past few days.

“Hey, Wajid. Good evening.”

“Hello, sir.”

He pulls out of the parking lot of my building. We start the tedious journey back from my office to home. We start the first phase, driving past the massive buildings of HITEC City. Accenture, Motorola, IBM, they’re all there. We’re all here doing the same thing, cashing in on a hungry and inexpensive workforce.

Ok, here I go....

“Hey, Wajid, I have a question.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The bombs in the city two nights ago, what do you think happened?” I was speaking in that 50% speed that is necessary with many people here. I was pronouncing very clearly.

"Sorry, sir?"

"The bomb. You think it is bad, yes? What made the bomb?"

He just stared through the windshield, navigating through the chaos that is Indian traffic. He made a small clicking sound with his mouth, a universal indication in India that disapproval was being felt. I was not sure what he would say. Would he go into a diatribe about Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians? Would he mention Hindus in a disparaging way? I waited anxiously.

“Government.” It was his only word.

“I am sorry Wajid, what do you mean?”

“Government did it.”

“You mean that the government did the bombing? The government bombed those people. Which government?” I was probably not speaking slowly enough, But I think he got the gist of my questions. He also could tell from the tone that I was nervous and incredulous.

His logic was simple, albeit unbelievable. He did not believe any radicals had done the acts of terror, he believed that it was those in power who were seeking to foment inter-community anger and instigate violence.

He continued, “Many people, the government make them angry to fight with each other. If it terror, they will to attack government building, not people.” His logic did not hold in light of the attacks in New York, the night club in Bali, the pizzeria in Tel Aviv and a myriad of other bombings that targeted civilians. I tracked this stuff pretty closely, and I wanted to cry foul with his story, but I decided to learn more about how he thinks, perhaps how the “Islamic street” of Hyderabad viewed the event. Incredulous or not, I decided to allow him to plug on further.

“Wajid, are the Pakistanis involved in this? Many times people say that Pakistan is involved in these things. I do not understand. In America, we have India and Pakistan both as friends now.”

Entirely problematic statement, especially when you consider the proper meaning of “friend”.

Wajid responded with a simple statement, “Pakistan, they are not good Muslims. Sometimes when they play India the Indians who are Muslim will fly Pakistan flag during match. They are not good.” I am not sure I could piece together the two ideas that he had imparted, but I was pleased that he was not a fan of the Pakistanis. It occurred to me that maybe he did not like them because they were not strict enough in their Islam. By this point in the drive, Wajid was taking me through the squatter camp that exists in a ravine behind HITEC. A bad place to have doubts about your driver’s allegiances. He could have easily pulled into one of those alleys into the tent camp and gotten some of his fellow jihadis to surround the car....

What in the world was I thinking?? Wajid is one of the best people that we have met since arriving here. Calm down. Focus.

A few moments of silence passed between us. I watched the shapes of India jump out of the emerging darkness. It seemed that a bunch of people had gotten wise to the short cut, it was pretty crowded on this dirt road. There were huts all around, woven from dessicated palm fronds, filled with the lowly who did menial work in HITEC.

When we slowed down, I saw a woman belt her kid in the head. Hard. He fell back into the road and screamed. A motorcyle swerved, almost hitting the kid. He could not have been more than three. Hard lessons sometimes come early in India. She was the kind of woman who had just spent the day doing the backbreaking task of sweeping the streets and gutters with a broom of twigs. She was probably aching in her back to the point of being irritable and the kid did something to make her fire off that smack. Man, that looked like it hurt. She also probably is so low in the social structure here that she was looking for a reason to belt someone.

Too bad the kid got hit like that.

"Wajid, why would the government do this?"

"Sorry, sir?"

"Government make bomb. Why they do, you say?" I needed to employ my pidgin English in this case. I think he was pretending not to understand as a way of avoiding a difficult subject, but he could not deny being able to follow my pidgin.

I wanted to dig into his logic, to the degree that our language barrier would permit. We were still stopped in the traffic. He opened the door and spit out the red juice onto the road. I think his bottom lip was filled with betel nut.

"They.... like to make people..... people are angry. Make fight. Divide."

If that was the best we were going to do, I was going to stop pursuing it. I now knew that he, as a Muslim, did not believe that Muslims did it. I read once that a majority of Egyptians believe that 9/11 was not committed by Muslims. I think they believe that every Jew that worked in the Twin Towers was called to stay home that day. Actually, I did read that once, this was an idea with millions of adherents. Inconceivable. Wajid's words may have been an aspect of that mentality. Instead of seeing the horrors within the Ummah, it was possible that Wajid focused all of the available possibilities against the enemies of Islam, in this case the government. Or maybe he was right.

Actually, no. I wouldn't concede that. He wasn't right.

The traffic picked up and we proceeded home. He pulled up the front gate, jumped out and opened my door. We exchanged smiles at the front gate.

He was a good man. I hope he thought the same of me.

Our fates had been joined, who knows why. If our faiths were at war, we would abstain.

"Salaam," I said.

He smiled and said, "Sir, salaam."

For tonight, we would remain friends.

Salaam.