Chapter 18
“The more you push a Maverick, the more he does not budge.” Captain Kaul stated, standing in the deepest centre of the marsh where all of them had been dropped. The mud was claiming them, the marshy ditch sucking them in from the waist down. Some were as deep as their chests.
“That is this marsh. Worse than a Maverick. The more you push it, the more it does not budge, and the harder it pulls you in. So, do not push it,” Captain Kaul instructed, whiling time and getting them even deeper. “Deep breath.”
Samar wanted to pull out a sword from somewhere and tear through the weight that was engulfing him. He lifted one leg to cut through a step, and the mud pulled him in deeper.
“Samar, steady.”
He held steady, feeling the mud touch his bare neck. His hands and feet felt frozen. The sun was warm on his face, but everything else was cold in mud. He could feel the movements of the Mavericks around him. One more move and his face would go under. His throat began to tighten.
“Moving through a marsh in panic is guaranteed death. Do not lift your foot or arm breaking suction. Wiggle it free. Like this.”
Samar craned his head to get a better view of Captain Kaul.
He was the only one who had remained steadfastly over the mud, his body only buried to his waist, even though he was in the centre of it all.
He now held his hand out and deliberately buried it in the marsh by his side.
His body went down a few inches, and they all felt the vibration.
Samar’s heart leapt. But he kept his eyes on Atharva’s face. Not even a hint of panic there.
Samar kept that expression in the focus of his vision and worked to control his own breathing. Atharva moved his shoulder in a wiggling motion, letting them all see how his arm was rotating — like a corkscrew.
Slowly and steadily, they saw it release from the thick mud, completely soiled.
Samar tried to move his arm and was pulled in deeper. His chin touched the marsh and everybody yelled.
“Samar!” Atharva’s voice was the hardest. He peered to look up, and got pulled in even deeper. “Steady. Help him!”
A tether came his way from the team manning the drill area.
“Do not pounce on it,” Atharva’s angry, clipped command sounded. “You are safe. You will be picked up if you go any deeper. Now move your arm slowly. Rotate from left to right, then right to left.”
Samar moved it.
“Slowly.”
He panted, eyeing the mud touching his mouth.
“Almost there. Slowly. The slower the better…” Atharva’s calm voice became his tether. Samar forced himself to relax, following his word to the T. “Don’t pull it yet. Just move.”
Samar moved, feeling like a child.
“Is it getting free?”
“I think so,” he managed without getting mud into his mouth.
“Then slowly pull it out.”
Samar yanked it out and his whole body went under.
He startled out with a gasp.
Samar blinked. Once. And brought himself to the present — sitting cross-legged in the back of a car, the dark seat in front of him.
He wanted to let his breathing come back to normal, but his heart wouldn’t stop racing, the last five days of the riot weighing heavy on his chest. As a doctor and as a soldier, he recognised death better than the palm of his hand.
And yet, when it was one of their own, it came to haunt him at least once before settling quietly into his subconscious.
A KDP member from Kishtwar had died. Many had been injured. But the riot had been controlled in time. He repeated the last part to himself, telling himself that the price paid for this peace had not gone in vain.
He exhaled.
“Where did we reach?” He asked Faris.
“Singhpora.” Faris turned over the driver’s seat. There was a jam in front of them, their car frozen.
Samar squinted out at the dark night. They had started from Kishtwar at 7 in the evening, hoping to get home before midnight. The jam on this highway looked tight enough to have them spend the night on the road.
“If you feel sleepy, let me know. I’ll drive.”
Faris gave a nod.
Samar massaged the balls of his eyes, willing the tightness on his forehead to relax.
It had gripped him, and lived there ever since Iram Haider had walked into their office a month ago.
Bad news was everywhere. He had just wound up one in Kishtwar.
Atharva, Adil and Qureshi had come back immediately after the crisis had been averted.
He had stayed back to do what he did best — clean up and investigate.
“Sufiyaan Sheikh is now going to be in Kashmir for good,” Faris said, sitting back.
“He is late in coming back.” Samar let his head drop to the headrest. “The election season is already in full swing.”
“His entry was planned like a hero after Awaami had done the groundwork. CM sahab didn’t like it.”
“Because CM sahab is being pressured to pass his seat to his son. Sayyid Butt is playing a very shrewd game.”
Samar thought about the riot that they had just prevented in Kishtwar. The peaceful town had suddenly erupted after a group of Muslims and a Hindu cycle rider had clashed. They were all friends otherwise. That fact had been revealed just yesterday to Samar.
He ran a hand over his elbow, cracked and wrapped in a crepe bandage after they had all run headfirst into the clashes on that first night.
Atharva had sustained an injury to the back of his head, but succeeded in stopping them all.
The fool was too gutsy for his own good.
He had climbed on top of a car and started talking on a loudspeaker.
Samar remembered thinking this was the end.
Either Atharva would be lynched to death or sustain injuries that would keep him from fighting the election.
But the crowd had quietened. And then he had pulled his sneakiest move. He had gone and promised on live television that CM Mohsin Sheikh would send backup. Mohsin Sheikh had been compelled to send it, even though his son had been the one to orchestrate the riot in the first place.
A thought struck him, and he sat up. “Is Sayyid Butt still in Kishtwar?”
“No. He left on the second day.”
“Sufiyaan is a puppet, Sayyid Butt is the real game maker, Faris. He led Mohsin Sheikh to the CM’s chair twelve years ago, and now he is betting on Sufiyaan. Keep an eye on him. Sufiyaan Sheikh is anyway going to be on everyone’s radar. Atharva and Qureshi also have their eyes on him.”
“He is planning something like Kishtwar again.”
“Riot?”
“No, he is planning something else. He is meeting Sultan Wani’s people regularly.”
“Sultan Wani was running this riot, wouldn’t it be for winding up?”
“Money exchanged after the job failed?” Faris retorted.
“Hmm.”
“I got update on Iram Haider some time back.”
Samar’s senses went on high alert.
“She has been in Leh for the last twelve years. Worked in a library, lives on rent. She is here to publish her book. The process has been initiated. Nothing worth flagging, except one thing.”
“What?”
“She has reopened a case to claim her father’s house. The one next to where you live.”
“Hmm.”
“And Atharva has asked for the papers from SMC.”
Samar’s hand tightened on his thigh.
Their car crawled a few inches. The interiors remained silent.
The lights flared in his eyes in the dark.
And that feeling returned. Of being in the middle of a marsh.
Iram Haider was the marsh. She was consuming him, Atharva, KDP, all of them — without anybody realising it.
They were all standing still while he fought.
And the more he fought, the more she engulfed their space.
He had tried everything. But time was not in his favour, nor was circumstance.
She was making friends in KDP, doing work to impress Atharva, slipping under every radar.
She had gone and established herself in the main house, in Atharva’s attic no less.
She had weaselled her way into Amaal’s and Adil’s good books.
She had proven herself innocent of being an Awaami spy, in spite of being caught red-handed in front of their office.
Her father was the founder of Awaami, and none of these fools he called his friends could see through it.
She had become the helpless, pitiable damsel, and Atharva ran after her every chance he got.
His hero complex was clouding his judgement.
Samar knew the SOP. Her father had come into their unit’s strategy like this. A wolf in a sheep’s garb. A civilian there to help. A politician with connections. A local, promising cooperation.
And then…
Samar ground his teeth, the scream shuddering inside him. Her name mumbling inside him. He controlled his rapidly rising breaths.
“Faris,” he said instead.
The man’s face turned over his shoulder again. Samar stared at him. He had gone with his impulsive instincts with Iram Haider until now. It hadn’t worked. And Atharva was right — the more you pushed the marsh, the more it engulfed you.
It was time to cut through it with Atharva’s brand of brutal calm.
“Put a man behind Iram Haider. Somebody new. Somebody that Atharva, Adil or Qureshi do not recognise.”
Faris nodded.
————————————————————
It was after 1 am that he finally walked to the outhouse, his head’s heaviness now also weighing on his chest. Samar stopped outside the main door and glanced at the windows. They were all darkened. The car’s weren’t there in the driveway. Was nobody home tonight?
Then he remembered. It was a Friday. They would have gone out to some corner of downtown Srinagar to party. Suddenly, he did not want to go into his room and fall asleep. He wanted to breathe some air. Quieten his mind. That would avert a bad night. He had been having more of those lately.
Iram Ha…
He stopped himself. Not again. Not tonight. He had to prep and quieten his head to fall asleep.
Samar stomped around the house and to the backyard. Out of sight of everybody — from the main house, the security and his roommates if they came home sooner.
He leaned back on the wall of the outhouse, looking up at the sky.
Moon. Stars. All of that. None of it made him slow down.
Samar looked down at the grass between his shoes.
Dried and frosty. Nothing extraordinary.
He grabbed his cracked elbow under his coat and squeezed.
Pain. Pressure. Lingering long after he released his grip.
Not enough to make his mind stop. Samar ran his tongue over his lips.
Cracked. Tasting of the chai they had sipped on the highway.
Sweet. Spice. He was in the now. His head began to quieten.
The whirring in his chest settled. His resting heart rate began to lower.
Why was he in this?!
That thought came out of nowhere and tore the calm he had painstakingly built. Samar gritted his teeth as his mind went out of his control again, hating how his rage multiplied.
Atharva had chiseled this team. And Atharva had encouraged his role as the damage controller, the cleaner, the shepherd who shot the wolves. And now he was himself protecting Iram Haider! The wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Samar pulled the branch closest to his hand and snapped it.
He panted. “Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” He crumpled to his haunches — his skin, his bones, his insides shaking.
What was happening to him? He was going back to that.
He was regressing. He couldn’t keep control of himself. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Get a grip.
Aamir Haider had betrayed them and Atharva had let him and Chaturvedi had died.
Iram Haider would betray them again and Atharva would let her again and…
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
A shutter rattled above him. He froze.
Samar got to his feet just as the window was thrown open. Amaal was there, the room dark behind her.
“What happened?!” She pushed half out of the window.
“Nothing.” He began to take her shutters in his hand and close them, but she pushed them open. Samar startled.
“Either an animal was mating or you were yelling.”
He stared at her, her hair messed up, her face rumpled from sleep. “You were not out?” He croaked, his voice now hoarse.
“What?” She squinted. “Do I look like I was out?” She pinched the top of her wool top, smothering a yawn. “What is happening here? When did you come?”
He began to push her window shutters close, but she shoved herself out of her window frame — “Don’t.”
Samar stepped back, at the end of his limit to act courteous tonight. He was going to tear into her. And not care. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
He still gave her another chance to move back in.
“Are you ok?”
You chose this, he thought cruelly, stepping forward until his face was close to hers — “I told you years ago to stop, don’t start.”
Her face changed. The sleep vanished. And just as he had anticipated, she pulled her face back, grabbed the handles of her shutters and slammed them shut.
He began to turn and walk away when the shutters snapped open again, hitting him in the shoulder. He stumbled but caught himself in time as her head popped back out.
“You are a cruel, unhinged man and I regret every single day that I told you that three years ago but that was the first and the last where you are concerned. It stopped the moment you walked. I am over it. It’s tragic you are not.
I am after you asking if you are ok because as it turns out, it is my job to ensure that you and your three partners look good and behave well in public.
You have failed miserably at both since February.
So either man the fuck up, buck up and start acting like a responsible leader fighting a serious election to form government in Jammu & Kashmir or give me in writing that I am not responsible for your media management.
Now go yell somewhere else. Some of us have to sleep, then wake up, then work. ”
She shut the window in his face again.
Samar gaped at it.
What just happened?
He stepped forward and knocked on her window. “Come out.”
“No.” Came her yell.
“I said, come out.”
“I said, no.”
“Amaal come out.”
“Fuck off.”
Samar stared at the window in front of him. His mind had gone quiet. He did not tempt the animal inside him, or fate. With that quiet mind, he turned on his heels and walked back to his room, ready to sleep.