AKHIL

His mobile phone vibrated and moved, its light flashing on and off. He looked at the number, then cut it off. Noticed Murad’s look. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’ Murad shook his head, half smiled, continued eating.

‘It’s lunchtime, for god’s sake. They can wait.’ The pasta travelled past his chin, leaving a trail. Murad pointed at Akhil’s chin and made a dabbing motion.

Two women walked into the student cafeteria. One of them, thin, young and blonde, saw him, stopped at their table.

‘Hi, Akhil,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to Rothman’s talk this afternoon at the department?’

‘Nah, don’t think so, need to go to the dean’s office,’ he said. ‘How’s the computer doing? Needs a clean-up. Give me a call sometime tomorrow afternoon? I’ll come by then, if you aren’t in class.’

‘Thanks, that’ll be great. Have a nice lunch,’ she said, including both of them in her smile.

‘Dude…’ Murad said, grinning, turning his head to watch her walking away. ‘She likes you, who is she?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Akhil said. ‘TA, Philosophy Department.’ He wiped his mouth, took a final swig from the mini-box of OJ.

‘You go to lectures there?’

‘Yeah, from time to time, why?’

‘Nothing. This sys ad stuff really gets you around, doesn’t it?’ Murad was unwilling to let go of her. They could see the women standing with trays at the food counter, waiting to be served.

‘Yeah, it does,’ he said. ‘What it means is that you have to attend to a bunch of dumb-asses.’

‘C’mon, man,’ Murad said, his eyes still following Blondie. ‘It doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘Murad,’ he said.

Murad jerked his head back to look at him. ‘What?’

‘Did you check out the website?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Do it, man,’ he said. ‘I’m serious. Put in all the details it asks for, you never know when it’s going to be helpful. I’m pretty convinced about it. I already have ten people signed up. I think it’s especially important for a guy like you.’

‘Why, ’cause I’m Muslim?’

‘Things have really changed around here, man. Can’t you see that? No harm in having a neutral forum, that’s what I’m telling everyone. Check out the blog, too. People have sent back some pretty interesting comments.’ His phone rang again. He picked it up. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ He took his backpack and summer hat off the table.

‘What’s with the buzz cut?’ Murad said. ‘You’re like some kind of scary, skinhead, right-wing militia-type, man.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ Akhil said, jamming the hat on. He walked the short distance to the biology lab. The pink and white dogwoods that dotted the campus seemed unusually lurid, as though painted by a manic hand. He guessed Tara would want to visit the campus. It had been, what, seven or eight years since he had seen her? All the years he had been away. It would be good to see her. She was the only one he could stand of the neighbourhood bunch. The other kids would tear into his room, mess up his stuff, confuse him with their noise and laughter. She had always held back a little, been silent, even somewhat respectful, though she had been older.

She had known not to tread on people’s toes.

From time to time, he had even allowed her to borrow a book. Once, it had been Crime and Punishment, another time, Nietzsche, if he remembered right. She had brought them back safely, their newspaper covers as crisp as before. She had not thought it odd that he was careful with his books, each with its particular place in a complex system of his own devising. She knew better than to replace a book on the shelf herself, always leaving it on his desk. Page 23 of every book carried the following stamp: ‘Stolen from the library of Akhil Murjani. God abominates thieves.’ He’d had to do that after someone – he couldn’t remember who, must have been that oaf, Victor Bhalla – had borrowed a Superman comic and then pretended he hadn’t. He had disliked it when the kids got into his comic collection. He had always kept his door locked so they couldn’t burst in while he was working or reading or, worse still, away.

As he approached the entrance to Wyndham, he noted, as always, the security camera the campus police had placed above the door. It made him uneasy, guilty even, like the mere presence of a cop somehow made you feel. There had been a big to-do when the security cameras had been put up in different parts of the campus after university shootouts had become the new way of expressing student unrest. But the cameras had stayed. He tried not to look up at it, taking his hat off just before he got to the door. He used the hat as a sort of glove as he pushed the bar on the door down and opened it.

He checked for mail. Nothing but textbook mailers that some publisher’s rep had put in all the boxes. He tossed them into the garbage bin, and went up to the office he shared with the department TAs on the second floor. He had just dumped his backpack on the floor and turned his comp on when Stanley, one of the PhD students, knocked on the open door to get his attention, and leant against it, smiling creamily.

‘Heard about Wang Jiao?’ Stanley said, anticipating his own enjoyment of the conversation he was about to have.

‘What about her?’ Akhil said, thinking of the researcher from China with the thick white calves and heavy black-framed glasses who had joined the department the previous year. She had never been friendly with him. He had figured it was some kind of intra-Asian immigrant power thing that the US tended to bring out, ‘real’ Asian (in this case, Chinese) vs. ‘fake’ Asian (i.e., Indian), researcher vs. admin guy. He had noticed how faux-sweet she was around the ‘real’ Americans.

‘They came around to question her,’ Stanley was saying. ‘Something to do with some white powder someone found inside her desk.’

‘What was someone poking around in her desk for? What white powder?’

‘Anthrax, man,’ Stanley said in a stage whisper, looking down the corridor this way and that. ‘Bio-terrorism.’

‘Wang Jiao? Bio-terrorism? What is wrong with everyone?’ Akhil felt a small buzz of fear despite himself. ‘So what happened?’ he said, knowing Stanley would tell him anyway.

‘Nothing. They took a statement from her. Says she doesn’t know what the powder is, she didn’t put it there. They’ve taken samples for testing.’

‘Well, Indians, for one, don’t need to fear anthrax.’ Akhil turned his attention back to the computer screen, hoping Stanley would go away. ‘We’re all probably exposed to it from an early age.’

‘Yeah, all those holy cows, ha ha ha. Be careful, man. They may question you next!’ Stanley rolled his eyes, laughed a little. ‘Better have your defence ready. What could the fine white powder be if not anthrax? Some strange Asian food, maybe? Who could have put it there if not Wang Jiao? All will be revealed anon! See ya.’ He ducked out of the door, doffing an imaginary hat at Akhil.

There was a familiar smell in Akhil’s mouth, the acid nervousness that had haunted him from childhood. Damn Stanley, with his stupid fucking little WASPy jokes.

He got onto his website. There was a message from someone who called himself Buffalo Soldier. Clever name. The new people of colour were certainly taking the hit for the jihadis. ‘Hey, man,’ the message said, ‘enjoyed your recent post on Israel and Palestine. Check out uncivilobedience.com, it talks about American “reconstruction” of Afghanistan. You’ll love it.’

Some people seemed to get the importance of the website. Murad was making a big mistake, not getting his info on to it. This Wang Jiao-type event was happening once too often, and you never knew when you could get mixed up in something like it. Best to be careful. If he had been a bit more perceptive, Murad would have noticed the little ways in which people acted different around him these days. Akhil himself had caught people staring at him for a second or two longer than was polite when he was off the university campus.

On his way out that evening, Akhil wiped his keyboard and mouse with a tissue after making sure no one was about. After a moment’s consideration, he cleaned the top of the desk, locked the drawers, and wiped the handles. He took a look around the office, then locked the door, and ran the tissue over the handle. He passed Wang Jiao’s office on the ground floor. It was shut, maybe even sealed by the cops. He wondered where she was. On the notice-board near the exit, he saw a memo from the department head that he had missed on the way in. ‘Attention, Everyone,’ (it read), ‘concerned agencies are investigating a substance, suspected to be anthrax, found in the desk of Ms Wang Jiao. Agents may be coming around to talk to people in the next few days. Please extend whatever assistance you can in the matter.’

What ‘concerned agencies’? What were they going to come around asking? This was just another excuse to rile people like him, make it seem a question of national security, instead of what it always had been – baring fangs at those who did not fit.

He drove his battered Volvo out of the campus to the Food Master on his way home. Friday was his cleaning day, and he did not like to run short when he was on the job. He walked around the aisle, picking up things off the shelves in a well-worn routine and piling them up in one half of the cart: sugar-free muesli, a week’s worth of bagels in all flavours, OJ without added sugar, tofu burgers, soy milk, rice, a few vegetables. In the little basket below the push-bar, he put the cleaning things: drain-cleaning liquid, a new high-powered antiseptic and bleach bathroom cleaning liquid that promised to wipe germs off the face of the planet, a pair of thick rubber work gloves, a small brush with a handle for the tough areas of the tub. He did a second turn around the shelves. This time, it was a couple of boxes of sugary kiddie cereals, a can of regular milk, a few packages of Pop-Tarts, two frozen mac-’n’-cheeses, a bag of pasta, and a standard jar of tomato sauce to go with it. He stacked them in the empty half of the cart.

At the check-out counter, the young blonde clerk twisted her pink lips into a shiny, oblivious smile and said, ‘How are you today?’ as she cast a longing look at her plastic pink nails. He ignored her, and began piling the stuff up on the counter. He handed her a couple of cloth bags, indicating the stuff that was to go into them.

‘Put the other stuff in regular plastic bags.’

‘Same bill?’

He nodded without looking at her.

On the highway, the cars up ahead suddenly fell to an obedient 55 mph as his radar pipped, its tone getting more and more frantic. Cop hiding, probably in the thicket a little further ahead. Bastards, always waiting to catch people out. Well, the highway motorists had their own code to get past them. Back in Arden, someone like him would be pulled over, of course, not Mikey and Johnny who were the local officer’s preschool friends. He shook his head, reset the radar. As he went past the clump of trees, he saw a dark shape like a car in their midst. People would give it a few miles before letting the good behaviour wear off.

He staggered down the steps of the building, down to his basement apartment, with the grocery bags. He left the plastic bags outside a door down the hallway before going into his apartment. He put away all the groceries, folded the cloth bags and put them away inside a drawer. He squinted long and hard at the tiny print on the side of the cleaning liquid so he could follow instructions. Then, with his rubber gloves on, he approached the bathroom with the air of someone about to secure the area by cleansing it of terrorists. There could be no half-measures. Eternal vigilance, the price of liberty.

He was giving the grouting a particularly harsh going when the doorbell rang. He exhaled, took off the gloves, draped them on the side of the tub, and went to get the door.

‘Hi, Janine,’ he said when he saw the tired-looking thirtyish woman with stringy hair and threadbare jeans. ‘I was just cleaning my bathroom. What is it?’

‘Hi, Akky,’ she said. ‘Sorry, just wanted to thank you for the groceries. Guess I’ll have to repay you some other time.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, wanting to get back to the cleaning. Two kids, a scrawny girl of about seven, and a plump little boy, even younger, gambolled down the hallway, and jumped at Akhil. ‘Hi, Akky!’ they called out in soft treble voices.

Akhil raised his hands above his head, trying not to be irritated. ‘Guys, guys,’ he begged. ‘Let go. Let me get back to my work.’

The kids continued to hug him around the legs, then let go of him as suddenly and danced into his apartment.

Janine smiled at him in apology. ‘Kids,’ she said, ‘don’t hassle Akky now, you hear me. We’ll come back later, when he’s done.’

‘Actually, I’m not free later either, Janine. Sorry. Have some work to do on the computer. Maybe tomorrow I could take them down to the park if you like.’

‘That’d be great. Okay, see you later. Come, kids,’ she said, pushing them out of the door before her. She turned round to wave at him. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed. ‘Sorry to disturb.’

When he was done, it was like a bathroom in an ad, airbrushed and photo-shopped to a sparkle. He took a shower, changed into sweats and a T-shirt, and padded over in socks to his computer. He felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, just below the hairline. He rubbed his neck as he opened up the website. Seven more entries, plus some links to related sites. Well, this site was getting some attention, as it ought. He opened up each entry, looked at what it said. Four Indians, a couple of Bangladeshis, one Sri Lankan. He sent an acknowledgement to all of them, asked one or two for additional info. It was late into the night when he went to bed after eating a single black bean burrito left over from the previous week’s shopping.

DANISHA

HERMAN MELVILLE, ‘BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER’

Old-fashioned story. Difficult to read. ‘I would have preferred not to!’

Scrivener – someone who copies legal documents.

Why does Bartleby stare at walls? Is he mentally ill? Or physically? One of the clerks says ‘prefer’ is a queer word. So is Bartleby gay?

Narrator – kind man. Feels sorry for Bartleby. But also frustrated. Calls him an ‘intolerable incubus’. What’s an ‘incubus’? A ghoul?

There are no women at all in this story. It’s a story of ‘Wall St’. So does that mean women have no place in it? Work is cold, lonely. Dehumanizing.

Of course, no black people at all!

Only seem to have questions.