Dahanu Road: A novel by Anosh Irani Page A

would wake up momentarily and fall asleep a minute later. She had about five minutes before he started snoring again.
    Banu boxed him and he woke up, as always, quite unperturbed. Then she whispered in his ear, “Put your head on my stomach.” He was too groggy to understand, so she shook him. “Wake up, Shapur.”
    “Hah? What is it?”
    “What kind of sad tiger are you?”
    “I’m tired.”
    “I have something to tell you.”
    “Oh no,” he muttered.
    “I’m not complaining about anything. I just want to talk. Put your head on my stomach.”
    He groaned and got up from his sleep, then placed his head on her belly. She was naked and she could feel his breath on her skin. That air contained all her husband’s hopes and desires, his truth, his love, it contained everything. She remained silent for a while and stroked his hair so that he was comfortable but not asleep. She would write a letter to her mother tomorrow and tell her the news. There would be a lot of excitement in the house, particularly among her sisters. They were twins, only twelve, and she would write in her letter that they were about to become aunties. But before she could write to them, she had to tell her husband.
    “Shapur, are you awake?” she asked.
    “You know,” he mumbled, “I am not a real tiger. I am an idiot who is ruled by his wife.”
    “That’s not true. You are a tiger. And the tiger is about to have a cub.”
    “What?”
    “Yes.”
    “You mean …”
    “Yes.”
    She wanted to say more, but when she saw her husband’s reaction, how his small eyes became round as moons, and how he got up from the bed and hugged her hard, she knew what she had said was enough.

    Nine months later, Shapur Irani’s excitement could still not be contained.
    But he tried not to think of his unborn child as he stood under a mango tree and waited for Ejaz. He chose a tree that could not be seen from his bungalow because he did not want to disturb Banu. Ejaz was taking too long. Ejaz, the Pathan. Ejaz, the only man in Dahanu who was the same height as Shapur Irani. Ejaz, all of six feet five inches.
    Shapur Irani was having tea at Dahanu station one day when he saw a man alight from the train. He could tell from the man’s loose black garb that he was a Muslim, a Pathan. This man towered above everyone, and Shapur Irani and Ejaz locked eyes like two beasts that recognized each other. Ejaz lowered his eyes first because he was the one without work. Perhaps he could tell from the manner in which Shapur Irani stood, tall and uncompromising, that he was a landowner, a man who commanded respect.
    Ejaz walked straight up to Shapur Irani and said, “I am looking for work.”
    It was a moment Shapur Irani would never forget: a Muslim was asking an Irani for work. But Shapur Irani knew that the Pathan was not from Iran. The men who beat his father were not the same as this man. Maybe that was why he felt no disdain for the Pathan.
    “Where are you from?” he asked.
    “I live in Bombay,” said Ejaz. “But my father was from Peshawar.”
    “Why are you in Dahanu?”
    “I am on the run.”
    Shapur Irani liked the man’s honesty. He did not ask whatEjaz had done. Sometimes men of strength had to do things that went against their conscience.
    “Ejaz, you will work for me,” he said.
    That was eight months ago, and in a short time Ejaz had earned a reputation as the fiercest foreman in Dahanu. When he stared at the Warlis with his black eyes, the men went quiet. All he needed to do was stand over them to make them realize how undernourished and weak they were. He had a long black beard, which he was proud of, and in his first week as foreman, he made himself a weapon that terrified the Warlis—he took a wooden club and hammered nails at one end. He told Shapur Irani that he did not intend on using it on the Warlis. It was just to scare them.
    Shapur Irani thought about this first meeting as he waited for Ejaz under the mango tree. He could scarcely