Babajan
By Mira Martin-Parker
The Lord’s house is high, like the top of the tallest date palm. If [a pilgrim] climbs it, he tastes the nectar of love; if he falls, he breaks his neck. —Kabir
The sergeant tapped lightly on the door before entering the cell. The man at his right looked at him quizzically, but said nothing. The walls inside were gray and bare. There was a small cot pushed up against the wall, and off in the corner there was an old wooden chair. About six inches below the ceiling a small barred window was letting in brilliant sunlight from outside. A small, thin, middle-aged man with dusty brown curly hair was sitting on the edge of the cot. His hands were folded in his lap and he smiled in greeting at the two men. The sergeant smiled warmly back at the prisoner. Noticing this, the other man gave him a sharp look. The sergeant immediately stood straight and resumed a blank, military face.
“Should I call in Farid to translate, sir?” he asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” the man replied. “You may leave now.”
The sergeant paused and looked anxiously at the prisoner. “But sir, this man speaks no English. He will not understand you.”
“I am aware of that, sergeant. You may leave.”
The sergeant did not move. Again he glanced nervously at the prisoner, who sat smiling pleasantly at his guests.
“I asked you to leave,” the man repeated firmly.
The sergeant’s cheek twitched. But he didn’t move.
“Now!” the man shouted.
The prisoner gestured at the sergeant with a wave of his hand, and reluctantly he turned and left.
For a moment the man paced back and forth looking down at the floor.
“What the hell is going on here?” he muttered.
He was tall, with ash blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. His movements were slow and graceful. It was winter, and he was wearing a heavy wool sweater with khaki trousers. Finally he stopped and looked around. The prisoner was still sitting and smiling. Outside, in the distance, you could faintly hear people calling the name Babajan.
“It seems you’ve made some friends here,” the man said. “My driver could barely make it through the crowds.”
The prisoner smiled.
“Oh, what on earth am I doing?” he said, lifting his hands with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t have to come here, you know. No one ordered me to. I came on my own. I wanted to see you for myself. They offered to take care of this problem for me. They told me I wouldn’t have to dirty my hands. A team could be sent in. But I said no, that wouldn’t be necessary. At least not right now. I wanted to see you with my own eyes first.”
He looked down at the prisoner.
“What is it you want from us? I can have you taken anywhere you want to go. You’re from India, aren’t you? I can have it all arranged. You’ll be safe; you have my word. Just tell me what you want. Look, if you don’t want to tell me, you can tell your friend Sergeant Meyers out there. I’ll call him in. Just tell us what it is you want.”
The prisoner sat smiling at him.
“Of course, you obviously have no desires, no attachments, unlike the rest of us mortals. Well, it’s easy for you to sit and smile like that. Lucky you!” He sighed again and sat down in the chair.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is going to be some sort of Grand Inquisitor thing. I’m no Ivan Karamazov, and I’m not going to start spouting off an impressive philosophy justifying all this madness. I have no philosophy. There is no moral justification for this nightmare—at least not on my end. I may have come here to see you on my own, but I certainly did not come to this country on my own volition. No, they sent me here. And they made it perfectly clear that I couldn’t say no without seriously damaging my career. Maybe that cowboy has some crazy, atheistic philosophy motivating him—no doubt he does. He’s probably deluded himself into thinking he’s the Grand Inquisitor. But I’m not into that fanatical, power hungry crap. He asked me to put a lid on things; to cool everything off and get our people into the right places, and he made it clear there would be hell to pay if I said no. So I’m here doing the best I can.
He stood up and began pacing again.
“You know, my daughter won’t speak to me now. She hates this war, she hates our country, and she hates me more than anything. She blames me for all this, as if I had any say in it.”
He stopped pacing and pulled out his wallet.
“See,” he said pointing down at her photograph. “Here she is. That’s my little girl. My only baby.”
The prisoner looked at the picture and nodded appreciatively.
“She’s going to school at Amherst. She’s probably turning into a lesbian; she’s most certainly become a fanatical leftist. I don’t care. I did the same thing when I was her age. I dabbled in socialism, macrobiotics, and Buddhism. I grew out of it, though. I eventually forgave my dad and followed in his footsteps. He was a diplomat, you know. He worked in Turkey when I was kid. You see, I’m not like that idiot. I don’t hate your people. I respect your culture. But my career’s on the line here. Someone has to pay my daughter’s tuition. Do you have any idea what an education costs these days? Of course you don’t.”
The man stopped pacing and listened.
Outside, the people were calling “Babajan” over and over.
“What the hell am I doing?” He said, grabbing at his hair.
The sergeant could be seen peeking in the small glass window on the door.
“Look, I’m not your enemy. I want to help you. Now you need to tell your friends outside to go home, understand? They need to go away.”
The calls from outside got closer and louder. “Babajan! Babajan!” they cried.
“If those people don’t go away—you will be killed, and there’s nothing Sergeant Meyers or I can do to prevent it. This region is being cleaned up, and your followers are in the way. Do you understand?”
The prisoner smiled.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” the man shouted. Then he sank back into the chair and buried his head in his hands.
The prisoner stood up and looked gently over at him. The man longed for him to say something, however terrible. But instead he approached him and softly kissed his forehead. The man shuddered. He got up, went to the door, and signaled for the sergeant to open. Then he said to the prisoner, “Go, and come no more. Come not at all; never, never!”
The prisoner went away.
And the man?
The kiss glows in his heart, but he still clings to his career.
Mira Martin-Parker earned an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva. Her collection of short stories, The Carpet Merchant’s Daughter, won the 2013 Five [Quarterly] e-chapbook competition.