Behind the Beautiful Forevers_ Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo [58]
Abdul sat on the floor in the back of the room with some other boys, waiting for the warden to call his name and enter his particulars into a brown paper file. Along the wall behind the warden were portraits of Indian eminences, and of ten faces Abdul felt certain of the names of three. Gandhi, of course, though his eyes were buggier in the portrait than they were on rupee notes. Abdul knew this Gandhi as the one who cared for poor people, who liked Muslims as well as Hindus, who took on the British and made India free. Abdul also recognized Jawaharlal Nehru, the founder of Independent India, who looked Fair-and-Lovely white and unlike any Indian Abdul had seen in real life. Bhimrao Ambedkar was the man in the red necktie and the black-framed eyeglasses—the one who’d fought for the right of the untouchable castes to be treated as human. At Annawadi, many Dalit families had dust-coated versions of this portrait tacked to the front of their huts.
The other faces on the wall were as mysterious to him as the Hindu gods and goddesses whose statues populated the warden’s desk. He figured Mirchi would be able to name all of the Indian eminences. It was the kind of information a boy would have in his head if he were lucky enough to go to school.
Registered, Abdul was taken to a barrack to lie with 122 other boys on a cool tile floor. Through a window came the decisive clatter of steel shutters; in the neighborhood outside the stone walls, shops were being closed for the night. He must have slept, for the next sounds he registered were sonorous calls to prayer—the amplified dawn azan of the neighborhood mosques. Allah-u Akbar. God is great.
Abdul’s father considered it disrespectful to pray to Allah when you were dirty, so Abdul rarely did namaaz. “And even when I do pray, I am thinking about work,” he had confessed to Kehkashan recently. Still, he’d always felt soothed, hearing the muezzins as they summoned believers or announced that lost children in green shirts were at the mosque awaiting reclamation. Under the care of men with such voices, he figured all lost children would be safe.
About Allah himself, Abdul had over time worked up an economics-based proof, since he lacked a strong internal sense of His existence. He put it this way: “It takes me longer than other people to understand things, but many smart people believe in Allah—the imams, the men who call out the azan, the rich Muslims who do all this charity. Would these people be doing this work and spending money for a God who wasn’t there? Such big people wouldn’t waste their rupees.” So there was definitely an Allah, and He would have a reason why Abdul had been locked up for a crime he hadn’t committed.
A pockmarked guard was getting everyone up, handing out rags and buckets, ordering the inmates to a long row of taps. There was more water here than at Annawadi, and Abdul felt a little better after washing off the sweating he’d done in the police cell. But on his second morning at Dongri, when ordered to take a bath, he bridled.
He’d seen no reason for a daily washup at Annawadi, since he was only going to get dirty again as soon as he dried himself off. Sometimes he’d get so ripe that his mother would wave a rag in his face: “You fool, it’s nice to get fresh!” Perhaps it was nice for other people. He personally found the bathing ritual not just pointless but self-deceiving. Getting fresh for a fresh day, in which something new might happen! He thought it better to start the day by acknowledging that it was going to be just as dull as the days preceding it. That way, you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Abdul informed the guard that he would