Free How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position by Tabish Khair

and in such mental disarray.
    I had agreed to cook dinner. Karim Bhai ate around Danish time, and we had gotten used to it too. It was a bit after six in the evening.
    My cooking is not as elaborate as Ravi’s or as practiced, if limited, as Karim Bhai’s. I usually slice onions, tomatoes and whatever else might be within slicing distance, fry it with chicken or minced meat or, in Denmark, salmon, add salt according to taste as they say, and finally plop in a bottle of Uncle Ben’s jalfrezi or some such ready-made mix of spices. It goes with rice, seldom Basmati, or pasta.
    I had just plunked in Uncle Ben’s korma mix when the bell rang. Karim, who was puttering around tidying up the flat, both TVs showing the same Danish news, went to open the door. There were muttered exchanges in Danish. I assumed it was some neighbor or a Jehovah’s Witness. But in a few seconds, Karim re-entered the kitchen with Pernille, Great Claus’s wife from upstairs.
    “Perhaps Pernille can eat with us,” he said to me.
    Pernille declined, but we insisted; she looked tired—the Eng Lit description, in Ravi-speak, would have been “haggard and woebegone”—and did not need much persuasion. Karim Bhai bustled about in the kitchen, relieving me of the chore of cooking the rice. Karim Bhai cooked only seven or eight dishes—halal restrictions curtailed his scope—but he cooked them well and always in a pressure cooker. I didn’t, dreading its whistle and the hint of a coming explosion. The rice, thanks to the intervention of Karim and his pressure cooker, was ready much quicker than it would have been if I had cooked it.
    After the table had been laid and the rice and curry placed in the middle, we plied Pernille with the fare. She pecked at the food, only perking up once to compliment the cooking. It was sheer politeness.
    “Where is Claus Bhai?” asked Karim Bhai finally, perhaps just to break the awkward silence.
    “I wish I knew,” replied Pernille, with some asperity. “I thought he might be here. That’s why I knocked…”
    Claus did drop in regularly—the only Dane I ever met who did not require an appointment at least a week in advance—and sometimes he and Little Claus joined us for dinner or lunch. But we had not seen him that day.
    “He must be working,” suggested Karim Bhai.
    “If only…” said Pernille. But then, with characteristic reserve, she changed the subject.
    Later, after she had left, Karim Bhai looked at me and shook his head.
    “Things are not going well between them,” he said to me.
    I was not sure: Pernille sounded like a woman who had unconsciously or consciously compromised on her career for the sake of her children, and the children had inevitably flown the coop.
    “No, no,” replied Karim Bhai, “I have known them for many many years. Things have not been good between them for a long time.”
    “Why, Karim Bhai?” I could not help asking.
    Karim hesitated. I knew he avoided anything that resembled gossip. Then he said in a low monotone: “Pernille thinks that Claus is having, that Claus is… (He lowered his voice a bit further, so much that I had to crane forward to follow him)… seeing another, you know, another woman.”
    He blushed. It had cost him effort to mention the possibility. And he hastened to add: “But, of course, he is not. Claus is a decent man. It is just that, here, you know here… (He waved his short arms around to indicate all of Denmark and perhaps all of Europe)… here everyone has such suspicions, everyone is always afraid. I keep telling her that it is not true, and she keeps saying that she will never forgive Claus if, after all these years, he leaves her for another woman.”
    I did not see Ravi that night or the next morning. He must have slept over somewhere else. But he walked into my office on Monday afternoon and said, in lieu of a greeting: “I ran into some of your Eng Lit First World types in the psycho canteen. I think I will avoid the place in