Free Fire in the Unnameable Country by Ghalib Islam Page B

in the press and the cause of tighter closures and the instalment of even more complex mirror-walls in La Maga— and his requisite torture by the Department had something to do with what happened next.
    Know that Niramish rarely slept in a single place for more than a week after that, moving from one safehouse to another, harboured by Uncleboy’s associates and taken out to the further reaches of the organization until he disappeared beyond the boughs of the baobab, so to speak, and none of the mastans would report to me even whether he remained alive. One day, I heard a soft hail of pebbles against my window and recognized the imp mastan standing below, Hasan or Hussein, I don’t recall which of the twins. Whichever, he bugled with his empty fingers and I wished I had sprouted wings enough to drop softly down to the ground, but I was forced to sneak out via the conventional route as the household slumbered.
    I shuddered though the night was warm, I felt it then and I should have/ we strode through one and the next deserted street and passed through known mirrors and appeared at the other end of the city. There was Niramish, translucent, paler than ever and seated on a bed, separated from Grandfather by the mere distance of a chess set. They were just beginning a game, but Grandfather rose at once with a nod, he departed and left the two of us to talk, but we did not talk for a long time.
    In time, the air grew foul and I complained to Niramish, There are no, but where are the windows in this room, friend.
    That is because they are suffocating us, yaar.
    Niramish was moving pieces around the Queen’s Gambit and replacing the pawns to Staunton Harold/ he was doing this and replacing them. He said, they’re suffocating us, yaar, a phrase he repeated many times, They’re suffocating us, he said while moving pawns to the start. But since he became angry while speaking and returned to fully visible flesh and blood, not at all diaphanous anymore, I was contented. Then he began to sob and became confused about his size. He shrank to my knee’s height and began clutching at my trousers, sobbing.
    I said to him, Niramish, this too shall pass, rise up, Niramish, and when he began to fade again and to flicker dangerously, I scooped him up onto my shoulder like a toddler and coddled him. It’s all right, Niramish, there are others in the world and surely this misery is not the world.
    He did not believe me then, and in strode Uncleboy, Telephone for Niramish, at which time my glasses fell off my face on their own accord.
    Niramish descended from my shoulders because he was shy for his sobbing and his shrinking act and reached down to lift my glasses since he was closer, and as he leaned them up to me he began sobbing again because they had fallen down and broken.
    I knew then, I could have said it, I felt everything but others knew absolutely.
    This one is important, Uncleboy tugged on my shirt, and we left Niramish.
    In the other room they came and went, and the voices jostled me between the apparitions, which spoke. They were hard drinking and a hand extended toward me, and the decanter was there. I smelled it but I had no wish for that. The smell was of whiskey and I worried for Niramish, but the air was not foul in this room and I was glad for that. I could not call the silence by name and it was not silence, for they were talking, and the voices that. A hidden organ heralded its bloody existence inside me and I doubled over in pain. The source of the pain was elusive and I began to run somewhere and to gasp because my throat or my. I waited for the pain but mostly the anxiety to pass and for Niramish’s conversation to be over. When we heard the noise and smelled the smoke I felt the other. Then I ran and I realized in fact I was clutching the decanter.
    I splashed the whiskey onto Niramish’s face. Rise, Niramish, I pleaded, but the hole was too large and around his head there was that, and