Paintings of Scarlet - Part 4

“It’s done, uncle,” I said, my voice shaking uncontrollably. “It’s done. Those men stole my brother and all the other men, and I have avenged their deaths. It is done, Uncle. They killed our children, and we killed theirs. How will I find my little brother now? Where is Aseem? How does this help me?”

“There is just one last thing you must do, Zhora, and one last person you must meet. He will know where Aseem is. We needed to scare these men, Zhora, if we wanted to know anything. You must meet this last man, and you will find your brother...”

I listened to him, as he gave me details of what I must do next. The horror of the playground still played in my head, like a reluctant song, the same part playing over and over in my head. I saw the little child hitting my knee, blowing up into tiny pieces of flesh and fire.

Times when I felt this way, I would go back to this same day, forty-three days ago, as I sat with my mother in my home in Isfara, holding her hand as she sobbed.

“Where is he? Where is my son?” her body shook in waves of tears. “Where is he, Zhora? Find him. Aseem! Where are you? What did they do to you?”

“Amma, Amma, don’t cry,” I tried to console her, fighting back my own tears. “I’ll find him, I promise. I’ll do whatever I have to.”

“Please find him Zhora, or I’ll die. My bacha, what’ll I do without him? My poor Aseem.”

It was only a day after this incident that my uncle came to my house. He paid his condolences to my mother, reassuring her that Aseem would be found, and spoke to me alone.

“Zhora, my men know who took Aseem away,” he said, speaking in a low, confidential tone. “It was those Americans, those bloody men. They had been snooping around the office a few days ago, claiming that some secret information had been leaked in your brothers’ office. They were asking me about him, and that was the day he disappeared. It’s those Americans who took him away.”

I listened to him, absorbing every word coming out of his mouth, my mind slowly flooding with anger and rage.

“You, Zhora, you are the only man who can bring him back. With your training, and your physical abilities, and your capacity to control your emotions, you are the only one who can bring him back, Zhora. Do it. Do it for your mother,” he said.

“Of course I will! How can you even doubt me? Tell me what I have to do,” I had told him, bravely.

I travelled back from these memories, listening as Baba told me the plan. Anger and excitement raged through my veins, electrifying me, shocking me with the thought of saving my brother. These months of living like a chameleon in the United States, of acting like a serial killer, shedding blood and tears, here was the prize. I listened to his voice, soaking in his words like a cotton soaking kerosene, ready to flame at any time.