The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

Everything about him was right: the honest stare, the confident stance, and the light in his smile. Instinct chooses her own children.

They wanted me to stay free, in part, because they wanted someone to escape and stay free. I smiled at Naveen. It wasn’t the first or last time I went with the river inside.

No smile would work, no goodbye would pray, no kindness would save, if the truth inside us wasn’t beautiful. And the true heart of us, our human kind, is that we’re connected, at our best, by purities of love found in no other creature.

The CIA guy. It’s creeping me out, man! I can’t work the street. I can’t talk to tourists. It’s like I see him everywhere, in my mind, asking questions about me. Did your guy, that Naveen detective guy, did he find out anything?’

For a while I looked at her, beautiful, healthy, strong, curled into herself like a sleeping cat. I tried to imagine what the vision of love she was clinging to might look like, and how different it was from my own. I lay down beside her and gathered my body into the contours of her dream.

Love the truth that you find in the hearts of others. Always listen to the voice of love in your own heart.

Money’s a drug too, of course, but I wasn’t worried for Farzad’s extended family. They weren’t hooked. Not yet. They’d torn their homes apart, true enough, but they’d replaced them with a common space of sharing. They’d turned their lives upside down, but it was an adventure: a voyage within themselves. They made sense of the dream they lived. It was still fun, for them, and I liked them very much for it.

‘Wait. I’m not finished. Compassion’s a very strange thing. It comes from deep inside. People know it when they see it, because you can’t fake it. I know. I’ve tried. I was terrible at it. I got sick, when I tried. I had to go back to being a genuine, uncaring cunt, just to get well again. It’s genuine, see, even being an uncaring cunt, and I’m drawn to genuine things, even if I don’t like them. Do you see what I mean?’

She read my face, frowning a little, as she made her way back into my mind. ‘Do you know what today is?’ she asked, laughing as my eyes widened with alarm. ‘It’s our anniversary.’ ‘But, we got together in –’ ‘I’m talking about the day I let myself love you,’ she said, her smile showing how much she was enjoying my confusion. ‘This is exactly the day, two years ago, that you stopped your bike beside me on the causeway, a week after Karla got married, when I was waiting for the rain to stop.’

It hurt him not to win. He thought he was good with a knife, and I was making him realise that he wasn’t. I should’ve let him win. It would’ve cost me nothing. And he was my boss, in a sense. But I couldn’t do it. There’s a corner of contempt we reserve for those who hate us, when we’ve done them no wrong: those who resent us without cause, and revile us without reason. Andrew was corralled into that corner of my disdain as surely as he was trapped in the dead end of the training corridor. And contempt almost always conquers caution.

‘The Buddha was a backpacker, travelling around with what he carried. Jesus was a backpacker, lost to the world for years in travelling. We’re all backpackers, Saleh. We come in with nothing, carry our stuff for a while, and go out with nothing. And when you kill a backpacker’s happiness, you kill mine.’

Fear is a wolf on a chain, only dangerous when you set it free. Sorrow exhausts itself in the net of forgetting. Anger, for all its fury, can be killed by a smile. Only hope goes on forever, because hope doesn’t belong to us: it belongs to our ancestors, the first of our kind, whose brave love for one another gave us most of the good that we are.

Stupid. Men. We were going to fight, for nothing. You can’t fight for anything, of course: you can only fight against something. If you’re fighting, the part of you that was for something has already been forgotten, replaced by a part that’s violently against something. And in that minute, I was violently against Concannon.

It was sorrow and dread as well, because love had become a stranger in their home. I was that stranger, once. I was addicted to heroin: so addicted that I stole money to feed my habit. I stopped, twenty-five years ago, and I despise the drug more every year. I feel heart-crushing compassion every time I see or hear of someone still addicted: still shooting in a war against themselves. But I was that stranger in my parents’ house of love. I know how hard it is to find the line between helping someone out, and helping someone in. I know that all suffer and die inside, again and again, from the addiction of one. And I know that sometimes, if love doesn’t harden itself, love doesn’t survive at all.

‘You’re nuts, you know that?’ I was lost, and not sure I wanted to know where we were going. ‘When I was arrested,’ I said, ‘I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I’ve actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you’ve gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who’ll be able to prove they’re sane will be the people behind bars.’

I was done. I quit. I’d had enough. Faith. Faith is in everything, in every minute of life, even in sleep. Faith in Mother, sister, brother, or friend: faith that others will stop at the red light, faith in the pilot of the plane and the engineers who signed it into the air, faith in the teachers who guard children for hours every day, faith in cops and firemen and your mechanic, and faith that love will still be waiting for you when you return home.

‘They slink up beside you, and whisper I thought you should know. Then they proceed to destroy your confidence, and trust, and even the quality of your life with their disgusting fragment of the truth. Some scrap of repugnant knowledge that they insist on being honest with you about. Something you’d rather not know. Something you could hate them for telling you. Something you actually do hate them for telling you. And why do they do it? Honesty! Their poisonous honesty makes them do it! No! Give me creative lying, any day, over the ugliness of honesty.’

Particularly Withb J&N's minions

Arrogance is pride’s calling card, and crowds everything with Self. Gratitude is humility’s calling card, and is the space left inside for love.

read the short message: There are no Gurus Mystified, I handed the card to Abdullah. He read it, laughed, and handed it back to me. ‘Quite a calling card,’ I said, reading it again. ‘It’s like a lawyer, saying there are no fees.’

‘Okay, so how many Parsis does it take to change a light globe?’ ‘Parsis don’t change light globes, because they know they’ll never get another one as good as the old one.’ She threw her head back and laughed.

‘Maybe I’m not what I used to be.’ ‘We’re all what we used to be, even when we’re not.’ ‘That’s not telling me what you’re doing here,’ she said. ‘What we tell, is rarely what we do.’ ‘I’m not doing an aphorism contest,’ she said, frowning a smile and sitting down beside me. ‘We are the art, that sees us as art.’ ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Keep your lines to yourself.’ ‘Fanaticism means that if you’re not against me, you’re against me.’ ‘I could report you for aphorism harassment, do you know that?’ ‘Honour is the art of being humble,’ I replied, deadpan. We were speaking softly, but our eyes were sharp. ‘Okay,’ she whispered, ‘you’re on. My turn?’ ‘Of course it’s your turn. I’m already three up on you.’ ‘Every goodbye is a dress rehearsal for the last goodbye,’ she said. ‘Not bad. Hello can lie, sometimes, but goodbye always tells the truth.’ ‘Fiction is fact, made stranger. The truth about anything is a lie about something else. Come on, step it up, Shantaram.’

brought you here to show you something that’s yours, as much as it is mine.’ ‘You’re right about that,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you understand.’ ‘I mean that this stuff you’ve got here isn’t ours, Khaled, and it isn’t yours.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘It was given to something bigger than we are, and you know it.’ ‘But, you don’t understand,’ he insisted. ‘I want you both in this with me. We can make millions. But the spiritual industry is a vicious business. I’ll need you, as we move on.’ ‘I’ve already moved on, Khaled.’ ‘But we can franchise!’ Khaled hissed, all teeth. ‘We can franchise!’

‘Just as well. And there’s a lesson. The more slender your grip on reality, the more dangerous the world becomes. On the other hand, the more rational the world you find yourself in, the more carefully it must be questioned. But enough of that, let’s get started. Gather around, and get comfortable.’

Loyalty is something you need for things you don’t love enough. When you love enough, loyalty isn’t even a question.

‘Enough obedience will let people do just about anything to other people,’ I said. ‘I like that answer,’ Idriss said.

‘Obedience is the assassin of conscience,’ Idriss said softly, ‘and that is why every lasting institution demands it.’

years, for this part of the universe to bring into being a consciousness, right here, capable of knowing and actually calculating that it took fourteen thousand million years to make the calculation. We don’t have the right to throw those fourteen billion years away. We don’t have the moral right to waste or damage or kill this consciousness. And we don’t have the right to surrender its will, the most precious and beautiful thing in the universe. We have a duty to study, to learn, to question, to be fair and honest and positive citizens. And above all, we have a duty to unite our consciousness, freely, with any free consciousness, in the common cause of love.’ I

‘I thought you didn’t believe in God, Karla,’ I smiled. ‘Who are we to believe in God?’ she said, her lips only lashes from my face. ‘It should be enough for anyone that God believes in us.’

‘That’s great, you’ll get this – what did one Gemini say to the other?’ ‘What?’ ‘Nothing. The other Gemini already left.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ Karla said. ‘He’s a writer. He thinks he’s older than his grandfather.’ ‘That’s pretty funny,’ Vinson laughed. ‘And as for you,’ Karla said. ‘Let that girl out of your armpit, right now.’

A constant now, that you constantly share with someone else’s now. It was a pretty good definition of prison.

‘Goodbye, and hello, beautiful soul,’ Karla said, as the ashes drifted from our fingers. ‘May you return, in a longer and happier life.’

‘Well, in that case it’s your duty, as a more rectified person, to speak to him, and attempt to moderate his damaging behaviour. But that can only work, if the other man submits himself to your counsel. If he is too proud, or too unrectified, you cannot perform your duty with him, and you must perform it with a more receptive person instead.’ ‘Okay. I get it. But, Idriss, I wouldn’t call that submission. I’d call that meeting me halfway.’

see . . . ’ ‘I don’t know how the Tantrics do it. All that physical penance, sacrifice and performing strenuous rituals, every day, for the whole of their lives. We teachers have it easy, compared to that. But we still go nuts, once in a while, under the sheer weight of being so fucking nice to everybody. Light the damn chillum, please. Where were we?’ ‘Khaderbhai’s errors,’ I said, lighting the chillum for him. He puffed for a while, found the stream, and floated his eyes into mine. ‘Tell me what you know about the movement toward complexity,’ he said, staring fixedly at me. ‘Khaderbhai said that if you take a snapshot picture of the universe, every billion years, all the way back to the Big Bang, we can see that the universe is always getting more complex. And that phenomenon, the continuous movement toward complexity, from the Big Bang to now, is the irreducibly defining characteristic of the universe as a whole. So, if this movement toward complexity defines the entire history of the universe –’ ‘– then it’s a pretty good candidate as a reference point, for a definition of Good and Evil that is objective, and also universally acceptable,’ Idriss finished for me. ‘Anything that tends toward complexity is Good. Anything that tends against complexity is Evil.’ ‘And the quick moral test,’ I added, ‘is to ask yourself the question: If everybody in the world did this thing I’m doing, or thinking of doing, would it help us get to more complexity, or hold us back?’ ‘Excellent,...

‘A thing is complex, to the degree that it expresses the set of positive characteristics,’ he replied. ‘The positive characteristics?’ ‘The set of positive characteristics includes Life, Consciousness, Freedom, Affinity, Creativity, Fairness and many others.’ ‘Where does this set of positive characteristics come from? Who made the list?’ ‘They are universally recognised, and would be recognised by your more evolved and advanced alien species, I am sure. If you look at their opposites, you’ll see why they are positive characteristics – Death, Unconsciousness, Slavery, Enmity, Destruction, and Iniquity. You do see what I am saying, don’t you? These positive characteristics are universal.’ ‘Okay, if we accept the set of positive characteristics, how do we measure it? Who gets to measure it? How do we decide what’s more positive, and less positive, Idriss?’ A black cat came to stand near us, arching its back.

‘You know, the guy you were talking to, the sage, Idriss, he told someone yesterday that they can release a departed spirit by offering food, on a plate, by a river, and leaving it there for the crows and the mice to eat.’

‘It’s all good, even the bad stuff. It’s all blood, flowing through the heart, and wonderful minutes, of wonderful things. I’m a writer. I have to believe in the power of love. Suicide isn’t an option.’

‘She has to be her own principal caregiver, Vinson, just like you are for Vinson, see? Cut her as much slack as she needs. Let her explore.’ ‘Explore?’ ‘Whatever she wants to do, or try, support her in it. Just give her time, and space. If she’s yours, sooner or later she’ll come to know it.’

Regret is a ghost of love. Regret is a nicer self that we send into the past from time to time, even though we know it’s too late to change what we said, or did. We do it because it’s human: a thing of our kind. We do it because we care, drawn by threads of shame that only fray and wither in the sea of regret. Along the way regret, even more than love, teaches us that harm creates harm, and compassion creates compassion. And having done its work, regret fades to the nothing that all things become.

His equanimity capsized in the cardroom-washroom, and he swore oaths against stupidity and cursed the malignantly uninformed.

‘Space, time, matter, gravitation, classical physics, particle physics, tendency field, positive characteristics, all imparted in the Birth-Bang.’ ‘Yes,’ he chuckled. ‘Concisely put. The tendency field operates on a very simple semi-Boolean program – If This, Then That – which runs everything, everywhere. The basic algorithm, if this happens, then that happens, runs everything, including entropy. If it happens that a fully self-aware consciousness arises, then the connection to the tendency field happens.’ ‘Doesn’t entropy run counter to complexity?’ ‘No. Entropy runs counter to order. And anyway, infinite entropy only applies in a closed system. And with black holes in our universe, leading who knows where, this isn’t a closed system.’ ‘Sorry to go back. You mean, no matter what you do in life, good or bad, you can always connect to this tendency field?’ ‘If you get in tune with the tendency field, through expanding and exploring the set of positive characteristics within yourself, the tendency field responds with constant energy, and affirmations. If you work against the tendency field, by being negative, unfair, unloving, and unconscious of the truth, you weaken your connection to the tendency field, and you experience existential dread, no matter how rich or famous or powerful you are.’

Joseph Campbell’s

Star Wars!

‘Carlos Castaneda,’ I said, reading the covers of other books. ‘Robert Pirsig, Emmett Grogan, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Buddha. Nice bunch. You could throw Socrates and Howard Zinn onto that list.

friends who wouldn’t let that happen, when she returned to the unreal world.

I wanted to know about the event. I wanted to know the story of how the Commissioner gave her the gun. What I didn’t want was a game, with a ten-minute deadline. ‘A woman always finds a way,’ she said, straightening up, and glancing at the clock. ‘At least once, when you are with this woman who has taken your heart, you will be thinking of me, while you make love to her.’ ‘See, Half-Moon Auntie, you’re wrong. That’s not gonna happen.’ ‘Are you so sure?’ she asked, holding my stare. ‘Completely. With all due respect, Half-Moon Auntie, my girlfriend kicks your ass. You’re a lovely woman, and all that, but my girlfriend is a goddess. And if it comes to an actual fight, she’d kick your ass there, too. She’d beat both of us together, with change, and have us thanking her for it, after she did it. I’m crazy about her, Auntie.’ She held my stare for a couple of seconds, testing me, maybe, then slapped her thighs and laughed. I liked it so much that I laughed with her. ‘All correct,’ her assistant called out, putting my bundle of rupees in a metal bin, locking it, and logging the amount in his ledger. ‘You’re not the first to say such words,’ Half-Moon Auntie said. ‘But not many do. A few. Most of them beg for their free show, and create lies, as reasons to consult with me.’ ‘To be fair to them, you put on a great show, Auntie.’ She laughed. ‘Thank you, Shantaram. That’s how the legend of my palm-reading skills began. An adulterous husband invented it, so that he could hold my han...

‘You write stories, Shantaram,’ she smiled. ‘One day you will write about me, and that will be a declaration of love. And this woman who has your heart will propose to me, out of happy love, nothing more.’ ‘Isn’t every love happy love?’ ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘There is your kind of love. You, and the few like you, who have become my dearest friends.’ ‘I don’t want unhappiness in love,’ I said, frowning. ‘I don’t want unhappiness at all.’ ‘I’m talking about the real thing,’ she replied. ‘The real thing is always more painful and more rewarding than anything less.’ ‘That’s . . . very confusing,’ I said. ‘But I’m so glad we had this talk, Half-Moon Auntie. If I’ve been unwittingly rude, and you’re not gonna shoot me, please give me about two minutes’ head start. It’ll take me that long to get to the door, on this surface.’ ‘Go, now, Shantaram,’ she laughed. ‘You are a VIP customer, from this day. May the Goddess keep your weapons sharp, and your enemies afraid.’

‘He’s nervous, being rich. He needs to move on, and he probably won’t move on, unless you move him on.’ ‘Move him where?’ ‘Anywhere that millionaires live. They tend to stick together, and they know how to look after themselves. He’ll be safe there, and you’ll get some peace of mind.’ ‘I’m having enough trouble living with one millionaire. I couldn’t handle a whole suburb of them.’ ‘Then take him to New Zealand. Buy a farm, near a forest.’ ‘New Zealand?’ ‘Beautiful country, beautiful people. Great place to vanish in.’

‘He wrote it, hoping that I’d show it to you. It’s a trick. He’s taunting and tormenting you, not me.’ ‘Exactly why I want to know what he wrote to you.’ ‘Exactly why you shouldn’t. It’s enough that I tell you it wasn’t nice, and that you need to know what he’s doing. I’d never hide it from you, because you need to know, but I don’t want you to read it. You’ve gotta see that.’ I didn’t see it, and I didn’t like it. For all we knew, Concannon had a hand in Lisa’s death. He’d tried to crack my skull. I didn’t feel betrayed. I just felt left out. She’d left me out of one too many of her games and schemes.

Like the shotgun

You wanna know a sure sign that you’re with your soul mate? a Nigerian smuggler once told me. You just can’t stay mad at her. Am I right?

Amy Leigh : )

He loved me after that night, that Indian-Irishman, and he never let me doubt it. Sometimes, the bravest thing we ever do is the thing we never get to do. And sometimes the spark that ignites a brother’s love, in men not born brothers, is nothing more than a pure intention.