By day, Khalaji was a contradiction in his smoothly tailored suits paired with that grizzled, wolfish beard, wild hair, wilder eyes, animalistic things that didn’t belong to polished patent leather shoes and the touch of slow, lazy elegance in his movements, in his smile, in the kindness in brutal hands. He looked as though a wild man of the woods and an intellectual had merged into some hybrid breed who could arrange delicate fabrics into confections of drapery—or just as easily crush a man’s throat in with his bare hands, knuckles bloodied raw.
