As we drove on, the driver kept staring at my gaunt, starved, beaten face in his rear-vision mirror. Finally, I asked him in rough, colloquial Hindi if he had any Indian movie songs in his cab.

Stunned, he replied that he did. I nominated one of my favourites, and he found it, cranking it up to the max as we buzzed and beeped our way through the traffic. It was a song that the prisoners in the long room had passed from group to group.

They sang it almost every night. I sang it as the taxi took me back into the smell and colour and sound of my city. The driver joined in, looking often into the mirror. None of us lie or guard our secrets when we sing, and India is a nation of singers whose first love is the kind of song we turn to when crying just isn't enough.

The song was still soaring in me as I shed my clothes into a plastic bag for disposal, and stood under the strong warm jet of water in Vikram's shower. I tipped a whole bottle of Dettol disinfectant over my head, and scrubbed it into my skin with a hard nailbrush. A thousand cuts and bites and gashes cried out, but my thoughts were of Karla. Vikram told me she'd left the city two days before. No-one seemed to know where she'd gone. How will I find her? Where is she? Does she hate me now? Does she think I dumped her, after we made love? Could she think that about me? I have to stay in Bombay-she'll come back here, to the city. I have to stay and wait for her.

I spent two hours in that bathroom, thinking, scrubbing, and clenching my teeth against the pain. My wounds were raw when I emerged to wrap a towel round my waist and stand in Vikram's bedroom.

"Oh, man," he groaned, shaking his head and cringing in sympathy.

I looked into the full-length mirror on the front of his wardrobe. I'd used his bathroom scales to check my weight: I was forty-five kilos-half the ninety kilos I'd been when [ was arrested four months before. My body was so thin that it resembled those of men who'd survived concentration camps. The bones of my skeleton were all visible, even to the skull beneath my face. Cuts and sores covered my body, and beneath them was the tortoise-shell pattern of deep bruises, everywhere.

"Khader heard about you from two of the guys who got out of your dormitory-some Afghan guys. They said they saw you with Khader, one night, when you went to see some blind singers, and they remembered you from there."

I tried to picture the men, to remember them, but I couldn't.

Afghans, Vikram had said. They must've been very good at keeping secrets because they'd never spoken to me in all those months in the locked room. Whoever they were, I owed them.

"When they got out, they told Khader about you, and Khader sent for me."

"Why you?"

"He didn't want anyone to know that he was the one getting you out. The price was steep enough, yaar. If they knew it was him paying the baksheesh, the price would've been a lot higher."

"But how do you know him?" I asked, still staring with fascinated horror at my own torture and emaciation.

"Who?"

"Khaderbhai. How do you know him?"

"Everybody in Colaba knows him, man."

"Sure, but how do you know him?"

"I did a job for him once."

"What sort of a job?"

"It's kind of a long story."

"I've got time, if you have."

Vikram smiled and shook his head. He stood, and crossed the bedroom to pour two drinks at a small table that served as his private bar.

"One of Khaderbhai's goondas beat up a rich kid at a nightclub," he began, handing me a drink. "He did him over pretty bad. From what I hear, the kid had it coming. But his family pressed charges, with the cops. Khaderbhai knew my dad, and from him he found out that I knew the kid-we went to the same damn college, yaar. He got in touch with me, and asked me to find out how much they wanted to drop the case. Turns out they wanted plenty. But Khader paid it, and a little more. He could've got heavy with them, you know, and scared the shit out of them. He could've fuckin' killed them, yaar. The whole fuckin' family. But he didn't. His guy was in the wrong, _na? So, he wanted to do the right thing. He paid the money, and everyone ended up happy. He's okay, that Khaderbhai. A real serious type, if you know what I mean, but he's okay. My dad respects him, and he likes him, and that's saying quite a lot, because my pop, he doesn't respect many members of the human race. You know, Khader told me he wants you to work for him."

"Doing what?"

"Don't ask me," he shrugged. He began to toss some clean, pressed clothes from his wardrobe onto the bed. One by one I accepted the shorts, trousers, shirt, and sandals, and began to dress. "He just told me to bring you to see him when you feel well enough.

I'd think about it if I was you, Lin. You need to feed yourself up. You need to make some fast bucks. And you need a friend like him, yaar. All that stuff about Australia-it's a fuckin' wild story, man. I swear, being on the run and all, it's damn heroic.

At least with Khader on your side, you'll be safe here. With him behind you, nobody will ever do this shit to you again. You got a powerful friend there, Lin. Nobody fucks with Khader Khan in Bombay."

"So why don't you work for him?" I asked, and I knew that the tone of my voice was harsh-harsher than I'd intended it to be- but everything I said sounded like that then, with memories of the beatings and the body lice still slicing and itching across my skin.

"I never got invited," Vikram replied evenly. "But even if I did get invited to join him, I don't think I'd take him up on it, yaar."

"Why not?"

"I don't need him the way you do, Lin. All those mafia guys, they need each other, you know what I mean? They need Khaderbhai as much as he needs them. And I don't need him like that. But you do."

"You sound very sure," I said, turning to meet his eye.

"I am sure. Khaderbhai, he told me that he found out why you got picked up and put in jail. He said that someone powerful, someone with a lot of influence, had you put away, man."

"Who was it?"

"He didn't say. He told me he doesn't know. Maybe he just didn't want to tell _me. Whatever the case, Lin my brother, you're paddling in some fuckin' deep shit. The bad guys don't fuck around in Bombay-you know that much by now-and if you've got an enemy here, you're going to need all the protection you can get.

You got two choices-get the fuck out of town, or get some firepower on your side, like the guys at the OK Corral, you know?"

"What would you do?"

He laughed, but my expression didn't change, and he let the laughter quickly fade. He lit two cigarettes and passed one to me.

"Me? I'd be fuckin' angry, yaar. I don't wear this cowboy stuff because I like cows-I wear it because I like the way those cowboy fuckers handled things in those days. Me, I'd want to find out who tried to fuck me over, and I'd want to get some damn revenge on him. Me, when I was ready, I'd accept Khader's offer, and go to work for him, and get my revenge. But hey, that's me, and I'm an Indian madachudh, yaar.

And that's what an Indian madachudh would do."

I looked in the mirror once more. The new clothes felt like salt on the raw wounds, but they covered the worst of it, and I looked less alarming, less confronting, less hideous. I smiled at the mirror. I was practising, trying to remember what it was like to be me. It almost worked. I almost had it. Then a new expression, not quite my own, swirled into the grey of my eyes. Never again.

That pain wouldn't happen to me again. That hunger wouldn't threaten me. That fear wouldn't pierce my exiled heart. Whatever it takes, my eyes said to me. Whatever it takes from now on.

"I'm ready to see him," I said. "I'm ready right now."