I didn't reply. "She was... she was a beautiful girl, and smart, and maybe, I don't know, maybe the nicest human being I'm ever gonna meet. That was in New York. We were students together. Her parents, they were reform Jews-they supported Israel, but they were against the occupation of the territories. I was with that girl, making love to her, on the night my father died in an Israeli prison."

"You can't blame yourself for being in love, Khaled. And you can't blame yourself for what other people did to your father."

"Oh, sure I can," he said, offering me that small, sad smile.

"Anyway, I went back home, and I was just in time for the October War-the one the Israelis call the Yom Kippur War. We got smashed. I made it to Tunis, and got some training. I started fighting, and I kept on fighting, all the way to Beirut. When the Israelis invaded, we made a stand at Shatila. My whole family was there, and a lot of my neighbours from the old days. All of them, all of us, we were all refugees, with nowhere else to go."

"Were you evacuated, with the other fighters?"

"Yeah. They couldn't beat us, so they worked out a truce. We left the camps-with our weapons, you know, to show that we weren't defeated. We marched, like soldiers, and there was a lot of firing in the air. Some people got killed just watching us. It was weird, like a parade or some kind of bizarre celebration, you know? And then, when we were gone, they broke all their promises, and they sent the Phalange into the camps, and they killed all the old men, and the women, and the children. And they all died. All my family. All the ones I left behind. I don't even know where their bodies are. They hid them, because they knew it was a war crime. And you think... you think I should _let it go, Lin?"

We were facing the sea, looking down on a section of Chowpatty Beach from a car park on the steep rise above Marine Drive.

Beneath us the first wave of families, and couples, and young men out for the night tried their luck at throwing darts or shooting balloons pinned to a target. The ice cream and sherbet-drink vendors called out from their flamboyantly decorated bowers like birds of paradise singing for mates.

The hatred that had coiled around Khaled's heart was the only thing we ever argued about. I'd been raised among Jewish friends.

Melbourne, the city where I grew up, had a huge Jewish community, many of them Holocaust survivors and their children. My mother had been prominent in Fabian socialist circles, and she'd attracted left-leaning intellectuals from the Greek, Chinese, German, and Jewish communities. Many of my friends had attended a Jewish school, Mt. Scopus College. I grew up with those kids, reading the same books, enjoying the same movies and music, marching together in support of the same causes. Some of those friends were among the few who'd stood by me when my life imploded in agony and shame. It was a Jewish friend, in fact, who'd helped me to escape from Australia after I broke out of prison. I respected, admired, and loved all of those friends. And Khaled hated every Israeli, and every Jew in the world.

"It would be like me hating all Indians, just because some Indians tortured me in an Indian prison." I said softly.

"It's not the same."

"I'm not saying it's the same. I'm trying to... look, when they had me chained to the wall there, at Arthur Road, and they went to work on me, it went on for hours. After a while, all I could smell and taste was my own blood. All I could hear was the lathis ripping into me."

"I know, Lin-"

"No, let me finish. There was a minute, right in the middle of it, that was... so weird... it was like I was floating, outside myself, looking down at my own body, and at them, and watching everything that was going on. And... I got this weird feeling ... this really strange kind of understanding... of everything that was happening. I knew who they were, and what they were, and why they were doing it. I knew it all really clearly, and then I knew that I had two choices-to hate them or to forgive them. And... I don't know why, or how, but it was absolutely clear to me that I had to forgive them. I had to, if I wanted to survive. I know it sounds crazy-"

"It doesn't sound crazy," he said flatly, almost regretfully.

"It still seems crazy to me. I haven't really... figured it out, yet. But that's exactly what happened. And I did forgive them. I really did. And I'm sure, somehow, that that's what got me through it. I don't mean that I stopped being angry-shit, if I'd gotten free and gotten a gun, I probably would've killed them all. Or maybe not. I don't know. But the point is, I did forgive them, right there and then, in the middle of it. And I'm sure that if I didn't do that-if I'd just hated them-I wouldn't have made it through till Khader got me out. I would've gone under.

The hate would've killed me."

"It's still not the same, Lin. I understand what you're saying, but the Israelis did more to me than that. And anyway, if I was in an Indian prison, and they did that to _me, what they did to _you, I would hate Indians forever. I'd hate them all."

"But I don't hate them. I love them. I love this country. I love this city."

"You can't say you don't want revenge, Lin."

"I do want revenge. You're right. I wish I didn't. I wish I was better than that. But I only want it on one person-the one who set me up-not the whole nation that she comes from."

"Well, we're different people," he said flatly, staring out at the distant fires of the offshore oil refinery. "You don't understand. You can't understand it."

"I understand that hate kills you, Khaled, if you can't let it go."

"No, Lin," he answered, turning to look at me in the faint light of the cab. His eyes were gleaming, and there was a broken smile fixed to his scarred face. It was something like the expression Vikram wore when he talked about Lettie, or like Prabaker's face when he talked about Parvati. It was the kind of expression some men assume when they talk about their experience of God.

"My hate is what saved me," he said quietly, but with an excited, feverish zeal. Softly rounded American vowels blended with breathy, aspirated Arabic in a sound, a voice, that was somewhere between Omar Sharif and Nicholas Cage. In another time, another place, another life, Khaled Ansari would've read poetry aloud, in Arabic and English, moving all those who heard him to joy and tears. "Hate is a very resilient thing, you know. Hate is a survivor. I had to hide my hate for a long time. People couldn't handle it. They got spooked by it. So I sent my hate outside myself. It's weird that I was a refugee for years-I still am-and my hate was a refugee, just like me. My hate was outside me. My family... they were all killed... raped and butchered... and I killed men... I shot them... I cut their throats... and my hate survived out there.

My hate got stronger and harder. And then, I woke up one day, working for Khader, with money and power, and I could feel the hate creeping back into me. And it's here now, inside me, where it belongs. And I'm glad. I enjoy it. I need it, Lin. It's stronger than I am. It's braver than I am. My hate is my hero."

He held that fanatic stare for a moment, and then turned to the driver, who was dozing in the front seat of the car.

"Challo, bhai!" he snapped. Let's go, brother!

A minute later, he broke the silence to ask me a question.

"You heard about Indira?"

"Yeah. On the radio, at Leopold's."

"Khader's guys in Delhi got the details. The inside story. They phoned it through to us just before I came to meet you. It was pretty messy, the way she went."

"Yeah?" I replied, still thinking about Khaled's song of hate. I didn't really care about the details of Indira's assassination, but I was happy that he'd changed the subject.