He laughed, and slapped at his thigh. It was a good laugh, the kind of laugh that won't rest until it shares the joke, and I found myself laughing with him.

"Do you know what this means, my boy?" he asked, when his face was serious enough to frame the question.

"Tell me."

"This formula-the one million, the ten million, the hundred million-this is the real truth of all politics. Marx was wrong.

It is not a question of classes, you see, because all the classes are in the hands of this tiny few. This set of numbers is the cause of empire and rebellion. This is the formula that has generated our civilisations for the last ten thousand years. This built the pyramids. This launched your Crusades. This put the world at war, and this formula has the power to impose the peace."

"They're not my Crusades," I corrected him, "but I get your point."

"Do you love him?" he asked, changing the subject so swiftly that he took me by surprise. He did that so often, shifting the ground of his discourses from theme to theme, that it was one of the hallmarks of his conversation. His skill at performing the trick was such that even when I came to know him well, even when I came to expect those sudden deviations and deflections, he still managed to catch me off guard. "Do you love Khaderbhai?"

"I... what sort of question is that?" I demanded, still laughing.

"He has great affection for you, Lin. He speaks of you often."

I frowned, and looked away from his penetrating gaze. It gave me a rush of intense pleasure to hear that Khaderbhai liked me and spoke of me. Still, I didn't want to admit, even to myself, how much his approval meant to me. The play of conflicting emotions- love and suspicion, admiration and resentment-confused me, as it usually did when I thought of Khader Khan, or spent time with him. The confusion emerged as irritation, in my eyes and in my voice.

"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" I asked, looking around at the closed doors that led to the private rooms of Khaderbhai's house. "I have to meet with some German tourists this afternoon."

Abdul ignored the question and leaned across the little table separating our two chairs.

"You must love him," he said in an almost seductive whisper. "Do you want to know why I love Abdel Khader with my life?"

We were sitting with our faces close enough for me to see the fine red veins in the whites of his eyes. The embroidery of those red fibres converged on the auburn iris of his eyes like so many fingers raised to support the golden, red-brown discs. Beneath the eyes were thick, heavy pouches, which gave his face its persistent expression of an inwardness filled with grieving and sorrow. Despite his many jokes and easy laughter, the pouches beneath his eyes were swollen, always, with a reservoir of unshed tears.

We'd been waiting half an hour for Khaderbhai to return. When I'd arrived with Tariq, Khader had greeted me warmly and then retired with the boy to pray, leaving me in the company of Abdul Ghani.

The house was utterly silent, save for the splash of falling rain in the courtyard and the bubble of the fountain's over-burdened pump. A pair of doves huddled together on the far side of the courtyard.

Abdul and I stared at one another in the silence, but I didn't speak, I didn't answer his question. Do you want to know why I love this man? Of course I wanted to know. I was a writer. I wanted to know everything. But I wasn't so happy to play Ghani's question-and answer game. I couldn't read him, and I couldn't guess where it was going.

"I love him, my boy, because he is a mooring post in this city.

Thousands of people find safety by tying their lives to his. I love him because he has the task, where other men do not even have the dream, of changing the whole world. I worry that he puts too much time and effort and money into that cause, and I have disagreed with him many times about it, but I love him for his devotion to it. And most of all, I love him because he is the only man I ever met-he is the only man you will ever meet-who can answer the three big questions."

"There are only three big questions?" I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

"Yes," he answered equably. "Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those are the three big questions. And if you love him, Lin, my young friend, if you love him, he will tell you these secrets, as well. He will tell you the meaning of life. And when you hear him speak, when you listen to him, you will know that what he says is true. And no-one else you will ever meet will answer these three questions for you. I know. I have travelled the Earth many times over. I have asked all the great teachers. Before I met Abdel Khader Khan, and joined my life to his, as his brother, I spent a fortune-several fortunes - seeking out the famous seers and mystics and renowned scientists. None of them ever answered the three big questions.

Then I met Khaderbhai. He answered the questions for me. And I have loved him, as my brother, my soul's brother, ever since that day. I have served him from that day until the little minute that we share. He will tell you. The meaning of life! He will solve the mystery for you."

Ghani's voice was a new current in the wide, strong river that carried me: the river of the city and its fifteen million lives.

His thick, brown hair was streaked with grey, and smudged completely white at the temples. His moustache, more grey than brown, rested on finely sculptured, almost feminine lips. A heavy gold chain gleamed at his neck in the afternoon light, and matched the gold that flashed in his eyes. And as we stared at one another in that yearning silence, tears began to fill the red-rimmed cups of his eyes. I couldn't doubt the real depth of his feeling, but I couldn't fully understand it, either. Then a door opened behind us, and Ghani's round face dissolved into its usual mask of facetious affability. We both turned to see Khaderbhai enter with Tariq.

"Lin!" he said, with his hands resting on the boy's shoulders.

"Tariq has been telling us how much he learned with you in the last three months."

Three months. At first I'd thought it impossible to endure the boy's company for three days. Yet three months had passed too swiftly; and when the time came to bring him home, I'd returned him to his uncle against the wishes of my heart. I knew that I would miss him. He was a good boy. He would be a fine man-the kind of man I once had tried, and failed, to be.

"He'd still be with us, if you hadn't sent for him," I replied.

There was a hint of reproach in my tone. It seemed to me a cruel arbitrariness that, without warning, had put the boy with me for months and had taken him away just as suddenly.

"Tariq completed his training at our Koranic school during the last two years, and now he has improved his English, with you. It is time for him to take his place at college, and I think he is very well prepared."

Khaderbhai's tone was gentle and patient. The affectionate and slightly amused smile in his eyes held me as firmly as his strong hands held the shoulders of the solemn, unsmiling boy standing in front of him.

"You know, Lin," he said softly, "we have a saying, in the Pashto language, and the meaning of it is that you are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return."

"Tariq's okay," I said, standing to shake hands and take my leave. "He's a good kid, and I'll miss him."

I wasn't the only one who would miss him. He was a favourite with Qasim Ali Hussein. The head man had visited the boy often, and had taken him on his rounds of the slum. Jeetendra and Radha had spoiled him with their affection. Johnny Cigar and Prabaker had teased him good-naturedly, and they'd included him in their weekly cricket game. Even Abdullah had developed an emotional regard for the child. After the Night of the Wild Dogs, he'd visited Tariq twice every week to teach him the arts of fighting with sticks, scarves, and bare hands. I saw them often, during those months, their silhouettes carved on the horizon like figures from a shadow-play as they practised on the one small strip of sandy beach near the slum.