kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"TouristTrap"

words

Tourist Trap (with Shweta Narayan) July 31, 1999

A wonderful country, this is.

My imagination has always taunted me with the beautiful sights, the aromas, the exotic charming natives of lands I'd never seen. Maybe if I'd gone to Sweden, huh? Not that I can complain about lack of sensory input; while I haven't seen much there has been no dearth of noise. Or of smells. Oh, the smells...

The air assaulted me a second before I stepped off the plane, moist and warm and all-enveloping like an over-enthusiastic but underexperienced lover. And like said lover, reminding my nose of stale cigarette smoke and unwashed bodies and sickeningly sweet perfume. Ah, Bombay.

I was greeted and welcomed, first off, by an airport terminal that had obviously been recently built, with a lot of care and no interior decorator. Had the lowest bidder offered to pay to do this monstrosity? The way to customs was periodically blocked by marble pillars. Not quite clean, square-based, and... well, blocky. The obstacles were decorated, for lack of a better word, by photographs, for lack of a better word.

The pictures were black and white, or at least grey and dirty yellow. Really really big, really really bad, really really grainy shots of historical sites. The sort that scare one into avoiding such places for want of sanity. I hadn't realised anything could do that to the Taj Mahal.

My introduction to the charming hospitality traditional to this land came from officials in pseudo-military uniforms, ranting at me in... English, I suppose. I mean, I did understand some of it. I think.

My papers were brutally examined, and my luggage -- when it finally turned up -- was battered. Seems the journey had treated it even worse than it had me. But at least we were finally in Bombay.

Oh, and apologies -- it's not Bombay any more. In order to celebrate fifty years of independance, the Indian government proudly decided to rename two of their major cities. I'll bet that did wonders for morale, self esteem, overpopulation, famine, global warming, and the common good. I wonder how their postal offices coped. In any case, I managed to make it out of the airport, although at first I didn't actually realise. It was just as crowded, just as noisy, just as smoky. Then it hit me. The rain, that is. There was now a fair amount more of it than there had been inside.

After half an hour of persuading various porters that I really didn't need any help thank you, and that I could actually manage one small backpack all by myself, I got hold of a taxi. The traditional mode of transport, the auto rickshaw, has been banned from the city's roads. I wonder why; they're lovely vehicles. Three wheels much like those learner wheels you put on baby bicycles, except more wobbly. A maximum speed somewhat less than your average pedestrian's and a tendency to be tipped over by potholes. Although to be fair, this country's potholes could capsize a tank. Literally. First one I saw, I wondered where the ferry was.

While I was staring at the pothole, a barge pulled up next to me. Well, it was on land and had four wheels, but it was covered in garbage and the size of a not-so-small boat.

"Sir? Would you be in need of the services of a Taxi?" The voice was somewhat british and had just a touch of refinement. When I realized that the door handle didn't work, I simply pulled the door open, got in, shut it, and held it closed tightly.

"Sure thing, mac. Could you take me to a good hotel somewhere about?"

He peeled outta there and some sort of miracle leapt us over the pothole. I was pushed into and almost through the back seat. From the condition of the car, I wondered if it had been the site of earlier nuclear tests.

"Say, mac? How'd you get to speak English so good? I thought everyone hereabouts spoke really backwards foreigner English, if you know what I mean." Thinking about what I'd said I hastily appended, "No offense intended, of course."

"No, I don't mind at all. I studied Macroeconomics at Yale, continued to get a degree in Business at Harvard, and went back for a degree in Civil Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. The problem is, India doesn't have enough jobs for everyone, and it is not all that feasible to get a job in another country. They don't like you to earn their money and send it out of circulation to India. Very sound economic sense, actually. So I came home, and I'm helping in the family business until I can perhaps get a degree in a more lucrative field of Engineering. I'm contemplating Nuclear Engineering."

My mind boggled at this. I probably made more money in a week than this guy got in a year, and he had more degrees than I had names. I mean, I scrimped along at home with my degree in history... but that was with American money.

Meanwhile, my friendly and overeducated driver had been testing pedestrian's views of the afterlife and their chances thereof. I wonder if it's considered suicide to try to cross the street? Religiously, that is.

He made a particularly vicious left turn, and I was out of the car. A few bruises saved me five bucks, but I really would rather have paid him. Thank goodness I was at least holding onto my suitcase and still had my backpack on. I don't think I could have found that cab again.

Looking around, I figured asking the natives might be harder than just wandering randomly until I found a hotel. It couldn't be too hard.

* * *

Well, I'd found a hotel. "Hottel" to be specific. But I wasn't being picky. It felt sorta like survival camp. Campsite open to the sky, no electricity and less water -- unless you counted what was dripping onto me -- and a fair share of predators. Rats, to be specific. I really wanted to get to my knife. I'd only brought it along because I flew often enough that it required something like a combar knife to cut through the meat on an airplane, but it seemed I'd need it besides.

The receptionist slouched over the cash drawer, smiling like a used-car salesman. His nametag declared him the Manajaar. His name was Habib. Looking around, I assured myself that "Hottel" was not some form of quickie mart.

"Excuse me. I'd like to get a room. How much for a night?"

"Two fifty an hour. Good room. Good plenty. Room you like."

"No, mac... I want a room for the *night*. Sleep?"

"Sleep extra. Twenty cost she services basic. Fifty more."

"Listen mac, I don't know what you're saying, but I want to go to sleep in one of your rooms for the night. I want a key to a room that has a door that locks. How much?"

He looked somewhat confused.

"You want no sleep partner?"

Exasperated, I shook my head no.

He counted silently on his fingers. "Twenty. Good room. Good plenty, you like."

I hastily counted out what looked like the amount he'd told me, took the keys, and walked the wormwood stairs he pointed up. Walking into the room, I picked up the door and leaned it against the opening as best I could. That would have to do. Just out of curiosity I tried the lock on the door and sure enough it worked.

I hesitantly laid out my luggage on the stained bedsheets, and sorted through my belongings. I really hadn't brought much. A few sets of clothes, a camera, and my knife. I tucked my knife into its sheath on the inside of my left boot, and made sure it was inconspicuous under my jeans. I stuffed the rest of my belongings into an oversized rucksack, and mentally looked myself over. The mirror in the room had once been large, according to it's frame and the number of shards on the floor. I laughed. The weekend warrior sets out to prowl. Shrugging, I headed out.

* * *

The weekend warrior soon found himself wishing for SWAT gear: a small security blanket against the maniacal drivers. I found that as a pedestrian I really wasn't given time to ponder the afterlife. I was still twitching once I'd gotten to the market place. Shadows of carrion birds had me flinching and I forced myself to calm down. Flinching at shadows would mark me as an unexperienced tourist, which really wouldn't help my chance at haggling. I aimed to be an experienced tourist. Foreshadowing, anyone?

After looking around a bit, being jostled and cursed in as many dialects as a full set of teeth, I found something for a co-worker that had sexual harassment written all over it. Hopefully she could take the joke. It was a letter opener made of imitation wood, carved like a giant phallus with a sexually exagerrated, six-armed woman dancing around waving kitchen implements. Supposedly a genuine relic of the Himalayas carved by starving zen masters, tantrically engaged with Yeti, holding the world together and apart by staring in their navels.

"Six hundred, good buy, not find another like it!" His smile made me really wonder about the meaning of life.

"This? There's twenty more just in your stall! Maybe the defects are unique, but really it's not worth more than six. I'll give you twelve." I winced, as it registered that I'd use too much english all in one sentence. Likely he hadn't been expecting anything besides a yes or no from a tourist.

"Twenty," I said again.

"One hundred."

"Twenty-five." He shook his head. Apparently we'd entered some sort of meta-haggling, where conversation about relative worth of the merchandise and eachother's ancestry really didn't matter at all.

We bandied numbers back and forth until he decided I was taking too much of his valuable time. Finally, with him actually a bit red-faced, quite a feat on an Indian, we settled on forty. Not bad on my end, though I'm sure he was still ripping me off. I checked my pockets for my wallet. It wasn't there.

Fighting down panic, I tried to remember what I'd done with it. Slowly, it came to me. It was in my backpack. Well, that was obvious. Why hadn't I checked my backpack? My backpack was missing. Great. Just Great.

Apparently my hagglee could tell from my frantic searching that the last ten frustrating minutes had to boot been a complete waste of time. From the look on his face, he was cursing my ancestry back to the dawn of time.

Okay. Missing wallet. Missing backpack. At least my passport was in a belly pouch. Despite it looking like I was adjusting myself, I decided to verify that at least that was there. It was. Now all I had to do was find someone to report the theft to. Right. That would solve everything.

* * *

"Police! Police!"

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't me shouting, although the voice was of some english-speaking tourist. Or rather, american-speaking. Once you leave the states, it becomes much more of a distinction. The voice, however, had a fair chance of attracting police attention. I figured I could interact with them after they'd dealt with the hysteric fool.

I hasted myself towards the voice. A few wrong turns through alleys still managed to give me visual sighting before the voice stopped its indignant yodeling. As I got closer, I realised that there was actually some sort of fire-fight going on. I'd thought that ruckus was just cars backfiring. It all sort of mingled in.

When a few shots exploded into the rotten brick beside me, I was quick to duck into an alley. Maybe I didn't want to find the police.

Just then, I was grabbed from behind and jabbered at in some foreign language. I couldn't understand the words, but the thing poking in my back was unmistakable. It said, "Don't move if you value your internal organs." Luckily I'd gotten myself out of the path of the other bullets, so there wasn't an immediate conflict of interest.

I went a little slack and waited. Hands pulled me deeper into the alley, not removing the solid metal canister from my back. Slowly, I was turned around. There were five of them all told, four before me in full army fatigues, and they looked mean. Admittedly, they were scrawny, wearing fourth-hand clothes that didn't fit them. They hadn't shaved, and one looked like he had some sort of disease breaking out over the remainder of his face. Another even seemed to be favouring one leg. But they had the eyes of fundamentalist lunatics. I wasn't going to make a single wrong move, especially not while one of them had a gun to my back.

The main thing running through my head was, "What the hell does this group of freaks want with me?" I wasn't going to voice that question though. Who knows what would trigger them. With hand signals and mime they explained that I was to remain quiet and run in the middle of their group. Apparently, we were heading somewhere specific. As we ran from alley to alley, I got the impression that we were specifically moving away from armed resistance.

I started to analyze them for weaknesses, but came up short. Something was wrong. I re-analyzed their strengths. They still had those fanatic, eagle eyes, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out where they were hiding their weapons. Especially the guy who'd originally captured me. Could it be that I'd misunderstood the feeling in my back? I decided that it was enough of a possibility that I'd be better off testing it. "Once wrong, twice wrong," ran through my head but I squashed it.

As we turned a corner, I took the opportunity to fake twisting my ankle. I went down on one knee, and grunted with suppressed pain. The guy behind me kicked me and started cursing, but he didn't pull out a weapon. Groaning, this time for real as he'd bruised my side, I slowly and carefully unsheathed my bowie knife from my calf. In one swift motion I corkscrewed up and behind him and put the knife to his throat, holding the blade tight against his rapidly bobbing Adam's apple.

* * *

My captee and I stared wordlessly at the remainder of the group, and they stared wordlessly back. This lasted for some time, my heart racing. I really didn't know what to do.

Suddenly, the police came rushing around the corner. Apparently, this group of ruffians had actually had good reason for their hurried retreat.

The police took cover, and drew beads straight on me. The meaning was clear although utterly confusing.

I've been in jail for three weeks, and still haven't figured it out. I'm hoping this diary will make it out, along with my passport information.

The US embassy will help, right?

Right?