I am a master in India

Chapter 310 Life in Exile
Arab countries rely heavily on imports for light industry, daily necessities, electronics, and clothing, with products positioned in the low to mid-range and priced in the lower to mid-range.

Customers here typically order in large quantities and prefer to see samples before ordering. If they like something, they will place an order within three to five days.

This was almost tailor-made for Suer Electric Appliances. Ron's products may not be high-end, but they are definitely cost-effective.

With the intention of striking while the iron was hot, he personally stayed in Dubai to oversee the processing of various procedures.

With Shakir's approval, Mary and Karuna began interviewing Daoud's henchmen in order to gather as much material as possible.

The man who led them was called Zamir; he had a stubble beard and bloodshot eyes.

Surprisingly, he was not as fierce as Karuna had imagined; instead, he greeted them with a friendly smile.

Karuna responded somewhat stiffly; he seemed a little nervous, as they were standing so close together, like friends shopping together.

Mary, on the other hand, remained very calm and even took the initiative to start a conversation.

"Do you like it here?" she asked curiously.

“No.” Zamir shook his head without hesitation.

"how long have you been here?"

"Half a year."

He took them to an Indian restaurant, where they met one of Zamir's classmates, a sturdy Malayali. After joining the Daoud, he changed his Indian name, Sri, to his Islamic name, Shayb.

When fellow countrymen meet, tears well up in their eyes. Zamir and Shayib together complained to Karuna that the Arabs in Dubai called them beggars or bastards, and that they were often discriminated against and humiliated.

They had no friends among the locals and faced discrimination everywhere. They missed their families and even had to clean their own toilets here.

Later that day, Zamir was going to take Karuna to see Dubai's neon nights, and he asked Mary if she needed to go back to the hotel to rest.

Not only did she not mind, she even wanted to come along. After spending more than half a year in Dubai, Zamir was no longer surprised by such things.

The streets of the United Arab Emirates are filled with prostitutes: extremely young Malay girls and white-skinned Russian women in hot pants sway back and forth gracefully on empty avenues.

They went into a bar, and Zamir ordered an Irish stout and drank it down in large gulps.

“I can’t go back. Mumbai can no longer accommodate me,” he said truthfully.

"Why?" Mary asked.

"Someone wants to kill me," Zamir said, sounding distressed.

He told Mary and the others his story, about gang wars and feuds.

That was six months ago, not long after Zamir arrived in Dubai. He ordered Satish to assassinate a herdsman named Salim, who was originally their accomplice. Later, he worked for Rajan and killed three bombers. His next target was Zamir.

He was scouting the area near Zamir's house when Shakir found out and decisively ordered: "Traitor, kill him."

Zamir then sent Satish to kidnap Salim, lock him in a car, and torture him. Salim begged for mercy over the phone, pleading with Zamir to spare his life.

“His voice was trembling violently, and he was very agitated.” Zamir spread his palms out and swayed them from side to side.

Salim said he would never do it again and promised to work only for Daoud from now on.

Zamir angrily denounced him as a traitor to the herders while he was in a phone booth downstairs in an apartment building, except that the apartment was not in Mumbai, but in Dubai, on the other side of the Arabian Sea.

However, killing Salim presented a technical challenge: Shakir had promised Mumbai police that the Daoud gang would not use firearms during the Maharashtra elections. Left with no other option, Satish resorted to a knife attack, disemboweling Salim.

"Blood spurted out, and even the kidneys were clearly visible. The person wielding the knife must have had some guts," Zamir commented.

Half an hour after Salim's death, Satish called Zamir again to report that the mission had been successfully completed.

From Monday to Wednesday, Salim lay dead on the rooftop of a building on Mira Road, undiscovered.

Rajan, who sent Salim to assassinate Zamir, naturally knew his men were missing from Monday. He reported the case to the police and told them the location of Zamir's house.

The police were lying in wait outside Zamir's house, only to find that Zamir was already in Dubai.

Zamir's family is very nervous. He hasn't been able to speak to them since he fled to Dubai, fearing that the police might be tapping his phone.

Zamir's brother was rendered mute during interrogation, and Zamir asked his younger brother to pay the police 50,000 rupees to save his brother's life.

“If they kill him,” the short man said excitedly, “I might drop a bomb, I’m capable of anything.”

Karuna, who was taking notes, was startled; the man had smiled kindly at them when they met that morning.

They had lunch together and are now sitting together in a bar.

Then, out of the blue, he asked, "Was the Mumbai bombing just as easily decided back then?"

Mary gave Karuna a look, signaling him to continue writing and not interrupt Zamir's narration.

Zamir said he paid a large sum of money to bail out Satish's brother-in-law, who had helped Satish kill Salim.

Shakir gave Zamir a total of two raqs of "operational funds," thankfully Zamir didn't do any one-off "order-taking" deals.

If he takes on the job for a palladium, the subsequent expenses are likely to exceed the budget, making it awkward for Zamir to ask Shakir for more money.

For their line of work, 100,000 rupees is already a high price. Part of that goes to Satish and his men who actually carry out the work, and 50,000 rupees is left to bribe the police. Fortunately, Shakir never sets a fixed price; the amount of funding is proportional to the difficulty of the task, and Zamir can take more or less as needed.

“The gangs are always willing to do anything about this,” Zamir said.

"So after you come to Dubai, how will you earn an income and how will you live?" Mary asked.

“Big brother will give us money.” Zamir nodded proudly; the big brother he was referring to was naturally Shakir.

Zamir was deeply impressed by the generosity of the Daoud group. He shared an apartment with Shayib and others, and the annual rent was 35,000 dirhams, which is roughly equivalent to 250,000 rupees.

He has his own laundry room, television, stereo system, and even a satellite phone, with monthly phone bills reaching 70,000 rupees. Furthermore, any expenses his family needs, such as wedding preparations, are delivered to him by Shakir immediately.

Zamir estimated that settling him in Dubai would cost 18 sahir a year.

So despite his loathing of Dubai, Zamir still did his best. He left two hundred men in Mumbai while he remotely directed operations from Dubai, planning the assassination, arranging escape routes, and devising strategies to deal with police interrogations (if the assassins were arrested).

He used a pencil to draw various charts to help him better understand the situation in Mumbai.

“It’s a pity Satish is dead,” Zamir said, taking a swig of his drink. “I was planning to bring him to Dubai this month, but he was shot dead in a warehouse by the Federation.”

"Will you avenge him?" Mary asked.

“Of course!” Zamir answered without hesitation. “But we have to wait for our elder brother’s order. We can’t act on our own until he gives the word.”

After finishing their beer, they decided to find another place to continue. The air was damp, and signs advertising dancers lined the entrance of a nightclub.

Zamir and Karuna went into the nightclub to relieve themselves. Karuna went to the urinal, while Zamir went into the adjacent stall. This was an unwritten rule for two heterosexuals who were in love and used the public restroom.

Zamir quickly opened the door again and strode out.

“There are cockroaches,” he said, the former Mumbai gangster boss who fled in terror.

Karuna indeed saw white cockroaches on the ground, and for a moment he almost couldn't help but laugh.

The second floor of the nightclub was divided into two booths, with music playing continuously.

“Baba Yang Music! Don’t miss it!” The doorman invited them into the room where a Ghazal hymn singer was performing.

“Indian dance! Come and see!” Another doorman, not to be outdone, beckoned them into the beer bar with the dancers.

The two men enthusiastically promoted the service, saying, "This way, please! This way, please!"

Zamir entered the room with the Indian dancers without hesitation, followed closely by Mary and Karuna.

It's called beer, but it's really a case of false advertising.

The bar was nearly empty, and the tape recorder played old songs that Indian expatriates liked, such as "He Stole My Heart" and "Our Love Letter".

The plump girl from Mumbai, adapting to local customs, sat gracefully on the stage dressed in Arab women's trousers, while the dry ice machine beside her was merely for show.

“In Mumbai, every bar had a few police officers from the crime department sitting around. I wouldn’t have a moment’s peace without bodyguards around me.” In this strange country, almost no one knows who Zamir really is.

He fled Mumbai safely, but it was no different from being in exile.

Some unseen force was preventing him from going home. If Zamir insisted on going back, he would die as soon as he left the airport, either by being encountered by the police or assassinated by Rajan.

So he had no choice but to stay in the country he hated, sitting in his living room every night watching ANA-NTV to ease his homesickness.

He dreamed of riding the train on Mira Road again, but reality only allowed him to boast about Mumbai's fifty-five skybridges. In repeated calls with his subordinates, he personally ordered the destruction of his beloved hometown, bit by bit.

Three months later, Zamir might go to Karachi or Bangkok, whichever he goes, it will be a place he hates even more than Dubai.

He said that in Dubai, at least people are relatively law-abiding.

Zamir, who was exiled, belongs to a very special type of refugee. He is neither a political refugee nor an economic refugee, but a criminal refugee.

Back at the hotel, Karuna was very excited. He felt the trip was worthwhile; it turned out that this was the kind of life the upper echelons of the Daoud gang lived overseas.

“It’s a waste to only make documentaries! Boss, we should adapt this material into TV series and movies! People will love it. They are both afraid of and curious about gangsters. These films and TV shows can allow them to glimpse the secrets of the underworld in a safe environment.”

“What do you think?” Ron asked Mary.

“There is great potential; we could even make many seasons.”

"Alright, you can figure this out yourselves."

Ron sighed, realizing that life wasn't going very well for the gangsters who had fled to Dubai.

He also realized that the gang warfare in Mumbai would never end.

Because its core is not about gangsters killing each other or the life-or-death struggle between the legitimate and illegitimate worlds.

At its core, it depicts young people with Mauser rifles attempting to use politics to rewrite their destiny and defy history.

Its core is the cutting of life, and the path to cutting life is paved with one murder after another.

(End of this chapter)