Chapter 6

Ishwari's Intentions

When I was fourteen, I wanted to go shoot paintball. I asked my friend Daniel if he wanted to go with me. But Daniel's parents went to Living Christ Church and despite their support for Bush and the Iraq War, wanted to discourage violence. Daniel's mom tried encouraging her son to play music, or at the very least adventure games. Legend of Zelda was more of her style. The Shinto allegories were lost on her. My mother bought me Call of Duty when it came out, and a stack of World War II books. Around the time she was driving me to play paintball with boys whose parents weren't zealots, she asked me what my favorite World War II weapon was. When she dropped me off, she told me I'd get a beating for every speck of paint she found on my clothes.

I thought she was just trying to keep me clean.

But throughout the year after that, she was true to her word. I got one beating per speck of paint on my body. Often I tried to explain that the paint was my own, or was from something on the battlefield. The playing field. Sometimes she bought it if I could lie convincingly. But other times it was harder to hide.

So I got really good at being stealthy. I got really good at hitting marks before they could shoot me back.

When I was twelve, she threw me immediately into the Boy Scouts. She demanded to the guys there that I be disciplined. She needed me strong. Taking direction. But then when it came time, she insisted I become Patrol Leader. And after that, she pushed me to become Senior Patrol Leader. A position I held until I became Eagle Scout.

But way before that, my first year as a Scout, I went to camp and while the other 12 year olds were taking Basket Weaving and Leather Working Merit Badges. Mom insisted I take Archery, Riflery, and Wilderness Survival. Wilderness Survival, the Scout Masters argued, was only for boys sixteen and over. She insisted. The Scout Masters were a bit… nervous about that. But Ishwari was an active member of Troop 108. She was always making food for the Troop, providing us with Kyrati cuisine that added some spice (quite literally) to the same array of sausages, eggs, and balogna sandwiches.

I survived. Obviously. And every summer afterward, Ishwari made sure to test my skills when we went for a private hike and climb somewhere in the Appalachians.

But it wasn't just that. There was a Tibetan temple in New York City. There happened to be a monk there from Kyrat, an old Utkarshi, and when I was ten my mom started taking me to visit him. He started giving me lessons. My Kyrati never got very good. My Tibetan was even worse. Thankfully the Utkarshi's English was pretty good, living in America all that time I guess, and Mom sent me there to learn more than language any way: I learned the names of all the Tibetan Emperors, the Kings of Nepal, the Battles of Kyrat, the Gya and Wangchucks of Bhutan. Not only those, I learned what they did, what their effects were today. I learned the names of Banashur and Kyra and Yalung and how the Tarun Matara's were chosen.

I'd grown up knowing my mother was a Tarun Matara. It was a fact. A statement. I was from Kyrat in the same way that I had black hair. My mother was a Tarun Matara and I had brown eyes. When I encountered some actual racist assholes in high school, I beat them until I got suspended from school. Mom congratulated me on winning the fight.

When I was thirteen my mother started dating a Peruvian guy and insisted I spend time with him at the garage. I learned how to diagnose engine problems and fix cars.

Ishwari did this. After she killed Dad, she could have stayed at the Royal Palace. I could've been given Kyrat on a silver platter. I would've been raised with Pagan as my new Dad. I wanted to gag that it was even possible but…

Fuck.

Pagan always took that weird tone with me. A weird tone. He referred to himself as uncle.

She wanted me to kill him. I stared at Sabal and tried to figure out how my mother could know he was a monster, and yet still bear him a child. Now I knew. She knew he was a monster. She knew she had to leave. But… she also loved him. As much as one can love a monster.

That wasn't the point. They were both dead. They were dead and I'd never know. I couldn't believe anything Pagan said. For that matter I couldn't believe anything mom said. But I could count on what she did. She raised me a Kyrati-American. She raised me to be a warrior, as much as she could in Jackson Heights. The paintballs graduated to World War II era weaponry. We even had a couple agents at our house, I don't remember what agency, asking about the guns. We were more than regulars down at the range, and Esteban confirmed to them that we were big fans of shooting.

"Fuck." I said out loud, "I'm… I'm the fucking King."

"Yes, brother. You are." Sabal said, smiling, "Kyrat is yours to rule."

"Fuck." I said again, but this time other words came out of my mouth, "I'm not the fucking King."

"Yes, brother, you are." he laughed, "I better stop calling you 'brother.' That would imply that I'm a prince. In line for the throne."

And suddenly, it was way too clear. Amita was gone. Sabal becoming a dictator and using the doctrine of upaya to justify his rule, even declaring himself King and being crowned by a couple rishis, was the best case scenario. Sabal was a zealot, but he wasn't an asshole. But man does a crown have a way of turning guys like him into monsters.

Men like me?

If that was the best case scenario, what was the worst case scenario? Two or more factions of the Royal Guard fight against two or more factions of Pagan's remnant forces. A civil war that keeps breaking out into more and more factions vying for control of a more fractional portion of the country.

"Ajay, it's been obvious this whole time. Who's worked harder to destroy Pagan Min's army than you? Who can lead Kyrat to a state of modernity and respect our traditions? Who embodies Kyrati traditions more than the last living heir of the Kyraraja?"

He was arguing for restraint against his own faction. It didn't feel real. But I guess that summed up religion in a nutshell: show them a piece of paper they can believe in and logic goes out the window. Even self-interest, to a degree.

Not only that, but he was making sense. If Amita and Sabal were leaders of political factions in a Kyrati parliament, they might be incentivized to compromise. Kyrat might have found a peaceful way into the 21st Century that also had all of its traditions in tact. But instead they were rivals in an insurgency and tried to have each other killed.

But Amita was gone. I jammed my khukri through her body and kicked her body into a river. If I left, there was no one holding back Sabal and his influence. I could be good for him. I could be good for this country.

But fuck if I wanted to. I wanted the fuck out of here. I wanted to catch the next flight to JFK. Get pissed at a club. Meet up with Daniel (he'd since become obsessed with Sartre, had renounced God, had a massive falling out with his family, and was dealing with his women issues one-night-stand at a time). Find a couple of co-eds looking to blow off steam. Wake up in the morning with a hangover and make eggs. Kyrat would be like a dream.

I could see it now, Where is your family from?

Kyrat.

Where is that?

It's in the Himalayas.

Oh that's cool.

Yeah, Ajay just got back from there, actually.

Oh really, what'd you do?

Eh. Killed a bunch of people.

Oh… wow.

"I'll do it." I said.

He literally fell to his knees, "Mero raja..." he said in the Kyrati dialect. My language was good enough to understand: My king…

"But you have to swear me something."

"Anything."

"Swear to me that you will never take up the khukri again."

"I swear, my King. I will never take up the blade or fire a shot unless Kyrat were to be invaded by outsiders again."

"No!" I shouted, "Not even then. Not even if Pagan Min rises from the dead in Hong Kong and invades Kyrat with another army of Triads. You'll leave it. You'll retire to the mountains. You'll sit in meditation for a hundred years before you resort to violence ever again."

"Yes, my King."

"Swear it!" I said. I sounded like a child who watched one too many episode of Game of Thrones.

"I swear. I will never hurt anyone. Even if they attack me."

"Good." I said, "Then I'll agree to be your King."

And then he started weeping. I thought he was being ridiculous, but look at where we were standing. Look at what he was doing moments before I arrived. While I arrived. If Kyrat had a biggest fan competition, Sabal would at least place in the top three. I grew up in America, where we framed out whole independence movement as an anti-royalist enlightened crusade. We laughed that the British still had their Crown and their whole Royal whatever. We looked down on societies with autocracy. I never imagined that I'd be standing here with a guy on his knees calling me King, weeping that I agreed to do something as dumb as be his Head of State. But that's what monarchy was to some societies, it was a symbol, a pillar of history and culture. Bhutan's monarchy was only established in 1907, but the Bhutanese Kings could trace their history back to Jigme Namgyal who fought against the British, and then to Pema Lingpa, a Buddhist treasure revealer and saint. When the King and Queen, or whoever ran their Instagram accounts, posted pictures of the Royal Family and their kid for all the world to see, it was a way to link their people directly to the living reality which was a pillar of their cultural identity.

"You don't understand, Ajay. King Ajay." fuck, I get to pick a new name, right? "King Ajay" sounds as wrong as King Tim or King Kevin, "For so long… Pagan Min was our King. He was a conqueror. He came here with guns and bombs and… you don't understand what it is to have you. Here."

"I know," I said, "I know I can't understand."