Gun Island

At the hospital, Tipu is immediately taken to the ICU. Piya already brought the antivenins, and the serum soon takes effect; Tipu’s condition slowly begins to improve. Piya arranges for Deen to stay the night at the Babadon Trust guest house, and he learns that “Rani” is the name of one of the Irrawaddy river dolphins that Piya has been studying all her life. She has been tracking a pod of dolphins for years and knows them all individually. She has a particularly strong bond with Rani, who is now the oldest member of her pod. Piya previously fitted Rani with a GPS tracker that would provide real-time updates about her whereabouts. Around the same time that Tipu mentioned Rani, Piya received an alert that Rani was no longer in the water. She plans to go find the dolphin the next day and invites Deen to come along.

On the way to the island Garjontola, where Rani’s coordinates are, Piya tells Deen that she suspects that a new refinery is dumping effluence into the water and causing the dolphins to abandon their old hunting grounds. At the island, they find Rani and the rest of her pod, who appear to have beached themselves all at once, as though fleeing from something that spooked them. Deen suggests that Tipu had a vision about this, and Piya immediately grows dismissive and distant. After they return, she helps to organize Deen’s transport back to Calcutta (Kolkata) to catch his flight. Deen asks Piya to keep him updated on Tipu, and invites her to meet up with him if she ever passes through New York. Piya snubs his offer to meet almost immediately but promises to email him updates on Tipu. While at the airport, Deen receives an email from Piya saying that Tipu is doing better and doesn’t remember anything that happened after he was bitten.

After returning from Calcutta (Kolkata), Deen finds it difficult to focus on work. He is plagued by disturbing dreams at night and a constant burning in his gut that feels “as if some living thing had entered [his] body, something ancient that had long lain dormant in the mud” (113). He even obtains a prescription for anti-anxiety medication, but nothing seems to help. One day, Deen receives a chat message from Tipu that reads, “Does the word BHUTA mean ‘ghost’? Or does it mean something else?” (114). Deen explains that the word simply means “being” or “existence.” Tipu posits that the term must apply to all living beings, and Deen explains it is used in connection to ghosts because the word also means “the past,” thus referring to beings that were once in existence. However, when Deen firmly asserts that he doesn’t believe in ghosts, the chat window disappears.

Another day, Tipu asks what a shaman is, saying that he has heard they can communicate with animals. Tipu relates Horen’s claim that Tipu’s father used to be able to do so, along with Rafi’s grandfather, who was a “bauley” (a person who leads people in the jungle). Deen suggests asking Piya, for he believes that she can communicate with dolphins even if her scientific background prevents her from admitting this. The next day, Deen contacts Piya to ask how Tipu is doing. Piya reveals that he has been having relapses with blackouts and migraines, and the only thing that helps is spending time with Rafi. She believes that the two young men are more than just friends. When Deen reveals that Tipu has been asking him about ghosts, Piya laughs it off.

The next news Deen gets about Tipu arrives months later, when the young man contacts him in a video call. Tipu notes that Deen is not looking well, and suggests that he is possessed. Deen rejects this theory, as only demons can possess people, and demons are a metaphor for greed. Tipu counters that greed is not imaginary as Deen is claiming demons to be, and Deen points out that if demonic possession is real, it means the apocalypse is coming. This idea scares Tipu. The young man claims to be working for a call center in Bangalore (Bengaluru). He also mentions Cinta, and when he learns that Deen is meeting her in LA soon, he implores Deen not to let anything scare him away from meeting her. He emphasizes that Deen must meet Cinta and listen to her because she has been good to him, and he must return the favor.

Deen is excited to see Cinta. She has arranged for him to attend a conference at a museum in LA, which is celebrating their acquisition of a 17th-century copy of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Just before takeoff, Deen overhears two passengers talking about wildfires in LA. He also causes a disruption by accidentally playing Urdu music through his Bluetooth speaker in the luggage bin. Deen is warned that he will be removed from the aircraft if he doesn’t sit down, and he apologizes, mortified. As the plane approaches LA, Deen sees smoke on the horizon. The plane flies lower, and Deen spots birds cycling the fires; he later learns that some species of hawk hunt in the aftermath of a wildfire. Two birds dive in after the same prey and emerge fighting each other. One of the birds eventually tires of the conflict and tosses the prey away; Deen screams as he realizes that it is a snake.

Immediately, the stewards descend and escort Deen off the plane after it lands. His gadgets are seized and looked through, and he is reprimanded for screaming about snakes on a plane. To his surprise, he is asked whether he gets frequent calls from Turkey and learns that his phone has been ringing for the past hour with repeated calls from the same Turkish number. Deen calls back but gets no reply. He finally gets to his hotel and falls asleep, dreaming of the fire and a snake hurtling toward him through the flames.

The next morning, after some delays due to the fire, the conference opens with a talk by a young historian, who describes the severe climatic disruptions during the 17th century, which earned it the moniker of the “Little Ice Age.” The planet was wrought with calamities from famines and droughts to epidemics, increased seismic activity, meteor showers, and even unprecedented levels of conflict around the world. There was talk of an impending apocalypse everywhere. Despite this, the period also preceded the Age of Enlightenment: a time of great intellectual and creative progress. The speaker posits that these discoveries eventually led to the modern-day climate crisis. He thinks the foreshadowed apocalypse is due to arrive now, a few hundred years after its original conception.

Encroaching wildfires force the conference to move from the museum to the attendees’ hotel. Deen and Cinta meet up, and he tells her about his trip to the Sunderbans and about the Gun Merchant’s legend, wondering why it was prohibited from being written down. Cinta suggests it is because the story is not over yet; she wonders whether the power of storytelling is the last vestige of humanity’s animal selves, connecting them to nature. That day, Dean and Cinta visit with Cinta’s niece, Gisa, and take a walk on the beach with the family dog. The dog finds a yellow-bellied sea snake and kills it, but she is bitten in the process and succumbs to the venom. The lifeguard notes that the snakes are not usually found here, but that they have been washing up on the shore over the past couple of months. On the way back to the hotel, Cinta tells Deen that Gisa, who was close to Lucia, could feel Lucia’s presence nearby as the dog was dying. Cinta confesses to feeling this way often, and has even heard Lucia’s voice during moments of personal crisis, long after her daughter’s death.

Deen writes to Piya about the sea snake, and she responds that she has recently seen an article about such sightings in California; the warming of the sea waters is causing the snakes to move northward. Tipu is still in Bangalore (Bengaluru) and has been keeping in touch with Moyna through phone calls and occasional pictures. Piya also informs Deen that the Gun Merchant’s shrine was washed away in a storm a couple of months ago.

Cinta’s speech is the closing event of the conference; she expounds on the historical background of Shakespeare’s Venice. She also notes that the character of Shylock would have stayed in Venice’s Jewish enclave: a space that was essentially an island within an island. Deen immediately remembers the concentric circles from the Gun Merchant’s shrine. Cinta describes how the space used to be a foundry where armaments, including guns and bullets, were cast. The Venetian Jewish merchants traded with Egypt and North Africa, and the land came to be connected to three things (hazelnuts, bullets, and guns) which all have the same word in Arabic: “bunduqeyya.” It is derived from the Byzantine name for Venice: “Bandadiq,” derived from Venedig. Deen makes the connection and realizes that rather than “Gun Merchant,” the story is possibly about a merchant who went to Venice.

After the talk, Deen and Cinta discuss the legend, and together they decipher more details that suggest it is more than just a fairytale. Through various linguistic clues, they piece together the Gun Merchant’s true story. He loses his home in east India due to the calamities of the Little Ice Age and goes abroad to reclaim his fortune. He is then captured by Portuguese pirates to be sold in Goa, the capital of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, where the slave trade was thriving. He is bought and freed by Ilyas, who was possibly a Portuguese Jew, and together they traveled first to the Maldives to make their fortune in cowrie shells, and then to Egypt, Turkey, and Venice.

Cinta invites Deen to her home in Venice so he can see the area where the Jews historically lived and make sense of the legend. Deen agrees, but once he is back in New York, he worries about how he will manage funds for the trip. A few months pass, and he gets a call from Gisa, who is working on a documentary about the refugee exodus into Italy. A large number are from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and she needs someone in Venice, where she is headed, who can speak Bangla. Deen’s travel will be covered and his services paid for, and he will have lodging at Cinta’s place; Cinta will join them a few weeks later. Overjoyed by these arrangements, Deen agrees and boards a flight to Venice a few days later.