The boy turned his dark eyes toward Jivan, but they were without feeling. Years ago, while commanding a regiment in the North China Plain, Jivan had seen that same emptiness on his cavalrymen’s faces.

“No,” Ram said.

Jivan blinked.

The boy glanced at him. “I was there, bhai-ji,” he said, looking away, but he need not have. Jivan understood the boy’s lie, his silence about his wounds. He understood all of it.

“You are not at fault.” Jivan clasped Ram’s shoulder. “Remember that,” he said. Ram walked off quickly, leaving him alone in the circle of lamplight.

WAR HAD BROKEN OUT in Europe. For a short while, a very short while, Britain was not involved, then she too entered, bringing along her dominions, colonies, and protectorates—a quarter of the world’s population, cultivating a quarter of the world’s land. In early September, Jivan received a letter from San Francisco from a man he had never met but whose name he knew. That Sunday afternoon he went to Fredonia Park, where Malik Khan sat under a ramada, speaking of his village to thirty others lounging on benches and blankets on the ground, enjoying the shade. He was relaying news of a couple who had eloped, only to be captured a day later by men sent from the village panchayat. It was the time of week when the local Anglos left the park to the Hindu farmers. Jivan stepped through the gate and the men stopped talking. The youngest, a fourteen-year-old from Hoshiarpur, stood up.

Jivan Singh addressed them without taking a seat. “Pandit RamChandra Bharadwaj of the Ghadar Party is coming from San Francisco,” he announced. The men listened intently. RamChandra was now the president of the party, and worthy of respect. “He has written to me with a request to hold a meeting. Next Sunday, please come to my home. He will give a talk.”

The men looked at each other. “Bhai-ji, if I may,” Malik Khan spoke up, “we thought your beliefs did not mix with the Ghadars’?”

Jivan paused. He had not realized his views were so well known.

“There is no harm in hearing what a man has to say,” Jivan said. He wanted to believe this was true. The leader of the Ghadar Party had approached him. He could not say no.

“What time shall we come, bhai-ji?” Harnam Singh asked.

“Afternoon, one o’clock is fine. Tell the others,” he said, knowing they would all come.

He did not tell them what else RamChandra had written in the letter—Bhai, I do not know your feelings on all matters, but your help to our countrymen has not been exceeded by another on this Pacific shore—or how proud Jivan was when Ram read to him these words.