OS: Why this Face?

He ran his hand across his cheek, pulling the skin taught, feeling the bones beneath. His eyes flickered back to the computer screen and met with an identical pair. They weren’t the only twins he was confronted with. The sharp nose mirrored his own, the eyebrows followed the same lines his own traversed and the lips curved in the same ways. Only a scar under the left eyebrow reassured him the man was somebody else.

Arnav Singh Raizada.

A strand of long hair fell in front of his eyes, obscuring the screen. The picture showed a similarly ungroomed man but it looked purposeful: the lank hair and unshaven beard clearly a conscious choice. He looked beyond the picture at his reflection in the computer, his own unkempt hair and rough beard looked back at him defiantly, seemingly ready to retort about their lack of access to running water and blades should he even dare to question their length.

The man in the picture was 36 years old to his own 28, married with 2 children and richer than he himself had ever dreamed of being. His dreams had been limited from childhood by his parents’ failures. Parents who were long gone now, unable to answer the question that had preoccupied him for months: Why this face?

‘How’ was probably more appropriate.

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore grow up to have the same face as a multi-millionaire living hundreds of miles away? Twins was out of the question due to the difference in age, even if he had had the time, money, or inclination to watch and believe all those movies where twins separated at birth were almost a national epidemic. He’d relegated it to a coincidence, convinced himself they must have relatives in common and a freak incidence of genetics had caused them to have the same face. Then the men had arrived.

Suits, expensive sunglasses and foreign watches; so out of place in his small town they drew an audience the moment their leather soles touched the red dusty earth. He met them willingly that first time – curious – unable to understand what these identically dressed men could want with him. An hour’s discussion over the most expensive meal he’d ever eaten had centred on his parents, questions he had no answers to.

The men were something else he’d been willing to chalk up to a strange encounter. Something irrelevant to his daily life, selling shoes to feed himself at least one meagre meal a day. The footprints a week later convinced him otherwise. It was the first thing he saw, his eyes drawn to them, the sunlight filtering through the window almost spotlighting them for his attention. They’d been in his house. At night. While he’d been asleep. At least two men had stood over him and watched him sleep. Why?

He paid more attention at subsequent meetings. Tried to differentiate between the three men, subtly decipher who made the decisions. Who had that modicum of increased power over the others? Who was the weak link? Who did they work for? The company name led nowhere but a brief glimpse of a logo once drew him into a world of genetics and bio engineering, words and symbols he had no hopes of understanding with his limited education.

Again and again, they questioned him about his parentage; his answers were more guarded now. Even the precious little information he did know he shielded albeit with clumsily built lies ready to crack at the slightest inspection. He willingly agreed to their requests for pictures but deflected requests for blood and hair samples.

And then, the weak one, the one he’d been priming for a month slipped up in a moment of frustration.  “Have you ever heard of someone called Raizada?’

His denial was instant, no hint at all that he’d fleetingly seen the man’s face on a news report months ago and spent hours on end in internet cafes researching the man. The same café he was in now, looking at the same pictures. Why this face?

He could leave town easily, he had no family and the few friends he had wouldn’t miss him. He already had the plan in place, he just needed a new name to fit with his face.

Advay Singh Raizada.