The Sword-Wielding Attack at the Standing Babas' Den is a sudden assault on Lin and Karla during their visit to a crowded gathering of ascetics and hashish smokers. The danger is contained by a man in the crowd who disarms the attacker without escalating the confrontation; the encounter also brings Lin face to face with Abdullah Taheri, whose intervention becomes the event’s defining consequence.

Setting and participants

Lin stands with Karla and Prabaker Kharre at the back of a narrow den. Behind them is the sealed door through which the Standing Babas entered; ahead, two lines of men extend along the walls toward an iron gate opening onto the street. The arrangement leaves Lin and his companions with little room to move, a fact that turns the den’s passage into a trap when violence begins.

The gathered men are socially varied: some wear suits or designer jeans, while workmen in faded lungis stand beside men dressed in traditional clothes from different regions of India. Young and old, rich and poor, they attend to the Standing Babas and the hashish. Some look openly at Lin and Karla, pale-skinned foreigners; some are visibly surprised to see a woman in the den. Yet nobody approaches them directly. Their presence marks them as conspicuous outsiders, but the crowd does not immediately treat them as targets.

The setting is also shaped by the Standing Babas’ chosen austerity. Their faces bear the visible signs of sustained physical hardship, while their devotion is accompanied by a constant use of Kashmiri hashish. Conversations, music, and devotional chanting mingle inside the compound. This combination of ascetic discipline, intoxication, and ordinary social bustle makes the attack a sharp rupture in a place where spiritual practice and communal routine occupy the same confined space.

The threat in the passage

A scream draws everyone’s attention to the street entrance. A man in the dress of a northern tribesman stands near the iron gate, shouting. Before those present can understand his message or respond, he draws a long, thick-bladed sword and raises it. He then advances down the corridor, staring at Lin. Lin cannot understand the words, but reads the man’s intention as an attack directed at him.

The other men flatten themselves against the walls, and the Standing Babas rock out of the swordsman’s path. The door behind Lin and his companions is locked, they are unarmed, and the narrow passage offers no clear route of escape. Lin steps back and raises his fists in a karate stance. His seven years of martial-arts training return to him as a practical resource; he also recognizes in himself the familiar impulse of a tough, angry man who avoids a fight until it arrives and then takes pleasure in it. The scene thus places a trained response beside a potentially reckless appetite for confrontation, while making clear that Lin has few safe choices.

A bystander intervenes

At the last possible moment, another man steps out from the wall, trips the swordsman, and sends him to the stone floor. The sword falls near Karla. Lin picks it up while the rescuer holds the attacker in place with a controlled restraint. The attacker’s anger or madness subsides, and he gives up. Men who know him escort him through the gate and out into the alley.

The intervention is forceful but measured: the rescuer stops the immediate danger, while the other men remove the attacker rather than allowing the encounter to become a wider brawl. A man returns and approaches Lin with his hands held out, palms upward, asking for the weapon without words. Lin hesitates, then gives it back. The man bows politely in apology and leaves. The sequence shifts the crowd from bystanders trying to make room for violence to a community that contains it and takes responsibility for its aftermath.

Abdullah and the encounter’s significance

After the attacker has gone, Lin checks Karla. Her eyes are wide and her lips form a wondering smile, but she is not distressed. Reassured, Lin approaches the man who intervened to thank him. He is tall, athletic, and dressed in black silk clothes and leather sandals, with unusually long black hair tied in a high ponytail. When Lin gives his own name, the man introduces himself as Abdullah Taheri.

Lin acknowledges that the encounter came close to disaster and recognizes the skill and courage behind Abdullah’s apparently effortless movement. He also understands that instinct and timing mattered: Abdullah’s action was not simply a display of strength, but a rapid response in a narrow space where hesitation would have left Lin and Karla exposed. Abdullah offers a modest explanation for the attacker’s behavior, suggesting that he was drunk or not in his right mind.

The event’s importance lies both in the danger it resolves and in the relationship it begins. Lin is first prepared to defend himself alone; instead, a stranger in the crowd acts at the decisive moment, and Lin responds by returning the sword and expressing gratitude. The den’s many observers do not become a mob: one man intervenes, others escort the attacker away, and the weapon is reclaimed courteously. In that compressed passage between the locked door and the street gate, the episode introduces Abdullah through action, establishing him as a capable and composed presence in Lin’s life.