by Fabio Geda
There are no views in Quetta. Only houses.
That’s what I thought, kaka Rahim.
I’ve changed my mind.
About what?
I can’t give you work here and pay you, pay you in money, I mean. There are too many of you. I can’t give work to everyone. But you’re a well-brought-up boy. So you can stay here, if you like, and eat and sleep here, until you find a place where you can really work, work and earn money and everything. But until that happens, you’ll have to work hard for me from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep at night, whatever I ask you to do. Do you understand?
I smiled with all the teeth I could find in my mouth. May you live as long as a tree, kaka Rahim.
Khoda kana, he said.
But even though I was happy, happy and relieved, I can’t pretend that everything was fine right from the start. I can’t not mention that my first day working at the samavat Qgazi in Quetta was hell. Firstly, they immediately gave me lots of things to do. Secondly, when they asked me to do those things they didn’t explain how to do them, as if I already knew everything, when in fact I didn’t know anything, especially not how to do the kind of things they asked me to do. Thirdly, I didn’t know anyone. Fourthly, I couldn’t chat or joke with people I didn’t know because I was afraid that the jokes would be misunderstood since I spoke their language very badly. Fifthly, there seemed to be no end to it. I wondered what had happened to the moon, because I didn’t see it rise. I wondered if in Quetta the moon only came out from time to time, when the bosses wanted it to, in order to make people work longer hours.
By the time I went to sleep at the end of the day, I was much more than khasta kofta. I was feed for the hens.
I sat down on the mattress before stretching out to sleep and realized how ugly the samavat was: the flaking walls, the smell, the dust everywhere and, in the dust, the lice. I compared it with my house, but only for a moment, because the thought was too depressing. My instinct told me I had to forget my house. That my mother had left me here for a reason. So I waved the thought away with my hands, the way a great friend of mine, in Nava, who liked to smoke plant roots in secret, used to wave away the smoke to stop the smell clinging to his clothes.
Enaiat, Enaiat, come here, quick …
What is it?
Get the bucket, Enaiat. The sewer in the street is clogged up again. Bucket, rags and sticks.
What are the sticks for, kaka Rahim?
Bucket, rags and sticks, Enaiat. Run.
I’m running.
Enaiat, I need help.
I can’t, kaka Zaman. The sewer is blocked, and the sewage is coming in through the door.
Again?
Again.
Lanat ba shaiton. We’re always walking in shit. But the kitchen has to keep going and we’re out of onions and watermelons. You have to go to the market and get them, Enaiat jan. As soon as you can. What’s that smell?
Can you smell it, kaka Zaman?
What do you mean, can I smell it? It’s terrible.
It’s the smell of the sewage, it’s coming in here.
Run, Enaiat. Rahim agha will be waiting for you, holding his nose.
Enaiat, where are you?
Here I am, kaka Rahim. Bucket and rags.
Not the new rags, stupid. The ones hanging in the yard.
I’m running, kaka Rahim.
Enaiat, what’s happening?
The sewer, Laleh. The sewage is coming into the samavat.
So that’s what the stink is.
I’m sorry, but I have to go and get the rags.
Come and see me after that, Enaiat, I have to ask you something.
Enaiat …
Yes, I’m coming, kaka Rahim.
I ran to get the old rags, which were hanging on a line at the far end of the yard, and the sticks. We used the rags to stop up the gap under the door, but I had no idea what the long wooden sticks were used for. I found out when kaka Rahim ordered me to wade into the sewage and help him push away all the stuff that had blocked the sewer. I refused, because there are certain things I’m not prepared to do. He started yelling at me, saying that if he, a grownup in charge of an important samavat like the samavat Qgazi, could do it, then so could I, a small child who was only there thanks to him. Yes, I replied, I was small, so small, in fact, that there were pieces of rubbish floating in the sewage that were bigger than me. In the end, other men came and helped kaka Rahim. But for the next few days I avoided him.
Those of us who worked in the kitchen had a room to ourselves. There were five of us, and among the five there was an elderly man I liked immediately. His name was Zaman. He was kind and gave me good advice about how not to get myself killed and how to do my work in such a way that I’d keep kaka Rahim happy.
In the samavat there were single rooms for those who had more money, big rooms for families with children, which was where I’d stayed with Mother, and the men’s dormitory. I never went into the single rooms, not even later. Other people cleaned them. People came in and out constantly, speaking languages I couldn’t understand. There was always smoke and noise. But I wasn’t interested in all that coming and going and kept myself out of trouble.
When they saw that I wasn’t someone who made a mess of things—not all the time, anyway—I started taking chay to the shops. The first few times I was scared of making a mistake or being swindled, but then I learned, and it became the best thing that could have happened to me. There was one place in particular that I liked: a shop that sold sandals, where every morning, about ten, I took shir chay, tea with milk, with naan tandoori made specially for osta sahib, the owner. The shop was close to a school.
I would go in, put the tray on the little table, greet osta sahib as kaka Rahim had taught me to, and take the money, counting it quickly, without making it too obvious that I was checking every coin, so osta sahib wouldn’t think that I didn’t trust him (it was kaka Rahim who had trained me to do that). Then I’d say goodbye, leave the shop and instead of going straight back to the samavat, I’d walk around the block until I came to the wall outside the school yard and wait for break time.
I liked it when the bell rang and the doors were flung open and the children came out into the yard, yelling and starting to play. As they played, I would imagine myself yelling and playing and calling out to my Nava friends. In my head I would call to them by their names, and kick the ball, and argue that someone had cheated in our battle to break each other’s kite strings, or that it wasn’t fair if I had to stay out of the buzul-bazi tournament for too long, just because the bone I needed was still boiling in the pot and I’d lost the old one. I walked slowly on purpose, so that I could spend more time listening to the children. I reasoned that if kaka Rahim saw me walking, he would probably not be as angry as if he saw me standing still.
Some mornings I was early taking the chay to the shop, and I would see the schoolchildren going in, all neat and clean and well combed, and I would feel bad and turn my head away. I couldn’t look at them. But afterward, at break time, I liked hearing them.
You know, Enaiat, I’d never thought about that.
About what?
About the fact that hearing something is very different from looking at it. It’s less painful. That’s it, isn’t it? You can use your imagination, and transform reality.
Yes. Or at least that’s how it was for me.
I write in a room with a balcony that overlooks a primary school. Sometimes, I take a coffee break about four, and I stop and watch the parents coming to pick up their children. I watch the children coming out into the playground when the bell rings, and lining up just inside the gates, and getting up on tiptoe to peer into the crowd of adults, trying to see their parents, and the parents waving their arms when they spot them and opening their eyes and mouths wide and puffing out their chests. Everything holds its breath at that moment, even the trees and the buildings. The whole city holds its breath. Then all the questions start—how was their day, what homework
do they have, how was the swimming lesson—and the mothers doing up the zips of their children’s jackets to protect them from the cold and pulling their hats down over their foreheads and ears. Then everyone bundles into their cars and off they go.
Yes, I used to see them like that sometimes, too.
Can you look at them now, Enaiat?
Clothes. I had two pirhan. Whenever I washed one, I would wear the other and hang the wet one up to dry. Once it was dried, I would put it in a cloth bag in the corner, next to my mattress. And every evening I would check it was still there.
As the days, weeks and months passed, kaka Rahim realized that I was good (and again I’m not boasting), that I was good at delivering the chay, that I didn’t drop the glasses or the terra-cotta sugar bowl, that I didn’t do anything stupid like forgetting the tray in the shop, and, above all, that I always brought back all the money. And even a little more.
Because some of the shopkeepers I went to regularly, every morning about ten, and then again in the afternoon about three or four, were kind to me and gave me tips, which I could have kept for myself, but at the time I didn’t know if it was right, so I handed them over to kaka Rahim. Not that there was much I could have done with the money. It was better that way, I think. If I’d made a mistake in counting and taken more as a tip than I should have done, kaka Rahim might have stopped trusting me, and I didn’t want to lose a place where I could sleep and clean my teeth.
But on a day full of wind and sand, one of these shopkeepers, the osta sahib who sold shoes, a sandal or chaplai in my language, and who liked me, motioned me to sit down with him for a moment and have a little chay myself, which I wasn’t at all sure I should do, but seeing that he was the one who asked me, I thought it would be impolite to refuse. I sat down on a rug on the floor, with my legs crossed.
How old are you, Enaiat?
I don’t know.
More or less.
Ten.
You’ve been working at the samavat for some time now, haven’t you, Enaiat?
Nearly six months, osta sahib.
Six months. He looked up at the sky, thinking. Nobody’s ever stayed that long with Rahim, he said. That means he’s pleased.
Kaka Rahim never says he’s pleased with me.
Affarin, he said. If he doesn’t complain, Enaiat, that means he’s very pleased.
I believe you, osta sahib.
Now I’m going to ask you a question. And you have to tell me the truth. All right?
I nodded.
Are you pleased with your work at the samavat?
Am I pleased that kaka Rahim gave me work? Of course I’m pleased.
He shook his head. No, I didn’t ask if you’re pleased that Rahim gave you work. Of course you are. Thanks to him you have a bed, something to eat in the evening, a cup of yogurt for lunch. I asked if you like the work. If you’ve ever thought of changing.
To do different work?
Yes.
What kind of work?
Selling, for example.
Selling what?
Whatever you want.
Like those boys with their wooden boxes down in the bazaar, osta sahib? Like them?
Like them.
I thought of it, yes. The first day. But I didn’t know the language well enough. I could do it now, but I wouldn’t be able to buy the merchandise.
Haven’t you put any money aside?
What money?
The money Rahim pays you for your work at the samavat. Do you send it home or do you spend it?
Osta sahib, I don’t get any money for my work at the samavat. Just the chance to live there.
Really?
May I be struck dead.
That skinflint Rahim doesn’t even pay you half a rupee?
No.
Lanat ba shaiton. Listen, I’m going to make you a proposition. At the samavat, you’re paid with food and a place to sleep, nothing else, but if you work for me, I’ll give you money. I’ll buy you the merchandise, you sell it and then we share the profit. If you make twenty rupees, I take fifteen and you take five. Your money. What do you say? You’ll be able to do what you like with it.
But kaka Rahim won’t let me sleep at the samavat anymore.
That’s not a problem. There are plenty of places in the city where you can sleep.
Really?
Really.
I was silent for a while, then I asked osta sahib if I could stand up and take a walk around the block, to think it over. It was break time, and maybe the children’s cries would help me find the right answer. The only thing that made me hesitate was that I was very small, as small as a wooden teaspoon. It would be easy for anyone to rob or cheat me. But in Quetta there were lots of children working on the streets, who bought merchandise wholesale and sold it again, so it wasn’t as if the idea was a strange one. And then there was the fact that I’d have money of my own, which wouldn’t be bad at all. True, I didn’t know where I’d sleep, but osta sahib had said it wouldn’t be a problem, and anyway all those other children had to sleep somewhere, and as for everything else—food, for instance—I could use the money I earned. And I could always go to a mosque to wash myself.
So, that morning, I didn’t even have to go all the way around the block. I went back to osta sahib and accepted his proposition. Then I went to kaka Rahim and told him I was leaving and why. I thought he would lose his temper, but in fact he said I was doing the right thing and he would find another boy if he needed to. And he said that, if I ever needed something, I could come and talk to him. I really appreciated that.
———
Osta sahib and I went to a place called Sar Ab (two words that mean “head” and “water”) on the outskirts of the city, to buy the merchandise.
Sar Ab is a big square filled with rusty cars and vans with their boots wide open and their owners standing next to them, each selling different things. We wandered around for a while, choosing what to buy, looking at which wholesaler was the cheapest and which had the most interesting merchandise. Osta sahib haggled over everything. Every single packet. He was a born trader. He bought a few snacks, some chewing gum, socks and cigarette lighters. We put everything in a cardboard box, with a string attached to it so it could be carried over your shoulder, and left. Osta sahib gave me quite a lot of advice. He told me who I should speak to and who I shouldn’t speak to, which were the best places for selling and which weren’t, what to do if the police showed up, and so on. Among all these pieces of advice, the most important was: don’t let anyone steal your things.
We said goodbye and osta sahib raised his hand in the air and wished me good luck. It struck me that, unless there was a reserve of different pieces of good luck somewhere, to suit each occasion, this was the same good luck I had been wished by my father’s old friend after he had taken us as far as Kandahar. I turned quickly and ran down the street. If I ran fast enough, I thought, someone else might get that good luck. I preferred to avoid it.
It was almost time for afternoon break at the school, and I didn’t want to change my routine. I deliberately made a detour so I could stand outside the playground and hear the ball bouncing against the wall and the voices of the children chasing each other. I sat down on a low wall. When the teachers took the children back inside, I stood up and walked toward the bazaar, keeping close to the houses in order to be protected on that side, and holding the cardboard box tightly in my arms because I was really scared that something would be stolen.
The bazaar where osta sahib had told me to go was called the Liaqat Bazaar and it was in the center of the city.
The main street of the Liaqat Bazaar is called Shar Liaqat, and the color of that street is a combination of all the colors on the posters and signs, green, red, white, yellow, a yellow one with the words Call Point Pco and the telephone symbol on it, a blue one with Rizwan Jewellers on it, and so on, and under the English words, the Arabic words, and under the Arabic words, the dust swirling in the sunlight, and in among the dust s
wirling in the sunlight a swarm of people and bicycles and cars and voices and noise and smoke and smells.
In keeping with tradition, the first day was really bad, almost worse than the first day at the samavat Qgazi. The kind of day you want to pretend never happened, the kind of day you’d like to leave on a stone and walk away from and never see again. Obviously, I hadn’t run fast enough and good luck had caught up with me.
It was evening and I hadn’t yet sold anything. That could mean I wasn’t any good at selling, or that nobody was interested in my things, or that everyone had already stocked up with snacks, socks and handkerchiefs, or that there was a knack to getting rid of the merchandise that I didn’t know about. At that point, feeling discouraged, I leaned on a lamppost and looked at what was showing on a television in the window of a household appliance shop. I was so spellbound by some program or other—a news broadcast, a soap opera, a nature documentary, whatever it was—that I didn’t notice what was happening, I swear, all I saw was a hand reach into my cardboard box, grab a packet of chewing gum and disappear.
I turned. A group of boys—six or seven of them, speaking Pashtun, probably Baluchis—were standing in the middle of the street, looking at me and laughing. One of them, who seemed to be the leader, was playing with a packet of chewing gum—my packet of chewing gum—balancing it on the back of his hand.
We started arguing, me in my language, they in theirs.
I really needed some chewing gum, the leader said.
Give it back to me, I said.
Come and get it. He made a gesture with his hand.
Should I try and get it from him? I should point out that I was a lot smaller than them and there were more of them than me and they all looked quite tough and not to be trusted. If I’d thrown myself on their leader, I’m ready to bet I would have ended up with broken bones and all my merchandise in their boxes. And what would it be like to tell osta sahib that everything had been stolen from me on the very first day? So, not out of fear, but rather because I’m the kind of person who thinks before doing something important, I had almost decided that it was better to lose a packet of chewing gum than my teeth, and was about to leave when—