Razaq reached out and popped one in his mouth. It was such a long time since he had eaten anything so sweet. His father had brought biscuits home from the village one day when Uncle Javaid and Auntie Amina had visited. His cousin Sakina was still a little child toddling around their one-roomed house. He had picked her up, given her a biscuit, and shown her the goats. Seema and Layla came, too. The three little girls had shrieked with laughter at everything Razaq did. It had been a good day.
“Beta, what was life like in the mountains?”
Razaq didn’t like Mr. Malik calling him “son.” The shop owner who had said he could be a chowkidar had called him that, too, yet he must have known slavers would come in the night. How much would the man have been paid, he wondered.
Mr. Malik flicked at a fly and Razaq said, “Accha hai.”
“Accha? Just good? What did you do?”
Mr. Malik looked impatient and Razaq remembered Farida’s warning. “I looked after goats, our sheep, fetched water. Helped Abu grow grain, my mother to grow vegetables.”
“Did you go to school?”
“Sometimes.” No need for them to know he could read and write a little.
Mr. Malik appraised him. “You look about twelve or thirteen.”
Razaq stayed silent. Some instinct made him let the men think he was younger than fourteen.
Mr. Malik sighed. “Have you ever been with a man?”
Razaq thought of Ardil. Was it like this for him? Then he remembered Saleem. If Kazim hadn’t saved him, he may have a different story to tell. He shook his head and the two men smiled at him. The warmth from the bath was wearing off. Didn’t the men know he was cold, or was this their way of showing him who was boss?
Mr. Malik called and Murad appeared. “Take him to the room.” Then he said to Razaq, “Have a good rest, beta. Tomorrow we shall see what you are good at, and you can start your training in your new job. We have no goats and sheep to look after here in Islamabad, but there are many things you can do. Can you dance?”
Razaq lifted his chin in affirmation.
“Then we shall see.”
Murad took Razaq to a room down the hall. There was a bed with a folded white shalwar qameez on it. Razaq pulled on the shalwar with relief. Then Murad pushed him toward a small adjoining room. In it was a white seat. Razaq stood looking at it until Murad shoved him aside, untied his own shalwar, and peed in it. Then he pushed a shiny button on top and water flushed his pee away. Realization dawned: it was a toilet. Razaq remembered his uncle telling him about them.
“How long have you been here?” he asked Murad, but he was met with a stony silence. Razaq realized with a jolt that Murad would not be his friend.
Chapter 14
Razaq woke to his first day at the white house, as he thought of it. Everything was white: the room he slept in, the bath and the room it was in, even the walls. Murad marched him to another room with a table and benches, not unlike Kazim’s restaurant. Aslam was right about the food: there were parathas and puri halva and chai. There was plenty on the plate, too; Razaq hadn’t eaten so well since before the earthquake.
The children he had seen watching TV the night before sat around the table. There were six, and all seemed younger than Razaq. Most looked about twelve. One of them was a girl. Razaq stole a look at her. She was very pretty with big eyes the color of almonds. Would Feeba have looked like that, he wondered. The children seemed happy enough, although a few looked tired. Maybe Aslam had been wrong and this was a proper job, or a place that looked after fatherless children. Yet Mr. Malik didn’t seem like a religious man intent on doing good deeds.
After breakfast, a man came to the house carrying a tabla, a pair of hand drums. With him was a woman. She was tall and looked much like the woman who had pinched Razaq’s cheek in Moti Bazaar. They went into the room with the TV. The children followed them in and Razaq brought up the rear, curious. The pretty girl spoke to him but he couldn’t understand her words. She switched to Urdu.
“It is our dancing lesson,” she said. “Those people are from Qasai Gali.”
The name meant nothing to Razaq. “What language were you speaking?” he asked.
“Punjabi,” she said. “Punjab is where I come from.” Her face clouded before she asked, “Where are you from?”
“Kala Dhaka, the Black Mountains.”
“Where is that?”
“In Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. I am a Pukhtun and that is the language I speak. My grandmother spoke Hindko so I understand that also.”
Her eyes widened.
“How did you learn Urdu?” he asked.
“In school.” She said it as if it was obvious.
Razaq stared at her. His sisters never went to school. Nor Feeba. But he was glad this girl had.
The woman called the girl’s name. “Tahira.”
Razaq said the name softly and curled his tongue around the way it sounded in his mouth.
The tabla player started up a rhythm and Tahira raised her arms to dance. Razaq thought she was magical. She turned her head and made her hands tell a story. Her feet tapped on the ground. Razaq could almost hear bells even though she wore none.
Just then the woman stopped her and said, “Do it like this, beti.” She showed Tahira what to do with her eyes. Razaq stared at the woman. He had never heard a woman speak with such a deep voice, even deeper than the lady’s who had pinched his cheek.
Tahira danced again and the younger children clapped in rhythm. A louder clapping came from the doorway as Tahira finished. Razaq glanced behind him and saw Mr. Malik smiling at Tahira. She sank to the floor, looking happy to have danced, but Razaq frowned. Mr. Malik’s smile was disturbing. Were they all in the house just to be fed well and have expensive dancing lessons?
“Shahbash, shahbash. Well done,” Mr. Malik said. “You are a true princess, little one.” His gaze shifted to Razaq. “Now let us see what our mountain prince can do.”
He motioned to the tabla player and flicked his fingers at Razaq to dance. The beat wasn’t familiar, but Razaq held his arms out and danced the steps the men performed at weddings in the mountains. He lifted his feet as if he were dancing between crossed swords. At first he felt self-conscious, but as he turned he saw Tahira watching him. It was her he wanted to impress, not Mr. Malik.
When the tabla stopped, she smiled at him. He was astonished to find her smile was worth everything, even being caged in the white house.
“Shahbash.” Mr. Malik’s praise wasn’t quite as effusive as it had been for Tahira. “Can you do something with him, Pretty?” he asked the dance instructor.
“Certainly, sahib.”
Mr. Malik’s cell phone rang, and he walked down the hallway talking.
Pretty spent the rest of the morning training the children how to dance for an audience. One dark-skinned boy danced in a colored shalwar and a tiny silk vest. If he made a mistake he giggled, but mostly he did very well.
“Danyal, concentrate,” Pretty said, but she didn’t sound angry. Even Razaq smiled when Danyal looked at him and rolled his eyes.
When the dancing class was over, the children gathered again in the room with the table and Farida brought in a bowl of chicken curry and chapattis. Razaq had only ever had chicken at weddings. If they got food again in the evening, it would be three times Razaq had eaten that day. He was lucky to eat twice a day at Kazim’s and that wasn’t just because of Ramadan. He wondered if they were being plumped up like chickens ready for the market.
Danyal sat beside him. “Ramadan finished last night so this is our Eid-ul-Fitr feast. Mr. Malik lets Farida spoil us every now and then.” He grinned.
Razaq was astounded that he hadn’t realized what day it was. His thoughts had been consumed with being brought to Mr. Malik’s house. At home, his mother would have made new clothes for him and his sisters, a new sweater maybe. Sometimes there was a gift, like his grandfather’s gun his father gave him at his eleventh Eid. Or his new lambswool hat when he was twelve.
“Shall we go outside and play a game after this?” Razaq said to Danyal. “Do you have a soccer ball?”
The smile disappeared from Danyal’s face. “We do not go outside.” He looked over his shoulder before he said, “All the doors have special security codes. There is no way out.”
That afternoon, no one was in the hallway and Razaq thought he’d test Danyal’s statement. There had to be a way out; he just had to discover it. He found the numbers by the front door that Danyal must have been talking about and pressed a few. They made a sound like the notes of a flute and Murad materialized as suddenly as a jinn and slapped Razaq’s hand away from the buttons.
He hauled Razaq to Mr. Malik’s room. Mr. Malik was still eating his curry. Razaq watched him dip the chapatti into the bowl and pop it into his mouth. His fingers were impeccably clean, so was his mustache. He pushed the dish away and Murad took it out while Mr. Malik smoothed both sides of his mustache with one finger.
“Now, my prince,” Mr. Malik began. Razaq bit down on his annoyance. He was sick of being called a prince. He used to call the goat they fattened for Eid-ul-Adha a prince. “You cannot go outside in case you get lost. Islamabad is a big city with many evil people. Only Bashir, Murad, and myself know the combination so there is no point in trying.” He studied Razaq. “I can see you need something to occupy you. Dancing is helpful to know, but you need to have a trade. A man has come to teach you how to give a malish, a massage. And then you will be a malishia.”
He raised his eyebrows, but Razaq said nothing. Mr. Malik smiled at him. Razaq was wary of those smiles: he looked too much like a leopard licking its lips. “You don’t know what a massage is, but you soon will. You can practice on me once you know how.”
He flicked his head toward the door, and Razaq was surprised to see Murad there; he moved so silently. He took Razaq to the room he had slept in the night before, then disappeared without a word. Razaq thought he was the rudest person he had ever met.
A young man stood behind a chair in the middle of the room, a towel over his shoulder. “Sit here, please, Razaq, and take off your qameez. My name is Sunni. First we shall learn to do the head massage. The customer feels very relaxed after a head massage. Start with the shoulder like this.”
Sunni proceeded to give Razaq a massage. Razaq was determined not to enjoy it, but with Sunni’s fingers on his neck, then his scalp, stroking his forehead and then his temples, he was transported to a different place. He had seen barbers do something like this in the village bazaar, but he had never experienced it. His mother had always cut his hair.
Sunni gave him a clap on the back. “Accha, now it is your turn.”
“What?”
“Now you do it to me.”
“But I won’t remember how to.”
Sunni grinned. “I will talk you through it. Come. This is the best way to be learning.”
And so Razaq began his training for his new job. The report to Mr. Malik stated Razaq showed great promise as a malishia, and Sunni became his instructor.
Chapter 15
Sometimes men came in the evenings, and the boys danced for them. Tahira wasn’t included and Razaq thought how respectful of Mr. Malik to not show her to the men, for even though she was only twelve she was still a girl.
Apart from dancing classes and Sunni’s massage training in the mornings, the afternoons were Razaq’s own to fill as he wished. The TV was always on. He was becoming used to seeing people do things in that black box and remembering it was just a play.
The younger boys loved watching cartoons and movies with fighting in them. “Amir Khan,” Danyal shouted, “here he is, he’s the best.” Razaq remembered how Aslam had liked him, too.
“You’ve never seen TV much?” Danyal asked him.
Razaq shook his head. “We didn’t have it in the mountains.”
“Ah, no reception,” Danyal said wisely. Danyal seemed to know so much and yet he must have only been twelve. “Didn’t you have a dish?”
Razaq frowned. “Enough dishes, of course.”
Danyal hooted. “A satellite dish, you mountain goat.”
Razaq squinted at him. “You are fortunate; if anyone like Murad called me a goat, I would fight him.”
Once his father had called him a goral, a goat antelope, when he jumped from rock to rock chasing a sheep.
Danyal grinned, and in that instant he reminded Razaq of Zakim. “You are in luck then for Murad will never call you anything.”
“Why not?”
“Has he said anything to you yet?”
“No.”
“And he never will.”
Realization dawned on Razaq. “He is a mute?”
“Hahn ji. Had his tongue chopped off. He can’t write either, so he can never tell anyone about Mr. Malik’s business, can he?”
Razaq stared at him.
Danyal wriggled his eyebrows up and down, then grinned again. “So be careful what you say.” He made a sawing motion on his tongue and gagged. Danyal could always make Razaq smile.
One afternoon, Razaq sat with Tahira in a corner while the boys watched Angrezi cartoons on the cable channel. She told him about her village. “We had a buffalo. I used to milk her.”
“I used to milk goats,” Razaq said.
She smiled. “I walked to the well with a can on my head. The buffalo turned the waterwheel to bring the water up.”
“I filled buckets at a stream.”
“Cheat.”
He grinned at her. “Did you have goats?”
“A few. My father planted wheat, and we threshed it after harvest. That was fun, jumping on the stalks. My father had to give half the grain to the landlord.” She fell quiet.
It sounded a lot like Razaq’s own life—until the earthquake. “It was a terrible sound that came from the middle of the earth,” he told her, “like nothing I’ve ever heard. And all my family died.”
Tahira didn’t say anything, but she leaned closer and put a hand over his. Razaq stared at her fingers curling around his and reminded himself she was just a child.
Razaq thought he heard Tahira call out that night. Had he imagined it? He listened a moment, then heard a sob. He crept down the hallway and found her alone in a room, weeping. Razaq didn’t hesitate—he did what he would have for Seema or Layla if they woke up from a nightmare. He sat beside her and put his arm around her back. She let her head fall onto his shoulder.
“What is the matter?” he whispered. “You have a bad dream?”
She nodded and wiped her face with a shawl. She was only a few years older than Seema, but Razaq felt such a confusion of emotion that it unnerved him. He wanted to protect her as if she were his sister. Yet she was not his sister, and if anyone in the mountains saw him do this, they would both be punished. He managed to push those thoughts aside. It was different here. There would never have been an unrelated girl sleeping in his home.
“Can you tell me?” he said.
“It was fire.” She sniffed. “I hate fire.” She stopped and Razaq waited. “It is how my family died. My village was attacked. I had a brother, the same age as you. He tried to fight but a man shot him. It was Easter—our Eid—they burned the church. Almost every Christian in the village was inside.”
Razaq stiffened. She was Christian?
“I was in the latrine,” she went on. Razaq could hardly see her—just heard her small voice telling him these things. He didn’t move his arm away. “It was Muslims from the next village who did it. Afterward, I wandered out to the main road and a man on a wagon picked me up. He seemed kind. I told him what had happened and he said it was justice because of the way America treats Muslims. I knew nothing of America, and I said what my father had told me: that we are all Pakistanis. But the man said true Pakistanis are only Muslim.”
“I am a Muslim,” Razaq said, wondering if she would hate him.
She turned her head. Could she see him? It was as if she was watching him, then she said softly, “But you wouldn’t burn me
.”
“No.” Razaq said it with more fervor than he meant to.
Tahira sighed. “Today was our big Eid, Christmas. No one knows about it here,” she whispered, “they only know today as Ali Jinnah’s birthday, but in our village it was the biggest day of the year. We had new clothes and colored sweet rice, like a wedding.”
Razaq touched her face and knew that if he could see her eyes, he would find himself reflected in them. It was a place he wanted to stay forever.
Sunni brought oil bottles on a metal rack for Razaq. “This one is made from coconut, mustard, and olive oil with some coriander. This one is saanda—it’s from the fat of a lizard and it makes the customer very happy.” He gave Razaq a wink, but Razaq didn’t know what he meant.
Sunni showed him how to give a full massage, and soon, Mr. Malik said Razaq could start earning his keep. He was to have customers in his room while the younger boys were watching TV in the afternoons.
The first man that Murad directed to Razaq’s room was tall. “Please lie on the bed,” Razaq said, putting a towel where the man’s head would rest. He started on the man’s shoulders.
“That feels good,” the man said. “What else can you do—full body massage?”
Razaq glanced at the man’s long legs and feet, thinking it would take all afternoon. “Yes, if you want.”
The man rolled over and stood up. “Why don’t we cut the crap? Just bend over the bed, and I’ll massage you.”
Razaq saw the same look in the man’s eyes as Saleem had had that day when he’d grabbed him in the gali. “No.”
He ran out of the room and bumped into a hard wall of flesh. It was Murad. He sent Razaq flying into the doorjamb, belted him across the head twice, and dragged him down the hall to Mr. Malik.
The customer followed them, tying his shalwar cord. “I want my money back.”
Mr. Malik was in the doorway with money in his hand when the man reached him. He gave the man the money between two fingers. “Come back tomorrow. He is just playing hard to get.” He winked and, miraculously, the man grinned.
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