I trudge to the store and tear the hem off my kameez with my teeth. Soaking it in mineral water from a crate of bottles.....
STORY
I trudge to the store and tear the hem off my kameez with my teeth. Soaking it in mineral water from a crate of bottles in one corner, I clean the blood off her body slowly, my face wet with tears. It is when I am dressing her that she opens her eyes slowly. They adjust to the darkness and she recognizes me.
We look at each other for a few moments.
She blinks as she recalls what happened to her. Then she sits up, electrified. “Nazri!”
“Hey.” I touch her face, wiping a line of blood trickling down from her forehead. “Hey. It’s all right.” She tries to squirm away from me and I move my hands away at once, holding them up where she can see them. Softly, very softly, I say, “I am awake, Maryam.”
Her blue and green eyes look into my black ones, then she smiles, her lips quiver and her eyes fill up with tears. I don’t remember moving but somehow, suddenly I have my arms around her and I am crying into her black curls and she is laughing and crying against my chest and I’m murmuring “I’m awake” over and over and over again.
When I have finally dressed her, I sit her down in front of me, taking care not to touch her wounds.
“Now listen, very carefully,” I say. She watches me, her hair swept back from her face, revealing the long scar along her forehead and right cheek, her eyes full of pain and disbelief and relief and joy at the same time. I wonder if it is possible to feel all of it together. “You must not tell anyone about anything, Maryam. Okay?”
She blinks.
“Why?”
“Because …” I look around the store and then at her, and then at my hands, and I say, “I’ll tell you a story.”
She gives me a confused look but nods condescendingly.
“There was a little boy and a Nazri did something terrible to him. He tried to hurt that Nazri because he wasn’t as little as you are. And that Nazri wasn’t as strong as this one. The little boy escaped that Nazri and ran all the way home, and told his father. His father went to that Nazri’s family and the family gave the father lots of money and then-” I stop, swallow. “The little boy had to go to jail because his family needed the money, Maryam.”
“Will I go to jail?” Her eyes are wide. “Will Nazri give Amma, Baba candies?”
“No. Maybe Nazri will go to jail this time, Maryam,” I say, leaning down and looking into her eyes. “But nobody will forgive Maryam or her Amma or Baba for Nazri’s cruelty. That’s not the way things work here. Iss liye (that is why), Maryam, you were hiding behind the tuck-shop and you were scared because you heard a crash, and then something hit you and you became unconscious. Okay?”
Maryam looks at me and I marvel at how well I am reflected in her eyes in the darkness of the room. “Okay.” She stands up. “Let’s go.”
“No.” I shake my head, turning to look at the room where Nazri’s body lies on the floor, a startled expression on its face. “You go out, and there’s a lock outside. Maryam, lock the door from the outside, okay?”
“Okay.” She says, and turns to the door. I notice her go limp, bend over in pain. Then she straightens. “What about you?”
“I will escape. Don’t you worry.” I tell her. “Chalo, bhag jao abb (Off you go).” An attempt at frivolity that neither of us feels.
She takes another step, then turns again.
“What did the little boy do?”
I look at the dark doorway opening into the tuck-shop.
“He served time in jail and then his Nazri told everybody she and her family forgave him for trying to kill her and …” I pause, then say, “and rape her. Then the little boy left his family and his city and never went back again.”
She walks another step, then limps back to me and wraps her arms around me.
“It hurts.” She whispers. I don’t tell her it is a blessing she can walk… that it is a blessing she’s breathing at all.
“It will be okay. If you can, try to get your Baba to take you to a hospital.” I know her secret will be out then, but at least only her parents will know. Or maybe everyone else will too. I am suddenly too tired to think of a plan.
“Were you that little boy?” she whispers.
I heave a deep sigh and stand up carefully, so as not to hurt her.
“Off you go.” I say. I watch as she limps out, a hand tenderly pressed against her groin. In the doorway, she turns for a second. The cornhusk doll in yellow and white stares at me for a few seconds, her face partially illuminated by the moonlight, and then she closes the door.
I walk into the shop and sink down next to Nazri, sitting down against the rough wall. Leaning my head against it, feeling its cool seeping into my cheek, I close my eyes and float to the roof.
As I watch my 20-year-old self close his eyes in exhaustion, his clothes splattered with Nazri’s blood, the moonlight from the skylight playing hide and seek across his face, I see a young boy of 16 walking into the bedroom of the judge’s wife. She is sitting on the couch, reading, wearing a beautiful black shalwar kameez, her long brown hair covering her left shoulder. The boy casts an adoring glance towards her as he places her coffee before her. Without looking up from her book, she murmurs, “thank you, Saleem!”
I watch from the cold corner of Nazri’s shop as the boy flushes a deep red and retreats from the room, smiling sheepishly.
