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Jeda had already put four girls into prostitution. He thought he would expand this business.
Before Naz arrived, it had once crossed his mind that buying underage children and training them for the profession was easier and more profitable — planting a sapling was better than transplanting a mature tree. Uprooting and replanting an older plant was troublesome and carried the risk of it withering. Therefore, he had bought an eight-year-old kidnapped girl for four hundred rupees. This girl had been abducted by a group from Punjab's Gujranwala and brought to Karachi. When Jeda bought her and brought her home, she was in a terrible state, crying uncontrollably.
Until then, he had only dealt with grown girls. This was his first encounter with a child. He could have strangled her and buried her in the same room where four bodies were already buried, but the little girl's screams and wailing had shaken Jeda's heart.
When Jeda sat her on a chair, she immediately jumped up. Crying so hard that she could hardly breathe, her innocent sobs and heart-wrenching cries of "Oh mother! Oh father!" echoed against the walls of Jeda's desolate room.
Jeda leaned against the wall and kept staring at the weeping girl. From the other room, Badal appeared with a butcher's knife in hand and shouted harshly,
"Shut up, you wretched brat, or I'll tear you apart!"
The girl let out a terrified scream and collapsed to the floor. "Mother! Father! Come quickly! Mother, wake up and come!"
Jeda rushed to pick her up and said to Badal, "Go to the market and get some candies and a few toys."
A little while later, the eight-year-old girl, still crying, angrily scattered the pile of candies across the room. "I don't want candies! Take me to my mother!" She kicked and broke all the toys, then continued sobbing with hiccups.
"Badal!" Jeda said in an unusually gentle tone, "Go to your room. I'll handle her.""Alright, listen, little one," Jeda said, lifting her into his arms. "First stop crying, then I'll take you to your mother."
The girl stopped crying.
"Look, my dear, it's very late now," Jeda said gently, running his hand through her hair. "Cars don't run in the dark. Sleep here with me, and in the morning I'll take you to your mother."
Those who had kidnapped the girl had probably made the same promise to her countless times before, so Jeda wasn't saying anything new.
"No," the girl said with a pout. "You're lying. Those other men said the same thing."
Jeda, a little awkwardly, pressed his cheek against hers and kissed her. "I've never lied to you, my dear! I have—" He stopped mid-sentence, as if something had lodged in his throat.
This was the first time in Jeda's life that he had shown affection—truly felt the softness of another's tear-streaked cheek. His soul had tasted a strange, unfamiliar sweetness, and somehow, it brought two tears to his crime-hardened eyes.
The kidnappers had often promised the girl they would take her back to her mother, sometimes even speaking gently to her—but no pair of lips had ever touched her cheeks, and no one's eyes had ever welled up at her crying.
Jeda didn't even realize his own eyes had filled with tears, but the girl saw them. Her cheeks still felt the warmth of his kiss. It had been a month since she was abducted, and in all that long time, this was the first touch that had given her comfort. She became quiet.
"You're my good uncle," the girl said, wrapping both arms around Jeda's neck and rubbing her cheeks against his.
Something stirred violently in Jeda's chest—like a flood breaking through a dam. The emotions that surged shook his very ribs. He was utterly helpless before the innocent little girl. He couldn't do anything, couldn't even think clearly. It felt as though he'd been split into two, and all the strength he had—the killing, the looting, the cunning tricks of a thief—shattered like glass bangles.
For a fleeting second, a thought flashed in his mind: throw the girl out of the window. But it came and went like lightning.
"Uncle, I'm sleepy," the girl said, shaking him lightly.
A few moments later, she lay down on the bedding spread out on the floor, curled up next to Jeda, and fell asleep. But Jeda stayed awake. His body—
A Diamond's Heart
In contrast, whenever he looked at his own home, he felt embarrassed. His sister and mother would go out wearing burqas, living within the bounds of purdah. Seeing his father wearing a simple shalwar made him feel suffocated, and his family seemed lowly to him.
Without asking his father, he had Nazo's burqa removed. The old father, who was living on a meager pension and dependent on his son, could not stand in his way. Even though he disliked his son's behavior, he did not object.
Now the two brothers were determined to wipe out all traces of Eastern tradition, which they believed was the cause of their backwardness. They took control of the once dignified, respectable household, which had lived in an orderly manner.
When the elder brother went to the market to check the prices of a sofa set, radio set, dinner set, and tea set, it felt to him as though an explosion had gone off—a blast that had flung him straight into the glittering world of the West, where he became stuck. He returned home, subdued, took a pencil and paper, and began trying to balance his salary with the cost of these items—but there was a vast difference, like earth and sky.
He sank into deep thought. Exhausted, he began to accept defeat—until the thought of the "upper society" came to him. This thought made him restless like a wounded wolf, and once again he became lost in the maze of possibilities.
That very evening, one of his friends hosted a garden party for his sister's birthday, to which the minister of his department was also invited. The party burned like a fire in his chest. He knew his friend's salary was not enough to host such an event—so where had the money come from?
A spark lit up in his mind. Where the darkness of disappointment had settled, a new path suddenly appeared: "Sir, if there's ever any service I can do for you, I'm here," the voice of his office peon from six months ago echoed in his mind.
Just two days after he had assumed his job, the peon had said to him in a confidential tone, "I've got a family to feed too, sir! We live off what you give us. The previous sahib took very good care of us. All it takes is your word."
At the time, he hadn't understood what the peon meant. In the six months since, he had begun to grasp it little by little—but the peon had already grown disappointed, taking him for an honest fool. The man had gone back to earning just two annas in tips for carrying documents, whereas under the previous sahib, he had been making five to seven rupees a day.
When Nazo's brother recalled the peon's suggestive words, he slammed his pencil down on the table and slept peacefully.
The next morning, when he reached the office, instead of calling the peon by his job title, he called him "Nordeen." He had the door closed and called him close, whispering something to him.
When the peon emerged, a smile spread across his face—the same smile he had worn during the days of the previous sahib. From that smile came a sofa set, a radio, and in the days to follow, every other item considered essential to "civilization," without which it was hard to maintain one's honor in society.
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To be continue