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Since when have you been here?"
"I was about twelve years old when I came to the teacher.
I had run away from home."
"Do you have parents?"
"Don't know." The boy replied with such indifference, as if they were some distant relatives, and he was speaking formally about them. He said, "My mother—my father threw her out of the house."
"Why?"
"My father used to get very angry. At first, he never got angry. He was a peon in some office—I don't even know which one. One day he came home and said to my mother, I've left my job.
Mother asked, Why did you leave the job?
He said, The boss abuses me, swears at my mother and sister. My salary comes from the government treasury, but the boss also makes me work at his house.
Mother said, Then find another job."
He said, "Now I won't work for anyone. I'll drive a cycle rickshaw." He borrowed some money and bought a rickshaw for about two hundred and fifty, maybe three hundred and fifty rupees. But he didn't get the license. The officials asked for a hundred rupees for it. Father couldn't manage to get more money. There wasn't even flour in the house. A few days later, he sold the rickshaw. He only got a hundred rupees for it. After that, father started getting angry all the time…
I was very small then. He began beating us at home—sometimes me, sometimes mother. Then one day he got a job at the Keamari docks. He went every day on the buses. One day something fell on him—don't know what—but his arm broke. He became useless, lost the job, and the bus fare money too. After that, he began beating me and mother every day, for the smallest of things.
Then one day, he threw mother out of the house and kept me with him. No one knows where mother went. About ten or twelve days later, father left the house early in the morning—and never came back. For two days he didn't return. I wandered on the footpaths crying. On the third day, Master Jeeda saw me. He listened to everything I said, then brought me here. Now, my days pass in great comfort. I've even become a master myself."
"What kind of master?"
"The kind of master that if you look away for just a moment, the earring from your right ear will be in my hand—and you won't even know. That's how sharp my hands are."
"You talk very boldly. How old are you? Fifteen?"
"I used to talk like this even when I was eight or nine."
In the boy's serious tone, a shadow of grief appeared. He said,
"Poor children are not children at all. They are born old. They never become young. When their youth begins, they die—and then their corpses keep walking, driven in any direction you choose."
"But those who enter our world—no one can drive them anywhere. They are kings. They cut through locks, break into safes, and live with pleasure."
Naz's eyes kept widening. The boy's mind was far more mature than she had expected. At that tender age of boyhood, he seemed like an old man—experienced and world-weary.
"Master Jeeda doesn't talk much with anyone," the boy continued. "He only talks with me. He listens to me, and I listen to him. One day, after hearing my story, he wept. Then I too began to cry. And when I cried, he suddenly slapped me hard on the face and said, You bastard, why are you crying?
After that, he stuffed some hashish into a cigarette and said, Take a puff—your sorrow will fade!"
"What?!" Naz asked in astonishment. "You smoke hashish too?"
"No, I don't like hashish."
"… I can't drink a whole bottle of liquor…
But I do like liquor."
"Don't you miss your mother?" Naz asked in a pained voice.
"Never even tried to remember her," the boy said. "In the beginning, Master Jeeda tried very hard to find her, but she could not be found. He searched every corner of Karachi."
"He must have wanted to make her a prostitute too," Naz said with a faint smile.
"No," the boy replied. "The Master never harms the dead. You don't know him—he's a very good man, I swear to God! I even told him, Find my mother and marry her, then I'll become your son. But mother was never found. Now I've forgotten her… the Master is everything to me—my mother and my father."
"Was your mother beautiful?" Naz asked impulsively.
"Of course! Truly, she was even more beautiful than you. I don't even know if she's still alive." The boy stopped speaking midway and turned his face away.
Without thinking, Naz caught him by the shoulders and pulled him close, holding him tightly in her arms. The boy's words had sunk into the deepest corners of Naz's heart. She pressed him harder against herself and kissed his forehead. Her tears rolled down onto his cheeks, and his two tears absorbed them. After a long, long time, the boy felt the comfort of a woman's lap.
He rested his round cheeks against Naz's bosom and, in a state of self-forgetfulness, buried his face there. He began to feel peace, as if a fallen bird had once again been placed in its nest. In the fullness of Naz's youth, he felt the same sweetness he had once tasted years ago on his lips and tongue. That very taste, that very pleasure, now returned like lightning and spread through every vein in his body. A surrender, an ecstasy overcame him. He closed his eyes and leapt across the months and years of the past.
Both their hearts were beating fast. Sobs and hiccups trembled inside their chests. The cobwebs on the ceiling dissolved into the spreading evening darkness. A child was losing himself in a woman's lap, in the warmth of motherly affection. A woman was losing herself in a child, embracing him in the form of a mother.
Another day, another night of Karachi slipped away. The boy hadn't cried in a long time. He had been burdened with the knowledge of the underworld, but today, the warmth of a woman's breast broke the spell. When the boy cried, he felt as though he had journeyed a long and weary distance, searching restlessly for the mother he had claimed to have forgotten. His tears now caressed his exhausted limbs.
Naz had been weeping for eleven days. Each tear had fallen like molten beads, burning her cheeks as they rolled down. But today, in this weeping, she found spiritual peace. She might have held the boy against her breast the entire night.
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To be continue....