Spirit of a Mountain Wolf (11 page)

“Come.” Aslam ignored the question as the bus stopped at the adda. He ran toward Kazim’s restaurant, Razaq close behind.

After all this time, Razaq was to see Uncle Javaid at last. He slowed as they drew closer to the small building. He couldn’t see any men who looked like his uncle sitting outside. “Is my uncle still here?” he said.

Aslam beckoned for him to hurry.

Just as they were yards from the outside tables, Kazim rushed out. He grabbed Razaq and dragged him inside. “Good work,” he said to Aslam. “Now get the naan.”

Razaq stared after Aslam’s back. Had he seen his uncle or not?

Kazim pulled Razaq into the cooking room. “What do you mean by running from your job? And stealing my thirty rupees? Where is it?”

Razaq shook his head. He didn’t like the look on Kazim’s face. He was in for a beating, he could tell.

“Gone, is it?” Kazim gave him a shake. “That’s longer it will take to pay off your debt to me.”

He took a bamboo stick from the wall. Razaq couldn’t escape: Kazim was standing between him and the doorway. “This will teach you to obey me.” He raised his arm and brought the stick down on Razaq’s back and didn’t stop.

Razaq’s father had once made him eat stick, as he called it, when Razaq had let a wolf take a young goat, but it wasn’t like this. Razaq fell to the floor and curled into a ball, steeling himself for each blow. He didn’t know when they stopped.

When he woke, he found himself on his blanket, lying on his belly. He turned over and cried out.

Aslam was there with a bucket of water and a cloth. “You have to be washed so the cuts can heal.” He helped Razaq peel off his shirt, pulling it from the new scabs. Razaq couldn’t stop crying.

“You are lucky he went easy on you,” Aslam said. “He does not want to mark you.”

Once Aslam had finished rinsing his back, Razaq asked, “Has he done this to you?”

“Once. I ran away in the first week. He said if I ran again, he would beat my little brother. He even knew his name.”

“My uncle wasn’t here, was he?”

Aslam didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Kazim said if I didn’t come back with you, he would cut my sister’s face and sell her to a chakla, a brothel.” He dribbled more water on Razaq’s back. “She is ten years old.”

Razaq clenched his fists. If anyone had hurt his sisters, he would have fought them, but what could Aslam do against Kazim? Aslam’s fear made him an untrustworthy ally. Razaq wondered if he would be that powerless if his sisters were alive and lived within Kazim’s reach. Yet was he any better off? He had told Zakim he would return. His father always said a mountain man’s word was his honor. How could he prove that now?

Javaid was sure Waqar wouldn’t give him more time off to find Razaq. He would have to search in his lunch hour and after work. Raja Bazaar was like a huge rambling village. Where could he start?

He took a rickshaw down there during his lunch break and asked in shops along the main road. It was useless, of course. Shopkeepers looked at him as if he was crazy when he asked about Razaq. One man even asked him how he expected to find one boy in a bazaar as big as this. “A pin is hard to see in the dark,” he said.

Javaid returned to the cloth shop but his heart wasn’t in his work as it usually was. He half-listened to a conversation between the young worker, Zaid, and a customer as he keyed in the shop’s takings. The customer was complaining about beggars.

“There are so many, even more now after the earthquake. Something should be done.”

“Do you like this color?” Zaid said. “What can be done about the beggars, janab?”

Javaid frowned; Zaid sounded bored.

“The government should provide a camp for them so they don’t bother us in the city,” the customer said.

Javaid held his tongue, but wondered how the man would feel if it were his relatives being forced to the city for work.

Zaid threw out a bolt of blue cloth so it billowed over the counter. “This one,” he said. “Your wife would look heavenly in it.”

The bearded man frowned at him and Zaid realized what he’d said. “Not that I have seen her, of course, but I am sure she is—” He shut up about wives as Waqar made a cutting motion with his finger under his neck and turned to Javaid instead. “Ji, those beggars from up north. They have been in Moti Bazaar, too. Just think, one even asked for you by name, Javaid. The cheek to find out your name.”

Javaid jumped up so fast the keyboard teetered on the desk. “When?”

Zaid’s mouth slackened. “A few days ago. Just before you returned to work.”

“What did he look like?” Javaid bent closer.

Zaid shrank back against the cloth shelves. “Like any beggar— dirty, always asking.”

“And?” Javaid was inches from Zaid’s face.

“I can’t remember. . . . Fair, ji, under all that dirt he was fair. Certainly a jungly wild boy from the earthquake.”

“What did you say to him? Did you say I was here?”

Zaid smiled as if his reply would make Javaid happy. “Of course not, I sent him off. We get enough beggars.”

Javaid thumped the counter and swore.

Zaid stared at him in shock. “There is something wrong, brother? What did I say?”

Waqar spoke from his desk in the front window. “Take the afternoon off, Javaid, but shut the computer down first. I’ll expect you earlier tomorrow and every morning until you have made the hours up.”

“Thank you.”

Javaid picked up his lunch pack, collected his bike from the storeroom, and hurried out to the gali. He almost ran with his bike to the cloth shop next door, then the next. He asked at all the cloth shops he could see. It must have been Razaq. If he had asked for him at Fazal Clothing Emporium then he must have remembered Javaid worked in a cloth shop. Would Razaq have known the shop’s name? Was Javaid wasting his time enquiring everywhere? Maybe Fazal’s was the only shop Razaq had visited.

It was growing late by the time Javaid was near the main road. One man thought he remembered Razaq, though the boy might have been a beggar. Who remembered beggars or even took notice when they spoke? Javaid had done it himself: brushed them away without even looking into their eyes.

“Ji, a boy was here asking for someone,” the man said. “He seemed different from the ordinary beggar working for a landlord. Can’t remember his name now—one of those khans from the mountains. I offered him chowkidar work, but he didn’t last the night. He was gone when I came in the morning. All he wanted was my food.”

Javaid didn’t like the man’s leer, as if beggars were worthless, and he didn’t ask any more questions. He sighed as he walked out onto Iqbal Road. Razaq could be anywhere by now. He jumped onto his bike and pedaled to the police station.

Javaid had no satisfaction with the police. The officer he spoke to refused even to fill out a First Information Report.

“You should have come here as soon as it happened,” he said.

“But I didn’t know then he was missing.”

The officer shook his head. “There are too many missing children. And soon they return home after we have spent much expense. The parents only come to us as a last resort.” He put his head to one side. “Now if he had been kidnapped, that is a different matter. Then we can fill out a pakka report.”

“Actually, I think he was kidnapped.”

“You think?”

Javaid thought of the money Auntie Latifa had received. Was it kidnapping if the abductor gave money?

The officer sighed noisily. “Where did this happen?”

“In Kala Dhaka.”

The officer put down his pen. “That is not a government-controlled region.”

“But he has been brought here to Rawalpindi.”

“Does he have a birth certificate?”

Javaid tightened his mouth. “Probably not. They don’t always register births in the mountains.”

“Then how can we help you if the child has no legal record? There are many children like this and only 2 percent are ever being recovered.” He held his thumb and forefinger together to show how little 2 percent was. “I shall put it in the Roznamcha, the daily diary, but keep searching, janab. You are the boy’s only hope.”

Javaid had trouble fighting a desire to punch the officer’s lazy fat face.

He went to the local mosque next. The imam was solicitous. He waggled his head in sympathy. “So many children forced into bondage. We will broadcast his name and pray this evil will stop. May Allah be merciful to your nephew.”

After a few days, Razaq was set to washing dishes again on the night shift. Kazim yanked him to his feet, and Razaq was sure the cuts on his back reopened.

“Up you get, you lazy shaitan,” Kazim said. “Be thankful you only had a light beating.” He brought his head down to speak in Razaq’s face. Razaq could see spit in the corners of his mouth. “But if you try that again, it will be worse. Do you understand?”

Razaq nodded. Kazim pushed him to the water trough to start washing cups.

He was not allowed outside. Kazim gave him an old ghee tin to do his business in, and Aslam had to dump it in the drain. Aslam ran for the naan all the time now, and Razaq cut vegetables in the afternoon. He thought it could have been worse. At least he’d had his clothes on during the beating and it was just a stick. Imagine if it had been a whip. He had seen a man in the mountains stripped and whipped by the order of the jirga council. After twenty lashes, the man’s back was reduced to red mush, like overripe watermelon. It had taken him six weeks to get to his feet.

The days turned into a week and then another. Razaq tried to remember his life in the mountains: looking after the goats, sheep, and Peepu on the terraced slopes; the jobs he did with Seema and Layla. His mother’s eyes, ringed with green, flashed into his head, reminding him to do a good job, to bring honor to the family. How could he do that here? His father’s honor would require him to kill Kazim. That was what his father would do. He would kill Kazim and set his son free. Razaq sighed. He was too tired to run away. When his strength built up he would try again, and this time he wouldn’t fall for stories from people like Aslam.

Then, a surprising thing happened. One afternoon, Kazim told Razaq to have a rest. That evening, he said Razaq could help wait on the tables. It was a break from washing dishes and gave him a chance to watch the TV. It was amazing how one afternoon’s rest made Razaq feel almost chirpy. He set the plates of rice and bowls of curry on the tables and smiled at a man who was staring at him. If Kazim let him do this regularly, he would regain his strength in no time at all. Then he could find his uncle.

By ten, most of the customers had gone but one man remained. He wore an expensive suit coat over his shalwar qameez and had a gold watch on his wrist and a gold chain as thick as a halter around his neck. His shoes were made of green leather.

“Do you want more chai?” Razaq asked him in Urdu.

“No, get me Kazim,” the man said without taking his eyes from Razaq.

Kazim must have heard because he hurried over, wiping his hands on a cloth. “You see what I mean?” he said to the man.

The man gave little away in his face, and Razaq wondered what Kazim meant.

“How much?” the man said.

Kazim spread his hands to encompass his poor restaurant. “One hundred and fifty thousand rupees.”

The man chuckled. “You would match Ali Baba, you rogue. Only militants ask that much.” Then his face changed into hard lines. “I’ll give you a lakh, and nothing more.” He stood and handed Kazim a piece of paper.

Kazim examined it. “It is good?”

“As good as the boy.”

Razaq looked at Kazim, alarmed. Was it happening again? One lakh was a hundred thousand rupees, enough money to build many houses in the mountains. Why was the man giving all that money to Kazim?

Kazim pushed Razaq into the other room. “Get your things.”

“What is happening?”

“I can’t be worrying, waiting for when you’ll run again. Mr. Malik has a good opportunity for you. If you do what you’re told, you’ll have a good life.” Kazim grinned and Razaq shrank from the greed in his eyes. “I knew you would bring a fortune for me.”

Kazim went back to Mr. Malik.

“I told you he was biding his time,” Aslam said, “just waiting for the right customer.”

“But I cannot be sold again.”

“If I was as pretty as you, it would have been me. At least you will get good food and maybe a TV. A ride in a car sometimes.”

“What do you know?” Razaq said. “Where am I going?”

“Mr. Malik is a dala. He trains boys and girls for business.”

Razaq paled.

“Hurry up. Mr. Malik is leaving.” Kazim’s voice from the outside room sounded jaunty.

“You have to help me,” Razaq whispered, but Aslam merely shrugged.

“What can any of us do? Mr. Malik is a big businessman with many people working for him. No one crosses him.”

Razaq put on his pakol, the green jacket, and his father’s sandals. He put the empty purse in his pocket. He walked to the door—there was no escaping.

Mr. Malik smiled at him, but it didn’t reach his eyes as smiles were meant to. “Come, beta. We have much to do. The first thing will be to give you a proper bath. Then we shall see what we have.”