Amal Unbound

“We need his filthy money. Maybe if we all united against him, something could be done. It’s happening more and more these days—people are banding together and overthrowing their landlords. Read about it in the paper all the time.”

“The Khan family would never let that happen here. Remember Hazarabad?” Fozia asked. “The people in that town made a pact. Refused to pay their debts until he stopped with the threats. Forget Munira’s measly acres! He destroyed their entire village. Jawad Sahib sent quite the message!”

I thought of my father, who had no time for my dreams. My little sisters and their endless demands. Suddenly I felt tired. Tired of feeling powerless. Tired of denying my own needs because someone else needed something more. Including this man. This stranger. Buying me off. Denying me this smallest of pleasures.

“It’s not for sale.”

“So you’ll give it without charge?”

His smirk taunted me. My scraped hands burned.

“You hit me with your car and want to take my things?” My voice trembled; I heard it growing louder, as if it were coming from someone else. “I’m not giving it away.” I snatched it from his hand.

“I had one question for you.” Jawad Sahib smiled. “Was it worth it? The pomegranate you couldn’t bear to part with?”

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry in front of him, but my body betrayed me. Hot salty tears slipped down my face. I looked down and stood still. I did my best not to move.

I stood still until he was satisfied. Until he walked away.

“Who turns down a free education?” The woman shook her head. “They enjoy being illiterate is the problem, really.”

I thought of my classroom, thirty-four girls crammed two to a desk. I could still remember how the heat rose from the ground and pressed into our skin during the warmer months and how we shivered under our chadors and sweaters when the temperature dropped. Even so, we went to school every single day we could. Nasreen Baji knew better. She had to know better. She had to tell this woman she was wrong.

But Nasreen Baji didn’t say a word in protest. Instead, she asked me to bring them more tea.

“I can’t remember the last time I read one of these books,” he said as he walked to the bookshelf and examined the titles. “I might have been your age when I read A Stranger in Al-Andalus.” He pulled the book from the shelf. “I loved this one. Read it so many times, my father replaced my worn copy with a new one. He didn’t realize I liked the feel of the old one.”

I tried imagining him as a teenager, sentimental about a worn book. I couldn’t.

I should have felt grateful.

But the thing was—those books were what made my days bearable. They were what helped me sleep at night without my homesickness choking me.

Without books, what was there to look forward to?

“It’s not fair,” I said. “Why should anyone have to figure him out?”

“No, it’s not fair. But that’s life.”

There it was yet again, my father’s words: Life isn’t fair. Maybe it was true, but why was that a reason to just accept everything and go along with it? I hoped the rumor about the girl turning down Jawad Sahib was true. I hoped there really was someone out there who had the courage to stand up to him and say no.

I thought coming home would help me feel better, but now all I could see was my mother’s bare wrists, Fozia’s frightened face, and a baby sister who would never know me. How many lives had this man upended?

Why did no one stop him?

“It’s cruel.”

“What do you mean?”

“This poem. It’s trying to say that there is always someone to go after someone and keep the balance of power equal. But it’s not true. The elephant is in control. The mouse. The cat. The ant. They can do what they like, but sooner or later they will all be gone except the elephant. Pretending otherwise is foolish.”

“No one would have bothered to investigate a family like the Khans even a few years ago,” Asif said. “But people all around the country are fighting the status quo. Things are changing.”

I hoped what Asif was saying was true, but I found it hard to believe. Asif couldn’t understand how things worked here and the absolute power a family like the Khans held in a place like ours.

There he was—the man I’d heard stories about all my life. The man whose photos lined the hallways I walked through each day. He was the bogeyman our mothers invoked to urge us to finish our dinner. When I was Safa’s age, I imagined him to be ten feet tall with beady eyes and pointy teeth. Hafsa was convinced he breathed fire.

But now he stood a few steps away from me. And he didn’t breathe fire and he wasn’t ten feet tall.

He and Jawad Sahib were powerful and mean-spirited men.

But maybe, just maybe, even they weren’t invincible.

“I’m not brave. I’m terrified. I just don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice. Making choices even when they scare you because you know it’s the right thing to do—that’s bravery.”

I was glad her son could not hurt anyone ever again, but seeing Nasreen Baji’s grief and knowing her pain was partly because of me made me feel an odd sort of guilt. It was the strangest thing to hold such different feelings inside myself at once.

“But if he did the things the news said he did”—I hesitated—“Isn’t it a good thing that he’s been caught?”

“With the two of them behind bars, what happens to us?” Ghulam asked. “I need this job. My son’s wife is about to have a baby. My other grandchild needs to see a specialist in Lahore for his heart. What are we going to do without my income?”

[...]

I thought Jawad Sahib’s arrest would be good for everyone, but it turned out change, no matter how good and necessary, came with a price.