Spirit of a Mountain Wolf

by Rosanne Hawke

  He heard the train and knew they were back in Rawalpindi where he’d rescued the buffalo at Farawa Chowk. He leaned forward and asked the driver, “Where is Qasai Gali?”

  The driver tooted his horn, then said, “Behind Moti Bazaar. It is as big and busy as an ants’ nest, so remember what I said. Don’t get lost and don’t talk to anyone you do not know. People steal good-looking kids like you.”

  Razaq scowled. It was a bit late for that advice.

  Murad gave a grunt and the driver shut up. The car turned down a gali barely wide enough for it, lined with adjoining houses. Murad got out and Razaq saw a glint in his hand: he had a gun.

  Murad looked up and down the gali before opening Razaq’s door. He motioned with the gun for both of them to get out Razaq’s side, then herded them toward a door. There was music coming from an upstairs window, and at ground level, there were windows where they saw women without scarves singing and dancing. Tahira pulled her own shawl tighter around herself. Razaq looked down the gali; it wasn’t a hive of activity, but he could imagine stalls set up there in the daytime. A group of young men entered the lane, laughing together.

  Murad pounded on the door. It opened immediately as if they had been expected. A girl, older than Tahira, stood there, her bold gaze taking in Murad and then Razaq. Her eyes widened. “Ji?”

  Murad thrust Razaq and Tahira into the house, pushing the girl aside. A woman appeared. “Murad, put that gun away. Do you think you are a movie star?” Murad frowned. “So, these are Malik’s little beauties.”

  The woman flowed closer as the girl shut the door. The woman was thin with a hooked nose and wore an orange shalwar qameez that barely covered her chest. Her glass bangles clinked and the sound reminded Razaq of his home. His sisters loved those glass bangles, especially red ones, but they broke so easily.

  The woman—Mrs. Mumtaz, Razaq suspected—pulled off Tahira’s shawl and peered at her. She took Razaq’s chin in her hand and lifted his head to see his eyes. “Hmm. Malik spoke truly for once. We should put you to breeding. Fair green-eyed girls would make us a fortune.”

  Razaq scowled. How dare someone talk to him as if he were a ram!

  Mrs. Mumtaz laughed, then gave Razaq a smack on his cheek with her open palm. Perhaps she meant it playfully, but it still hurt.

  “Ow.”

  “Ow,” she mimicked. “Is that all you can say, mountain wolf?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. Saleem had called him a wolf, too. His fingers clenched as he breathed in quickly, then he felt Tahira’s hand on his arm. He slowly let the air out.

  Mrs. Mumtaz watched them. “So, this is true also. Malik says you are a pair.” She opened her eyes wide at Razaq but still he said nothing. Her face changed. “Even if you do have feelings for this one, you will bury them. She is not for you. And if I find you interfering with her or any of my girls without permission . . .” She grabbed Razaq in the front of his shalwar. He gasped in shock as she made a chopping motion with her other hand, then let him go. “And I can see that would be a big pity.”

  Her eyes flashed at him. “All you have to do is obey one rule.” She paused as if telling a joke. “And that is to obey me. I am the naika, the madam. Understand?”

  Tahira nodded. Razaq did, too. He could see Mrs. Mumtaz was capable of anything, maybe even of making Tahira’s life hell if he didn’t do what she wanted.

  She walked around him, considering him. “You are the only boy I have working here. You are on probation only. Malik tells me you are a malishia. This is good. We have a room for you and also for you, little sweetie.”

  She turned to Tahira and Razaq stiffened as her long red fingernail traced a line down Tahira’s cheek to the corner of her mouth. “This is where my knife will cut if you refuse a customer, or if you forget to give me any tips or gifts you receive. Do you understand?”

  Razaq could see Tahira blinking, trying to keep the tears at bay.

  “She is only twelve,” he said. Even he could hear the challenge in his tone, and he sensed Murad take a step closer to him.

  “So, the wolf speaks at last and not on his own behalf. How interesting. She is twelve, you say? Well, that is just how my customers like it.” Mrs. Mumtaz stared into Razaq’s eyes, daring him to say more, but he decided against it.

  She waved Murad off then. “Tell Malik they will do fine.”

  As the girl shut the door behind him, Mrs. Mumtaz smiled again. “You both are my Eid-ul-Adha gift.”

  Her smiles were even worse than Mr. Malik’s, Razaq thought. She looked like a jackal and was just as unpredictable.

  She took them past the room where the girls were dancing to the tabla and harmonium. The musicians were playing a love song that reminded Razaq of Uncle Javaid’s wedding. Men lounged against cushions watching the girls. None of the men wore suit coats or fine leather shoes, and they seemed to be having fun. Apart from the fact that men in the mountains didn’t sit around and watch women dance, it looked innocent enough. The house was older, the rooms smaller, and the furniture not as fine as at the white house, but the place seemed warm and cozy in the low light.

  Razaq was given a room facing the gali. Mrs. Mumtaz stayed in the hall as he entered. He turned at the sound of the door closing and a bolt shooting home. He raced to the door and pulled at it, but it wouldn’t budge. He checked the window, but it had bars—there would be no getting out of that.

  The room was small and filled mostly by the bed, but there was a wash bowl and a bucket of water, plus another bucket—no doubt the toilet, for there was a lota, a small plastic jug, beside it to wash his bottom if needed. Razaq sank onto the bed. It was a dump compared to his room in the white house but still a palace compared to Zakim’s cardboard Rag Mahal.

  In the morning, Razaq was standing at the window when his door was unbolted and the girl from the night before stood there with a tray. It held chai, a chapatti, and some leftover potato curry. So the food wasn’t the same as the white house’s either. Razaq sighed inwardly as the girl sidled in and dumped the tray on the bed. The chai spilled onto the tray.

  “You are very handsome, Mr. Green Eyes,” she said. “Like Hrithik Roshan.” She smirked at his incomprehension. “The Bollywood actor—you see his latest movie?”

  Razaq looked at her thin face and frowned. What sort of girl said something like that to a boy? She came closer and if Razaq could have taken a step backward, he would have.

  “My name is Neelma, and I am Mrs. Mumtaz’s niece.”

  Razaq felt a cold mist rise over him, as if a jinn had flown through the window. If Mrs. Mumtaz found her here she’d get her knife out, he was sure of it.

  “You must leave my room.” It came out as a croak.

  She pouted. “I am not frightened of my aunt if that is what you are worried about. I do not work here; I live here. One day I will be the madam.”

  Razaq wasn’t taking any chances, but he didn’t want to offend the girl either. She had a petulant look, as if she could be spiteful when crossed. He’d seen that expression on a boy’s face at the madrasah when Ardil had quoted all his verses correctly. On the way home, the boy had tripped Ardil, and he’d hurt his ankle.

  Suddenly, the girl smiled. Razaq let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

  “You are still new,” she said. “There is time to get to know each other.” Then she paused. “Today is a special day—Eid-ul-Adha— but you will not be celebrating since you are locked in here.”

  Razaq couldn’t decide why she was pointing out the obvious: was she sorry about it or being mean? She left the room with a wink. He’d had no idea girls could be so forward.

  “And,” she put her head back in the room, “you empty that bucket in the latrine in the courtyard. When you are allowed out, that is. In the meantime, the jamadarni will do it each morning.” She grinned, shut the door and shot the bolt across.

  Razaq ate the curry using the chapatti to scoop it up as he always did; it was cold. So was the chai, but he
drank it anyway. In the mountains, he had helped his father slaughter the goat for the sacrifice of Eid-ul-Adha to remember Ibrahim almost sacrificing his son Ismail, but God provided a ram in time. Last year, Razaq’s mother had divided the meat for their neighbors, and he took some to Ardil’s house. His mother made a delicious curry from the goat, and they ate well for three whole days. His father had praised not only his wife’s cooking but also Razaq for raising such tasty meat.

  Razaq stood and paced the length of the room. He had never been locked in such a small space. Even though he couldn’t get out of the white house, he could still walk down the hallway, sit in the dancing room, watch TV. Now he did feel like a wolf. A wolf in a cage would yearn for the mountains, the freedom to run and hunt. It would snarl and fight the bars at first, but eventually the futility would kill it as surely as a bullet would. The freedom of the mountains was so much a part of Razaq that he was frightened of what he would become without it.

  Chapter 19

  Each morning, the door opened and a woman in rags came in to take Razaq’s latrine bucket. She must be the jamadarni, Razaq thought. He had never seen one before, but he’d heard that they swept the streets in cities and emptied commodes and garbage bins. He curled up tighter under the cotton-filled quilt like he used to when he was little. He would have done anything right then to see his mother come into the room, bend over him, and pull his ears to rouse him up to take the goats to a new field.

  He woke later to find a tray of food on the floor by the bed, but he didn’t bother to eat it. A cockroach crawled on the rim of the curry dish; orange oil congealed around the edges. Perhaps he could stay asleep forever. He closed his eyes.

  A knock on the door woke him, but he ignored it. It came again. It would be that terrible girl. Then he remembered how she had barged in; she wouldn’t knock. He heard his name called. It didn’t sound like Neelma. He pulled back the quilt and padded to the door. He pulled on the knob and miraculously it opened.

  Tahira stood there. “Razaq,” she said, “you look dreadful.”

  He half-grinned. “Shukriya, kind princess.”

  Her face darkened. “Don’t call me that.”

  He sobered. “I am sorry.”

  She touched his arm. “I knew you wouldn’t like to be locked up. Mrs. Mumtaz did it because you’re a boy, and she needs to be sure you will cooperate.” She stumbled over “cooperate” and Razaq frowned. He could hear Mrs. Mumtaz’s words in Tahira’s mouth. “I told her if she let you out in the afternoons, you would do the right thing.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.” He imagined the begging Mrs. Mumtaz would have made her endure.

  “But look at you—you are so dark and sad. You have lost your light, like you’ve been under a rock all week.”

  Razaq remembered Zakim saying he had light in his eyes. “Has it truly been a week?” he asked.

  “Almost.”

  “Does Mrs. Mumtaz know you are here?”

  She nodded. “You can’t have breakfast with the girls, but you can sit in the courtyard later on, or go on the roof if the girls go outside.”

  Razaq felt a lifting sensation inside him. “You are a true friend, Tahira.” It made her smile. “Have you . . . have you started work yet?”

  The smile faded. “I had to start dancing last night. I danced in the room with the women and girls, and then I danced for a man in my room. After that,” she said softly, “another came.”

  “I am sorry,” Razaq said. “I wish I could do something.”

  Her eyes were large. “I pray to Yesu and I feel less.” Then she said, “I never dreamed this. I wanted to go to high school. There is a boarding school for Christian girls in the mountains. My friend Hadassah went—an Angrez paid for her fees. That would have happened for me, too, for I gained the same marks as Hadassah. Then I would become a teacher. After that . . .” Her voice trailed off, but Razaq knew what should have come after: a shadi, a wedding. “None of that will happen now,” she whispered.

  Razaq didn’t trust himself to say anything. The anger that men like Mr. Malik could take everything away from girls like Tahira rose up behind his eyes and consumed him. He could have punched the wall, but he didn’t want to frighten her.

  Instead he said, “I was meant to be married in three years.”

  She frowned at him. “Aren’t you too young?”

  He glanced up the corridor before he said, “Boys marry young in the mountains, at seventeen even. I am older than Mr. Malik thinks. I just didn’t tell him. I got away with it because I am not tall.”

  “You are growing,” she said. “You are taller than when you first came to Mr. Malik’s house.” Then she added thoughtfully, “All I can hope for is to become a tawaif, a high-class prostitute, with only one man looking after me. It is a kind of shadi.” She made a sad sound. “The only way out of this life now would be to marry, but who will marry a girl like me?”

  Razaq wanted to say that he would like to, but would it change everything if he told her? Now she knew he was older than she was, she might keep away from him, and they both needed this friendship.

  “What was your dream?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Look after the land we worked and build up a herd of sheep from our ram Peepu that every man in the mountains would want for his own herd. But the earthquake changed all that.”

  “I must go,” she said suddenly, as if she heard a noise. “I will try to see you if you come to the courtyard.”

  Razaq didn’t have a chance to check out the courtyard because Mrs. Mumtaz visited him next.

  “I didn’t think you would like to be locked in, but that is what will happen if I have any tuklief from you.” She put a folded shalwar qameez and a towel on the bed. “Wash and put this on. I see you have your bottles of oil. Good. A customer will come shortly. At first there will only be a few customers until it becomes known we have a malishia.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do a good job and make me happy.”

  Razaq thought it was a good time to ask about his pay. “Will you be putting aside money for me each time?”

  “God, you mountain people think you own the world, don’t you?”

  “With respect, bibi, Mr. Malik put aside money for me each time a customer came. Do you have it?”

  She stared at him so long that Razaq couldn’t tell whether he’d offended her or if she would start laughing. Finally, she said in a strangely controlled voice, “Is that what he told you?”

  “Ji.”

  “He didn’t give me your little bank account, so you had better start afresh. Teik hai, I can put aside money for you, but half of what you earn has to go to Malik, and half to me for looking after you and housing you. I can put away twenty rupees each time.”

  “But the customer pays so much more, and I am the one doing the work.”

  She put a hand on the door and looked back at him. “But you do not work for yourself, do you? Malishia work is a very profitable business, and this is the first I’ve heard of one working for someone else.”

  “I could work for myself,” Razaq said.

  “I’m sure you could, but Malik needs his lakh first. That will take twice as long since you are working here.”

  She smiled, showing her jackal fangs, then swung out of the room as though she was as young as Neelma. Razaq listened carefully, but there was no sound of a bolt drawn across. It was amazing how good that felt: he could open the door if he wanted.

  Instead, he washed himself and combed his hair, put on the clean suit of clothes. It was embroidered with light pink thread and had a neck shaped like a valley. His father always wore qameezes with buttons and collars, and so had he. Then his door opened and a good-looking young man ushered in an older man. The younger man saluted Razaq before he closed the door again.

  The customer stood by the door. “I’ve never had a massage before,” he said, “but I have hurt my shoulder. Could you ease it?”

  Razaq was lost for words for a moment. “You want an upper b
ack massage?” he finally said.

  The man nodded.

  “I shall try. Please, take off your qameez and lie here.” Razaq spread the towel on the bed.

  The man winced as he took off his shirt and lay down. As Razaq worked on the man’s shoulder, he felt his first twinge of self-respect since he had entered Mr. Malik’s house. He would like to be able to make people feel better in this way. His mother had a talent with herbs yet Razaq had never paid attention. He thought it was women’s business, for his mother was called upon if a friend was giving birth. He massaged the rest of the man’s back as well—he was sure it would all be connected. The man groaned, but he didn’t sound displeased.

  When it was finished and the man put on his shirt, he smiled. “It feels much better. Thank you, what is your good name?”

  “Razaq.”

  He felt a prickling behind his eyes; that was the way his father asked the name of a man. None of his customers had ever thanked him like that either, and there had been no “whatever.” If only all his customers could be like this one.

  “If I get any more pain I shall return,” the man said.

  When the door opened, Razaq saw the young man sitting on the floor in the hallway. He stood up to escort the customer outside.

  “Who are you?” Razaq asked when the young man returned.

  “I am Bilal and I am your madadgar, your helper.” He grinned. “Actually, now that men are coming into the house in the afternoons to see you, I have to provide security.”

  Razaq’s mouth dropped open. “Truly?”

  Bilal was a heavy young man. Even though his voice sounded like a boy’s, Razaq could imagine him “providing security” like Murad did, but he was nicer than Murad.

  “Mrs. M doesn’t want any trouble,” Bilal said. “Besides, it beats sitting around. I am here in the evenings as well to watch that no one hurts the girls. The customers need to know there is a man in the house.” He grimaced.