Mud City (6 page)

Shauzia recognized the language they spoke as English, and she dredged up
the English words she knew from when she had studied it in school.

“His name is Jasper,” she said.

The man and woman tried to get their sons into the store.

“I need work,” Shauzia said. She held out her hand for money,
in case they preferred to give her that.

“You speak English very well,” the woman said slowly. Then she
put a ten-roupee note in Shauzia’s hand. “Come, boys, let’s go
inside.”

That’s more like it, Shauzia thought, putting the money in her
pocket. When the family came out again, the little boys headed straight for Jasper.

“Can we take him home with us, Mommy?” one of the boys
asked.

“He belongs to this boy,” the woman said. The boy stuck out
his lower lip and held Jasper so tightly that Jasper had to shake the boy away.

The man gave Shauzia another ten-roupee
note.
“Buy some food for your dog, too,” he said. Then the family piled back into
the van and drove away.

Shauzia and Jasper stayed outside the grocery store for the rest of the
day, but they earned only a few more roupees. She bought some meat patties to share with
Jasper, and some nan. Then she went to meet the other boys.

They were using the old Christian cemetery as a camping place. It was
shady and cool during the day, and the weeds were soft to sleep on at night. The
gravestones all seemed to mark the graves of British soldiers who had died killing
Indians. Shauzia didn’t know which war that was. She didn’t suppose it
mattered.

“How did you do today?” Zahir asked. Shauzia held up the
bundle of nan. She didn’t say how much money she’d made.

One of the boys had some oranges he’d stolen off an old man’s
karachi. They ate together. Zahir commanded extra food from some of the children, but he
didn’t bother Shauzia.

“Hello, can I join you?” A small boy, his blue junk bag at his
feet, stood on the other side of the graveyard fence.

“Sure. Come on over.” Zahir went over to
him.

Shauzia knew what was coming.

“Swing your bag up first,” Zahir suggested. “It will be
easier for you to climb over.”

The small boy swung his junk bag up into Zahir’s waiting arms. Zahir
waited until the boy was almost at the top of the fence, then pushed him hard back onto
the sidewalk. The boy tried a few more times before he realized that his junk was gone,
and there was nothing he could do about it.

Shauzia didn’t join in the scramble for the stolen junk, but she
didn’t do anything to help the boy, either. She wasn’t afraid to fight
Zahir, but the last thing she needed was someone depending on her, expecting things from
her. She would never get to the sea that way.

“I look after myself. He can do the same,” she whispered to
Jasper as they settled down among the crosses and tombstones and went to sleep.

Each morning, Shauzia would leave the graveyard, sometimes taking Jasper
but usually leaving him in the shade with a pan of water
poured from
a tap outside the old church nearby. She would walk to the Saddar Bazaar or hitch a ride
to other parts of the city to look for work.

Moving around Peshawar so much, she quickly got to know the city. She knew
in which neighborhoods she’d most likely find work, which shops gave food away to
beggars at the end of the day, and which rich hotels had garbage bins that could be
broken into. She learned where there were outdoor water taps, where she could wash a bit
and get something to drink. She learned which parks she could nap in during the heat of
the day, and which parks had guards who would kick her out before she even got
comfortable.

If she was lucky, she worked. If not, she begged. Bit by bit, she kept
adding to the roupees in her money pouch.

“We’re getting closer to the sea,” she told Jasper one
evening when they were alone in the graveyard. She showed him the bundle of money. He
sniffed at it and wagged his tail. She put the money back in the pouch and hid it under
her shirt before any of the boys could return and see it.

“We don’t know these boys,” Shauzia
told Jasper. “All we know is that they’re hungry, and you can’t trust
hungry people. If they knew I had money, they’d steal it from me, just the way
I’d steal from them. Well, probably I would.”

Boys drifted in and out of the group. Shauzia didn’t always learn
their names. No one ever said much about themselves. Some things were too hard to talk
about

“Can you spare any roupees?”

By now, Shauzia could ask that question in Dari, Pashtu, Urdu, the
Pakistani language and English.

“As much as I hate begging, it’s worth coming here every
Sunday,” she told Jasper.

“Here” was the Chief Burger restaurant on Jamrud Road, near
University Town, where most of the foreigners lived. People who wanted food stood out on
the street and called their food orders through the windows. After they placed their
order, they had nothing to do but watch Jasper do his tricks.

The man who ran the burger stand liked Jasper. He gave him water and bits
of ground
meat. “I’ll make the burgers smaller today. If
the customers notice, it will be too late. I’ll already have their
money!”

Shauzia was happy that her dog was eating. She would have liked some meat
herself, but she didn’t ask, and it was never offered.

She didn’t know whether it was the church, or the pizza, or
Jasper’s tricks, but she always made a lot of money on Sundays. Sometimes she made
more than she did when she was working.

There were many regular customers at the Chief Burger. Shauzia remembered
them from week to week, and they remembered her – or, at least, they remembered
Jasper, since that was who they greeted first.

Shauzia always hoped they would give her a piece of pizza along with their
roupees, but they never did. Not even the people she saw often, like the couple in the
white van that she had first met outside the grocery store. Their two little boys cried
when they had to stop playing with Jasper and go home.

“Spare any roupees?” she called out.

“Would you like some money?” a man asked, coming up beside
her.

Adults ask such stupid questions, Shauzia thought.

“Yes, I need money,” she replied politely, holding out her
hand. “I am also looking for work.”

The man handed her a hundred-roupee note.

Shauzia thought her eyes would fall out of her head. She had never held
such a beautiful thing before.

“Come with me,” the man said. “I will give you a job and
then I will give you even more money.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Shauzia. “I will work very hard
for you. Come on, Jasper.” She bent down to pick up Jasper’s leash.

“Leave the dog,” the man said. He took hold of Shauzia’s
arm.

Jasper growled.

Shauzia tried to bend down to reassure him, but the man tightened his grip
and began to pull her along the sidewalk toward his car.

“Wait!” she said. “Just let me see to my dog.”

The man did not stop. He held her more tightly.

“You’re hurting me!” Shauzia cried.
Jasper, hearing the panic in her voice, started to bark at the man. But he kept pulling
at Shauzia.

“No!” She tried to pull away. “I don’t want to go
with you!”

A crowd began to gather. The crowd attracted the police.

“What’s happening here?” a policeman asked.

“This boy stole from me, one hundred roupees,” the man
said.

“I didn’t steal! He gave me the money!” Shauzia yelled.
“He tried to put me in his car, but I didn’t want to go.”

“Search him,” the man said. “You will find my
hundred-roupee note in his pocket.”

Shauzia didn’t want them searching her and taking the rest of her
money. She took the bill out of her pocket and held it out to the man.

“Take it back.”

One of the policemen took it.

“Evidence,” he said.

Then they grabbed hold of her. Jasper barked madly and threw himself at
the policemen.

Shauzia screamed and tried to fight back,
but the
police were bigger, and they threw her into the back of their van.

She looked out of the tiny window of the back door of the van in time to
see one of the policemen kick Jasper hard. Then the van pulled away, and she could see
nothing more.

“Empty your pockets.” The guard at the police station
pointed at the counter top. Shauzia looked around at the others in the room. They were
all men, sitting behind big desks, drinking soft drinks and watching her while fans
whirred overhead. No one moved to rescue her. She was the only child in the room, and
she felt very, very small.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” She had been insisting
that ever since the police threw her in the van.

“Empty your pockets!” the guard insisted. “Empty them,
or we will empty them for you.”

With shaking hands, Shauzia took the few roupees she’d earned
begging that day out of her pocket and put them on the counter.

The guard unfolded her magazine picture of the lavender field. He looked
at it, passed it around, then folded it back up.

“You can keep this,” he said. Then he
noticed the string around her neck. “What are you wearing?”

Shauzia pretended not to know what he was talking about, but it
didn’t work. He reached out and pulled up her money pouch, taking it right off her
neck. He opened it up and dumped the money on the counter in front of him.

Shauzia stared at all her roupee notes, the ones she had worked so hard to
earn, the ones that were going to take her to the sea.

With a sweep of the guard’s hand, they disappeared into a
drawer.

“That’s mine!” she shouted.

“What’s yours?”

“The money you took. It’s mine!”

“What would a boy like you be doing with so much money? You must be
a thief!”

Shauzia tried to leap over the counter to get at her money, but the
counter was too high, and the policemen were too big. They picked her up, and in the
next instant, she found herself being tossed into a cell.

She landed on something soft, then sprang right back to her feet. She
grabbed hold of the cell bars and tried to squeeze through them.

“You can’t keep my money!” she
yelled. “I earned it! It’s mine!”

One of the guards banged his stick against the bars, inches from her
clenched fists. Shauzia backed away.

“Quiet down, or nobody gets any supper.”

“I want my money!” she yelled at the guard’s back as he
walked away.

“Stop yelling. You’ll only make them angry,” a voice
behind her said.

Shauzia turned around. The cell was full of boys. Most looked a little
older. Some were around her age or a little younger. They were sitting on the floor,
staring up at her.

“Well, they made me angry,” Shauzia replied, kicking at the
bars. “What do I care if they’re angry.”

“Because they’ll take it out on all of us.”

“So sit down and shut up, or we’ll shut you up.”

Shauzia sank to the floor. The other boys had to shift around to make room
for her.

“I’m going to get my money back,” she said quietly. She
hugged her knees to stop trembling and scowled to keep from crying.

“Do you have any proof they took your
money?” one boy asked.

“Do you have proof you even had money?” another asked.

“I’ll get it back,” she repeated. Some of the boys just
laughed.

They don’t know me, she thought. They laugh because they don’t
know how determined I am.

Shauzia’s panic and rage gave way to discomfort as the afternoon
wore on. It was impossible to get comfortable in the cell. The air was hot and
didn’t move. She longed to lie down or lean her back against something, or stretch
her legs out in front of her. There were too many boys on the cement floor of the
cell.

Soon her legs were cramped and her back was sore.

The cell stank of unwashed bodies and other foulness. Shauzia found it
hard to breathe, and she wondered how the other boys were managing.

Maybe they’ve been in here so long they’ve gotten used to it,
she thought, just like I got used to the sheep.

She hoped she wouldn’t be in the cell that long.

For the first few hours, she jumped at every
little
noise that came from outside the cell – every time the phone rang in the outer
office, every time one of the guards walked past.

“Relax,” one of the older boys said. “You’re not
going anywhere.”

“How do you know?”

“Once you’re in here, you’re in here forever,” he
replied. “I was only six years old when they locked me up. Look at me now –
old enough to grow a beard soon.” The other boys laughed.

Shauzia thought they were probably just joking. The shepherds had joked
like that. They made fun of how clumsy she was with chores, or laughed at how one sheep
liked to butt her in the behind with his head.

Shauzia hadn’t minded. There wasn’t much else to laugh at. She
concentrated now on not letting her fear show on her face. Anger was good. Fear was
dangerous.

“If your family can bring in some money, the police might let you
go,” the boy next to her said in a quiet voice. “You won’t be here
forever. Don’t listen to them.”

“What do I care? I’ve been in jail lots of times.”

“You don’t look old enough to have done
anything lots of times,” an older boy said, and they laughed again.

“How long have you been here?” she asked the boy next to
her.

He shifted around a little and pointed to a group of scratches on the
wall.

“These are my marks, one for every night.” His was only one
group of scratches. There were other groups, all over the walls.

Shauzia counted the marks. He had been there almost three months. She
didn’t let on that she could count.

“I have no family,” the boy said, looking ashamed. “Not
here. They are back in Afghanistan. I came to earn money to get them out, but now I am
in jail. The policeman asks me, ‘Where are your papers?’ I have no papers.
My house was bombed. How could I have papers? So I just sit here.”