Spirit of a Mountain Wolf (6 page)

Razaq had to race for naan again that afternoon. This time, he only took a rupee of his own money. On the way back, he was relieved to see Saleem’s bus had gone. The boy who had been cleaning the windows was sitting on the ground eating a cold chapatti.

“You got away from Saleem.” The boy said it matter-of-factly. “You haven’t been here long?”

Razaq shook his head. The boy was a few years younger than he was, but he had a worn expression, as though he had lived most of his life already. “You work for Saleem? Clean his bus?”

The boy nodded.

“Do you get much money for that?”

The boy shrugged. “Some. It is enough to buy flour and salt to take home.”

“You have a family?” Razaq squatted beside him and handed him a piece of his naan.

“My father is crippled now and cannot work. I have sisters.” The boy swallowed. “This naan is tasty. My father doesn’t ask what I do, just that I bring money home.”

“Working on the bus is good?”

The boy looked up and Razaq was shocked to see the bleakness in his eyes. “It is not just the cleaning and getting chai. Saleem protects me from the other men.”

Razaq nodded. “Kazim did that for me today.”

“Kazim is just protecting his property.” The boy paused. “I have to do anything Saleem wants, sometimes it is every day. I thought I would have a rest from it today when he saw you.”

Razaq rocked back onto the balls of his feet and blew out a breath. “He does that with you? You let him?”

Defiance sparked in the boy’s face. “What else can I do? I have no skills, I cannot even read, and I have to feed my mother and sisters. Better me than them.”

“Kazim doesn’t do that to me.”

The boy’s eyes held no pity. “It is just a matter of time.”

Razaq thought about it as he washed the dishes throughout the night. His friend Ardil came to mind. Ardil’s family were their closest neighbors, but then Ardil was sent to live with one of the khan’s friends, all his schooling and upbringing paid for. Now Razaq wondered what Ardil’s life had really been like in that stranger’s house. Had Ardil seen a look in that man’s eyes like Razaq saw in Saleem’s, as if he were a goat about to mount a she-goat?

Kazim wouldn’t let him go, he knew that now, not when he had paid so much money. To find his uncle, he would have to sneak out when Kazim was asleep in the early hours of the morning. He would have to pick the best day. At least he had his father’s purse. He could feed himself until he found his uncle and got another job.

Days dragged by. Razaq’s time was so used up he had no energy to think about leaving. He was too tired to do anything early in the morning except collapse onto his blanket. He kept telling himself that he would be used to the hard work soon, and then he would have enough energy to leave, but it seemed as though the more he got used to the work, the more he had to do. He was starting to feel the way Aslam looked: thin and tired. Each morning he’d wake to find Aslam preparing the food. Aslam never did anything quickly, which was the cause for numerous cuffs over the head from Kazim. Razaq received his share, too, if he was too long coming from the tandoor oven.

When he had been there a week, Razaq asked Kazim for his pay. “Can I have what is owed me?”

Kazim was standing at the stove; he whipped around and grabbed Razaq around the neck with one hand. “What’s owed you? I’ll give you what is owed you.” His hand tightened around Razaq’s neck. Razaq gagged. “You get no wages until the money I paid for you is made up.” He grinned as he released Razaq. “And that will take years.”

Razaq coughed and tried again. “The money you paid was commission, not my wages.” His voice ended in a squeak.

Kazim pulled back his arm and smacked Razaq across the face. “You ungrateful shaitan. I am feeding you, you have a place to sleep, and you have work to do.” For each of those things he hit Razaq over the head. “What more do you want? Most boys have none of this. You should be thanking me for saving you from the streets. Do you know what they do to you out there?” He leaned closer to Razaq. “They gouge your eyes out. Those green eyes would make a rupee or two. Or they take your kidney to sell and forget to sew you up again. Do you want that?” Kazim pulled Razaq’s head up. Blood ran from his nose. “What do you say, boy?”

Razaq saw the look in Kazim’s eyes, noticed his hand still curled. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

“I did not hear you.”

“Shukriya, janab.” Razaq said it louder and scowled.

Kazim relaxed, stood back a step. “It would be a pity to break that mountain spirit, but by Allah, I will if I have to. And I can, do you understand?”

Razaq managed to get rid of the scowl.

“Go and do your work, and don’t get any ideas beyond yourself. You work for me, I look after you. That is all there is to it.”

Razaq didn’t like the sound of Kazim looking after him. Saleem looked after his boy, too, but what sort of care was that?

The next morning when Razaq woke, Aslam’s back was toward him. He checked his father’s purse. When he opened it, he let out an exclamation of horror.

Aslam didn’t even turn. “What is wrong with you?” he said.

“My money. It’s gone.”

Aslam shrugged. “We are not allowed to keep money.”

“You took it,” Razaq said, getting into a crouch.

Aslam kept chopping coriander. “He made me.” He didn’t even sound defensive or sorry.

Razaq stared at his back. Did Aslam have any spirit left? A thought suddenly struck him. “Does Kazim skewer you?”

Aslam shook his head. “Kazim doesn’t act like that.”

Razaq glanced down at his father’s empty purse, then pulled up his head as Aslam carried on. “One of the drivers does.”

Razaq pulled Aslam around to face him. “You must tell Kazim. He will stop it—” The words froze on his tongue. Tears were dribbling down Aslam’s face.

“Kazim gets paid every time.”

“But are you not his nephew?”

“I don’t know. He calls me that.”

“But that makes Kazim a . . .”

“Ji, a dala. He finds boys for men who want them.”

“He stopped Saleem doing it to me.”

Aslam’s shoulders drooped. “He must have big plans for you then.” His gaze dropped to Razaq’s purse. “Sorry about your money.”

“It was two months’ wages at least.”

“Not here it wouldn’t be. I will never pay off my debt. My father thought he was being paid for an apprenticeship. That is what he thinks I am doing all day—training to be a cook.”

“You go home each night. Why do you come back?”

“We need the money—every time I am skewered, Kazim gives me twenty rupees.” He shrugged. “If I was not working for Kazim, it would be someone else. At least he looks after me.”

“Does he?” Razaq said, then regretted it. What could Aslam do? His family would probably be attacked if he ran away from Kazim. Razaq sighed. At least he didn’t have a family who could be held to ransom for his actions. Nor was he going to wait around to be treated like a goat. He gave Aslam a half-smile. “I am going to find Uncle Javaid. He works in a cloth shop in Moti Bazaar.”

Razaq thought of all the things he knew about his uncle. He was his father’s younger brother. He lived near Raja Bazaar. His wife, Amina, was a girl from the mountains, too, and Uncle Javaid had come home to marry her. Amina was Feeba’s cousin. Razaq had been about the age of his sister Seema at the time of the wedding. He remembered the huge degs of curry and rice the barbers had cooked, the music, the men dancing, the guns shooting in the air for joy. His uncle had looked like a prince in a pearled turban as he danced with him. “You’re a good dancer, you’ll be doing this one day, Razaq,” he had said, and grinned, but he’d looked nervous, too. Razaq had gone into the women’s tent to see Amina; to his young eyes she had looked like a houri from Paradise. He had always wondered if Feeba would grow up to look like that. He remembered the body they had recovered at the school. There had been too much blood for him to see Feeba’s face.

He shook his head clear. Yes, he’d leave today, on his trip to the tandoor oven, money or no money. He’d take the rupees for the naan and be done with it.

As Javaid came down the mountain, he noticed colored boats with loud tractor engines carrying food supplies docking at the village. A few Western people from the boats brought the supplies to shore. Tents were lined up near the river, and he strolled down there, but without calling outside the tent flaps, he couldn’t tell if anyone he knew was inside. He carried on past the tents until he came to the end of the rows. A woman was tending a fire with a saucepan bubbling above it, no doubt a meal for when the fast ended. The woman saw him and quickly covered her face with her shawl. She looked familiar, like one of Amina’s aunties.

“Auntie ji?” he said.

She glanced up at him. “Nadeem?”

“No, I am his brother. Have you seen him?”

She shook her head slightly.

“Have you had much loss?” he asked gently.

“All my family, except my son.”

“I am very sorry to hear that.”

She brightened. “But my son has gone to the city to get a job. He will return with money to build me a house.”

Javaid stared at her in pity. If she was the aunt he thought she was, she had suffered greatly. She wasn’t making sense at all. How could one young man make enough money to build a house? He excused himself and walked toward some tents where children were playing soccer. He quickened his steps. There was a colorful sign saying:
You have the right to play
. He frowned—it sounded like a Western outfit.

“Yes?” A young white woman was inside the tent with a group of girls. Like a flock of birds taking flight, the girls covered their heads with one sweep of their hands. The woman was startling to look at, and he averted his eyes.

“I am sorry to intrude, but I am looking for my family,” he said in English.

The woman asked an older girl to take the class, then she said to Javaid, “Come with me.” She took him to another tent where a man sat at a desk.

“I am looking for Nadeem Khan’s family,” Javaid said to him.

The man opened a book that looked like a ledger. “We are trying to keep track of who survived,” he said, crinkling his forehead. He checked on many pages while Javaid waited, then finally shook his head.

Javaid wished the man would look again. “They had children: a boy, Razaq, about fourteen, and two younger girls, Seema and Layla?”

“Did you say Razaq?” the woman said. Her English was fast and difficult to understand. “A boy named Razaq came here.”

“Razaq Nadeem Khan?” Javaid hardly dared hope.

She thought a moment. “I don’t know, he didn’t say. He was helping for a day or two, but he hasn’t returned.”

Javaid glanced at the book. “Would you not have written it down?”

The man looked up. “I only started the records yesterday.”

Javaid addressed the woman again. “What did this Razaq look like?”

The woman smiled. She was looking into his face openly as only Western women did. Javaid had to deal with such women in the shop sometimes; they even spoke to him if their husbands were with them, but he knew they didn’t mean any harm. It was just the way they were raised.

“He had the most unusual green eyes,” the woman said. “Good looking, helpful, and respectful.”

Javaid was so aghast he forgot his manners and stared at her. Green eyes? Didn’t he himself have light-colored eyes? And respectful? She had just described practically every boy in the mountains. Only politeness stopped him from cursing. How would he find Razaq? With no maulvi, he couldn’t get a message out.

He turned to the man. “Who is giving the azan, the call to prayer?”

“Wazir Ahmad, the maulvi’s son. He is living behind the mosque.”

Javaid inclined his head to the young woman without looking at her directly this time and retreated to the village. He bought a chicken kebab and ate it with a chapatti by the side of the road. He stripped the chunks of meat from the bamboo skewer and slowly ate each piece wrapped in strips of the bread. The food in Kala Dhaka was the best he had ever eaten. Food in the city could never match it for freshness and taste.

He wiped his hands and hurried on toward the mosque. “Janab!” he called at the door.