Karachi Raj

“Aiy, Seema, open the door! What, thieves will come and rob you, so you have to hide?”

Hafiz’s nineteen-year-old sister, the unacknowledged pride of the Basti, was hiding out. Late afternoon, when her parents and brother were at work, was a precious time to study. She loved solitude. But neighbors had other ideas.

Mithi bai was having a Qur’an-khwani for her son’s circumcision. He was eight years old, late for the ritual. The humiliation the poor boy would undergo! He’d be in bed for a week, the target of jokes. He’d miss school, normally cause for envy, except in this instance. The word circumcision was never uttered publicly. Instead, euphemisms circulated. Sunnat. The way of the Prophet.

Seema opened the door. The wart on Mithi bai’s cheek was bigger than ever—it used to be the moon, now it was Jupiter. She had two daughters who were married to “office workers,” Mithi bai’s proudest claim.

“Amma isn’t home. How can I help you?”

“You can read the Qur’an, can’t you?” Mithi bai flung her chadar over her shoulder. “This college-shollege, if they can’t teach you the Qur’an, what good is it? The women who usually come mumble the words. They come for mithai, not blessings. They skip entire sections. Thirty women, thirty surahs, it should be over in an hour. Are you coming? Or do you have better things to do? Maybe some college function, with boys and girls?”

“I have nothing else to do.”

“I know you don’t look down on your poor neighbors. I’ve known you since you were a baby, running around naked in the lane, almost getting drowned in the rains. I always saved you. I knew you’d never become a nakhrey-wali looking down her nose at poor folks. We didn’t go to college. Nobody in our family ever went past Matric. We wake up at dawn, get in line for water, make nashta at our broken stove, put on ragged clothes, get in line for the bus, squeezed like ants in a matchbox, and so the day goes. How can you find time for college in all this jhamela?”

“You can’t.”

Mithi bai stepped inside. She looked as if she intended to rifle through the drawers of the lone cabinet, to detect any articles of luxury.

“Make me some tea,” she ordered Seema, settling on the charpoy.

She started looking at pictures of film stars in old magazines.

“This one, Reema, she’s grown so fat. They like fat girls in Punjab. They call it being healthy. They eat makhan and ghee, and have heart attacks at forty. One should respect one’s body. It’s the only one Allah has given you. If you lose an eye or a leg, can you ever replace it? I wanted my Rashid to be a doctor. He would have had to go to college, which is impossible for people like us. How would he go to college to learn to cure fat film stars, if he’s jammed in the bus every day to support his poor mother and father?”

Tea was ready. Mithi bai was sweating. “Turn on the fan, hai, the heat is killing your poor khala.” She took a sip. “First-class tea, rich and creamy. You’d make a first-class wife. Don’t be like other college girls who give up getting married for the sake of work. Job-shob, it’s here today, gone tomorrow. What lasts is family. When I’m old, my Rashid will be my support. He won’t be one of those modern boys who abandons his parents to please his modern wife in a modern home with modern children, living so far away no rickshaw can take you there.”

“When is the Qur’an-khwani?” Seema didn’t read the Qur’an well, but she couldn’t admit this to Mithi bai.

“Don’t change the subject!” Mithi bai smacked herself on the head. “You smart college girls, you make fools out of us. I was...