“They must be brought back. Girls can become prostitutes if they are on their own and the boys drug addicts. They can be taken in by unscrupulous individuals. There is a saying in Urdu: Dhukhia insaan to sher ka bhi bharosa kar leta hai. A lonely and distressed person will trust even a man-eating lion. In the past twelve months we have saved forty-seven of our youngsters from such a fate, and six wives who had left their husbands. One boy had decided to become a. . a. . a homosexual— please don’t mind my bad language.”
In the past twelve months alone? How long has this been going on? There is a sickness and a tightening at the base of Shamas’s throat. He wonders what else this person is involved in. Contract killing? Did he have anything to do with Chanda and Jugnu’s disappearance? Shamas is sure no one at the office knew anything about this before last week: when people come to the office asking for help because a daughter has left home or a son, they are told plainly that since the children are of age there is nothing legal that can be done; nor is it legal to disclose addresses and telephone numbers of women’s refuge centres. Do they call this man and his associates after they leave Shamas’s office in disappointment?
The man seems not to have read Shamas’s silence as hostile. “We’ll need photographs of Mah-Jabin and Ujala, of course, and National Insurance numbers. Credit card details too prove useful. Very little force would be used, I personally guarantee that.”
Shamas’s skin has become chilled: the man knows Mah-Jabin and Ujala’s names. “I know where my children are,” he hears himself telling the man. “Now excuse me. I really must leave.”
“We’ll be gentle. We do what the parents say. One mother and father wanted us to bring back the girl — who had run away a week before her arranged marriage to a decent-enough cousin from Pakistan — and they said we could use as much force as we liked but were not to hit her face because that would show in the wedding photographs and video. If we had to we should hit the body — which would be covered up with the wedding gown — or we could hit the head — where the veil and the hair would hide the bruises.”
“As I said, my children are perfectly happy and so am I.” He is trying to suppress his anger, his earlobes hot.
“You may be happy but is your wife?” A voice comes from behind Shamas.
He turns around and sees that two men are standing ten yards away from him, and behind them, a further ten or so sun-filled yards along, on a narrow cement path that cuts through the swathe of wild grasses and late-summer’s imperfect blossoms, is a car, three of its four doors open. Maple leaves glisten above it, those at the lower edge of the canopy moving rhythmically to and fro on their long stalks like the pendulum of a clock. All this is glimpsed in the sweep of the gaze, but Shamas’s eyes have returned to the two men because they have begun to walk towards him.
And the man who had been talking to him takes a step nearer to him too, aggressively. The two men arrive and in turn take his right hand into their own in an enforced shake, smiling.
He is not used to this: the people he has dealt with up until now have left their authority at the door when they entered his office. All three of these however are standing too close to him, and he is starting to tremble, experiencing a kind of vertigo and an unpleasant lightness in his feet — an awareness of being close to the edge of something.
He wonders whether Suraya’s husband could have sent these people.
Maintaining his composure — he does not wish to appear undignified in front of these strangers — he steps out of the cordon they seem to have made around him and begins to walk away at a controlled pace. But they, obviously unconcerned about what he may think about them, break into a little run as they try to keep up with him and he is brought to a halt as all three overtake him and block his way. It could almost be playfulness— but he is beginning to think that it is not a game but a blood sport.
One of the two who had been waiting behind him earlier says: “Shamas-ji, you are happy with the situation but your wife came to us several months ago, a year and a half ago to be precise, to see if we could track down her son Ujala, and before that, four or five years ago, she had wanted us to see if your daughter Mah-Jabin hadn’t fallen in with bad company. She told us in passing that she was devastated when Mah-Jabin left her husband, despite the fact that like every other decent mother she had told her daughter that the house you are going to — the house of your husband and in-laws — is Heaven but you are not to desert it even if it becomes Hell, that as far as the parents are concerned a daughter dies on the day of her wedding.”
The second of the new arrivals says, “Your wife did not want you to know about the fact that she had visited us obviously because you don’t have a mother’s heart in your breast and wouldn’t have understood. A mother misses her children when they run away so she wants them back.”
“Some women in the neighbourhood had put your wife in touch with us — she is, of course, a very polite and pious lady. In the end, on both occasions, she didn’t want to go through with it, but we were very distressed by her plight. She said her children were the other half of her heartbeat.”
“Now,” says the second new man, his face pitted around the mouth, scars from the beard of acne he must’ve had as an adolescent, “is it fair that you wish to deny other families the service your own family contemplated using not long ago? Why are you trying to blacken our name, asking awkward questions through your office? We are but humble slaves of our community.”
The more the man talks the more terrible it is for Shamas. Once again, and for an instant, he thinks this isn’t really happening, that his total disbelief will presently set reality straight and make these men vanish. He looks at the talking man’s empty hands as they are balled into fists that are now being aimed at his face, his head, his ribs. The newspapers fall from his grip. The other men join in with blows of their own. When he cries out in pain, they hit him harder, on the kidneys and belly, and he does not know where to put his hands. A metal finger ring grazes his face and the pain is as though a line had been drawn on his face in sulphuric acid.
The blows came harder and faster but then, as though he is being hit by a single person, they begin to come after measured pauses, the men deciding, calculating carefully where to hit him before doing so — they are obviously people who understand the reality of violence and inflicting pain.
He can no longer breathe through his nose and as he lies there, the newspapers, torn or whole, scattered all around him, he feels a mouth draw close to his face and say,
“This is just a mild warning. Next time we’ll deal with you in a Pakistani way. Watch out or I’ll crush you like this”—he makes a fist and squeezes it tighter—“and lick you off the palm of my hand.”
“And don’t go to the police about this — unless you want people to find out about what you have spent the whole summer doing with that whore of a woman at the bookshop.”
Another voice adds, “In that small room it must’ve been hot as a pistol that’s just been fired but, no doubt, the sweat these two worked up kept them cool.”
“He said earlier he had to be somewhere. Maybe the dirty shameless bitch is waiting for him over there as we speak, her fat tits at the ready, the knot of her shalwar’s drawstring loosened.”
There is the sound of laughter. “Perhaps we should go and see.”
“Look at him. He’s trying to growl at us. I think we are hurting his feelings by talking about her in this manner. She’s obviously so pure that angels can use her clothing as prayer mats. In fact that is why she’d take off her clothes and put them on the floor — to let the angels praise Allah on them — while he shoved his cock in her mouth or got her arsehole ready with fingers dipped in oil.”