‘It’s okay, Daru,’ Mumtaz says. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back soon.’
I continue to glare at the pimp, my heart pounding. I wonder if Mumtaz would be impressed if I beat the hell out of him.
‘Please, Daru,’ she says. ‘You don’t know how hard it was to arrange this interview.’
‘It isn’t safe for you to be here alone,’ I tell her.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, tossing me the car keys.
‘Why can’t I come?’
She tilts her head to one side, smiling like she wants to rumple my hair. ‘You look so disappointed. Let me ask her. If she agrees, I’ll come back for you.’
Before I know it, Mumtaz is running off with a giant pimp into some back alley in Heera Mandi and I’m sitting alone in her car. I am such an idiot for doing this. What will I tell Ozi if anything happens to her?
She isn’t gone for long, but I’m already imagining an elaborate rescue scenario when she reappears. ‘You can come,’ she says. ‘But only if you promise not to do anything macho.’
‘I promise.’
I have to walk quickly to keep pace with Mumtaz and the pimp. We pass a few men in the alley: satisfied customers, judging by their vacant smiles. Definitely stoned. Maybe even a little heroin. One is fastening his nala with both hands.
Then we enter a building, climb two flights of steps, pass through a door that opens only when the pimp knocks out a little code, part a curtain of beads, and find ourselves in a room with a shuttered window, dimly lit by a clay oil lamp which sits on a low table.
Reclining against a long, round cushion is a middle-aged woman with finely plucked eyebrows, her fleshy body well proportioned and voluptuous. She takes a gurgling puff from the hookah beside her and with the tiniest dip of her chin indicates that we should sit.
‘It’s a man’s habit, but I love it,’ she says, taking another puff. Her voice is throaty, like Mumtaz’s, but much deeper.
Then she points one henna-decorated finger at me. ‘Have I seen you before?’
‘No,’ I say.
The woman chuckles. ‘Of course not. Your father, perhaps, but not you.’
A disturbingly young girl with long eyelashes brings in tea. She wears bells on her ankles that chime as she walks, and I find myself hoping this is the only service she’s made to provide, although I doubt it very much.
‘You’re not bad-looking,’ the woman says to Mumtaz, who smiles and lowers her gaze politely. ‘A nice face. And good hips. But your breasts aren’t generous. You should eat more.’
Mumtaz starts to laugh. ‘They’re bigger than they were. I’ve fed a boy.’
‘With those?’ The woman considers. ‘Perhaps it’s because you have broad shoulders that they seem small.’ She smiles. ‘Are you looking for work?’
Mumtaz flashes a sly grin. ‘Your tea is delicious, Dilaram.’
‘Thank you. Like all things in my profession, it is a learned art.’
‘How did you come to begin learning?’ Mumtaz asks, slowly taking out a minicassette recorder.
Dilaram laughs solidly, her body rippling. ‘It’s quite a funny story really. I was a pretty girl, like this one here.’ She smiles at our adolescent tea server. ‘Only younger. The landlord of our area asked me to come to his house. I refused, so he threatened to kill my family. When I went, he raped me.’
Mumtaz shuts her eyes.
Dilaram chuckles. ‘I was so skinny. Not like a woman at all.’
‘He paid you?’ Mumtaz’s voice is so soft I can barely hear her.
‘No.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He kept making me come. He let his sons rape me. And sometimes his friends. One of them was from the city. He gave me a silver bracelet.’
‘Why?’
‘He said it was a gift. Then I became pregnant.’ She laughs. ‘Imagine, my mother was also pregnant at the time.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘The landlord told me the man from the city wanted to take me to Lahore to marry me. I didn’t believe him. But the villagers told me it was the only way to recover my honor, so I went.’
‘Did he marry you?’
‘No. He took me to a hakim who ended my pregnancy. Then he told me he had bought me from the landlord for fifty rupees. He said I would have to give him fifty rupees if I wanted to go back to my village.’
‘But you didn’t have the money.’
Dilaram chuckles. ‘He brought me to Heera Mandi and made me have sex with men until he had his fifty rupees.’
I look at Mumtaz, but she doesn’t notice me. The women are completely focused on each other.
‘Then did he let you go?’
‘No. He told me the villagers would not accept me back because I had lost my honor. I believed him. The others knew stories of girls who had returned to their families and were killed by their fathers or their brothers. So I stayed on. I worked for many years, until I was no longer young and had few clients. By then the man had grown old. He needed my help to run this place. Once it was clear to the girls and the clients that I was in charge, he died. Some people said I poisoned him.’ She laughs silently, shuddering.
I light a cigarette as the interview continues, and not seeing an ashtray, I tip the ash into the palm of my hand. Dilaram seems a little too well-spoken for an uneducated village girl, sounding more like a wayward Kinnaird alumna to me, actually, and I begin to wonder whether she’s making up her story as she goes along.
Occasionally I turn to look through the curtain of beads behind us. The giant pimp observes us closely, his arms crossed in front of him. I don’t see any of Dilaram’s prostitutes or their clients, but through the walls I hear sounds which convince me that business is continuing despite our presence.
When the interview is over, Dilaram watches us go, laughing to herself. Our eyes meet for a moment, and I’m startled by the anger in her glance.
Neither Mumtaz nor I say anything until we’re on the canal. She’s driving fast, shifting up through the gears, and I want to ask whether she believes Dilaram’s story, but something in her expression makes me think better of it.
I light a cigarette, the last from her pack, and pass it to her.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says.
She passes the cigarette and we share it, each taking a few drags before passing it back. Soon we’re back in New Muslim Town, near my house. I want to touch her, to make some connection before she drops me off and I’m alone again. But she does it for me.
She pulls up to my gate and stops. Then she turns and kisses me on the cheek, her hand curling around the back of my head, touching my neck and my hair. We stay like that for a moment, and I don’t move, my arms at my sides, afraid of doing anything to make her leave. But she leans away from me and smiles, and I have to get out. We don’t say goodbye.
I watch the taillights of her car flash red, and then she’s gone around a turn. I know I’m standing still, but I feel like I’ve stumbled and I’m starting to fall.
The day after I become privy to the secret of Zulfikar Manto, I find myself in a suit and tie, my shoes shining more brightly than new coins in a beggar’s bowl.
Butt saab is a master of the French inhale. He sits behind his desk, smoke slipping out of his mouth and up his nostrils, and watches me with the half-lidded, red-eyed superiority of a junior civil servant, which I’m told he once was. A flick of his tongue sends a tight gray ring drifting over my curriculum vitae. Mercifully, it disperses before reaching me.
‘Normally, I wouldn’t have agreed to see you,’ he says. ‘We have a hiring freeze in place at the moment. But your uncle is a friend, so I’m making an exception.’
Eight banks, eight c.v.’s, seven flat-out rejections. This is my first actual interview. ‘Thank you, Butt saab.’