Free The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji

resigned—he was used to my odd-hour homecomings, along with the regular payments I made him to lie to my grandfather about them—he opened the gate. I drove in and parked on the driveway, noticing, for the first time, the race going on in my chest, between heartbeats and ragged breaths. Sharif Muhammad came in from his prayers just behind me, walking into the compound by the pedestrian gate. He saw me sitting in the car, my head pressed against the steering wheel.
    “Sadiq Baba? Are you all right?” he asked loudly, knocking at my window.
    I raised my head and looked at him. I must have looked wild-eyed. I didn’t answer him. He reached to open my door, which was unlocked, not even properly closed.
    “What’s wrong, Sadiq Baba? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    I sat there, unable to move.
    He sighed, a long, hard sigh of disapproval. The chowkidar had not felt obligated to keep my secrets from Sharif Muhammad, who lectured me regularly about my drinking, words I ignored, words I laughed at, in his face. Sharif Muhammad reached into the car and helped me get out, mistaking the reason for my shaky state, understandably—the smell of my breath must have been all the evidence he needed. He was walking me toward the door of the house, trying to get me to speak all the while, when he stopped, suddenly, at the front of the car.
    “What’s this, Sadiq Baba?” he asked sharply.
    I looked down at where he was pointing—at the front bumper of the car, bashed and bloody. I heard myself moan and realized that I had been moaning all along.
    “That’s blood! Whose blood, Sadiq Baba?” He squeezed the arm of mine that he held, hard enough to hurt. “What did you do?”
    I started crying, unable to answer. I closed my eyes and saw them again. The woman on the pavement. The child kneeling beside her.
    Sharif Muhammad shook me and asked again, “Whose blood? Who did you hit? Where did it happen?”
    I mumbled an answer, suddenly remembering the street I’d been on. In Karachi, directions are given by landmark, because most of the streets have no name. So, I gave him directions that way—naming an ice cream shop, a newsstand, a bakery as signposts for him to follow.
    “Did you run away, Sadiq Baba?”
    His question was a formality. Later, I would be ashamed at the presumption in his words. He knew damned well I had run, without having to ask. And it didn’t surprise him that I had.
    He left me at the front door of the house, shoving me inside.
    “I will go. I will see what happened.” His voice was harsh and gentle at the same time, waylaying the objections he thought I might offer.
    This time, at least, I didn’t lower myself to his expectations. I nodded gratefully, still shaking. This was a line that he offered, I knew, to keep me from drowning. “Yes. Yes, go see, Sharif Muhammad. See if they need anything.” As soon as I said the words, I moaned again, out loud. The tone of my voice sickened me. The privilege in it. The patronage.
    I made my way to bed and fell asleep in my air-conditioned room, oblivious to the heat of the rising sun, oblivious to the life or death of the woman I’d hit, to the grief of the child I may have orphaned.
    I woke up from my dreamless, pampered sleep and made my way out into the lounge. Both of their backs toward me, I came upon Sharif Muhammad, returned from his errand, filling my grandfather in on the consequences of what I’d done.
    “She’s dead. Leaving behind a little boy.”
    “How old is the boy?” Dada asked.
    “Four or five. Younger than Sadiq Baba was when he came to live with you.”
    Dada stopped short his pacing, his hands behind his back. He frowned at Sharif Muhammad’s words.
    Sharif Muhammad didn’t flinch. He said, “I left the boy, still crying, in the care of the old imam of the masjid . The masjid on the street where his mother was killed. They will try to find out who she is—was. Who her people are.”
    “Hmm. Yes, the boy must be restored to