Free The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa Page B

Qasim apologetically, but the girl was already looking past him.
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    He scouted the congested place for an access to Shahnaz’s upstairs apartment. He had no plan, but the shock of the target’s presence galvanized him. Discovering what appeared to be an
entrance, he groped his way along a narrow passage into the dank guts of the building.
    In a labyrinth of dingy tunnels, he kept looking for stairs. Stale air, poisoned by the stench of ammonia, frying onions, mustard oil and sweat suffocated him. He stumbled over a child defecating, and the discordant sound of music filtering through the walls was pierced by a distant wail. He groped for balance and his hands along the wall slid into grime. He looked into squalid rooms, nauseated by the reek of poverty and decay; the syphilitic reverse side of the tinsel. Qasim grew frantic. He ran blindly through the red betel-juice-stained corridors, brushing at cobwebs that clung to his skin.
    The thoroughfare issued into a slushy, unpaved gully. He had penetrated right through the building and the air he now breathed beneath the starry sky felt fresh as a pine-laden breeze.
    An old man sat on a charpoy vacantly puffing a hookah. A little further up, in the middle of the lane, was a structure of bamboo poles enclosed by scraps of jute sacking. Light filtered through a circle of men peering at the center. The grating, irregular chhum of payal-bells coming from it intrigued Qasim and he walked up to join the spectators. A man shifted, making room for him. The crude sack fence came up to Qasim’s chest. A woman, bells tied to one twisted ankle, was hobbling around in the small enclosure. Her short, thick-waisted body jerked grotesquely. Now and again, a man standing with her in the enclosure shouted, “ Naach, pagli !”—dance, madwoman—and jabbed her with a cane. At this she would raise her arms and twist her wrists in a grim caricature of dance movements. Her jaw hung slack in an expressionless face, and sick yellow eyeballs stared unseeing. Qasim was horrified. Would any of these men sleep with her, he wondered? This was nothing human. It was a sick excrescence. Did the
pimp think that by exercising the excrescence he could stir sensuality? The woman continued her monotonous, mechanical spasms, one hip jerking higher, jaws dribbling spittle. There was laughter, and Qasim realized they were mocking her. A man, obscenely shaking his body, called to her as to a monkey. A couple of men laughed, enjoying the sport. “Don’t touch her,” the man from inside warned when an arm reached across the fence.
    A spectator threw a coin into the enclosure. It lay half-hidden in the dust at her feet. Qasim threw an eight-anna bit and silently withdrew.
    He wanted to hasten to the glittering side of the building, back to the tinsel-dusted girls and the pink, spicy haze.
    Loath to reenter the inner hallways he walked until he came to a passage between the building and the next block. It was a mere gash, a slice of dark open to the sky, a channel for the sewage drain that flowed through it.
    Walking astride the drain to keep from touching the walls, Qasim was more than halfway across when a slit of light fell across the drain. It came from a dimly lit entrance. Qasim glanced casually through the open door. He hesitated a moment and then stepped inside.
    A dust-coated bulb barely lit the stone parapet fencing the steps. This side-entrance, he realized, led upstairs. Feeling his way through the gloom, Qasim carefully began to climb.
    â€œJust where do you think you’re going?”
    â€œUpstairs,” replied Qasim freezing in surprise. Only then did he notice two men sprawled on the landing at the top. They wore white lungis and Qasim could just make out the deeper shadow of achkan-coats beneath their turbans. He was glad of the murky light that masked his face. Recovering his composure almost immediately, and acting the part of a harmless buffoon, he set up