Amal Unbound(13)

Closing in on me.

Flinging open the kitchen door, I rushed into the backyard, past the workers in the sugarcane fields, past the tractors, their noise blurring into the distance.

“Amal! Wait!” Seema raced after me.

But I didn’t stop. I kept running, as if the farther I went, the farther I could leave my destiny behind.





Chapter 14





Over my dead body.” My mother’s voice was low, almost a growl.

My sisters and I lingered by the closed entrance of my parents’ bedroom. It had now been two days since Jawad Sahib visited our home and my parents began arguing without end.

“You discuss this as though there’s a choice,” my father said. “Is our daughter not dear to me also? Be reasonable.”

“So we give up our respect? She goes off to become a servant, and what becomes of her? And what about the rest of our girls? They are young, but think of their futures. Who will marry a girl whose family has been shamed like this?”

“I spoke with the village elders. Our neighbors feel sympathy, not judgment, toward us. This won’t change anything for the other girls. Besides, it could have been worse. It’s not as if she’ll be out in the fields. She’ll be a servant in that house. And Jawad Sahib gave me his word; he won’t harm Amal.”

“His word? His word can change with the tides. What need does he have to keep his promises? You’re the one who took loans from a viper without breathing a word to me. You fix it.”

“Do you hear yourself? When the rains came five years ago and destroyed all the wheat before we could harvest it, or when the drought shriveled the sugarcane to dust last year, how do you think we survived? A miracle? I did what I had to do to protect this family.”

“I would rather have died than owe him a thing. And thanks to you, we owe him our daughter.”

“Who doesn’t owe him money? Make the monthly payments and there’s no problem. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t decided to stop functioning. Children were running this home. What else could we expect?”

There was a long silence. Then my mother wept.

I walked away from the door and into my bedroom. I wished Seema was home from school. My stomach hurt more and more these days. My guilt was hollowing me from the inside out.

The door creaked open. In a place so filled with people, spaces seldom stayed empty for long. But it wasn’t one of my little sisters who walked inside. It was my father.

He sat next to me on my bed, his eyes fixed on his sandals.

He had avoided me since we last talked, but sitting next to me now, his eyes damp, his shoulders hunched, he didn’t look angry. He looked like my father.

“I shouldn’t have taken money from him,” he said. “I was desperate. He preys on people in their moments of weakness. I thought I’d pay it back with the next harvest, but the debt kept growing. I owed money on what I owed. He told me I could take my time. I thought he was generous. Now I know the truth. How else to keep us forever under their thumb?” His eyes locked into mine. “Do you know how hard your grandfather worked to buy this little patch of land?”

“I know,” I whispered.

“When I was your age, we went hungry for months, saving everything we could. My father wanted us to be our own masters. To have something to pass down to future generations. I’m the only son in my family; it’s up to me to keep this land ours and honor your grandfather’s memory. Does everything our family worked for come to an end now? This isn’t what any of us want.”

“Abu, I can’t leave. What if I never come back?” I pushed down a sob.

“Never come back?” He placed his arm around me. “You think I’d let you go away forever? He wants his money. I’ll get him his money. I swear on my life I will get you home as soon as I possibly can. I’ll make things right.”

“How long?” I wiped a tear. “How long will I live there?”

“A few weeks. A month at the most. You won’t be there long.”

I looked at the pile of books in the corner of my room. A month ago, I washed the chalkboard with Miss Sadia. I sat with Omar on the fallen tree. I was going to be a teacher.

How could everything as solid as the earth my grandfather fought for crumble so easily beneath my feet?





Chapter 15





Jawad Sahib’s driver would be here any minute.

My suitcase was packed and resting by my bed. My mother had lent me the aluminum-cased one from her own wedding dowry. She filled it to the brim with clothing, nuts, and dried fruits.

There was a tap on my bedroom door, and then Hafsa entered. She closed the door and approached me. “I was thinking about it last night,” she whispered. “What if you ran away? Maybe hid in my house?”

“Hafsa, I couldn’t do that.”

“My parents wouldn’t even need to know,” she said. “My closet is pretty big. Nobody would ever guess you were at my place and it could give us some time to figure out what to do next.”

“I can’t. It wouldn’t be safe, not for me and definitely not for you,” I told her.

“But that’s what friends do.” Hafsa’s eyes watered. “You would do the same for me.”