Amal Unbound(15)

“Come on,” she told me. “Let’s find Mumtaz. She’ll know what to do.”

“Well, good luck.” Bilal nodded to us before he hurried away.

I lugged my suitcase and tried to keep up with her, but it was hard not to get distracted. This house was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Back home I could touch my ceiling with my hand if I stood on a chair, but here the ceilings seemed to graze the sky. Grim-faced family members stared at me from photographs lining the egg-white hallways. Each room we passed was larger than the one before it, and all were filled with brilliant rugs covering marble floors. Light poured in through enormous windows.

I followed Nabila through a curved entrance down a new hallway. Everything was darker and shabbier here. Instead of marble floors, this part of the house had gray concrete. The cooled air of the main home was replaced here by hot musty air and the smell of frying onions.

A man in a faded shalwar kamiz holding a broom and a dustpan brushed past me as he headed toward the main house. A woman followed behind carrying a basket of laundry—pants and shirts and shalwar kamizes piled in a heap.

“Your arm any better?” the woman paused to ask Nabila.

“Oh.” Nabila glanced down. Only now did I realize her left arm had white gauze wrapped around it. “The burn looked worse than it was. The tray was too bulky and there were too may things on it.”

“Well, keep it bandaged for a week,” she said. “Make sure it doesn’t get worse.”

“I will,” Nabila said to the woman. “Did you find out how long Jawad Sahib’s going out of town for?”

“I know he’s leaving after dinner. Bilal just loaded a pretty big suitcase into his trunk. It’s got to be at least a week or two, but hopefully longer.” She smiled before continuing on.

Nabila ushered me farther down the narrow hallway and stopped at a rickety door. It creaked when she pushed it open.

“This is the only spare room, so it must be yours,” she told me. “You’re next to Shagufta, the woman I was just talking to.”

I took in the cramped, windowless space, empty except for the worn charpai. This wasn’t a bedroom. It was a prison cell. Beads of sweat prickled my forehead.

“What’s going on?” a voice said.

It was an older woman with a nose ring, like my mother’s.

“This is Mumtaz,” Nabila told me before turning to her. “I was looking for you. The new girl arrived”—she gestured toward me—“I didn’t know where to put her.”

“She’s going to be in the room next to Nasreen’s.”

“Nasreen Baji’s room?” Nabila stared at her.

“I know. She just told me,” Mumtaz replied.

“But why?” Nabila asked.

“How should I know?” Mumtaz glanced at my suitcase. “Bring that along with you into the kitchen for now. Nasreen wants you to get acquainted there. She’ll meet with you after dinner.”

I lifted my suitcase and pushed back my growing dread.

“It’s hard at first, I know,” Mumtaz said gently. “But you get used to it.”

Get used to it?

I thought of Safa and Rabia shrieking through the house, Lubna sleeping in my arms, the sound of Omar’s bicycle chime.

That was the life I was used to—and it felt as distant to this one as the stars in the night sky. The stars that could no longer guide me home.





Chapter 17





I trailed Mumtaz into a kitchen that featured a metal sink the size of a table. Fluorescent lights hung over counters that ran the length of the room. The windows against the far wall were cranked open, but the slight breeze did nothing to cool the hot, stuffy room. Just outside the window was a simpler verandah for the servants, with some threadbare charpais and stools stacked against a wall.

A girl who couldn’t have been more than nine years old chopped onions but paused to smile at me. Next to her, a man with a gray mustache stirred three different pots.

“The dishes,” Mumtaz said, and pointed to a towering stack in the sink. “Start on those.”

I rested my suitcase by the door and walked to the sink. Pressing down the faucet, cool water rushed against my hands, a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat.

“Officers gone?” the cook asked.

“Left a little while ago,” Mumtaz said.

“I hate serving him food after they leave,” he grumbled. “He finds something wrong with everything after they come.”

“I know. They have really been putting him on edge lately,” Mumtaz said.

“His father shouldn’t have given him so much responsibility if he’s going to be so thin-skinned.”

“If you think you have it bad, Hamid, think of Bilal,” Mumtaz said. “Poor guy is with Jawad most of the day and has the bruises on his arms to prove it. Be glad you’re mostly out of sight back here in the kitchen.”

“Never thought I’d say it, but I miss his father,” the cook said.

Mumtaz plucked cream-colored ceramic bowls and plates with gold trim out of the cupboards while the little girl ladled cholay, beef korma, and saffron-scented rice into serving platters.

“Can I help?” I asked when I had finished the dishes.

Mumtaz nodded to a pile of kebabs resting on a plate by the stove. “Get the kebabs from Hamid and put them out on one of the flat trays.”