Amal Unbound(20)

“You don’t have to make fun of me! I’m just trying my best to fit in.”

“Looking like you’ll shrivel into dust at a few words isn’t fitting in. It’s only going to make things worse for you,” Bilal said. “We heard what happened today. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” I folded my arms. “I’m not going to sink to her level.”

“That isn’t fitting in,” Bilal replied. “That’s letting people take advantage of you. Talk back and hold your own. Or lose it forever.”

“I don’t need it forever!” I said. “And back home—”

“Except you’re not back home, you’re here,” the older man interrupted. His voice was neither harsh nor mocking. Instead it was filled with pity. “Pay attention. Learn. You decide how you will be treated.”

I walked back into the main house.

They were right.

My father would come and take me home any day now, but until then I had to play by the rules of this house. And that meant I had to stand up for myself.





Chapter 21





Let the kitchen staff know they don’t need to bother with my lunch,” Nasreen Baji said the next morning. “I won’t be back until dinnertime.”

“Yes, Baji,” I said. “And Mumtaz said she’ll show me the settings for the iron today.”

“Oh, that.” Nasreen looked up at me and sighed. “I meant to talk to you. I know you didn’t do it.”

“You do?” Relief flooded my body.

“I have my eyes and ears in the household,” she said. “The person responsible has been handled.”

“Thank you, Baji.”

“Good choice on the flowers, by the way.” She nodded to the crystal vases on the coffee table and the nightstand. I had replaced the drooping violets this morning with white and pink roses.

“My mother loves roses. We had them all around the border of our house.”

“What colors did she have?”

“Only red,” I told her. “I didn’t know you could grow so many different kinds.”

“My father had a plot of land for me to garden in when I was young, in the back of our house. I tried all sorts of flowers. Tulips, marigolds. Somehow I managed to always kill them. Vegetables were another story, though; I had a knack for that.” Her eyes seemed to look past me when she spoke.

“My mother loves to garden, too . . .” I told her, my voice trailing off. Was my mother pruning her garden right now? Was Seema helping her instead of me?

“It was the funniest thing,” she said. “I could be upset about anything at all, but digging through the garden, I found peace.”

“What do you grow in your garden here?” I asked her.

“Here?” She laughed. “Imagine that! What would people think? The matron of the estate crouching in the back garden, planting mint?”

Maybe she was right, but then what was the benefit of reaching Nasreen Baji’s station? If she could be this wealthy and have power over so many people but couldn’t grow her own garden, what kind of freedom was that?



* * *



? ? ?

After Nasreen Baji left and I finished straightening her room, I went to find Mumtaz. A bedroom door farther down the hallway was wide open when I passed. Bilal and Nabila were inside straightening it up. I took in the bed with navy linens. The furniture inside was the color of crushed almonds. Jawad Sahib’s room. Nabila looked up. I was about to avert my eyes, but I remembered Ghulam and Bilal’s advice. I met her eyes with my own steady gaze. I thought she would say something, but instead, she frowned and looked away.

I hurried down the steps to the main floor.

Mumtaz wasn’t in the kitchen.

I walked past the dining room and then down a dim hallway with cream carpet I had not entered before. The first room I passed was a bathroom with black counters.

I paused at the next door. It was encased with six square windows. Peering through the glass, I saw a table with a leather chair beside a large window. A row of silver filing cabinets lined the wall behind it. But the other walls were lined with bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling. And books—so many books, they seemed to burst from the shelves.

A library! I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I slipped inside, walked up to a shelf, and traced my fingers along the spines.

Poetry, fiction, history, biographies, the library had them all. Mirza Ghalib, and Allama Iqbal, Miss Sadia’s favorite poet. I had never seen so many books in one place before.

And then I saw it. On the bottom shelf. A collection of poetry by Hafiz. I remembered the book Omar lent me by the stream. The poetry unit Miss Sadia was so excited about. I pulled out the title. It was a thinner volume than Omar’s, and the cover was green, not orange.

I looked at the book in my hand. I knew I shouldn’t have touched it. I shouldn’t have even stepped inside this room. But if I borrowed one thin volume, returning it as soon as I finished, would anyone notice? Was it really a crime to borrow a book gathering dust? Wasn’t it a bigger crime to have such an amazing library collection going unread?

I tucked the book under my arm, obscured by my shawl, and hurried to my room. For the first time since I came here, I felt happy. I wished I could tell Miss Sadia and Omar that I’d found a way to read poetry after all.