Children of Dust Read Free Page B

to sift a batch of peas or pick a tray of lentils, she moved to the assigned task, completed it, and merged back into the shadows of irrelevance. I didn’t know how I could catch her interest.
    Then Adina visited the house.
    Adina was a rich girl from overseas who had recently moved to Lahore and was invited over to play with me. She had been well fed on romance novels and Indian films. The first day together she took meinto a bedroom and had me act out various film scenes with her. In one, where I was a restaurant owner and she was the habitually late waitress, I was supposed to lower my sunglasses—our only prop—and give her a deep, stern, manly look, a look that she had me modify and tinker with until it fulfilled her vision. In response to the look she wiggled and squirmed in apology, softening up her boss with feminine pouts, befuddled sighs, delicate knee slaps of haplessness, and mildly sensual nail-biting. In another scene she scripted, she and I had just entered into an arranged marriage and now, after the reception, were meeting for the first time. We were supposed to do “dialogue” with each other, she instructed: she would say creative and adult things about how she resented her parents for not asking her consent before marriage, to which I was supposed to respond with dramatic pronouncements that proclaimed the inevitability of her love for me.
    I took Adina’s role-playing game to Sina.
    Following her around for a day, I found that there was a moment in her daily routine when she stripped off her cloak of invisibility, a time when she wasn’t a servant but became, for lack of a better word, a woman. It was in the evening, when it had become dark but was not yet late enough for dinner. During that interval Sina went to the shed in the backyard and took a shower in the partly open servants’ enclosure. Then, hair dripping, she put her clothes back on and walked around the backyard, airing herself. Save for the lights seeping through the curtains, it was completely dark by the time she finished. It was there in the yard that I approached her.
    “I want you to play with me,” I ordered.
    “You want to play now?”
    The darkness made me bold. “Yes. We will play here. I will be the husband.”
    “I don’t know…,” she said in a voice drenched with reluctance.
    “It will be all right,” I assured. I grabbed her by the hand and took her to the lawn. The moon, full and fourteenth, had broken out of the clouds, and her skin and eyes were glowing. “So, let’s see,” I said, stalling for time as I came up with a scenario. “How about we’re at a picnic?” I clinked an imaginary glass with her. “Drink!”
    She mimicked, but without any eagerness.
    “Come on, show a little joash ,” I demanded. “You’re out on a beautiful day with your powerful husband! Show some desire!”
    She didn’t respond. After sipping my imaginary drink for a little while, I became annoyed by the silence.
    “I think we need more dialogue. How will you feel if I tell you that your beauty is like that of a Night Princess?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, looking genuinely bewildered.
    “Look,” I said, becoming the director. “You have options when someone says that to you. You can do nakhra , like whine and complain, to convey that you’re very shy. Or you can be my enemy who gets angry—”
    “I’m ashamed,” she interrupted.
    “Don’t be!”
    I pulled her close, more from affection than perversity. As she struggled against me, I made her fright a part of our role-play. She became the damsel in distress and I was her protector. As I held her body against mine, her hair spilled droplets on my arms. Her clothes were damp and sticky. My mood suddenly turned.
    “Take off your clothes,” I instructed. Then I paused for a moment, hearing the swishing of the trees, checking for the sound of footsteps in the driveway, listening to the laughter of oblivious adults safely lodged deep inside the belly of the