Darshan
wall of the wretched, squat building that was to be their new residence. His father glared at him. There would be no sympathy. They had all—the whole family—been forced here.
    There had once been a murder, Baba Singh’s teacher had told his class back home in the village, born of a woman’s blind jealousy and rage. At her hand, her husband had suffered a brutal and painful end, and now she roamed the earth, muttering all the time with madness. The story clung in Baba Singh’s mind now, but he willed himself not to be afraid. He was twelve, almost a man. He did not believe in such tales anymore. His teacher had only meant to terrify them into obedience, to point out the harsh realities of the world, that fury and hate were the fall of men, that misbehavior and offense had an awful price. “Remember,” the teacher had said with severity. “Do not forget. Do not lose yourselves in weakness. On that day, your lives will end.”
    Someone should have told it to Mr. Grewal. Maybe then he would have thought twice about being a cheating moneylender, about stealing away people’s livelihood. Maybe the Toors would still be back in Harpind. Maybe this day would be like all the other village days. No different. Just the same. That is what Baba Singh wanted. He wanted their money back, their land that had been taken away plot by plot, their animals, the pond where he and his siblings liked to play. He wanted the taste of a red, juicy pomegranate seed popped between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He wanted the velvety morning sun on the back of his neck, a feeling he had never really noticed while he had it, that mixture of warmth and field dust brushing his skin, telling him he was safe and young and had everything.
    If the moral of his teacher’s lesson reflected even a small kernel of real justice, the brutal end to the Toors’ ancestral village life should have caused Mr. Grewal to go mad, to be pierced with guilt and remorse. But right now the moneylender was in his office on the town’s main road, peering at one of his ledgers through his thick spectacles, recording this latest victory and filing it away on his shelves. He had taken so much from so many—and nothing had ever happened to him . That was proof that Baba Singh’s teacher was wrong, that there was not always payment for a crime, that not all men suffered. Only some. Only the weak. It was a merciless lesson to learn at the age of twelve. Baba Singh glanced over at his brothers and sisters, not at Ranjit and Desa who were older, but at the younger ones, Khushwant eight, Kiran six, Avani only four. They looked confused and frightened.
    Baba Singh knelt before them. He would make them understand. “There was a murder once—”
    Khushwant shook his head. “Stop it, Baba. I know that story. Do not scare them.”
    “What is he talking about?” Kiran asked apprehensively, her dark hair pulled back into a tight braid.
    “I was going to tell it differently,” Baba Singh told his brother. “The ending would have been different.”
    Kiran turned to their mother. “When are we going home?”
    Harpreet smiled at her daughter. Many considered Baba Singh’s mother beautiful. She was often complimented on her thick, black hair that was frizzy on humid days, softening the angular lines of her face, and sleek and straight on cool days, giving her an air of industriousness. Today she seemed tired, like she might be sick. “Please leave them be, Baba.”
    “I am only telling the truth. It is better that way. Those goats Kiran likes so much. They aren’t hers anymore. We aren’t going back. We are home.”
    Avani gripped her hand-painted wooden elephant and leaned into Khushwant.
    “What will happen to my goats?” Kiran asked.
    “They are not your goats.”
    “Baba,” their father said, his voice sharp; Lal had a tone that sometimes stung. “Enough.” He began to fumble for a key tied to his loose-fitting drawstring trousers.
    Baba Singh tossed another

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