He will arrange for some families, including his own, to share your responsibility, and provide homes for the boy to sleep in, as well as your own. There will be many friends to help you look after Tariq. I want him to know the hardest life of the poorest people. But above all, I want him to have the experience of an English teacher. This last thing means a great deal to me. When I was a boy..."
He paused, allowing his gaze to shift and settle on the fountain and the wet surface of the great, round boulder. His eyes gleamed, reflecting the liquid light on the stone. Then a grave expression passed across them like a cloud-shadow slinking over smooth hills, on a sunny day.
"So, forty-eight hours," he sighed, bringing himself to the moment. "After that, if you bring him back to me, I will not think the worse of you. Now it is time for you to meet the boy."
Khaderbhai gestured toward the arches of the cloister, behind me, and I turned to see that the boy was already standing there. He was small for his age. Khaderbhai had said that he was eleven years old, but he seemed to be no more than eight. Dressed in clean, pressed kurta-pyjama and leather sandals, he clutched a tied calico bundle in his arms. He stared at me with such a forlorn and distrustful expression that I thought he might burst into tears. Khaderbhai called him forward, and the boy approached us, making a wide detour around me to the far side of his uncle's chair. The closer he came, the more miserable he seemed.
Khaderbhai spoke to him sternly and swiftly in Urdu, pointing at me several times. When he finished, the boy walked to my stool and extended his hand to me.
"Hello very much," he said, his eyes huge with reluctance and fear.
I shook hands with him, his small hand vanishing in mine. Nothing ever fits the palm so perfectly, or feels so right, or inspires so much protective instinct as the hand of a child.
"Hello to you, too, Tariq," I said, smiling in spite of myself.
His eyes flickered a tiny, hopeful smile in response, but doubt quickly smothered it. He looked back to his uncle. It was a look of desperate unhappiness, drawing his closed mouth wide and pulling his small nose in so tightly that it showed white at the corners.
Khaderbhai returned the look, staring strength into the boy, then stood up and called for Nazeer once more in that half-shout.
"You will forgive me, Mr. Lin. There are a number of matters that require my urgent attentions. I will expect you in two days, if you are not happy, na? Nazeer will show you out."
He turned without looking at the boy, and strode off into the shadowed arches. Tariq and I watched him leave, each of us feeling abandoned and betrayed. Nazeer walked with us to the door. As I changed into my street shoes, Nazeer knelt and pressed the boy to his chest with surprising and passionate tenderness.
Tariq clung to him, grabbing his hair, and had to be prised from the embrace with some force. When we stood once more, Nazeer gave me a look of eloquent, lingering menace-If anything happens to this boy, you will answer to me for it-and turned away from us.
A minute later we were outside, on the street beside the Nabila Mosque, boy and man joined tightly at the hand but in nothing else except our bewilderment at the power of the personality that had pushed us together against our wills. Tariq had simply been obedient, but there was something craven in my helplessness to resist Khaderbhai. I'd capitulated too readily, and I knew it.
Self-disgust quickly became self-righteousness. How could he do this to a child, I asked myself, his own nephew, give him up so easily to a stranger? Didn't he see how reluctant the boy was?
It's a callous disregard for the rights and well-being of a child. Only a man who thought of others as his playthings, would surrender a child to someone like... like me.
Furious at my feeble pliancy-How did I let him force me to do this?-and burning with spite and selfishness, I dragged Tariq along at a jogging trot as I marched through the swarming street.
Just as we passed the main entrance to the mosque, the muezzin began to recite the call to prayer from the minarets above our heads.
Tariq tugged at my wrists with both hands, pulling me to a stop.
He pointed at the entrance to the mosque, and then to the tower above it, where loudspeakers amplified the voice of the muezzin.
I shook my head, and told him we had no time. He planted his feet and tugged harder at my wrist. I told him in Hindi and Marathi that I wasn't a Muslim, and I didn't want to enter the mosque. He was adamant, straining to drag me toward the doorway until the veins stood out at his temples. At last he broke free from my grip and scampered up the steps of the mosque. Kicking his sandals aside, he darted inside before I could stop him.
