couldn’t be reclaimed except through an intervention by the student’s family.
I completed my first lesson without getting beaten.
15
B efore I became a regular student at the madrassa , though I did occasionally play with Flim, I didn’t have any real friends. With so many of the boys from the mohalla in school, I had to play with girls. They particularly liked to play wedding. They took turns being bride, drafted me to be groom, sang songs in Siraiki and Punjabi and Balochi, fed me and my bride sweetmeats (which were really rocks), and saw off the happy couple with rose petals (which were really tiny pieces of cow dung). Sometimes I played house with a pair of girls named Bina and Samia and married both of them simultaneously. Up on the roof they lived in two separate “houses” that I constructed for them out of turned-over charpai s covered with sheets, and I took turns spending time with each. This continued until I was caught by a stone-faced Pathan widow while running my hands over my wives’ bodies. Fearing that she would report me to Dada Abu, I regretfully gave up this activity.
At the madrassa I became friends with Marjan and Ittefaq. They were also part-timers. Marjan was mild and mellow—a short guy with a white topi . Ittefaq was aggressive and rambunctious—a taller guy in loose shalwar kameez . He was older than Marjan and me and was the leader of our little crew.
During school breaks and on Fridays we played cricket at the Old Hospital or looked for soccer games near the dusty roundabout.
Marjan told me that his older uncle had a spot in one of their family homes from which they could look into other people’s houses and see naked housewives. We did that for a little while, but the women were old.
One time we stole adult bicycles and scissor-kicked them—with our legs through the frame—all the way into the military part of town, turning back when some soldiers in a Jeep glared us away.
Another time just Ittefaq and I went for a long excursion in the afternoon on the dusty streets heading out of town. We passed withered, turbaned men walking with their bullocks; wooden carts tilted back from the vast amounts of weight on them; women in the bright-hued scarves that Gypsies wore. Eventually we came upon a clearing amidst a collection of dunes where a carnival was underway. There was a tent with freaks of nature which we wanted desperately to enter, but we were too afraid to go near because we’d heard there was a backward-footed churayl inside, and Dadi Ma had warned me against those. Beyond that tent there was a merry-go-round, a massive seesaw, and many stalls selling food. After wandering among those, we made our way to one of the main attractions at the festival.
It was a hollow wooden tower made of large, curved planks screwed together. It rose up nearly three stories high, with a diameter of about thirty feet, like a bloated parapet from the Crusades. Attached to its exterior was a latticework of rickety wooden staircases that took the audience up to the rim, which was guarded by a railing. From the rim we could see into the pit below, where a Suzuki sedan, stripped of color and doors, and two denuded motorcycles were parked. Suddenly a small, shutterlike door snapped open at the bottom, and the audience—knowing what was to come—cheered loudly. Two men in jeans and collared shirts came out and waved. They kickstarted their bikes, the sawed-off mufflers coughing and roaring, and then rode around in circles, kicking up dust, picking up speed. Suddenly, with the assistance of a little ramp and centrifugal force, the bikes leaped up against the wall of the tower, going around in circles, still gaining in speed until they were going around perpendicular to the floor. Like cream coming to a boil the bikers rose ever higher, and I was afraid they would reach thevery top and fly off into the crowd. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more exciting, the car below came alive with
I completed my first lesson without getting beaten.
15
B efore I became a regular student at the madrassa , though I did occasionally play with Flim, I didn’t have any real friends. With so many of the boys from the mohalla in school, I had to play with girls. They particularly liked to play wedding. They took turns being bride, drafted me to be groom, sang songs in Siraiki and Punjabi and Balochi, fed me and my bride sweetmeats (which were really rocks), and saw off the happy couple with rose petals (which were really tiny pieces of cow dung). Sometimes I played house with a pair of girls named Bina and Samia and married both of them simultaneously. Up on the roof they lived in two separate “houses” that I constructed for them out of turned-over charpai s covered with sheets, and I took turns spending time with each. This continued until I was caught by a stone-faced Pathan widow while running my hands over my wives’ bodies. Fearing that she would report me to Dada Abu, I regretfully gave up this activity.
At the madrassa I became friends with Marjan and Ittefaq. They were also part-timers. Marjan was mild and mellow—a short guy with a white topi . Ittefaq was aggressive and rambunctious—a taller guy in loose shalwar kameez . He was older than Marjan and me and was the leader of our little crew.
During school breaks and on Fridays we played cricket at the Old Hospital or looked for soccer games near the dusty roundabout.
Marjan told me that his older uncle had a spot in one of their family homes from which they could look into other people’s houses and see naked housewives. We did that for a little while, but the women were old.
One time we stole adult bicycles and scissor-kicked them—with our legs through the frame—all the way into the military part of town, turning back when some soldiers in a Jeep glared us away.
Another time just Ittefaq and I went for a long excursion in the afternoon on the dusty streets heading out of town. We passed withered, turbaned men walking with their bullocks; wooden carts tilted back from the vast amounts of weight on them; women in the bright-hued scarves that Gypsies wore. Eventually we came upon a clearing amidst a collection of dunes where a carnival was underway. There was a tent with freaks of nature which we wanted desperately to enter, but we were too afraid to go near because we’d heard there was a backward-footed churayl inside, and Dadi Ma had warned me against those. Beyond that tent there was a merry-go-round, a massive seesaw, and many stalls selling food. After wandering among those, we made our way to one of the main attractions at the festival.
It was a hollow wooden tower made of large, curved planks screwed together. It rose up nearly three stories high, with a diameter of about thirty feet, like a bloated parapet from the Crusades. Attached to its exterior was a latticework of rickety wooden staircases that took the audience up to the rim, which was guarded by a railing. From the rim we could see into the pit below, where a Suzuki sedan, stripped of color and doors, and two denuded motorcycles were parked. Suddenly a small, shutterlike door snapped open at the bottom, and the audience—knowing what was to come—cheered loudly. Two men in jeans and collared shirts came out and waved. They kickstarted their bikes, the sawed-off mufflers coughing and roaring, and then rode around in circles, kicking up dust, picking up speed. Suddenly, with the assistance of a little ramp and centrifugal force, the bikes leaped up against the wall of the tower, going around in circles, still gaining in speed until they were going around perpendicular to the floor. Like cream coming to a boil the bikers rose ever higher, and I was afraid they would reach thevery top and fly off into the crowd. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more exciting, the car below came alive with
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