The Street Child.

Written by: Syeda Amna Zubia

A tear squeezed out of the corner of his eye, mingling with the sweat on his bronzed cheek it rolled down the curve of his thin neck before it finally disappeared into the darkness of his torn jute kurta. His eyes looked upward beseechingly, hands outspread and waiting until disappointment darkened the hazel and the long lashes turned away. He plodded back to the betel-stained sidewalk and kneeling, he took a swig from his bottle of water; the water was murky and smelling excessively of chlorine. Head bowed down, he wept again.

Day after day, he wandered through the streets of Karachi, sticking to traffic intersections and commercial areas where the money came relatively easy.  Every night he set himself a bed in one of the dark alleys or the sidewalk, whichever suited his liking and wherever he got tired and didn’t want to keep walking on. He tried to keep changing his station every two or three days for he had learned it wasn’t wise to get too acquainted with any of the other street tramps. He had learned that it was not only the beggars who stole your money. And while the beggars stole it when you were asleep, the big, burly people in the big, black cars, twirling their big bushy moustache did not need to wait that long. He had learned a lot of little things in his thirteen years, some tricks which seemed trivial at first but actually turned out to help him survive in this strange life.

He looked up again; wiping his tears he surveyed his surroundings. It had gotten dark and everyone has started packing up for the day. The sabziwala was covering his stall as little kids swarmed it, hoping for a half-rotten fruit the vendor might discard so that they could fill their growling, empty bellies. Hawkers, with all sorts of little nothings spread on their sheets, called out to the hopeful customers with new vigour, in the aim of earning a little more before they left for the night. Small boys ran from car to car with gajras –jasmine flower bracelets, determined to not waste any. The beggars too were now retiring for the night, blending into the stream of pedestrians along the sidewalk. Picking up his water bottle, he too joined the flow.

He turned into a dark alleyway, choosing a shortcut he often used to avoid familiar faces. It brought him straight onto the wide main road which ran through most of the city. Sometimes he stuck to it for days, and it would transport him to all sorts of neighbourhoods in this great city. He found it strange how one path could connect so many different people, so many different places, the diversity in the way the houses were built and the people who lived in them.

Picture Courtesy: theviewspaper.net

He quickened his pace, eager to get to his favourite haunt before it was occupied by someone else. . True, it was just a rundown, wooden shack, with a torn, stiff pillow and a threadbare rug to protect him from the evening chill that often descended upon Karachi. But it was much more than many others got, and it was still better than a night on the cold hard sidewalk. Humming a tune he had picked up from the public buses, he skipped along the gravel like a happy schoolgirl, the little stones crunching under his worn leather slippers. There could have been nothing more important to him then than reaching his little shack soon and settling in for a good night’s sleep.

As he neared his little hut, a reclining figure under the lone streetlight at the junction ahead caught his attention and he slowed his pace, making his way towards it. In the dim yellow light, he made out the slender body of a woman, long hair cascading around her on the concrete. He went closer and bent over her, until he was able to see her face clearer, and he made out the sharp angles and sunken cheeks. The light made her skin appear almost translucent and on the corner of her mouth…

He stopped.

   …His earliest memory is of a woman. He was too young back then to know, but by now, he’s figured she was extraordinarily pretty, with a straight nose, high prominent cheekbones and fair skin, slightly browned by the sun. Her almond-shaped eyes always rimmed by kohl, eyelashes so thick they didn’t need mascara. Her light brown hair was tinged with red and glowed golden in the sunlight. She always wore it the same way, and pinned her dupatta into the long braid down her back, bringing up the ends of the cloth and tucking them under the straps of her bra.

She used to hold him close, protectively, against herself. And whenever she was confused or deep in thought, she would furrow her perfectly arched eyebrows, pull in her lower lip under a perfect white tooth and bite at the small star-shaped mole on the corner of her mouth, the very same mole he was staring at just now.

She was a constant presence in all his early memories, but as he grew up into a toddler she disappeared.  Sometimes he had sudden flashbacks of a strange night; raunchy grins and lewd looks, glass bangles on a slender wrist, breaking, shattering on the ground. High-pitched screams; abruptly smothered, motorbikes revving up. A muslin dupatta discarded on the street, gathering dirt, blowing away in the night breeze.

As he knelt beside her, he turned her face towards himself and studied every feature on her famished face, every line on her pale skin and every wrinkle of the crow’s feet which had appeared around her fatigued eyes. The cracked, dry lips, though stained a deep red, drew in raspy breaths, struggling to get air into the battered body. Unscrewing his bottle of water, he wet her mouth a little at a time. He tried covering her up with the torn saari, hands fumbling, and his eyes stinging with hot tears as he saw what had become of her. He pulled off his kurta to hide the bruises which blossomed red, yellow and black on the smooth white skin. Her bones jutted out awkwardly, as if she would be better off without any.

His tears splashed onto the pavement and onto her face, rousing her, a bewildered look entering her eyes. Upon seeing the child, she at once she took up a guarded behavior, cautiously surveying him and his actions. She had just begun to speak when she realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt. And was even more puzzled when she saw where it was. She regarded him more closely, and when their eyes met, she recognized the glow she saw in them, the shine they attain when they have acquired something long lost, the same glow she saw reflected from her own.

Silently, mother and son clung to each other, as for the time, words had elapsed. In that one embrace, they tried to pour the longing and the love from all those years wasted. The race to a comfortable bed was paltry as compared to the comfort he obtained from her, for several years to come.

As his mother held him close, protectively against herself, he could not help but think how silly he was to be wasting time over such matters of inconsequence, when his real destiny had awaited. He was blinded by the lights and bustles of everyday life and had become a part of the system, the vicious cycle which trapped within it all aspects of human life, monotony prevailing above them all. But now as he held his mother so close, his own flesh and blood, he learned the dependence of humans upon others. Because despite all achievement, despite the importance of being liberated, this is what truly matters, the bond of humanity.

Picture courtesy: Sara Khazem.