They ask him how old he is, but he doesn’t know. They laugh at him. The children standing around Boy are like the rich girls from the big house. They have better clothes than him, and they’re holding books in their arms. One of them is sucking on a lollipop like he doesn’t even care, like there are a thousand more lollipops in the world. His tongue is dark red, and the lollipop makes a sound every time it hits his teeth.
When he runs away, they call him a name. “Hazara!” they yell. But he is not a Hazara. The servants in the big house were Hazara. His mother told him they were there to serve the rich people, but he and his mother were guests. That night, the first night away from the garden and Mother, he walks on big streets full of lights and people. Boy is not afraid of the dark, but night isn’t the same in the city. There are thin streets that disappear between buildings. He goes down an alley and sees children sitting together under the doorway of a shop that looks like it’s closed forever. Maybe they’ll offer him some of the naan one of the older boys is tearing into pieces. He’s tearing it carefully, making sure all the pieces are the same size. But the children don’t notice Boy. It’s cold, and he crouches against a wall and buries his face, and he starts to cry because he misses the wool jacket his mother made for him. He will sleep with no blanket tonight, no jacket, no fire. His feet hurt. They have never taken him this far before. A skinny cat glides past him, but when he reaches out to stroke its fur, it runs away.
“Why are you crying?” one of the children shouts at Boy. “We’re in the same place as you, and we’re not crying.”
“Come sit here,” says a girl.
He gets up and walks slowly.
“Can’t you go faster?” she says.
When he is next to her, she gives him a piece of naan. “Eat.” She is smaller than he is, and her voice is small, too.
After many more nights like this, Boy feels lucky. He has brothers and sisters. They go everywhere together. He isn’t afraid of children with clean clothes laughing at him anymore. He’s learned all kinds of things to say to them, bad things about their mothers and grandmothers. Every night, he thinks about his own mother and says a prayer for her. He has more food than before; he can steal, because he is so small and quick. He makes it a game, runs away from grown-ups who try to catch him.
He likes to steal from women who wear the chaderi because they can’t chase after him very fast. He remembers Mother clutching his hand and running across the street, how he could feel her sweat seeping into his palm, how she would say, “Hurry, Mother can’t see well.”
Boy brings in more food than all the other children. Sometimes, he steals candy bars called Milky Way with white stars on their blue wrapper, and he looks up at the sky and dreams of a day he will have his own garden with its own stars. Most of all, he dreams of a place with walls. Sometimes he and the others play a game, pretending they are rich people who live inside houses, and they talk about how high the walls will be and take turns acting like they are the master or the lady of the house.
Late one night, when he is curled up in a cardboard box outside a bakery, one of the girls crawls in with him and whispers, “How come you’re so good at getting food?” He shrugs and says, “Because I’m not afraid.” That night, he does not say a prayer for his mother. For the first time in his life, he does not say any prayer at all. The girl snuggles against him, and they fall asleep under a stolen blanket. She is screaming when he wakes up. Three boys much older than Boy are staggering around and laughing, dangling the blanket over them, just out of Boy’s reach. He yells at them to give it back, but they don’t. They run away with the blanket. The little girl leaves Boy’s side and curls up alone in another box. Boy realizes something for the first time: the entire world is like those rich little girls in the big house, coming to kill his bit of warmth.