“Are you going to shoot me, Avaan?” asks Sarv. Ever-fucking-green.
Gun pointed at his temple, I speak as calmly as possible. “Yeah.”
Hands clasped behind his head, he faces me with a nonchalant smirk. He might as well be getting ready for a blow job. “What gave me away?”
“You called me Avaan,” I reply, staring into those black rectangles where his eyes ought to be. Instinctively, I step back. “When you were yelling inside the church.”
“Huh.”
“You’re the one who’s been supplying Humayun with those P38s, right?”
“Yes. We have a deal.”
“A deal?” I remind myself of the gun in my hand. Two bullets, both for Evergreen. “The legendary soldier working for a Sector 3 hustler and supplying him with guns? What am I missing here?”
“You think I work for him? Humayun has been trying to clear his name for the last three years.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you remember, Avaan?” He nods at the gun in my hand. “There were almost no guns in Old Pakistan since the Civil War. But three years ago, suddenly everyone had 1911s. People like your brother. Once the army traced them back to Humayun — well, you can imagine how willing he was to cooperate. And now, with the terrorists running amok, he’s been very eager to help.”
My stomach sinks deep inside me. “So, everyone I’ve killed for Humayun —”
“Was at the army’s behest, yes.”
“So why let me live this long?”
“You? I thought you were dead all these years. Humayun didn’t know who you really were until last night. As far as he knew, you were some paleet thug. Just your luck that I decided to pay him a visit when you were there.”
The gun rattles in my hand. “You told him about me, about my past.”
His sneer widens, cracks over a frozen lake. “Yes.”
Three years. That’s how long I’ve kept my past hidden. Faked my death, changed my name, changed my look, and breathed life into a lie named Salaba Hatteb. An illusion so pure that it fooled Humayun.
Evergreen smashed that illusion with a few words.
“You got sloppy, Avaan. You killed two soldiers in Sector 1 around the same time Humayun found out that you’d been lying to him for three years. Come on.” He lowers his hands. “Do you think he wants that kind of attention on himself? Again?”
I keep the .45 trained on him. “You were supposed to kill me after Inayah and Rosa?”
“No. Humayun wanted you dead last night.”
He nearly put me down three years ago and could’ve done it again last night. He’s faster. No doubt about it. I’ve got the scar to prove it. “So why didn’t you?”
“Doua.”
Hearing her name from his lips twists me up inside. It’s a violation. Like laughter in a graveyard. “What do you mean?”
His smirk turns to a scowl. “She keeps coming up in connection to the terrorists. And Yaqzan specifically.”
I have the pieces but no idea what the puzzle is. “Who’s Yaqzan?”
He shrugs, hands still raised. “All I know is that he’s an old paleet with some history with Doua. And a marked interest in you.”
“Me?”
“You don’t think it has something to do with Baadal, do you?”
This road I’ve been walking leads back to that day three years ago. A road that begins with the library-shelter’s rubble and my brother’s corpse. The day Evergreen set fire to my life. Ground Zero.
I hold the .45 with both hands. “What’s Yaqzan after?”
“Same thing I am. A second civil war.”
Those whispers I’ve been hearing. Wistful murmurs, soft convictions. That certitude in mutual destruction that’s been echoing throughout this city. The shiver in your heart before a fight.
“The snow falls over it all,” I say, almost proudly.
“The snow —” His shoulders stooped, his face hidden by long grey hair, he sounds tired and old. “Do it.”
“What?”
“Do it. This is the only chance you’ll ever get.”
I almost forget how much I hate him.
I am reminded of exactly how much when someone digs a gun barrel into the back of my neck.
Hell on earth.
Raising my hands, I find myself face to face with a pair of pissed-off soldiers who snuck up on me.
Officer 1 trains her .303 in my face.
“Sir, are you all right?” she asks Evergreen.
He takes a few seconds to reply. “Yes.”
Officer 2 twists Baadal’s 1911 out of my hands and whips it against my head, sending me to my knees. Blood trickles down my face, my neck.
Officer 1, not to be outdone, jabs the rifle into my chest, into the scar from three years ago.
“Let me kill him, sir.”
“No,” Evergreen responds.
“Sir, with all due respect, if he got the drop on you, then he’s more dangerous than we anticipated.”
Kneeling, my mouth filling with salt, I watch Evergreen loom over me, a hoary, malevolent spirit in the falling snow. He snatches the .303 from Officer 1 and rams it into the pit of my stomach. A hissed scream comes to a rolling boil in his throat as he plows the rifle into me again and again, the rectangular shades flying off his face. Writhing on the ground, my arms and hands taking the brunt of his rage, I catch a glimpse of the hatred in his large golden eyes. Eyes like a burning forest.
Silence creeps through the unsettling crunch of wood and bone and flesh.
Through murky strands of light, I watch Evergreen tower over me, his bony shoulders rising and falling. His face has reverted to a taut, joyless visage.
The thoughts in my head are so childish: Why does he hate me so much?
Doua drapes herself over me, shielding me from him. Avaan?
“Pick him up,” Evergreen commands.
Officers 1 and 2 haul me to my feet.
Evergreen forces me to look at him.
“Doua,” he says. He lets the name sink in. “I want you to find her, do you understand? Because there’s a bounty on Yaqzan’s head. Because catching that monster — putting his head on a bloody pike — is my ticket out of Old Pakistan. Do you hear me?”
I don’t say a word. The last bit of defiance in me.
His voice is something out of a nightmare. “Look at me!”
Things spin out of focus. The world topples and blurs and fades.
Do not fall asleep. Please.
I look up, and what I see isn’t Evergreen. It’s big black eyes, shining and round. It’s a dusky face with small, thin lips. It’s the woman who cradles my head as I find the only solace I’ve ever known. I hate us both for what I’ve become.
Something stings my face. Cigarette smoke and sweat assail my nose. My mouth tastes of iron and salt. People cry and groan from multiple directions around me. A blanket envelops me completely, steam-cooking me in a stale, pungent odour of herbal medicine and sickness. Under me, a pile of damp cardboard sheets sticks to my back.
I wake up to a never-ending dream. Needles of light stipple my mind. A small canopy shelters me from the snow. A few paces ahead, a bunch of people gather around a trash can bonfire, murmuring away as they fondle tasbih beads in their hands. Collapsed blue walls keep the snowy night at bay.
Blue walls?
Strands of darkness collect over my view, my head spinning and growing heavy. And then nothing anchors me anymore.
The dilapidated blue walls greet me. They rise to the burned sky, the ones that are intact. The roof hasn’t existed for decades — yet another remnant of the first civil war, the one that segregated Old Pakistan. Huge blue bricks and masonry are piled up in one corner of the fenced rectangle surrounding me and everyone else. There’s a Pakistani flag towering proudly over us all. The real one, not that PFM bullshit.
Blue Haven. How the hell did I end up here?
A white cat sits on all fours near me, one ear pointing back. She’s staring at the red-haired woman sitting to my right. She’s pretty, and pretty tall for a woman, almost gawky the way her limbs poke out of her green kurta and ratty jeans. There are enough holes in both that I can make out her mismatched leggings and arm warmers. Her hair spills in lank, reddish-brown strands past her ears. Mid-twenties by my estimate. There’s a black armband above her right elbow. An ex-Badlander.
Red. That’s what I’m going to call her.
A half-extinguished cigarette hangs from Red’s lips as she holds her hand close to her face. I try to see what she’s looking at so intently. A small mirror. She smiles, her wide lips unnaturally pink. The light in her green eyes seems directionless, not radiating outward, as if confined by thick lines of kajal.
She catches me staring.
“Hey.” Red flips the mirror shut, flicks the cigarette butt into a pyramid of others, and starts rubbing a damp rag over my face. It stings. “Still here?”
“Still here.”
“What’s your name, sahib?” Her voice is a little raspy, her cadence haphazard.
“Martin Frost.”
“What?”
“Av — Salaba. Sal.” I wipe my face, only to realize how much of it is covered in bandages. My hands are also wrapped in bandages, the skin peeking through in blue, pink, and purple bruises.
“You got some nasty gashes and cuts. A bruised rib too, from what I can tell.” Her cheeks and lips pinch into a smile. “I’m no expert, but I think you got your ass kicked.”
“You should’ve seen the other guys.”
“Sure.” She laughs. Quick and nervous. “Who were they?”
Evergreen and his thugs. “No idea.”
A large, blackened trash can sputters ash and embers nearby. Naked and cold under the blanket, I wince at the thought of moving.
Red takes a deep gulp from a bottle in a paper bag, glances at me, and then pours me some in a plastic cup.
“Here. This’ll help.”
I hold it to my lips. “Is this medicine?”
She pauses. “Sure.”
My lower lip burns as I take a sip. It’s strong stuff, whatever it is. Exactly what I need.
“Thanks, Red.”
“You’re welcome. I have your piece.” She extends her thumb and index finger. “Don’t worry. I won’t report it.”
The subtle art of reminding me that I owe her now. Five minutes from now, she’ll be asking me for a favour. And I’ll tell her to fuck off.
“How did I end up in Blue Haven, Red?”
“No idea. You were here when I started my shift.”
“Blue Haven.” I say the name sardonically. “When I was growing up, they still called this place Yaqzan’s Church.”
She shushes me. “Please, don’t say that so loudly. That name hasn’t been said in decades.”
“The snow falls over it all,” I whisper, almost to myself.
I lick my lower lip. The saliva soothes the burning cut. It’s been a few minutes, but I’ve managed to stay awake. Silver linings. “Can I have my piece back?”
“I’ll hand it to you when you’re ready to leave.” She leans forward to pat my arm. Her kurta parts, and I sneak a peek at her cleavage. “But don’t worry. You’re safe here. The patients have no past in Blue Haven.”
She takes another gulp from the bottle. Her hand trembles. She flexes her long fingers and pours me another cup. “Those scars on your body — were they donations?”
“Food for my family.”
“Kidney?”
“Yup.” And a piece of my liver, as I found out much later.
“You’ve got other scars. Nasty ones. The one on your chest. I couldn’t help but notice that gunshot wound.”
I say nothing.
Her hand settles on my right side, tracing the scar. “Nobody deserves this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know. Trust me. Selling pieces of yourself just to get by. Like we don’t lose enough pieces of ourselves as it is. Our dignity, our pride, our happiness.” Her voice is mostly quick puffs of breath. As if I’d startled her. As if she’s resurfaced briefly from the depths and latched on to me for a sliver of breath. “Isn’t that enough?”
She goes for another gulp, but I grab the bottle and hold it out of her reach. “You’ve had enough, Red. Come on.”
I take a generous swig of it myself, and I hear Doua’s admonishment. Just drinking from her bottle has given you gonorrhea.
“I know,” she whispers, turning her head away quickly.
“What’s wrong?”
Something about what I said makes her green eyes well up. “I lost a friend this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear.”
She looks at me. Have I transgressed?
She begins to speak, stops herself, then says it. “Thank you, Sal. You’re very kind.”
In the name of all that’s pure and holy, this woman is a mess. Her skin is lighter than mine, but that’s probably because of the makeup she’s wearing. Given the black armband, she’s another byproduct of prostitution. Or rape. Despite the croaking voice and the tears, I sense a stronger woman buried somewhere under the glass rubble.
Too bad she is not older than you.
“You’re going to pay for that, Doua.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Just mumbling.”
“Oh.” Her laugh again, fast and breathless.
“I’m going to head out, Red.” Powering through the pain, I stand up. “Thanks for patching me up.”
“Hang on,” she says, reaching into a basket. She throws me a new shirt — a black button-up, most of the buttons missing.
As I put it on, she rubs her collarbone, flushed from the liquor. She looks up at me. From this angle, with such a gracious view of her cleavage, a part of me is glad I managed to straighten up.
“You can keep the blanket, sahib,” Red says. “I’d stay here and get more rest if I were you, though. This place is safe.”
Nice eye contact.
I should get out of here. Yet here I am, transfixed before this strange woman made of glass, struggling to keep herself from breaking apart.
“Why don’t you come with me, Red?”
What?
“What?”
There’s a pause as she squints up at me, and then her lips ease into a smile. “You sure?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.” Red steps inside the room, eyebrows raised. She tiptoes over the sketches on the floor and stops in front of the mattress. “You sure know how to make a lady feel special.”
“Only the special ones see this room.”
“Sure,” she giggles. It’s the laugh of someone still drunk.
“Sorry there are no fountains and marble floors.”
“Fountains and marble floors? Is that what you think Sunni homes are like?”
“Aren’t they? We’ve all heard the stories.”
“Sure.” She plops on the mattress. The polystyrene bursting out at the seams makes her laugh.
I sit next to her, and my bandaged hands caress her arm. I breathe in her scent as I kiss her neck and shoulder.
“Sal?” Her face grows dark, the mirth seeping out of it. “I need to tell you something. Before we do anything further.”
I begin kissing my way closer to her lips. “Whatever it is, I already know.”
“You do?”
“Yup.”
Her already breathless voice grows huskier as my hands slip up her kurta. Unfastening her bra, I fondle her breasts. The lone bulb swings over us.
I flinch, my body tensing up. Something cold pools inside my chest.
Red grabs my face and kisses me. Her tongue meets mine, entwines with it.
My body feels like a stone.
She pauses. “Sorry, is something wrong?”
“No. No,” I say, forcing my lips into a smile. “Keep going.”
She kisses me again, and I close my eyes, focusing on her soft lips against my bruised lower lip, the pain sharp but delicious. The taste of tea and booze and cigarettes lingers between each kiss, between flicks of her tongue against mine.
But my heartbeat races.
“Sal?”
That floor. That damp, tepid floor reeking of sweat and dirt.
“What’s wrong?”
Jaw clenched, I try to focus my dizzy brain on Red. “Keep going.”
Red kisses me again, amazing me with how quickly she brushes aside what could easily be a deal-breaker. She pushes me down on the mattress, slithering on top of me. She kisses down my neck this time. Unbuttoning my shirt, she returns to my lips again as her fingers grab hold of my cock.
Helping her out of her kurta, I go back to kneading her breasts, her moans intoxicating. I roll her shredded jeans down her hips and legs. Grabbing a handful of her ass, I squeeze firmly and drink in more of her moans as we kiss deeper.
But there it is again: that faint chill in my heart. It won’t go away.
In her white panties now, Red eases me out of my jeans and underwear. Climbing on top of me, she kisses the scars and wounds on my body. Waves of pain and pleasure sweep over me. She curls her tongue around my nipple; her finger traces the length of my cock.
I’m entombed in glass, destined to witness these moments as reflections of a world I can neither touch nor feel. A ghost, out of sync with reality.
My mind is yanked back to dark hands pinning me down.
My legs draw close together. “Stop. Please.”
Red looks hurt. “Don’t you …?”
What do I say? “This isn’t a good time.” I hold up my bandaged hands.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t be. You were wonderful.”
She laughs. Too drunk to give a shit, I figure. Flat on the mattress, she watches me for a while before staring at the pale, cracked ceiling.
I walk into the bathroom and exhale.
I wipe the mirror’s yellowing haze and find Salaba staring at me. His unkempt hair reaches down to his shoulders. The beard clumps and twists down his chin, strands of white streaking through it. Avaan and Salaba stand before each other, nothing linking them except their golden eyes. Evergreen’s face flashes before me again. Golden eyes, like a burning forest.
When I come out, Red is smoking by the barred window in her white bra and panties, her back to me. She uses a cup as an ashtray. The billboard flickers on and off, shadows dancing over her in blues, pinks, and purples. I take in every bit of her frame. The flashing light from outside illuminates the smoke dancing from her lit cigarette. Her red hair is short. Her narrow, delicate back curves and flows down to the seams of her panties. She has a diagonal scar on the right side of her ribs, just like me. She too has sold a kidney.
I cough loudly, and when she looks back, I try to smile, managing only a grimace. I balance an empty bottle on the doorknob. Red nods in admiration. Lying down on the mattress, I stare at the ceiling as she continues to smoke.
Sirens blare outside as a military jeep zooms past, red and blue lights scattering through the room.
“That can’t be good,” Red sighs. “You think it’s the terrorists?”
I remember Evergreen again. Large golden eyes. “Loyalists. And no.”
Red stands at the foot of the mattress, imprisoned by the barred shadows. She folds her left arm across her belly and rests her right elbow over it. Her right hand and jaw glow orange from the small light of the cigarette in her lips.
“Can I ask you something?”
Stretching fully on the mattress, I clasp my arms behind my head. “Sure.”
“How come you wear a shirt and jeans? Why not shalwar-kameez?”
“I like shirts and jeans. My turn: you got any family?”
She taps the ashes into the cup, her shoulders stiff. “Brothers. Three of them. I haven’t seen them since I was fourteen.”
“You ran away from home?”
“It was run or die.”
“Was it the booze?”
“No, no. The booze came pretty soon after.”
“That’s horrible.”
She shrugs. “It all happens as Allah says it should.”
“That’s what the Mullahs would tell us.” I feel the old phantom pain where my childhood used to be. “When they weren’t trying to fuck us.”
She nibbles her lip. “Is that what happened to you?”
Takes me a few moments to respond. “You figured?”
“You’re not the only one with horror stories, Sal.”
I nod. “It happened at Laari Adda. It was a truck driver.”
“I’m so sorry.” Red looks away, eyebrows arched upward. “That’s monstrous.”
“It all happens as Allah says it should.”
She shakes her head. “Come on. What that truck driver did to you, that’s got nothing to do with Allah. Or Islam. Hell, it’s a huge sin for a man to be with another —” She bites her tongue, slamming the brakes at the edge of the precipice. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Some All-loving Creator, isn’t he?” I sit up and crawl to the edge of the mattress. Her cigarette is mostly a stick of ash now. “He’ll abide one man killing another. For war. For punishment. For self-defence. Even revenge. But He won’t abide one man loving another. Or not wanting to be a man at all.”
“Stop it,” she whispers. In the dim light, I can make out how red her ears are.
“It’s why your brothers chased you out, right?”
Her eyes dart around the room, the light scattering in them like the first time I saw her. She extinguishes the cigarette in the cup and turns to leave.
Kneeling on the mattress, I take her hand gently. “Most people would’ve thought you swung both ways.” I glance at the window, where there’s a splash of yellow in the reflection. Doua. “Or they would’ve wondered if it was the booze. Or if you were ravaged by Sky Sickness.”
She makes no sound, doesn’t blink.
“I’m from the Badlands, Red, and I know it’s none of those things. I’ve known people like you my whole life.” I hold both her hands. “You weren’t born a woman, right? That’s why your brothers chased you out. Because you weren’t always their sister.”
“How did you —?”
“You’re not the only one with horror stories.”
When Red speaks, it’s more to her reflection in the window. “I was the eldest son. Our parents were dead. It was all on me. Food, water, clothes, you name it. I scrounged, I fought for everything. I was so many things to them. A brother, a mother, a father, a friend. I had to be, right?”
I nod. I was all those things to Baadal too.
She continues. “All they had to do was let me be one more thing. It’s all I asked.”
Kissing her hands, I pull her into my arms. “I know.”
“I’ve always felt like I’m being erased,” she whispers into my chest. “Even now, I feel it inside me. This feeling that I’m slowly being extinguished.”
“It isn’t enough for them that we rot and die in a corner of this city,” I say. “We must rot and die on the inside too.”
“They want to kill me. Or fuck me. That’s all they feel toward me.” Hot tears fall onto my chest. “As if I’m insane for doing this to myself. Satanic. People like my brothers, people like these Mullahs, when they look at me — if they even look at me — all they see is a mutilated piece of meat. They think I chose this life. How could anyone choose this life, Sal?”
“Fuck your brothers,” I say, holding her chin and making her look at me. “And fuck the Mullahs too.”
That makes her laugh. “Yeah, fuck them.”
A piece of chipped plaster sloughs off the ceiling and falls.
Red tangles her arms and legs around me on the mattress, snuggling tightly, as afraid of distance as I am.
“You live alone here?” she asks.
“It’s me and another guy. You won’t see him. He mostly stays in his room, drinking himself to death.”
“Poor guy.”
I hear her mouth open then close. When I look at her, a tight smile hangs on her wide lips. As if I caught her doing something she shouldn’t.
“What’s wrong, Red?”
“I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t know about — what happened to you. I would’ve done things differently.”
“Don’t be.”
She kisses my shoulder, pressing her cheek to it. “Still, I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for you.”
“Or you.”
Time doesn’t heal wounds. It makes you forget they’re there. Right up until they tear open again. Like my wounds when I finally found Eksha and wished I never had.
“I’m glad we did what we did, Red.”
She doesn’t miss a beat. “Or tried to, at least.”
I wince.
“Sorry,” she giggles. “Too soon?”
I slap her ass.
Another piece of the ceiling crumbles to the floor.
Red reaches past me and picks up a half-crumpled sketch from the ground. Lying flat on her back, she studies it.
“Who taught you how to draw?”
“She did.”
Picking up more sketches off the ground, she studies each of them with me. She goes through a handful, one at a time, letting the older ones fall. She holds up one. It’s recent. One where Doua gazes to her left, her face cupped in her hands. I spent hours sketching it, the product of an especially Avaan-esque night.
“She’s kinda pretty.” Red’s voice trembles. “Who is she?”
Doua sits with her legs tucked under her, sifting through the countless sketches littering the room. She picks up a sketch — the one of her naked under a thin shawl, with nothing else around her, as if floating in the sky. She slips onto the mattress and curls against me. The glass bangles jingle in the air where Red’s question seems to echo.
Feeling her soft, warm body, hearing her light breaths, taking in the scent of strong, sweet black tea, the memory of her lips still fresh, I tighten my arms around her. Pieces of something beautiful. Something lost and found.
I was eighteen. She was twenty-three.
Doua stood before me, fingers touching her lips, bemused smile fading to bewilderment. I could still taste her lips, the heat of her breath, the scent of tea lingering over my lips and tongue. It was a moment I’d dreamt of ever since I first saw her. And yet, the moment it happened, something dark and leaden curdled inside my veins.
“Avaan?”
My breath was ragged. I mumbled an apology, an excuse. “I don’t know why this — I didn’t mean to —”
“Avaan?” she whispered, reaching out. “What is wrong?”
“I don’t —” I managed to croak, my mind racing to memories that should’ve stayed lost. The truck driver. The cold, clammy floor.
The air I breathed felt like powdered glass. I bit the corner of my mouth, clenched my fists. It was no use. My breath, my heartbeat, my thoughts, my body — every inch of me was in mutiny. The world was smudged and narrow around a single point of light. Around the dusky, dark-haired woman before me.
“It is okay.” She kneeled next to me. “Look at me, Avaan. Look at me. It is okay. Just breathe.”
“Doua, I —” I grabbed my chest. I did everything I could to contain myself. But I shook in her arms. Tears flowed down my face. “I can’t breathe.”
“I am here.” She pressed herself against me, her voice quivering slightly. “I am here. Everything is fine. Okay? I am here. Everything is going to be fine.”
Her voice. Her touch. They buoyed me, a lifeline in the dark. She held me as you might a wounded bird. Gently, carefully. I couldn’t break in her arms. She held me for a long time.
My breathing returned to normal. The tears dried up.
“You poor thing.” She smiled, her eyes misty. “You poor thing.”
Doua held my face. I tried to look away, my cheeks damp, but she didn’t let me.
“May I?” she asked.
I nodded.
She kissed me, softly, gently. Waves of fear and panic and misery washed over me again, making my skin crawl, making my heart freeze, making me sink into myself. I held on to her. I held on to her voice as she whispered my name between hot, wet kisses. I held on to her soft, cool hands as they caressed me deeper into the kiss. And for the first time in I don’t know how long, I wasn’t alone in this world.