Part _||
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Jeeda had left the old musician's house in a hurry, but as soon as he reached the street, his steps began to slow — until he stopped completely. He looked around. He was standing on the footpath of Bunder Road; buses, taxis, and rickshaws kept passing by, but he didn't stop any of them. He walked on foot instead. His steps lacked their usual urgency and purposefulness. His head hung low, as if his conscience had carried this weight for the first time — or felt it for the first time. A thorn had lodged itself in his heart, one that carried both a sting and a sweetness.
He was passing through Kharadar. A police constable sat in front of a paan shop, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Jeeda approaching, he stood up — just a few days earlier, this constable had been on duty when he caught one of Jeeda's boys picking a pocket in this area, and had skillfully made the boy disappear from the crowd.
The constable expected Jeeda to stop, exchange a few words, ask about the area, and press a crumpled five-rupee note into his palm as he walked off. But Jeeda walked past with his head down. The constable followed him and, after a few steps, placed a hand on his shoulder.
"What's this, ustad?" the constable said. "Did you win big or has someone died? You're walking with your head down like you're following a funeral."
Jeeda startled and stopped. The words almost escaped him: *It feels, my friend, as if today I myself have died.* But he said nothing. With great difficulty, he forced a childlike smile onto his lips and walked on, like someone woken from a deep sleep who turns over and falls back asleep — he seemed to be walking in his sleep even now.
"Haven't you fallen asleep?" Someone shook him. "Where did you drift off to?"
Jeeda startled awake. He looked around — he was sitting on the bed in his room. Naaz sat beside him, gently shaking his shoulder. His awareness returned. He realized Naaz had shaken him three or four times already, but he couldn't remember when or how he had arrived in the room. The old musician's spell still lingered on his nerves, and the sound of the *deghi* and the *jal tarang* still echoed in his mind.
He began to feel exhausted, remembering that he had walked on foot from one end of Karachi to the other. In his normal state of mind, he wouldn't have walked even a few steps. A strange discomfort crept over him, because he had never once admitted defeat. His emotional state had faltered before too, and he would steady himself with a puff of hashish or half a bottle of whisky — but tonight's intoxication was different. Tonight he didn't think of hashish, nor of liquor. Some force — or some weakness — had left him helpless.
He looked at Naaz again. Her face seemed different to him somehow. He had never spoken to her openly before, even though she had been confined to his room for nine or ten months. All he knew about her was that he had bought this girl and would, sooner or later, groom her for high-paying clients. He was spending money on her recklessly, knowing this money was an investment — one that would return fifty-fold through her youth and beauty. But tonight, a faint feeling began to stir in his heart: that Naaz wasn't just a business asset, but *his* — and that this lost girl was somehow connected to his own emotions.
"Does my sitting here bother you? Should I get up?" Naaz asked helplessly, seeing him so distant.
Jeeda looked at her, startled, as if wanting to say: *No — if you get up, who will I sit beside?* But he couldn't say it, and steadied himself instead. He felt a strong urge to talk to Naaz, but then realized he was, in a way, begging for spiritual comfort from a girl he had bought for five hundred rupees. In this strange intoxication, a bitterness began to rise; a weight pressed on his heart. Until now, his only forms of expression had been sin — liquor and hashish — but tonight he stood at a crossroads. He thought of no crime, no gambling, no liquor, no hashish. His head bowed again. Naaz took it gently in both hands and lifted it with tenderness.
"What's wrong today?" Naaz asked softly. "There's no smell of liquor on your breath."
"No liquor, no hashish, no bhang, no opium — isn't that strange in itself? Isn't it strange that there's no smell on my breath at all?" Jeeda said openly.
Naaz got up, fetched the whisky bottle from the other room, and handed it to Jeeda. Without hesitation, he pulled out the cork and took several long gulps straight from the bottle.
"It's been ages since you started learning the sitar," Jeeda said, lowering the bottle from his mouth. "Have you learned anything?" Naaz had been eager for days for Jeeda to sit with her and listen to her play, ever since he had given her the first lesson. She had resolved to learn the sitar only because of his interest in it — but months had passed, and he had never once asked whether she had learned it. Today, when he finally mentioned the sitar himself, Naaz's face lit up. "Will you really listen? Would you like that?"
"Bring it, then!"
Naaz went to the other room and brought the sitar back, but by then Jeeda had already lain down on the bed. She sat beside him. A moment later, her fingers began moving over the strings. Her teacher had instilled the mastery of his art into her slender, delicate fingers. She knew this mastery belonged to Jeeda.
Naaz began playing the *alaap* of Raag Shaam Kalyan — not realizing she had touched a chord within Jeeda's being that no one had ever touched before, one he had kept hidden behind the dark curtains of sin and guilt.
A soft resonance of the strings began to float through the room, like a school of water nymphs murmuring gently over the sea in the stillness of night. The old musician's enchantment stirred once more within Jeeda's being. He glanced sideways at Naaz and kept watching, until his eyes slowly began to close. A little while later, Naaz saw that Jeeda was fast asleep — and his eyelashes were holding back two tears.
To be continue....