Someone is coming.

Barefoot in the snow. Her feet leave deceptive prints in the fluffy white stretch between the station house and the darkness hiding at the treeline. In the morning it will look like someone opened the tin-metal screen door and walked into the woods. Her marks will still be there because the snow has stopped falling. The mountains are coated with silence. He can hear her coming.

Zafar twists in his cot and pulls the bristly wool blanket to his chin. His brother mumbles gibberish from the bassinet. He wishes more than anything that he didn’t stay up and listen to their stories. Father and Waiz phupha are across the snow-coated grass, in the main house. The women are in their own quarters. He’s not ready to be a man, but Hamad is just a baby. There’s no one else.

“She sings,” phupha said, smiling over his tea. The steam obscured his face like a niqab but his white smile, so wide, danced behind his voice.

“Says who?” Father asked.

“My men. They hear her sometimes, at night. It’s beautiful, they say. But in a way that hurts.”

“Your men are liars and tale-tellers. She is quiet. No words. She doesn’t have a face.”

Zafar remembers coughing, choking on his biscuit. No face. That’s when he started to regret their permission.

Father clapped him on the back, hard.

“Not a story for the boy,” phupha had said.

“Nonsense,” said Father. “He’s getting old. She’ll visit him soon, too. He needs to know.”

“Faruk…”

“He needs to know, Waiz. She knocks,” he said, turning to his eldest son. “Singing, no singing—doesn’t matter. She knocks. Everyone knows this. Always with the left hand. Four times.” Father rapped the wooden table with a knobbly, twisted knuckle four times. “Knock, knock, knock, knock.

“She comes during the transition, dusk or dawn. A bad time. Her feet point backwards.”

Laying in the purple-blue haze of dusk, he wonders, Will I be able to resist? and pulls the covers over his head. No knocking, not yet. Just the crunch of feet breaking the snow-settled silence. Quiet, but loud in the stillness.

The conversation plays endlessly in his head, keeping him awake.

“Maybe they should stay in the quarters with the women, just until we are finished tonight, Faruk.”

“Nonsense. He’s not a girl. Does he look like a girl? Zafar. ‘Victory.’ You, an army man—you know this. There’s no victory in retreat. No honor in cowardice. Zafar can watch his brother. He’s already twice the man of most of your soldiers.” Father dropped a heavy arm around him then, pulled him close, just for a moment. His shirt smelled of spice and sweat and something secret, something else. It was a man’s scent. One day it would be his.

Phupha was smiling, but his eyes didn’t smile. They darted between his face and Father’s, back and forth like the glassy marble eyes of a toy doll. “I’d be lucky to have him,” he said. “What do you think, Zafar? You’re going to be one of Khan’s men when you get older? A soldier of Islam?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning, legs squirming under the table.

“Maybe tomorrow we go out and shoot army guns, what do you think, Zafar?” Father asked. 

“Okay.”

“Your name means Victory. He’s told you that?” Waiz phopha asked.

Zafar nodded.

“Well then, we need you more than you know,” his uncle said, reaching across the table to run a big, calloused hand through his hair.

Now, laying in the hard, unwelcoming cot, he watches the window through the crack he’s allowed in the covers, watching as the sky fades from lavender to violet to plum. The razor-top trees are black shadows against the sky, swaying, slicing, trying to cut it open and release heaven. He says a prayer: it’s for nightfall. Total dark. Anything is better than dusk.

And he listens to the crunch in the snow. Monotonous, it pulls him down. One foot in front of the other. Does she walk like that, like him? The thought conjures images he’d soon forget, given the choice. But even now, shivering in bed as the icy wind gusts against the wooden slats of the station house, even now with the limited cognition and foresight of a seven-year-old boy, he knows that some images never leave the mind. They become a part of you and travel wherever you go, like an army man’s pack—his kalashnikov, his canteen, his fatigues, his boots.

Zafar closes his eyes to watch her. Stumbling through the snow, weaving, her face and body concealed in black against the darkening sky. All that shows are her ankles, that tiny slip of skin. He sees achilles. The round, light brown nub of heel approaching. Crunch. Slide. Crunch.

Maybe he’ll be asleep when she knocks. Maybe he won’t hear at all. 

A slow rising of the shoulders as he pulled deep, shaky breaths was the only indication that he was a boy and not a statue. Shadows pooled at his feet. Zafar stood over his desk, head down, chin digging a dent in the soft flesh just above the clavicle. He was transfixed. Devout. He may have been pouring through the Qur’an, small finger gliding right to left, muttering in Arabic under his breath as he worked to memorize scripture, or slaving over his arithmetic, chewed pencil in palm, scribbling in the margins. His posture was of a boy lost in study.

Outside the sky was turning lavender-gray as the sun, obscured by clouds most of the afternoon, only burning its way through cover in the last half-hour of daylight, settled behind the low hills that rolled across the western horizon. Because of the afternoon’s foggy veil, or because his bedroom’s only window faced east, he did not notice the shadows growing, taking over the wood-paneled bedroom, leaving him alone in the day’s remaining glow. The crisp smack of wood striking wood ripped him from his trance. He folded the slick, wrinkled page with tears along the seams from when it was ripped hastily from the magazine, and returned it to its new home beneath his mattress. Seconds later he was outside.

Hamad was lobbing balls into the air and smacking them on their way down. He held a wooden bat nearly as big as himself, and imitated the satisfying wood-on-wood sound with his mouth each time he made a connection and sent the glossy red ball hurling toward the northern edge of the property, where browning lawn gave way to trees and darkness. Wind blew from the south and east, faintly carrying the stench of garbage beneath the smell of the sea.

“Time to go inside. Collect the balls and return them to the closet, along with the bat you can barely lift.”

“Ah, Zee! Come on!”

“Don’t plead, it makes you sound like a baby. You’re too old to act like a baby.”

“And you’re too young to act like Father.”

Zafar closed the gap and ripped the cricket bat from his brother’s hand. “The balls! Now!” Hamad sulked a few steps in the direction he’d been batting, stopped, turned around. “I’m scared,” he said.

“Scared of what?”

“The trees. It’s darker over there. Dark enough.”

“That’s not how it works. You know that.”

“I’m scared, Zee.” Hamad threw a look over his shoulder, squirmed.

“Didn’t I just say you were too old to act like a baby? Get them now. We don’t leave toys in the yard.” His eight-year-old brother stood where he was a moment longer, throwing furtive glances from the treeline to his face. “Fine. Stand there and watch the light fade. Then Father will come home and find you in the shadows. Is that what you want?”

Minutes later they were through the backdoor, dropping the bat and the balls in the closet. Zafar watched the treeline at the edge of their yard as the sky turned purple. The light was becoming unreal, losing its natural vibrancy the way it always did at twilight. He was thankful to be inside. Hamad had almost made—

“Where’s Leila?” he asked his brother. 

“With Munsif.”

“Munsif isn’t here, bay-waqoof. Father dismissed him yesterday. Go check his room, it is emptier than your brain.” Zafar’s heart picked up speed; he pictured the bare white walls, the sheetless cot in the corner.

“It’s not fair that I have to watch her, Zee. She’s too young to play any games.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

He ran outside, calling his sister’s name. She wasn’t in the back. He circled around, desperately hoping he wouldn’t see his father’s small, white compact beginning up the hill in the distance. Zafar ran a full circle around the house, shouting into the darkening sky.

Father’s workshop sat at the western edge of the property, at the bottom of a small slope. It had been a barn when they’d moved in three years ago to the farmhouse; its paint was a dull red that was closer to brown, like dried blood on a bedsheet. Father kept a padlock on the front doors and carried the key on a chain in his pocket. No one was allowed inside without him. There were windows along the wide walls, but they were fogged and blurry. A mudslide last year had sent a small boulder rolling downhill that had knocked a hole in the eastern wall; it was a dark spot beneath splintered wood that made Zafar think of the homes of cartoon mice. He ran to it, dropped to one knee, peered inside.

“Leila!”

There was movement inside, white cloth shuffling in the shadows. His heart leaped to his throat and froze there, stopping his breathing.

“Leila?”

The figure turned, stared, approached.

“Zee!”

He exhaled. Then threw another glance over his shoulder. There was another white blur in the growing darkness: Father’s car, beginning its ascent at the bottom of the snaking hill, less than two miles away. His relief was temporary.

“Leila, come out. You need to come out now, please.”

“Zee!” she exclaimed again, tossing a small paperweight toward him. It traveled five inches from her chubby hand and cracked as it hit the ground.

Zafar dropped onto his belly and began slithering into the hole. He was sweating, despite the rapidly dropping temperature. The sun had disappeared. It was dusk.

“Leila, please, come here. Come! Take my hand! See! We can dance!”

“Dance!” she said, and started pumping up and down in place, bending at the knees. Her white teeth stood out in the stale, dark air. He tried to push further in and felt a sharp splinter ripping into his shirt, pulling skin.

“God!” He forced himself back, aggravating the wound. Hamad was behind him, watching, his face pale. He grabbed him and threw him on the ground.

“Get in there! Get her out now before Father gets up the hill!”

Hamad saw the look in his brother’s eye and words of protest died in his mouth. He crawled through the opening and grabbed his sister, who responded with an insolent shriek. Seconds later she was being shoved through the opening; Zafar kept his palm pressed against the sharp wooden end of the broken board as she wormed through. Hamad followed. Zafar picked his sister up and they sprinted across the yard, through the backdoor just as Father’s car wheezed and coughed to silence in the driveway. Their breath had barely caught when they heard the door open. His feet struck the wood, loud in the silent house. Keys jingled. He sighed. Came around the corner. Their foreheads were slick with sweat.

“Why are there no lights on in my house?” He struck the switch on the wall and the overhead chandelier burned to life. “Too dark in here,” he said, mostly to himself, as he crossed the room to turn on the straight lamp.

“Were you exercising?” He spoke to all of them.

Zafar responded: “No sir.” He flinched away when Father lifted his hand and placed it on his forehead. He held the back of his hand to the light, twisted it, studied it.

“Hamad and I were playing cricket. We were inside before the sun went down.”

Father’s eyes slowly turned to Hamad where they held for a moment. Zafar held his breath, watched his brother dance on his feet, look at the ground. Eventually, Father said to him, “Is he a good bowler?”

“Not very,” Hamad said. “I hit everything he threw.”

“Hmm.” Father left the room, went upstairs. They listened as his feet stamped his progress above their heads. He returned from his room when full darkness had fallen over the world, said, “I am going to my workshop. Have Usaid keep my dinner in the oven.”

Zafar thought of the tossed paperweight. He wondered what else Leila had done, and began preparing answers to questions that would become his.

He dreamt of a night with Father. They were up late, in the reading room of the old house. Books lined the walls, books in English and Arabic and Urdu and Hindi and Farsi. Seeing them again in his dream, Zafar felt the same tinge of sadness and defeat, the sense that there was so much knowledge, all around him, just out of reach. He promised himself that evening that he’d learn to read them, all of them.

Father was sitting in his smoking chair, a faded green club chair wrapped in cloth instead of leather. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and meals cooked in the kitchen down the hall. It was warm and pleasant. Father smoked and read, his glasses hanging at the edge of his nose, rubbing his thin mustache, while Zafar watched. Outside this room, the house slept.

“You’re not interested in the history of your country?” Father asked, gesturing to the closed book in Zafar’s lap.

“My eyes are tired.”

“Perhaps you should sleep then.”

Father pushed his glasses up and pulled his book close to his face. This had been at the beginning of the bad times, shortly before they’d left the house Zafar was born in and moved to the farmhouse at the edge of the city. Zafar’s heart ached for a return to normalcy, knowing that he’d never get it. Some things can’t be reversed. People don’t come back once they’ve reached their end, no matter how much they leave behind. His sadness made him linger. Father dipped a biscuit into his coffee and chewed behind his book and a rising cloud of blue-gray smoke.

The book lowered. Father removed his glasses and stared for a moment.

“Come here.”

Zafar crossed the room and sat on his father’s lap. He was still young enough to do this without the embarrassment—the need for distance—that would come later. When Father called him like this, it meant he wanted to tell a story. They weren’t always pleasant stories—often weren’t, really—but Zafar wanted for it regardless. It was good to be a small person in a bigger person’s lap while he still could.

“When I was younger,” Father said, “not much older than you now, I hung around with some people that weren’t the best.” He was speaking English, only English, that’s how Zafar knew, even as he dreamt, that this was after—

Well, he didn’t need to think about that in his sleep. God knew he spent enough of his waking hours with it on his mind.

“One night while we were sitting on the roof of one of their houses, smoking cigarettes we’d taken from somebody’s father or older brother, they started to tell me a story. They often told stories of the things they did when I wasn’t around. I didn’t get around with them too often, I was always afraid of getting in trouble. They told me many stories…but this one I will never forget.

“Three of the boys were out at night, late at night. They were older than me, probably sixteen or seventeen. They were out at night, riding their bikes through the neighborhood, enjoying the darkness and the cover it gave them to do things they didn’t want seen.

“One of the boys saw a young girl walking alone. Walking in the other direction. Her head was down and covered. So he stops a little farther down the road and tells the others. Of course they want to go looking. A girl out at night must be trouble—they know this. They want this. They turn and ride back the direction they saw her, but she’s gone. There’s nothing there, just dark, silent houses.

“Having nothing to do, they spent the next twenty minutes looping the streets, riding through the dark neighborhood, hoping to find her.

“‘There!’ one of them yells. He yells quietly to not attract attention. There’s a girl at the end of the street, walking toward the dead end.

“‘That’s not her,’ the first boy says. ‘She was dressed differently.’

“‘Well maybe this one knows where her friend went,’ the one who spotted her says, and begins after her. They all ride down the dark street smiling and excited. When they get to the girl she’s standing at the dead end, facing away. The boy in the lead gets off his bike and walks to her. He pulls her shoulder and says, ‘Have you seen the girl walking alone? We are looking for her.’

“The face he sees when she turns around seems like a normal face at first. It is pale in the moonlight, and round. Her hair is covered. She opens up her mouth and says, ‘What girl?’ and her mouth keeps growing and growing until it is too big for her face. They told me it was like the mouth of a shark or some beast, a mouth that should not have been on a girl’s face. They got on their bikes and pedaled away fast as they could. They didn’t go on night rides after that. They sat on the roof and smoked cigarettes instead.”

Father’s cigarette had burned out. The filter sat between his hard fingers, forgotten. The room, the house, the night was silent.

“Do you know why I choose to tell you this story, Zafar?”

He shook his head, too afraid his voice might crack if he tried speaking.

“Bad things happen when you are up to no good. Bad things attract bad things, if you understand me. You don’t want to signal to these things to come because they will come. They will find you.

“I’ve done bad things. And because of that, bad things happened to me. To us. None of us are safe now and it’s my fault.”

Zafar remembered every detail of that night: the story, the smoke in the air, the things Father had said after. They’d gone to bed then and he spent the entire night hiding under his blanket, wondering what bad things might be after him. But in the dream they stay in the reading room, they stay in the chair.

“You’ve done bad things too, Zafar,” Father says. His arms tighten around Zafar, locking him in place. “I know you have so don’t lie to me. Someone has been about in my workshop, touching things that don’t belong to them.”

“I haven’t,” Zafar says. His voice is thin because his chest is being squeezed. He can’t breathe, someone is choking him, crushing his ribs against his lungs.

“You lie!” Father screams. “You were out there with her. That girl.”

“What girl?” Zafar asks. He turns to look at Father, now impossibly tall, his gaunt face towering above.

“What girl?” Father repeats, his mouth growing into a monstrous, ferine grin. It stretches to the corners of his face, touching his ears, reaching to his eyes, consuming until his face is black, the world is black, the world is nothing.

Sleep eluded him. Pressure grew in his chest, the weight of uncertainty. He’d have to answer for it, somehow. Father had returned from his workshop late, ate dinner alone, as he did often. They’d been in bed twenty minutes already, Hamad and Leila upstairs, Zafar the lone occupant of the first floor. His window faced east; it was the first to grow dark in the evening and the first to gain light in the morning. The wind sighed and pressed the trees, the house.

Even if something was out of place—surely something had been altered by Leila’s careless grip—Father would not have roused him from sleep. He would have sat at the table, beneath the burning lights, and chewed food and thought slowly. It wouldn’t come tomorrow. Perhaps the next day. Long enough for the immediacy to dissolve, for recently forged stories to be forgotten. Zafar would be reading anthropology, or he’d be working on his English, memorizing rules of grammar, and the broken paperweight would be dropped loudly on his desk, scraping the wood. Questions would follow. Answers would be attempted. Punishment applied.

Without thought he stood. The sudden movement caused his vision to darken and his heartbeat to thrum behind his eardrums. The day’s first sunlight was beginning to glow at the edge of the hill beyond his window. His fingers slipped beneath the mattress and his pulse doubled. He relived it first; wanted to be there again before seeing it.

Eyes closed, he saw bare walls. White. Sterile. A single cot pushed into the corner, stripped of sheets. Small pinpricks in the plaster surrounded by rectangles of white, untouched by dust. Munsif had taken his meager belongings: pictures of his family, the two outfits he alternated between, his Qur’an, his prayer rug.

Did he forget it, leaving in haste? Or had he left it behind for someone?

Zafar, compelled by an alien curiosity that seemed childish and beneath him, had sat on his cot and tried to imagine his servant’s life. Such a small room. No television, not even a lamp to read beneath. This had been his only sanctuary outside of servitude. He lay on his servant’s bed, put his face to the thin mattress, inhaled. When he shifted, he heard it, crinkling beneath.

Now, lifting his own mattress, he craved the rush of finding it. The woman—blonde, white, American—was laying on a white couch, her legs spread, her hands caressing golden flesh. Zafar had never seen a naked woman. It made him feel light and airy, like he might float to the ceiling and stick there. He took it to the window, where paltry moonlight still fell at silver angles.

His eyes flirted from her face to her chest to the shadowed spot between her open legs. She was smiling. Her blue eyes seemed to look out at him, to see him where he stood. Her teeth were whiter than the couch, small, set in a neat row. One hand was curled delicately beneath the hollow of her neck. The other sat on her thigh. A dark patch of golden-brown hair disguised whatever hid between her legs. He knew it was different than what was between his legs, but not how it was different. Back when he’d still gone to the private academy in town, Bashar, a chubby boy that breathed loudly and offensively, had told him there was a hole down there, like a well. He couldn’t see a hole, only the beginning of a slit, an indentation that descended beyond his vision. He traced that line with his finger, his face growing hot and feverish, and a rock hit his window; he nearly ripped his precious treasure in surprise.

Assuming himself caught (Why is Father outside, What is he doing) he ran to his bed, shoved his picture beneath the mattress, dove under the covers. Waited. Minutes passed. There was another knock against the glass. Another. One more. Pebbles being lobbed from a minor distance. Then the house was silent outside the occasional creak and stir of old wood settling in for sleep. Slowly his thoughts turned to memories of cowering under the blankets at Waiz phupha’s station house in the mountains.

There is no victory in retreat, no honor in cowardice, Father had said. Zafar left the bed, crossed the room, thinking, My name is Victory.

At the window, he saw her. A veiled figure standing in the trees. A silhouette against the dark backdrop of the world, his mind. She stepped backward, her gait awkward but steady, and disappeared.

When he woke the next morning, he wrote it off as a dream. But the picture remained, had grown new wrinkles from hasty foldlines. And his window, previously unblemished, bared four marks.

They finished dinner as the sun went down. Father watched it fall behind the hill, frowning above his papers as the quality of light changed, became spectral.

“Hamad, open the lights, please.”

“Why can’t Usaid do it, Father?”

“Usaid is packing his belongings. He leaves in the morning. I have relieved him of his duties.”

“Leaving? But who—”

Zafar issued a swift kick under the table, pointed to the lamp with his eyes. When the lights were on and Father’s posture had loosened—his eyes no longer studying the purple yard—Zafar asked, “Why did you relieve Usaid, Father?”

“We no longer need him,” he said without looking up.

Hamad looked sideways at his brother; clamped down on his tongue to still it. Leila scribbled a blank page black, smiling.

“But with Munsif gone, who will watch us while you work?”

Father lowered his papers, removed his glasses, glanced at the back window. He said, “I will.”

They sat in silence as their reflections grew in the glass. “You’re aware of what is going on in the city, yes? You read the paper I leave for you in the morning?”

“Yes, sir. The labour unrest.”

“And what does that mean? Explain it for your brother, who surely does not read it as he claims he does.”

“Workers are unhappy. They are occupying the factories demanding better wages and access to shares of the workers’ participatory fund.”

“Very good.” Father smiled. He saved it for rare occasions. Zafar beamed at the sight of his thin lips turning slightly upward beneath his pencil-line mustache. The joy faded as Father continued. “I see you’ve lost none of your Urdu after all.

“Tomorrow’s paper will tell you that the police opened fire today on a protest. My factory is closed. Most factories in Karachi will be closed soon. I will be doing what work I can from my workshop. We do not need Usaid or Munsif with you to watch the house and myself just across the yard. Would you agree, Zafar?”

Their eyes turned to Leila as she frowned and scribbled, digging deep black lines into the paper.

“Yes, sir.”

“Father, why are the workers protesting?” Hamad asked.

“Your brother said because they want better wages. He’s not wrong. But workers have always wanted better wages. They always will. The world is built that way. Those that are uneducated or unskilled always want more than they can earn. They see other people with the things they want and they want them too. The real reason they are protesting is because of the president’s anti-industrialist, socialist agenda. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has catalyzed this movement. Now he is the one ordering them shot dead in the street.”

Father laughed, scanned the windows. “He’ll be gone soon. They never last long. One day this nation will have the leader it deserves, not another of these corrupt fools with their empty promises and idealistic machinations.” His eyes fell on Zafar. “Maybe it will be you. Hmm? What do you think, Zafar? Your name is almost the same. Zulfikar, Zafar. I prefer the meaning of yours.”

“Yes, Father. Victory.”

“Victory. So you cannot lose.”

“What about my name?” Hamad asked.

“Hamad. Your name is praise. You should know that.”

“What about Leila?”

“I’m drawing outside!” she said, finally looking up upon hearing her name. Father glanced at the blackened paper, the short stub of pencil, the darkness pressing against the window. His mouth produced a low sound as his teeth grinded against each other.

“What about your name, Father?” Zafar said, delivering another kick beneath the table.

He looked up. The darkness in his eyes dried the saliva in Zafar’s mouth.

“Faruk. I am the one who distinguishes truth from falsehood. I can tell right from wrong. You’d do well to remember that.”

The last bit of light had bled from the sky. Dusk had passed. Full dark fell on the yard and the house and the people within.

“If I am going to be working from my workshop then you must obey my directive that you do not go inside. There will be important work there. There already is, in fact. Which is why you know not to go inside, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So which of you has been inside?”

Hamad threw a panicked look at his older brother.

“We haven’t been inside, sir,” Zafar said.

“You haven’t? I suppose my papers threw themselves on the floor, rearranged themselves in a nonsensical order to waste my time? And my paperweight, the one your uncle brought me from Saudi Arabia? Smashed itself on the wood?”

“I haven’t been in there, I haven’t!” Hamad yelled. Father slapped him across the face. The flat sound rang across the room. Leila dropped her pencil and began to cry.

“Silence! You will not lie to me in my house!” Father wrapped his hand around Hamad’s small wrist and lifted him from the table.

“It wasn’t him! It wasn’t.” Zafar said.

“What are you saying? It better be the truth.”

“He didn’t go inside, Father. It was…me. I went in there. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied.”

“Zee,” Hamad said.

“Quiet.” Father released his wrist and pushed him away. “It was you, Zafar? And how did you get inside? The padlock was in place when I got home.”

“I crawled through the hole in the side.”

“You can’t fit. You’re almost as big as me. But you’re not lying about Hamad. I know when you lie and when you say truth.” He turned to Leila. She shrank into her chair as her eyes bulged.

“You! You daughter of the night! I should have known!” Leila shrieked as he grabbed her from the chair and began storming down the hallway. Zafar jumped up from the table and chased.

“Father, wait! She doesn’t understand! She’s too young, please, I should have been watching, please it’s my fault!”

“She has to learn now, while she’s young, same as you did. Twice as much if she wants to grow up as an honorable woman.” He slammed through the front door and into the black yard, toward the workshop. Leila screamed.

“Father, stop, please, please, stop—”

“DO NOT FOLLOW ME!”

They froze in the doorway, watched Father and Leila disappear as they crossed the yard and then reappear as the workshop door opened and light from inside escaped. Then the door slammed and the world was dark again. Quiet. Hamad paced in a tight circle, hyperventilating, his hands shaking rapidly at the end of his hanging arms. “Zee,” he said, again and again.

Zafar held his brother and cried. Eventually Hamad stopped shaking. He buried his face in his older brother’s shirt, wiping his nose with it. They stood that way for thirty seconds, squeezing each other tight, before Zafar ushered his brother back into the house.

Just as he got Hamad through the door, the screaming began from the workshop, the sound of a banshee in the night. Zafar decided to wait inside too.

He dreamt of the woman from the picture. He was in a black room with black walls and a black floor. When he stepped forward, his feet made no sound. She lay on the white couch, naked. The only sound was the rasp of her skin as she gyrated and shifted, moaning softly.

Zafar walked to her. The dread rising from his stomach was overpowered by the energy rising beneath his waist. He needed to know what she smelled like. How soft a woman’s skin was, and if it felt like velvet or satin or some other luxurious fabric beneath his fingers. If her breath would be warm on his neck.

She froze him with her gaze, then beckoned. He closed his eyes and leaned in. Her hand took his and guided it down her stomach. She giggled and bit his ear. Father emerged behind the couch, rising up and up, impossibly tall, ten feet above the ground. He brought the leather strap down on the woman’s face. The whip-crack produced a sound like Munsif bringing the carpet beater down on a rolled, antique rug on a hot afternoon. She screamed, and the voice that flew from the black pit of her mouth was his sister’s—the painful shriek of a child. Zafar fell backward, scrambled on his butt, and Father brought the strap down again, and again, and again, yelling in Urdu, telling her that the pain she felt was the evil leaving her body, the spirits, the night, the darkness being forced out. Zafar hit a wall; stopped. The woman’s screaming transformed into something inhuman, the cry of a specter from the woods, a bobcat crouched in the snow on the ridge of a mountain.

Father stopped. His glasses had fallen off. His eyes turned to Zafar, and he shrunk, disappearing back beneath the couch the way he’d come. The woman stood; her face was bleeding, her body bruised with purple-black welts. Above her head she held a black burqa, the same deep, infinite black as the walls of the room. She smiled before dropping it over her head. All that remained were her feet. Zafar watched as they twisted backward, could hear the tendons screaming as her toes turned toward the couch and her heels came to face him.

She started to walk. Soon she was close enough that he couldn’t tell her apart from the walls.

Zafar cooked his siblings breakfast. They ate quietly, the boys trying not to stare at the marks on their sullen sister’s arms.

The kitchen smelled of tea when Zafar first entered, shortly after morning’s beginning light. Father had been up before dawn, then; had made his way to the workshop before night began turning to day. He hoped he would stay there all day, that he might take to sleeping there, that he might never step foot inside the house again.

But hope took you nowhere—he was old enough to know that. So when the plates were cleared and washed he brought Hamad’s English language text to the long wooden table and opened to the previous day’s grammar exercises. Better to be found busy than hopeful. With his brother at work, he attempted to rouse Leila. Her book of letters and numbers was in the next room and he retrieved it.

“Leila, why don’t you work on your letters? You were doing so well yesterday.”

She sat and stared at the table, her chubby arms folded across her chest. Her dark hair was cut in a straight line across the round, pale moon of her face. Her lips were pursed and her stare was hollow.

“Or you could do numbers. Numbers were always my favorite. I could help. Want to go through your numbers?”

“No.” Her voice was barely audible. Hamad glanced up briefly and then returned to his exercises.

“Okay,” Zafar said, rubbing her back. “Why don’t you just draw then?” He turned to the family room, “I can grab you a blank—”

“No!”

He froze.

“No more drawings! Drawing is bad! I don’t want to draw bad things anymore!”

“Okay, you don’t have to. It’s okay.”

The front door opened, closed; they heard Father walk through the hall and saw him appear in the doorway.

“Good, you’re up. Up and working.” He watched them for a moment, then went to the kitchen. A moment later he walked back through the room with a new cup of tea and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The front door opened and closed again.

Leila left the table, left the room, sat on the couch and frowned. Zafar thought of following her and decided against it. Instead, he stood over his brother and watched him work.

“‘Effect,’ with an ‘E,’” he said, pointing.

“I thought…wait,” Hamad flipped backwards through his text, searching for reference.

“Verb or noun?” Zafar asked.

“Huh?”

“Are you using it as a verb or a noun? That’s the first thing to look for.”

“Um….verb? Verb. Right?”

“Verbs are action words, Hamad. Is that an action?”

“I don’t know!” Hamad slammed his book and pushed off the table. His eyes were filling with tears. Leila looked to the room and then back down again. “I don’t want Father to hate me like he hates Leila.”

“Keep your voice down!” Zafar pulled his brother back to his chair. “Father doesn’t hate Leila. Don’t say stupid things.”

“He does, Zee, and it’s not even her fault. Father hates all girls.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Ever since Mother died. He fired the women that used to work in the house. We don’t ever see anyone in the family anymore, not even Phupho. You don’t have any friends that are girls, not even your cousins. Have you ever even talked to a girl that isn’t Leila?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I went to a boys’ school before Father took me out. What girls am I supposed to talk to?” Zafar asked. Heat rose to his cheeks as ethereal pieces of last night floated into his mind.

“Ever since Leila was born and Mother died he’s gotten rid of all the girls, Zee. The only girl he thinks about is the one with the backwards feet.”

“Stop it, Hamad,” Zafar said, craning his head, “you know he comes in quietly sometimes.”

“I like it better when he’s not here. I wish Munsif was still here.”

“Well he’s here for now, we can’t change that. Just stay busy for when he comes inside. Mostly he will be in the workshop.”

“Why does he get mad that I can’t read the paper, Zee? He’s the one that stopped teaching me Urdu when Mother died. How am I supposed to know how to read it? He doesn’t let you teach me, he wouldn’t even let Munsif or Usaid speak it in the house. And they can’t even speak English!”

“I don’t know! What do you want me to tell you?”

They were quiet for a while. Zafar checked on Leila, found her sleeping on the couch. Without thinking, he went to his room, stood over the mattress. The house was silent. There was a bird outside his window, whistling. He watched it, then he saw the marks on the glass and heard Hamad in his head, The only girl he thinks about is the one with the backwards feet. The sweat on his forehead went chill. His palms were clammy. The excitement was there again, that electric-floaty feeling from the dream, the dread.

Back at the table, Hamad was staring blankly over his books.

“I don’t know what Mother looked like, Zee. I can’t remember. I don’t even have a picture.”

“Me neither,” Zafar said.

“You must remember a little. You were as old as me when she died.”

He saw a smile. Remembered the warm comfort of her hands on his back. Her voice. She used to sing when it was just the two of them in the house.

“I remember,” he said eventually.

“What was she like?”

He let his eyes fall out of focus, tried to picture her across the room sewing. Singing to herself. He could see her face turning, smiling at him; raising the black burqa she was fixing over her head, dropping it down, her feet turning inward as she crossed the room.

“Why are you thinking about this now?” He forced himself to see his brother’s face. Nothing else.

“I try not to be mad at Leila,” Hamad said. “It’s not her fault that Mother died. But if she never came, Mother would still be alive. And Father wouldn’t be like he is. I would speak Urdu and we would still play with the cousins and visit Phupho in the mountains. I could go to real school.

“Even though she killed Mother, I try not to hate her. Because I don’t want to be like Father, hating her for something that she didn’t choose.”

“She didn’t kill Mother, Hamad.”

“Father thinks so.”

“No he doesn’t. He thinks he did. He told me so, one night after she died. Before we moved out here and away from everyone else. He told me he cursed us and it was his fault Mother died. That he was being punished for something he did. He said the woman with the backwards feet killed her and she was going to come after all of us eventually. Except Leila. That’s why he kept the name Mother gave her, even though he hates it. It means ‘night.’ That’s why…nevermind.”

Hamad had his chin resting on his knuckles. Zafar sat tall next to him, his eyes looking through the window, seeing nothing.

“What was Mother’s name, Zee?”

“Mahreen.” He smiled. “It means ‘bright and beautiful as the sun.’ That I remember. I’ll always remember.”

“What was she like?”

“She was like the morning.”

Father returned before dark. He turned on the lights in the kitchen and the hallway; he lit the chandelier in the dining room and found the lamps in the living room and the study. Upstairs, he showered. When he came back down the heavy smell of soap followed him. He sat at the table and lit a cigarette while intermittently marking the margins of his paper.

Zafar finished preparing dinner in the kitchen. The smell of cinnamon and boiling potatoes drifted into the dining room, and into the kitchen came the mingling of soap and smoke. It had the effect of shrinking him, making him little again. Hamad carried plates as he set the pot of biryani in the center of the long table. For one awful moment Zafar thought Father was scrutinizing the food, the way he carried it; straightening up, he saw Father’s eyes didn’t follow. They were watching the treeline in the backyard as the afternoon’s daylight dwindled. The cones in his eyes took a backseat, letting the rods absorb what little light remained. The effect was a surreal glow, an indigo ambiance that told of mystery and imagination.

“Bad time,” Father said to himself. He met Zafar’s stare. “A time of transition. Crossing over.”

Before he could stop himself, Zafar said, “What is she, Father?”

His face hardened. His answer was short: “Devil.”

The room was filled with the sound of silverware on ceramic as plates were passed around, forks and spoons delivered. Overhead, the chandelier burned. The orange room stood against the purple twilight. They ate quietly until Father said, “Who remembers the story of Heer Ranjha?” His eyes continued to hold the same distant look as he viewed his own reflection in the glass, as if talking to no one.

“Surely you remember, Zafar,” he said, looking to his oldest son. “It was your Mother’s favorite.

“You probably heard it too, Hamad. You—you’re too young,” he said, turning to Leila, avoiding her name.

No one answered. Father said, “It begins: ‘First take the name of Allah and second the great Muhammad, the Prophet of God; third take the name of father and mother, on whose milk my body thrived.’”

He stopped; a wistful smile bloomed beneath his mustache.

“‘Fourth, take the name of bread and water, by eating which my heart is gladdened; fifth, take the name of Mother Earth, on whom I place my feet.’”

Father cleared his plate and dropped his fork across it. He lit a cigarette and said, “A silly story, really, but your mother loved it. Forbidden lovers that end up dead. Shakespeare did it better.”

He left the room. They cleaned up and went to bed.

Zafar awoke after many hours; when he opened his eyes, hoping to see morning’s glow, he was greeted by the dull gray light of dawn. Something had pulled him from sleep.

He stood over his mattress, breathing. His fingers fell beneath the fold and began to lift. He ran a hand along the bottom until he felt the smooth, laminated surface of his hidden woman. A rock flew against his window and he dropped it.

Another tap. The sound that had drawn him to consciousness.

He crossed to his desk, keeping his head forward, avoiding the temptation in his peripheral vision. The desk was wide and wooden, a dark cherry color, the surface scarred by age. He pulled the drawer open and pushed papers aside.

Tap.

At the bottom, buried among notes and exercises and other forgotten things, he found what he was looking for. The picture was faded, black and white. She’d posed for it, sitting in the garden behind their old house, sewing needles in hand, the warm smile that he’d known resting above her chin. He pulled it to his nose and inhaled; the effect was limited—mostly it smelled of a crowded, forgotten corner, like paper left to sit in the dark—but enough to make him small again.

Tap.

He thought about Father’s smells, the lingering of spices on his shirt, the smell of his soap and his cigarettes. Smells that would always make him small, even when he was a man, even when they were his own. He saw his Father’s large, tired hands, felt the weight of them on his shoulders. He thought about hate, and he thought about love, and he thought about how sometimes they were the same thing.

And he turned.

At the window there was a woman. Her face was covered with a black veil. All that remained were her eyes. They were dark brown, the color of chestnuts. Her mouth was hidden, but her eyes showed a smile. She did not sing. He could not see her feet and did not know if her toes pointed at his room or the trees behind her. She beckoned with a pale hand. Zafar smiled. He was awake to hear her knock.

And behind her, the sun, coming over the hill. It was morning.