Amal Unbound: Chapters 8–16

I was the best student in my class, but soon Hafsa, and even Seema, would surpass me.

I read Miss Sadia’s familiar scrawl on the first paper.

Lubna lay swaddled tightly, fast asleep.

Her gold bangles from her wedding dowry, the ones she never removed because they were her most valuable possessions, clinked against her arms when she touched me.

Her gold bangles from her wedding dowry, the ones she never removed because they were her most valuable possessions, clinked against her arms when she touched me.

“Munira can’t possibly recover. He burned their orange groves to a charred crisp,” Fozia continued.

“The people in that town made a pact. Refused to pay their debts until he stopped with the threats. Forget Munira's measly acres! He destroyed their entire village. Every last orange grove and cotton field. Jawad Sahib sent quite the message!”

I didn’t really care about Jawad Sahib and his acts of vengeance.

"No, Amal. I'm sorry, but it has to be this way.”
But did it really have to be this way? If I were a boy, would I be staying home to fold laundry and iron clothes? If I were a son, would he so casually tell me to forget my dreams?

My mother was adamant about our education.

But today, traveling the same streets I’d walked hundreds of times before, without little hands to keep out of fruit stands, without tiny feet to steer around idling rickshaws, I noticed it all as though for the first time.

Shaukat’s store was bustling.

My neighbors filled the aisles, sifting through the vegetables and fruit.

Slinging my satchel over my shoulder, I stepped back onto the dusty road.

I was so engrossed, I didn't hear the door swing open and Seema charge in until she grabbed me by the arm and ushered me into the kitchen.

Fozia called him worse than his notorious father.

“A-Abu,” I stammered, “I should have told you right away. But his car. It hit me. I was minding my own business walking home from the market. But he wouldn’t let me be. He wanted to give me a ride home. He took my things and wouldn't give them back!”

“You give it to him. You drop everything at his feet, apologize, and walk away! Don't you have any idea the lengths that family goes to just to satisfy their egos? And Jawad Sahib especially! Don’t you know what he could do to us now?”

When Omar and Seema returned from school, we gathered by the wire chicken coop in the backyard, obscured from view.

And never be indebted to anyone—especially someone like this.

“His word? His word can change with the tides. What need does he have to keep his promises? You’re the one who took loans from a viper without breathing a word to me. You fix it.”

He had avoided me since we last talked, but sitting next to me now, his eyes damp, his shoulders hunched, he didn't look angry.

The familiar stretches of brown and green patchwork earth I had known all my life swept past me in a blur before transforming into plush manicured green as the car slowed down and the driver turned onto a gravel road lined with shade trees.

When the estate materialized in the distance, only the second-story windows and balconies were visible from behind the huge brick wall surrounding it.

The driver walked me into the cavernous house and dumped my things next to a marble staircase in the middle of the foyer before turning to leave.

The driver walked me into the cavernous house and dumped my things next to a marble staircase in the middle of the foyer before turning to leave.

“Wait, Ghulam. What’s this?” asked a gangly teenager with a mop of curls.

Floor-to-ceiling windows behind them overlooked a tiled verandah with wicker sofas and a sprawling garden.

Floor-to-ceiling windows behind them overlooked a tiled verandah with wicker sofas and a sprawling garden.

“Well, if she stands there gawking, it’ll be us he yells at for not putting her to work.”

I followed Nabila through a curved entrance down a new hallway. Everything was darker and shabbier here. Instead of marble floors, this part of the house had gray concrete.

The cooled air of the main home was replaced here by hot musty air and the smell of frying onions.

Only now did I realize her left arm had white gauze wrapped around it.

Nabila ushered me farther down the narrow hallway and stopped at a rickety door.

I lifted my suitcase and pushed back my growing dread.