Looking up, she scanned the crowd again only to realise she was beginning to draw attention. Tawfiq had noticed the attention too. ‘This is not good,’ he said, clearing a way for her to follow him as he moved deeper into the alley.
‘You’d think a tailor in a street full of bird sellers shouldn’t be too hard to find,’ Sofia said, almost to herself. As they passed one of the side alleyways she looked down to see an excited crowd milling around a cockfight, but with word quickly spreading that a Western woman was in the street, men were already beginning to stop and stare.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ whispered Tawfiq. ‘I think we should leave. It’s not right that you go to this man’s home alone.’
‘I’m not going alone. I’m going with you and we can’t leave. This is about saving some little boys.’
‘What does Dr Jabril say?’ Tawfiq lamented.
‘He doesn’t know.’ Tawfiq stopped and turned around, looking at her with alarm. ‘I tried to call him but I couldn’t, and I tried Chief Wasim but I couldn’t get onto him either. We had no choice but to do this now. There’s no one else and there’s no time. This is for the little boys, Tawfiq. Remember that. This is for the little boys.’
She saw the slump in his shoulders and knew what that meant. ‘Okay, you can try calling him.’
Leading Sofia over to the entrance of a nearby shop, Tawfiq pulled out his phone and dialled Jabril’s number only for it to go to messages. ‘Dr Jabril’s not going to be happy,’ he said, shaking his head as he put his phone away again.
‘He’ll be very happy if we find where the boys are, though.’ Sofia was watching his face. ‘I know you’re unhappy about this, Tawfiq. I’m unhappy too, but what else can we do? We’ll do this as quickly as we can. We’ll just go in, ask this man, and then leave.’ He looked as uncertain and worried as she felt. ‘Come on, let’s keep going.’
Tawfiq didn’t move. ‘It’s there,’ he said, pointing to a green sign. She realised he’d seen the sign before he’d tried to ring Jabril.
As they entered the shop a bell tinkled. Thousands of bolts of fabric, in some places five and six deep, were stacked against the walls, on shelves and gathering dust on the top of old cupboards. Spools of brightly coloured thread hung from the ceiling, while below them an old man was furiously feeding material into an ancient Singer treadle sewing machine. He hadn’t heard them enter over the noise of the machine, but when their shadows fell across his work the machine slowed and he looked up.
‘I think it best if I talk,’ whispered Tawfiq. Sofia agreed completely. A man would respond much better to Tawfiq than to her.
‘Where is Afzal?’ Tawfiq asked. Without a word the man stood and led them back out into the street, pointing up a narrow staircase beside the door to his shop that neither of them had noticed.
29
AFZAL LIVED IN the tiny apartment with his wife, four children and mother. After Tawfiq knocked they stood listening to the shuffling going on behind the door as someone made themselves presentable to strangers. A young woman finally opened the door, still making adjustments to her black burqa so that only her eyes could be seen. While Tawfiq was explaining that they were there to speak with Afzal, the woman looked more interested in examining Sofia. When Tawfiq had finished she motioned for them to come in and sit on the floor while she fetched her sleeping husband, who came out of another room with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth while scratching his crotch. Three little children, who had been peeking out from behind their mother when she answered the door, were now gathered around their father as he sat opposite Tawfiq and Sofia on the floor. Sofia smiled at the children. The little girl stuck her thumb in her mouth and buried her head in her father’s side. The boys continued to stare.
Two filthy glass doors opened onto a timber deck with rotting boards and a dilapidated timber balustrade. An old flyspecked air conditioner, which looked as if it had given up the ghost decades earlier, was hanging threateningly off the wall above the doors. Training bacha bareesh, if that was what this man did, didn’t look like it paid that well.
Afzal’s two boys, who would have been about five and six years old, had shaved heads. Their younger sister, who had emerged from her father’s side, had a head of luxurious dark waves, two little gold studs in her tiny earlobes and gold bracelets jangling on her wrists. Afzal’s wife was leaning up against a bench in front of a two-hob gas burner that served as the kitchen. An older woman was holding a sleeping baby. Both women were watching Sofia and Tawfiq. When the wife picked up an old plastic flyswat that might once have been a cheerful red but had faded to a dirty brown, and hit the wall, it seemed to be good enough reason for the two women to start arguing. As Sofia watched, the wife picked up the dead fly with two fingers and threw it out the open window. With that settled, the women turned their attention back to Sofia and Tawfiq.
Afzal seemed immune to what was happening behind him. With a thick smoke haze settling around his head and
