The story of the two kids I met at a shopping plaza in Islamabad is as ordinary as most such stories are. Nothing extraordinary happened. I met them during a visit to Pakistan. And I left them at the plaza when I returned to Washington.
It was a long visit. I stayed there for more than two months. In those two months, I could have done more to help the boys. But I did not.
I made feeble attempts to make things better for them but left it incomplete and escaped, as I often do with the jobs I undertake.
After my initial meetings with them, one day I found the two brothers asleep on the steps of an under-construction building, hugging each other to stay warm.
It was early autumn and since it rained in the morning, it was a little chilly. I went home and returned with a blanket. They welcomed the blanket with so much delight that it embarrassed me.
The next day when I went to the plaza, I visited the kids again and asked them if they needed another blanket. They did not respond. When I insisted, they pointed to a big, middle-aged man, sitting at a little distance, wrapped in their blanket.
I started to walk to him to get the blanket. The kids stopped me. “Please do not,” said the elder brother. “He will beat us after you leave.”
“How dare he,” I shouted, “I will tell the police.”
“Oh, that will be worse. The police are with him,” he said.
“With him? With this beggar?” I asked. “He is no beggar. He is the in-charge here, the chief chowkidar,” the kid said.
“Who made him the chowkidar? He looks like a thief,” I said.
“No one, he appointed himself,” the kid said and explained how this man came to the market, collected a few other toughs, negotiated a deal with the shopkeepers and became the head chowkidar.
I brought two small blankets from home and some warm clothes and gave those to the two kids, saying: “These blankets are too small for big men, so they will not steal them from you. And these clothes will keep you warm too.”
During the weekend, I went to a friend who was a senior officer in the city police and told him all about the kids and the thug.
“Can’t you guys do something about it?” I asked him.
“Not much,” said the officer. “The shopkeepers will back him because he provides them security at very little cost.”
Then he explained that he would need an official complaint to act against the man. “And nobody will do that, not even you,” he said.
“It’s a lengthy legal process. Even if you came forward, you will soon run away as it will require you to come to the court at every hearing.”
“So you are suggesting that we should leave the kids at his mercy?” I asked.
The officer laughed and said, “I will do something but you stop visiting them because that will make things difficult for them.”
After a week or two, I saw the two kids washing the car of the local thanedar. It horrified me because I knew the thanedars never pay anyone.
Yet, the kids looked happy. I wanted to ask them why but then decided to talk to my friend in the city police first. I telephoned him and told him what I saw. He laughed and urged me to “visit the kids now.”
I went back to the market in the evening but did not find the kids at their usual place. When I asked someone, I was led inside the under-construction building where I found the kids sitting on a half-broken bed.
They ran to me when they saw me and took me to their new abode, a half-finished room in the unfinished building. They put a clean cushion on two empty, wooden crates and asked me to sit.
I did. Before I could ask them where they got all this “furniture” from, the chief chowkidar came and informed the kids that he had asked the “hotel-wala to send chai for your guest.”
Totally perplexed, I asked the kids what all this was.
“It is all because of you, sir. It is all because of you,” said the elder brother. “Now we are no ordinary kids. We wash thanedar saheb’s car.”
“Thanks for arranging this,” said the younger brother while showing me a polish tube he used shinning up the thanedar’s car.
“Does the thanedar pay you?” I asked.
“No, obviously not,” said the elder brother, “but it does not matter. Now, we are not ordinary kids. We wash thanedar saheb’s car,” he reminded me.
“Are you happy?” I asked them.
“Yes,” said the elder brother. “With your help, I, too, will become the chief chowkidar one day.”
They were happy but I was not. So when I got a chance, I went back to my friend in the city police and asked him what was happening, why were the boys washing thanedar’s car.
“Get real, yaar, get real,” he said. “This is neither a film nor a short story. There are no happy or sad endings here. There is just the continuation.”
Then he explained why he “just nudged the process ahead,” did not push it.
“Had I sent my constables to talk to the chief chowkidar, it would have offended him. He could have waited for a few days and then thrown them out of the market,” said the police officer.
“Had I been more intrusive, the chief chowkidar and his thugs could have done anything. One of the boys could even have lost a limb in a fake traffic accident.”
Then he explained how their association with the thanedar had not only raised their status in the plaza but also had other benefits for them.
“What benefits?” I asked.
“Go and see what happens when they are washing the car,” he said. I did. I went there in a friend’s car, parked it at a corner and watched.
As the boys finished washing, the waiter of a roadside restaurant brought a plate of kebabs and nans for them. “From thanedar saheb,” he said.
And when the thanedar was leaving, he offered them two cups of ice cream, perhaps because a senior officer of his department had asked him to look after the boys.
But what happened after the thanedar left was even more astonishing. Other boys of their age, who do all sorts of odd jobs in the plaza, showed a peculiar deference to them. Some of them went to the two boys just to say, “Salaam.”
This did not please me, so I called the police officer in the evening and said: “Yes, you are right. They indeed are more comfortable now. But instead of reforming them, it is turning them into little ruffians.”
“That is because the chief chowkidar is the only role model they have. He is their mentor. All those boys want to become a chief chowkidar when they grow up,” he said.
The two boys were still washing thanedar saheb’s car when I returned to Washington at the end of my working visit to Islamabad.
[Concluded.]