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My brother died the next week.
I gasped. She sniffed. After a moment of silence, she continued.
We figured the doctor had probably duped us. There was nothing we could do about it …
Then, the world came crashing down on us. My father, who would always stay away from the other men in the bosti, now joined their group. He started drinking, coming home in the middle of the night with other men and beating up my mother and me. He quit his job as well and used to take all the money that mother earned to buy alcohol, drugs and women. And then one day, he didn’t come home. We don't know what happened. Maybe he died. To be honest, I don’t care. … Good riddance.
I was utterly astounded. Moina stopped talking for a long while. I stared at her. A girl just my age. I could’ve been in her shoes! And this was the story of just one girl, out of how many – hundreds, thousands … millions?
My mother worked for a year or so, but she grew weaker. She only worked to pay back our debts. And when the last poisha [coin] was repaid, she quit her job and fell to the floor. This was almost 6 months ago. Since then, she hasn’t risen.
“So how do you manage?”
At that, she got slightly flustered and hesitated before replying.
I do what most people in my place would have done. I use my body. Look, apa, I know what you are thinking. But I need the money. Who will pay the rent? Who will buy the food? Who will pay for mother’s medicines?
But things are so hard. Sometimes I wonder why I was born. I have no aim in life, apa. I just live each day with no thoughts for tomorrow, for what else can I do?
***
I came out of Moina’s broken home and checked my watch. It had only been about 45 minutes since I entered. But during this time, I had changed into a totally different person and I looked at the world around me with newly-created eyes.
Moina had finished her story by telling me that she has AIDS and would have committed suicide, had she not had to think about her mother as well. She told me how hard life in this bosti was without a male member in the family. Drunkards often came into their insecure refuge and sexually abused her. There was only one toilet for fifteen houses and, for a woman to go out of the house to go to the toilet after dark was like asking to be raped. During the day as well, the toilet was usually unusable, as there was no water. But, worse of all, she was all alone in the world. There was nobody to hold her and help her live through the hell fire that she was engulfed in.
Standing outside her hut, I looked up to the sky and took a deep breath of the dirty, putrid air to calm my traumatized insides. Then, I hitched up my pants again and walked back to where my driver was waiting for me.
All the way home, I shed a thousand tears for Moina, and all the others like her, praying earnestly for them, so that they could at least find one good reason to be alive.
***
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