Mud City Read Online Free Page B

nodded at the work she had doneand poured her a cup of tea from the thermos he had filled at the tea shop.
     “Take some bread,” he said, pointing to a small stack of nan wrapped in
     newspaper.
    Shauzia tore a loaf in half and took half out to Jasper, who gulped it
     down, then sniffed the ground for more.
    “Maybe later,” she said, and he thumped his tail.
    By the time she had finished the job, the heat of the morning had almost
     dried her clothes.
    “Do you have any more work for me today?” she asked.
    “Not today. I am closed today, so there will be no deliveries or
     customers. You are a hard worker. Maybe I will have jobs for you from time to time. I
     just said maybe,” he added, when Shauzia’s face lit up. “Fetch your
     dog, and I will pay you.”
    Shauzia got Jasper.
    The butcher peeled a ten-roupee note from a bundle he pulled out of his
     pocket. He hesitated for a moment, then added another ten roupees.
    “Take the rest of the bread,” he said. She did.
    “Look,” she showed Jasper. “Three loaves.We’ll eat like kings today and still have some for tomorrow.
     Food, money and clean clothes, and we only just got to the city! This will be
     easy.”
    But she had no more luck that day, or the next. The day after that, her
     sandals fell apart. She tied them together with a bit of twine that she found on the
     ground, but that only held for a half a day. It wasn’t just the straps that were
     broken. She’d worn one sole clean through to the pavement.
    “I can’t go on like this,” she said, looking at the
     bloody mess the bottom of her foot had become.
    They sat at the side of the road for a good long while, wondering what to
     do.
    In the middle of the afternoon, a pedlar with a karachi full of rubber
     sandals pushed his cart slowly past her.
    “That’s what I need!” Shauzia called for him to stop and
     walked gingerly over to him, her bare feet tender against the hot pavement.
    “How much for a pair of sandals?” she asked.
    The pedlar named a price. It was more than Shauzia had in her pocket.
    “I don’t have enough.” She felt like
     crying. Her bare feet burned. She had to hop from one foot to the other.
    The pedlar watched her for a moment, then rummaged in the bottom of his
     cart. Finally he handed her several sandals that did not match.
    “Try these,” he said. Shauzia tried them on until she found a
     sandal to fit each foot. One was brown, and one was green.
    “Why do you have all these sandals that don’t match?”
     she asked.
    “People with one leg need sandals, too,” he replied.
    “How much for these?”
    “How much do you have?”
    Shauzia showed him the money in her pocket.
    “That will do,” he told her. He took it all.
    Now she had sandals, but she had no money.
    “It’s all Mrs. Weera’s fault,” she said to Jasper,
     as they watched the sandal man wheel his cart away. “If she had got me new sandals
     like she was supposed to… ” Shauzia didn’t complete the thought.
     Blaming Mrs. Weera suddenly seemed like a waste of time. Therewas
     never any money in the compound for things like sandals.
    “What do I do with these?” she asked Jasper, holding up her
     old torn sandals. She decided to leave them on the sidewalk. She put them down, but
     before she had taken a few steps, a young man swooped down and picked them up.
    Maybe she should have kept them after all.
    Shauzia slept in a different spot each night for the first few nights she
     was in Peshawar. The city was never quiet at night. There were always the sounds of
     gunshots, arguments and trucks. There were sounds that could have been crying and could
     have been laughing. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
    When people passed by they ignored her, or stared down at her. Sometimes
     they dropped trash on her. She told herself it was because they didn’t see her.
     The more it happened, though, the harder that was to believe.
    One day, after she and Jasper had been in