The day Kallo the whore was driven out of her neighbourhood for sleeping with her uncle, Mushtari Bano had coincidentally decided to consume kerosene and kill herself after her hakim husband’s betrayal.

Poor Mushtari Bano, a devout woman who was regular with her prayers and fasts and who would keep a watch on Kallo from a distance, couldn’t even in her wildest dreams imagine that the urchin would hit her nerve one day!

I first spotted Kallo at the tooth powder seller’s tamasha. Every Friday evening, a bulky man would appear with a drummer and sell assorted tooth powders. Both young and old would throng his cart.

“Wood, coal… if you want some relief, you have to chew on my powder,” he would announce, and his praise would make the best of qadirs and naat-khwan pale in comparison. The vendor was more melodious and mellifluous than all of them, and Kallo was his model. With her dark, pockmarked face, her unabashed eyes, her straw-like hair, her long jumper soiled in grime and dust, her cracked heels and crooked, long and dirty nails, Kallo was a masterpiece of filth in flesh and blood. But she had a set of pearl-white teeth, and the vendor would open Kallo’s mouth over and over to convince his customers that she exclusively used his special tooth powder. However, I knew that Kallo had barely brushed her teeth in weeks.

Anyway, the vendor was only interested in selling his powder. After the crowd dispersed, the vendor would hand Kallo a fistful of chana and a few coins as remuneration. This work was certainly more honourable than the other menial jobs that she did in the neighbourhood. For example, Rashida Bhabhi would shout, “O Kallo! The little one has pooped! Go and wash him, will you? The poor kid is smeared in poop in the toilet, and you are just watching him? Don’t you have any shame? And yes, a heap of his clothes has also piled up. Wash them as well.”

Kallo would attend to the job without uttering a word of complaint. Rashida Bhabhi would leave two thick rotis and some mint chutney in the basket, and this would be her meal for the day.

Scrubbing Sughra’s grandmother’s back; picking lice from Sughra’s and her sister’s heads; bringing coal from the community store; bending under the weight of the coal; grinding the wheat; cleaning up the locked storerooms; feeding the oxen; grazing the goats, etc. – Kallo did all such menial jobs. In return, all she got was a meal or two and some old clothes.

After finishing up all these chores, she would return to her uncle’s house with an aching back and bone-splitting pain, where she would be the target of her aunt’s insults and uncle’s punches. They would yell at her for loitering around all day like a stray bitch and not lending a hand at home. Home.

For Kallo, home was just a red house surrounded by lush trees that was sketched on paper. Her aunt’s daughter, Zahra, would often draw such a sketch and later fill it with colours. The sky in her drawings was always a happy blue, strewn with violet clouds. Kallo would gaze at the picture with eyes full of desire. To her, a home was something found only on a calendar, for what she called “home” was just a rusted tin shed with a plastered floor, on which she spread her dirty sack to sleep, and at times, play hide-and-seek with the stars that peeped through the innumerable holes in the roof.

This tin shed was the only shelter for a shivering Kallo in the winter, a drenched Kallo in the rains and a perspiring Kallo in the summer.

It was a blazing summer when we had the niyaz for Khwaja Baba. Some pulao-zarda was left over after distributing the portions in the neighbourhood. By the next day, the garlic in the pulao had begun to give off a foul stench. Suspecting the pulao had turned bad, Miyan Saab got up without eating while the kids unwillingly ate roti with milk, making faces.

I thought of Kallo at once and sent my oldest daughter to get her. She came by, scratching her head, picking on her teeth. She devoured the rancid pulao as if she had been hungry for ages. She didn’t even leave a grain of rice. In fact, she sucked on each and every bone. I’ll be rewarded for this! I thought when I saw a contented Kallo burping after her sumptuous meal. The pulao would otherwise have been dumped in the garbage, a meal for cats and dogs. It would have been such a big sin to waste all that food!

After finishing the meal, Kallo washed a pile of utensils. She unblocked the drain that had been clogged for months. Despite her ugliness, I felt a sudden rush of affection for her. At once, I fished out my older one’s old satin suit that had come off at the seams and gave it to her.

She made a partition with a bedsheet near the drain and took a bath. After all, she had got a new pair of clothes!

After offering my asr prayers, when I recited the salaam, I chanced upon her black, soot-like body. La hawl wila quwat! I thought. She had the face of a devil but the body of an angel! Just like a cot, her body was sturdy and strong, like a life-size statue of an African woman. She poured water on her head from a jug. Her two dark crescents grew rounder and tenser. The grime from her head washed away, becoming one with the soot of her body. Her curly locks danced like snakes on her voluptuous hips. I felt a bit jealous. My husband had been practising restraint for a while. And after bearing five children, I couldn’t maintain my curves. My muscles had grown loose like an old gunny sack that was only fit to mop the floor after years of being used.

I took back the satin suit from her. It needed a bit of a repair, that’s it. It could easily be mended at home. Inflation was high, and war was lingering upon us. It was no joke to buy new clothes.

Kallo didn’t mind at all. She wiped her body dry with the bedsheet, put on her soiled garments and skipped away.

Excerpted with permission from the title story in Kallo and Other Stories, Sameena Nazir, translated from the Urdu by Saira Mujtaba, Hachette India.

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