4 walls and a window

Dwelled in the streets of Peshawar

Crawled the bus driver’s devour

To hitchhike a local

Apparent and vocal,

“100 rupees for him and the other “

Their chastity yearned for to smother

At checkpoints along the embellished roads

Each vary of travel and transport modes

With infants of nine, ten and eleven

Their bellies scoped for their fragment of heaven

All from the streets, or runaways consume

A spliff of their own varied heaven fume

Those stops where tiresome drivers rest

Nine out of ten have a ruggedly zest

For those young ones who sell for the night

Or gang-raped by four men, no source of contrite

Appeals for the children, if asked, then they blame

“It’s their fault the first place those children then came”

جیسی کرنی ویسی بھرنی

; You reap what you sow

And so, they endow

The consistent pattern from abuse to abuser

Never would one firm themselves the deluder

And women, the things that are useless to carry

A boy in his young age was never made wary

That two men subsided in 4 walls for rooming

Was not a repayment for children made grooming.

Naeem was greeted to Jahid in the guest room, the daycare counselor approached him earlier that week about a temporary stay there, of which he accepted. Naeem was greeted before then, at work, with his daily travel in the gravel pits, a vitalness for 200 rupees a day.

Recycled bottles, plastic streamers, advert pages and rust were extorted in the mountainous pile of work. His tow sack hinged on his right shoulder, half-filled as usual after half the time worked. The hessian fabric gaped from the side of the sac, whilst a burnt metal strap evaded outward from it. As he walked, the clinger of hollow cans immersed closely to his ear. His chappals stranded his feet, though elapsed farther than should have from his ankle, it was the most fitting he found in the meetings for Asr Masjid prayer. The cardboard-colored kameez broadened over his arms, though earlier that afternoon he complacently tucked the out ridges to fir his narrow, worn arms.

The counselor, Sir Ruhan, wore an ironed, white kameez over his ribbed vest. The north western Sun embellished him as he walked in the direction of Naeem’s pickings. “ Asalam Alaikum”, “Walaikum Wasalam sir”, the converse was brim, concise as Sir Ruhan was assured of the lateness of the day and the encroachment of night. Naeem gloomed around the room, several black bunkbeds, and a central hay carpet where two people played marbles. The mud walls layered under a sloped roof, windows were only recreational by the outside lunch sites. A flowered blanket was neatly placed on the endings of the mattress.

“Lunch is in two hours, all the children gather outside, be early, the washrooms are along this hall on the left”. Naeem could still hear the roads and main buses compressed in traffic, he knew that at this time he would have usually walked alongside them in hopes for a meal. He knew everywhere, Peshawar consisted of homeless children, they had to know everywhere, therefore he was one. Naeem ran away several months before, “ My brother beat me a lot”, he replied as one of the infants asked for his background.

Lunch derived of lobia kalool and paratta, sufficing him greatly as he nourished it.

“Jahid stop putting your finger in my cup!”, exclaimed one of the new arrivals as he was newly acquainted with Jahid. “There’s nothing in it, look.”, Jahid cheekily spoke. The infant stirred near the cup and peered into the fully visible water being splattered on his face as he did so.

“ Damn you!”, exclaimed the infant. Jahid pinioned the cup on the child’s head as a Taqiyah he saw men wear on the pilgrimage to Masjid. Dust from the road diverted from car ends and glared a spiked yellow during the golden dusk. From roofs, the clamored city paths stayed silent for a moment. Then the night elapsed.

The daycare housed many children, but not enough to counter the mass populated Peshawar’s children and poverty rates. During nightfall, they too rummaged through the streets to continue earning as most of them stayed a few weeks at best. Shelters were few, dismissing those that are to soon close such as that Naeem primitively visited. The mosquito-simmering wet air pastured across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, rigged the province of pumping gas fuels and bus frontiers smoke.

Naeem statured himself near the cinema, he knew there were two. The other one propelled lude films and nude women whilst the mass got off from it or with a child. This one had heightened standards, “druggies come here after high”, he described it. His passioned film was casted there, the good guys are saved and the bad guys die in the end. Though, the elevated desire for some hash and glue eradicated the film soon afterwards. As streetlights illuminated, it indicated the offers he was to receive at a busy intersection.

“Shall we go?”

““Where?”

“Either to the car or a hotel”

“What do you want to do?”

“What else? Make love”

“I’ll also pay the hotel bill”

“It looks like you’re hard. Come with me”

He knew familiarly well his response, though there was an occurrence where he accorded with them. At eight and a half, he confounded with a man three time, each time for a thousand rupees. The previous three days, he hadn’t eaten, the days after, he mourned at nightfall with reverence. His condemnation asked, “What have I done?”. It was habitual by his friend, Saeed, to suggest it. “He told me to give my ass away, but I refused”. Saeed advised it as a child advised another to currency their body, the vulgarity was unequal. Naeem condensed himself on the street beds alongside bus parking routes, a man rented those to aspire the fatigued bus drivers to rest. He facades the resting site to roaming infants, enhanced to do so. Surely, you must, must understand. A European man resorts this as the cause of their religion, a rival middle eastern man justifies them with terrorism.

“What can we do?”

“We know it’s totally against Islam, God doesn’t like it, but we’re helpless against our desire.”

The cyclic persuasion does not expire

The ones who refuse are appraised a denier  

Of pleasure, if spotted a woman outside

Of course, its assumed she’s serviced his side

With herself and her body, though if with a boy

How must one assume the sex trade envoy?

Naeem laid tiresome, on the street bed

Four strung him sidelines, enraptured instead

One, by one, by one, by one, till done.

His need made neglect, from home did he run

Yet 4 walls and a window was far much to expend

And relate if no food would his body depend

On daunted men who experienced the same

How possibly is there for them to made blame?

Dwelled in the streets of Peshawar

Crawled the bus driver’s devour.