February 22, 1990 — Malik Riyaz's Estate
Hyderpur
The money changed everything. Not in the way people think—not in the obvious ways, the new things, the shiny distractions. It changed things in the spaces between. The way servants moved quieter. The way guards at the gate stood straighter. The way the villagers, when they passed the estate, walked on the other side of the road and didn't quite look up.
Riyaz noticed. He noticed everything. That was what thirty years in the military did to a man. You learned to read silences, to weigh glances, to know when the air shifted.
The air had shifted.
He sat on the veranda in the weak February sun, a cup of kehwa cooling in his hand, watching the new guards make their rounds. Four of them now. Two at the front gate, one at the back wall, one who walked the perimeter in slow, deliberate loops. All retired. All loyal. All paid more than any village guard had ever been paid in the history of Punjab.
Riyaz had hired them in January, right after the first lottery win. At the time, it had felt like paranoia. Like an old man's fear of losing the last thing he had left. But now, with over a million rupees in the house—actual cash, crisp government notes stacked in a steel trunk under his bed—it felt like the most logical decision he had ever made.
A million rupees.
In 1990, that was not money. That was a concept. That was the kind of number you read about in newspapers, attached to politicians and drug smugglers and people who lived in Lahore and Karachi and never set foot in places like Hyderpur. It was not something you kept in a trunk under your bed while your five-year-old grandson slept in the next room.
But here they were.
And here was Arslan, standing at the edge of the veranda, watching the guards with those eyes that saw too much.
"Nana."
Riyaz looked up. "Yes, bete?"
"The MNAs in Uch Sharif. They have jeeps."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement. A child stating a fact, the way children state facts about the weather or what they had for breakfast.
Riyaz almost smiled. "Yes. They have jeeps."
"Can we get a jeep?"
The question hung in the air. Simple. Innocent. The kind of question any child might ask after seeing something shiny and new.
But Riyaz had learned, over the past two months, that nothing Arslan asked was simple.
"Why do we need a jeep?"
Arslan tilted his head. The gesture was pure child—confusion, curiosity, the search for words.
"So we can go places. Farther places. Faster."
"We have the horse cart."
"The horse cart is slow."
Riyaz set down his tea. "And where do you want to go that's so far?"
Arslan thought about this. His face did something complicated—the furrow of a child trying to explain something too big for words.
"Everywhere," he said finally. "I want to see everywhere."
Riyaz looked at him for a long moment. Then he did something he hadn't done in weeks. He laughed.
"Everywhere is a big place, bete."
"I know." Arslan's voice was soft, serious. "That's why we need a jeep."
---
The decision took three days.
Not because Riyaz was reluctant—he had already decided, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he would buy the boy whatever he wanted. That was what grandfathers did, wasn't it? That was what he had missed, all those years of watching his daughter disappear into that house of snakes, knowing he could do nothing, save nothing, protect nothing.
But a jeep was not a toy. A jeep was a statement. A jeep in 1990, in rural Punjab, was the difference between being someone and being no one. Between being respected and being invisible. Between safety and its opposite.
So he thought about it. Weighed it. Consulted no one, because there was no one to consult.
And on the morning of February 22, he woke Arslan before dawn.
"Get dressed. We're going to Multan."
Arslan sat up in his cot, blinking. For a moment—just a moment—his face was unguarded. Surprised. Almost childlike.
"Multan?"
"Jeep shopping."
The smile that spread across Arslan's face was so wide, so genuine, that Riyaz felt something in his chest loosen. This, he thought. This is why.
---
The drive took four hours.
The jeep—Riyaz's current jeep, the old military surplus olive thing that had carried him through a dozen campaigns and a thousand dusty roads—rattled and coughed its way across the flat expanse of southern Punjab. Wheat fields gave way to scrubland gave way to the first ragged edges of Multan's outskirts. Buses passed them, stuffed to the brim with men hanging from doors and children pressed against windows, their faces smeared with dust and wonder. Donkey carts loaded with bricks. Bicycles carrying entire families. Women in burqas walking along the shoulders, clay pots balanced on heads.
No motorcycles. No cars. Just the endless, patient crawl of poverty.
Arslan watched it all from the passenger seat, his small body barely visible above the door frame. He said nothing. But his eyes moved constantly—scanning, cataloging, filing away.
Riyaz noticed. He noticed everything.
"What are you looking at?"
Arslan didn't look away from the window. "Everything."
"Everything?"
"The way people live. The way things work. The way—" He stopped. Searched for words. "The way it's all connected."
Riyaz let the silence stretch. Then: "You think about strange things for a five-year-old."
Arslan turned to him. That gaze again—too old, too steady, too knowing.
"I think about what I see."
Riyaz nodded slowly. "That's not a bad thing."
"No," Arslan agreed. "It's not."
---
Multan in 1990 was a city of ghosts and merchants. Older than memory, built and rebuilt on the bones of a dozen empires, it wore its history like a shroud—crumbling shrines next to half-finished plazas, British-era buildings with their paint peeling, streets so narrow you could reach out and touch both sides.
The car market was on the outskirts, near the old cantonment. A sprawl of lots and workshops, of men in grease-stained clothes and men in crisp shalwar kameezes, of vehicles in various states of repair and decay. Toyotas from the late seventies, their paint faded to nothing. Suzukis that had been patched and repatched so many times they were held together by prayer and rope. A single Land Cruiser, 1983, that had probably belonged to some army officer's cousin.
Riyaz parked and they walked.
Arslan's hand was small in his. The boy stayed close, eyes wide, saying nothing. But Riyaz could feel the tension in those small fingers. The way they gripped tighter when they passed certain vehicles.
They stopped at the first lot. A man in a brown waistcoat approached, smiling with too many teeth.
"Malik Sahib! Welcome, welcome! Looking for something special? We have the best selection in all of Multan, I swear on my mother's grave."
Riyaz ignored the theatrics. "Jeeps. Four-wheel drive. Reliable."
"Of course, of course." The man led them through rows of vehicles, pointing, explaining, praising each one like a marriage prospect. "This one, 1979 Toyota, original engine, runs like a dream. This one, Suzuki 1982, very good condition, very reasonable. This one—"
Arslan tugged at Riyaz's sleeve.
Riyaz looked down. "What?"
Arslan pointed. Not at any of the jeeps. At something in the corner of the lot, half-hidden behind a stack of tires.
A car.
Not a jeep. A car. Low-slung, elegant, completely out of place among the utilitarian vehicles around it. Its paint—what remained of it—was a deep, metallic blue. Its lines were smooth, almost fluid, a stark contrast to the boxy jeeps and trucks. The round headlights stared out like eyes from another world.
Riyaz frowned. "That's not a jeep."
"I know." Arslan's voice was quiet. Reverent.
"That's a car. A sedan. Useless on these roads."
"I know."
"Parts will be impossible to find. No one in Pakistan knows how to fix it."
"I know."
"Then why are you pointing at it?"
Arslan looked up at him. And for the first time since the fire—since that morning in Uch Sharif when Riyaz had found a five-year-old sitting calmly in the ashes—the boy's face was not a mask.
It was open. Hungry. Desperate.
"Because it's beautiful, Nana."
---
The dealer had followed their gaze. His smile widened, sensing an opportunity.
"Ah, you have excellent taste, young master. That is a BMW. 1985. 5 Series. Came in on a shipment from Germany—some businessman brought it over, couldn't pay the import duties, had to sell. It's been sitting here for six months."
Riyaz's jaw tightened. "BMW? That's—that's a luxury car. From Europe."
"Exactly!" The dealer was practically glowing. "Very rare. Very exclusive. In Lahore, Karachi, men would kill for this car. Here in Multan—" He spread his hands. "No one knows what it is. No one wants it. Too low to the ground. Too fancy. But for someone with taste, someone who understands—"
"How much?"
The dealer named a figure. Riyaz did the math in his head. It was more than he had planned to spend. More than twice what he had planned to spend. But still—in the context of a million rupees in a steel trunk—possible.
"Too much," Riyaz said flatly. "We're here for a jeep."
Arslan's grip on his hand tightened. "Nana."
"No."
"But Nana—"
"We came for a jeep. We're buying a jeep." Riyaz turned to the dealer. "Show me the 1979 Toyota."
The dealer hesitated, glancing between the old man and the boy. Then he shrugged and led them toward the jeep.
Arslan didn't move.
Riyaz felt the tug on his hand. Felt the small body go rigid. He turned.
Arslan stood exactly where he had been, staring at the BMW. His face had changed. The hunger was still there, but now it was mixed with something else. Something that looked, for all the world, like the beginning of tears.
"Nana."
The word was small. Broken.
Riyaz felt his heart clench. "Bete, it's just a car. A fancy car that we don't need and can't use—"
"I want it."
"I know. But—"
"I want it."
Riyaz sighed. "Arslan, be reasonable—"
And then it happened.
Arslan's face crumpled. Not in the controlled, calculated way of a child performing for attention. This was something else. This was a collapse. The boy who had sat calmly in the ashes of his burning house, who had watched looters pick through his family's remains without flinching, who had quoted Qur'an at funerals with the voice of a prophet—that boy was gone.
In his place was a five-year-old. A real five-year-old. One who wanted something so badly it hurt, and didn't have the words to explain why.
"I want it," Arslan said again, and his voice cracked. "I want it I want it I want it—"
"Arslan—"
"You don't understand!" The boy's eyes were wet now, tears spilling over, running down cheeks that had been dry through fire and death and the slow burn of revenge. "You don't—it's—I need it, Nana, I need it—"
Riyaz knelt down, bringing himself to the boy's level. "Bete, tell me why. Tell me why this car, of all the cars—"
But Arslan couldn't tell him. Couldn't explain about 2025, about the collector's market, about the 150 million dollars this car would be worth in thirty years. Couldn't say that he had watched Pawn Stars in his first life, had seen men weep over BMWs from this era, had calculated the appreciation curve in his head a hundred times. Couldn't say that this wasn't a car—it was a retirement fund, an insurance policy, a piece of history that would outlast empires.
He could only cry.
And so he did.
He dropped to the ground—actually dropped, his small body collapsing onto the dusty lot—and cried. Not politely. Not quietly. The kind of crying that shakes the whole body, that turns the face red and swollen, that makes sounds you didn't know humans could make.
"I want the pretty car," he wailed. "Not the big scary trucks. The pretty blue car. I want it I want it I want it—"
The dealer stared.
The mechanic working on a nearby Suzuki stared.
A man bargaining for a 1978 Datsun stared.
Riyaz stared.
For a long moment, no one moved. The only sound was Arslan's sobs, echoing off the corrugated metal roofs of the workshops, bouncing between the rows of dusty vehicles.
Then Riyaz did something unexpected.
He laughed.
Not a mean laugh. Not a frustrated laugh. A genuine, helpless, what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do laugh. The laugh of a man who had survived wars and coups and the death of his daughter, and was now being defeated by a five-year-old's tantrum over a German luxury car.
"Get up," he said.
Arslan kept crying.
"Arslan. Get up."
No response. Just more sobs.
Riyaz looked at the dealer. "How much did you say?"
The dealer, still stunned, repeated the figure.
Riyaz sighed. He looked at the car. At the boy on the ground. At the car again.
"Two hundred thousand," he said. "My limit was two hundred thousand."
Arslan's sobs paused. Just for a moment.
The dealer shook his head. "Malik Sahib, for that price, I cannot—"
Arslan's sobs resumed, louder than before.
Riyaz closed his eyes. "Two twenty."
"I have a family to feed, I cannot—"
Arslan wailed.
"Two forty. Final offer."
The dealer looked at the boy. Looked at the car. Did some calculation of his own—probably involving how long that BMW had been sitting there, how many people had walked past it, how unlikely it was that anyone else would ever want it.
"Two fifty," he said. "And I'll throw in a full tank of petrol."
Riyaz opened his eyes. Looked at the boy.
Arslan had stopped crying. He was sitting up now, wiping his face with his sleeve, watching the negotiation with an expression that might have been hope, might have been triumph, might have been nothing at all.
"Two fifty," Riyaz repeated. "That's more than I planned to spend."
Arslan said nothing. Just looked at him with those too-old eyes, still wet, still red, still impossibly young.
Riyaz sighed again. Longer this time. Deeper.
"Fine."
---
The drive back to Hyderpur was surreal.
The BMW followed behind them, driven by one of the dealer's men, who would take the old jeep back to Multan as part of the deal. Riyaz watched it in the rearview mirror—that sleek blue shape, so out of place on the dusty roads, hugging the ground like a predator stalking prey.
Beside him, Arslan sat in silence. His face was calm now. Peaceful, almost. He stared out the window at the passing fields, the occasional village, the women with pots on their heads.
Riyaz cleared his throat. "You know that car will be impossible to fix if it breaks."
"Pretty car ."
"You know there's no one in this country who knows how to work on a BMW."
"It's shiney"
"You know we just spent enough money to buy three perfectly good jeeps."
Arslan turned to him. That gaze again. But softer now. Almost warm.
"We got a good looking one Nana."
Riyaz waited for more. For an explanation. For some sign that this had been about more than a child's whim.
But Arslan just turned back to the window and watched the world go by.
After a long moment, Riyaz shook his head and laughed again. Quietly this time. To himself.
"You're going to be the death of me, bete."
Arslan didn't answer. But in the reflection of the window, Riyaz could have sworn he saw the smallest smile.
---
That night, after the BMW had been parked in the courtyard, after the guards had been told to keep an extra eye on it, after dinner had been eaten and prayers had been said, Riyaz sat on the veranda alone.
The money in the steel trunk was less now. Significantly less. But somehow, he didn't mind.
He thought about the boy's face in that moment—the moment when Riyaz had said "fine." The tears had still been wet on his cheeks. His nose had been running. He had looked, for the first time since the fire, exactly like what he was: a five-year-old child who had gotten what he wanted.
And yet.
And yet there had been something else in those eyes. Something that had flickered, just for an instant, before disappearing behind the mask again.
Satisfaction.
Not the satisfaction of a child who had won a toy. The satisfaction of something else. Something older.
Riyaz shook his head. He was imagining things. He had to be.
The boy was five years old. Five. He threw tantrums and wanted pretty cars and pointed at land like any child might. There was nothing more to it.
Nothing at all.
In his room, Arslan lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling.
The BMW sat in the courtyard, visible through his window. A blue shape in the moonlight. A 150-million-rupee asset that everyone around him thought was a child's fancy.
He smiled.
Not the mask. The real thing.
Let them think I'm a child, he thought. Let them laugh. Let them wonder.
In thirty years, this car will be worth more than this entire village. In forty years, it will be a museum piece. And I'll still be here, watching, waiting, building.
He closed his eyes.
For once, he didn't dream of screams.
He dreamed of blue paint and round headlights and the long, winding road ahead.
March 3, 1990 — Bahawalpur Mandi
Livestock Market
The noise hit first.
Not the sound—though that was plenty: goats bleating, cows lowing, men shouting prices, children chasing chickens through the dust. No, it was the smell that arrived before anything else. Thick. Animal. Ancient. The smell of shit and hay and sweat and blood and the thousand-year rhythm of men selling flesh to other men who would kill it in the name of God.
Riyaz stepped out of the BMW—the BMW, he still couldn't believe it—and immediately regretted wearing his good shoes. The dust was ankle-deep in places. Men in stained shalwar kameezes moved between pens, prodding animals, spitting paan, arguing over prices that would double by afternoon.
Behind him, Arslan scrambled out of the back seat, eyes wide. Not with the wonder of a child seeing animals for the first time. With something else. Something that looked, to anyone watching, like the excitement of a five-year-old let loose in a candy store.
Which was exactly what Riyaz was supposed to see.
"Camels first," Riyaz said, already moving toward the far end of the mandi where the larger animals were kept. "Two good ones. Strong. Healthy. Then we go home."
Arslan nodded. But his eyes were already moving, scanning the pens, cataloging, calculating.
Riyaz didn't notice. He was too busy trying not to step in something unpleasant.
---
The first pen they passed held goats. Ordinary ones. The kind you saw in every village, every backyard, every Eid. Brown and white, skinny-legged, with the vacant expression of animals that knew their fate.
Arslan stopped.
Riyaz kept walking for three steps before realizing the small hand had slipped out of his. He turned.
Arslan stood at the pen, staring at the goats. His face was doing something complicated—the kind of expression that could be fascination, could be calculation, could be nothing at all.
"Bete. Camels."
Arslan didn't move. "These are small."
"Yes. Goats. We're not here for goats."
"How much do they cost?"
Riyaz sighed. This was going to be a long day.
---
The seller materialized from somewhere—a thin man with a stained beard and teeth the color of old tea. He smiled, seeing the BMW in the distance, seeing the quality of Riyaz's clothes, seeing opportunity.
"Sahib! You have excellent taste. These are the finest goats in the mandi. From my own village, raised on the best grazing—"
"How much?" Arslan asked.
The man blinked, looking down at the child. Then at Riyaz. Then back at the child.
"Uh—"
"How much for all of them?"
Riyaz's eyebrows shot up. "Arslan—"
"I'm asking." The boy's voice was soft, polite, the voice of a child who didn't know any better. "How much for all the goats in this pen?"
The seller's smile widened. "For the young master? A special price. Let me calculate—"
Riyaz stepped forward. "We're not buying all the goats. We're here for camels."
Arslan looked up at him. That gaze. Innocent. Confused. The perfect performance.
"But Nana, they're so small. And soft. And—" He paused, tilting his head. "And if we have goats, we can have baby goats. And then more goats. And then—"
"We don't need more goats."
"How many goats do we need?"
Riyaz opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
The seller watched this exchange with the expression of a man watching his lottery numbers come up.
"We don't need any goats," Riyaz said carefully. "We need two camels. For Eid."
"But Nana—"
"No."
Arslan's face did something. Not quite a pout. Not quite a frown. Something in between that Riyaz was learning to recognize as the beginning of trouble.
"Okay," Arslan said. Too easily.
Riyaz narrowed his eyes. But the boy had already turned away, walking toward the next pen.
---
The next pen held cows. Big ones. The kind that pulled plows and gave milk and stared at you with those huge, mournful eyes that made you think they knew something you didn't.
Arslan stopped again.
"How much for the black one?"
The seller here was younger, sharper, with quick eyes that had already calculated Riyaz's worth down to the last rupee. "That one? Pure Sahiwal breed, sir. Very good milk production. Excellent bloodline. For Eid sacrifice, you won't find better."
"We're not buying cows," Riyaz said.
"How much?" Arslan asked.
"Arslan—"
"Fifteen thousand," the seller said. "For you, because you have excellent taste, fourteen."
Arslan nodded thoughtfully. "And the brown one next to it?"
"That one? Also Sahiwal. Also excellent. Thirteen thousand."
"The one behind it with the spots?"
The seller's eyes widened slightly. "That—that one is not for sale, young master. That's my personal animal. My—"
"I'll give you sixteen for all three."
Silence.
Riyaz stared at his grandson. The seller stared at his grandson. A man bargaining for a buffalo two pens over stopped mid-sentence and stared.
Arslan looked up at Riyaz with those too-wide eyes. "They can be friends with the goats, Nana. Cows and goats can be friends. I saw it in a book."
"What book?"
"A book."
Riyaz pinched the bridge of his nose. "We are not—"
"The goats are already bought," Arslan said. "The man is counting the money now."
Riyaz turned. Sure enough, the first seller was bent over a small table, carefully stacking rupees that one of Riyaz's servants—when had a servant arrived?—was handing him.
"What—"
"I told him you said yes." Arslan's voice was still soft, still polite, still the voice of a child who didn't know any better. "Was that wrong, Nana?"
Riyaz looked at the cows. At the goats in the distance. At his grandson's innocent face.
He looked at the BMW, parked at the edge of the mandi, gleaming in the morning sun like an accusation.
"How many," he said slowly, "have you bought?"
Arslan tilted his head. "So far?"
"So far."
"The goats are twelve. The cows are three. And there's a buffalo in the next pen that I think would look very nice next to—"
"No."
"—the camels. Because camels and buffalo, I read in another book, they—"
"No more animals."
"—get along very well if you introduce them slowly and—"
"Arslan."
"—give them both their own space, which the haveli has plenty of, Nana, you said so yourself, there's all that empty land behind the—"
"Arslan!"
The boy stopped. Looked up. Innocent. Inquisitive. The picture of childhood curiosity.
"Yes, Nana?"
Riyaz took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third.
"Go wait in the car."
"But the buffalo—"
"The car, Arslan."
---
Arslan went to the car.
He sat in the back seat, watching through the window as Riyaz negotiated with sellers, waved his arms, pointed at animals, and generally did the work of a man trying to contain a disaster that had already happened.
Three trucks had arrived. Riyaz's servants—bless them, they were efficient—had already started loading animals. Goats first, because they were small and easy. Then the cows, which required more effort. Then a buffalo that Arslan had definitely not bought, but which was now being loaded anyway because apparently the seller had "understood the young master's interest" and brought it over.
Arslan smiled.
Not the mask. The real thing. Small. Private. Hidden behind the glare on the window.
Twelve goats. Three cows. One buffalo. That was just the start. He had seen others—a pair of rare Kathiawari horses in a corner pen, a flock of Kajli sheep with their distinctive black heads and curled wool, a camel with the long, soft coat of a breed that would be nearly extinct by 2020.
He would get them. Not today, maybe. But soon. Riyaz would grumble, would calculate, would eventually give in. Because that was what grandfathers did. And because, underneath the frustration, Riyaz wanted to give Arslan the world.
He just didn't know which world.
---
It took three hours.
By the time Riyaz returned to the car, the trucks were full. Four of them now, not three. Someone had found another truck. Riyaz wasn't sure who. He wasn't sure about a lot of things anymore.
He got in the driver's seat. Sat there for a long moment, hands on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at the chaos he had somehow become responsible for.
Behind him, Arslan's voice, small and sweet: "The camels are very nice, Nana."
Riyaz looked in the rearview mirror. Two camels stood in the back of the fourth truck, their long necks swaying gently as the vehicle lurched forward.
They were good camels. Strong. Healthy. Exactly what he had come for.
Surrounded by forty-seven other animals he had not come for.
"Forty-seven," he said out loud.
"Yes, Nana?"
"I counted. Forty-seven animals. Not including the two camels."
"Forty-nine with the camels."
Riyaz closed his eyes. "We don't have space for forty-nine animals."
"We have space. The land behind the haveli is empty. You said so."
"We don't have shelter for forty-nine animals."
"We can build shelter."
"We don't have feed for forty-nine animals."
"We can buy feed."
"We don't have people to take care of forty-nine animals."
"We can hire people."
Riyaz opened his eyes. Turned around in his seat to look directly at his grandson.
Arslan met his gaze. Innocent. Open. The face of a child who had absolutely no idea what he had done.
"You planned this," Riyaz said.
"Planned what, Nana?"
"From the moment we arrived. You planned to fill those trucks."
Arslan's brow furrowed in confusion. "I just like animals, Nana. They're soft. And they smell funny. And—" He paused, searching for words. "And they're alive. Like us. But different."
It was such a perfect, childlike answer that Riyaz almost believed it.
Almost.
---
The drive back took five hours.
The trucks moved slower, weighed down by their living cargo. Riyaz drove the BMW ahead of them, watching in the rearview as the procession wound through the dusty roads—four trucks loaded with animals, plus the original one he had come in, plus two more that had somehow joined along the way.
He had stopped asking questions.
Beside him, Arslan had fallen asleep. His head rested against the window, his mouth slightly open, his small chest rising and falling with the rhythm of exhausted childhood.
He looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was supposed to be.
A five-year-old boy. Spoiled, maybe. Willful, certainly. But just a boy.
Riyaz looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned back to the road and kept driving.
Behind them, forty-nine animals swayed and bleated and lowed their way toward a new life.
In front of them, the future waited.
And Riyaz, for the first time in weeks, let himself wonder: What have I gotten us into?
---
They arrived after dark.
The haveli's courtyard was lit with kerosene lamps, their light flickering across the walls as servants rushed to direct trucks, open gates, find space for animals that had no space. It was chaos. Beautiful, absurd chaos.
Arslan woke as the BMW rolled to a stop. He blinked, yawned, looked out the window at the scene unfolding.
"Are we home?"
"We're home."
"The animals are here."
"The animals are here."
Arslan smiled. That wide, genuine smile that Riyaz saw so rarely.
"Good," he said. And then, because he was five: "Can we have breakfast now?"
Riyaz looked at him. At the chaos. At the animals. At the servants running in every direction.
He laughed.
It was not a comfortable laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had given up on understanding and decided to just enjoy the ride.
"Sure, bete," he said. "Breakfast."
---
That night, after the animals had been settled (more or less), after the servants had been fed, after prayers had been said and the household had finally quieted, Riyaz sat on the veranda alone.
The BMW gleamed in the courtyard. Beyond it, in the newly erected temporary shelters, forty-nine animals shifted and snorted and made the sounds of life.
He thought about the day. About the way Arslan had moved through that mandi like a general surveying a battlefield. About the precision of his choices—not random, not childish, but specific. That goat, not that one. Those cows, not those. A buffalo that Riyaz still didn't remember agreeing to.
He thought about the look in the boy's eyes when he'd said "I just like animals."
It was a good answer. A perfect answer.
Too perfect.
Riyaz shook his head. He was tired. That was all. Tired and old and imagining things.
The boy was five years old. Five.
He threw tantrums and wanted pretty cars and bought animals like they were toys. There was nothing more to it.
Nothing at all.
In his room, Arslan lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling.
Forty-nine animals. Goats that would breed true. Cows with bloodlines that would be rare in twenty years. A buffalo from a strain that would nearly vanish by 2015.
He had done it. Not with explanations, not with arguments, not with any of the tools of adulthood. He had done it by being exactly what they expected him to be: a child.
A spoiled, willful, ridiculous child.
He smiled in the darkness.
Let them think I'm a child. Let them laugh. Let them shake their heads and wonder.
In twenty years, these animals will be worth more than this haveli. In thirty, their descendants will feed thousands. And no one will ever know that a five-year-old planned it all.
He closed his eyes.
For once, he didn't dream of numbers.
He dreamed of animals. Endless herds, spreading across the land, carrying his name without knowing it.
And somewhere, in the distance, a five-year-old boy laughed.