What does a poet look like? Maybe she is referring to my worn jacket, and my unkempt beard.
He couldn’t tell if she was serious or just toying with him. He scanned the papers absently. It
was an odd collection of loose pages from books and parts of discarded newspaper articles that
workers used to pack their lunch.
“These are all incomplete bits and pieces of stories,” he said. “What’s the point?”
“I like to imagine the endings myself—the way I imagine my life could be.”
Ahmad nodded at the papers. He was holding two pages from a short story by Maxim Gorky,
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, translated to Urdu. He had read the story years ago, and it all came
back flooding to him. Twenty-six men, “living machines,” who worked from early morning till
late at night making buns in a damp cellar with little light filtering in from the small, dusty
windows. Menial, repetitive work that dragged them down, their only source of consolation was
a sixteen-year-old seamstress named Tanya who would stop by their “prison” every morning to
ask for buns. Only for those few minutes did they feel alive.
“You like it?” Reshma asked.
“Good writing never dies,” Ahmad said and handed her the papers back. “Do you know that
Gorky was a great Russian writer?”
“I don’t care about the writer,” Reshma said. “I love to read. It frees my soul.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.” Reshma’s full lips turned up in a slight smile.
“How can you bear... sleeping with... you know...”
She threw her head back, her long locks of hair caressing her back. "Right, you want to know
how I can stand doing what I do.”
Ahmad bit his lips and looked away. He was sorry he had brought it up.
“Don't you think you're doing the same thing?” Reshma asked. “Why don’t you tell me how you
can bear it?"
“I...” Ahmad stammered, shocked by her bluntness. “But I’m not… It’s not the same thing.”
“Why? One way or another everyone’s a hooker. Look at your job and your coworkers. You’re
all selling yourselves, working like slaves for a few rupees. Like the twenty six guys in the cellar.
You all hate it, but you have no choice but to endure it.”
Ahmad fell into an awkward silence.
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