Buki had complete faith in his own physical strength in just about any situation, and he also had faith in God. It struck him that now he might need to put himself in God’s hands to find his way back out again through the maze of constricting lanes and alleyways, courtyards within courtyards overflowing with trash, reeking with sewage, to wherever he was being taken. Buried somewhere in the net of this serpentine world there was a tiny dark room that he was forced to stoop to enter. Without stepping inside, his escort pointed to the narrow bed against the wall across from the entrance, and motioned for him to sit down. Then he closed the door and walked away. Buki heard the key turn in the lock.

He sat there with his long legs spread wide, his elbows on his knees, his head lowered in the sling of his palms, waiting. A rat shuffled across the cement floor. There was a basin and a pitcher against the wall, a rag of a towel on the stub of a peg. The room was lit by one small yellow bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling with a pull spotted with dead black flies. He made out a small shrine in the corner with a glossy picture cut out from a calendar of the goddess Yellamma. Squatting beside it was a girl, a child almost, plump as if she had only recently been fattened in order to be eaten. Her face was far too heavily made up for such a young human specimen, and she was wearing a sari made of synthetic cloth with a bright pattern of Santa Claus faces on it with a white beard like Rebbe-ji’s, which she was beginning to unwind. Buki raised one large hand, palm outward, pushing it forward like a traffic cop to compel her to stop. She was very dark skinned, so black she was almost blue. Maybe she was a Bnei Israel or a Bnei Menashe or something like that, Buki speculated—one of those ten lost tribes of Israel who had wandered to the subcontinent and gotten lost in this whorehouse. “You sure don’t look Jewish,” he suddenly heard himself blurt out.