“But I came here to get me a Jewish girl to bring home to my guru. It’s okay if she’s not religious.” Buki still could not let go, he did not like to fail.

“There is a madam,” the girl finally offered. “The most mean, fat like an elephant. She is a Jewish, they say.” Buki considered this option briefly. Rebbie-ji welcomed Jewish victims of all sizes and shapes and life experience to the House of Holy Healing, nobody was considered unworthy or a lost cause, in some select cases you didn’t even have to be Jewish. Still, it might be too dangerous to tackle this one at this time. They could come back to get her later, with a battle plan, maybe a few men, take her out with a truck. The girl pulled the end of her sari over her face, and lowered her head.

“Are you telling me now there’s not one single Jewish whore in this whole damn whorehouse?”

There was a long pause, and she lifted her head sharply. She had just remembered. Yes, two girls, very small, only four and five years old maybe, in cages, their virginity sold already many times, worth many lakhs of rupees, she had heard they were Jewishes, it would be very hard to save them, not possible.

“Let’s go git ’em, girl. It’s a major mitzvah.”

Buki stood up in a flash, his head ramming against the ceiling, pancaking his Borsalino. He followed the girl’s glance. She was staring forlornly at the door, locked from outside. “No problem, sister.” One pull with his mighty hand, and it opened like a can of beer.

It was surprisingly easy to carry out this rescue, Buki commented to me soon after I had taken over the prepubescent pod, when he recounted the whole story as part of my orientation. At first their hearts were pounding, the girl’s and his too he admitted. They would run a short distance, press themselves against a wall and take cover, poke their heads out cautiously to check if the coast was clear, then dart out again. Soon though, they realized nobody was around, it was midafternoon in India, the unforgiving heat of the day flattening everyone, they were all sleeping, recharging for a long night’s work ahead. The few who were awake and might have noticed them must have concluded that it was nothing out of the ordinary—just another newly inducted devadasi whore following orders, leading an overgrown transgender or cross-dresser or other hormonally challenged type, maybe even a hijra eunuch, to whatever he was paying for.

Everyone was also fast asleep in the segregated area where they kept the youngest girls and babies in their cages, including the two little targets of their raid, as if a spell had been cast over the whole castle. Buki simply lifted them up and carried them off, careful not to disturb their sleep and startle them; they were almost two-dimensional, the only material weight was that of their wooden cages. They were wearing flounced synthetic chiffon-and-netting dresses in pinks and lavenders, tinseled ribbons in their hair, smears of glossy red lipstick, black kohl on their closed eyelids, gold-colored rings in their ears. Curled up in their cages they looked like tropical birds of many colors captured in the jungle.