When did I realize I wasn’t alone? A sense of danger ran a shiver down my spine, and I looked up at the stairs that led to the second floor. A man, still wearing the effects of the sleepless night on his face and his clothes, stood there. His eyes met mine and widened in surprise. He smiled. Startled, I dropped the ghungroo and ran. I should have known to be afraid.

Days passed and I made another unforgivable mistake. I forgot about the encounter in the dark; I forgot about the man. The Malkin told me about a tawaif who had retired and needed a girl to work in her home. I wanted to be that girl. I was full of dreams of escape. Perhaps my mother noticed.

That day, sisters, dawned red. Not that the day has any business with the work of the whores, but nevertheless, the day dawned red. My mother was uncharacteristically kind that day. She told me it was my birthday, and as I didn’t know any better, I believed her. She fed me halwa puri, combed my hair, and embraced me for the first time in a long while. Later, she made me dress in a gharara she had borrowed from an acquaintance. Then, when the first stars of the night were dotting the horizon, she took me to a party on the rich side of the city.

I should have questioned her then, but I didn’t. I should have known to be suspicious, but I was bedazzled by the attention she was giving me. So, I followed her to that party. She was my mother. I thought she would never do anything that would harm me.

He was there, that man who had been on the stairs that morning in the kotha. The man about whom I had forgotten. He was there.

You all have known a similar flavor of pain, sisters. Even if I don’t put it into words, you know what happens next. The same old tale of the lamb and the wolf. You have heard it before. You have lived it before.

I escaped too late, running out of the nawab’s haveli on bare feet. I was bleeding from the gash on my arm, from the scratches on my face, from between my legs. It hurt to run, but it would have destroyed me to stay.

The night was alive and the city streets blurred as I ran without direction, without thought, without reason. I ran and ran and ran and would have run farther still had I not turned a corner and bumped into that boy. We both fell from the impact. His lips were split, and he coughed up a mouthful of blood. He looked as shattered as I felt.