Ch. 1 Available Here

Ch. 2: In the evening Ayaz was sent to the neighborhoods to collect dinner for the Imam and his families from the generous neighbors. He walked gingerly because he was still sore from his morning beating. He held a steel pail in one hand. Rahim, an evening student, who only attended from the mid-afternoon to the night-prayer, walked besides Ayaz, carrying a multicolored cloth in which he wrapped the bread given for the madrassa's students. 

Except for Jamshed Street the gulleys were narrow and unpaved.  The doors to almost all of the houses were open. However, a heavy khaki curtain hung in the doorways, preventing outsiders from peeking inside. It was an unsaid rule that you did not enter a house unannounced. What, with the women almost always walking around without doopattas or any other type of hair covering. Even though this was a city, honor was still an important thing here. The boys approached each curtain, hitting the pail with a big wooden spoon and waited for someone to come to the door. The tradition of the students from the madrassas coming to collect food from the neighbors dated back hundreds of years. There was a mutual symbiosis between the families and the madrassa. The school took in many of the students from the city and nearby towns, keeping them busy, giving them a strict moral education and free board, while the neighbors provided food for the students every few nights. Upon graduation, these students, obedient and pliable, moral and deemed religious on account of their rote memorization of the Quran, usually married into the neighborhood's families, adopted their business and things went as on before.

Ayaz and Rahim went from house to house in their festive procession, announcing their arrival in sing-song voices. "Here we are, the students from the mosque, give us some salan, give us some naan." Usually a young man would come to the door, look at the two pre-pubescent boys, and instead of taking the pail and going inside with it, would just invite them in. The boys would extend the pail to the matron of the household who would be sitting on a squat four legged stool by the stove, ladeling a plateful of curry, or stew, or lentils, into the pail of slops, and sent the boys on their way. Some houses handed them leftover parathas, others gave the boys old naan. Occassionally the two would get lucky and find someone who had recently bought naan from the bazaar. These, Ayaz considered Allah's blessings. If he ever got a hand on them, he would hide the bread in his kameez pocket and eat it in his bed before going to sleep so that he would not have to share it with anyone else.  However, hiding food in one's pockets was a risky affair because someone was often likely to sniff it out during the night-prayer.
No one at any of the houses bothered to speak to them.

Occassionally a talking parrot would say something. Otherwise, everyone in the families gathered around the dasterkhan, sat lotus-style, and ate with their hands. The children fought over the few glasses of water, and did their best to avoid getting smacked by their playful uncles.

The scenes he witnessed on his food-fetching walks often reminded Ayaz of his own family back in Chitral, a small town of just two large tribes less than a hundred miles to the South, near Muzzaffargharh. There too everyone gathered around to eat rice and lentils, and beef stew and naan, around the multicolored, printed dasterkhan. There too the young uncles tricked the children out of the choice pieces of meat that the mothers tried to pass onto their babies. There too the glasses of water were too few and the spices too many. The family gatherd around there was much larger though, with guests from other houses of the tribe sometimes coming over. Dinner was the time when most of the socialization took place and after which some of the biggest decisions were made.

It had been one such warm summer night, with the fierce sun having tucked itself behind the blankets of sand, that Ayaz's father, Ijaz, had announced "that my son will go to the madrassa in Dera Ghazi Khan to become a hafiz ul Quran!"

It was a great honor and a great opportunity that was being heaped upon Ayaz. Memorizing the Quran was an integral part of Islam. Ever since the time of the Prophet in Seventh century Arabia, all around the world Muslims committed the Quran, in Arabic, to rote memory. It was one way by which the community made certain that no additions or subtractions were made in the Quran. The Hafiz, he or she who memorized the Quran, were a venerated part of any Muslim community because the feat required many years of intense memorization. During Ramadan, the Hafiz would be invited to lead the prayers and encouraged to recite the entire Quran during the thirty days. In the month great cash gifts and other favors would be bestowed upon him. It was a common joke that most Hafiz found their wives during Ramadan.  Being a Hafiz was also a good way to bolster oneself in all other walks of life. Most Muslims would give preference to  a Hafiz in hiring for any other job, whether it was construction or engineering. Most of the Hafiz did not know Arabic and therefore did not know the meaning of the large text they had memorized. However, it was commonly believed that simply reciting the words in the Quran, meaning or no meaning, brought Allah's blessings, and therefore was a good thing. Because everyone assigned the words as being blessed and favored by Allah, the Hafiz was considered, a priori, as having a deeper connection with God, which almost all Pakistani honored.

That evening Ayaz had received resounding slaps on his back. Not at all like the slaps he later received from Qari Jamil.