Excerpt from Flash House by Aimee E. Liu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Meanwhile I strained to listen to the talk of the markets, the drivers for hire huddled outside big hotels, the schoolboys in their crisp white cricket uniforms assembling in the park. By nightfall of my fifth day on the streets I had found my way to a monument of an angrezi, very tall, with hat and waistcoat and sword in hand. Taller trees around him cast shadows in the twilight. A group of girls leaned against the statue, calling to one another, laughing.

They wore thin saris tied low across the belly and left their heads uncovered. The jitter of their glass bangles sounded like laughter through the groan of traffic. The road here was a small roundabout faced by compound walls, with other roads pulling like spokes of a wheel. So many directions to flee, I thought, as I worked up the courage to approach. A bicycle rickshaw slowed as if on parade, though I understood it was the girls who were on display, while the passenger, invisible in his covered cab, was the spectator. The cab stopped in front of a short, thick girl with round cheeks and flowing hair. A shirt-sleeved arm parted the oilcloth canopy. She climbed in, and the vehicle jerked away.

"Hey, little sister," called a voice. "Better shut your eyes or they'll fall out of your head." The girls all laughed, but it was not malicious laughter, and when they summoned me to join them I crossed, dodging cows and bicycles and pi dogs. The scents of rose petals and jasmine floated from their skin. Their eyes were rimmed with collyrium, their mouths with vermilion, and the gems in their noses and earlobes twinkled. They sniggered at my rags, the dust in my hair. "You will do no business like this," they warned. "Not even at your age."

Their attention was warm and soothing as nan, and I wished I had returned to the river to bathe, only so that these girls might stretch a hand, might feel moved to pet me. To praise me. But perhaps this failure on my part was also my saving, for their disgust, the friendly joking that now turned disdainful reminded me of my true business here. Before the next customer could approach, before they had begun to tire of me, I called out the words I had rehearsed that day. I described the foreign woman with the kind, not beautiful face, the body of sharp turns and soft skin and ignorant gestures. I did not speak of rescue, did not call her Mrs. Shaw. I only said she was known by the girls of the flash house and asked if she ever came here.

None knew her. In fact, a chill current seemed to sweep among the girls at the mention of a firenghi who would travel in their midst. I had not, after all, said what possessed her to seek their company. And then an automobile crept toward us, and the girls edged apart, each striking a pose like the cinema posters, hands on hips, lips pushed forward, saris draped to show off a comely throat or midriff or breast. But as I drew out of sight, a hiss beckoned me forward. The eldest of the street girls hung back from the others. As I approached I saw that her eyes were so heavily blackened that they appeared like gouges in her skull. Her sari was threadbare and, beneath, she wore nothing. Painted shadows exaggerated the roundness of her breasts and hips, and rouge enlarged the nipples. She reeked of sandalwood. After the car had stopped by one of the other girls, she turned to me. "This woman you seek," she whispered. "She is good firenghi?" At my nod, she said, "Yes. I know her. Mrs. Shaw. I have seen her rescue home. There is nothing for me there. But you are still young." Quickly, she spat out an address, directions, which I committed to memory without understanding. Then she pushed me away. I repeated the address to beggars, sweepers, rock pickers, ayahs on their way to work in the foreign houses. Two mornings later, I was waiting outside the gate of Salamat Jannat--Safe Haven--when Mrs. Shaw stepped out of her small green automobile.


First she ate. In the relative privacy of Joanna's office, with the windows open to the courtyard and the ceiling fan doing its best, the child stuffed herself with nan and vegetable bhaji and lhassi and fresh mango. Joanna was both impressed and concerned by the sheer volume she consumed. She must not have eaten in days. But though she used her hands greedily and unabashedly, there was something dignified about the way she sat, erect and silent, shoveling rice into her mouth, catching the occasional stray grain on a fingertip, sliding it between her lips with an amused--yes, amused--glance up at Joanna. She was pleased with herself. That was it. After Joanna had made two trips to rescue her, she instead had come here on her own. Filthy, she was, too, and raggedly hollow-eyed, yet there was nothing needy about her expression. She appeared to believe she deserved this food, this attention and all the protection that Joanna wished she could give her, as if it were her due.

Copyright © 2003 by Aimee E. Liu. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.