Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hamza was used to writing a diary before going to bed.

The turmoil of Lyari’s gangs, the movements of terrorist organizations, and his own ideas or plans for the next step—he habitually wrote all of it down in invisible ink. Normally, when the diary was opened, only a few scattered entries could be seen, most of them about shoot-outs, smoking, or having witnessed yet another grand spectacle that day. In fact, Hamza hadn’t counted exactly how many words he had written, but he estimated that the notebook was nearly full.

Aalam said, “The people who trained you taught you how to hide your identity, how to shoot, and how to pass intelligence—but they didn’t teach you this. Listen to me: you need to make yourself comfortable. Don’t let Lyari drive you insane.”

“How could it?” Hamza said. “My will is strong.”

“That’s the will of Jaskirat, not yours,” Aalam replied. “You are not a real person here. You have to constantly suppress yourself so others believe you are Hamza the Baloch. At first it might be fine, but later you won’t be able to endure it. Listen to me—write something. People are strange creatures. Looking at photos, looking at words, somehow helps them remember more firmly what they’re supposed to do.”

Hamza followed this advice. So today, he wrote:

• When seeing Uzair tomorrow, maintain a normal expression. Do not bring anything up. Avoid eye contact as much as possible.

• If Uzair asks about it first, hand the gun to him. Say that I have always regarded him as an elder brother. Let him kill me.

• Absolutely do not let Rehman know about this. Hopefully Uzair will not confide everything to his cousin.

Hopefully Uzair will not!

Uzair would deliberately scold and drive Hamza away to protect him when Rehman flew into a rage. Which meant Uzair should understand even better that if Rehman ever found out that one day his brother had been fucked, and that the person was not one of Arshad’s worthless lackeys but a newly arrived Quetta Baloch from within their own gang… Hamza would truly lose his testicles, and no one would give him anesthesia.

It was precisely because Hamza weighed Uzair’s partiality toward him that he dared to take advantage of Uzair’s drunkenness and post-hashish confusion to have sex with him. Uzair should be able to remember that it was he who first pulled Hamza close and touched him. Even if he didn’t remember, he could ask the others at the bar—they had seen Uzair almost touch that long-haired man all over through his clothes. As for what happened after Hamza helped Uzair back to the room, only their God knew.  In any case, the sentence Hamza said publicly the most last night was: “Don’t, please, Uzair Bhai.”

And Uzair also had projected himself onto Hamza—this was a result Hamza and Aalam had planned for.

Hamza Ali Mazari was a young man who had lost all his relatives. The fact that on his very first night in Lyari he had nearly been raped by Babu Dakait’s men was yet another experience that counted in his favor. Aalam deliberately let only Rehman and Uzair know about this, because only their pity was valuable; too much pity would cause Hamza to lose authority.

The experience of losing his father might cause Uzair, when facing a Baloch youth who trusted an older brother and had lost his family, to think of himself. If Uzair sorted out everything that had happened last night—everything Hamza had intentionally guided—he would feel a sense of guilt that his own twisted lust had defiled an innocent brother from the same community. He would feel ashamed when faced Hamza.

• And—

Hamza let out a long breath and set down his pen. He could no longer rationally organize the motivations behind his actions. To be honest, everything he had done last night was very simple: Uzair was seeking something in him, and he discovered that he, too, had developed desire—and that doing this would not get him killed. So he fucked him.

Before confirming spy candidates, the Indian side had screened them for physical endurance. Hamza’s tolerance for alcohol was extremely high, but he remained wary of the hashish cigarettes prevalent among Lyari’s gangs. Gang members often invited Hamza to smoke, and he usually declined.

Donga—one of the gang’s bald, burly men who was close to both Uzair (genuinely) and Hamza (falsely)—after failing several times, patted Hamza on the shoulder admiringly and said that this was a man who didn’t need to accomplish anything great in life; as long as he recited the shahada before death, he would go to Jannah. Hamza, too, felt confused. He did not understand how people who observed fasting could still drink alcohol daily, nor how people who could cheer while watching Indians die could love their friends and families.

Aalam said: Don’t try to understand. You are not a bridge of understanding. You are the bundle of explosives meant to blow up the bridge through which terrorists reach India.

“Uzair Bhai, why do you drink?”

Amid the bar’s noise, Hamza couldn’t even hear his own voice. He had to lean his shoulder closer to Uzair’s, sitting beside him, almost pressing his mouth to the Pakistani’s ear to feed the words into it. “This—this isn’t permitted behavior.”

Hamza thought his words would be hard to hear, but Uzair heard them easily. After drinking, Uzair was no more passionate than when sober. Alcohol usually has two effects on people: excitation and calm. Uzair belonged to the latter—becoming dull after drinking. He was dazed, until Hamza asked such a foolish question, which finally stirred him.

“Baccha!” Uzair mocked crudely. “Then why are you drinking? You know this isn’t allowed.”

“Because you all do it. Rehman Bhai, Uzair Bhai, Donga—mani brat, mani abba, mani kaka. But I don’t understand.”

“That’s good. It means you’ve never had something break your heart so badly and you couldn’t take revenge.” Uzair turned half his body, propping his arm on the bar, resting his cheek in his hand as he looked at the Baloch Indian man beside him.

Hamza thought there were two painful reasons in that sentence. But this was Uzair Baloch—the dependable jackal beside the Baloch lion, a devil who could burn people alive and kick severed heads like balls. Having one’s heart broken surely hurt less than being unable to take revenge.

The bartender casually placed two hashish cigarettes near them. Each bar had its own way of retaining customers; here, it seemed to be offering cheap second-rate hash when guests had already drunk most of their alcohol and were too engrossed in conversation to order more. Hamza didn’t touch the cigarette. Uzair, unsurprised, put one between his lips, lit it, and took a deep drag.

“When your family died, did you drink?” Uzair asked.

Hamza shook his head. “I don’t drink when I’m angry, Uzair Bhai.”

“You’re a good one.” Uzair exhaled a cloud of smoke that immediately hid his face. Hamza couldn’t even see his thick, charcoal-dark eyebrows. “I drank a lot, then ended up in the hospital. That was three or four years ago. After that, I started working under Rehman Bhai.”

Uzair was much taller than Rehman, he called Rehman Bhai. Rehman also treated him like a real younger brother. When they were together, there were countless tiny gestures between them, that only exist between people who see each other as part of their own lives. Sometimes, when Uzair wanted to express disagreement, he would whine out bhai, elongate the vowel, to Rehman, like a spoiled younger brother at home. But in public, Uzair called him formally bhai—to preserve Rehman’s absolute authority in the gang. In such private moments, numbed by alcohol and cannabinoids, Uzair used a damp, slurred tone—wet and rough, like a cat licking its own thigh—to call Rehman Bhai. Because he loved him. Because he was loyal to this cousin who was more decisive and had given him another complete home.

“Hamza,” he called, in that same wet, dragging tone, like a frog leaping onto land and leaving behind a trail of sticky substance called emotion.

Hamza was be touched despite himself. Was this love that Uzair hadn’t managed to put away—love meant solely for Rehman—or had he, too, received this unreasonable favoritism?

“Hamza.”

“What is it, Bhai?”

Uzair squirmed in his chair, trying to shift closer to Hamza with both himself and the chair. To keep balance, his hand pressed onto Hamza’s thigh. The heat of his palm made Hamza restless. He tried, as inconspicuously as possible, to grip Uzair’s hand and move it away. Uzair likely wouldn’t mind; his gaze was already unfocused. At this stage, a person’s relationship with their limbs was close to that of a cat and its tail. Uzair seemed to still be talking, still moving, but the only part of him that was awake was the strand of attention observing Hamza. The rest of his body was immersed in confusion.

“Listen to me.”Even after his hand was moved away, Uzair cupped Hamza’s face again.

Uzair was about ten centimeters taller than Hamza. He could easily look down at this Baloch youth, like a kestrel looking at a dove, like a cat looking at a mouse. Because his vision was blurred, his gaze grew more straight. Hamza felt as if he were about to be pierced by that stare, as if his head might be twisted off by those hands. Cold sweat soaked his back, yet only the damp skin chilled by the air-conditioning was cold; his core burned unbearably hot, to the point of wanting to tear his clothes off.

Uzair’s sense of balance worsened further. After speaking, his forehead rested entirely on Hamza’s shoulder; eighty percent of his body was pressed against him.

“Listen to me, Hamza… next time Rehman Bhai speaks, if you know it’ll make him angry, then shut up. You’re still a kid, Hamza. You don’t understand anything. Not everyone who treats you well in this world is your brother—the kind of brat who would still love you even if you burned his house down.”

Uzair seemed to want to pinch his index finger and thumb together to indicate a very small margin, but he didn’t have the strength. His hand merely groped at Hamza, pinching a tiny wrinkle in his clothes.

“…only this much love. Understand? You’re not his family. Don’t make him angry.”

“Why are you telling me this?” No—Hamza, your tone is too stiff. Be more moved… the Jaskirat heart cried out. But he couldn’t. His throat was dry, as if he hadn’t drunk a drop of water all night.

But Uzair was wet—too wet. He didn’t notice Hamza’s dryness. His voice floated up from Hamza’s shoulder; it sounded less like Uzair speaking and more like Hamza’s body itself speaking:

“You’re a very good youth. I think you’ll be even better in the future.”

Uzair was drenched in cold sweat, and the breath he exhaled was humid. Hamza stiffly, carefully hugged him back once, at the same time clamping his legs together. Moisture made him think of dryness. Perhaps the only dry thing on Uzair’s body now was his tongue, made bitter and dry by hashish. Thinking of that Pakistani Baloch man’s tongue sent a sharper heat surging through Hamza’s lower abdomen.

Uzair called him Hamza, called him baccha, called him a little Baloch bird… his hands never left Hamza’s body. Training before going undercover had mentioned the teasing and sexual assault of young men on the streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan. That wasn’t love or desire—at least not desire toward young men. At its core, it was a form of power oppression. Secondarily, the oppressor often extracted from these youths a vague image of a woman with a penis—a wild woman not protected by religious law.

But when Uzair called him baccha, he was just calling him baccha. Hamza heard no sexual meaning in it. He only heard the Baloch’s panting, his groans of dizziness from hashish. Hamza looked around. Without lowering his voice, he said “Don’t, Bhai, don't that”. The bartender glanced over, then hurriedly looked away because of the identity of those involved.

Hamza gently held Uzair’s wrist, letting his hand fumble over his chest. Uzair still hung his head against Hamza’s shoulder. He seemed to be staring at his own hand, confused about why he was touching someone else—perhaps even confused about why there was a hand at all, and whose hand it was that was touching Hamza.

At least, in the bartender’s eyes, this was how last night ended:

The Baloch youth, unable to escape Uzair Bhai’s caresses, finally gave up resisting. With difficulty, he pulled a few bills from his wallet and supported Uzair upstairs to a guest room that was often used for illegal sexual activities.