Amal Unbound Read online

  Also by Aisha Saeed

  Written in the Stars

  NANCY PAULSEN BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Aisha Saeed.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Saeed, Aisha, author.

  Title: Amal unbound / Aisha Saeed.

  Description: New York, NY : Nancy Paulsen Books, [2018]

  Summary: In Pakistan, Amal holds on to her dream of being a teacher even after becoming an indentured servant to pay off her family’s debt to the wealthy and corrupt Khan family.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017038160 | ISBN 9780399544682 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 9780399544705 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Indentured servants—Fiction. Family life—Pakistan—Fiction. | Courage—Fiction. | Comduct of life—Fiction. Pakistan—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). JUVENILE FICTION / People & Places / Middle East. JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / General (see also headings under Family).

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S24 Am 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038160

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket illustration © 2018 by Shehzil Malik

  Version_1

  For Ami and Abu, my first teachers.

  Contents

  Also by Aisha Saeed

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  I watched from the window as the boys tumbled out of the brick schoolhouse across the field from us. Our class was running over. Again.

  Girls shifted in their seats and sneaked glances at the clock above the chalkboard. My friend Hafsa sighed.

  “And finally, I have some bad news,” Miss Sadia told us. She picked up a stack of papers from her desk. “I finished grading your math tests. Only five of you passed.”

  The class let out a collective groan.

  “Now, now,” she hushed us. “This just means we have more work to do. We’ll go over it tomorrow and take another test next week.”

  “Those questions were hard,” my younger sister Seema whispered to me. We lined up by the chalkboard at the front of the class to get our tests. “I should’ve stayed with the younger class until fall.”

  “Oh, come on. You know you probably passed,” I whispered back. “When have you ever failed an exam?”

  Seema tugged at her sleeves as she walked up to Miss Sadia. It was only in the arms that you could see my old uniform was too big on her. Miss Sadia handed Seema the paper. As expected, Seema’s worried expression shifted to a smile. Her steps were lighter before she slipped out of the classroom.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help today,” I told Miss Sadia once the room was empty. This was my favorite part of the day, when everyone left and it was just the two of us. The building felt like it had exhaled, expanding a little bit without all thirty-four of us, crammed two to a desk, filling up nearly every square inch of space. “My mother is in bed again.”

  “Is the baby almost here?”

  “Yes, so my father said I have to come home and watch my sisters.”

  “I’ll miss your help, Amal, but he’s right; family comes first.”

  I knew helping family was what a good eldest daughter did, but this time after school with Miss Sadia wasn’t just fun; it was important. I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, and who better to learn from than the best teacher I ever had? I loved washing the chalkboards, sweeping the floor, and hearing stories of her college days. I loved watching her go over her lessons and rework them based on what worked and what didn’t the day before. I learned so much from watching her. How could my father not understand?

  “I could still use your help with the poetry unit next week,” she told me. “Some of the students are grumbling about it. Think you could convince Hafsa to give it a chance? You know how she rallies the others to her side. She’ll listen to you.”

  “I don’t think she minds reading the poems. Writing them makes her nervous.”

  “You’d think everyone would be happy to write poetry! Shorter than an essay.”

  “It’s different. The great poets like Ghalib, Rumi, Iqbal—they had things to say.”

  “And don’t you have things to say?”

  “What would I write about?” I laughed. “My little sisters? My father’s sugarcane fields and orange groves? I love reading poems, but there’s nothing for me to really write about. Our life is boring.”

  “That’s not true! Write about what you see! Write about your dreams. Pakistan was founded by the dreams of poets. Aren’t we of the same earth?”

  Miss Sadia’s dramatic way of talking was one of the reasons I loved her, but I wasn’t convinced. It’s not that I wasn’t proud of my family and our life. I was lucky to belong to one of the more prosperous families in our Punjabi village, but it didn’t change the fact that I lived in a village so tiny, it didn’t even register as a dot on a map.

  But I promised I’d talk to Hafsa.

  This is what I now remember most about my last afternoon at school—the smell of the dusty chalkboard, the sound of the students lingering outside the door, and, mostly, how easily I took my ordinary life f
or granted.

  Chapter 2

  I raced down the school’s gravel walkway to catch up to Seema and Hafsa. The sun blazed overhead, warming my chador and my hair beneath it.

  “I’m buying Miss Sadia one of those bells I see on TV. You know, the kind that rings when class is over?” Hafsa grumbled.

  “She doesn’t always keep us late,” I protested.

  “Remember last week?” Hafsa said. “How she went on and on about constellations? By the time I got home, my brothers were out of their school clothes and halfway through their homework.”

  “But wasn’t it interesting?” I asked. “The way the night stars help us when we’re lost and tell all sorts of different stories?”

  “Why do I need to know about connecting dots in the sky? I want to be the first doctor in my family. Not the first astronaut,” Hafsa said.

  Hafsa and I had been friends so long, I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t know her, but when she talked like this, I didn’t understand her at all. Unlike Hafsa, I wanted to know everything there was to know. How fast did airplanes fly? Why did some leave whiffs of clouds in their wake and others didn’t? Where did ladybugs go when the rain came hard and fast? What was it like to walk through the streets of Paris or New York or Karachi? There was so much I didn’t know that even if I spent my whole life trying, I knew I could only learn a small percentage of it.

  “How’s your mom?” Hafsa asked. “My mother said her back is hurting.”

  “It’s gotten worse,” I told her. “She couldn’t get out of bed yesterday.”

  “My mother said that’s a good sign. Backaches mean a boy,” Hafsa said. “I know that would make your parents happy.”

  “It would be fun to have a brother,” I said.

  “There it is! Look at the door!” Hafsa said when we turned the bend toward our homes. She pointed to the building that had appeared next to our village mosque. A structure had never emerged quite like this before with no explanation. Two weeks ago, a concrete foundation had been poured onto the field where we played soccer. The next week, brick walls arose and windows appeared, and today there was a door—painted lime green!

  “Any idea yet what it could be?” I asked her.

  “Yes.” Hafsa grinned. If Hafsa could have it her way, she’d be permanently stationed by the crates of fruit at her family’s market, soaking up every bit of gossip. “Khan Sahib is building a factory.”

  I rolled my eyes. Rumors and gossip were a part of life in our village. Some of the talk was ordinary, about the state of the crops or the weather, but often it centered on Khan Sahib, our village’s powerful landlord.

  “Why would he build a factory here? He has plenty in Islamabad and Lahore,” Seema said. “What we need is a clinic. Look how much Amma’s back hurts. The doctor in town is good, but this village needs a proper clinic.”

  “Do you really think Khan Sahib would put up anything to help us?” Hafsa scoffed.

  “Maybe it’s not him building it,” I suggested.

  “Look at the fancy green door! Who else has time and money to waste like that? You know I’m right.”

  Any unexplainable situation was always pinned to Khan Sahib. He was the mysterious figure I’d heard of all my life but never seen. When I was younger, he loomed large and scary, like a character in a horror story.

  “Sure! He’s the one who breathes fire when he talks, right?” I rolled my eyes.

  “Didn’t he pick all the fruit off Naima’s guava tree?” Seema winked.

  “I heard he’s why we’ve had no rain for months,” I continued.

  “I don’t decide what I hear,” Hafsa huffed. “I just report it.”

  “We’ll find out what it is soon enough.” I hooked my arm through Seema’s. “But in the meantime, let’s hope it’s a clinic.”

  Hafsa’s house came first on our path, just past the post office. Then came mine. I saw it in the distance. Gray like the others surrounding it except for the roses my mother planted around its border just before I was born; they still bloomed each spring around this time, without fail. It’s why spring was my favorite time of year.

  My friend Omar pedaled past us in his blue and khaki school uniform. He chimed his bell three times, our signal to meet. The stream. That’s the direction he was headed in.

  “Oh no.” I looked in my book bag. “I left my exam in class.”

  “Again?” Hafsa frowned.

  “Tell Amma I won’t be long?” I asked Seema.

  Seema hesitated. Our father would be home soon, but she knew Omar didn’t chime his bicycle bell three times unless it was important.

  “Okay.” Seema nodded. “Hurry.”

  Chapter 3

  Omar waited for me by the narrow stream that sliced through the length of our village. This was one of our usual spots, the wooded area next to my father’s fields where our towering green stalks of sugarcane met the orange groves that dotted the landscape into the horizon. This area was far enough from the heart of the fields where our workers spent most of their time fertilizing the earth and keeping the groves and stalks trimmed and cared for, but even if they ventured to the edges, the shade trees here were thick and leafy, shielding us from view.

  “I brought it!” he said when I approached and sat next to him on the fallen tree bridging the stream. He handed me a book with a burnt-orange cover.

  I ran my hands over the raised lettering. The complete works of Hafiz. We had a small collection of books in our class, but it was no secret that the boys’ school had a much bigger library to choose from.

  “So, what did you think?” I asked him. “Which one was your favorite poem?”

  “Favorite?” He frowned.

  “Omar!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t even read one poem?”

  “I bring you what you like. Doesn’t mean I have to read it.”

  “Yes, you do.” I poked him. “I need someone to talk about it with.”

  “Fine,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll read some after you’re done. That’s how good of a friend I am.”

  Omar’s dark hair looked almost brown under the bright afternoon sun. Looking at him, it hit me yet again how unfair it was for God to give me a friend who understood me completely and create him as a boy.

  “Amal, I know he’s your friend, but you’re not a little girl anymore,” my mother had lectured me a few months ago when I turned twelve. “You can’t spend so much time with him.”

  “But he’s like our brother,” I had protested. “How can I not see him?”

  “Of course you’ll see him around the house—some conversations can’t be avoided—but walking to school together, talking freely the way you both do . . . people will start gossiping if they aren’t already.”

  Omar and I were born three days apart. He lived with his mother, our servant Parvin, in the shed behind our house. They moved there after his father died, and I’d never known life without him. He was part of the fabric of who I was. I couldn’t follow this rule. Neither could Omar. So now we met in secret to talk, to listen to each other, to laugh.

  “I told Miss Sadia I wouldn’t be able to stay after school,” I said. “I’m hoping it’s just until the baby comes, but my father said we’ll have to see how it goes.”

  “Once things settle down, he’ll change his mind.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “Your father probably got fed up because Safa unlatched a neighbor’s chicken coop again. You know you’re the only one who can keep up with her.”

  “Omar, she did not!” I tried to stay serious, but a smile escaped. My youngest sister was a constant source of drama in our house.

  “See? You know I’m right. Your poor father probably spent the morning chasing chickens and apologizing to neighbors.”

  “You need to stop with the Safa conspiracies all the time.”
I told him.

  “Ha!” He grinned. “I’m going to have to become a lawyer. Safa will need a team of them with the trouble she gets into.”

  “She’s only three!” I swatted him, but just like that, some of the heaviness lifted. He was right. Besides, my father usually gave in to us if we pleaded enough.

  “Speaking of school, the headmaster from Ghalib Academy called. I got in!”

  “Omar!” I exclaimed. “I knew it! Didn’t I say so?”

  “And they’re going to cover everything! Room and board, all of it! This could change everything for me, Amal. If I do well enough, I could get one of their college scholarships. Can you believe it? Maybe I’ll even get my mother her own house one day.”

  I hugged him. Omar had been attending the school across from mine, but Ghalib was one of the best schools around, a boys’ boarding school a few towns over. Attending it was a lucky break for a servant’s son like Omar. He was right—it could truly change everything for him.

  “I wonder what the library there is like,” I said.

  “That was fast.” He laughed. “Can I settle in to the school first before you have me hunting down books for you?”

  “No way!” I said. “But I bet they’ll have more books than both our classrooms combined. And Hafsa told me some boarding schools have cafeterias with all the food you can eat and televisions in all the bedrooms.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But they do have an after-school chess club and a debate team. And the dorm has a computer lab we can use in our spare time. The only thing is I’ll have to share a room with another student. Maybe even two students.”

  “Do you know who they’ll be?”

  “No. I’ll meet them when I go there for orientation weekend, but it’ll be strange living with people I don’t know.”

  “Hafsa’s already staked her claim on me to be her roommate when we go to college someday.”

  “Well, at least with Hafsa as a roommate, you’ll be up to date on all the inside information about everyone and everything on campus.”