"Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn..."
Arslan's voice barely cracked as he stood barefoot in the soot-stained courtyard. The charred skeleton of his house hissed faintly, the fire having already consumed its appetite in the dark hours before dawn. The smell of cooked flesh lingered under the burnt wood and twisted iron, masked now by the holiness of the phrase that parted his lips—a verse repeated so often in funerals that it had lost all weight, yet from Arslan's mouth, it floated like a knife dipped in honey.
People had gathered. Men in mismatched wool shawls. Women standing behind low mud walls whispering. The molvi from the mosque, pretending he had come to investigate the fire, but in truth hoping to be the first to salvage any unclaimed rupees from the ash heap of sin.
No one suspected Arslan. Why would they? He was five. And small. And visibly grieving. Quiet. Unmoving. His voice low, and his tone so measured that even the most seasoned hypocrite around him believed it.
"Allah is the best of planners," he murmured when someone asked where he had been when the fire broke out. "I was asleep in the courtyard. I woke when I heard the walls crying."
A collective nod. Allah works in mysterious ways. The child has seen a vision. Subhan'Allah.
One man offered him a piece of roti. Another patted his head and muttered something about fate and the wickedness of modern times.
Only one man looked at Arslan with interest rather than sympathy.
Malik Riyaz.
He stood at a distance, leaning on a cane that had no functional purpose. His eyes were not on the wreckage, nor on the crowd, but on the boy—still, barefoot, unnaturally calm. A former military man, known for keeping to himself. Owner of tracts of land no one had seen but everyone feared. And Arslan—without ever having met the man—knew everything. Knew about the deals signed in backrooms after a war no one remembered winning. Knew about the land registered under borrowed names. Knew about the bodies buried under medals. He knew because Malik Riyaz's name had come up too many times in whispered stories, and because he remembered what would happen in the future. Arslan had thirty-five years of watching the world from the floor of hell.
When Riyaz approached him, cane clicking softly against the cold mud, Arslan did not look up. He merely recited:
"Wa mā ramayta idh ramayta walākinna Allāha ramā..."
("And you did not throw when you threw, but it was Allah who threw…")
The old man's mouth tightened. A military verse. Used to justify collateral damage. Or divine justice.
"You're the son of...?" Riyaz asked.
"No one," Arslan replied. "Only Allah's servant."
The old man stared at him, then at the ruin behind him. "You'll come with me," he said eventually.
"Shall I take ghusl before I sit in your home?" Arslan asked softly. "This ash has covered my body... but it cannot touch the ruh."
Riyaz blinked once. "You'll shower."
"Do you have clothes for me?" Arslan asked with innocent precision. "I wouldn't want you to use your money on me. The house money... it should be enough for some time. Allah provided it, not man."
There it was. The implication—not accusation. Not request. Just submission wrapped in foresight. A five-year-old too pious for his own good. How could Riyaz object? The house belonged to Arslan now, technically. Everyone was dead. And villages in 1990 did not run on papers—they ran on witnesses, honor, and fear.
By the time Arslan had bathed and changed into a too-large kameez, his face wiped clean and his eyes drooping in carefully choreographed exhaustion, the molvi had already begun suggesting janazah arrangements. The neighbors—greedy bastards who had pocketed whatever wasn't charred—had now turned helpful, publicly parading their grief with loud voices and loud prayers.
Riyaz stood silent through it all.
When the old man next-door—the one who smiled like a sheep and bit like a hyena—came forward offering to "help," Arslan stepped forward.
"Chacha, you are a kind man. Everyone knows it," he said with unblinking sincerity. "My father always said your heart was golden."
The lie landed gently. The neighbors nodded.
"You've always helped people," Arslan continued. "Maybe if you could… take the house? I don't want anything from it. It's ashes. But I will need to buy a Qur'an. And maybe shoes, so I can go to madrassa."
The old man hesitated, blinking at the wreckage. "Beta, it is… so soon…"
Arslan nodded, looking down as if in shame. "Forgive me, I did not mean to speak out of turn. But Allah's command doesn't delay. My father said, the sooner you bury the dead, the lighter the sin."
The molvi nodded. "That is true."
"I am the only one left. That means I am responsible. Allah made me witness. I don't want to hold onto a house Allah has already burned. That would mean I believe my will is stronger than His. I fear Him too much to do that."
The neighbors praised the boy's fear of God. The old man looked around—trapped by a child's godliness and the crowd's eyes.
Riyaz said nothing.
"I can offer sixty," the man said.
Arslan looked uncertain. "Chacha, forgive me… I don't know value. But my grandfather is here. He will know what's fair."
Riyaz's voice was iron.
"Seventy."
The man blinked. "That's—"
Riyaz's eyes did not blink. "Do you want it or not?"
The man nodded slowly. "Of course. For the boy. I'll bring it by sunset."
"No need," Arslan said, tilting his head. "I trust you."
Another lie. A child's lie. A holy lie. No one questioned it.
By nightfall, Arslan had seventy thousand rupees tucked in an oil-stained bag. His hands clutched the Qur'an he had asked for first. And the world, stupid and blind and sinful, believed they had witnessed a miracle. A boy protected by Allah. A boy who bore grief like a prophet.
But Arslan knew the truth.
He had burned down a house of snakes.
And now he would build a kingdom with the ashes.
Arslan wore white that morning—not bright or pristine, but the kind of soft, sun-baked white that matched the dry dust of Hyderpur's winding paths. The shalwar was too loose around his ankles and the kameez sleeves covered half his palms. His shoes were rubbery, flat, and dull—no logos, no shine, no ambition. Just enough for respect. Just enough to belong.
"Aslām-u-alaikum," he said to the men sitting at the tea stall as he passed, not stopping, not pausing for acknowledgment. He didn't expect it. And they, distracted by the trivialities of weather and land disputes, didn't give it. A child saying peace to them was as meaningful as the wind whistling through the wheat fields. It meant nothing. That suited Arslan perfectly.
Hyderpur was a quiet place by design—quiet in sound, but loud in contradictions. Everything here was both sacred and profane. The masjid's loudspeakers would call the faithful with mechanical zeal, yet the very courtyard of God's house was littered with unpaid debts, harsh bargains, and secret sins. The men who showed up five times a day to bow toward the Kaaba had not bowed once in their lives to a woman they married or a child they raised. Arslan knew this. He had once been their child. Now, wrapped in the flesh of innocence, he was something else entirely.
Malik Riyaz was in the hujra, the village council room—a sun-scorched veranda shaded with a frayed khess curtain and carpeted with generations of crushed prayers. His presence was magnetic. He sat cross-legged, broad-shouldered, spine straight, a man whose calm was mistaken for mercy and whose judgments were mistaken for justice. He didn't speak much. He didn't need to. His silence cost more than most men's words.
Arslan entered silently and sat cross-legged near the threshold, not too close to the elders but not entirely out of sight either. He folded his hands in his lap, lowered his gaze, and waited. It was his first day in Hyderpur, and he wanted to see it all—the disputes, the loyalties, the mechanics of power disguised as wisdom.
A man came in, older, with a turban stained from the sweat of years. He limped slightly, but his eyes were alive with grievance. Another followed him, younger, sharper, smug. Both stood before Malik Riyaz and presented their versions of a boundary dispute—a matter of two feet of land that both claimed their grandfather had urinated on first. That was enough to make it sacred. The debate began with tradition and quickly dissolved into numbers neither could prove.
Arslan listened.
He watched Riyaz listen with folded arms, eyes closed. He watched how the men raised their voices but lowered their eyes when they spoke to him. He watched how silence ruled this room. And when the silence ended, Riyaz gave his verdict: they would divide the disputed land diagonally and each would swear on the Qur'an to accept the result.
They agreed. Because when Malik Riyaz spoke, you didn't wait to feel understood—you waited to feel safe again.
After the jirga, tea was served. Riyaz beckoned Arslan over with a tilt of the head, pouring him a cup before his own. That subtle gesture told the entire village the boy was his blood.
"You understood anything, bête?" Riyaz asked, his voice textured like worn leather.
Arslan looked up, eyes wide, voice soft. "I think I did, Nana."
"And what did you understand?"
Arslan tilted his head, frowning thoughtfully, then began—not with answers, but with a question. "If both were telling the truth… but still disagree… maybe there's more than one truth?"
Riyaz's thick brows arched. A few men snorted in amusement.
"But then," Arslan added, "Allah sees from above, and we see from below, so maybe only He knows the line clearly. And maybe that's why Nana didn't take sides. Because Nana is just, like Allah loves."
It was an answer too rehearsed for a 5-year-old. But it was soaked in Qur'anic logic. No one could object.
Riyaz gave a half-smile. "Hmm. Next time you sit closer. You'll learn more if you hear the lies better."
"Yes, Nana."
And just like that, Arslan's seat was upgraded—closer to power, closer to decisions, closer to leverage. He spent the rest of the day trailing behind Riyaz like a silent shadow, nodding politely at every man, pausing at every verse he overheard, smiling just enough, blinking just slowly enough to seem thoughtful, not manipulative.
He quoted Surah Al-Baqarah to the man who scolded his son for a mistake the boy didn't commit: "Let there be no compulsion in religion." He quoted Surah Al-Furqan to the woman who wept at her husband's grave: "The servants of the Most Merciful are those who walk upon the earth humbly." No one expected a child to speak like this. But no one wanted to question it either. It sounded holy. And in the absence of literacy, anything holy was truth.
That night, as the sun collapsed into the hills and the calls to prayer echoed over the farmlands, Arslan sat alone under the neem tree near the well, knees to chest, shivering not from cold but from memory.
He didn't smile, but he felt something close to contentment. He had not been struck today. He had not been questioned, not belittled, not broken. He had observed. He had whispered. He had molded perception. That was victory.
And when Malik Riyaz asked if he wanted warm milk before bed, Arslan nodded and said, "Yes, Nana, if it's not too much trouble."
Riyaz chuckled. "For you? Never."
And for a brief moment, Arslan looked like a child.
The day ended with peace.
Maybe.
Arslan woke before Fajr, sitting upright with the clarity of a Philosopher and the grin of a gambler. The night had not ended. It had merely paused to ask, What will you do next, child of fire and memory?
There was no moon. Just silence, just cold, and just enough fog to keep secrets wrapped politely.
Arslan lay in his bedding—a clean quilt folded by Malik Riyaz's servantless house, smelling of mothballs and time. He turned, glanced out at the silhouette of the mulberry tree just past the window bars. The branches stretched out like accusations.
He whispered, "Baba came in my dream."
A lie. A beautifully symmetrical one.
He closed his eyes and imagined the performance. His voice would be soft. Innocent. His tone would tremble, but not from fear—from practiced awe. The Qur'anic verses would come as seasoning, not the main dish. The dream would seem absurd and divine—both, in perfect balance.
This was no longer about vengeance. That part of the book had ended in ash. This was the economic era now. The world, as it always had been, was currency-shaped.
He rose with a purpose and walked to the kitchen. Malik Riyaz was already there—alert, sipping from a brass cup filled with salty tea, staring out the wooden slats of the window like an aging hawk. Arslan greeted him with gravity.
"Asalamu'alaikum, Nana Abu."
"Walaikum asalam," the old man replied, setting the cup down. "You're awake early."
"I couldn't sleep."
"Why?"
"I saw my father in a dream."
There it was. A pause. Not suspicion. Curiosity.
Malik Riyaz pulled out a stool and gestured. "Tell me."
Arslan sat slowly, legs not yet long enough to reach the ground. He laced his fingers together as if to trap something divine between them.
"He came in light. White clothes. His face... I don't remember it clearly. But I remember what he said."
"What did he say?"
"He said, Beta, I couldn't provide for you in life, so Allah gave me permission to guide you in death. He told me to give you something. Something to save us both from hunger."
He paused. Riyaz's gaze did not break.
"He told me some numbers. I saw them clear as day."
A beat.
"Numbers?"
"For a lottery ticket."
Silence stretched like a tightrope.
Arslan continued softly, almost apologetically, "He said to place the bet today. Or it won't work. And not to be scared. He said it would feel wrong. But God makes strange paths for those He tests."
Malik Riyaz leaned back. "Your father said that?"
"He said… 'One sin from my son will cleanse the sins of his father.'"
Riyaz's eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion—just in thought.
"You remember the numbers?"
Arslan listed them slowly, carefully. Riyaz said nothing. He simply finished his tea and walked out of the kitchen. No lectures, no doubt, no sermons. Just footsteps echoing down the hallway and the creak of the front gate.
At the tea stall, the world was already gossiping over burnt chickpeas and political decay. Riyaz did not sit down. He simply approached the chaiwala, a man named Jamil, and leaned in.
"I want you to place a bet today."
The man blinked. "Lottery? What numbers?"
Riyaz handed him a scrap of paper. "Put the usual amount under your name. You'll get your cut."
"Sir, that's—"
"Just do it."
The sun broke through clouds like a poorly timed joke. By noon, he was back. Arslan was sitting with a Qur'an open in his lap, reciting Surah Yusuf in a soft, melodious tone—just enough to be overheard but not intrusive.
Riyaz entered. Arslan stopped, stood up respectfully.
"Did you do it?"
"I did."
"I don't know if it'll work," Arslan said, eyes cast downward. "But if it does, maybe Baba was telling the truth. Maybe the fire… was just a door. And God opened a window."
That was enough. Riyaz nodded, and the subject disappeared.
---
At dusk, they sat on the porch. The villagers passed, nodding at Riyaz, some throwing odd looks at Arslan—now dressed neatly, always greeting everyone in perfect Islamic decorum, never playing with children, never raising his voice. His eyes seemed older. But villagers had other things to do. Nobody asked why.
Riyaz finally spoke.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Arslan did not answer immediately.
"I want to be someone God never tests again."
Silence.
"And if He does test you?"
"Then I want the questions to be multiple choice."
Riyaz chuckled—first time in weeks.
---
At night, Arslan knelt beside his bed, not in prayer, but in ritual.
He whispered, "I saw a dead man in a dream, and sold the lie as divine."
He smiled.
"God's name works best when it's just vague enough to avoid blasphemy, and clear enough to bankrupt your enemy."
He lay down and pulled the blanket over his face.
For once, he didn't dream of screams. Just numbers. And a ticking clock.