Read Between the Assassinations for Free Online

Tax Department!”
     
     
    He came running down the stairs, and stopped at the last step. To his right, the doorway opened onto the factory floor. In the six weeks since his factory had reopened, he had not once gone through this doorway; Ummar had handled the affairs of the factory floor. But now the doorway to his right, black and yawning, had become inescapable.
    He felt he had no option but to go in. He realized now that the morning’s events had all been, somehow, a trap: to bring him to this place, to make him do what he had avoided doing since reopening his factory.
    The women were sitting on the floor of the dimly lit room, pale fluorescent lights flickering overhead, each at a workstation indicated by a numeral in red letters painted on the wall. They held the white shirts close to their eyes and stitched gold thread into them; they stopped when he came in. He flicked his wrist, indicating that they should keep working. He didn’t want their eyes looking at him: those eyes that were being damaged, as their fingers created golden shirts that he could sell to American ballroom dancers.
    Damaged? No, that was not the right word. That was not the reason he had shunted them into a side room.
    Everyone in that room was going blind.
    He sat down on a chair in the center of the room.
    The optometrist had been clear about that: the kind of detailed stitchwork needed for the shirts scarred the women’s retinas. He had used his fingers to show Abbasi how thick the scars were. No amount of improved lighting would reduce the impact on the retinas. Human eyes were not meant to stare for hours at designs this intricate. Two women had already gone blind; that was why he had shut down the factory. When he reopened, all his old workers came back at once. They knew their fate; but there was no other work to be had.
    Abbasi closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than for Ummar to shout that he was urgently needed upstairs.
    But no one came to release him, and he sat in the chair, while the women around him stitched, and their stitching fingers kept talking to him: We are going blind; look at us!
    “Does your head hurt, sahib?” a woman’s voice was asking him. “Do you want me to get you some Dispirin and water?”
    Unable to look at her, Abbasi said, “All of you please go home. Come back tomorrow. But please go home today. You’ll all be paid.”
    “Is sahib unhappy with us for some reason?”
    “No, please. Go home now. You’ll all be paid for the whole day. Come back tomorrow.”
    He heard the rustle of their feet and he knew they must be gone now.
    They had left their shirts at their workstations, and he picked one up; the dragon was half stitched. He kneaded the cloth between his fingers. He could feel, between his fingers, the fine-spun fabric of corruption.
    The factory is closed, he wanted to shout out to the dragon. There—you happy with me? The factory is closed.
    And after that? Who would send his son to school? Would he sit by the docks with a knife and smuggle cars like Mehmood? The women would go elsewhere and do the same work.
    He slapped his hand against his thigh.
    Thousands, sitting in tea shops and universities and workplaces every day and every night, were cursing corruption. Yet not one fellow had found a way to slay the demon without giving up his share of the loot of corruption. So why did he—an ordinary businessman given to whiskey and snooker and listening to gossip from thugs—have to come up with an answer?
    But just a moment later, he realized he already had an answer.
    He offered Allah a compromise. He would be taken to jail, but his factory would go on with its work: he closed his eyes and prayed to his God to accept this deal.
    But an hour passed, and still no one had come to arrest him.
    Abbasi opened a window in his office. He could see only buildings, a congested road, and old walls. He opened all the windows, but still he saw nothing but walls. He climbed up to the roof of his