"The Golden Boy," by Daniyal Mueenuddin

"Bayazid never knew how he came to be a little boy alone in the streets of Rawalpindi. He had a memory more of forces than of people, a crowd, a hand, a hand no more. Yet the bazaars in those early nineteen-fifties were not so crowded as that, and Rawalpindi a town small enough that a lost little boy should be found."

"Karim Khan kept an eye on the boy all through the afternoon and evening, as he served customers by the light of a hissing pressure-gas lantern, dishing up dal or a meat curry that grew more delicious each year, for he never washed out the fire-blackened pots that sat over the coals, but replenished them with a double handful of lentils or meat, beef or mutton, whichever was cheaper."

A small boy named Bayazid appears alone in Rawalpindi with only a new pair of cheap plastic shoes and a shalwar kameez. Memory of his past is fragmented into sensations of a crowd and a vanished hand, suggesting possible abandonment after the Partition. Karim Khan, who runs a tea-and-curry stall, notices the boy sitting quietly and clutching the shoes and keeps watch through the afternoon and evening. The stall’s unwashed, fire-blackened pots yield increasingly savory dal and meat curries as Karim replenishes them. The boy shows remarkable concentration and remains immobile except for his fierce protection of the shoes.

Read at The New Yorker