Imran's Radio · Second Shift · Pulse Beat
He came on Sundays, in the evenings, with something to mend. Imran had set up a small workbench on the balcony of Zainab's flat. Her mother, who had never trusted a man with a soldering iron, had…
He came on Sundays, in the evenings, with something to mend.
Imran had set up a small workbench on the balcony of Zainab's flat. Her mother, who had never trusted a man with a soldering iron, had become unexpectedly fond of him. They sat in the cool, with a cup of tea, as he fixed an old transistor radio he had found at a flea market in Chor Bazaar, and she read, and neither of them spoke.
On the third Sunday of the month, he held up the radio. "It works," he said.
It crackled, and from it came, faintly, a woman's voice singing a ghazal of the old kind, rich and crooked and exact. Zainab, in the kitchen, put down her spoon. The three of them listened until the song ended.
"Where is it from?" asked Fatima.
"All India Radio." He smiled. "Nineteen-seventy-one recording. A woman who nobody remembers." He looked at her. "I think of you, when I fix them. I'm taking something that was thrown away and making it speak again."
She put her book down, and for the first time in two years, did not feel tired.