Osama’s other side finally surfaced in the summer after our O-level exams. While we awaited our results and speculated about whether to remain in the Cambridge system or to enter the local board system to maximize our chances of getting into medical college, Osama began soliciting boys for sex. Mosquito Khan was the first one Osama asked—right to his face and in public, too—while pushing his new iPhone to the middle of their booth as an offer of payment. I’ll book us a hotel room, Osama said. Mosquito told me he left the restaurant, but Osama kept calling him, texting him to reconsider, then begging him not to tell anyone.
Has he said anything to you? Mosquito asked. I shook my head, and realized I was a little dismayed.
Osama then reached out to others. He’d pay them, he kept repeating. He had a motorbike now, so he could meet them anywhere. Logistics were not a problem. It was clear to me that most of the boys enjoyed these offers, even if they were repelled by the idea of sleeping with Osama. It became a game for some, in fact. One by one they reached out to him, flirted with him, wanted to see if he would make them an offer. He did. Osama must have known they were playing with him, but he went along with it. When Aslam asked for pictures, the idiot sent them. They weren’t fakes. Even with his face out of the frame, even with the flash in the reflection, you could tell it was Osama, bent over in his bathroom mirror, arching his back. Others asked, others received. Then they would gleefully report back: Oh, yes, he also asked me, he also sent me that picture. Gandu. He is a gay, who knew?
But didn’t we know? Or was it just me? I kept quiet when the boys showed me their text exchanges. I feigned ignorance when, every now and then, Osama called me. We continued to chat about exam results, worried for careless mistakes made on the Biology exam. Once that summer we met in the Fri-Chicks by the school and I thought he was going to put his phone on the table. I was waiting for him to swallow his Zinger burger, wipe his mouth with a napkin, and say, I can suck you off in the bathroom.
I would have refused him, anyway. After Osama paid our bill, I sat on the back of his motorbike. He dropped me home. I returned to my room. I realized that day that even the meanest desire comes with a cost.
The boys decided to teach Osama that very lesson. They met up at Shehbaz’s and planned it out. Mosquito Khan told me the details. First, Aslam would agree to sleep with Osama. He’d propose to meet him at his house. When Osama appeared at the door, others hiding at the street corner would gang up on him. They’d push into his house or drag him out to the street. They wouldn’t beat him, but they would shove him around, scare him, tell him to stop. If that didn’t work, they would threaten to tell his parents.
I don’t think they will follow through, Mosquito said to me on the phone. Haven’t they all flirted with him too? How can they prove they were only joking?
I didn’t reply. Hadn’t he figured out how the world operated? I imagined them with their spiked hair, standing around the corner from the milkman’s gate, holding their noses against the sweet stench of manure, while Aslam strode ahead and rang the bell. Once. Twice. I could see him banging the metal gate with his fist, then peering through the jaali. The street children would pause to look at Aslam and his stiff hair, they would smell his body spray. Up ahead they’d notice the group of men waiting at the corner. They’d try to put two and two together. I could see them inspecting the commotion, calling each other, and gathering in the street outside Osama’s boundary wall. That’s when I felt my skin crawl—seeing the younger version of those boys standing and looking at them carefully, trying to understand.