Khader Khan places Tariq, his young nephew, in Lin’s care with the stated aim of teaching him English through constant companionship rather than formal lessons alone. Lin is allowed only a two-day trial before deciding whether to continue, but the boy’s fear at being handed to a stranger makes the arrangement an immediate encounter with responsibility, not simply an invitation to teach.

The request and its terms

Khader Khan returns to a favor he had mentioned the day before: Lin is to teach Tariq enough English to improve the boy’s command of the language and give him an advantage when he begins formal studies. Lin agrees to try, though he is bewildered by the request and unsure that he is the best person for the job. His uncertainty is practical as well as personal: he asks where the teaching is supposed to take place, imagining that he might come to Khader Khan’s home.

The proposal is far more encompassing. Tariq is to stay with Lin for ten or twelve weeks, living with him, eating and sleeping where he does, and accompanying him wherever he goes. Khader Khan wants the boy to learn not just English phrases but what he calls the English way—Lin’s way—through unbroken company. Lin objects that he is not English. Khader Khan answers that, as a foreigner, Lin is English enough for the purpose: the assignment depends on his difference from the people around Tariq, not on any claim that he is English by nationality.

A trial and a network of care

Lin’s hesitation is not hidden from Khader Khan. He names both concerns Lin has not voiced aloud: that something may happen to Tariq, and that Lin will lose his freedom to go and do as he chooses. Lin feels relieved to be understood, and briefly expects that Khader Khan will withdraw the demand. Instead, Khader Khan offers a limited test. Lin is to take the boy for forty-eight hours; if he finds the situation impossible, he may bring Tariq back, and Khader Khan says he will ask no more of him.

The trial is not meant to leave Lin alone with the burden. Khader Khan says Qasim Ali Hussein, the head man in the slum and a friend of his, will help. Qasim is to arrange for several families, including his own, to share responsibility and provide places for Tariq to sleep as well as Lin’s home. Khader Khan’s plan is for the boy to experience the hardest life of the poorest people while also learning from an English teacher. He begins to explain why that last part matters to him, but pauses before completing the thought. The reason remains unstated in this encounter; the scene records its weight without supplying an explanation.

The boy at the handover

When Khader Khan calls Tariq forward, the child is already standing beneath the cloister arches. Though eleven, he looks much younger to Lin, and his clean, pressed kurta-pyjama and leather sandals contrast with the tied calico bundle clutched in his arms. His expression is forlorn and distrustful. Rather than approach Lin directly, he circles widely around him and moves to the far side of his uncle’s chair. After Khader Khan speaks to him sternly in Urdu and points several times toward Lin, Tariq comes to Lin’s stool and extends his hand. His faltering greeting makes his reluctance audible; Lin’s hand nearly swallows the child’s, and the contact awakens a protective instinct that complicates his resistance to the assignment.

The parting makes clear that Tariq is not simply being delivered into a neutral arrangement. Khader Khan stares strength into the boy, then leaves without looking back at him. Lin and Tariq both watch him go feeling abandoned and betrayed. Nazeer walks them to the door; as Lin changes into his street shoes, Nazeer presses Tariq to his chest with unexpected tenderness. The boy clings to Nazeer’s hair, and Nazeer has to be prised away from him with force. He then gives Lin a lingering, menacing look that makes the consequence of any harm unmistakable: Lin will answer to him.

Reluctance, power, and responsibility

Outside, beside Nabila Mosque, Lin and Tariq hold tightly to each other’s hands, though their only shared understanding is their bewilderment at Khader Khan’s power to push them together against their wills. Tariq has obeyed; Lin recognizes that he has capitulated too readily. His affection for Khader Khan, which he experiences as a kind of love shaped by their unequal positions, sits uneasily beside his resentment at being ordered to take responsibility for a child. He turns that resentment into a moral objection: Khader Khan, he thinks, has disregarded Tariq’s rights and well-being and treated the child as if he were someone else’s plaything.

That judgment is entangled with Lin’s self-disgust. He condemns Khader Khan for surrendering a reluctant boy to a stranger, but also knows that he himself has failed to resist the demand. Angry at his own pliancy, he pulls Tariq along at a jogging trot through the crowded street. As they pass the mosque’s main entrance, the muezzin begins the call to prayer from the minarets. The handover therefore ends not with consent or reassurance, but with the two unwilling companions already moving together: Khader Khan’s authority has made the arrangement, while Tariq’s small hand in Lin’s makes its human obligation harder to dismiss.