The Price of an Apple
The Price of an Apple
BY:Khan
Madihah Gul's small voice trembled as she cried, “Baba Jani, I want an apple... Uncle Liaqat won't let me pick any. He says, 'Get out of here... this isn't your father's orchard.' I want an apple too.”
The ten-year-old, living in a mud house without a proper door, burst in crying, almost running. She flung a worn cloth bag over her shoulder and dropped it in the dusty courtyard. In the single room she grabbed the hem of Amruddin’s shirt and pulled, insisting. “Just this once... tomorrow I'll bring Sohni Abiha a whole bag of apples. Come, let’s eat together.”
Amruddin chewed and soothed his daughter, and she ran back outside to tell her friends. “Don’t worry, Abiha’s still young and innocent. I’ll teach her when she returns from playing,” he told his wife, smiling at her encouragement. “This land yields gold, and yet that gold goes to faraway places. The locals don't benefit.” He sighed and left.
Amruddin sold fried bread—pakoras—at the road near the settlement and earned just enough for two meals. Abiha was his only child, and he dreamed of educating her. She went to the government school that passed by the orchard on the outskirts of their neighborhood. The apples there were of high quality; their sweet fragrance spread across the settlement and teased every child. Adults could resist, but children could not. Sometimes kids stole apples, and the gardener would chase them away. The old, gentle gardener had once shown mercy, but he had been replaced by a younger, harder man. The new watchman and the promise of cruel dogs were supposed to end theft, and while theft dropped, hunger did not.
When Abiha begged for an apple, Amruddin went to the gardener. “Brother, please give me one apple.”
“Give me thirty rupees and I’ll pick it for you,” the gardener said, twisting his mustache with cruel amusement. “This orchard is for the rich abroad, not for poor people like you. Go away, and keep your children from coming. Haji Sahib has ordered two fierce dogs to be brought. They’ll arrive the day after tomorrow.” Amruddin returned empty-handed.
The next afternoon, despite his wife's warnings, Abiha still followed the scent of the apples and found one fallen near the shrubs. She tucked it into her bag, but the gardener saw her. He not only snatched the apple but beat her. At home, Abiha told her father everything and he exploded like an angry lion. He was poor, but not powerless; he confronted the gardener and argued fiercely. Still, he lay awake that night, haunted by hunger and unfulfilled wishes.
The gardener’s threat simmered in his blood, and the next morning Amruddin set up his pakora cart, waiting for customers. He longed to give his daughter abundance or at least to shelter her in a home where fruit bowls were always full. Lost in these wandering thoughts, he was approached by a motorcyclist asking for twenty rupees’ worth of pakoras for his little girl. Amruddin stuffed a packet into the man’s hand, who paid and sped off. In the next instant, the motorcycle collided with a truck. The rider was thrown; the child was flung forward; the apples that the motorcyclist had been carrying spilled across the road like a sudden, red confession.
“Baba Jani... if you don’t bring me my apple today, I won’t eat and I will starve!” whimpered the injured girl. With trembling hands Amruddin gathered the apples and placed them in a wrap. Suddenly the injured girl fluttered her eyelids and groaned. “Baba...ba...ba...” she whispered, life clinging to her voice. Amruddin’s world spun. He bolted home with the apples and called, “Abiha! Abiha!”
He arrived at the mud hut and gently laid four apples on the bed beside his daughter. Only then did he realize that Abiha herself was badly hurt—the cloth bandage on her head soaked with blood. “Pino, what happened?” he asked, voice shaking.
“She went to steal apples again,” Pino replied, dabbing her eyes. “The gardener sent his dog. It bit her leg and struck her head; I’ve changed the bandages twice but the bleeding won’t stop. Take her to the hospital.”
Someone grabbed his heart and squeezed; for a moment he collapsed into emptiness, then life returned to him. The injured child murmured, repeating, “Dog... gardener... apple...” and then grew faint. The sight was repeating itself—bloody, fragile breath, the fragile body of someone who needed help.
Amruddin placed his own hand in hers and promised himself he would never hesitate to help another child. That wounded little girl was not his, but in a strange, aching way she felt like his second daughter. The orchard’s apples had become a weight heavier than their sweetness—an emblem of injustice and suffering. He knew now that letting fear or pride stop him would be a betrayal. He cursed himself for having ignored the other girl’s plight while he chased his own grievance against the gardener.
He ran into the street, pushing through the crowd, and found the ambulance wailing. The little girl’s eyes were still fixed on the spot where she had been cast away. As he watched, the bitter truth lodged in him: children are the shared hope of a community. No one truly owns them. He would carry that lesson forward—this was a wound to be healed with compassion, not with silence.
He promised then to defend every child's joy and hunger, with his whole heart.
