Ice Candy Man

Lenny spends much of her time on the roof, looking down into the courtyard containing the fallen women. Hamida often joins her. The women are wretched and despondent. There are no children in the compound, so Lenny asks Hamida if she misses her children. Hamida does, but she dares not try to see them. She has two boys who are teenagers and two girls, one Lenny’s age and one younger. She tells Lenny that their father is a good man, but he would be angry if she tried to see the children. She tells Lenny that she is simply cursed by fate. She can do nothing to change her circumstances. She tells Lenny a tragic tale that reinforces this belief in fate.

Lenny’s mother grows furious with Imam Din over a trapped tom cat; she beats him with a fly swatter until he disarms her. Imam Din is humiliated. When Lenny’s father comes home there is a rare moment of fun and lightheartedness as the family hugs and laughs about this small family tiff. These are the moments Lenny’s mother, Lenny, and Adi treasure: when their husband and father talks directly to his wife. These moments are extremely rare; Lenny often hears her parents arguing, and she has seen bruises on her mother’s body.

Suddenly, the hunt for Ayah is off. Lenny and Adi impatiently wait for Ayah to be returned to them.

The next few weeks are hard for Lenny. Cousin ignores her, and the more he does this the more she thinks about him. Soon, she is obsessed with him. The attraction that was missing before suddenly emerges.

Cousin continues to ignore and dismiss Lenny until he has great news: he sees Ayah in a taxi. He admits that he’s been pretending to ignore Lenny, and that in fact he loves her. Lenny admits that she does not love Cousin in return. Cousin drags Lenny to Godmother to complain and receive supportive advice. Godmother tells them that he will outgrow his feelings for Lenny when he is around other girls.

To keep Lenny’s attention, Cousin searches the city for Ayah.

Lenny, too, sees Ayah pass by in a taxi. She is dressed up in fancy clothes and is wearing a lot of makeup.

Lenny and Adi spend the night with Godmother, while Dr. Mody is there. He wants to talk to them. However, he simply stirs the pot of the constant bickering between Godmother and Slavesister, including offering to rid Slavesister of her “demons” if she pulls his finger. Of course, when she does this, he farts. The children are overcome with laughter and demand to be repeatedly exorcised of their own “demons” (248).

Godmother finds Ayah. Lenny has heard Ayah is now a dancing girl, but Godmother insists she is a married woman. Godmother swears Lenny to secrecy and reveals that Lenny’s mother is rescuing women and either returning them to their families or sending them to safe women’s camps. Ayah has been rescued and sent home to her family in Amritsar.

Lenny refuses to believe all this. She confronts her mother, who tells Lenny the truth. She is not an arsonist using petrol to burn Lahore; instead she is a black-marketeer who uses the money to rescue women from prostitution and slavery and return them to their families.

The next day, Godmother tells Lenny that she is right—Ayah is still living in Lahore. Godmother arranges to speak with Ayah’s husband that evening. Lenny stays to see him.

When Ice-candy-man arrives, Lenny is shocked. Godmother questions him about his home in the red-light district and his odd behavior, allowing his “wife” to perform in front of strange men as a dancing girl. He weaves a tale of his origins in a princely, poetic, acting family, and of his passion for Ayah, whom he has made his wife. He displays all of his divergent identities: con-man, poet, love-lorn suitor, and cruel oppressor. Godmother allows him to tell his story, then she furiously and righteously attacks, accusing him of allowing other men to dishonor his wife and of taking profit from using her womanhood. Ice-candy-man is destroyed, rocking on the floor, crying, saying that he cannot live without Ayah. He is dismissed from Godmother’s sight like a dog.

Godmother arranges to visit Ayah, and she takes Lenny with her, even though she must go to the red-light district in Lahore. Hand in hand, they brave the laughter and looks from the other people in this disreputable part of town.

When Ayah enters the sitting room inside the apartment she shares with the Ice-candy-man, Lenny does not recognize her. She is dressed as a Muslim woman, and she has been renamed Mumtaz by Ice-candy-man.

When Lenny looks into Ayah’s eyes, she sees that Ayah’s soul has been crushed and stolen from her body. When the Ice-candy-man leaves the room, Ayah begs Godmother to get her away from him and to help her go to her family. She falls on the floor and wraps her arms around Godmother’s legs, insisting that she cannot live with the Ice-candy-man because she feels dead inside. Though she is no longer forced to perform, Ayah cannot forget the past. Though they are married, Godmother agrees to try to help Ayah/Mumtaz leave her husband, that subdued snake and renowned trickster, the Ice-candy-man.

When Lenny tells Cousin of her adventure and of Ayah’s terrible predicament, Cousin tries to explain the reality of Ayah’s life as a dancing girl. Lenny does not understand prostitution, nor that the Ice-candy-man is acting as Ayah’s pimp.

During a scuffle outside the women’s refuge, Lenny and her mother see the Sikh guard beating up a man before bundling him in a wagon to be taken off with his other pimp friends. The beaten man is the Ice-candy-man, in pursuit of the escaped Ayah. Ayah doesn’t want to see them, but Lenny sets up a cry of “Ayah” that is answered by the women below, “‘Hai! Hai!’” (285). Ayah briefly appears, but she looks up at Lenny as if she is a stranger and goes back inside the house.

Godmother has worked another miracle by having the police rescue the willing Ayah from her imprisonment with the Ice-candy-man.

The Ice-candy-man stalks Ayah, living on the street outside the Recovered Women’s Camp, and even following her to the homeopath, when she is guarded by the Sikh. Ayah ignores his presence and the romantic, lovelorn poems that he directs at her. He throws rose petals and candy over the wall into the women’s enclosure. The women sweep away the rose petals and candy as if they are “goat droppings” (288).

One day, there is no smell of rose petals in the morning, and Lenny learns that Ayah has gone home to Amritsar. The Ice-candy-man, too, disappears over the border into India.