The baby soap child

September 27, 2026Believe me: Every criminal is cursed with a birth defect. Most of them are short—really short and thin and diminutive, with somewhat twisted limbs and features. During my long years of incarceration, I have hardly seen a handsome fraudster, drug dealer, rapist, child molester, or murderer.

Even those who are tall or sturdy usually have something seriously wrong with their body proportions. They have either a bit too big or too small a head on a bit too big or too small a torso, with arms and legs that are a bit too long or too short.

This defect sometimes manifests itself in an erasure of the personality with the criminal becoming shapeless, formless and featureless, like figurines made of dough by a five-year-old child.

These are the kind of people you tend not to notice even when they are walking all alone along a deserted road, simply because they merge into the general ugliness of our urban life—with its broken roads, piles of garbage, overflowing gutters, chaotic traffic and horrific buildings. Illegitimate children—also suffer from these anomalies.

And I am no exception. When I see my face in the broken mirror of my prison cell—a dark hole where I am going to spend the rest of my days—I often feel that I am looking at the portrait that Dorian Gray kept hidden behind dark veils—a portrait that reflected the sheer ugliness of his soul.

Earlier, I regarded my abominable deformity as the bane of my accursed existence, which seemed to have no place in the whole wide world—not even in the hearts of my unknown, sinful parents. However, like Dorian, I later came to value and even love my ugliness as my face struck terror into the hearts of those around me.

It was a visage that called to mind the head of a badger poised to attack its prey, its pointed but irregular teeth bared in anticipation of the kill.

My immense ugliness, while shutting me out from any possibility of finding a friend or lover and building a social life at the orphanage and, later, in the world beyond, also protected me from people at large who could feel nothing for me but revulsion and hatred. This realisation gave me the power to finally connect with my surroundings.

Yet the only kind of life that was possible for me in this world was a double life. During the day, I worked as a delivery man, running around this grotesque, huge and almost interminable city on a motorcycle, with my face covered by a clinical mask.

But at night, I did what I then regarded as a social service—a truly charitable act of kindness. I killed the newborns that sinful mothers left in the dirty cots outside the ugly buildings of Edhi's orphanages so that they might be spared a life of misery and depravity.

I waited patiently in some dark corner with a view of one of these little beds every night, sometimes for days or even months, just for the moment when a car, a rickshaw, or a motorcycle pulled up in front of it.

I started walking towards the cot after the vehicle had sped away, leaving a faint trail of dust behind. When I laid my hands on the small, warm bundle, I heard a weak, muffled cry.

I gently uncovered the little face and looked at it closely. I confess that I was always touched by the vulnerability and innocence of those babies. But what I looked for was the birth defect—the anomaly of the bastard.

And believe me, I came across a glaring abnormality in every case—except the last one. That night, I was caught off guard, as the child was not brought to the cot in a vehicle. It was a shadow that had put the little bundle in the cradle much earlier than usual.

She was already bending over the cot when I first realized what was happening. The woman was looking at the baby for the last time. Finally, she started plodding along, and by the time she reached the street corner, I was already at the cradle.

When I removed the cloth from his face, I was startled by his beauty. The newborn was perfectly calm and wide-awake, his pink, round face adorned with golden-brown hair. I had only seen such a pretty child on the posters for baby soap.

This wasn't possible. The child must have some deformity. There must be something gross about him, I said to myself, as I ran my hand over his little body, removing his clothes.

The child was the epitome of perfection. He looked even more beautiful in his pure nakedness. As I stared at him in utter confusion, something dawned on me.

This child was also an aberration. He was free from defects, but his very beauty and perfection were a deviation—a departure from the norm that all illegitimate children must follow. He was an anomaly among them and deserved the same treatment as the rest of them.

However, as I was about to cover his beautiful mouth, the child—calm and wide-awake—smiled. Despite my ugliness, the child was not afraid of me. For the first time, I had decided to return home without finishing my job.

This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. The writer can be reached at farrukhkamrani@gmail.com.

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