On this particular day, I was outdoors with my two daughters when suddenly we heard a shrill voice, "The cat! Is it the cat or the kittens?"

I turned. It was Yaqoob. He was the most mischievous of boys on our street. When mothers spotted him, they held their children's hands tightly and whispered, "Don't play with Yaqoob."

He was a boy of seven or eight. His father had abandoned his mother, and she had died in an accident. Yaqoob lived with his grandparents.

Yaqoob treated other children with a particular roughness. And when he saw a dog or cat, he would hit it with a stick or throw a stone.

When we saw him, my daughter pulled my skirt, and we went to where Yaqoob beckoned us. The large gray cat was one we saw occasionally near our house. It had a habit of disappearing and reappearing. This time, she was sitting majestically between her two kittens. The cat meowed furiously and glared at Yaqoob. As she stared, there was so much anger in her round green eyes that sent a shudder down my spine. The look reminded me of the animals I had seen at the zoo.

One day not long before running into the gray cat and her kittens, we made a trip to the zoo at the insistence of my four-year-old and two-year-old daughters.

I hated the zoo and had not set foot there for several years. It looked like another manifestation of sinful human selfishness to me. Taking happy animals from forest and woods, plains and mountains, putting them to regimentation and considering them contented was intolerable to me. If I don't have the courage or capability to dismantle all zoos in the world and send the muted animals back to their natural habitat, at least I have the power not to visit any zoo, not to stand before any cage and watch the misery of a helpless animal.

But on that particular day, my two-year-old daughter with her tiny stature joined forces with her older sister, bended her neck and pleaded with me, "Mommy, please take us to the zoo!" That coming from the throat of such a tiny tot melted down my resistance. On that mid-summer day while the heat was excruciating, I took both of them to the zoo.

We joined the line. We bought our tickets and entered the zoo. My daughters were overjoyed. They did not know where to run and which animal to see first.

There was a small lake to our right. Beautiful birds with long, wide beaks were resting heavily on their short legs, looked tired. Perhaps that summer heat had made them dizzy. It seemed they were comparing that small muddy lake with the ripping waters in wider spaces where they had spent their youthful days diving and singing their songs.

My daughters were walking on either side of me holding my skirt and watching with an indescribable curiosity.

We proceed further. My eyes caught the bars in front of the cages. It made me shudder. Inside the cage, beautiful green birds sat on the branches of an artificial tree, bored and pensive. It was as if they hankered after their natural habitat.

It was a Friday afternoon. The heat was killing. The zoo was full of spectators. I could not help but think that by visiting the zoo, the people were flaunting their cruel superiority over the animals.

In front of green birds we saw dark, foul-smelling room. My four-year-old daughter cried with joy, "Mother, the elephant!"

We proceeded. The elephant's huge wrinkled body filled my eyes. He was standing in the middle of the dark room, motionless like a boulder. His hind legs were tied with chains. In front of him was a pile of rotting carrots. It seemed to me that the elephant had closed his eyes to avoid seeing the decaying food. As I watched his wrinkled skin and shut eyes, I thought, "All the ties that bind a living creature to life are disconnected in his case, leaving him as only a huge mass of meat, skin, and bones to stand in the middle of this dark cell, motionless, recalling his pleasant memories of the wild forests in India or Africa. There is left in this huge body not a single wish to live. One day, he will breathe his last, roll over on one side and such a life will come to an end."

I was engaged in these thoughts when my youngest daughter ordered, "Why don't you buy me an elephant?"

I inquired in surprise, "What are you going to do with an elephant?"

She answered in cold blood emanating from ignorance, "I'll tie him to my school. I'll feed him milk in the morning. At night, I will give him bread and tell him stories."

This made me think about the milk and the bread that I was procuring with much effort and my daughter was going to generously feed the elephant with. I did not know what sort of forest stories she was going to enchant him when she asked again, "Will you buy me one? Don't lie!"

I said I would to appease her.

We reached the cage of the wolves. They looked at humans from behind the bars with a conspicuous malice and paced inside the cage back and forth with rage. The humans watching them were not touched by what they saw. With the power afforded them by those bars, they laughed at the wolves' plight. Some children even hurled pebbles or clods of earth at them. Then wolves roared and regretted the presence of the bars, realizing that their paws and teeth were helpless against the metal.

Not yet convinced about the strength of the bars, my daughters hurried away, scared.

We went farther. The monkeys were imitating humans, laughing with satisfaction. If somebody laughed, a monkey smiled. If someone held his ears in his hands, a monkey would follow suit. Enraptured by selfishness, the humans threw pieces of bread or carrots into the cage. The primates gladly put these into their mouths and began munching, making efforts to imitate the humans even better next time.

My daughters could not be weaned from the monkey's cage.

The pressing spectators and summer heat taxed my patience. I dragged them to a covered enclosure, surrounded by glass boxes full of water with big and small fish. The fish moved slowly. I knew they were thinking about the sea, being confined to such small boxes. My daughter gave another order, "By me a fish."

I asked her what she was going to do with it.

She said in the same cold blood emanating from ignorance, "I will tie its neck to my school with a string." I was still in rage with bulging eyes when she shouted, "Are you going to buy me one or not?"

Helpless, I said I would comply.

"Don't give me a lie!"

I said I wouldn't.

Pointing to the white fish inside the glass box, she said, "I want this kind."

I expressed compliance.

I was wishing for a huge bed with one leg in a boundless forest where elephants grazed and another leg in ocean where fish swam freely. I didn't know where the two other legs laid. And I visualized my youngest daughter watching with her childish pride sometimes the elephants and other times the fish. This made me laugh. My daughter asked furiously, "What are you laughing for?"

I said it was nothing.

I realized how egotistical human beings are even from infancy. We left the covered enclosure.

We saw Pamir's impressive yaks that had filled a cage with their huge bodies and long black hair. Paying no attention to humans standing in front of their cages watching their humps with a mixture of surprise and fear, the yaks held their heads high with a pathetic futile bravado. Perhaps they were remembering the impregnable boulders and ridges of the Pamirs.

My children did not pay the yaks much attention. They pulled my skirt and dragged me to a spot where much noise came from. My four-year-old hollered, "Look at the lion!"

I turned and saw the lion. He was restless due to the mid-summer heat. I don't know why he appeared to me like a noble, but disappointed, man of learning. He had placed his huge head on his two paws and nodded every few moments. The crowds pestered him. The lion had closed his eyes as if he hated humans.

Further on, we saw a donkey. He was so peaceful. He was perhaps the only animal contented inside his pen. His back was no longer aching under heavy loads. He sometimes lied and other times rose and jumped carelessly. I looked into his eyes. He seemed restive, remembering only the zigzagging lanes in town.

Reproductive instinct had shadowed the gazelles in their cages. They had given birth to new offspring. With a special curiosity detected in all young animals, the youngsters watched everything inquisitively. It seemed to me the old gazelles were tormented by their memories of the green valleys and watched with regret their young getting used to cages, not knowing anything about those dales.

The old gazelles with their twisting horns watched the humans from behind bars, hardly supported by their long legs not made for sitting. The young gazelles gazed at my daughters with their fascinating black eyes. I don't know what sort of affinity developed between them when my youngest called, "How lovely!"

I turned and looked at the old gazelles, lying on one side, chewing something carelessly. Our eyes met. There was something in that bored glance that made the zoo more intolerable to me. I dragged my children toward the exit, not listening to their protests. "It's getting late. Let's run fast!" I said.

My two-year-old who always accuses me of lying said in anger, "Why are you lying? It's not getting late."

She was thinking "being late" was something concrete that I could show her. She asked, "Where is 'late'? Show it to me."

I told them once more that if we did not leave right then, it would grow dark. My children are afraid of the dark, so they quickened their pace not looking back. We left the zoo for home.

I noticed my daughters were absorbed in watching the kitten. It was late evening. Yaqoob was fed up with teasing animals. He was looking back with regret, on his way home. When we returned home, my elder daughter asked, "Are we humans?"

I said, yes we are.

She said it's good to be humans.

I wished to tell her that it would be better still if humans were humane. But I did not. Instead, I asked her why she thought so.

She heaved a sigh, saying, "Because humans go to the kindergarten, eat, and have homes." She continued after another sigh, "The poor cats. They have none."

I was satisfied. My daughter thought and asked, "Don't the cats have homes?"

I said they did not.

She asked again, "Cats are not humans?"

I said they were not.

She asked, "Why not?"

I said without thinking, "Humans do not have tails and walk on two legs."

She asked, "If a cat didn't have a tail and walked on two legs, would it be human?"

I said carelessly that it was so.

My daughter was silenced.

Days went by. I was kept informed by my daughters about the condition of the gray cat and its kittens. It seemed to me my daughter had raised my theory that if cats have no tails and talk on two feet, they become humans and it was confirmed by Yaqoob. I asked, "What is the matter?"

She said, "The kittens have turned into humans. Come and see them!"

"How did they turn human?"

"Yaqoob made them," she said.

I had a sinking feeling. I ran with my daughter to the mulberry tree.

Two kittens were soaked in their blood. Yaqoob had cut their tails and two fore legs with a small axe. My daughter said consolingly, "They will get better. And soon they will walk on two legs like humans. Yaqoob told me."

Then she mumbled something, which I did not hear. I started shaking all over with rage.

That night, it was difficult to send my daughter to sleep. And I was awake all night hearing painful cries of the gray cat lamenting the murder of her young ones.