Karim has kept the lamp bench at the mouth of the Sorange pit for eleven years. The bench is a wall of hooks. On each hook a helmet lamp and a brass token with a number. The miner arrives. He leaves the token with his name on the register. He takes the lamp from the hook of the same number. He takes off his sandals. He puts on his boots. He goes down. When he comes back up, he hangs the lamp again. He takes back the token. He puts his sandals back on. Karim marks the time. That is all there is to his trade. To hand out the light. To take it back.

On Thursday the light did not come back up. Forty-two went down that shift. At eight in the evening Karim holds forty-two tokens marked as gone down and eight hung back up. Thirty-four empty hooks. The lamps have not returned. The tokens of those who went down stay on the register, in a column.

The contractor arrives at four the next day. His name, let us say, is Sahibzada. He has a sheet of paper and a pen. He looks at Karim's register. He counts the column of tokens gone down. Then he says quietly, in slow Urdu, that the tokens are thirty-two, not forty-two. He says it the way a measurement is dictated. Thirty-two gone down. Thirty-two lamps. Karim does not answer. Karim lines up the tokens on the bench, one beside the other.

Sahibzada explains. He explains that the compensation is five hundred thousand rupees each. He explains that the company pays sooner if the numbers are in order. He explains that two of the forty-two had no work permit. One of the two is a boy. A boy under eighteen in the tunnel is a fine. The fine closes the mine. The mine closed is the valley without wages. Then he repeats the measurement: thirty-two. Karim takes a lamp that came back up. He cleans the contacts with the cloth. He hangs it back on the hook. He does not answer.

The eight who came back up Karim saw one by one. They came out at seven. They were black with dust. Each one hung his lamp back on his hook. Each one took back his token. They make the gesture even when their hands are shaking. Then they sat outside, against the wall. They waited for the others. The others did not come back up.

At midnight they began to bring up the bodies. Bodies do not hang the lamps back. Karim took the lamps off the helmets, one by one. He put them back on the hooks. He cleaned them with the cloth. A dirty lamp does not charge. Then he took each man's token from the register. He marked the time beside each name. That is all he knew how to do.

The boy was called Younas. He was sixteen. He had gone down on Thursday with the lamp of number nineteen, borrowed, because nineteen was free that day. He had no token. He had no work permit. He had gone down because his father had sent him to ask for work, and someone had sent him down to fill the shift, and no one had written anything. At the bench, before going down, he had taken off his sandals, like everyone. Younas's sandals are still under the bench. They are of blue rubber. One has its strap broken and repaired with a copper wire.

Karim looks at the sandals. Then he looks at the long table, against the wall. On the long table is the row of belongings. They are the things those who went down left at the bench before going down. Shoes. A stopped watch. A water bottle. A comb. Each thing has a tag beside it with the name, for the family and for the compensation. Karim counts the tags. Thirty-two. The boy's name is not there.

Karim looks at the sandals again. Under the bench there are other things without a name too. A packet of cigarettes. A key. A comb of red plastic. But the other things have a token, and the token has a name, and the name has a tag. The sandals do not. The sandals belong to the boy who is not on the register.

Karim bends down. He takes the blue rubber sandals from under the bench. He holds them a moment, one in each hand. The contractor watches him. Karim carries the sandals to the long table. He sets them at the end of the row, beside the other belongings. He takes a blank tag. He writes a name: Younas. He sets the tag beside the sandals. Now the tags are thirty-three.

Sahibzada sees. He does not raise his voice. He only says that that name was not on the register. Karim says that the boy had gone down with the lamp of nineteen. He says it quietly. He adds nothing else. He goes back to the bench. He takes the second lamp that came back up. He cleans the contacts with the cloth. He hangs it back on its hook. He takes the third.

The contractor stays a minute. He looks at the long table with the thirty-three tags. He looks at Karim cleaning the lamps one by one, like every evening, as if the shift were any shift. Then he puts the sheet back in the folder. He puts the pen back in his breast pocket. He goes out the door of the bench without saying anything more.

Karim goes on. The lamps that came back up are eight. He has cleaned three. Five are left. He cleans them one by one. Contacts, cloth, hook. Contacts, cloth, hook. Contacts, cloth, hook. When he has finished, he turns off the big light of the bench and leaves on the small one above the long table. The blue rubber sandals stay at the end of the row, beside the tag with the name, under the small light, where the boy's father, when he comes to look for him, will find them first.