The Wish Maker (33 page)

From his seat in the front Uncle Shafto said, “Actually they are all the same. All of them. Take Anjum Mian, my colleague. Man is a nincompoop.
Nin
com-poop. But what is he getting? Promotions. Why? Connections. This is the game. He will be GM in a year or two, just wait and see. And mark my words: he will
take
this company
down
the drain.”

Hukmi reiterated her initial stance, maintaining that it was all politics, and Suri shook her head.

I asked if it was always like this.

“Always,” said Suri. “From the very start. Democracy this and democracy that. Very well. But will you tell me, please, is it democracy to steal people’s lands? To take away the things they have lawfully earned? Land reform, they said. Land reform, my foot. First the father came to steal, and now the daughter is stealing, and nobody can say a thing, because we are in democracy. Your Uncle Saaji used to have so much. Ask him, ask how much he used to have: he will tell you. The Kureishi brothers used to be his tagalongs. But it goes—always it goes in the end—and like this the Kureishi brothers were gone, like this.” She snapped her fingers in the air. “Now they go around in their cars like they have always owned the world. And why not? They are providing the commissions and getting the benefits. They have dinners and receptions.” Her tone of exaggerated innocence had returned. “They are the businessmen. And she is the businesswoman.”

“Who?” said Aasia, alerted to the prospect of a businesswoman.

“The madam herself,” said Suri. “The queen.”

Hukmi chuckled.

“Who’s the queen?” said Aasia, desperate now to know.

“Who!” cried Maheen, sensing a buildup and her own exclusion from the excitement. “Who! Who!”

“A
bad
woman!” cried Hukmi, and it established the parallel between reprehensible women and the screaming little girls who demanded to know their names.

Maheen struggled free of her mother’s lap and sank into the seat. She was frightened, and frightened of being frightened.

“Look,” said Suri, pointing, “there she goes . . .”

It was a banner stretched taut between two electricity poles on the street. It thanked the people for electing the mohtarma a second time, and gave a prayer of thanks to God for sending angels to assist the people at the polls. Next to this was a portrait of the prime minister herself, watched over by a silhouette of her late father, and beneath it all the large, colorful letters that spelled out the name of the local politician who had paid for the banner.

I wanted to know if Benazir was a bad woman.

“God judges,” said Suri. “God will judge.”

Hukmi said, “I don’t know why some people are
hell-
bent on supporting her. . . .”

My mother was hell-bent on supporting her.

“It is not their fault,” said Suri charitably. “They do not know. How can they, when they have not suffered?”

“Still,” said Hukmi. “There should be some sense . . .”

“That
tau
I don’t think there is,” said Suri.

“A sense of right and wrong . . .”

“No, no.”

“A sense of family . . .”

“None.”

The car was quiet.

Isa looked at me and looked away.

Moosa looked at me for a while.

Then, from the driver’s seat, Uncle Saaji said, “Leave it,
ji
. It is a blessed day, a noble day. A very noble day indeed.” He sighed extensively, releasing the anxious air he had carried with him all morning, and his mood was recovered. “Zaki Shirazi,” he said. “You may guess where we are going.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for suspense.

“Where?”

“You may guess it.”

“Yes,” said Aasia, “guess.”

“Guess!” cried Maheen.

We were going home—not to theirs, but to mine. Daadi’s room was air-freshened and lamp-lit in anticipation, the bed made, the sofa plumped with new padding for the cushions. Daadi herself was waiting on the sofa and set about at once with instructions, presiding over the seating and admiring the outfits and departing in a hurry for the kitchen to see if lunch was ready. On her way out she said to tell my mother that we had come.

But it was better to stay in the room and enjoy the feeling of being in a family, which was, for once, complete, even if the family wasn’t mine and the feeling belonged in reality to someone else.

7

In all I spent three nights and three days with the cousins. And toward the end it was established that I was welcome in their homes, newly integral to their lives, as they were to mine; we parted informally, not required to say good-bye or offer thanks, it being understood that this was a beginning, and not the end, as is so often assumed of events that have concluded. I was sent home in Hukmi’s car with her driver, who had returned from his village after the Eid holiday and claimed in the car to have seen a jinn behind his neighbor’s bushes—he told the story as if he’d told it many times, recounting the unreality at the heart of it in the same flat tones with which he described the fit his wife had thrown the following night (she wanted more than her usual share of his salary). “Never marry,” he said, shaking his head dismally at his own faint reflection in the windshield. “You will forget the man you were, the man you wanted to be. Never marry.”

We drove past the houses of the colony, past the colony park, where the removal of the prayer tents had revealed patches of dug-up soil, demarcations for seed and fertilizer, for shrubs to snap from and bring forth flowers that in spring would bloom spectacularly.

At home there was excitement: Chhoti and Samar Api had returned from Barampur with stories of success. The lunch hosted for Uncle Fazal’s relations and acquaintances had been well attended, and Chhoti had received many compliments, mostly praise for her young daughter, who had grown noticeably since anyone could last recall. Chhoti named a relative of her husband, a man who owned a considerable amount of land in Bahawalpur and whose wife had now indicated to Chhoti that they were interested for their eldest son, a lawyer.

“Lawyer!” said Daadi.

“Bar of London,” said Chhoti.

Daadi was impressed. “So then?” she said to Samar Api with a look of probing complicity. “What have you thought? Is it a yes or is it a no?”

Samar Api said, “No, no,” and smiled indulgingly. She was dressed in clothes that revealed by suggestion, and rustled like wrapping when she moved in her chair, bringing other things to the fore.

Daadi approved of the changes and gave a complimenting nod to Chhoti, who was gratified beyond her ability to show it and began instead to list the virtues of village life, which had more to recommend it than she had initially allowed.

“Well, I have always said it,” said Daadi. She settled her hands in her lap and waited for the acknowledgment, if not the apology, that was her due.

“You have,” said Chhoti. “You have.”

“So much to do
any
where,” said Daadi.

“So much.”

“Only a matter of finding it . . .”

“Only.”

“And of looking.”

“Of looking, no doubt.”

After tea Chhoti left. She said she wanted to reach Barampur before dark, or her sisters-in-law would talk. Daadi wanted her to stay but Chhoti insisted. And soon after she had left, Samar Api announced that she was going to Tara Tanvir’s house.

Daadi was surprised. “But you have just come,” she said. “Be patient. Wait a little.”

“But I have to go,” said Samar Api, and went into the dressing room.

She emerged after some minutes with her hair tied up. She was looking for a handbag; she held her dupatta behind her back while she bent to search in the wardrobe. She found it: she stood up, hung the strap on her shoulder, patted the bag with her hand and watched it settle, then adjusted the position of the strap, watched it settle once again and was ready to go.

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

But she was in a hurry. “You’re not invited, Zaki. It’s not polite to go to people’s houses when you’re not invited.”

Later in the week Daadi received a phone call from a woman who introduced herself as a schoolteacher and gave her name as Mrs. Waheed.

“Shama,” she said. “Shama Waheed.”

“Yes,” said Daadi.

The woman said she ran the guidance and counseling department and taught English literature—that was her area of expertise, though she had also been the counselor for almost a decade now—

“Yes,” said Daadi.

“Well,” said the woman, “I am calling today in my capacity as the teacher of your niece, Samar.”

Daadi noted the style.

“She is a delightful child.”

The woman was kind.

“I have taught the girl for two years now. And I would like to tell you that she is a fair student—not to mention a pleasure—and I am pleased—”

“You are kind.”

“
You
are kind!”

They laughed.

“Yes,” said Daadi, sensing the ease, “please tell me: is all well? I hope it is not the school fees that have gone up again . . .”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Not at all. Though I would not be surprised if they did increase the fees one of these days. Profit, profit, all the time profit. That is the school’s philosophy.”

“These schools,” said Daadi.

“Terrible,” said Mrs. Waheed.

“You also feel?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Oh, very much so. The fees are rising all the time, but teachers’ salaries are staying the same, if you please.”

Daadi said, “Terrible.”

“And we have children also, you know. We must also send our children to school. And if
their
fees are rising, and
our
salaries are staying the same, then
how
are we going to make up for the difference? It does not add up, you see.”

Daadi said, “Terrible, terrible.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, and sighed. “What a relief it is to let it out.”

“Yes,” said Daadi. “Yes.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, “I hope you have felt as comfortable with me, Mrs. Shirazi, as I have felt with you, or as you have
made
me feel, rather, in these few moments.”

“Yes, of course,” said Daadi, and placed her hand on the mantelpiece.

“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed.

“Yes,” said Daadi.

“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed again, and blew out her breath. “I wanted to say, Mrs. Shirazi, that your niece has been absent for the whole of this past week from her school.”

Daadi said, “No, no.”

“That is correct,” said Mrs. Waheed.

“Cannot be,” said Daadi. “There is a mistake. She goes every morning, Mrs. Waheed, she has breakfast with me in this room, in this room where I am standing. How are you saying that she is not going?”

“Then I am right,” said Mrs. Waheed.

“You are wrong,” said Daadi.

“No, no, Mrs. Shirazi, that is not what I am saying. I have known for some time that something is going on . . .”

Daadi was stroking the mantelpiece.

“It is not your niece, actually, it is not these girls but the company they are keeping.”

Daadi said, “Company.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Tell me, Mrs. Shirazi: are you dropping the girl to school yourself?”

“My maid goes. My maid and driver.”

“And are they picking her up as well?”

“No, she comes with her friend.”

“Tara Tanvir.”

“That is the one.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, “then I should tell you that Tara has also been absent from school on the very same days.”

Daadi was quiet.

“And her house you cannot even
call
,” continued Mrs. Waheed, “because there is no one to confront, no mother, no father, no one to take an interest, I don’t know how many hours I have been holding on the line . . .”

Daadi was nodding. “Thank you,” she said, “for letting me know. The girl will go to school. She will go. I will see to it.”