The Wish Maker (37 page)

“She saw you?”

“Ya, but so what!”

“I’m just asking . . .”

“Ya, but why are you taking her bloody side?”

“I’m not taking her bloody side!”

“Okay, fine then, fuck off, okay?”

And she went into the bathroom and unleashed the shower, and stayed inside for a long time in the hiss.

By evening she had decided to apologize.

She went to the servants’ quarters at the back of the house. In the dank courtyard, in the spreading dark, Naseem was squatting by the tap above the drainage and clobbering a soaped shalwar in the water. The latrine door behind her was lit from within; there was a flushing sound, and Barkat emerged with his face wet. He stood by the door and wiped his face with the hem of his kameez.

Naseem looked up and saw her. She returned to the washing.

“Sorry, Naseem.”

Naseem didn’t respond. She was no longer angry. She was washing and rinsing her clothes with resolve.

Barkat came forward with a chair. He settled its delicate legs on the floor, then settled himself carefully on the seat. He leaned back in it, then leaned forward and entwined his fingers.

He said it was not his place, being a servant, to speak on an occasion that did not involve him directly. But he would speak today in his capacity as an elder, an elder speaking to someone who was still a child.

Back in her room, her confidence restored, Samar Api asked to use the telephone and brought it into her room to call Jamal.

But he already knew. Tara had called him in the afternoon and told him about what had happened at the tuition center. He said Tara was distraught too, and anxious to know what had happened when Samar Api went home.

“I don’t know, Jamal,” she said. “I just don’t know anymore.” She wanted reassurance, and the telephone cord was wound up around her finger.

She listened to what he was saying.

“But why are you saying it like it’s my fault?”

“Ya, but why are you saying it like it’s
my
fault?”

“But it’s not my fault . . .”

“Ya, but you’re saying it.”

Abruptly she was accusing him of saying things to upset her and of not saying enough when he should have; earlier occasions were recalled now and hurled collectively. And it lit up her features and her voice before it left her with the dread of having gone too far. “Okay, Jamal, I’m sorry. Just forget it—please just forget it.”

She hung up the phone and stared at it.

“Samar Api . . .” I said.

But she shook her head vehemently and looked away in time to hide the tears.

“Zaki, I think it’s my fault.”

It was afternoon of the next day, and the gloom of the night had lifted. In its place now stood a spirit of self-examination, a hard new wish to identify the problems and an attendant belief in the remedial powers of honesty and reason.

“I think I overreacted. But he should know I’m sensitive. But I should know he’s sensitive too.” The reasoning had led to a dilemma.

She consulted the horoscope in the newspapers.

“See,” she said, “he’s a Cancer. He’s like a crab. He’s moody but he’s also sensitive.”

And she looked for herself.

“And I’m a Capricorn! O God, it’s so true. It says I’m stubborn and this week I should try not to be so stubborn. It says I should swallow my pride.” She was glad to know it. “I can’t be proud, Zaki. You can’t be proud in a relationship. You have to learn to compromise.”

She had it confirmed on the phone by Tara Tanvir, who told her that it was true, she was stubborn and she could be proud. And she had been unfair to Jamal, who was simple and blunt by nature and could not be expected to attend to the needs of a hotheaded Capricorn.

“O God,” she said afterward. “I’m like a total bitch!” She was considering it for the first time. It was exciting. “Zaki, do you think I’m a bitch? Zaki, you have to be honest!”

It was turning into a joke.

I said, “Sometimes.”

She gasped—she was shocked! She threw a protesting pillow in my face, and I threw it back with twice the force, and we ended up having a pillow fight.

She laughed and I laughed.

“O God, Zaki!” She was laughing and grimacing at the same time, hugging her stomach with gaseous pain. “O God, stop it . . .”

We laughed and gasped and blew whistles.

“Seriously,” she said, sitting up and placing the pillow in her lap, “what do you think I should do?”

“About what?”

“This
thing
,” she said, and waved at the wall. “How do I fix it?”

I said she could call him.

“But no,
na
”—she slapped the pillow in her lap—“I have to do something special, something that makes up for being such a bloody bitch.”

In the end she decided to buy him a present, a cologne and a selection of songs on an audiocassette that she would ask the man at Off Beat to record for her. She would have the items wrapped and delivered to him at his house. And then she would wait for him to call her.

We stood over her bed and counted her savings, depleted by recent outings to restaurants and cafés. And we talked about what to get him, the kinds of things as well as the prices.

“I think we have enough,” she said, and stacked up the notes in her hand.

But there was still the uncertainty of her confinement. Barkat and Naseem drove her to the tuition center in the afternoon and waited now for her in the lane. Naseem hadn’t told anyone in the house. But she had promised nothing, and the threat of disclosure remained. One day, watching Samar Api emerge with Tara Tanvir from the Lyceum building after the math lesson had ended, Naseem said, “From now on you will not be seen with that girl.”

“Why?” said Samar Api.

“Buss
,
”
said Naseem.

“Listen to your elders,” said Barkat.

At home it was said that Naseem was turning into a nuisance. But Daadi said nuisances were necessary, and only accumulated with age, starting with marriage itself, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law, and children too with their demands, and then daughters-in-law, until one was left with oneself and found that that was the biggest nuisance of all.

“Zaki,” she said. “I need you to do me a favor.”

She wanted me to go to the market and buy the present, the cologne as well as the selection of songs. “And you can say you’re getting them for yourself.”

But I didn’t have the money.

“So you can say I got them for you.”

She explained that it was important for her to stay in the house for some time; she had to recover the earlier freedoms. She didn’t think it would take her more than a month. And she was thinking ahead to the future: the subjects she was going to study for her A-level exams, and her graduation, timed to coincide with her engagement; she was going to have his family solemnize the relationship in a hanh ceremony, an exchange of rings that was not binding but would enable her to meet him without these constraints.

I went to the market with her money. Isa and Moosa took me in their car, which was being driven today by Moosa. He was still too young to apply for a provisional license. It didn’t stop him from driving the car with confidence, with swift movements of the steering wheel, making a style even out of the mistakes.

Isa shouted.

“Chill,” said Moosa, and tittered.

We went first to Off Beat with the list of songs. The shop was located in the upper alcove of a small plaza on Main Boulevard. It was a hot day, and the shop’s windows were tinted black against the sun. The air inside was suddenly cold. The stacks of CDs and audiocassettes went all around the walls, on shelves made of glass that were reflected in the narrow mirrors that stood at regular intervals and reached up to the ceiling.

The man behind the glass counter was sitting on a stool with his arms crossed over his chest.

I showed him the list of songs.

“Do you have all of them?” It was not unusual for songs on an Off Beat selection to end unfinished because the reel had ended, or to not be on the tape because the man behind the counter hadn’t found them.

The man held up the list and angled his head and raised both his eyebrows and sighed.