The Wish Maker (50 page)

The first period belonged to the English teacher, a woman. She came in with her books and walked up to the teacher’s desk, landed the books, picked up a stick of chalk and began to write isolated words on the blackboard. The room was silent. The boys were copying the words. The English teacher wrote and wrote, moving width-wise along the board, then moving back and starting a new row of words, and onward until the board was filled up. She twirled now and sat down in the teacher’s chair. She was reading her own book, her head tilting from side to side in solitary involvement. When the bell rang she got up promptly with her pile of books and left the room. The noise started up again, and again stopped when the next teacher came in, a short young man who brought only one book. He wrote
Algebra
on the board and turned around to confront the class. “In algebra,” he said, leaning against the blackboard, his legs crossed at the ankles, “we use two variables,
x
and
y
.” He turned around and wrote
x
and
y
on the board. “Algebra was invented by Arabs. Zero—you know zero—was also invented by Arabs.”

A voice said, “Sir, will that be on the test?”

There were sniggers.

The teacher conceded a smile of amusement, and said, “Maybe one question.”

The laughter was relieved.

“Arabs invented algebra,” he continued, “and Arabs also invented the decimal—you know the decimal—which is widely used in mathematics today—”

“Sir, will that also be on the test?”

The math teacher stared, his lips pressed out and his nostrils twitching, and gave a series of quick blinks. “Stand up,” he said, and then in a shout: “Stand up!”

The boy stood up.

“Get out.”

“Sir—”

“I say get out!”

The boy, a tall and clever one who looked older than the others, began to make his way past the chairs. When he had left the room the teacher turned again to the blackboard and wrote
Fixed Variables
. “Write it down,” he said, his back to the class, the humor gone from his voice.

After the math period there was the physics period, and after that chemistry, for which we had to go to the chemistry lab in a line led by the teacher, a quiet and dignified old man who performed an experiment with a test tube and tried toward the end to contain the chatter that had broken out in rebellion, encouraged by the shift in location and also by the prospect of the lunch break: the bell rang and a flood of bodies broke past the door. I managed to find my way back to the junior building, and then through the already empty corridor to 9D, which was the room allotted to Saif’s section. It was deserted. I walked out again into the sun and, with my hands in my pockets, up along the hot path all the way to the canteen, which was located in a low white building. The queues inside were too long, and I waited outside by the benches and tried to find Saif among the groups. Then I started walking back toward the junior building, frowning in the sun, my hands secure inside my pockets, and the bell rang on the way and the noise and the rush swelled up, and the monitors appeared, shouting at the junior boys and stopping them at will and awarding punishments that were then carried out on the path.

At home that night my mother asked, “And how was your day? Did you make any friends?”

“I’m sure he did,” said Daadi, but desisted from asking for proof.

I saw Saif in the mornings at the start of assembly. We no longer shared a house; I had only stood in his enclosure on the first day because I didn’t then know that I had already been assigned a house, which was across from his on the other side of the field. It was a release from the monitor who had taken me up on the matter of my shoes. And my new monitor was kind and forgetful, a plump senior who had recently won recognition in the inter-school debating championships and was often late to assembly himself, lacking the time and the authority to conduct inspections. He stood at the back of the house enclosure and hurriedly marked the register with his pen, making comments that never led to punishments. The junior boys indulged him in the morning but considered him a failure because they saw the subtly teasing way his contemporaries had with him, a way that was regretted and later ridiculed.

Saif was the one boy I knew. But he had a life from before, and had friends from before who accompanied him at lunch break to the canteen and sat with him on the benches, boys he had known last year and who were now one year ahead and brought with them the advantage of seniority. I sat with them a few times but felt alone; they had ways of talking to one another, ways of joking about other boys and teachers and the people they knew outside the school. And their methods were established: they knew where to meet and knew what they wanted from the canteen, and had a way of buying a collective lunch that was distributed equally. I listened when they talked, and laughed when they laughed, and gave them my money and ate the food they brought back from the canteen. But I felt alone.

The search continued in the classroom. All the chairs in the front were taken, and most of the chairs in the middle, but the chairs at the back retained a temporariness that was due to their proximity to the door, from which new boys entered and old ones exited continually. Here I had a series of vivid encounters, first with a boy called Daniyal, who was small and enjoyed making lewd jokes but was withdrawn and grudging when I asked to borrow his notes—he turned away at once and began to do his own work, as if to guard against a larger intention—and then with a boy called Saqlain Raza, a practicing Shiia who gave solemn, lurid descriptions of the muharram ritual. He claimed to lash his own back with chains—he insisted that I touch the back of his shirt to feel the ridges, but the math teacher saw us and told us to stand up and get out, a humiliating episode from which our friendship never recovered. Then Munawwar, who had moved from San Diego, and Ahmed, an aspiring scientist; and then, for a few days, a boy called Qaiser, whose father was a teacher in the biology department and whose views reflected the dilemmas and ambitions of schoolteachers. He enjoyed spending time outside the staff room and claimed to know the salaries of the heads of departments, and insisted that his father’s was the highest, though at other times he said that the teachers weren’t paid enough and were likely to go on strike.

When Daadi next asked about my friends, I told her I had none and told her also not to ask me again.

Naseem commented on the change in tone.

And Daadi said, “The boy is maturing,” and closed her eyes serenely, drawing on her powers of persuasion.

The week consisted of five school days, and every day (except Friday, a half-day) was divided into seven periods, four before the break and three after. Both English and math were given a period a day; their importance was derived from the role they played in shaping the other subjects, such as physics, chemistry and biology, each occupying four periods a week. Urdu was allotted three periods a week; Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat one each, though they were taught by the same person, a hat-wearing, red-bearded man called Dr. Qazi, who was rumored to possess a Ph.D. and drew attention frequently to the lack of regard at this school for his subjects, which were the best subjects, since they alone determined our destinies in this world and the next. Indeed, Dr. Qazi, with his dark trapezoid hat and fiery beard, wearing simple sandals and a plain white shalwar kameez with the shalwar raised an extra inch at the ankles, was conspicuous among the many shirts and trousers and, though ridiculed for his fervor, was singularly able to extract for his subjects an air of sanctity; the class was rowdy until he began to pace the room with his lecture, which was likely to appear on the test and had to be faithfully transcribed by each of us because there was no copy of it in the library.

“Women,” said Dr. Qazi. “What is the place of women in Islam?” He had stopped beside the blackboard; he hid his hands now and looked from one side of the room to the other.

Pens and pencils went to work.

Dr. Qazi was pacing. “The place of women in Islam is better than their place before the advent of Islam in Arabia.” He had delivered the sentence in a stretch; he turned now and began to pace in the other direction. “The place of women”—his voice had slowed—“in Islam”—he said it with imploring sweetness—“is better than their place before the advent of Islam in Arabia.”

Hands moved quickly and efficiently. A few had finished with the writing and made a show of it; they went into hair, went to rest on cheeks, implying boredom and superiority. The boy at the desk across was still writing, but leisurely, his hand working in a continuous slanting motion. As he wrote he seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, leaning forward and back and then turning the angle of his face for perspective. He stopped now to examine the work, and his look was searching and then pleased, aware of his achievement, for while appearing to write he had begun to make a drawing.

He settled his hands on the desk and looked up at the teacher, his small dark face finely angled, culminating in a sharp chin that was raised slightly with interest. The hands were covering the sheet of paper to hide the drawing.

I looked away.

And he began to draw again, his hand moving with speed: the two eyes already made were darkened with lines above and below, and acquired lids and a sprinkling of lashes.

“Women in Islam,” said Dr. Qazi, “are to be regarded with tenderness. They are not to be inherited. They are not—it is forbidden—to be inherited, like slaves, as they once were. As they? Once were.”

The eyebrows determined the expression and made it artfully unaware.

A line became a triangle, and grew into an M with two dots inside: a nose.

It is said in the Quran, in ayat four and verse thirty-two:
“
To men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn.”