The Wish Maker (62 page)

Daadi called Chhoti in the evening.

A woman picked up the phone.

Daadi said, “Where is my sister?” She heard her own voice; it was uneven. She placed a steadying hand on the mantelpiece and said, “I want to speak to my sister.”

The woman went away.

She came back to the phone and said, “She will call you.”

Daadi said, “Who are you? Who are you?”

The woman said it was her house.

“It is not your house. We will do a court case. Do you have any shame? Where have you kept my sister?”

The woman had hung up the phone.

Daadi dialed the number again and again. Her hands were trembling. But no one was picking up the phone.

She began to pace the room and thought of calling the police. But there was nothing she could say to the police. She thought of going in the car to Barampur. But it was night already.

The phone rang.

“Who is it?” said Daadi.

It was Chhoti.

Daadi said, “Where were you? Why won’t they let you come to the phone?” She was holding the phone with both of her hands.

Chhoti said, “What did you say to them?”

Daadi said, “We will do a court case.”

“You will do nothing.”

“Where are they keeping you? Where have they kept you all this time?”

Chhoti said, “You are not needed here.” And then she said, “There is nothing we want from you.”

Daadi said, “I have done everything for you—”

“You have done nothing!”

And Daadi said, “
I
have done everything!
I
am the one! If I don’t call for you—”

Chhoti said, “Don’t call for me.”

“I won’t.”

It had ended.

Daadi went to sit down on the sofa. Her chin was in her hand.

Naseem came into the room and began to arrange the empty plates and teacups on the tray. Then she stood back and said, “I wanted to ask you something.” She was looking at her feet, the toe of one foot making arcs on the carpet.

Daadi was watching her.

Naseem said, “I want to go on the pilgrimage.”

Daadi was quiet.

Naseem said, “My son is buying my ticket. But I will need more for the time I spend there. I will need to—”

“I don’t have time for your needs.”

“You must help me,” said Naseem.

“I must do nothing,” said Daadi. “Go away from here.”

“I have worked for you my whole life.”

“Go now or I will throw you out.”

Naseem said, “I have never asked you for anything.”

“I pay you,” said Daadi. “I feed you. I keep you in my house. If it weren’t for me you would starve on the street. Now get out of my room.”

Naseem said, “This is what you are giving me?”

“Get out!” said Daadi. “Get out of my house this instant!”

And Naseem did.

17

Grime gathered in the kitchen, grease on the plates, grease on the pots. It clung to the metal and hardened. The sink was clogged. The food came every morning from a housewife who was advertising her home-delivery program in
Women’s Journal
, and was stored in the fridge and heated in the oven at mealtimes. It amassed in the rubbish bins and stayed. There was no one to take it out now, and no one to point it out in the bins.

Naseem’s room at the back of the house was empty. She had moved into Mrs. Zaidi’s house at the end of the lane. Her job was to sweep the bathrooms, sweep the floors and look after Mrs. Zaidi, who had angina and considered herself vulnerable.

Barkat brought the news to Daadi.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Daadi after hearing it. “And if you want to leave too you are welcome to do it.”

Barkat didn’t bring it up again.

“We don’t need a cook,” said Daadi. “We don’t need a driver. We don’t need anybody in this house. I will look after myself and so will Zakia, and so will Zaki.”

I was spending my afternoons at school. The monitor appointments were going to be announced at the end of the term, and I was working to compile a portfolio. There was much to do: I signed up with the debating team and went with them in the school van to participate in a declamation contest at another school, and signed up for charity work at a children’s center, a two-week project, evenings and weekends only, which would earn me their certificate. On some nights I went back to the campus to use the swimming pool; I had decided to sign up for the swimming gala, and had settled on the idea of the twenty-meter backstroke.

My nights were full.

And my friends complained.

“What’s happening?” said Mooji. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Sparkle said, “Where the hell are you, man?”

I told them about the work I was doing.

“Who’s your competition in the house?” Sparkle wanted to know on the phone.

I said, “No one.”

She said, “Who’s the competition in Saif’s house?”

“Saif’s in my house.”

Sparkle thought about it and said, “So he’s okay with you going ahead for it? Like have you guys agreed on it?”

I said, “There’s no agreement.”

Saif’s answer was the same. “He said the exact same thing,” said Sparkle urgently, for she had taken it upon herself to mediate. “There’s no agreement. What are you guys going to do?”

“I think Saif knows I’m going to be the monitor,” I said.

“Zaki, how can you say that . . .” Her tone was concerned, and implied that I had said something inappropriately willful.

I said, “It’s not like that. This is between me and Saif. Just leave it alone.”

The next morning I saw him at assembly. He was dressed carefully, wearing a starched shirt and trousers, his shoes polished and his hair combed to the side. It wasn’t his style. He was handing a large beige folder to the housemaster when I walked in.

“Don!” he said.

We embraced.

I said, “I thought you weren’t coming today. I was going to mark you present.”

But he said, “No, no, not necessary. From now on I’ll do it myself. I thought: my attendance here’s been pretty good, why ruin it now.” And he winked and grinned, showing that he’d outdone himself again.

I filled out the monitor application and arranged the forms in a file. I went up to the housemaster at morning assembly, presented him with the file and only then saw that Saif had done it before me.

The housemaster said, “Your name?”

He didn’t know my name.

“Zaki Shirazi,” I said.

He wrote it down on the file.

“Father’s name?”

“Sami Shirazi.”

“Profession?”

“Pilot.”

“PIA?” He was interested.

“No, sir,” I said. “PAF.”

There was no way of bringing it up. I sat with Saif and Mooji and EQ on the stone benches outside the canteen, and talked with them in the old way of other things; and at night I talked to Uzma and Sparkle on the phone and sensed in their unconcern a troubling assumption, the feeling that they knew who was going to win and were resigned to it. Then I thought they expected that resignation from me as well.

One day, on the phone, Sparkle said, “No, it’s true: you’re very lucky to have a friend like Saif.”

I said, “Why am I lucky? Why isn’t he lucky? Why aren’t you lucky, man? Why aren’t Uzma and EQ and Mooji lucky? Why is it about me all of a sudden?”

Sparkle said, “O God, Zaki. What’s happened to you?”

I said, “Nothing.”

But I knew she was going to report it.

The next morning Saif moved his desk to the front of the classroom. He sat there through the first two periods in a state of absorption, wearing his ironed shirt and trousers, listening and writing and raising his hand repeatedly to ask questions. And at the start of the third period I moved my desk too, back to its initial position, which was to the left of the blackboard and farther behind, and found myself sitting beside a neighbor I already knew.

The monitors were appointed every year at the end of the spring term. A list of names went with the housemasters to the coordinator’s office and from there to the principal’s office. The principal then called a meeting of the staff. And in that meeting the merits and demerits of the candidates were discussed and compared until they led to a selection of ten monitors, one from every house.

“But you have to do more things,” said Kazim. “You don’t have enough things.”

He had brought me into the art room to have this discussion. The door was locked from inside.

I said, “Like what?”

He thought about it. “Art,” he said. “Make paintings. Things to show the world. They’re easy. We’ll do them together. I’ll show you.”

He went with me in the school van to debating competitions, took me to the art room at lunch break for the rehearsal of my speeches and followed me to the grounds for sports after school. He said we were going to make an “all-rounder” out of my personality, develop it in all the main areas so that in the end, when it came to the selection process, my name would stand out.

Enthusiasm led to frustration: he was quickly disappointed and embittered; he was sullen if I didn’t ask his opinion, betrayed if I failed to keep a promise or failed to show up on time. He wore glasses now, and the effect was comical, like something out of one of his own drawings.

And abruptly he revived, full of faith in the ideas he had thought up: he wanted me to go every morning for a few minutes into the coordinator’s office (“You have to keep up appearances”) and he wanted me to separately introduce myself to all the housemasters, whose opinions in the final meeting were given more weight than those of the other teachers. “No stone unturned,” he said. “That has to be your motto.”

He stood outside the swimming pool in the failing light and timed my lengths with a stopwatch. Afterward he shared his observations: the speed was good but there was a deviation in the line; it was noticeable and would need correction. Carefully he touched my arm, which was swollen from the effort, and withdrew his hand and said, “Impressive.” When I won the bronze medal in the swimming gala he bought me a card and a large book of photographs on the greatest swimmers in the world. “You can take it up,” he said. “It can be your profession. Nothing is impossible.”