The Wish Maker (63 page)

But I left the book in the art room, and in the morning he was sullen.

He noted and reported every sighting or rumor of consequence. He said he had seen Saif in the coordinator’s office, and had seen him on another occasion, talking to an influential housemaster outside the junior building. “Very clever,” said Kazim, in a proud detection of cunning. “You have to be very careful with that one.”

When we appeared to walk together in the corridors, or on the stone path, he was full of a sense of himself. He said, “They will see!” It was enough for him to experience the sensations, even if the experience itself was deferred. In those moments he seemed to grow outward, to leave his limitations behind and become his potential.

We went to the Lahore Museum. He said he wanted me to get inspired. We went first into the painting gallery, a long room with unrelated pictures hung in two adjacent rows on the walls. Kazim explained that it was chronological. “Chughtai,” he said, pointing to a picture of a woman with elongated eyes. She was sitting in a pool of darkness and held a lighted lamp in her small, fine hands. “And this is Ustaad Allah Bux,” he said when we passed a blurry painting that showed a shepherd with his flock of sheep. “Now things get political,” he said excitedly, and led me to a painting of brick kilns puffing out dark smoke. “He was a Marxist,” said Kazim.

And he said, “This man is a Christian.”

We were standing before the picture of a wine bottle. It stood on a striped sheet of cloth. There were two gleamless oranges beside it.

“Why is this so great?” I said.

He threw up his hands and said, “Isolation. Loneliness. Don’t you get it?” And his voice echoed in the empty gallery.

We went in after that to see the statue of the starving Buddha. It was broken. Around it, in the other glass display cases, were more broken things from the past.

A cockroach crawled out from under the display case, chased itself in a circle and went back into the darkness.

“I’m inspired,” I said. “Let’s go now.”

The next day he said, “You have to meet the important housemasters.”

“I’ve met them,” I said. “I say salaam to them every morning.”

He said, “No, no. That’s not enough. They’re hard old hags. They need to see a little love.”

We were walking to the car park. The last bell had rung and the corridors were empty.

He said, “We’ll go tonight. I’ve made the appointments. Just come to my house at seven o’clock.”

I said, “Your house is too far.”

But I was at his house a little after seven. He was standing outside the small, scratched gate. He wore a long black polo neck and tight jeans that had collected in wrinkles near his ankles.

He climbed into the car and his eyes were green.

I said, “What’s
wrong
with you!”

He sighed, his hand on the window, and moved around in his seat. “They’re lenses,” he said.

I made him take them off before we reached the housemaster’s house. (He performed the action quickly and effortlessly in the rearview mirror.) We had come to see the housemaster of the biggest house, a teacher who had been in the school for more than twenty years and was presently the head of the math department. He lived in Sant Nagar, an area of many narrow lanes and small, unpainted houses. On the way we passed one marble engraving of a defaced elephant, then another.

“The Hindus used to live here,” said Kazim.

We parked the car in the lane outside the house. But it took up the width of the lane.

Kazim said, “Five minutes.”

We went inside. There was a room with sofas pushed against all of its walls. The sofas and the carpet were brown, and the walls were bare except for a large framed photograph of the Kaabah, a sea of white-clothed pilgrims surrounding it.

We sat on the sofa and waited.

A door opened and the teacher came in.

We stood up.

“Salaam, sir,” said Kazim.

“Salaam, sir,” I said.

Sir nodded. He was a short man, and sat on the adjacent sofa with the ankle of one leg balanced on the knee of the other. His feet were bare, and he was caressing the raised foot with his hand.

He said, “How is your mathematics?”

Kazim looked at me.

I said, “Sir, it’s not bad, sir.”

He was poking his mouth with a finger; he brought it out now and frowned at it, then placed it again into his mouth. The other hand was still caressing his foot.

Kazim said, “He is very good, sir.”

Sir said, “You are looking to improve?”

Kazim said, “Yes, sir.”

He said, “I have too many pupils here in the evening. Maybe there will be an opening next week. Maybe. You can come again next week. The rate is one thousand rupees.”

Kazim said, “Thank you, sir.”

In the car I said, “I’m not taking tuition from him!”

Kazim said, “You don’t have to. I’ll take the tuition. You just have to make sure you keep up the connection with him.”

On the weekend he came to my house with a poem he wanted me to recite. The inter-house recitation competition was scheduled for the following week, and Kazim wanted me to win it. The staff meeting was scheduled for the week after that; Kazim said it was psychologically important to win something now in order to stay fresh in their minds. And he brought good news: he had gone to the principal’s house with a painting, had shown it to him and told him that it was mine. (He had made an abstract picture, he said, in a style deliberately unlike his own.) The principal was impressed. “They won’t forget you now,” said Kazim. “Whenever they mention your name some little thing will come up.”

“What about Saif?” I said.

He made a face, then gave a shudder; he had gone too far in anticipating my feelings.

“Saif’s still my friend,” I said.

He sighed.

I said, “What did I say?”

“Read it on your own,” he said, and sat sullenly in one of the veranda chairs.

I walked up and down the veranda and recited the poem, which was about barren landscapes and fresh flowers, a poem he said he had found in
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.

Later we sat in the darkened veranda and went over my pronunciations of the words. A bat came in and then couldn’t get out, and spun and spun until it crashed against the door in the corner.

“Who lives there?” asked Kazim.

I said, “My cousin used to live there.”

“Who lives there now?”

“No one,” I said.

I didn’t win the recitation contest. But I won an honorable mention and was given a certificate of merit. I took it before lunch break to the coordinator’s office for submission.

The coordinator said, “What is this?”

“Certificate, sir.”

He considered my standing form, then turned the certificate around in his hand as if assessing its weight. “You’ve got the spirit,” he said.

“Sir.”

“You don’t think you’ll fail.”

“No, sir.”

He said, “Good, good. Keep it up.”

The list went up in the morning. First the boys went to see if it had been put up on the bulletin boards in the hallway; after assembly they checked again. And then, after the first period bell, the names began to come in: Saqlain Raza had made it because he had won the tent-pegging trophy; a boy called Babar Rahim had made it because of his grades. My name hadn’t been mentioned when I left the classroom.

Kazim was standing in the hallway. He said, “I don’t know what happened.”

The boys were crowding around the bulletin board.

They weren’t looking at me.

I said, “It’s fine.”

“You deserved it,” he said.

But I kept saying, “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

At lunch break I went to the canteen to congratulate Saif. And he was gracious; he neither condescended nor acknowledged the rivalry. He was buying and handing out drinks to his well-wishers, and he met me as only one of the crowd.

“Don,” said EQ.

“Don,” said Mooji.

We embraced and sat on the bench, waiting for Saif.

There was a party for him that night. Uzma had reserved a table at an expensive restaurant. “It’s just his very close friends,” she had called to say. “I’m baking him a cake. He asked me to invite you.”

And, after Uzma had called, the phone rang again. It was Kazim. He said he had been to see the principal, who had told him about what had happened at the meeting: my name was discussed. But the housemasters said there had been discipline problems in the past, and someone had cited a fight from two years ago, a fight that had taken place outside the campus. The principal had crossed out my name and asked for the name of the next contender. And the housemasters had recommended Saif.

“It’s sabotage,” said Kazim.

I said, “You use really big words, man.”

He said, “They deliberately sabotaged your name.” He was breathless.

But I said, “It’s not a big deal. Saif deserves it. You shouldn’t say all these things about him. It’s really not good to get involved in someone else’s life like that.”