The Wish Maker (40 page)

“Okay,” said Samar Api. “I think we can go now.”

She locked her door from the outside and dropped the key in her handbag. It was plump with magazines. She was going to sell them at a secondhand bookshop in Main Market and take the money to the palmist in Tech Society.

We went through the veranda, our shoes making sounds.

But the gate was locked, and Barkat had taken the key with him to his quarter at the back of the house.

I offered to fetch him.

“No,” she said. “He’ll find out.”

A dilemma.

“We’ll climb it,” she said, and made me do it first, watching my feet and hands go up the floral wrought-iron designs of the gate.

The upper ledge was narrow. Sitting on it was uncomfortable.

But the house was suddenly whole, like in the opening scene in
The Jungle Book
, when the jungle foliage parts obligingly to provide a semi-aerial view of India.

“Zaki, I can’t do this.”

She was strangely feminine. Her body was foreshortened and her shoes with their heels were not made for physical exertion. The makeup was useless, and the handbag was a hindrance.

“At least try, Samar Api.”

“I can’t.” She was shaking her head and looking away.

I took the bag and the shoes and instructed her to grip the tendrils.

“Now what?” She was nervous.

“Now raise your foot.”

She raised the foot cautiously and placed it on a flattened curve. She waited for the pain. It didn’t come. She grew emboldened and rocked herself on one foot, rocked herself and then pulled up. At once the pain was sharp, and she was pulling the upper tendrils, scowling at the pain and trying to go up.

“Zaki, I can’t!”

“You can!”

“Zaki, no, Zaki!”

“Come on!”

“O God!”

And she climbed the difficult gate. Her whole body was clenched, her hands pressed into the ledge and her legs stiff with fear. But she had succeeded. In the climbing of anything now there would be a repetition.

The house with its many windows was like a skull.

I jumped.

And she jumped.

And it was easier.

“Ouch,” she said, and held up the sole of a foot. It was starting to redden. She recovered the handbag and strapped on the shoes.

We walked along the lane and then drifted onto the narrow pedestrian track. Her heels left holes in the mud, a trail that broadened out with the growing confidence of her steps.

“Wait.”

She had stopped at the intersection of the lane and the road, and was waving her arm at the traffic. The cars didn’t stop. The motorcycles and bicycles were slower. A ricksha neared but continued on its way; it was occupied.

“It’s hot,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter, Zaki.”

We waited.

The traffic left behind its smoke.

“
Zaki!”

She was running to catch a ricksha that had stopped. She spoke into the driver’s window and nodded, motioned hurryingly and climbed in.

“Main Market first,” she said, and leaned back in her seat, which was hard like the rest of the ricksha, a bright tin box. The inside had been partitioned to create the illusion of room, for heads that touched the sagging plastic top and knees that folded forcibly against a metal buffer separating the driver at the front from the passengers at the back.

The ricksha sound was like a wail. It developed a consistency that broke only when the ricksha encountered a speed breaker and bumped.

“Where are you going?” said Samar Api. “This is not the way to Main Market . . .”

The ricksha drove on.

“Excuse me!” She was knocking violently on the partition. “Where are you going?”

The ricksha slowed down.

“Main Market,” said the driver, and he was a boy wearing a skullcap on his small head, the few hairs on his chin recently grown.

“This is not the way to Main Market,” said Samar Api.

The driver sighed and looked out his window, and began to reverse the ricksha.

“Do you even have a license?”

The driver was reversing.

“Are you listening to me?”

He was listening.

“This is wrong,” said Samar Api. “We could be arrested. We could have an accident. Anything could happen. I am not going to give my money for this.”

The secondhand bookstore was located in the darkened basement of a small, crumbling plaza in Main Market. The shop adjacent to the bookshop was being rebuilt; the laborers were trying to demolish an uneven, already broken wall that had flaked down to brick.

The hammers rose and struck.

“This is wrong,” said Samar Api. She was arguing over the noise with the sales assistant for ascribing arbitrary values to the magazines she had placed before him on the counter.

“Secondhand,” said the man.

“Look at this,” said Samar Api, and held up a magazine, an anniversary edition of
Stardust
with a bathrobed Amitabh on the cover. The words
The King at Home
were blazing behind him in stark silver letters. “This was for two ninety-five.”

The man considered the magazine and brought out his calculator. His finger was held above it.

He looked up at the ceiling.

The price came to him.

The finger struck.

He held up the calculator.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head.

The man said, “All right, all right.” He took hold of the piled magazines and brought them across the counter: he counted the number of spines with his finger and multiplied it by an average price.

He showed her the calculator.

“No,” said Samar Api.

“Last offer,” said the salesman.

“I’m sorry.”

“This is it.”

“No.”

“Take or leave.”

“But no . . .”

“The choice is yours.”

She sighed. She needed the money to take to the palmist and to pay the ricksha waiting outside. And she couldn’t argue with all the sales assistants in all the shops. She stood before the counter for some moments, looking at her magazines, acquired over the years and read individually and stacked methodically on shelves, in wardrobes and shoeboxes. She watched as they were lifted now and dumped whole into a container that was swarming with dead magazines, the covers marked with big black crosses.

She was paid. And she didn’t forget to thank the sales assistant.

The handbag, emptied, hung limply on her arm.

The steel steps shuddered on the way up.

“Tech Society,” she said to the ricksha driver, who roused the vehicle and drove on.

Tech Society was one of the housing colonies on the canal. And at this time of day the canal was deserted. The boys who came to dive in it had gone for the day, the mud-brown water undisturbed and wrinkling in the sun. The canal broadened on the way; the trees increased; it narrowed again and the trees thinned. We had been driving for some time when the sound of the zuhr azaan went up outside; the driver ejected the audiocassette at once, and Samar Api raised the dupatta from her shoulders and arranged it around her head.

The ricksha entered the high black gates of Tech Society, and the cars were instantly visible. They were parked in rows outside a small steel gate, which was open and led into a house: the men were standing in a circle in the garden; the women sat on benches on the patio. The house was moderately sized, the walls painted an unassuming beige and lined along the top with flowerpots, which seemed to be the only attempt at decoration.

A slim girl in a black shalwar kameez was going around with a roster. She was tall and dark, had her hair in a small bun and wore a locket that touched her collarbones and slid from side to side when she moved.

“Forms,” she said, and held them out. She was chewing the gum in her mouth with indifference; her eyes looked away and her mouth made a bubble, which grew until it popped.

A name was called. Three women rose hurriedly from a bench and were led away by the tall girl.

Samar Api sat on the abandoned bench. We could hear the surrounding conversations, the expressions of curiosity and willingness. One woman was starting to tell another about her divorce, staring with frank, bloodshot eyes at her listener; another sat with her elbows on her knees and swayed herself on the bench, her face smothered in her hands. A man stood behind her and looked out onto the lawn; a woman sat next to her on the bench and stroked her back.

“Zaki? Do you think it’s wrong?”

Her name was being called.

“You’ve come so far, Samar Api . . .”

“I know, I know.” She was conflicted.

The voice from inside was calling out.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “We can come back later.”

But she had already stood up.

The tall girl swept in through a door and then a hallway, lit weakly by white light, and now came to another door. She knocked. A voice spoke from inside. The girl opened the door and went in.

The woman was sitting at her desk. And it was littered with objects of organization: there were pens and pencils and colored markers in a mug, a ruler and a paper cutter, a device for punching holes in sheets of paper, a stapler settled next to a stack of staples, a round glass paperweight and a calendar opened onto a picture of sunflowers.

The woman was sitting behind her materials, beneath a large framed calligraphy of a Quranic ayat, and was lifting papers from a pile on her desk. She glanced at the papers, stacked them and returned them to the pile.

She smiled.

Her eyes were small and friendly behind her glasses.

“Hello,
beta
,” she said, and consulted the form in her hand. “Samar.”

Samar Api smiled.

“A nice name,” said the woman.

Samar Api kept smiling.

The woman went on stacking her papers.

“Oh,” she said, noticing, “please sit, please sit.”

We sat in the two chairs on the other side of the desk. The chairs were comfortable; the room was suddenly deep. The windows were small and located high up on the walls.

“What would you like to drink?” said the woman. “We have Pepsi, we have 7UP. We have Fanta also. Would you like to have Fanta?”

Samar Api declined for both of us.

“Dieting?” said the woman.

“No, no,” said Samar Api, and laughed.

“You don’t need to.”

“I’m not!”

“Promise?”

“Promise!”

“Good,” said the woman. “I am trusting you.”

Samar Api licked her lips and folded her hands in her lap.

“So,” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Samar Api.

“You want to know your future.”

“Yes,” said Samar Api.

“Very well. Come here, please.” The woman was patting a stool by her side.

Samar Api left the chair and went to sit on the stool. It was high, and made her appear taller than the woman.

The woman asked for her hand.

Samar Api held it out.

“The other hand.”

“Oh . . .” Samar Api extended her right hand.

The woman received it in both of hers, and held it carefully, caressing the skin and folding and unfolding the fingers.

“Moisturizer.”

Samar Api laughed.

“Nivea?”

“Oil of Olay.”

“Oil of Olay,” said the woman, nodding. She was looking at the open palm. “The lines are all good. Some curves here and there but overall you are on the right track. You don’t want fame—am I right? Yes, you see: the line is fading. But that is all right. You don’t desire fame. You are not that kind of person.” She was speaking with a mixture of certainty and doubt, making statements that were posed as propositions.