The Wish Maker (46 page)

Astrid only gave directions to the main street below, where a few shops stood facing the stream. She said not to go beyond the shops; beyond there was only a neighborhood, and then more alleys that led to houses. The bigger markets were on the other side and farther up the hill.

“Wait for your mother,” she suggested. “She will take you in the evening.”

But I had to leave the house, had to leave the odd confinement of the patio and the upstairs rooms, and I left now promising to return before long. Outside, in the sun, the cobblestone street shone; the walls of the houses were high and white and unknown, their painted windows shut. And at once the memory, brought on by the isolation, of home took root: the house appeared beyond the gate, and the car parked in the shade in the driveway, leading up to the cool of the veranda and then past into the rooms: Naseem and Barkat in their rooms, and Daadi in her own room, and Samar Api in hers.

I took out the coins from my pocket and counted. They were enough. And there was time.

I ran down the street, the coins slashing.

It was a dark green box for storing jewelry. Samar Api had no jewelry to store, but she had drawers in which she kept things, pens and badges and lockets, and later she would also have jewels. The lid was domed, smooth to the touch, and lifted heavily; the inside was lined a deep red.

“How much?”

The girl at the till was sullen. She was punching the price into her machine and listening at the same time to a woman’s voice that was shouting in the Spanish language from behind a curtain.

The girl pointed to the sum on the small rectangular screen.

I gave her my coins, and they added up. The machine coughed lengthily and opened. The girl stacked the coins inside their separate slots, tore out the receipt and went marching behind the curtain to address the shouts.

“Zaki!” It was my mother. “Thank God, Zaki!” She had entered the shop.

“I’ve been looking all over and I told you not to go far.” She was standing here, wanting to have an argument.

I said, “Sorry.” I wanted to leave the shop.

“But why did you do that?”

“Sorry.”

“You can’t just say sorry, Zaki. You have to understand.”

“Sorry!”

And now she saw the box, saw that I had bought it, but it was too late to ask and revive a mood she had destroyed.

“Where are you going?” she cried.

But I had already left the shop.

A church. She wanted to see a church.

“You can go.”

“You won’t come?”

“No.”

She said, “Zaki, please. Come with me.” And she had surrendered.

But I said, “I’m fine here. You can go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t go anywhere.”

I watched her walk away down the pebbles and into the dark mouth of the church. I was sitting on a bench under a tree in the courtyard. From here the hills seemed far; the Alhambra castle was a small clay object. A bare-chested man with a tattoo of the sun on his back was sitting ahead on the ledge and playing a guitar. The tune was romantic, anguished. He was playing it to the separated hills.

“Zaki, I want you to meet someone.”

She had returned from the church with a man, a tall, tanned man with Chinese eyes. His clothes were white, a translucent shirt rolled up to the elbows and white trousers rolled up to the knees.

“Zaki,” she said. “Say hello to Karim.”

She was smiling terrifically.

“Hello,” said Karim.

I didn’t shake his hand.

“Karim is from Malaysia,” said my mother, and then looked at Karim, who stood with his arms crossed at his chest, his white shirt trembling in the breeze. He was looking out into the sunlight like a man on the deck of a ship in a cigarette ad.

“I was telling Karim that you like to draw. Karim’s an artist.”

Karim responded to this in no way at all. He was accustomed to having it said about him.

“You draw?” I said.

“I don’t, actually,” he said, and his hands went into the pockets of his trousers. “I do other kinds of art. I make things, you know, with my hands.” And he looked at my mother and grinned.

We sat there in the sun, on the shadeless bench behind the ongoing guitar music. Karim was telling my mother about his life in Malaysia, in a place called Kayel, where he knew many other artists and musicians; he said the arts were generally progressive but had suffered a break in a link: his hand sawed off a part of the air.

“We’re colonized,” he said. “In the end we’re excluded from our histories.”

“Absolutely,” said my mother.

Karim was frowning at his fingernails.

“You know,” said my mother, and she was crossing and uncrossing her ankles, “we’re staying at a bed-and-breakfast here, in the Arab Quarter, and I was telling them, our hosts, or host rather, an Armenian woman, she has two other guests staying with her. But I was telling them the other day about the amount of red tape we have to deal with, just to get the small things done. And they wouldn’t believe me! They would not believe me.”

“Oh, it’s unparalleled,” said Karim.

“Still,” said my mother, “I’m sure Malaysia is a good two steps ahead of where we are.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Karim.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Believe me. Things are pretty bad there right now. We have every kind of crisis and a head of state who’s buying up property in the West.”

“Look at it this way,” said Karim, and leaned in to explain. “If it weren’t for the system, if the system itself weren’t as bad as it is right now, there would be no women like you to take it on.”

My mother thought about it.

“Frankly,” said Karim, “I prefer it this way.” And he laughed and went on looking at her.

I stood up.

“What’s the matter?” said my mother.

But I was running.

“Zaki, wait!”

I ran past the church and down and then up and up the winding streets, higher and higher, until, at last, I reached the door and was past it.

“Are you okay?” said Louise.

“Where is your mother?” said Astrid.

I was kneeling, panting.

“Zaki!” She had come in after me.

“Are you all right?” said Louise, concerned now. She stood up from her chair at the patio table and reached out a hand.

I thrust it aside.

“Zaki!” said my mother.

I went into the house and up the stairs.

She came up after me.

“How dare you behave like that,” she said, and slammed the door behind her. “She is
so
kind to you, and you were
so
rude to her just now.”

“Then why doesn’t she find her own little children? Why does she have to be kind to
me
?”

“Because she can’t
have
any! Do you understand that? Can you for once understand? It’s not always about
you
, you know? Other people have
lives
, other people have
feelings
.”

“Then give me away!” And I collapsed on the bed with my fists, and was crying. “Why don’t you just give me away!”

She stayed standing near the door. “Don’t say that,” she said.

“I just want to go home now.” And the words, expressing so desperate a need, were clear in the sobs.

“We will,” she said, and sat beside me on the bed, her hand on my head.

It was our last day in Spain and we were going to see the Alhambra castle.

“Take a lot of water,” said Astrid. “You will get thirsty after all the climbing.”

The castle was located at the top of a hill. And we had to climb that hill; we were carrying a picnic basket and swapped it as we went up. It was hot and bright, and the other climbers had come prepared in shorts and cotton T-shirts.

My mother was wearing a shalwar kameez.

I said, “I’ll take the basket.”

She said, “Thanks, Zaki. You’re so good.”

And we went up with effortful strides, our arms dangling like those of our primate ancestors.

At the top of the hill we had to wait in a queue. And, after paying for our tickets, we were allowed to go inside: the view was suddenly grand, a view of towering arches reflected in a long, still pool of green water. The tourists ahead of us were walking slowly, stunned by the altered atmosphere. There was a fountain with identical stone animals standing underneath it, and beehive-like formations that hung from the surrounding arches. My mother led me by the hand into a hall, where the ceiling was white and intricately carved with calligraphy, like thousands of snakes engaged in a celebratory dance. “Look,” she said, cutting with her splayed palm an arc in demonstration, “this is what Muslim culture used to be about: art, music, architecture. It used to be progressive.” And she made a small fist as she said the word.

“So what happened?” I said.

“To what?” she said.

“To the Muslims. What happened to them after all this?”

We were sitting in the palace café, which was for tourists to eat in and hadn’t been a part of the original design. We had ordered Cokes and were planning to consume them quietly with our picnic lunch, which my mother had hidden under the table.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking around at the roaming tourists, who were mostly white. “I suppose they forgot where they came from. They forgot their history, their culture. It happens to people sometimes. They forget.”