The Wish Maker (55 page)

At lunch break, when we were walking to the canteen, Saif laughed and said, “What a show. What a show.”

He didn’t mention his father, and I didn’t ask him.

Barkat went away that afternoon, taking the two-day leave he was allowed at the start of every month, and in the evening I took Naseem in the car to Main Market. We went first to Jalal Sons: she went into the stark white aisles inside and selected the insect-repelling Flit dispensers, the small white phenyl balls that were placed above the drains of bathrooms and came in plastic packets, a stack of Capri soaps, three small jars of Dentonic dental powder and three tubes of Medicam toothpaste; she dropped the items into the shopping cart and went into Feminine Care, selected Bio Amla shampoo and Kala Kola hair tonic, a tin of Touch Me talcum powder, a small blue bottle of Nivea face cream for Daadi and a tub of the cheaper Tibet Snow fairness cream for herself. I waited with the trolley at the till when she went upstairs to fetch the bread and eggs and milk. Then I drove her to the fruit-and-vegetable stalls outside Pioneer Store, where many cars and motorcycles were already parked, and where a slowed line of rickshas, and cars and wagons behind them, was trying to get to the other end of the street.

In the spreading dark, standing in the light of the bulbs that hung from wires above the stalls, Naseem examined the fruits and vegetables with her hand and made selections: apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, cabbages, cucumbers and a kilo of horseradish. They were weighed, placed in blue plastic bags and taken to the car. The vendor’s assistant arranged the bags in the seats at the back and stood outside my window.

“Give him money,” said Naseem.

I paid him for the fruits and vegetables we had bought.

He was still there.

“Give a tip,” said Naseem.

I gave him ten rupees.

“Give more,” said Naseem.

I gave him another ten-rupee note, and he took it and went away.

“It is good to give,” said Naseem.

We drove with difficulty through the street, between the jutting bodies of parked vehicles, then went along the roundabout and turned in toward the mosque. The azaan was sounding, and boys in skullcaps were going inside.

Naseem switched off the radio and drew her dupatta over her head. She looked outside at the boys in skullcaps and said, “It is good to pray in the mosque. At your age it is very important.”

I said, “I should.”

We left the mosque behind, and went past a butcher’s shop where pink, headless torsos were hanging from strings.

“At every age,” said Naseem, “there is a chance to repent.” She said that she had understood this only recently, at a time in her life when she no longer possessed the energies of youth. Still, she said, a man’s youth was something else, a time of determinations and will. She said her own son was like that. He was intelligent but had fought with his schoolteachers and quit the school; then he had worked as a laborer and made buildings with his bare hands, but had quit that too when the contractor, joking around one day, had called his sister a name. Naseem said she had worried then for her son. But he had reassured her; he had taken Allah’s name and said that there were many ways in the world.

He came home one day and told them that he was going to buy a car, a wagon, which he was going to fill with passengers, all paying the fare, and take them around the district. There was a route from Dipalpur to Haveli Lakha and then back to Dipalpur, and north from there to Kasur. The average ride was for fifty rupees. The total number of passengers a wagon could fit was fifteen (the one remaining seat in the front was for the driver), and there were at least ten journeys to make in a day. Adding it up, and subtracting the cost of petrol, and then multiplying it by the thirty days of the month, gave a total of more than two lakh rupees. But from this he would have to pay the car dealer, who had agreed to receive the second half of the payment in monthly installments.

“Even so,” he said, “it will leave thirty thousand rupees.”

They were eating their evening meal in the courtyard of Naseem’s house.

Her husband said, “Allah will give,” and went on eating. He was unemployed, white-haired now and had no money.

Naseem said, “Who will buy the wagon? I will buy the wagon?”

Her son was chewing slowly. He finished the food in his plate, drank water from the steel cup and splashed the rest away.

She was filled with regret.

She said, “How will you do it?”

Her husband went on chewing.

And her son said, “Allah will give,” and got up from the low stool and went to wash his hands under the tap.

She thought of selling her land and giving him the money. She had three marlas behind a railway track, a small plot in a factory workers’ colony that was surrounded by sugarcane fields. She consulted her acquaintances and they advised her against it. The land, they said, was a place to hide her head in case she had to; it was a thing to keep, a thing to sell only when the price was high. She listened to them and agreed with them. But later, alone, she sank imperceptibly into her own thoughts. He was her son; and he would have a car of his own; and a car too was a place to hide one’s head, a car had many uses, and could take them to different places. She saw herself sitting in the backseat.

He came home and she fed him, then sat them all down and made the announcement.

The wagon came. She heard about it first from Majida, her neighbor, who banged blatantly on the door and cried,
“Mubarikaan! Mubarikaan!”

She hurried out to the door.

Majida stood in the doorway with her hand on the latch and said, “You never told any of us.” Her tone was admiring and reproachful.

Naseem said, “Is it here?”

“
Leh
,
”
said Majida, and took her by the hand, “what a fool you are pretending to be.”

They went out into the street, and Naseem saw the people who had come out of their homes, saw the surprise and the excitement in their faces and the way they were looking at her.

She drew the dupatta over her head and tried to walk slowly.

“Come quick,” said Majida, leading her still by the hand, “before the others start sitting on your seats.”

They went down the street and turned the corner. The wagon was standing on the main road, between the shops and the stalls, and was long and high and white and had two green stripes on its side and colorful stickers on the front and on the back.

Her son was sitting in the driver’s seat, and was talking to a boy who stood outside his window and had his hands on the felt. Others had gathered around the wagon; they were waiting for a chance to touch it. On the way to the wagon Naseem was stopped by the washerwoman and then by the cobbler, and they were gracious and gave compliments.

Naseem smiled and nodded, adjusted her dupatta and said,
“Vekho ji, rab da kamal
.
”

They went in the wagon to the shrine of Hazrat Karman Aley. It was the shrine closest to their village. The wagon was new and needed protection, but they wanted to have it blessed right away. So they went. Naseem sat at the back, next to Majida, who had come along, and with a crowd of children in the seats behind them, the little boys and girls who were attracted by the sound of the horn and had attached themselves to the doors.

Naseem said, “There is no tape?” She meant the audiocassette player that was usually located in the front.

Her husband was sitting in the seat ahead and had his hand on the strap above his window. He said, “No, no, there is none.”

Naseem’s son said, “There
is
a tape.” And with his one free hand he found the buttons, and abruptly the sound burst from behind, and it was Madam Noor Jehan and she was singing:

On the wide highway roads they went. It was early evening, and the sun hung low above the sugarcane fields. Their windows were down from before and wouldn’t go up, but they were not complaining: the wind was coming in and was tickling their faces, trembling their hairstyles and making their clothes flap.

Majida turned to the children at the back and was harsh and scolding when she said, “A mother’s prayers, a mother’s prayers,
that
is what gets you ahead in life.”

Naseem’s face was in the wind.

“Mother!” cried Yakub, her son, from his seat in the front.

“Yes!” she cried.

“Are the cars coming?” He was about to turn the wagon, and they saw now that the mirrors were missing.

Naseem stuck her head out, and then drew it back inside and cried, “There are no cars coming!”

Yakub cried, “Very good!”

They waited.

And they cheered and whistled when the wagon turned the corner successfully.

The shrine was like a mosque but bigger, more spacious. Naseem knew from her visits to the courtyard inside that it could accommodate more people than almost any other place she had seen. There were no times for opening or closing the doors, and this laxity, while it was in keeping with the large-hearted persona of the dead saint, had also drawn the attention of wandering types, the beggars and drug users and lunatics who came in and then rarely went away. Now their contingent passed a madwoman, dressed in her customary rags, sitting on a tattered old sheet in a corner of the white marble courtyard, and she looked at them and looked away. She had lost the urge to beg, it was said, because of the food that came here every day in pots from those whose wishes the saint had answered.

The children looked at the madwoman and prodded one another and laughed.

Majida slapped them and said, “She will come here and eat your little faces.”

They went to the chamber that contained the saint’s grave. Naseem’s son had bought a chadar from a stall outside, a long, silken sheet that had prayers written on it and glowed differently in different kinds of light. He was going to place it as an offering on the saint’s grave and say a prayer of thanks.

The men went inside the chamber. Naseem and Majida had to stay outside because of a new sign that had been nailed to the door and said that women, by decree of the shrine’s keepers and patrons, were not allowed in the chamber. They stood outside and said the prayer, not requiring the physical closeness.

Then they waited for the men to return.

Majida said, “Our prayers are more effective than theirs. It is in nature.”

She wanted agreement. She had come here all the way to bless Naseem’s new wagon and now she wanted some agreement.

Naseem said, “In this there is no doubt that God listens to women.”

Majida nodded thoughtfully. The dusk had deepened and the lights in the courtyard had come alive, and they could see the mosquitoes above their heads.

Majida said, “Keep praying, and Allah will keep giving.” It was a way of saying that she was happy for Naseem, and that she had not lost hope for herself.