The Wish Maker (7 page)

My mother stood above the tray and appeared to hear the headlines, while Naseem responded to the English with expressions of growing alarm, although it was not a language she spoke or even understood. Afterward she went into the next room and woke Samar Api, whose school day started an hour after mine.

My school was dull. It had twenty classrooms and a canteen, a play area with a small sandpit for the kindergarten, and a barren sports field for the older classes. Every big wall carried a picture of Allama Iqbal, the national poet, who always wore a shawl and struck the same pensive pose in profile, and a plaque that bore the school motto, which was
Cogito, ergo sum
. It was never translated for our benefit but was always among the questions we were made to answer when a special visitor came to the school.

“What is the motto of our school?”

“The motto of our school is cogitoergosum.”

“What is an object?”

“An object is a nonliving thing.”

“What is an organism?”

“An organism is a living thing.”

“What is a valley?”

“A valley is a low land between two mountains.”

In the first year we were made to read an essay on Aziz Bhatti Shaheed. It was the first essay in a book called
English for Class One Students
, authored by one Brigadier (Retd.) Arif Ahsan. The cover showed a group of children playing under a banyan tree. The banyan tree was large and spreading; the children were fair-skinned and wore shalwar kameezes and not the uniforms that we had to wear, and were smiling and laughing and running around in the shade of the tree as if in a state of unsurpassable satisfaction. The first page of the book was blank but for a dedication. Brigadier (Retd.) Arif Ahsan had written:
This book is dedicated to the memory of my late father, Syed Ahsanullah, who instilled in me the very love of English that has culminated in the publication of this book.

It should have been “the very lovely love of English” or “the very nice love of English,” and not “the very love of English.” Brigadier (Retd.) Arif Ahsan had left out an adjective on the first page of a book called
English for Class One Students
.

But there was going to be a test on the essay. It said:

I underlined “instantaneously.” It was a long word, and was made up of small parts that were easier to say alone.

“Miss!” someone shouted. “Zaki Shirazi’s father was in the air force!”

“Yes, Miss!” cried someone else. “Miss, he died in a plane crash, Miss!”

Now Miss, who was long and sharp and sheathed today in pink, looked up from the book on her desk and said, “Zaki Shirazi, stand up.”

The legs of the chair made a scraping sound.

“Which war did your father die in?”

“No war, Miss. Accident.”

“Oh,” said Miss, disappointed. “Zaki Shirazi, sit down.”

And I sat down and began to murmur the words in a desperate chant:

At two o’clock the bell rang, sounding release, and the corridors became filled with commotion. The parents of children and their drivers were standing beyond the gate; there had been kidnappings at other schools and demands for ransom, and in response the school administration had decided to restrict the flow of movement: the children and their claimants were separated by the thick iron bars of the gate, and the waves and shouts of identification were verified by an old white-haired man who sat on a stool inside and kept his hand on the bolt. He heard a shout, pointed to the shouter, pointed to the child, considered their connection, then unbolted the gate and held it open and shut it again. I went with Naseem past the ice-lolly man, past the man roasting channa in a pit of sand on a cart, and then along the row of parked cars and motorcycles. Daadi sat in the back of her Suzuki with her window down for ventilation, a handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth for protection against the fumes, and Samar Api sat beside her in the checkered school uniform, which was creased and dusty now, and stained permanently at the hem and near the sleeves with small spots of ink.

“Samar Api, give the masala, please.”

She was eating a chhalli and had kept the packet of masala with the lime and the other chhallis in her lap.

“Say please.”

“I already said it.”

“So say it again.”

“Please.”

“Say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Say ‘Samar Api, you’re my favorite cousin.’ ”

“Samar Api, you’re my favorite cousin.”

She hesitated.

“Samar Api.”

“Wait!” She dipped a halved lime into the dusty red powder, stroked it lengthwise along her corn cob, licked the lime, shut her eyes and smacked her lips, and stroked it again along the corn.

“Daadi!”

Daadi saw.

“So he should take it himself,” said Samar Api, and lifted the things from her lap and thrust them aside, and then looked away, implying with her manner that it had all been a game or a joke and had earned a disproportionate response.

“Sorry,” I said, eating.

But she wasn’t in the mood.

We went onto the canal, where the traffic had collected in bundles. The small spaces that opened up continually on the dusty side-track were negotiable but required daring. Our driver then was called Barkat, a shy old man who kept his skull in a damp coil of cotton in the heat as well as in the cold. He disliked confrontations and allowed other vehicles to get out of the way.

“He is careful,” said Daadi.

But his caution created a feeling of restlessness in Naseem, who knew the traffic laws and admired the audacity of those who broke them.

“You are not driving a donkey cart,” she said.

The light ahead was green, and a space had opened up behind a decorated wagon.

Barkat was driving and said nothing.

“Go,” said Naseem.

Barkat said nothing.

“Go on,” said Naseem, and made pushing movements with her palms.

Barkat looked in the rearview mirror.

“O Naseem!” said Daadi from the back.

Naseem pointed at the stopping cars ahead and said that we had lost our chance.

Daadi said, “He is the driver. He will drive.”

Naseem said it was regrettable.

“Don’t give answers to me,” said Daadi.

Naseem laughed.

“Don’t answer!” cried Daadi.

And Naseem grunted and gave a shorter laugh, and said that it was regrettable and then withdrew with a casual chewing motion of her jaws.

The one TV in the house was kept in Daadi’s room. It had a bloated screen and stood on odd thin legs, and was capable of being dragged on its small, whining wheels into the other rooms. To switch it on we had to first connect the wires at the back, which Daadi had disconnected to prevent excessive electrical consumption. (She believed in physical isolation, in full severance of physical contact between things.) The TV was old and lacked a remote control; it had to be approached for adjustments, for the color and the sound and even for the channel. In those days there were two channels, Doordarshan and PTV, and we called them India and Pakistan.

“My India is not coming!” Daadi cried in the evening.

She had said her maghrib prayer and then gone across the room to switch on the TV, and instead of the channels she had found a gray gushing, which showed flashes of color when she changed the settings, and caught snatches of music from a program called
Chitrahar
, which was presently showing the new Indian love songs she had intended to watch; but the settings had failed and the gushing had gone on.

“O Naseem!” she cried. “My India is not coming!”

And Naseem was sent in a hurry to adjust the aerial on the roof.

We stood downstairs in the doorway and relayed messages from room to roof until the link was struck, color showed on the screen, and the position of the aerial had been found and was held. Then the Indian songs were watched, and the Indian news, and then the Pakistani news; and after the news came the televised songs of Madam Noor Jehan, who wore colorful saris and stood in shiny settings with her hands clasped at her navel and moved her mouth around to the words of her own songs, which Daadi said had been recorded many years ago in the studios, where real face-distorting expressions were allowed.

Friday was then the weekly holiday in Pakistan. On Thursday night we went in the car to Main Market, to a shop called Tom Boy’s that rented out pirated videos of Indian films. It was a small, damp shop: the walls were stacked with titles that began with
Abhimaan
near the entrance, went around the room in a U and culminated in
Zanjeer
on the opposite wall, a world that began and ended with Amitabh Bachchan, who was the male lead in both films and was said to be the most famous actor in the world.

There was a story about his fame. It was about the time he was fighting the villain in
Coolie
and got punched by a real punch. It burst his intestine and he fell into a faint; an ambulance arrived; its doors opened and closed. For days the people of India sat in temples and prayed, and the doctors in the hospitals removed their glasses and shook their heads. The people prayed and prayed, but Amitabh stayed fainted, and the people prayed more, and the doctors said they were sorry, but the people still prayed. They went into temples, struck bells and lit fires, sat on the floor and prayed with their eyes shut, their palms pressed together and their bodies swaying. One morning they opened their eyes and were told that Amitabh too had opened his, and the news spread quickly and the temples emptied and there was singing and dancing in the streets.

But Amitabh was ordinary, not fair or quick or clever like the other heroes of Indian films. He was a tall man, dark-skinned, with drooping, bloodshot eyes, hairy on his arms and on his chest; the hair densely swirled behind his shirt buttons, which he opened, one after the other, in slow, deliberate movements, when he committed to a fight. Even then his temperament was unaffected: he preferred to lean against barrels and sacks and walls, and fought with resisting thrusts of his long legs. And afterward, wounded, he staggered on his legs, but disguised the pain with humor, which was dark and sour and tended to attract the shadow of tragedy.

There was nothing remarkable about him.

“You can’t see it,” said Samar Api.

“What is it?”

“I won’t tell you.” She was lying in bed and writing inside a school notebook, turning her head from side to side.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a kid and you’ll go and tell people.” I was wounded.

“Will you tell people?”