The Wish Maker (20 page)

It was what they did.

His driving was unaffected by this, but she could tell that his mood had changed. She was glad that he could drive well.

She said, “You should come with me the next time.”

“Go yourself.”

“I
will
go.”

“So go. Go.”

They went to Turtle’s house. But she asked to be taken back to Nargis’s, and Sami didn’t look at her when she said it, and then Turtle summoned a driver and she went alone in the car and went back the next morning on the flight to Karachi.

He called her when he came to Karachi.

“You can’t call my house,” she said.

Her mother came into the kitchenette and went past her to the fridge, didn’t seem to notice, and went out again.

“You can’t do this, Sami!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. But he was laughing.

“I’m putting down the phone.”

“Why!”

“Because you think it’s
funny
. It’s not the same for girls. Why can’t you understand that?”

It was unmerited.

She said, “Where do you want to meet?”

And he proposed a place.

They met at a dingy restaurant in Saddar. The place was empty. The tables had stained plastic tops that displayed a floral design. There was a TV in one corner and it was showing the evening news, which was in Arabic, a new thing.

“Where do you want to go?” he said.

She tried to think of a place. She couldn’t take him to a friend’s house because her friends were girls; and she wasn’t going to take him to a hotel.

He said, “Are there any monuments?”

She tried to think of monuments. There were none. It came to her that Karachi had no history.

He said, “What about a park?”

They couldn’t go to a park. She knew of a girl who had gone to a park with a boy and was stopped there by a policeman, who had asked the couple for their marriage certificate, which was now required in public places, and then taken the boy and the girl to a police station.

“No parks,” she said. “Where are you going after this?”

He said there was an air base nearby.

There were air bases everywhere.

She said, “No. Forget it. Let’s stay here and eat.”

And they drank their Cokes and ate a lukewarm meal.

She went to Lahore again in the spring. She had timed her visit to coincide with his, and was staying again with Nargis. The night of her arrival there was a dinner party at Hania Apa’s house.

“Can you come?” she said.

And he said he would.

She waited for him in that drawing room, surrounded by people who now knew her name and engaged her in ways that were still novel and exciting. But she was thinking of him. It was like a burden that was also a blessing. It colored everything. She tried to imagine a life in which there wasn’t this kind of waiting, this ever-present need for someone else, a need that was denied and then fulfilled and then denied again. She could no longer imagine such a life, even though she knew, in an abstract way, that she had once lived it.

The doorbell rang. And she saw that he had worn the right clothes, a proper shirt and trousers, a slim brown belt, and black suede shoes on his feet. His hair was combed in a new way. A sadness came over her. She was surprised by the feeling and tried to banish it, but it stayed. She watched him watch himself. And then her view changed: it was of herself as an impostor. What did she want? She had never thought about it. He had met Hania Apa and shaken hands with her, and was sitting now on one of the cushions. But these conversations didn’t require him. They would go on and on. She went across to the table and made a strong drink.

“You want?” she said.

And he said, “Why not.”

The first-class portraitist was listening, and said, “A supportive husband is a good one.”

“Oh, no,” said Zakia. “We’re not married.”

It made her apprehensive.

The portraitist said, “So get married!”

She looked at him.

“Why not.”

“Why not.”

They all laughed.

“Good!” cried the first-class portraitist, and raised her glass grandly.

So for the rest of the night she was buoyant. She hugged Hania Apa, laughed at many jokes, nodded vehemently when someone made a passionate point about the status quo and said that it must be ruptured by a peasant revolt. Her glass was full. Then the poet arrived, and there were drunken salutations, and Zakia, her arms wide in greeting, leaped up from her cushion on the carpet and went toward the door to receive him. Later in the night the electricity went, and there were groans in the shadowy room, and abruptly it was back but with the sound of shattering glass. A bulb in one of the overhead lamps had burst.

Hania Apa sighed.

“I’ll get it,” said Zakia.

“No, no,” said Hania Apa, and flapped a lazy hand as if to dispel a fly.

“It’ll take a minute!” Zakia cried from the kitchen.

She stood on a stool and slowly twirled the bulb into place. And beneath her the conversation continued: this army, they were saying, it would bring about the end of this country, there was nothing in the papers, just blank slots now and lines of print blackened out by markers.

“Bataaein na phir!”
cried Zakia from the stool, and aimed her importunate look at the poet.
“Inqilaab kab aa raha hai?”

And the poet looked blankly at the faces around him, held up his glass and shook it contemplatingly, and motioned with an open palm toward the sprightly girl on the stool with the lightbulb in her hand and said, “
Bhai inqilaab tau tum lao gi
.”

He said, “Let’s get married!”

And it was not how she had wanted him to say it.

But she said, “I’ll think about it.”

They went to buy her an outfit. She was going to meet his mother and his sisters at his house, and he said it had to be right. They went to a shop in Liberty Market, and she was made to accept, after some pleading, a pink georgette shalwar kameez with short tassels on the shoulders. The next day they drove in his car to his house and it was strangely momentous. He got out of the car and opened the gate, which dragged noisily, then came back to the car and drove it toward the house. The driveway was cracked. The lawn was unmown and bordered by marigolds. And she saw the lone tree on its edge, with a dark, twisting bark and smooth, shining leaves. “What’s that?” she said.

“It’s called something,” he said. “Nice little flowers. Sweet-smelling. My mother planted it.”

They went through the veranda, which showed their blurred reflections walking on its floor.

The room was choked. The smell was frantic, recent, undecided between rose and varnish—she identified the cylinder of air-freshener on the mantelpiece, next to medicines and framed photographs and a telephone, the accoutrements of middle age.

The mother rose from her bed and came forward to formalize the introduction: she held Zakia’s face, kissed her forehead and said, “
Mashallah
.” Then she led them to the sofa and the chairs, and Zakia noted that the dark wood was polished and the silk upholstery was opal.

Tea came with the maidservant, a woman called Naseem, who settled the tray on the long, slender table and sat herself on the carpet. She looked at Zakia from time to time and grinned and blushed.

Then the sisters, Suri and Hukmi—she knew them instantly; he had described them so well she wanted to laugh—came in from the adjacent room. They were married and had been waiting. She stood up for them, and they were pleased. Their glances were furtive, glances of confirmation. She could sense their anticipation.

Sami talked incessantly. She saw that they relied on him. The mother was nodding to the things he was saying and the sisters were proudly withdrawn. He was the man of the house now (his father had died two years before of a heart attack) and Zakia was going to be his wife.

She returned to Karachi with her impressions, and revived them daily for deliberation, nearing and nearing her decision, which was already made.

He proposed again.

“What about the airplanes?” She hadn’t prepared the question.

“What about them?”

“You’ll be away.”

He said he thought she had always known that.

“But it’s going to be difficult for me.” She wanted more.

He said he would come home to see her whenever it was possible.

And it was enough. She said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

She told Papu and Mabi. And they didn’t resist. Shazreh had gone by then to live with her husband in Canada, and the general manager’s suite on the fourth floor of the Beach Fantasy Hotel had about it the air of desertion. Papu asked about the boy’s profession. She said he was in the air force. Papu gave a grunt, as though it was both outlandish and predictable. Mabi said she didn’t have the money or the patience to put up another wedding.

“You don’t have to,” said Zakia.

But Sami’s mother wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, the proper way: she wanted to take a flight to Karachi and ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage.

“It matters to her,” said Sami on the telephone, and she heard the indignation behind his pleading. “Please. You must do something.”

She went into the lounge and made the announcement: the boy and his family were coming, and Papu and Mabi would host them. She didn’t give them time to object.

The day arrived. She went downstairs to the lobby, alone but dogged in her singleness. She was parenting herself. It was gloomy and enjoyable. Her outfit was her own. Not having to buy a new one, not having anyone to fuss over the details, she was newly content with her appearance.

She saw them: Sami, his mother, his sisters, the maidservant and another woman too, his aunt, his mother’s younger sister. The greetings were practiced, and the aunt’s warmth was additional. She felt both encompassed and protected. They followed her into the elevator. It was small. And abruptly she was seized by a panic: upstairs, her parents, the waiting awkwardness, the conversation.