The Wish Maker (29 page)

“You should come to my house,” I said. “We’ll make a time capsule.”

Yawar grunted.

I explained about time capsules.

“Sounds good, sounds good,” said Yawar, who was caustic by nature but amenable.

He came to the house on the weekend in starched white shorts and a colorful T-shirt, his shoelaces tied and settled like ribbons, his thick white socks pulled up to his knees. Daadi was pleased with his appearance and offered him food to eat, which Yawar declined, and a glass of juice from the fridge, which Yawar accepted and drank but left unfinished on the table. Of this too Daadi was approving; she said the lack of greed was a mark of good upbringing, and showed that Yawar’s mother was devoted to the household, which was rare in these times, a blessing that hadn’t been bestowed on other households.

We made our time capsule in the lawn. The capsule itself was a black plastic box we had found inside the house, a box that was strong enough to endure the eroding soil and the gnawing attempts of insects. It would surface after centuries, when man was estranged from the lives that preceded his re-emergence, and the excavation would lead to a discovery: some items from the past that offered proof of man’s intelligence and his ability to find his way in a world that by then would have vanished.

We searched. We looked first in the kitchen, where the knives and forks were locked in the cupboard; the key was with Naseem, who was sleeping in her quarters at the back of the house. We wanted items of instruction, items that would lead to conclusions about the past: we sought syringes, binoculars, lighters, none of which were found. We tried to contain the file within the box, tried to hold down its corners. But they snapped.

“It’s boring,” said Yawar.

I went inside and brought what I found: a toothbrush, some pencils, a blue-nib pen, a compass, a lipstick and a hairbrush.

We drafted a letter. I wrote:
Dear citizen of the future, my name is Zaki Shirazi and I am a boy. I live in this house with my cuzzon.

Yawar wrote
Yawar
and added the date and location.

“What if Americans find it?”

Yawar wrote
Asia
after
Pakistan.

“What if aliens find it?”

Yawar wrote
Planet Earth.

We sealed the box with masking tape and buried it in the ground. Yawar said he didn’t think anyone would find it. He was restless now and wanted to go.

“There’s nothing there,” I said.

But he went and found Mazri, who came up to the gate on his bicycle and did a wheelie. Yawar wanted to know about the bicycle; he said his older brother also had a Sohrab Eagle, but his was an older model. Mazri was not rude or mocking. He said his father had taken the bicycle to the petrol pump in the morning and had the tires filled with air; they were good as new now; he allowed Yawar to mount the bicycle to test his claim. Yawar made a slow, wavering journey up and then down the lane.

“So then?” cried Mazri.

“Good as new, good as new!” cried Yawar.

When Mazri rode the bicycle he did it with flair. And Yawar stood patiently at the gate and watched him, grunting with pleasure at the showy turns.

“My turn now,” I said.

And Mazri laughed and said that I would have to pay him first.

At night I went out walking in the lane, which was deserted, and past the other houses in the dark. I climbed the barred gate of Mrs. Zaidi’s house and hopped. The knife I had brought was small and sharp. The windows in the house were all shut, the curtains drawn from inside. There were roses on the fringes of the garden, eerie in the stark white light that came from the porch, the buds meager and shriveled and the stems thorny, as if waiting to injure hopeful smellers. The bicycle had been leaned against a pillar in the porch. At first the knife had no effect; the rubber of the tires was hard and held. But stabbing in the same place proved worthwhile: the rubber popped, and the air began to hiss out.

“What did I do?”

“Get in,” said my mother, and started her van. The school parking lot was not a place she visited regularly; she was angry already and aggravated by the unmoving cars ahead.

“But what did I do!”

“You know bloody well what you did,” she said, and swerved the van away from a car. “All day long I work like a dog. And then I have to come home and listen to that old witch who lives in that house for twenty bloody minutes on the phone because she wants
new
tires, she won’t settle for repairs, she wants
new
tires, and I have nothing to say because
you
are no better than riffraff.”

The traffic outside was worse. The road was blocked and the van was stuck in the blockage.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Shut up.”

They had decided to send me away. I was to spend the Eid holiday with Suri and Hukmi and their children, away from the house and the television, away from negative influences. “And it is good,” said Daadi, “because Samar will be gone as well and there will be nothing to do in this house all by yourself.”

Samar Api was going with her mother to Barampur, where Uncle Fazal was hosting a lavish Eid lunch for his relatives and friends on the third day of the holiday. Families were driving in from other parts of the district, and Chhoti and her daughter were required to entertain the lady guests.

Samar Api didn’t want to go. She fought with Daadi when it was mentioned, then fought with my mother when she went into her room for persuasion. Chhoti was arriving in a few days to take her daughter back to the village. Daadi said it was a matter of days—Eid was a family occasion that occurred only twice a year—and they weren’t asking for more than that. But Samar Api refused to come out of her room. She said she wanted to stay in Lahore and go to Tara’s house for Eid.

Chhoti arrived, unwarned, unprepared for resistance, and flew into a rage upon arrival; she cited hardships and sacrifices and cursed her own fate for giving her an ungrateful child. And she sulked, suggesting with her silence that the residents of the house had done nothing to make it easier. Daadi was offended and withdrew her involvement, and my mother was left to mediate the remaining correspondence between Chhoti and her child.

They left in the morning. Chhoti went to sit inside her car and instructed her driver to start the engine, which revved and revved in the driveway. At last Samar Api emerged from her room, and her eyes were red and swollen with crying; she went outside with her schoolbag, in which she had her clothes, and sat beside Chhoti in the back of the car with the bag in her lap, refusing to look at her mother or at the assembled spectators outside, and stared ahead at nothing in defiance.

6

Suri and Hukmi lived with their families in the Gulistan housing colony.

Their houses were separated by a low white wall and resembled the other houses in the lane, houses with brown iron gates and slanting, imbricating roofs, and strips of grass that fringed the outside walls and appeared to be of an equal length. It was a new way of living, a way out of the old joint-family system that hadn’t done away with the better aspects of community life: there was a park in the heart of the colony, with slides and merry-go-rounds, a walking track, a cricket pitch and a badminton net held between two poles in the grass. A chowkidaar patrolled the lanes at night. The milkman had to report to the colony office for his salary and was punctual. There was no load-shedding at night, no problems with electricity, no water crisis at the last minute—problems, when they did arise, were addressed promptly and efficiently, owing to the built-in aspect of accountability. And still the houses continued to be available and continued to sell at reasonable prices.

At Hukmi’s house today there was no one to answer the door. Her servants had left for the Eid holiday with advances on their salaries. Hukmi had to open the door herself. She was wearing a bathrobe and a towel in a turban around her head.

“They’ve all gone,” she said.

I followed her past the dining room, where the curtains were drawn and the light kept out, the chairs tucked into their places at the dining table, then past the paintings on the wall, paintings of fair-skinned babies and the robed, fair-skinned women tending to their needs. They were unlike the paintings my mother collected, which were awkward and childishly made and became interesting only after she had told a story about where they came from, or who had made them, or how they had been made.

“Shoes,” said Hukmi, indicating a wooden rack beside the bedroom door. It held several shoes at a raised angle, caught at the heels and held aloft.

“Take off, please,” said Hukmi, and watched.

In the bedroom the lights were dim. Suri was sitting on the sofa under a golden clock and talking in tones of understanding on the telephone, though she now made a face at Hukmi that revealed her exhaustion. And on the bed were Uncle Saaji and Uncle Shafto, both lying on their backs with their heads propped up against pillows. They were watching a tennis match on the TV in the corner.

“He’s finished,” said Uncle Saaji, and puckered his lips. He was married to Suri and had once owned factories in Lyallpur. His soft, benign face gave his occasional bouts of anger the blunted quality of disappointment.

“Wait and see,” said Uncle Shafto, Hukmi’s husband, a passionate man who had never owned anything of significance. “The man will win. He will make a comeback. Born to win.” His upturned mouth was sealed in determination.

Uncle Saaji said, “No, no,” and crossed his hands behind his head. The pose was uncomfortable; he returned his hands to his chest and settled and resettled them.

“Man’s a player,” persisted Uncle Shafto.

“No, no.”

“Just see.”

They saw.

“Baakaap!” cried Uncle Shafto. His head lifted from the pillow. “Baakaap!”

Uncle Saaji made a sputtering sound.

“Baakaap!”

“Finished,” said Uncle Saaji.

On the TV the audience was clapping, the two players walking to the net to shake hands and then walking apart, both looking humbled and dispassionate though one had just won the match and defeated the other.

“Actually it is bad luck,” said Uncle Shafto.

Hukmi came out of the bathroom in her clothes and sat on the sofa beside Suri. Her hair was wet and hung in braids.

Suri hung up the telephone and said, “Marwa Madam wants to change the plan.”

Hukmi said, “I’m not going.”

“Wants
us
to have it
here
,” said Suri.

“I am not going.”

“Always at the last minute—”

“I’m
not
going.”

It was settled.

“Zaki Shirazi,” said Uncle Saaji from the bed. He frowned in admonishment, then altered his expression and gurgled naughtily with a finger in his mouth.

“Oh yes,” said Uncle Shafto, taking note; he raised his neck and resettled the buffer of pillows behind his head. “What a match, Zaki Shirazi.
What
a match.”