The Wish Maker (34 page)

They were summoned into Daadi’s room. She turned first to Naseem.

“Where do you take her in the morning?”

“To her school,” said Naseem.

“To her school?”

“To her school—ask her, ask anyone—”

“Are you lying to me?”

Naseem said she was willing to take an oath on the Quran.

Daadi brought out the Quran and made her do it. Then she held the Quran before Samar Api. “Swear,” she said. “Swear on it.”

Samar Api was crying.

Daadi took her hand and placed it forcibly on the book.

Samar Api withdrew the hand.

“Let me . . .” said my mother.

“Swear!” said Daadi.

“Please,” said my mother, “let me.”

They went into the next room and returned after some minutes. Samar Api was now sobbing into her hands. My mother stood beside her and explained to Daadi.

In the morning the girl went to school with the maid and the driver, was delivered to the school gates, where she waited for her friend, in whose car they then went to the friend’s house. There they stayed all morning, and the friend’s car returned the girl to her own house in the afternoon.

It was said that they were studying to prepare for their exams.

Daadi said she wasn’t fooled.

“I will call my sister,” she said. “And I will tell her what has happened. I will see to it that the matter is addressed, because
I
will not be held responsible,
I
will not be made to hear the taunts when tomorrow she goes and does something . . .”

Daadi continued to threaten and complain.

“Brought out the Quran,” said Naseem. “Just think of it.”

Samar Api brought me into her room.

“Zaki, I have to tell you something.”

It was late at night. The light of her bedside lamp was the only one in the room, and sent its enlarged dim oval along the ceiling and down a wall. The door was locked.

She was sitting on her bed in her pajamas, a pillow in her lap, her fingers spread out on the bedding.

“Zaki, I am in Ell Oh Vee Eee.”

She looked at me.

“Zaki, you can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t tell anyone, Zaki—”

“I won’t.”

She accepted. She leaned back on her palms, then leaned forward and began to press her fingers into the mattress. She said his name was Jamal, he was the son of a politician from Multan; their family had gone to the lunch at Uncle Fazal’s house in Barampur. That was where she had met him, though at the lunch itself they didn’t speak, only saw each other from across the room. Later he sent her a letter through his cousin, a small piece of paper on which he’d scrawled a verse and signed his name. She called him at night on the phone and they talked. She had been to see him at his house in Lahore because Tara had taken her there. He spent most of his time in Lahore, she said, and he was older than her, twenty-four years old.

“Zaki, I need your help,” she said. “I really need your help, Zaki.”

I said I would help her.

And it relieved her. She fell back into the bed and said she had always known in her heart that she could trust Zaki. And she turned on her side, and hugged the pillow under her chin, and said that sometimes she had to hold herself to know that it was happening to her. “Because sometimes,” she said, blinking in wonderment, in delighted disbelief, “I can’t believe that my Amitabh has arrived.”

8

The advent of the dish antenna had coincided in the cities with the spread of billboards. In Lahore they stood on all the main roads, in the newly licensed commercial areas as well as in the older neighborhoods, ads for dentists and doctors near houses, for electronics on the busier thoroughfares, fridges and televisions and deep freezers and split-level air conditioners operated by remote control, causing happiness and enchantment among the women who stood by their appliances of choice with surprised expressions. One of these, the tallest of the billboards on Sherpao Bridge, was taken down at the start of winter for readjustment. For days the site was veiled, obscured by a curtain made from many different sheets of cloth that stirred and lifted lightly in the wind and fell again into place.

And then it was there.

It showed a leggy blonde in an overcoat with her arm stretched out in stopping, one foot on the pavement and one in the air. The world around her was a haze of activities, of bodies passing in and out of buildings and of cars streaking past. But she was looking ahead and smiling, confident in her ability to cross the street.

Look at me!
the billboard cried.
I am Swiss Miss!

A box of Swiss Miss cosmetics cost three hundred and ninety-five rupees.

“That much I have,” said Samar Api, and emptied her savings onto her bed. She had more than four hundred rupees; she had one thousand, seven hundred and seventy rupees, her combined earnings from various gift-giving occasions, as well as savings from her pocket money, which was no longer forthcoming since it was no longer considered necessary for Samar Api to go out of the house.

“We have to start going out,” she said. “I think it’s been long enough, Zaki.”

My mother appealed on her behalf: the grades were better, she said, and the teachers had no complaints. The girl went to school every morning and returned every afternoon and went straight into her room. “Children make mistakes,” said my mother, “and they should be forgiven. That’s the way to set the example. To forgive and reward, not to punish all the time. How can there be improvements when there are no rewards?”

But Daadi was unwilling to end the confinement, and said that her decision to not inform Chhoti of her daughter’s recent conduct was a big concession.

Samar Api went to school and returned from school. She came into Daadi’s room at lunchtime, ate her meal and went back into her own room. She asked for the phone only in the evenings but returned it before Daadi went to sleep. And she didn’t ask for permission to go out.

Her essays and assignments, marked and graded approvingly by her teachers, were left around the house for others to see.

“This is remarkable,” said my mother. She was holding up a stapled exam sheet.

Daadi didn’t ask to know the marks.

“Twenty-six out of thirty,” said my mother, and looked around amazedly.

Naseem nodded.

And Daadi continued to wipe the bits of roti in her hand along the grease on her plate’s rim.

One Thursday afternoon we went with Naseem and Barkat in the car to buy groceries from the market. And the following week we were allowed to go to Empire Center to try a new dessert dish made of chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream that had drawn enthusiastic recommendations from Suri and Hukmi.

Samar Api said she wanted to go to Empire Center with Tara Tanvir.

“No,” said Daadi.

“And why not?” said my mother.

“Not with that girl.”

“Why not?”

Daadi was shaking her head in sustained refusal.

“They are children,” said my mother. “And children make mistakes. That is why they are children: they make mistakes and they learn from them. For God’s sake.”