A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

by Lisa Papademetriou

  “No,” she whispered, even as she pulled out The Exquisite Corpse. She flipped the pages. It was the same book. There was no doubt about it. It was the same. The same handwriting.

  She clutched the book to her chest, thinking about how to destroy it.

  There was no point in throwing it away, after all. It would just creep up on her again, like a book boomerang. What else? What else could she do?

  Her eye fell on the stove. It was gas.

  I’ll burn it, Leila thought. Hah!

  The right burner lit with a whoosh, and she held the book over the flame, letting fire lick at the edge of a page. The paper flared and the whole book burst into flame. Leila let out a little squeal, and let go. The pages sat awkwardly on the burner, blazing. “Sorry, sorry,” Leila whispered as she watched it burn. Seized with a sudden panic that the fire might burn down the whole house, Leila grabbed a pair of metal tongs hanging beside the stove and used them to grab the book. She tossed it into the sink.

  Thick black smoke had started to fill the kitchen, smelling like the hippie gift shop that her friend Ta’Mara loved. Leila coughed and wondered if there was a fire extinguisher—

  Footsteps slammed toward the kitchen, and Leila thought about running, but Samir appeared before she could take off. “Is the house on fire?” he cried.

  “It’s not the—ugh!” Coughing, Leila fanned the smoke away from her face. “It’s not the house!” She turned on the tap, dousing the pages while Samir slapped on the fan beneath the microwave. Then he cranked open the window.

  A fire alarm started to shriek. It was directly over Leila’s head, and seemed to be screaming inside her skull. “Do something!”

  “Chup kar!” Samir grabbed a broom and gave the alarm a solid whack, knocking it to the floor, where it died with a squawk. He looked up at Leila. “I did not even know we had that thing.”

  Gingerly, Leila pulled her hands away from her ears. The smoke had finally died down, and Leila turned off the tap. The book lay in the sink, soggy, but otherwise undamaged.

  “Oh,” Leila whispered. She picked up the book.

  It hadn’t burned. She opened it. The ink hadn’t run under the water.

  In fact, there was a new sentence: You couldn’t see the damage that the fire had caused, but it was there.

  She slammed it shut.

  “What’s that?” Samir asked, looking at the wet book. Then he looked at Leila’s face. “Are you all right? You look—”

  “What’s going on?” Babar Taya burst into the kitchen, followed by his wife and a very irritated-looking Rabeea. Everyone was in their pajamas, but Jamila Tai had pulled a jacket on over her sleepwear. “Is everyone all right?”

  Wali pranced in shouting, “What was that? Kya ho raha hai? What is the smell?”

  A drop of water dripped from the book onto Leila’s little toe.

  “Leila just burned some toast,” Samir explained. “Did you know that we had a—” He gestured to the smoke detector. “Did you know that it works?”

  “It doesn’t look like it works anymore,” Rabeea said, eyeing the smashed pieces on the floor.

  “Of course we have a smoke detector,” Jamila Tai put in. “I had Chirragh install it.”

  “Why?” Rabeea asked. “The house is concrete.”

  “Because your father and I lived in Connecticut for two years, and everyone in the United States has a fire alarm,” Jamila Tai replied. “They’re positively pathological about reminding you to check the batteries—I never broke the habit. Leila, if you would like some toast, I’d be happy to make you some.”

  Leila glanced at Samir. His permanently cocked eyebrow lifted slightly, and he nodded.

  “Yes,” she said slowly, sinking into a chair. “Thank you so much.”

  “I’m going back to bed,” Rabeea announced. Nobody tried to stop her.

  Wali climbed into the chair beside hers. “Halvah poori!” As usual, everyone ignored him as they bustled around. Babar Taya began measuring coffee and Jamila Tai asked if anyone else was in the mood for roti. Then she shouted for Chirragh, who limped in wearing his signature glare.

  Silently, Samir placed a glass of orange juice in front of Leila. She looked up at him, and he smiled gently. The damp book sat in her lap, and Samir glanced down at it. He didn’t mention it.

  You couldn’t see the damage that the fire had caused, but it was there.

  The sentence was burned into Leila’s mind. She tightened her grip on the book.

  It had only just dawned on her to wonder what the book might want from her.

  After lunch, Jamila Tai had asked Leila if she wanted to buy any trinkets—that’s how she put it, “trinkets”—for friends or family while she was visiting Pakistan. Nadia had asked for purple khusas, size 5, and Leila wanted some bangles for Ta’Mara, so she said yes. Rabeea announced that she wanted to get some kohl for her eyes, and Wali liked any excuse to leave the house, so he asked if he could come along.

  So they all piled into the car, and Asif, the driver, pulled into traffic. “I can’t find my seat belt,” Leila said, wondering if Rabeea was sitting on it. They were squashed into the backseat with Jamila Tai.

  “Oh, I don’t think we have them in this car,” Jamila Tai said vaguely.

  Wali was in the front passenger seat, playing with the radio and bouncing happily.

  Leila’s parents were heavily into seat belts and life vests and bike helmets. Most of that stuff was required by law, anyway. But Leila had noticed that people in Pakistan didn’t seem as . . . safety conscious . . . as Americans. She was noticing it now, as Asif’s driving technique seemed to be to head straight for all oncoming cars at top speed until the last moment, and then swerve aside while honking furiously. Nobody else seemed to think that this technique needed improvement. Leila shut her eyes and focused on her breathing. It was something her mother liked to do when she was stressed out. When she inhaled, she smelled the smoke that lingered in her hair from that morning’s book disaster. Leila inhaled again, hoping that the book wouldn’t decide to follow her on the shopping trip. For some reason, this relaxation technique was not working.

  They pulled into a parking lot in front of what appeared to be a strip mall. But it wasn’t like an American strip mall; it was crammed with stores, each of which was overflowing with goods. An old man with one hand used his stump to bang on the car window. His black eyes pleaded as he said something in Urdu, the words muffled through the glass window. Leila shrank back a moment as a memory surfaced—she was a little girl, visiting her grandmother in Lahore. A despairing woman held a black-eyed baby up to the car window, and Leila had buried her face in her grandmother’s shawl and burst into tears. For years, Leila had remembered Lahore as a place where she was treated like a princess. She had forgotten what it was like to be out in the city.

  Leila reached for her purse, but Rabeea put her hand on Leila’s wrist. “They will all come over,” Rabeea told her. Her eyes were gentle, but her voice was firm. That was when Leila realized that people were milling around the cars—children selling flowers, old women, crippled, poor, desperate people.

  “Sad.” It was the only word Leila could think of. All other sentences had been squeezed from her—her throat was closed, her chest heaved with the weight of sadness so strong that it felt like fear.

  “You can’t help them all,” Rabeea said. “Besides, a lot of them work for organized crime. The bosses take the money and let the people starve.”

  Leila wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make her feel better, but it didn’t. Instead, she felt as if she had been stabbed—unable to move with the shock. She was starting to wonder if Rabeea’s heart was made of granite.

  Jamila Tai stared straight ahead as Wali pointed to a vendor who stood with an enormous bouquet of gaudy balloons.

  Leila looked down at her lap. Breathe in, she told herself. Breathe out.

  Beyond the vendor was the market. Shop after shop—fashionable children’s clothes, glittering jewels, a
bank, a carpet store with vibrant rugs. Asif wove through the parking lot and jerked to a stop. Lightly, he sprang from the driver’s seat and yanked open Leila’s door.

  “Thanks,” Leila told him. “Shukria.”

  “You are welcare.” He enunciated, smiling beneath his black mustache. Asif was a young guy, only in his twenties, and very handsome. Leila had seen him helping out with the kitchen work once or twice. He usually had earphones plugged into his ears, and would chat on the phone while arranging fruit on a platter. She wondered what his life would be like in the United States.

  “Liberty Market,” Jamila Tai announced, as if she were a stewardess. She led Leila to the bangle stall and Wali stood on tiptoe to help her choose. Leila was pretty sure that Ta’Mara’s favorite color was purple, but Wali insisted that turquoise was the nicest, so that’s what Leila chose. Then the jewelry seller—a pockmarked man with large ears and several missing teeth—tried to interest her in some earrings. He held them up to his own ears, as if he were a model. Leila had to mash her lips together to keep herself from giggling. For a moment, she considered getting them for Aimee, but rejected the idea just as quickly. What would be the point? “Just these,” Leila said, gesturing to the turquoise bangles.

  They went to a store that sold CDs and DVDs—all pirated, and offered for a fraction of the price that they would cost in the United States.

  “Pakistan Idol!” Wali cried, pointing to a rack of CDs. “Zamad Baig!”

  “He won the first season,” Rabeea explained. “Wali is his biggest fan.”

  “Nooo,” Wali singsonged. “I wanted the other one to win.”

  “Muhammad Shoaib,” Jamila Tai said. “Samir favored him, too.”

  Rabeea smiled, clearly embarrassed. “It’s my mom’s favorite show.”

  “And yours!” Wali chirped, as Rabeea glared.

  “It’s my mom’s favorite, too,” Leila said. “I mean, American Idol is. I don’t know if she knows about Pakistan Idol.” It seemed funny and strange to see Pakistan Idol written out in the same text used for the show in the United States, just as it was strange to see a Spider-Man balloon for sale beside a man selling mangoes from a donkey cart. For Leila, Pakistan was a jumble of the familiar and unfamiliar, which made every moment seem like a dream.

  Leila bought a copy of the Pakistan Idol CD for her mom. Then Rabeea announced that she wanted to get her eyebrows threaded. Jamila Tai wanted to get her hair blown out and set. “What would you like, Leila?” she asked. “Would you like to have your nails painted?”

  “Oh, no, thank you.” Leila’s friends were into nail polish, but Leila thought it made her fingers feel weird and heavy.

  “I don’t want to go to the beauty parlor!” Wali whined.

  Jamila Tai was about to insist that Leila come, but Leila offered to take Wali to get ice cream, instead. This was met with a response from Wali that was so enthusiastic as to be irresistible.

  “He’ll just drive us crazy if he stays with us, anyway,” Rabeea said, already heading up the steps to the salon.

  Jamila Tai frowned, but in the end, she had to agree. There was an ice-cream place only three doors down from the beauty parlor. She didn’t need to point it out. Wali knew the way.

  As Jamila Tai and Rabeea disappeared behind the frosted glass door, Leila felt happy, and almost triumphant. She was in a foreign country, and she was taking her little cousin for ice cream. This felt very Elizabeth Dear. “What’s your favorite flavor?” she asked Wali.

  “Vanilla!” he said, which made her laugh. “Is vanilla wrong?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Leila told him. “Vanilla’s great. Classic.”

  Ahead of them, a boy walked down the street leading two goats. One was white, except for a long red stripe down his back, and a red marking on his right flank in the shape of a flower. The other was black. Both goats wore garlands of flowers on their horns and around their necks. They were the fanciest goats Leila had ever seen.

  “Wow!” Leila said, reaching for her camera.

  “They are for Eid,” Wali explained as Leila snapped a photo.

  The boy leading the goats looked questioningly at Leila. She gave the boy a thumbs-up.

  He said something to her in Punjabi, so she smiled and said, “Nice goat!” Then she gave him another thumbs-up.

  The boy said something else.

  “He wants to know if you want to see them more closely,” Wali explained. “They are both female.”

  “Oh, sure!” Leila replied, nodding. Another thumbs-up. She had never used this gesture before, but it seemed like the only appropriate response to this particular situation.

  The boy led over the goats, and she took some more photos. The white one tried to nibble the end of her scarf, which made Leila laugh. She scolded her, and petted her neck. “Who’s a good goat?” she asked. “Who’s a sweetie goat? Hm?” The goat butted at her, and she kissed her head. “Oh, I just want to take her home with me!”

  The goatherd looked at Wali, who said something in Punjabi and gestured to Leila. She assumed he had translated what she said as the goatherd showed off the goats, opening their mouths and showing their teeth and everything. Leila could see that he was really proud of his goats. She nodded and smiled and petted them some more.

  “He wants to know which one you like the best,” Wali said.

  “I like them both,” Leila said. “Well, I guess the white one. She has personality.” She patted the white one again. “And I love the henna job.”

  Wali and the goatherd exchanged a few words. Then the goat boy bowed low to Leila, and she gave him another smile. The goatherd said something else in Punjabi.

  “He wants five hundred rupees now,” Wali said.

  “What? What for?”

  “The goat,” Wali explained, as if it was perfectly obvious.

  Leila’s happy feeling dried up. She had heard of beggars like this—who demanded money when someone took their photo. She was about to refuse, but when she looked down, she saw that the boy had no shoes, only thick calluses on dusty feet. She felt a deep sense of shame.

  Maybe I can’t help them all, Leila thought, remembering Rabeea’s words. But I can help this boy with the goats. He’s walking around, hoping people will photograph his fancy goat. That’s insane. I’m probably the only customer he’ll have all day. All week. It wasn’t like Lahore was crawling with tourists.

  Leila dug around in her pocket and pulled out five hundred rupees. She wasn’t really sure how much real money that was. How many dollars. It took a ton of rupees to make one dollar, she knew that much. The goatherd smiled and said shukria.

  “Shukria,” she said back to him, and he smiled again.

  “That’s a great goat!” Wali said in excitement, which made her laugh.

  Well, he had a point. The goat was pretty cute.

  Leila scrolled through the photos of the goat on her camera. They came out really well. There was one where it looked like the goat was smiling, giving her a knowing look. She couldn’t wait to show Ta’Mara. She would think it was hilarious. Which it was.

  Fancy goats.

  Hah!

  Even the goats get dressed up for Eid here, Leila thought, smiling, and was immediately distracted by Wali, who had spotted the man selling Spider-Man balloons. Leila didn’t have time to wonder how soon the Eid holiday was, or what the goats had to do with it.

  Ice cream does not take long to eat, unless you are seven and lapping up tiny licks in order to make the treat last longer. Leila didn’t mind, even though she had finished her ice cream long ago. She was enjoying sitting with Wali, scrolling through her photos, looking at the goat. She was enjoying not being home with that creepy book, and hardly even thinking about it, except for once in a while. But even then, it didn’t seem as scary as it had that morning. In fact, Leila was beginning to believe she had imagined the whole thing. Jet lag can explain a great deal.

  The ice-cream place was clean and bright, and could have been located in
any mall in the United States. Leila felt comfortable there. Well, she felt comfortable until a handsome boy with mischievous hair walked in.

  “Leila!” Zain cried, as if Leila were the very person he had been hoping to see. He wore a cream salwar kameez, and looked thoroughly handsome as he walked over to their table and mussed Wali’s hair.

  “Hey!” Wali griped. He didn’t look up from his ice cream.

  “I should have known I’d find you here,” Zain said as he leaned against the marble table. “It’s the best ice cream in Lahore.”

  Leila smiled, hoping that her skin was aglow from the embarrassment she was feeling. Elizabeth Dear always managed to make blushing seem charming. She wondered if she should ask after Zain’s mother, the way Elizabeth would have, or if that would seem weird.

  “What flavor did you have?” Zain asked her. “My mother always wants coffee. Two pints of coffee, one of chocolate chip. The chocolate chip is for me.”

  With a smile, he stepped up to the counter and placed his order. She watched him as he waited, leaning against the marble counter. By the time Zain’s order arrived, Wali was finished, so he and Leila joined Zain on his way out the door.

  He started toward a white Lexus, then turned to grin at Leila. “Maybe this won’t arrive at its destination,” Zain said, holding up the bag. Leila was about to reply, when a man tugged at Zain’s elbow. The man was very small, only a head taller than Wali, and his face was a web of deep wrinkles spun across dark skin. He wore a pointed cap wrapped with tinsel, and what looked like a filthy orange sheet. He said something to Zain and looked at Leila.

  “What?” Leila said.

  Zain shook him off and replied angrily. But the man continued to stare at Leila from the shade of his thick gray eyebrows. His gaze held her paralyzed, and he said something to her slowly, as if he could make her understand. But she didn’t understand.

  The man reached toward her, but Leila felt unable to duck away. His fingers touched the top of her head.

  Leila finally found her voice. “What’s he doing?”

  “He is a fakir,” Wali explained as Zain pulled out his wallet. “He gives you a blessing.”