The Wish Maker

by Ali Sethi

  “Don!” said Mooji when the results came in. “Cheetah-man!” He had passed all the subjects.

  EQ gave a grudging grunt because he had failed in two subjects and barely passed the other six.

  “Now we have to make you the monitor of the house,” said Saif, working it out uncertainly in the air, and finding to his amazement that it was entirely possible. “That’s it!” he cried. “That’s what we need!”

  It was unrequired and also ultimately transparent, but was provided in the form of a promise, so that it enabled a distinct perception of myself, as a success sensed by others, to come into being.

  Our acquaintances extended beyond the boundaries of the Wilson Academy campus. We functioned now as a group, and were friendly with other groups: we had alliances with boys at Beaconhouse Academy, Aitchison College and Ibn-e-Sina Foundation, and later with a group of boys who patrolled the grounds of the old campus of Punjab University. This last group was our most valued: the boys were known to us through Mooji, whose cousin was studying chemical engineering at the college and was also a member of the IJT, the student wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami. They had been in the news for demanding segregation between boys and girls in the campus canteen, and were known to threaten and beat the students who violated their edicts. We referred to them as Atif Bhai’s boys (Atif Bhai was Mooji’s cousin) and had met them only once, at the venue of a fight we had scheduled to take place outside a popular restaurant, where Atif Bhai and his boys had shown up on motorcycles, wearing shalwar kameezes and carrying chains. They spoke only Urdu, and attacked the other side with unexpected ferocity: two of the boys they attacked were taken to a hospital, and Saif’s father called their parents and gave them money for their silence. Saif stayed at home for the next few days because he was advised to avoid being seen, and I went to his house with my homework and took his assignments to school in the mornings.

  Mooji said, “Don’s in hiding.”

  “Incognito,” said EQ, using a word he had learned recently.

  But Saif was unconcerned; the incident with Atif Bhai’s boys had entered the consciousness of his enemies and had increased his fame.

  On weekends there were parties at Saif’s house. Preparations began in the early evening: it was left to Mooji and EQ to fetch the alcohol, and they always went with the security guards, in whose presence the car was never stopped; the uniforms were recognized by the policemen who stood on street corners at night and waited to confiscate the bottles. Ours came from a man called Bhatti; it was the only name he gave, and he insisted on meeting in unlit residential areas, where he waited with a duffel bag strapped to the back of his motorcycle. He sold imported bottles of whiskey and vodka, though Saif enjoyed wine too and had begun to stock it for the girls who came more and more to his house. But on most nights it was only the boys: they came from all over the city, boys our age and older, and sometimes grown men who possessed the spirit of a prolonged and carefree youth. These gatherings were called sessions: the alcohol was drunk above the music, which was played on a colorful new stereo that sat beside the wooden bar and made turbo swirls of blue and pink that grew and shrank and revived continually on the small black display screen. Good nights culminated in the smoking of hashish, which came from Billy Goodshit, an ambitious and talkative junior at school whose real name was Bilal. The first time he came to Saif’s house he was wearing a baseball cap, and it was snatched and thrown around until we were steeped in the lull of the drug, and had to listen to Billy Goodshit’s made-up monologue in silence, finding whatever observations we were having too arduous to articulate.

  And there were other nights of action only, of loud, fast music and incessant chatter, the confidence of the boys derived from the confidence of the girls who came with them. Two girls were always present and came together. Their names were Uzma and Sparkle. Uzma was Saif’s girlfriend, someone he had met in a popular chat room on the Internet: Saif was an SOP on the channel, a Super Operator, and had passed on his powers to Uzma, whom he had glimpsed only once in the darkened audience of a play at Gaddafi Stadium. He made her an OP, a position below that of the SOP but that came equipped with the power to ban selected users and also to change the topic of the channel. So on that first night Uzma had changed the topic to “Thank You, Mister Blue!!!” (That was Saif’s nickname.) And the next day she had set it to “Sparkle’s in Da House!”—a tribute to the girl who was her companion and best friend from school. They were a duo, Uzma and Sparkle; the first time they came to the house there had been some unease, a sense of expectancy that fed a mounting fear of failure: Uzma and Saif had never met, only chatted on the Internet, and he had gone now in his car to fetch her. (She lived with her aunt in Iqbal Town, in a house that didn’t have an address plaque and was indistinguishable from the other small houses in the area. And she didn’t have a car of her own, and was going in Sparkle’s car to a restaurant, from where Saif was going to pick her up.) We waited in the upstairs wing, EQ and Mooji and I, and were relieved when they entered: Uzma was a lithe, kind girl with a withered beauty, like that of someone much older, and had quickly shown her devotion to Saif, of which he became stoically aware; and Sparkle was loud and frank and friendly, a chubby, chocolaty girl who asked many questions and became quickly scandalized, which was the impression she wished to create on that first night. It later emerged that she knew our history, the things we had done and even some of the things we had said to one another and could no longer recall, things she somehow knew and mentioned in conversations to create the effect of a deep, human knowledge. Toward the end of one of those nights she had taken me aside and made a proposition: there was a girl she knew, a girl called Farwa, she was pretty and came from Multan and lived in the all-girls hostel at Kinnaird College. Sparkle said she wanted me to try out the girl for her. “She’s from Multan,” said Sparkle understandingly, “so she’s a bit reserved. But I think she needs to be opened up. I think you’re the one who has to open her up.” And she was speaking of suitability, of external symmetries she had sensed and now wanted to set in motion.

  Sparkle made the introduction in a group window on the Internet. Then she withdrew for some days, supplying the things I had to say, lubricating things that had led by the end of the week to conversations on the phone. The week after that we went out to a restaurant, and Farwa and I were sitting there and starting to talk when Sparkle appeared—she had coordinated her arrival—and came and sat with us at the secluded table, talking loudly and picking compulsively at our portions, though she herself was on a diet and wasn’t going to place an order. “I’m not eating!” she cried, and placed a hand on her heart, a wound to a pretended pride. “I’m just trying it out, okay?”

  We settled on a weekend. Saif had gone with Uzma to the polo grounds, and had left me with the keys to his house and car. The car now had tinted windows, a security requirement insisted upon by Saif’s father: the view from within was dark, but the view from outside was blocked—no one could see the driving. I drove it to the Kinnaird College hostel and waited in the row of parked cars outside. It had begun to rain, the start of a predicted shower; I switched on the radio and listened to it for some minutes. Then Farwa had appeared, she was sitting beside me in the front of the car, and I drove her to Saif’s house and led her upstairs into the wing. And I returned her to the hostel at night, in the rain that hadn’t stopped all evening, that had continued to gather weight and now hammered frantically; I watched her hurry out in the wetness, and pulled out of that parking lot, the car pushing on against the rain, hot and moist inside and wrapped in noise.

  15

  The sounds came from behind the door, and the wife heard them and awoke. They were tapping on the door; then they broke past it. There were many of them, policemen in uniforms and also in ordinary clothes, and they had rifles and guns with which they beat the editor, who was sitting up in his bed. The editor’s wife asked to see an arrest warrant. One of the officers said he’d show her a death warrant instead.

  T
hey tied her arms and locked her in the bathroom, and they took the editor away.

  It was reported in the newspapers. They were saying he had made a speech in India, an anti-Pakistan speech in which he’d criticized his own country; and the government was saying that it amounted to an act of treason, and could lead to a trial in a military court. Some had even written in to say that he was a spy for the Indian agencies and not really a Muslim.

  “They are saying it,” said Daadi, who had read the columns in the Urdu newspapers. “There must be some truth in what they are saying.”

  My mother said, “That’s what they’ll say when they come for me tomorrow.” It was morning and she was in a hurry; she was going with the editor’s wife to the High Court to file a petition for the editor’s release.

  “God forbid,” said Daadi.

  “You can’t leave it to God,” said my mother.

  “Don’t say such things!”

  “Can’t leave it to anyone.”

  “But why must you go?”

  “I have to.”

  Daadi went into the dressing room, returned with an amulet, hung it around my mother’s neck and said that it would bring bad luck if she took it off before the period of uncertainty had ended.

  Daadi had voted in the last election for the leader of what was then the opposition party. She went with Suri and Hukmi to the voting booths in the FC College grounds, dabbed her thumb in purple ink, pressed it on the voting slip, oversaw the insertion of the slip into the green box and came home and held up the stain on her thumb.

  She was pleased when her man won the election. She wore her large glasses and sat before the TV, and heard his address to the nation, in which he talked about the well-known corruption of the last government, and promised to make improvements, to build roads and give electricity and gas to the villages. He spoke in a halting, roving way, repeating phrases and saying the words in different pitches, until he had landed like an airborne thing on the end of his original point.

  Daadi watched his round, fair face, his large, fair hands, and said with a mixture of surprise and admiration that he looked like a foreigner.

  “The wife is even fairer,” said Suri, who had seen her in a shop.

  “The whole family,” said Hukmi.

  But there were stories about him, and they had led to accusations that were being considered in the Supreme Court.

  Daadi said, “The judges are making a mistake.”

  The Supreme Court building was attacked. A clip from the storming was shown again and again on the news channels: a minister from the present government was leading the mob of agitators toward the big white building in Islamabad. The judges were hearing the case inside.

  Daadi said, “Judges? They are the most corrupt.”

  The president of the country resigned and a new one was appointed.

  Daadi said, “It happens.”

  My mother said the new prime minister was trying to become the king of the country.

  Daadi said it was a misunderstanding that had happened between two people. “It happens all the time,” she said. “People come and people go. Not everything is like your politics.”

  Then, at the start of the summer, it was reported that India had tested a nuclear missile. The footage was shown on the channels, the beige uniforms of the marching Indian soldiers and the slogans of the crowds that cheered for them in the streets.

  Daadi said, “They are coming.”

  My mother said, “There will be sanctions.”

  But Daadi said, “They will come. Allah may help us. But they will come for us now.”

  Pakistan responded to India’s nuclear tests by conducting its own: the footage of the trembling desert, where the tests were conducted, was accompanied by the sound of a distant rumbling. There was dancing in the streets of Lahore. Naseem came home at night from the market and said that the world was ablaze with lights, there were firecrackers and fireworks everywhere, she had heard the firing and seen the men with the Kalashnikovs standing on rooftops.

  Daadi said, “He showed those Indians. Now they will not come, those little black Hindus.”

  Naseem became emotional and said, “Vekho ji, bum da kamal.”

  The government declared a state of emergency. A voice on Radio Pakistan announced in the morning that the right to convene any court, including a High Court or the Supreme Court, had been temporarily suspended.

  My mother laughed and said, “King of this country.”

  He appeared on PTV, sitting at a desk with a portrait of the Founder of the Nation in its golden frame behind him on the wall, and said that the world was trying to punish Pakistan for declaring its independence and was going to subject it to economic sanctions. These were trying times, he said, but Pakistan had always emerged from its trials. He urged his fellow citizens, his brothers and his sisters, to stand with him in this time, to cut down on their daily spending and to pause and to think.

  Hukmi said, “Be a Pakistani and buy the Pakistani,” and it was a formal-sounding version of the slogan that was attached to the back of her car.

  Suri said, “If we don’t, who will?”

  So the air-conditioner settings were altered from high cool to low cool and the number of dishes at lunchtime and dinnertime was reduced from four to three. The use of air-freshener, identified in this time of introspection as an unnecessary expense, was temporarily suspended; and there was no more buying of imported goods.

  At night Naseem sat before the TV on the carpet, the lights in the room switched off, her face flickering in the TV darkness, and watched Pakistani songs, Pakistani ads for Pakistani goods, and cheered on the sports channel for Pakistani teams. Then she switched it off and went away, saying that she wanted to save the electricity for the country.

  “It will not take long,” said Daadi, “for things in our country to improve. Everyone is doing something. Everyone, from top to bottom, is making an effort. Everything will be all right.”

  One day in late summer, a hot, windless day on which the clouds were dark and bulging but gave no rain, Suri and Hukmi came to the house and announced that there was going to be a new way of referring to the prime minister.

  “Ameer-ul-Momineen,” said Hukmi, drawing it out.

  Daadi was impressed. She said, “What does it mean?”

  “It means,” said Suri, “that he will be”—she thought about it—“from now on”—she was thinking—“the ameer”—she was hesitant—“of the”—but she was succeeding—“of the momins. Yes, from momin, the word, comes momineen .” She looked at Hukmi and said, “Is that right?”

  Hukmi closed her eyes and said, “Quite right, quite right.”

  Daadi looked from one daughter to the other. “I see,” she said, “I see.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Suri, and lifted one foot from the floor and brought it up to the table, and settled it there, just to show that she could.

  “Oh, very good,” said Hukmi, who couldn’t have done the same with her own foot.

  Daadi said, “It is a good name.”

  And Suri laughed wildly and said, “It’s not a name! It’s a title!”

  “A title,” said Daadi.

  Suri looked at Hukmi and said, “She thinks it’s a name!”

  And Hukmi glowered and shook her head and said, “Just look at her,” and reached with her hand for the crystal bowl on the table, a bowl that was empty. She looked around the room and said, “Some peanuts, some cashews. There must be something.”

  Suri said, “Must be.”

  Daadi raised her head from the pillow on her bed and turned on her side and cried, “Naseem? O Naseem!”

  In the morning the text of the proposed bill appeared in the newspapers. The prime minister wanted to amend the constitution, and the amendment included the clause that mentioned the change in his title:A Bill further to amend the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan:WHEREAS sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone and the authority which He has
delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised through their chosen representatives within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust;

  AND WHEREAS the Objectives Resolution has been made a substantive part of the Constitution;

  AND WHEREAS Islam is the State religion of Pakistan and it is the obligation of the State to enable the Muslims of Pakistan, individually and collectively, to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah;

  AND WHEREAS Islam enjoins the establishment of a social order based on Islamic values, of prescribing what is right and forbidding what is wrong (amr bil ma’roof wa nahi anil munkar);

  AND WHEREAS in order to achieve the aforesaid objective and goal, it is expedient further to amend the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan;

  NOW, THEREFORE, it is hereby enacted as follows . . .

  My mother came into the room for breakfast and Daadi gave her the newspapers.

  “Have you seen this?” said Daadi.

  “Seen what?” said my mother. She had sat down in her chair and was making her tea on the tray.

  “The bill.”

  “What bill?”

  “This one,” said Daadi, and indicated the newspapers. “The one you are holding in your hand.”

  My mother said, “I will look at it.”

  She read the pages and drank her tea.

  Daadi said, “So?”

  “So what?”

  “What does it say?”

  “You have read it. It says what it says.”

  “But what does it mean?”