The Wish Maker (12 page)

“Oh no,” said the lawyer, and put up a palm of unventuring good sense.

“Not with them.
Bhai
, they are diehards. What they have seen and suffered you and I can’t even begin to imagine.”

This led to sighs of astonishment. Someone lit a cigarette and was requested to pass around the lighter. Bags and briefcases were opening now, and scrolls and banners were emerging. The writing on the cloth was in English and Urdu, the letters painted in black and shaded with red and green dimensions. The woman who was instructing the jiyalas came by and spoke to the lawyer. “Is this any way?” she was saying. “Do they think they can end it all just like that? Who will let them? Will we let them?” Her knuckles were pressed into the flesh on her hips and her tone was loudly belligerent.

More people were arriving. They were dressed like us and spoke in a mixture of Urdu and English, the men commending the women for coming and the women pointing repeatedly across the footpath to the jiyalas, who were still waving their flags and posters at the traffic on the main road.

“This way!” cried the jiyalan. The crowd followed her across the footpath. She began to march and waved at a small, smiling boy, who stopped smiling at once, contorted his features, plunged a fist into the air and shouted, “Ya Allah! Ya Rasul!”

And the jiyalan pressed her palms into her ears and cried, “Benazir Beqasur!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The jiyalas waved their flags and shouted. And their followers shouted behind them: “
Pakistan ki Zanjeer! Benazir Benazir!
”

On the main road the traffic continued. The lights of cars and shops had come alive in the gloom, and the street lamps flickered and then came on all at once. The roads, just blue, were revealed in electric colors, in black, yellow, red and white. The shopkeepers came out and stood on their steps to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Policemen and policewomen were now moving silently ahead of the procession, escorting it past the shops, then across the street to where the cinema billboard was, and down to the steps of the Provincial Assembly building. There the procession came to a halt: the jiyalas stood on the steps of the building and shouted some more slogans, and the jiyalan went down to the last step and gave a violent ultimatum to the president, who wasn’t there and couldn’t respond, and then named and thanked various other people who had worked for the Benazir government and had extended their support in different ways to the jiyalan and her neighbors, who were here today to represent the residents of Bhaati Gate. The jiyalan made these announcements and was joined on the last step by the jiyalas, who had folded their flags and were ready to leave and now departed, leaving their inspired followers, the men in suits and ties and the women with the Urdu and English banners, to stand on the broad steps of the building with their statements stretched visibly in the borrowed glow of the night.

A man went down the steps, turned around, stood facing the men and women who remained and waved his hands and arms in a downward direction.

The bodies sank. The voices settled into a hum and then into silence.

The man raised a loudspeaker to his mouth and said, “Brothers and sisters . . .”

The loudspeaker shrieked. He held it away and looked inquiringly into its wide, circular mouth. He was a tall, thin man with hunched shoulders, a man who wore his forty-odd years like a dying youth.

“My friends,” he said.

The loudspeaker didn’t shriek.

“First of all I would like to thank you.

“For coming here tonight.

“And for showing your support.”

His voice was low and dim.

“For a leader we have elected.

“And a leader we will
not
see.

“Dismissed.

“By this puppet president.

“And this interfering army.”

There was applause from the seated audience. The police were standing near the doors of the building and gave no sign of stimulation.

The man was strengthened and said, “We have come here to say that we will
not
be intimidated,” and at once the applause returned.

From the road a passing car beeped encouragement.

The speaker smiled at the car and raised his loudspeaker like a mug of beer and said, “Thank you, thank you!”

A boy stuck his head out of the front window and cried, “Long life to you, my friend!”

The speaker nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“Long life!”

“And to you!”

The speaker was amused.

The speaker was nodding.

“O Mister Gentle Man!”

“That’s enough,” said the speaker.

“O egghead!”

“That’s enough!”

“Your mama loves it!”

“You have no shame?”

The speaker was enraged. But the car, having roused his rage, had gone. And he was left with the loudspeaker still in his hand, the audience waiting for him to resume, the night vast and indifferent and surrounding.

He raised the loudspeaker to his mouth and began to speak with delayed passion: he spoke of the week’s various connected occurrences and exposed them as part of an old conspiracy; and from there he went into the past, to the birth of the nation and beyond into the War of Independence. The seated audience was listening. The policemen and policewomen were standing on the steps and listening. But the speaker was sinking further and further into the past, and its depths were growing, and he had now lost control of the sequence and was repeating his words. A murmur caught and grew among the listeners. A few policemen came down the steps and stood with their batons. But the speaker was still speaking, and was trying now to revive the slogans, whose vitality gave no sign of returning. A policeman went up to him and touched him on the shoulder. But the speaker was trapped in his passion and spat at the recoiling policeman, who touched the spittle on his cheek, smelled it, rubbed it on his thigh, then swung his baton and struck the speaker’s back, his arms, his hands, and struck them until the loudspeaker had dropped and the people in the audience were running up and down the steps. There were screams. Two police vans had pulled up to the building and were opening.

My mother came down the steps and was grabbed by waiting policewomen.

“My children!” she cried.

They tugged at her clothes and at her hair, and held her down.

“Where are my children!”

“Inside,” said the overseeing policewoman, who was waiting inside the women’s van.

At the police station we were made to form a queue that led into the office of the SHO, a large man who sat under a framed portrait of the Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of the nation, and spoke from under a short mustache in a steady, unhurried tone: he asked the men for their names and occupations, asked the women for the names and occupations of their husbands, and wrote this information in the carefully partitioned columns of his ledger. Then the registered detainee was led out of the office, which was lit by a single lightbulb hanging tentatively from a long, nibbled wire, and down the corridor into another room, one of two separate rooms for men and women. A door was opened and shut, a bolt clanged, and the SHO went on writing in his ledger.

The light in the office went off.

He shouted.

Feet went down the outside steps, down into the courtyard and then past the gate of the police station, where queries were shouted and more men were sent out to investigate, while upstairs, in the small, hot office, crowded with bodies and breathing, the waiting in the dark became oddly loaded.

Someone coughed.

The SHO, invisible in the dark, said nothing.

A man’s voice was talking.

The SHO slapped his hand on the desk and the voice was silenced.

The silence stayed.

The light returned.

The SHO picked up his pen and began to write inside his ledger. Above him the lightbulb flickered but went on burning. The ceiling fan groaned and caught, and then sped up, and the room was filled with stirring.

On the desk was a mug that said I LOVE MY COUNTRY and a family of pens was trying to escape from it, each leaning hopefully over the rim.

It was my mother’s turn.

The SHO asked for her husband’s name.

She gave her editor’s name.

The SHO smiled and looked up at her face. The corners of his mustache were unaffected by the smile, and his eyes were searching and then disparaging; he tapped his pen on the open page, looked at the women behind her, at the men behind the women, and saw them all at once, the thoughts they had in their heads and the words that were waiting on their tongues, things he knew to be empty and inflated and knew just from the way they stood. His own mind was made up, and he wrote neatly in the ledger: the name, the occupation and the punishment awarded.

“Next,” he said.

My mother was led out of the office and down the corridor toward a large, dim room where the registered women were being sent.

A policewoman stopped us outside.

My mother said, “Why?”

The policewoman said the room was for ladies only.

“He is a child,” said my mother.

The policewoman looked at me, blinked wearily and looked away.

We went inside. The room had only wicker cots that were arranged in rows and gave it the appearance of a ward. Two naked lightbulbs hung from wires and burned, and the only window looked out onto a brick wall. The walls were patching.

My mother sat on a cot with Auntie Nargis, a tall, slim journalist whose son was at school with me.

“So?” said my mother.

Auntie Nargis raised both her eyebrows and attempted to sigh. But the sigh became a laugh that died before it was formed. She said, “I don’t know,” and looked around the room persistingly.

“Sit,” said my mother, and patted a place by her side on the cot. It sent up a puff of dust.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“No, thanks,” said Samar Api.

Women kept coming into the room, and the cots became filled. The hum was loud and echoed from the walls. The women were now speculating about their prospects: someone was saying that it was best to bribe a sympathetic policewoman and find out if the SHO had made any calls. But another woman advised against it, and said that her husband, a business-man, had been alerted and was going to send someone soon. The suggestions were accumulating but there was no way of knowing whether someone would come or not, or whether they were going to serve food in the cell before morning: a woman made a face and said that she was hungry; another criticized her for saying it; an argument began between the two and quickly spread and grew loud and heated in the small, hollow room. After a while it tired itself out: there was still no news. A woman started humming and was joined by two others, a slow, mournful tune that grew into a song. The others lay on their cots and heard the song, and later sang in the same sad style, securing the mood of resignation. Then another sound started: a man was shouting, was crying out repeatedly from somewhere; his cries came at a steady, unrelenting pace and then faded into yelps. An attempt at identifying the voice quickly failed; it was coming from one of the cells downstairs, which were reserved for ordinary criminals, people who came into the police station for things like murder and theft. The women, enclosed by the walls of the better room, listened to the unknown man’s cries in silence, and were soon unable to speak at all, knowing that for them there was just the wait.

The door had opened. A policewoman was calling out a name. The surprised woman stood up and was quietly led out of the room. After some minutes she returned: she had come to fetch her bag; her husband had arrived and she was leaving; the SHO was receiving people in his office and they were all going to be released. The speculation started up again; someone lit a cigarette and was made to pass around the packet, and the growing excitement was physical and a song was started to contain it, an anthem of deliverance with fiery, prophesying lyrics. The women sang it together, and at the end clapped their hands loudly and hooted, and the suddenness of their enthusiasm frightened a gecko and caused it to scurry across the ceiling.

“Samar Api,” I said, and pointed to the retreating lizard.