The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi

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

    It was late at night when my mother’s name was called. The room had almost emptied; the two other women were asleep on their cots. We were escorted out of the room by a policewoman and led back into the SHO’s office, where the editor of my mother’s newspaper was filling out a form. The editor wore a suit and a tie but looked tired and defeated; the SHO sat across from him with his feet up on the desk. His hands were behind his head and his eyes were shut.
    “Thank you,” said the editor, and stood up.
    The SHO opened his eyes.
    The editor was holding out the form.
    The SHO received the form and dropped it under his desk.
    “Thank you very much,” said the editor again.
    The SHO closed his eyes.
    We followed the editor out of the office, down the stairs and into the courtyard, which was empty, the shadows yearning in the moonlight. The recessed cells in the corridors were black. A policeman was asleep in a chair with a long, slim rifle propped vertically between his legs. His head was turned to one side and his mouth was open. There was a movement, the dart of a cat behind a bin, and the tin it toppled was tantalizing until it came to rest. The policeman grunted, sat up. There was a pause. And slumber was restored.

    On the gravel path the footsteps scraped and scraped.
    “Where is your car?” said the editor. He had led us outside the police station and was standing beside his car in the darkness, the road empty and receding.
    My mother said it was parked in a service lane nearby.
    “I’ll drive you there,” said the editor, and jangled his keys.
    “We can walk,” said my mother.
    The shadows separated.
    “Don’t come back to work!” the editor shouted.
    My mother kept walking.

    At home Barkat was waiting. He came outside, squinted into the headlights, his face swollen with sleep, then identified the van and opened the gate.
    The van went in. My mother parked it and said, “Go to your rooms.”
    Someone was standing in the driveway.
    “Go now,” said my mother.
    We went away but stopped in the veranda to listen.
    Daadi said, “I know where you went.” She was standing on the steps outside her room with a tasbih in her hand, working its beads through her fingers. Her head was covered.
    My mother said, “I don’t have to tell you.”
    “No,” said Daadi, and her voice was calm. “You don’t. I already know. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
    From the lawn came the sound of crickets shrieking in the darkness. It rang in the driveway, and bounced off the walls of the house, a rendering in the dark.
    Daadi said, “How dare you?”
    And my mother said, “How dare you talk to me like that?” Her voice was low and quick, her breathing heavy and rushed.
    Daadi said, “I know what you think. You think that you can do what you like. But you can’t. You still live in my house. You live off my money.”
    My mother didn’t speak. The shrieking of crickets went on occupying the silence.
    “I want you to leave,” said Daadi. “I want you to pack your things and get out of my house. There is no room for you here and there never was. I should have known it in the beginning. And I should have sent you back to where you came from.”

4

    Zakia Hussein had come from Karachi, and grew up there with her younger sister in the white-walled surroundings of the Beach Fantasy Hotel. Her father, Papu, was the general manager of the hotel, and her mother, Mabi, was the hostess at the Chinese restaurant with the revolving doors on the sixth floor.
    Hotels did good business in those days. Karachi was a busy port city, a place for entering the rest of the East, and the passengers of vessels and air-liners were likely to dismount and go into the city center: the streets were broad, the buildings variously styled, the churches and halls, built by British administrators, sharply steepled or domed in the Italian way. There were things to do