The Wish Maker Read Online Free Page A

Within the hour they had formed a pile of possibilities that was then reduced to eight final pieces, two from each of them. They monitored the measurements and oversaw the folding and wrapping. And at the counter their resolve collapsed: they were short of money, this was typical, who was short of money, and why should we give when you haven’t, and from there the accusations flew: I have done so much for this wedding while you have done nothing, well , well, what? Well, we are not responsible. Then who is? Who is?
    The cashier pressed his palms together. Who was the mother of the bride?
    They looked at one another and looked away.
    Hands went into handbags. I’ll pay, no I’ll pay, no let me, no please . . .
    And they left the shop and returned to the house in the car with the gift-wrapped bundles clutched to their laps.

    I had been asked to distribute the invites. It was distressing. I didn’t recognize most of the names and addresses that now appeared in embossed golden script on the envelopes. But weddings, like funerals, required staging to an audience, and the final list of names had come to one hundred and seventy-three. I now had to make perhaps as many trips to unknown houses in the city and was grateful when Isa and Moosa, my cousins, offered their help.
    They had changed. Isa, Suri’s son, had settled into adulthood (he was twenty-three this year) with an airtight, burp-coming chest and a toughened but tolerant look. He wore full-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans, which were fitted along the thighs and bulged provocatively at the back with his wallet. (He had joined one of the new international banks on Main Boulevard.) When we met he posed many quick questions about life in America and then answered them for himself. He asked about housing, rent, taxes, interest rates, and then disregarded my answers and delivered an unprompted omen on the boom. “Too much too soon,” he said in English, shaking his head gloomily, and I heard him repeat it later at night, so that it appeared to have been picked up from one of the new business channels on TV.
    And Moosa had changed too, but not in the same way as Isa, who had come to inhabit his personality with an air of confirmation. Moosa, Hukmi’s son, was twenty-one this year, only two years younger than Isa (and older than me) but somehow elderly already, as though he had learned a humbling lesson that had left him subdued and even grateful; he wore sweatshirts and baseball caps and walked around the house with a slouch. And he hadn’t shaved in weeks, and responded to related inquiries with a smile.
    “Mullah!” I had cried in greeting.
    “Naw, man,” he said, shaking his head in the new disarmed way, “bro’s a hippie now. No more drama, man. No more of that stuff.” It wasn’t clear what he was referring to—he was aggressive once but that was long ago, a thing from childhood.
    “Smoking?” I said.
    Again he shook his head, this time in defeat. “Old habits, man . . .” And again he smiled, incorporating the habit into his new, pleasant take on life.
    Their car was now a red Honda City that Isa had acquired with a loan from the bank. It was a strong, stout car, inexpensive but efficient; Isa gave me a proud external tour of the thing, tapping the shiny bonnet and praising the tough tires that he claimed could handle a mountain. “Get in gear,” he said, soaring his hand like an airplane, “and that’s it. Takeoff.”
    “Frickin’ awesome,” said Moosa, who was standing nearby and nodding.
    I thought of the old Suzuki with its one functional headlight, its dark, furry boot and slackened dashboard. The memory was attached to the faults, things we had then wished away.
    “Solid,” I said, and knocked on the bonnet to confirm it. “Yup. Looks good. Take it for a ride?”
    “Sir,” said Isa obligingly, and held open the shiny door.

    Most of the houses were in Defense,