The Wish Maker Read Online Free PDF Page A

into the smoking section. We settled into a sofa by the window, and I saw that our arrival had stopped the advancements of a date: they were sitting in a corner, the boy now looking sourly in our direction, the girl speaking rigidly to the table as though someone had just switched on the lights after promising not to. An abandoned hookah sat between them like undestroyed evidence. They ordered the bill and paid it quickly, and left maintaining a careful physical distance.
    And that was it. There was nothing more to do. There were still no bars or nightclubs in Lahore or in the rest of the country, where alcohol was banned. Isa said it was unnecessary since people went on doing what they had always done. He gave the example of Dubai, where they had achieved some kind of regulation by allowing alcohol only in the clubs; you couldn’t buy a bottle and take it home with you. That system was better because it allowed things in small amounts and saved people from excess in the end.
    “Over here,” he said hopelessly, “everything goes on underground. Everyone does everything.” He meant the people in the society pages, from whose world he was excluded. He went on to list their vices in a burning whisper: “Partiessharties, coke-shoke, anything and everything, E bhenchod, speed and heroin.” He recovered his voice and said, “What the fuck is booze, man? It’s nothing.”
    “Orgies,” said Moosa with a smile of depravity, a guilty smile that suggested complicity of intent if not in the act itself. “Swapping partners. There’s a club in Karachi where you swap your car keys first.” He laughed mordantly, as if at a hard but distant memory of the thing. “And gays. So many gays.” He said it with a sigh of amazement, a yearning for a time when it was still an occasional occurrence and not a pervasive phenomenon, a thing that happened but didn’t yet demand a reckoning by showing up so obviously around him.
    “And bombs?” I asked.
    “And bombs,” said Moosa, who hadn’t thought of it like that. “And bombs.”
    “Basically it’s all changing,” said Isa, whose vision of it had suddenly expanded and gone beyond the horizon; he saw it all at once and it compelled him to bring up his hand and rock it to either side like a raft in water. “It’s all up for grabs,” he said. “It’s all up for grabs.”

    The alcohol still came from bootleggers. And their names were the same: Samuel, Emanuel, Joseph, Ilyas—Christians with purchasing licenses. The imported bottles were sent from the warehouses of embassies in Islamabad, and in Lahore they were always more expensive. One evening we set out in the car to acquire our stock for the wedding. We were following directions delivered by the man, who was gruff and edgy on the phone and spoke only in codes (“the stuff” was ready, he said, five “browns” and five “whites”). The place was in Cantt, which was surprising, since only rich people and retired generals lived in Cantt. We got lost trying to find it. It was late already; the maghrib azaan had sounded and the sun had vanished behind the thick, dark trees of a park. Night would soon descend, and the policemen would surface at the curbs, waiting to stop cars like ours (too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich) so they could search the seats and trunks with flashlights.
    “Dogs,” said Moosa, “bribe-eaters.”
    “No worries,” said Isa, who had tried this sort of thing and succeeded.
    We found it in a dusty lane behind the polo grounds. It was a large gray house guarded by a tall gate of thick blue iron. The owner’s name was inscribed on a white plastic plaque outside. It was not the name of the bootlegger, who went only by Ashfaaq.
    Moosa offered to ring the bell.
    “No,” said Isa, and dialed a number into his mobile phone.
    Moosa began to gallop his fingers on the dashboard.
    “Don’t,” said Isa.
    Moosa didn’t.
    “Ji!” said Isa to the phone, suddenly buoyant. “We are outside. Yes,