“Is that what you’re going to say when it’s time for me to take over the company?” Maryam had said, and her father spread his hands in a way that said the situation there was far from ideal. Her grandfather, walking in just then, said, “You’re not a girl, you’re a force of nature,” which was half a compliment, half admonishment for the stupidity of driving where she would be caught, which he hadn’t yet completely forgiven. Her grandfather had little time for democracy, which brought too many variables into play, but he was certain that the people Billoo the Phone Call worked for would be significant in the new democratic setup and it would prove more invaluable than ever to have Billoo on the unofficial payroll.

  When the round-the-clock coverage of election night began, Maryam and Zahra were together in Zahra’s living room, legs drawn up to their chests, gripping each other’s knees. Zahra’s parents were across the landing watching the news with their neighbors, so the two friends had the flat to themselves. They devised an election scorecard with a complicated color-coding scheme; played Snap in the coverage longueurs; sang “Dila Teer Bija” when the first win for the PPP was announced. The night stretched on past the point when cards or ice cream could keep them going, so they took it in turns to fall asleep and wake each other up on the sofa in front of the TV. That way, there was no moment of history that at least one of them didn’t witness. In the early morning, Zahra’s parents came home and said the results were clear and it was time for everyone to sleep. Maryam and Zahra said no, there was something important for which they still needed to stay up. The adults, smiling and indulgent in a way that was new, didn’t argue. At dawn the two girls stepped out onto the balcony to watch the sun rise on a democratic Pakistan that would soon have Benazir as its Prime Minister.

  “How can you think about living anywhere else, Za?” Maryam said. “This is where we belong.”

  The world had new role models now, rendering those of a few months ago irrelevant: Benazir herself, Shabana Noshi, everyone who had faced down tear gas and batons and prison sentences and exile for the sake of a democratic future that Zahra hadn’t believed possible. It was to them that this day truly belonged, the ones who hadn’t given up when the world told them they were fighting a losing battle, when their daughters told them there was nothing to gain from courage. Next time, she promised herself, she would be among their number.

  Maryam knew it wasn’t the new driver’s fault that he wasn’t Abu Bakr, but even so she referred to him only as “Driver” so that her parents and grandfather would know she hadn’t forgiven them for treating as replaceable someone who’d been so loyal to her. No one noticed—all of Khan Leather’s many drivers were simply known as “Driver”—but by the time she realized this she felt awkward about switching to his first name in case he wondered what had brought on this familiarity.

  Driver took her to Khan Leather that Saturday two weeks after the elections when the euphoria had already started to be tempered by questions around the power-sharing deals that would be hammered out and what it might mean for Karachi’s fractured population. In October there’d been blood, retaliatory violence for a massacre in Hyderabad along ethnic lines. Curfew had fallen, the army was called out. Her grandfather told her that democracy would only make this sort of thing worse as political parties formed along ethnic lines tried to assert their street power—she’d been grateful when he said that, because speaking to her about the ways in which the world worked was his way of saying she was being restored to his favor. And that Saturday, a further sign of restoration: when Driver drove through the front gates the guard stopped the car to say her grandfather wanted her to meet someone and asked that she come straight to his office rather than the cricket pitch.

  She walked up the stairs, looking down at her chest more than once, grateful for the item that her mother had left on her bed soon after her grandfather’s white-sari-in-the-rain comment, though she still didn’t know who among her mother’s network had handed down this miracle called a jog-bra. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it allowed her to run and sweat on the cricket pitch without forcing the men to keep their eyes fixed on her face or her feet.

  When she entered the office, broken-nosed Billoo was there. He stood up, placed a hand over his heart, and bowed his head slightly.

  “I was just telling our guest that you’ll be running the company after I’ve gone,” her grandfather said. He’d never said this to anyone other than Maryam herself. She was unprepared for how enormous the public anointment would feel, how it would straighten her spine, push her shoulders back, allow a feeling to settle on her that she couldn’t name but could visualize very clearly—a robe of silk-lined leather, weighty and beautiful. “And he was about to ask me a question about that when you walked in.”

  Billoo spread his hands philosophically. “Girls taking over is the new fashion,” he said, and she knew the question he’d now decided not to ask concerned her father.

  “You’ve met my son,” was all her grandfather said, or needed to say.

  It had never been made clear to Maryam what conversation her grandfather had had with his son about the whole thing—perhaps none. Toff knew, everyone knew, that Maryam would come to work at Khan Leather after university, and when her grandfather died she would be ready to take his place and nothing would change in Toff’s ornamental role. She didn’t much mind about titles. Her father could have one that superseded hers; she had no wish to embarrass him.

  Billoo looked from her grandfather back to her and then to her grandfather again. “Is she staying?”

  “We’ll both be here,” her grandfather said, gesturing for some reason at one of the office windows.

  There was no mistaking Billoo’s surprise but he only said, “Should I go now?” and her grandfather said yes.

  When he’d left, her grandfather asked her to sit in the chair Billoo had vacated, the wide expanse of his rosewood desk between them. She sat and quickly stood up again as soon as she felt the warmth of Billoo’s backside on the seat. Her grandfather laughed and stood as well, walking over to the window he’d indicated earlier and asking her to join him.

  “What are we looking at?” she said. The garden her great-grandfather had planted in the months just after Partition was spread below them, sturdy trees that produced fruit and shade intersected by a pathway lined with flowerpots that changed through the seasons. The approach of winter brought with it a paucity of options, so the flowerpots displayed only dark and light pink sadabahar—periwinkles, as her father insisted on calling them, with the same pretentiousness that made him refer to spices by their English names. Even Zahra’s impeccable politeness with regard to Maryam’s parents had cracked the day she heard Toff speak of methi as fenugreek.

  “Did you know someone’s been stealing inventory from the warehouse?” her grandfather said, rubbing his handkerchief on the grimy windowpane even though he must know the accumulation was outside, his office interior buffed to gleaming every morning before he arrived. “Has your father mentioned it?”

  “Someone who works here?”

  He nodded, looking as grave as she’d ever seen him. “We know who it is. So—if you were running the company, what would you do about it?”

  “Not the police,” she said automatically. There’d once been a theft in Saba’s household—an inside job—and her parents had taken the rare step of calling the police. They’d arrested all the servants and some hours later told Saba’s parents they were sure the ayah who’d raised her was innocent because they’d put mice down her shalwar, repeatedly, and though she’d fainted at one point when they revived her and did it again, she still swore she knew nothing about the crime. The ayah had returned to work the next day and no one ever mentioned the arrest or the mice in her presence. Saba had told Maryam all this, a note of scandal entering her voice when she whispered that people of “that class” wore no underwear. Maryam still couldn’t look at the ayah without imagining frantic rodents scrabbling down her thighs, up her thighs, drawn to heat and scent.

  “That’s the correct first step,” he said, his understated praise more meaningful than anything anyone else could say to her.

  “Make him return the inventory or the money he got for it?” she said.

  Her grandfather frowned. “He’ll say the money went to his sister’s dowry or his mother’s medical bill or the cost of a roof that was falling in.”

  “Isn’t it possible that’s true?”

  “The men know they can come to me when there’s a real need. I’ve put children through universities, built back collapsed houses, paid so many medical bills I should have used the money to build a hospital on these grounds instead. We do what we can, and what is right, for those who are our responsibility. Not dowries, though. Uncivilized practice. So, no police, no repayment. What then?”

  She rolled her tongue around the inside of her mouth, thinking. “Fire him?”

  “Well, of course fire him. Is that all? Is that the message you’re sending to the rest of the workers? Steal from us and all you risk is your future employment?”

  “So . . .” There was some kind of commotion downstairs, shouts coming from the direction of the warehouse. “So, you do call the police after all?”

  “They can’t be trusted to respond with proportionality.” The shouts had become a single voice calling out, calling for her grandfather, asking for his forgiveness. He sighed. “It’s not a terrible thing that you can’t bring yourself to think of the correct answer.”

  Billoo strode onto the path, a cricket bat in his hand, its blade propped jauntily on his shoulder. Behind him, Kashif and Lamboo were dragging along a man—thank god, thank god not one of her cricket players—who was on his back, screaming. There was a wet patch on his shalwar, near his groin, expanding in a rivulet down his right leg. A group of workers from the warehouse followed, silent. From the other direction, artisans from the workshop were making their way along the path. Kashif looked up to the window and she stepped back.

  “Do I have to watch this?”

  Her grandfather rested his palm on the top of her head. “No. Go into your father’s office. You won’t hear anything there.”

  She went directly to the bathroom attached to her father’s office and threw up.

  When her grandfather came to find her a few minutes later, she was sitting in the desk chair, doodling cartoon figures—Snoopy, Garfield, the Wizard of Id. The radio was playing Noor Jehan because some sounds had carried from outside. He held out his arms, a rare gesture, and she ran into them.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  His arms tightened around her. “It should never feel all right to see that. I’m glad you didn’t want to watch.”

  When she pulled out of the embrace, he rested his hands on her shoulders. “Billoo knows how to inflict hurt without causing permanent injury. The police wouldn’t be so careful. I don’t want to deprive a family of a breadwinner. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  “You can ask me anything,” he said.

  “Does my father know?”

  “He doesn’t try to stop it, but he doesn’t want to be here when it happens. That’s your father, and most of the world. Justice isn’t gentle, but it is necessary. That’s also why Abu Bakr had to go—it was necessary for you to learn you can’t get away with certain behavior. Do you see that?”

  Again she nodded. He kissed her forehead.

  “I intend for it to be a very long time before you have to take on this kind of responsibility yourself.”

  Maybe the police will be different by then, she almost said, but she knew she would disappoint him with the refusal to look the world in the eye. Instead she said, “I think I’ll skip cricket today.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Why don’t you help me with a design decision I’ve been trying to make? So many people have foreign citizenship now, we need a passport-holder that’ll take two passports. I’ve narrowed it down to my two favorites, and whichever one you choose we’ll have in our spring line.”

  She smiled, though that had felt impossible just a few seconds ago. When she walked with him to his office she could almost hear the rustle and creak of her silk-and-leather robe.

  November drew to a close. On one hand the imminence of Benazir’s inauguration made everything extraordinary, on the other hand nothing about being fourteen was made any easier because of it. Zahra had spent the previous evening walking up and down her living room in a sari, making sure she could manage the grown-up garment without tripping over its hem or looking like a child trying on her mother’s clothes. Her first outing in it was tonight, at a wedding in the palm-lined garden of the Beach Luxury Hotel, to which she was accompanying her father in place of her mother, who had a school function to attend. She was unlikely to run into anyone from school—it was the daughter of one of her father’s newspaper colleagues who was getting married—so even if she did look less assured than she should, there’d be no one to see it who mattered.

  Or so she had thought, walking in beside her father. She’d been so resentful about having to come, she’d forgotten that, although she might think of her father’s colleague as just another gasbag uncle, he was also a journalist who had tested the limits of press censorship through all the years of dictatorship, winning international awards for courage in the process. And so Zahra should have known that the hundreds of wedding guests would include politicians who had spent the years of dictatorship in exile, foreign correspondents who used “uncle” as a source to file reports that said the things no one in Pakistan could say, and human rights champions, including a diminutive lawyer with the heart of a lion and the presence of a Colossus.

  Zahra caught her father by the arm and pointed to Fehmida Dawood. The woman’s laugh carried across the garden, its earthiness reminding Zahra that when she’d once asked her father about his encounters with this embodiment of justice—an ardent cricket fan who used the privileges of fame to sit in the media section during Test matches and gossip about the players—he had unexpectedly replied, “She tells the bawdiest jokes; I can’t possibly repeat them.”

  “You want to meet her?” her father said now, and she nodded, suddenly shy.

  “Come,” he said, setting off past trees wrapped in fairy lights and waiters carrying chilled bottles of Coke and Mirinda toward the guests who were standing about, women talking to women, men talking to men—no one showed much interest in the stage at the far end of the garden, where the bride and groom were posing for an endless succession of photographs with friends and family and people of importance who had to be called up to join them so that they could know their presence here was valued enough to be immortalized in the wedding album.

  As they approached Fehmida Dawood, Zahra wondered how her father would break through the phalanx of admirers, men and women, surrounding her, but to her surprise it was the lawyer who raised her hand and called out to him with a term of affectionate abuse.

  “Another true believer,” she said, as he drew closer. “I hear you hurt General Zia’s feelings in the last days of his life, Habib. The government of Benazir Bhutto should make it a matter of priority to get you a medal. And who have you brought along?”

  Zahra barely had time to take in the glow of being her father’s daughter, a hero’s daughter, before her father lightly pushed her by the shoulder, urging her forward. “This is my daughter, Zahra.”

  “Zahra. How does it feel to be your age and see the world change?”

  Zahra felt she might faint or throw up. But Fehmida Dawood was looking at her, and so was everyone else, as if they really cared what she had to say and weren’t simply being polite for her father’s sake. She was suddenly very aware that her kitten-heeled shoes were uncomfortable, all the weight landing on the balls of her feet, and this was so distracting she couldn’t think of anything but relieving the pain. She shifted her weight; the heels of her shoes stabbed through the grass, unbalancing her, and as she reflexively put out her arms the sari slipped off her shoulder.

  As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Fehmida Dawood took hold of her hand and held on, and with the other hand draped the sari back in place. “I really do want to know how it feels,” the lawyer said, still holding on to her hand.

  “It feels amazing,” Zahra said. She was conscious that she was being touched by greatness and that she must say something that didn’t sound like any other silly teenager. “And it feels like more things are possible in the world than I’d believed.” That came out wrong. She sounded like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland saying, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  But Fehmida Dawood stepped back and smiled at her, a warm full-beamed smile, as if Zahra had summed up everything that was wonderful in the world. “Isn’t that an extraordinary thing to learn? Remember it always. How old are you? Sixteen?”

  “Fourteen,” she said.

  “A sari and an intelligent response at fourteen. My god. What are you going to grow up to be? A journalist like your father?”

  “No. A lawyer like you.”

  “This is news to me,” she heard her father say.