“I suppose all your generation wants to go off to university in America.”

  “No, England. I want to go to Cambridge,” she said.

  “My old alma mater,” Fehmida Dawood said, as if she didn’t know that was why Zahra had said it. “Get in touch with me when you’re applying and I’ll have a few words with a few people.”

  And then it was done, her moment at the center of the universe over. The conversation returned to the grown-ups, and someone’s teenage daughter appeared and she and Zahra were made to talk to each other—one of those conversations no one wanted to be in, but no one knew how to leave, so it continued endlessly until someone else joined in and made extrication possible. Zahra’s father was in a haze of cigarette-smoking journalists by then, so Zahra stepped away from the wedding guests and onto the walkway by the creek; the lamps at the garden’s edge were reflected in the water as submerged balls of light, and cast enough illumination to make the huddled shapes of the mangrove trees visible on the far bank. She lifted the hem of her sari and tapped her heels on the ground to loosen the soil they’d sunk into.

  “Look who’s transformed since home time this afternoon.”

  Zahra glanced around. “Hammad.”

  “How different things would be if the school uniform was a sari,” he said, looking at her in a way that she knew she shouldn’t like. His jacket was slung over his shoulder, held in place by a finger hooked inside the collar; she found herself thinking the word taut in relation to the torso beneath his slim-fitting black button-down shirt—a word she associated with the pages of books marked in secret code on Maryam’s shelf.

  “Would they?” she said, trying to sound indifferent. That feeling of transformation that had come upon her when she pushed her bra off her shoulder and made a man shudder with desire returned, accentuated—here she was, a grown-up version of Zahra who moved through the world, admired not just by her students and teachers but by women like Fehmida Dawood and boys whose glances had previously flickered past her.

  Hammad laughed, reached out, and grazed the tips of his fingers against the bare skin of her midriff. She quickly stepped away, not wanting anyone else to see. But no one seemed to be looking in their direction. The buffet dinner had been served at the other end of the garden, and guests had very quickly formed a raggedy line along the white-clothed tables, piling seekh kababs and pulao and korma and deep-fried prawns onto their plates. Zahra could feel the warm imprint of his fingers, and a tingling sensation that came from it. She had never been touched like that before, never thought it could happen so easily and with no need for her to do anything other than stand there.

  He stepped forward, closer to the creek. A wooden boat was the only movement on the water, its oars making little sound. A kerosene lamp revealed the rower to be a boy, barely a teenager, smoking a cigarette. Hammad whistled low and the boy rowed closer. “Sutta?” he said, and the boy tossed a packet at him. He caught it deftly and flipped it open. It had a single cigarette and a box of matches inside. “We need to give him something in exchange,” Hammad said. He reached out for Zahra’s wrist—but this time he didn’t touch her skin, only caught hold of the bracelet of jasmine flowers there. As if they were in a PTV drama where physical intimacy was only suggested. He slid the bracelet off her arm, the jasmine cool against her wrist and hands, held it up to his nose for a thrilling moment, and then threw it in the direction of the boat. The boy caught it deftly on the blade of his oar and flicked the oar to send the bracelet into the air and back down onto his outstretched palm. Zahra watched them both, admiring their ease.

  Hammad lit the cigarette, offered her a drag, which she refused, and pulled on it for a long time—transformed from PTV drama hero into a worldly man in one of those ads that played during the commercial breaks of cricket matches.

  “So,” he said. “What does she say about me?”

  “Who?” She heard the sullenness of her voice, wondered if Hammad could hear it too.

  “Come on, don’t tease. She’s your best friend. I know she tells you everything.”

  Zahra shrugged. “Why should I tell you what she tells me?” She was accustomed now to Hammad walking Maryam to and from the gate at either end of the school day, the fact of their occasional calls—“Who knows how he got my number?” Maryam had said unconvincingly—and it was obvious that while Maryam enjoyed the pursuit, she didn’t like him, so Zahra had stopped being bothered by it. How long could a seventeen-year-old boy remain interested in a fourteen-year-old girl who gave him only the dregs of her attention? But now, the musk of his cologne a faint presence that made her want to put her face against his neck to get to the source of it, she couldn’t believe that chaste walks and phone calls were all Maryam wanted from Hammad.

  “What is it about her?” he said. “I mean, there’s the obvious stuff. But something else. She’s so . . . like she could rule the world one day and it wouldn’t even surprise her. Do you think Benazir was like that when she was fourteen?”

  “No,” she said shortly.

  “Put in a good word for me, will you? Or tell me how to move things beyond Ocean Video dates. You’re the only person she listens to.”

  Now Zahra understood why Maryam had refused Zahra’s offer to take her to Crystal Palace and introduce her to the videowallah who’d give her the newest movies in the best prints.

  “Unless . . .” Hammad said, drawing the word out slowly.

  “Unless what?”

  He smiled, and it went all the way through her, making her legs feel unsteady. “Want to walk?” he said, flicking his cigarette in the direction away from the lights and the wedding guests. His hand reached out and stroked her bare skin again, and everything in her brain stopped except the word Yes.

  But from her heart came another word. Maryam. She stepped back, away from the intoxication of his scent, his proximity.

  “You’re not at all nice,” she said, and he smiled that smile again that said, no, he wasn’t, not nice at all. She had to turn away from him quickly then, almost tripping over the hem of her sari as she walked back into the garden toward the world in which she was worthy of standing with the bravest and wisest of people, no taint in her, no dark desires.

  The night after Benazir was sworn in as Prime Minister, Zahra and Maryam arrived at a party in Gizri thrown by Saba’s older brother, the school’s star athlete. Saba had invited a number of her own class fellows, including Zahra and Maryam, but her brother had come up to Maryam in the schoolyard and made it clear that she was on his guest list too and he really hoped she was planning to be there. He barely glanced at Zahra until Maryam said, “I’ll come if Zahra’s coming,” and then he said, “Zahra, be a sport.”

  Maryam’s new driver had driven them to the party. “You know you’re not to wait, yes?” Maryam said as they got out of the car.

  “There’ll be plenty of people here to drop us,” she said to Zahra in explanation, raising her voice over the music coming at them from the dance floor.

  There was no need for Zahra to ask if Maryam had lied and told her parents that Zahra’s father would be picking them up from the party to take them back to Zahra’s, even though she’d told Zahra that her father shouldn’t bother, she’d tell Driver to work late. Zahra had been too pleased when Maryam suggested a sleepover to wonder about her motives. In the car, she had been strangely distracted. Zahra had taken the moment alone together to finally tell her about the Brigadier’s visit—it seemed safe at last to assume the military was out of power—and all Maryam had said was, Lucky timing, and made an exploding sound, as if Habib Ali’s act of conscience weren’t something she’d even registered. Now Zahra watched with silent disapproval as Maryam pulled off her oversized turquoise blouse and placed it in a polythene bag that was stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans. Beneath the shirt she was wearing a white tank top, clearly inspired by Whitney Houston on the cover of her Whitney album. She placed the polythene bag behind a row of flowerpots, ran her fingers through hair that had acquired a feathery fringe and bounce in a salon earlier that day, and said, “Come on,” without looking at Zahra, who had been feeling stylish in her unbuttoned denim shirt with rolled-up sleeves over a striped shirt but was now conscious that her red pumps were scuffed at the toe and her legs were too long for her acid-washed jeans.

  A group of A-level students called out to Maryam, but when Zahra kept on walking toward the table at the far end of the garden with its steel basin of iced drinks, Maryam followed her. They stood side by side, unspeaking, sipping Pakola from bottles through plastic straws that collapsed in on themselves if you sucked up the liquid with too much vigor. Night-blooming flowers filled the air with heavy perfume. The trees were strung with fairy lights, and the veranda had been transformed into a dance floor where an invisible demarcation line separated the Class 10 students from the A-level ones. There was a chill in the air that made Maryam’s tank top even more infuriating. Hammad approached, all leather jacket and gelled hair and that cologne again.

  “Dance,” he said, without acknowledging Zahra, and, taking hold of Maryam’s hand as if that were the most natural thing in the world, led her onto the dance floor, where she walked past her classmates without looking at them.

  Zahra stood alone in the garden. She couldn’t join her classmates while they were all watching Maryam and whispering to each other, and it would be desperate to attempt to interpose herself into any of the groups of older students. But worse to spend the evening standing here by herself while Maryam danced closer than she should to Hammad. The cold was beginning to raise goose bumps on her skin and she wondered if it would be fatally uncool to roll down her sleeves.

  Surely the world shouldn’t still be this? Benazir was Prime Minister; she had taken the oath of office in a bright green shalwar with white dupatta, the colors of the Pakistan flag, and made the men around her look like pygmies. Military men and bureaucrats, the old guard, and now here they were: administering the oath of office to her, saluting her. Military officers saluting Benazir. You could cry remembering it, and perhaps no matter how long you lived on this earth you would always cry remembering it. They’d hanged her father, put her in prison, cast her into exile. And now they saluted her, this woman of only thirty-five, because millions upon millions of people went to the ballot box and said they must. Zahra brushed her hand across her eyes. What did all this matter—the school cliques, Maryam’s awfulness, Hammad’s inattentiveness, the scuffed toes of her shoes? Why should any of this matter when the world was transformed?

  “How does it feel to become unglued?” Babar was walking straight across the garden to her. His blue button-down shirt had a rough patch near his heart where he’d unstitched the fashion label’s logo from it. Boys who went abroad and bought expensive shirts could unabashedly also wear the knockoffs sold locally, but if you wore the imitation without being able to afford the real thing you looked like a wannabe, he’d explained to her some weeks earlier when she asked about the red marks on his finger where he’d clumsily pricked it with the needle. She had been both attracted and repulsed by the way he told her this, as if confirming a shared understanding about both their lives.

  “Maryam and I aren’t glued,” she said. “I thought you said you weren’t coming.”

  “I wasn’t, but then you said you were.”

  She saw his hopeful smile, the way his shoulders filled his shirt, the perfect straight line of his nose. So much more handsome than Hammad, she thought, and tried to make that matter. Sipping on her Pakola, she looked across to the dance floor; Maryam and Hammad had disappeared somewhere in the mass of bodies, but she caught Saba’s furious stare.

  “Go dance with everyone,” she said to Babar.

  “You’ll have to come with me or I’ll go on standing here making you feel awkward.”

  He made it easy to join their classmates, who had stopped their whispering even though they clearly remained aware of Maryam and Hammad. Saba was so glad to have Babar dancing in the same mass of bodies as her that her smile reached out to envelop everyone, even Zahra. Soon everything disappeared except the beat of the music, thudding within Zahra’s heart, and the occasional not-accidental brush of Babar’s arm against hers. She closed her eyes as she danced. It wasn’t Babar’s arm, it was someone else, unknown. The familiar stirring inside. They danced and danced. Maryam left the floor and sat down on Hammad’s lap in one of the plastic chairs in the garden, his jacket draped over her shoulders. Saba gave Zahra a look that said she should drag her best friend away from this scandal that would follow her into the schoolyard tomorrow. But Zahra just closed her eyes, let the music move her body and obliterate everything else.

  People moved on and off the dance floor. Babar asked Zahra if she wanted to go and get something cold to drink but she said no, so he stayed. Saba’s brother started to dance behind Zahra—his wooden movements more than offset by the glory of his athlete’s physique—and three times she leaned back and her shoulder touched his bicep. The third time he apologized and moved away. The music changed to “Fast Car” and everyone who wasn’t part of a couple made a sound of protest. The dance floor half emptied, but Saba stayed where she was, dancing slower now next to Babar, who danced slower next to Zahra. Hammad and Maryam came back onto the floor; Hammad had his arms around Maryam’s waist and she clasped his back, their bodies swaying together. Tracy Chapman’s voice pierced Zahra, cut open her heart and showed her how much longing was in there. Babar moved nearer and she closed her eyes again. An arm touching her arm, the back of a hand against the back of her hand, fingers on the verge of entwining with her fingers. Saba caught her by the elbow, pretend-friendly, and pulled her close, arm around Zahra’s shoulders so they could move together in time to the music, facing Babar, who looked crushed but gamely danced on. Zahra turned her face to the garden so she wouldn’t have to see any of the slow-dancing couples—it wasn’t just Hammad and Maryam, every boy holding a girl around her waist made her feel the same. Beneath the frangipani tree a group of boys stood together, a flash of silver that was a hip flask adding something to their bottles of Coke. Everyone wanted something more than school rules allowed, it wasn’t just her. It was the slow-dancing couples, the hip-flask boys, it was Saba, it was Babar, everyone, all of them, why did they have to be so constrained, made drab in their school uniforms, forced to walk on the right-hand side of the stairway going up at the start of each day, why couldn’t they be allowed to break free, the world was new and different now, how could any of them stay the same?

  “Where’s Maryam going?” Saba said, a loud whisper close to Zahra’s ear.

  There she was, hand in hand with Hammad, walking toward the front gate. Look at me, Zahra willed, and Maryam turned her head and let go of Hammad’s hand. Zahra stepped off the dance floor and Maryam came toward her.

  “You’re having fun so you should stay awhile,” Maryam said, one hand in a pocket, hip jutting out, as if posing for cameras. “I’ll go for a drive with Hammad and then we’ll come back for you.”

  “You get into that car and tomorrow the whole school will say you did it with him.”

  “Fine, then you come with us, Madam Chastity Belt.”

  That was Hammad, who had walked up without Zahra noticing. Maryam’s mouth opened in surprise.

  “Come on,” he said. “Whoever’s coming, come on. We’re leaving.” He turned and strode across the grass. Maryam set off after.

  “My brother’s picking me up soon. We can drop you home, one or both of you.” Babar’s voice was reassuring, but Zahra looked at the dance floor, saw every pair of eyes watching Maryam, and followed her best friend out.

  Hammad continued striding out of the gate and down the street past the row of parked cars and the group of drivers perched on the edges of a long flower bed, smoking and huddling together for warmth. Some of the drivers looked up at Maryam and Zahra before looking away again, and Maryam glanced back toward the house—she’d just remembered, as had Zahra, the polythene bag with the turquoise shirt. Farther down the street, a car’s headlights flashed on and off. Hammad raised his hand and quickened his pace.

  “Why is his driver parked so far away?” Zahra said. Maryam shook her head, really properly looking at Zahra for the first time that evening.

  It felt strange to be standing out here, on the street, at night. She wasn’t cold anymore, not after the dancing, but it felt right to roll down her sleeves, button them at the wrist. On the other side of the gate there was a world of light and music where girls and boys could dance together and everything was familiar, from the music to the partygoers to Saba’s house itself, which Zahra and Maryam had known since the age of birthday parties with balloon-animal and performing-monkey entertainment. But the street itself was darkness and shadows, a feeling of exposure heightened by the breeze that had got inside her shirt, against her skin. All at once she understood that the world beyond school rules was here, on the wrong side of the gate. She felt drugged or drunk, though she’d never been either, wishing she could move the cup of her bra away from her body so the breeze could get in there and play.

  “Let’s go back inside,” Maryam said.

  Back to closing your eyes and imagining that someone other than Babar wanted to dance with you, back to Maryam sitting on Hammad’s lap, back to waiting for something exciting to arrive.

  “Don’t you want to wait to tell Hammad?”

  He’d got into the car, which was now coming toward them. It was a white Suzuki FX, with tinted windows. Hammad stepped out and said, “Ladies, your chariot awaits.”

  He smiled at Maryam, and Zahra felt, as she had by the creek, the power of being the person his attention fell on. Babar was just a boy, but in Hammad’s smile, in the strength of his wrist as he extended his hand toward Maryam, there was something else—something heady that made Zahra tingle. She touched her hand to that place on her torso that his fingers had brushed. Maryam said, “We’re not coming. Come on, Zahra.” Zahra pretended to take something out of her shoe, to give Hammad a moment to try to change Maryam’s mind.