Read ‘It Might Be He Returns’ by Fatima Taqvi on io9, courtesy of Lightspeed Magazine.<\/b>
\nio9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed\u2019s current issue. This month\u2019s selection is \u201cIt Might Be He Returns\u201d by Fatima Taqvi. Enjoy!It Might Be He Returns
What you need to know about the boy in this story is he is always hungry and the sun is always too hot for him, and he would save the world if he could. This is what he tells himself as he sits opposite the tailor\u2019s shop, looking at the clothes sway in the breeze of the air conditioner within. Fawad would save the world, he would change fate itself. He would give his parents the best of the best. March into any school he wants. Get any kind of education he needs to feel like the person he knows he could be.
The mirror in Master Jee\u2019s shop has always stretched itself up at a tilt behind the counter, framed by the stitched clothes that hang around it. A thin crack smiles across its grime. The fast approaching and departing shapes of Karachi\u2019s blurred traffic reflect on its surface in unsettling bursts. Perhaps it would have been better had it been facing somewhere else. But then none of what was to come would have happened.
The first time Fawad saw the mirror\u2019s true intentions, he was sitting cross-legged against a wall of the shops opposite the tailor\u2019s shop, scratching a map of all he knew into the dirt. He was thinking, always thinking. What to do? Where to go? One of his sandals was about to break, should he spend time looking for a new pair? Pangs of hunger assailed him and the world grew and contracted over the emptiness, shimmering at the edges, radiating unintelligible truths only he felt the impact of.
Opposite the road, the mirror beamed the sun\u2019s reflection back so brilliantly that for the moment that Fawad stopped, his gaze dragged up towards its face where it shone through the glass behind the crouched figure of the tailor over a sewing machine.
Just in time to see the tailor\u2019s reflection peel away from the rest of its flat mirror world and stand up.
Fawad had wobbled where he was sitting, almost passing out. The tailor\u2019s reflection paused for the longest moment, before giving a defeated shrug and sitting down again in faithful imitation of Master Jee as both tailors shook out a length of white cotton.
The next time it happened, he couldn\u2019t breathe, and the last time he almost lost control of his bladder. The reflection had taken to tilting its head, shading its eyes with one hand as it peered out from the shop window. Craning over its doppelganger\u2019s shoulder, face hidden in a flash of light. One arm reaching up. Pointing straight at him.
Needless to say, Fawad was scared out of his mind. At first, at least. Because, really, no matter how strange these happenings are, the mirror belongs to a very large group of things that have nothing to do with him. He is outside, on the streets. It is inside.
When his father died, the inside places all closed themselves to him. People he used to know started sitting too close together, taking up all the space and leaving him none, staring up at him, as if in shock he thought they would yield him a millimeter. When he showed up at school, the Vice Principal held him by the ear and dragged him back out of the school gates. Would there be any payment coming for his fees, she asked. Because if not, it was time he became a man and earned for himself. A man. And schools were for children.
The school gates were bolted twice behind him, once sideways and the other bolt going into the ground, deep into the earth, maybe the aluminum went rattling all the way down into the earth\u2019s core, where no doubt his father sat with all the other dead and deceased swapping stories. The school gates shook for a moment, as if filled with rage. Then stood still and silent as a monument.
The last inside place left was home, and that was swallowed soon after the funeral by the grubby hands of leering, red-eyed uncles, and blockaded by the sharp tongues of aunts who snatched his old model of a cell phone, his school uniform, his small collection of books and toys for their children.
Now all he owns is his name. His name and his hunger, and his last thought every night that if nobody was ready to save the world, he would have loved to if he could.
Fawad.
The yearning in the voice hits him first. The need. Colliding with the emptiness and fullness that coexist inside him, his stupor and aches meet a sensation so strong it creates a pulling, a suction.
And then\u2014
Ignore it. Yes, it\u2019s loud, it blocks everything else out, but is it as loud as the call of styrofoam boxes of hot, greasy food being distributed right now beneath the bridge? Kindly faces waited for him in that great big outside place, a foot away from screaming traffic. If he could feed himself, keep living a bit longer, avoid the gangs so keen to recruit more children with or without their will, he might make it to being a gardener like his father. His father had been successful and well-liked, going around to those large sprawling houses full of shiny things and fed people. He made enough money to send Fawad to school. But remembering all this was a mistake on Fawad\u2019s part, because now he recalled his father\u2019s softness as he\u2019d draw Fawad to him, saying, \u201cYou must not be a gardener when you grow up. Not like me. We will find you scholarships. This is Karachi! There are schools, colleges, tuition centers on every street. You will learn, you will grow up, you will change the world.\u201d
And he is undone, left entirely open to the designs of the mirror who now calls to him again without words.
Not by his name. It snares him now, this unshaped sound. The slow vibration of a mother\u2019s breathing whose chest moves as you lie on it. Until it stops moving altogether, and there is nothing but the shrill tone of something else entirely.
He\u2019s already there without really deciding to do it, feet at the door to Master Jee\u2019s shop, twitching hand on the glass. The mirror reaches inside his head, twisting something essential that connects his heart to his eyes. His soul shudders to the resonance of the summoning.
Inside the shop, immediately blanketed in the silent cold of the air conditioning, the mirror is taller than he recalled. He\u2019s giddy, as if looking down from a great height. What if he looks at the mirror and his reflection is all wrong?
But it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s just as he is. Though the set of his reflection\u2019s jaw has a look about it. Maybe it already knows what will happen next.
Master Jee glances at him, his lips part and his brow furrows, but a flash from the mirror, and Master Jee\u2019s face relaxes. He turns away, humming an old song, from days back when bills weren\u2019t so high and he would imagine a more comfortable old age.
Fawad runs his fingers along the mirror\u2019s surface. He traces the outlines of the grime, but he cannot feel its ridges and bumps as he should. The cloud is beneath the mirror\u2019s smooth surface. Inherent to its substance.
As if he has planned it all along, as if he is a happy dancer at a mehndi, he lifts a foot, twists his body, and steps right through the mirror.
Once, on one of Fawad\u2019s birthdays, his father had bought him a cake like the ones they\u2019d seen lining the shelves in bakeries. A white creamy cake, with triangular chunks of sweet pineapple closing ranks in a circle, usually reserved for the children of fathers on whose chests the expenses of everyday life didn\u2019t weigh so heavy. The sun had done its work and the cream cake was soft. As the mirror now melts around the contours of his body, Fawad thinks of how the knife had fallen through his birthday cake as he\u2019d cut it, like it had waited all its life for the knife to know it. He is a little boy again. It is his birthday, his father smiles, he laughs and jumps on the spot for a slice, and falls through the mirror on the other side.
Darkness. Neither of night, nor of power failure, because he can see perfectly well. Light is not needed\u2014everything here carries its own light within itself, glowing against the void.
He turns. There are clothes on either side of the mirror on this side too. They bulge as if filled by invisible bodies. The ends of the kameezes move as if swaying. The shoulders slump, the necklines loll, all this fills him with terror, and he looks away.
The Other Tailor\u2019s shop is only a glowing facade, marooned in all this darkness. There are walls, but they\u2019re not joined at the top. There is no roof. A door frame but no glass door. The shop rumbles, it is cold, but there is no air conditioner.
I must go, he thinks. What am I doing? Djinn, churail, demons, all the stories he\u2019s ever heard race through his mind. Who else would live here in this sunless land?
In the darkness behind him there\u2019s a sound, and he sees in the spaces between the disconnected walls a large horse made of paper trot away down an unseen road, tattered reins slack at its side. The horse\u2019s eyes are blinkered by decades-old newspapers yellowed by age. It shakes its inky mane as it trots along, and Fawad sees an ad for a nightclub scrunched up over one eye, an announcement from a mosque over the other.
As it disappears Fawad realizes he has no idea what else lurks just beyond. Perhaps the next creature may be something other than a horse.
But when he turns to leave, the clothes don\u2019t look the same. Why hasn\u2019t he tried one on yet, his mind demands to know. These clothes are so alluring, so beautiful, and kept ready for him by some kind hand no doubt. Look at this sherwani, for example. What a prince he\u2019d look. His Vice Principal would hold him as an example to the other students. His uncles would hold the doors of his home open to him again. He could hand out food under bridges instead of being the one taking.
He lifts his own gray kameez over his shoulders.
\u201cStop that.\u201d
The voice comes from beyond, and he sees now it belongs to a person, another human. Master Jee.
Except it isn\u2019t, not at all. He wears the same clothes. The same spotless brown kameez. The same agate ring on his index finger. The same Peshawari chappal on his feet.
But his ring is on his left hand. Not the right. He\u2019s hunched over, absorbed in some work he holds in his hands, and the cap he wears throws a shadow on his face. He\u2019s bent, turned slightly away, and his face is hidden from view. And it\u2019s easy to see he isn\u2019t human at all. He\u2019s too still. He radiates lack.
\u201cGet out of here.\u201d He says, curt as all people belonging to inside spaces are. \u201cYou don\u2019t belong.\u201d
\u201cI was called.\u201d Indignation triumphs over fear, and Fawad peers closer. He sees a glint of something on the Other Tailor\u2019s face. Hard to see.
A cat yowls from a corner, making him jump. It dashes across Fawad\u2019s vision, made up entirely of scrunched up Urdu magazines ripped apart and remade to a feline form, an extract of a forgotten short story legible across its back.
\u201cYou really didn\u2019t call me?\u201d He stirs uneasily. He knows he was called. But now that he\u2019s here, he doubts any of it happened.
\u201cThose meant to be here are here.\u201d The Other Tailor replies. \u201cBut you must go if you are not interested in untangling these threads. For there is a lot to do, and I work to a deadline. And I only warn you away from those,\u201d he waves a hand without looking up in the direction of the clothes, \u201cbecause they have had their fill already. Which is why they look so fine.\u201d
Fawad now sees a sleeve has snaked closer to him. It stops the moment he sees it.
The Other Tailor seats himself on a stool and bends over his work. A tangle of threads sits in front of him. He mutters and picks up this thing and that. A pair of scissors fall from his lap.
Before I leave, I will pass him this one thing, Fawad thinks. It is good to be helpful, father always said. So he passes it and as he does there is a splash of light as the Other Tailor looks up for the briefest of moments.
\u201cI will not pay you.\u201d He says immediately. \u201cDo not expect payment for that action.\u201d
\u201cI was just passing it to you.\u201d
\u201cWe have no agreement. Your work has no recompense.\u201d
\u201cI only meant\u2014\u201d
\u201cContracts are everything here. Promises here matter. You cannot agree to something and renege on it later, as they do in your world.\u201d
Fawad digests this.
\u201cSo you have been there then? In my world? I did see you, you know.\u201d
\u201cI might have stretched my back,\u201d the Other Tailor speaks thoughtfully. \u201cI work so hard. I might have looked out into the other world, to where cities are voiceless and nothing wears its meaning on its sleeve. So are we agreed?\u201d
\u201cAgreed to what?\u201d
\u201cTo our contract. You will assist me. Procure me my items. And I will pay you.\u201d
Something makes him look to see what manner of outfit the Other Tailor is stitching.
The thread is sticky. He thinks of corpses with dead things hanging out of their mouths. Filaments stick out, ragged. It is colorless, translucent. Disgusting. It makes no noise, no rustling. As silent as the moment just before he falls asleep when he can\u2019t remember what his father\u2019s voice sounded like.
\u201cWhat is this? Who is it for?\u201d
\u201cYou can give it to the client yourself,\u201d the Other Tailor\u2019s voice is gentle. \u201cIf you like.\u201d
So soft his voice, like a rotten birthday cake spoiled in a bakery and sold at a discount to a man eager to give his son a special moment, though for days afterwards he\u2019d been racked with fever, his ribs aching from how he\u2019d thrown up, the cream cake gone bad reaching up through his throat, exiting the body it was never meant for.
\u201cDo you go to school?\u201d
Fawad\u2019s mouth twists.
\u201cNo matter,\u201d the Other Tailor says. \u201cWe have schools here. Even on the other side of Karachi, we have schools on every street, and some of our graduates, they\u2019ve changed the world. That can be your payment.\u201d
Forgotten were the styrofoam boxes. The plastic bags of biryani. The kindly faces on the great big outside. One thing gleamed for him, beyond all other wants or desires. There were schools here. And the Other Tailor was guaranteeing him a place.
Should he have investigated first? Seen what manner of places they were? Despite everything, he was his father\u2019s son, and at the promise of book learning he leapt before he looked.
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022
The first item he was sent to find was easy enough, but returning to the mirror with it taught him the ways of this other world.
Rubbish heaps in Karachi are as common as clouds in picture-book skies, and Fawad knows them. They have their own ecosystems. If you study one of them, you know them all. He finds what he\u2019s looking for immediately\u2014scratch cards. Lying crumpled, used, faded by sun, sodden in liquid waste. He picks them up by the handful.
They are grubby. Used up. He does not understand at all.
But then he steps through the mirror to the other side, and the gray flat rectangles burst into hopeful firefly lights, coalescing into silver chiffon, illuminated by sighs and yearnings. The digits on them coil, become black curlicues, embroidered floral arrangements, imitations of wedding flowers that were never picked. In another life Fawad\u2019s father would send him to buy these scratch cards, then they would input them into cell phones for credit to talk to people far away.
The silver chiffon shimmers, and for a moment Fawad thinks of the flare of a skirt lined with this cloudy fabric.
The Other Tailor sighs and takes it. He stabs the cloth with his needle. He has only one word for Fawad now.
\u201cMore.\u201d
A cricket ball turns into a floating sort of emerald and ochre silk. A bridal bracelet studded with jasmine buds turns to thread the color of moonlight and romance. A garland of roses to crimson patches. A broken tile from the city\u2019s biggest shrine to a string of ribboned squares. He sits and picks and unpicks thread from the cloth. He spools the thread that tangles up at his feet. Then out for more.
Discarded syringes stained with blood become white muslin\u2014swaddling cloths smelling of milk.
\u201cThey always do that,\u201d the Other Tailor says. So, he ventures out to wash them. There\u2019s a swamp, a shrine, a river, so he sits at the river, hoping the amused faces beneath the mire of the swamp don\u2019t come closer to investigate him.
A watchman\u2019s discarded sandal turns to smooth leather. A school girl\u2019s uniform dupatta retains its starched form, and he must unravel it, the starched white swiftly dissolving into cobalt ink threads. A butcher\u2019s stained clothes must be unpicked as well to pink rosettes. A khwaja sira at the traffic lights gives up a snippet from the patterned inner cloth of her handbag bemusedly.
\u201cAre you eating?\u201d She asks him. \u201cYou look kangra sa.\u201d
Fawad realizes he hasn\u2019t for a while and goes back to the place under the bridge where they hand out those styrofoam box meals and occasionally fruit juice cartons. He\u2019s rarely hungry anymore. He doesn\u2019t know if it is magic or anticipation.
\u201cMore.\u201d
Somewhere an Imam is getting ready to lead the Friday prayer at the smallest mosque in Karachi, but a cat has fallen asleep on the only kameez he owns. He can\u2019t be late, and he can hardly go to mosque in his prayer cap and his lanky vest, but the cat is weak as she lies belly up on his right sleeve. Her bones poke out, the way his own do from under his hungry frame. He can\u2019t bear to wake her when she looks so at ease. He\u2019s heard her wailing recently, and he thinks she has lost her kittens. Her body is still heavy with milk. She shouldn\u2019t be disturbed any more.
But then if he doesn\u2019t go to the mosque, they\u2019ll choose someone else to do the khutba, and that person will speak of fire and shame instead of wishing for others what you want for yourself. The Imam cuts off the sleeve with scissors, pulls his torn kameez over his head, and rushes away past where Fawad hides in the shadows.
In the other world, the sleeve turns into gold.
\u201cMore.\u201d
Broken arcade lights turn to sequins. Shriveled up almonds in wedding favors become cold rubies.
A teenager stops to wipe the sweat off his face. His motorcycle wobbles, hits a stone and a metal piece breaks off the frame. He doesn\u2019t stop, deliveries must be made on time, so he swerves past a thin boy who picks up the broken metal.
The metal piece turns to silver.
Fawad goes to Clifton. At the seaside he steps between rubbish to collect bluebottles in an empty ice-cream tub. He wonders, crossly, what the mirror image of these coasts are like in the other world, and if they are free from the stench of pollution. The bluebottles sting him, and so his skin wears angry red welts. He tosses them in anger at the Other Tailor in a cloud of sand that all turns, mid-air, to a nude granular fabric with aquamarine crystal work.
\u201cIt\u2019s chaotic\u201d, Fawad says, feeling mean. \u201cIt won\u2019t go together.\u201d
But he doesn\u2019t talk too much anymore. His mind feels uneasy. Something isn\u2019t right in this arrangement. To settle his thoughts, he has walked around to see the schools. The buildings on the horizon move with him. They don\u2019t stay still long enough for him to reach them. He thinks he can hear children talking. He thinks he can hear a bell ringing.
The worst was the gunny bag.
\u201cCan I not just get one from a bag of flour?\u201d He had pleaded. But no. This one. At this location. Behind this many trees, in a deserted area. The streetlamps don\u2019t work here, they have more sense than that. There are spaces where people live and deserve light, and spaces that absorb violence, the haunts of the criminally cruel.
The gunny bag is heavy. He pulls and pleads with the burlap, but it insists on falling out of his hands, each time with an unsettling thud Fawad would sell his soul to unhear. He can\u2019t see clearly but he knows those are maroon stains on it, and he knows where they\u2019re from. The flies and other insects know too, and they scramble as Fawad continues to disturb their feast.
Finally, he manages to empty the contents of the gunny bag out. He delivers the figure out of the bag with his small hands. Folds up the bag. Pauses.
The Other Tailor had no further instructions, and Fawad cannot leave the mutilated form just like that. So he starts to dig a hole, and the ground won\u2019t give, it has seen too much to be soft. Fawad collapses, taking heaving sobs. He runs his hand over the ground and finds grass.
He places the blades of grass at the figure\u2019s mutilated feet. Something gleams there in the shadow, having fallen out of the gunny bag too, along with an empty wallet. He picks it up\u2014a broken blade.
Why does he pocket it? He cannot say. And then he\u2019s running as one vehicle and then another draws up, with a new gunny bag, its contents still alive. He ignores the sounds of crying and pleading, men laughing, and he races away, banging through Master Jee Number One Tailor\u2019s door, stepping through the mirror. He doesn\u2019t even blink when the gunny bag turns into a white, shroud coloured sheet.
The blade sits in his pocket. It is the least magical of all items, and keeps its form when he passes through the mirror. He somehow knew it would.
He tosses the sheet to the Other Tailor.
\u201cUnpick it.\u201d The Other Tailor says without turning.
Fawad doesn\u2019t move. The clothes hanging in the Other Tailor\u2019s shop watch him. Waiting for him to get it.
Perhaps it is pity that moves the Other Tailor. Or impatience.
\u201cLook,\u201d he offers.
Fawad peeks behind the counter.
The chaos of patchwork has disappeared. It is no longer colorless. It is all one outfit, skirts flaring out. It is no longer silent, but rustles a song as the Other Tailor moves it, the chorus in more languages than Fawad knows. It looks warm now and full of life. It is a pleasure to behold.
When it\u2019s worn, all this bedsheet sized fabric will be gathered into bunches around the woman\u2019s waist to fall in the most graceful of ways.
\u201cA gharara,\u201d he says.
The Other Tailor nods. Impossible to know what he\u2019s thinking. His face has always been hidden. Fawad wants to ask him now to show it, but he wonders if the Other Tailor is too shy, or too full of shame. Asking feels too intimate, too presumptuous. Who is he to ask? His anger now feels like a foolish, knobbly thing. And yet he feels to disperse it would mean rejecting something he cannot fully grasp.
The Other Tailor watches him.
\u201cMy mother wore one,\u201d Fawad says for the sake of saying something. \u201cA gharara. At her wedding.\u201d
\u201cAnd her mother wore one on her wedding too. But before her, her mother wore a gharara every single day. And her mother before her too. But when each of them died, they wore a shroud, and we make those here too. Fawad,\u201d the Other Tailor says. \u201cAre you certain?\u201d
\u201cCertain of what?\u201d
But the Other Tailor\u2019s eyes are now affixed behind Fawad.
\u201cShe is coming.\u201d
\u201cWhen?\u201d
\u201cAny day now. It is important that she not be annoyed in any way.\u201d
And he falls to work swiftly, assimilating the new fabric into the whole.
\u201cBe certain,\u201d he murmurs. \u201cBe certain you don\u2019t regret it.\u201d
The sewing machine is clattering though, so maybe Fawad imagined it.
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022
The client climbs out of the sea. Or out of the swamp, out of the river, out of the distant buildings on the horizon, or out of all of these at once. Worst of all, Fawad recognises her, because, after all, he\u2019s known her his entire life. He knows all about her.
Karachi flashes charcoal eyes. Shakes the smell of grilled kebabs out of her hair every morning and washes it with sea water. The hem of her faded skirt is lined with bluebottles. Her feet are bare except for anklets of bougainvillea. Her soles are always sandy.
Fawad tries to speak but his throat doesn\u2019t cooperate, it closes his voice away. Something about children, he\u2019s thinking: Karachi\u2019s arms swing the children round and round, giving them sights and sounds and adrenaline so that their laughter touches the peach fires in the sunset sky. Then at dusk she goes for a walk leaving them behind, ignoring their tears and starving wails as the night gently claims them. She inspects the produce on the market thelas, maybe stopping to look at a secondhand book stall, or to gaze at the locked gates of an art exhibition, wishing she could go inside. Oh, she says. Did you think I\u2019d forgotten the children? The stray cats, the scab-ridden dogs, the overburdened donkeys? The baby girls left on rubbish heaps? The monkeys and flamingoes who escape their handlers, every cell of their being in search of habitats long since wiped out? Look here, she beckons, and you see them all sleeping safe inside the knots at the ends of her dupatta slung around her neck.
And the whimpering of the strays and the tearful voices of the children fade away as Karachi tires out, crawling inside a horse\u2019s corpse left to rot outside a leather factory. She puts a trembling finger in her mouth and then passes it over the gunny bags strewn across the city, writing something in an ancient language that was spoken on her shores long before there were any humans. Nobody knows that the men in gunny bags have become children again, sound asleep, wrapped inside the loop of her dupatta, held close in worlds above her bosom.
\u201cBut you don\u2019t,\u201d Fawad says. \u201cYou don\u2019t do any of that.\u201d
\u201cNo,\u201d Karachi replies. \u201cBut it would be nice if I did, wouldn\u2019t it?\u201d
She is here for herself today. Here for something that will be the perfect thing. She is distractible, her thoughts are like so many rickshas, buses, tankers zooming around, but she also has a malaise, maybe something autoimmune, that brings the traffic to a shrill standstill for hours.
Ah, yes. She remembers now. A whole suit, if he has it. A gharara suit.
\u201cOf course. Have I not been working on it all this time?\u201d The Other Tailor replies, and the words are courteous but his voice has a nervous anger laced within it.
\u201cAnd who is this?\u201d She asks.
\u201cAn apprentice. A helper,\u201d the Other Tailor says. And he brings up an outfit Fawad can barely recognize, though surely he has seen it every day he\u2019s been working.
\u201cI love it,\u201d she says, clasping her hands. \u201cOh, this is beautiful. Better than the last one so many years ago.\u201d
Her face dimples. Her kajal-lined eyes dance as they follow the gleaming embroidery going up and down the skirts.
The Other Tailor says, in a cross sort of relief. \u201cDid I not tell you? And do you listen?\u201d
There is one last step every tailor knows which must be done for the gharara. It is always stitched inside out. But he must wait for her command. This is their ritual.
\u201cNow,\u201d she says.
The Other Tailor reaches into the garment, grabs the inner cloth, and pulls. The cloth flips. The gharara has folds that ripple, their stitches sticking out. The Other Tailor pulls all the folds so they fall on the inside. Right way around, Fawad thinks. That\u2019s how it\u2019s meant to be.
When the Other Tailor withdraws his hand, the world on the right side of the mirror screams.
The shops turn inside out. The rooms flip so their insides come on the outside. The malls, the houses, the offices, each flips so that everyone falls out, like coins from pockets shaken roughly.
And everyone outside falls inside. Gates burst open, the flower peddlers and children selling balloons are pulled in. Bodies fly out of gunny bags. Let us not think on whose turn it is now to fill them.
A pause, a tremor, and then, just like that, life goes on. Not one person remembers. This is how it has always been, they say, as the ministers pick up the rubbish collecting bags and the homeless drive their shiny cars to their new mansions.
The fates have been switched, and nobody is the wiser.
Karachi touches the fabric.
\u201cHow soft,\u201d she murmurs. \u201cHow full of life.\u201d The Other Tailor sits back down, content.
\u201cNo.\u201d
\u201cWhat\u2019s that now?\u201d
Karachi steps towards him, and he realises he has spoken. She tilts his face up. You might think that was mehndi on her palms, but Fawad sees now it is dried blood.
\u201cNothing is without consequence.\u201d Fawad continues, his voice shaking. \u201cWon\u2019t you pay the price? For the garment?\u201d
\u201cI have never paid for it yet. Have I?\u201d She appeals to the Other Tailor. \u201cDon\u2019t be ridiculous. What would that even look like?\u201d
\u201cAnd yet you always take. You took our cricket balls, our shrouds, our scratch cards and the things that live on seasides. You took the school girl\u2019s dupatta without which they will not let her into school, the khwaja sira\u2019s handbag where she keeps her ID documents. You took the maulana\u2019s sleeve, the corpse\u2019s resting places. And made yourself pretty. I ask you, what do you give?\u201d
\u201cConsider that I switch the fates.\u201d Karachi says. \u201cAnd so, in a way, everybody is equally unlucky. It is always somebody\u2019s turn, given a generation or two. Isn\u2019t that very fair of me?\u201d
\u201cNot good enough. So many people are ground down into suffering. Every family has a story of pain. Of hurt. And your dress has taken from representatives of all the city\u2019s inhabitants.\u201d
\u201cVery well,\u201d she says softly. \u201cLet\u2019s say you have the right of it. What shall I grant you? A throne? A crown?\u201d
\u201cGrant your people street lights that do not fade. Roads that do not cave. Electricity that doesn\u2019t fail. Factories that never catch fire. Libraries anyone can join. Water that does not flood.\u201d
\u201cYou ask a lot,\u201d she says calmly. \u201cNone of this is in my gift.\u201d
\u201cIf you don\u2019t know how to do it\u2014\u201d
\u201cI did not say I don\u2019t know how to do it. It\u2019s not what I am for.\u201d
\u201cCome now,\u201d the Other Tailor says to Fawad. \u201cWe did not agree to this. The contract was for an education.\u201d
\u201cYou promised me that. But what has she promised to the people who own the materials? They could have used the silver, the gold, the gemstones. And what has she promised in return to me?\u201d
\u201cThe sea,\u201d she murmurs. She is not a person anymore, Fawad sees. She is ancient, she has fins and an elongated neck and sharp teeth. She bites her own hide, and light pours out, all on the shoreline. The first light on the swamp where the city of lights would come to be. \u201cThe sea is for you, for me, for all of us. One day when the sun is hot enough, we shall drown together.\u201d
Fawad flinches. It\u2019s already happening. Unnatural monsoons have been devastating Karachi. Going on all night long, without stopping. New faces are appearing under the bridges. The dead are welcoming ever increasing numbers in their circle beneath the ground. Hidden hands of powerful people far away have altered the balance of the land through negligence and malice.
\u201cAnd yes,\u201d she feels the fabric again. \u201cI will grant you all that.\u201d
Fawad stares.
\u201cYou said\u2014\u201d
\u201cOh, I won\u2019t do one bit of it. You will.\u201d
\u201cHow?\u201d
\u201cIs it my business to know? When you learn real magic, you can use it for all sorts of things, I imagine. And I need an attendant. So stay here. Learn. There are schools enough if you want to change the world. All the secrets of bending life itself to what it should be, even when the powerful move against you. Even when they consume your city to its dregs. And when you\u2019ve learned it all, let\u2019s see what you want to do with it. Maybe, someday, you can become the city.\u201d
\u201cIt is not that simply done,\u201d the Other Tailor says.
\u201cOf course it isn\u2019t. You will first go back.\u201d She turns Fawad away from her by the shoulders. \u201cUntil the full moon sits in your sky again. See how you like life with the fates flipped. Will you return? That is the crucial bit. Once they taste privilege, few ever desire change.\u201d
\u201cHas this happened before? Have there been\u2014\u201d
\u201cSchool tomorrow! Your driver will take you. Your lunch will be packed. Your parents are still dead, but your house is yours, you have money and people who help you. When you sleep at night, you might think you will do something for those sad faces who tap on the window of your car and ask for money. But you will wake up the next day, and your bed will be soft, and the air conditioner just right, and so you won\u2019t. Have I not seen this many, many times?\u201d
She laughs, and Fawad can hear the rain hammering on the right side of the mirror. Perhaps there is water in Master Jee\u2019s shop on the other side. She laughs again, but the Other Tailor, he raises his face to Fawad, and Fawad sees himself in his glass face. He feels the Other Tailor is trying to say something.
\u201cYou don\u2019t think I will return? I will be back,\u201d Fawad says, voice trembling from what? Uncertainty? \u201cAt the next full moon.\u201d
\u201cIt might be he returns,\u201d the Other Tailor says. He slips something to Fawad. Something sharp.
Karachi shrugs, and turns away.
When Fawad steps back out of the mirror into an amnesiac world newly remade, he is filled with an overwhelming panic. It is silent on the other side. The rain has stopped. There is a power failure, so the shop is dark, and nobody has started the generator.
He leaves Master Jee\u2019s shop, and spots another boy sitting cross- legged opposite the shop. His heart sinks to see him\u2014but oh, the relief when he realizes it need never be him again.
He sees a car pull up, and his memories are rearranging themselves, so he recognises it as his own. He backs away, inside the shop again.
It will unmake him, he thinks. The amnesia. He can feel the lure of thinking that it wasn\u2019t just luck that rescued him. It was himself, the trap his new life has laid for him whispers. It is his cleverness that got him off the street. He deserves this life.
Something pricks his hand.
He looks at what the Other Tailor had given him.
It is the broken blade he\u2019d brought back with the gunny bag. He must have dropped this somewhere, and now the Other Tailor had given it to him back.
So it did happen, he tells himself, walking to the door. All of it happened. He mustn\u2019t forget. He places it with care in his pocket.
One hand on the door handle about to step out, and he\u2019s scared. There\u2019s so much to do. Who will help him?
He turns back to see the mirror.
All he sees is his reflection.About the Author
Fatima Taqvi is a short story writer of horror and fantasy hailing from Karachi, Pakistan, and currently living in London. She has work appearing in Strange Horizons, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, The Dark, and other places. She can be contacted on her website fatimataqvi.com.
Please visit Lightspeed Magazine to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the August 2025 issue, which also features short fiction by David Anaxagoras, Osahon Ize-Iyamu, Adam-Troy Castro, Christopher Rowe, Sarah Langan, Naomi Kanakia, V.M. Ayala, and more. You can wait for this month\u2019s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.<\/p>\n