The screen went dark. Mae heard, very faintly, a grinding, she heard the sound of wind. Please, wind, please air, please sky, I am of the earth. Help me.
Sezen roared. She stood up and covered her mouth and hopped up and down, beset by hilarity, hope, all manner of feelings, including hatred of the rich:
For, on the screen, Mrs Haseem-ma'am was sitting on her chair, dressed as Sezen had dreamed. Spiky hair, black leather, black jeans, everything black. Mrs Haseem looked down in shame, she tried to look up in pity. She saw herself as too old, too plump, squeezed into jeans, and looking like a drug dealer.
'I use clothes to flatter friends, not to make fun of people,' Sunni said.
Bad Girl Sunni said it, too, an echo on the screen. She stood up with maximum dignity.
Onscreen, the effect was hilarious, for she walked off like a fashion model on a catwalk, as in a video. She looked proud to be Bad Girl Sunni.
Mrs Pin and Mrs Doh grinned, eyes goggling, pleased at her defeat.
Mrs Ali stood up suddenly, straight and fierce, and walked off to join Mrs Haseem. So I know who my friends are, thought Mae.
'Now,' she said, 'for those who are left: Let's go back to looking at this thing.'
In the afternoon, the children came to the Swallow School.
Their clothes were ragged, their stripy T-shirts brown with age and dust. They clutched notebooks to their chests.
'We want to see the games!' they chorused.
Mae remembered Teacher Shen. 'I think we had better look at education,' she said.
She saw a little girl called Dawn wince. 'It's not so bad, Dawn,' said Mae. ' 'Education,' ' Mae told the machine.
And an owl flew onto the screen.
Maybe an owl meant education in America, but in Karzistan owls were birds of death, not of wisdom. This owl wore glasses, which was especially terrifying. The children went silent.
Dawn covered her eyes.
'See? It's a friendly owl,' Mae said. It began to recite all the options. 'It can help you with schoolwork.'
The children stayed silent, but became accepting. They accepted it might be useful to know this, and none of them had opened up the owl before.
'Call me 'Owl,' ' said Mae.
The children giggled, nervously.
'I am old. I am wise. I am friendly. You call on me, and I will help you.'
'Ow-ow-ow-owll-l' wheedled Dawn, twisting in her chair, and they all broke into giggles. It was extremely rude to call an adult 'Owl.' Mae let them laugh.
Mae decided to show them a symphony from Paris. There was more than one of them. A list of choices offered things Mae had never heard of. 'Explain,' she said.
The television spoke. They were names of people who had made music.
'Who is Bay Toh Vang?' she asked.
And the television told them about the man, his life, and a world that was unfamiliar, strange, gone. The world was a big place, and history made it even bigger, showing different worlds at different times. It was like looking down a huge chasm. Mae even felt a bit dizzy.
The children wanted to see the nest of singing Talents called the Pink and Gold Girls instead. Up they came, breasts sparkled with sequins, but with positive messages about learning being 'the Way' for both boys and girls.
Mae found Hindu raga, and Indian musical movies; she showed them Muslim music from the Arab league. Half her audience sat forward, for they yearned with all their hearts for a Muslim world.
She showed them Puccini. A voice explained that opera was about love and action, stabbings and vows and disguises. Mae showed them Collabo from New York, the music from a hundred American minds pouring into one mix. It bounced, jagged, strange, brave, bold, stupid, smart.
The children of Karzistan saw the careless faces of New York and they saw themselves. Dawn leaned forward wide-eyed, the light of the future dancing in her eyes. When they left, they made a sound Mae had not heard before. Thirty children left talking, as loudly and seriously as adults.
When Mae got back home, she found that Mr Ken had cooked her a meal. He stood, slim and broad at the same time, wearing an apron and grinning at himself.
'What are you doing? What? What?' she asked.
'I cook for you,' he said, pleased. God, he was beautiful.
'That is my job.' She was chuckling.
'Oh! And you've been working. Sit. Tea is made. Then we eat.'
Mae looked at her good man. Sometimes life was a miracle. Sometimes you found a good man to love you. Sometimes he lived next door. The only foolishness was to expect it.
Mae took off her field hat, and gave Ken Kuei a kiss. Looking at his face, Mae thought: No, true foolishness would be not to know it when you got it – and take it.
'Noodles and pig bowel,' he said, proudly, of his supper.
The size, the beauty, the miracle of the world. Fields of butterflies, thousand-year-old fields, children's faces, drifting clouds of life.
Mae dropped down onto a chair, and took her bowl of tea. Under her arm, she still had Sezen's notebook. Mae opened it again. She saw the immaculate clothes, the lean hard faces, sheet after sheet, one dream after another.
All clean, all hard, getting darker, meaner, and angrier.
Amid all that filth, she dreams of this, with that useless mother, the dirty babies. No wonder she is angry. Angry and hard as nails, and she wants, and she wants. Mae recognized that hunger. It was Info Lust.
The thought came as simply as the bursting of a bubble. Sezen wants me as a mother. How touching do I find that?
I am going to have to do something different, now that Sunni takes half my business. Do I say yes to Sezen, and do these bad-girl best clothes?
The food arrived, borne by beautiful arms, crowned by a beautiful smile.
Bubbling up from inside her came a chuckle. She pulled him to her and kissed his shirt with its slightly rounded belly. 'Where is your mother? Where are your children?'
'Didn't you hear? No, you were gone this morning, working as always. They are all visiting the other grandparents.' He smiled. 'We are truly alone.'
'Oh!' Her voice trailed away in delight.
After supper, in the alley between the houses, Mae stood nude before him.
Kuei poured cold delicious water over her. He soaped her, washing her back. She poured water over him, and washed him. Then, soapy and nude, they made love. She had never even dreamed of doing this with a man. Kuei knelt and with gentle, puppy-dog lapping, kissed her most-secret places. It was animal, doglike. A year before, shame would have overcome her. Instead she felt as though another layer of clothing had been flung free.
Mae held herself even more open for him, and soft, warm, wet, he explored her. And she saw the swollen head of his penis, round and the colour of a peach, and she knelt then, and ate. 'Oh, I am sorry,' he gasped, and the fruit burst in her mouth, and the strongest possible taste of masculinity pumped into her. He pulled her to her feet and most shocking of all, he plunged both of them into a kiss. He poured water over them, cooling, purifying. And it was her turn to crumple in the middle, and she pressed the back of her own hand against herself, as if to quell the trembling. He kissed her cheek, and stepped out to dry himself. She looked down and saw her hand was bloody.
She was menstruating. She poured water over it.
She explained she had not known. She was worried; some men were terrified that menstrual blood would
