A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic Read Free Page A

hi, Leila. I see you’ve met Mamoo.”
    Mamoo is the Urdu word for “uncle.” Actually, it’s the Urdu word for “my mother’s brother.” There’s a different word for “my father’s older brother” ( taya ) and “my father’s younger brother” ( chacha ). With a mother, there’s just mamoo.
    This mamoo looked disgusted. “She’s too shy to take a book!”
    Leila squirmed.
    â€œWhat sort of book would you like?” Samir asked.
    â€œI don’t really—”
    â€œWhere’s your father?” Mamoo narrowed his eyes at Samir. “The man spends all of his time ignoring me.”
    â€œHe’s at work, Mamoo,” Samir replied. “It’s Wednesday. He’ll be home at dinnertime.”
    â€œOh, he will, will he?” Mamoo stroked his mustache. Leila thought that he sounded like he didn’t believe it, which—I can tell you—he did not . “I’ll be back at nine o’clock sharp. But don’t tell him I’m coming!” He scowled at Leila.
    â€œ I’m not gonna tell him,” she said.
    â€œHe really isn’t avoiding you, Mamoo,” Samir called down the hallway.
    The old man shook his cane, but didn’t turn back.
    Samir faced Leila. He pushed his rectangular glasses farther up his long nose. One of his thick black eyebrows was permanently arched, which made it look as if he was mocking the world. People often took that eyebrowpersonally. Right now, Samir was looking at Leila’s hair, which made her smooth it self-consciously. “What sort of book were you looking for?”
    â€œI . . . I just . . .” Leila blushed a little under Samir’s gaze. If only she were Elizabeth Dear! Then she would have thought of something witty and charming, yet utterly unassuming, to say. Even Nadia could have spouted some kind of Noteworthy Quotation from a Literary Luminary about the Importance of Story.
    But Leila was stuck being herself, and all she came up with was, “I like all different kinds of books. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular.”
    â€œTake any book you want,” Samir told her.
    Leila’s father was from Pakistan, and she knew one thing for sure about the culture—if someone thought you wanted something, be it a pancake or a bar of gold—they would insist that you take it from them. They would insist forever . Pakistani hospitality is an irresistible force and an immovable object rolled into one. There was really only one way to solve the problem. She grabbed The Exquisite Corpse from the shelf and mumbled thanks.
    They stood in silence for a moment, as perfectly stillas the shelves around them. “Do you like reading?” Samir asked at last.
    â€œOf course. I read all the time.”
    â€œKim’s gun is on display here in Lahore, if you’d like to see it.” Leila’s face was blank, so he added, “ Kim , by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling used to live in Lahore. Have you read it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOh. The Jungle Book ? The Just So Stories ?”
    â€œI know The Jungle Book ,” she said. She didn’t want to admit that she had never heard of Kipling. She’d always thought that Walt Disney wrote the movie.
    â€œThey make us read Kipling in my school, since he lived here and won the Nobel Prize. What was the last book you read?”
    â€œSweeter than Sugar,” Leila said. It was #32 in the Dear Sisters series. “It’s really good,” she added, wondering if she sounded as intelligent as Elizabeth Dear.
    â€œI’m sure it is,” Samir said with that arched eyebrow. “We could go see the gun, if you like.”
    Now, Leila had about as much desire to go see a gun previously owned by Kipling as she had to mop up a hairballmade by her cat, Steve. But Samir’s brown eyes were gleaming, and Leila sensed that this was some famous Pakistani thing she was