Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Talking on Paper.....By Padash!
Hey lovers,
So finally after your encouragement and insistence, I have published my first memoir, aptly titled "Talking on Paper". It is now available on Amazon and Kindle. All author royalities are donated to Sakhi for South Asian Women in New York. A non profit that works to prevent domestic violence.
I look forward to your feedback and please help support!
This would not have happened without all your love and support over the past few years!
h
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Daddy’s Little Girl!!!
A man often finds himself forced to balance two women in his life; his mother and his wife. Both women he loves dearly. One represents promises made in the past, the other, promises made for a future. But when it comes to a third female, he doesn’t take more than a second to declare that it is she he chooses over all the other women in his life. His daughter! One he devotes his entire life to protecting from the cruel world outside! Dedicating his life to shielding her from any sort of physical and emotional hurt. But unfortunately, like all love stories, there comes a time, when he knows there will be another man in her life too. And sometimes, that man would be unable to love her as unconditionally as her father.
Why Yes!
Mustafa and I had been in a terrible relationship for almost four months. A relationship of infidelity, hurt, denial and guilt. Yet the funny thing with being blinded by love is, that though we pass every red flag in our journey, we continue to march forward…hoping….wishing…that maybe….just maybe….tomorrow will bring resolve. Replace anguish to the bliss we read about in novels and watch with bated breath in chick flicks.
It was in search of just this resolve when I ended up back in Mustafa’s New Jersey apartment one weekend. He left me sleepless at night…depressed at his infidelities which I never confronted him on…and angry at myself for being so weak….yet when my father informed me that he was going to be in the States on a business trip and that we should meet in Philly that weekend, I jumped at the opportunity. Mostly excited at the prospect of squeezing an evening with Mustafa in there somewhere.
I arrived in Philadelphia late Friday night and my father and I spent the night at Khala 1’s place talking over chai and Marie biscuits. In between, I would answer Mustafa’s calls and texts assuring him that I would see him the next day. Baba wasn’t too happy about my plans to go visit someone on Saturday evening but I was so blinded by my love that I paid him no mind. I just kept assuring him that I would be back the next morning. That I was only going to see a friend in Jersey that I hadn’t seen in a while.
When Saturday evening rolled around, I walked out of Khala 1’s house, bade my sad father farewell and hopped immediately on the train to New Jersey. By the time I reached the train station, Mustafa was nowhere to be found. A few texts and a couple of missed calls later, he finally informed me that we were all going to go to a club in New York City and since he was picking up his friends, he would be running late.
“Wait…are we going to the club straight from this train station?” I asked slightly confused and disappointed at the same time. I had hoped for a quiet and romantic evening.
“Yes babe…stay put…we will be there!”
An hour and a half after that conversation, I was still sitting in a large yet empty train station which was now inhabited by three souls; myself, an over-friendly African American man and a geriatric janitor. Every move either of us made would echo loudly in the marble walls of that train station. I tried to read a book…I tried to listen to my mp3 player….I walked around and window shopped through caged grills of closed newspaper stands. Mustafa was still nowhere to be found.
“How you doing Mam” Much to my chagrin…the dreaded moment finally arrived when the African American man inched his way closer to my bench to strike up a conversation.
I forced a fake smile and told him I was fine.
“You’s a beautiful somebody…you Spanish? Indian? I love women from your land…beautiful hair…beautiful skin…dag you is pretty as hell.”
“Thank you.”
“You married? You got a man? I can tell you aint feeling me too much!”
He had asked a loaded question and if he only knew that was the wrong question to ask a woman whose heart was breaking at exactly that moment. A question which could result in him watching the object of his lust bawl unattractively, loose her temper at him simply because he belongs to the male gender or just get stuck in a long winded conversation of her sorrows and misery. None of which would result in him getting a little something something like he had hoped to. But the nice girl that I was, I spared him that torture.
“Well all I gotta say is….” He respectfully acknowledged my disinterest and got up to leave “If I was your man….I would never make you wait at a train station by yourself. I would treat you like a queen.”
Ok….ok…yes I know that was a line. And yes I know that he probably has made plenty of girls wait on subway platforms and train stations but at that point his words stung like Dettol on a cement gash. I stared at him with welled up eyes as he walked away. It was one of the first realizations that weekend that I may be chasing after a lost cause. Maybe I was fooling myself and maybe it was time to take the blindfold off.
By 1am, the blindfold was still on. At least by then it was perched perfectly before my eyes but inside a massive dance club in the Big Apple. Mustafa was now by my side with his entourage of 7 other desi boys from Rutgers. Their impeccably shaped sideburns, trimmed goatees, pristinely gelled spikes and black leather coats, made it hard for me to tell any of them apart. Yet they surrounded me as if I was the queen bee of their Mafia and I basked in the adulation. From the corner of my eye, I would see them indicate their approval at my looks to Mustafa. I would even overhear them remark that “his girl was effing hot” and yes it was flattering. Mustafa too felt stroked by all this fawning over his arm candy by his male peers. It’s the little things that make boys happy. Dinky cars, action figures and a trophy on their arm that his boys envy him for.
The night was a blast and by the time we ended up at the Tick Tock Diner, I had forgiven and forgotten Mustafa for the train station fiasco. When we landed back at his place, we undressed, got into his bed and made love. I honestly don’t remember if the sex was good or bad. Funny thing is, as sexual as I am, with Mustafa, it was never about the sex. We could have never made love for the rest of our lives and I would still remain just as deeply in love with him. Funny how this world works.
Still naked and in bed, we shared our customary cigarette afterwards as the sun came up pouring in a radiant light blue into his bedroom through the curtain slits. We were both lost deeply in our own silent thoughts. Smoke escaped our lips and wriggled up towards the ceiling as I wondered why every time we met….I still felt just as confused with no resolution. What were we? Where was this heading to? Did he love me as much as I loved him? I looked at him from the corner of my eye and for the first time he too seemed to be lost in thought. Could he be thinking about the same things right now? Was he wondering where we stood also? Was he actually feeling guilty about his indiscretions?
“What are you thinking about?” I decided to ask him.
After a brief silence which seemed like an eternity, he uttered “I’m thinking about Sakina.”
There was nothing more that I could say. Yet he continued on.
“…I’m thinking…what she would do if she could see us like this right now. What would she think? You know I think of her often….”
“You do?”
“Yeah…I mean I wonder how she is doing. She never spoke to me after our engagement ended and she has a right to. I just hope she is well. I shouldn’t have hurt her.”
I rolled over, mostly because tears had now begun to make their way down my cheeks and I didn’t want him to see them. A part of me couldn’t bear to hear any more but another part of me wanted to know more of this honesty.
“She was my first love after all. You never forget your first love.” He continued.
I thought of asking him if he still loved her but then stopped myself. I wasn’t strong enough to hear the answer. Maybe I already knew. It didn’t matter if he still loved her…one thing was certain, he sure didn’t love me. Squeezing my eyes hard and holding back tears I would emit frequent “hmms” and “uh huhs” and even a “yes” making sure that even for a second he wouldn’t notice that I was stifling tears with my face turned away. That my voice was heavy with hurt.
Somewhere along the way, as he reminisced sweetly and audibly about his one true love Sakina, he fell asleep with his arm resting across my breasts.
Have you ever tried to weep in bed next to a person while trying to hide it? Nothing is more torturous, but that night I managed to succeed. His snores drowning out my whimpers. The room where we lay in bed was now completely bright. At sunrise, it was obvious that what seemed like passion in the dark was the remains of a broken heart in daylight. And then somewhere along the way, I too fell asleep.
I had promised my father that I would be back before noon on Sunday. It was supposed to be our last day before he headed back to Pakistan. But when I finally awoke from my slumber, it was almost 3pm. A Tina Sani ghazal played in the background as Mustafa surfed the internet. I lay there watching him and realized that inside this man was a little boy who didn’t know what he wanted. It may have been me a while ago but not anymore.
“Morning sleepy head….I’m starving…lets go grab brunch.” He greeted me as if last night’s conversation had never taken place.
I nodded and forced a smile.
“I’m going to jump in the shower and get ready. You can go after me!”
As he sang in the shower, I sat on the bed and looked around his room. Narcissistic photographs of himself. Little things that had brought amusement to this little boy and he just had to attain. A shirt that seemed like a good idea at the time, a book he never read but the cover was intriguing, a CD he never listened to but the singer looked hot. At that exact minute, I knew I wanted nothing more than to get out of his place. To get far away from him. I felt suffocated and desperately wanted a fresh start. I had no ill will towards him, I just wanted my old life back.
My cellphone had run out of battery the night before and I had never charged it. As I searched for a charger and opened his bedside drawer, I got my last and final answer. Staring at me was a photograph of Mustafa and Sakina from their engagement many years ago. Their smiles wider than I had ever seen. A photograph that obviously still rested on his bedside table even after all those years. As I sat on the bed, wondering whether to allow my tears to escape, I also heard him turn off the shower. I decided against crying because I didn’t want him to see.
“What’s wrong?” He asked me nonchalantly as he stepped out wrapped in a towel.
“Mustafa….can you please take me home…”
“But I thought….we were going to eat….aren’t we…” he pleaded with his eyes. He knew he could keep playing the game and I would end up staying there another night. But not anymore! My father had travelled thousands of miles to see me. And I had a long journey to make back to Philly. I had to start now.
“I just wanna go home Mustafa…please…” I guess the hurt and plead in my eyes was obvious because he immediately stepped back and acquiesced.
“Sure…get ready…I’ll drop you off at the train station.”
As we got in his car, I ran inside to grab my cell phone while he waited. I pulled out the engagement photograph from the drawer and placed it neatly back on his bedside table where it had always belonged. It was my way of letting him know, that I was finally moving on.
On the way to the train station, he tried to cheer me up with Bollywood songs and repeatedly asking “Do you hate me Padash?” I just smiled and nodded and told him that I didn’t. I honestly didn’t. As soon as he pulled into the train station, my heart was so heavy that I wanted nothing more than to burst into tears. But I had controlled myself so long, I could do it for a few minutes more. A train was already on the platform so I immediately dashed out of his car and yelled back that it was the train I had to catch. There was a large, almost colossal pillar at the entrance of the train station and I ran behind it. As soon as I knew I was veiled from his sight behind the giant pillar, I finally broke down. Right there at that station and hiding behind a pillar with a fist in my mouth, I sobbed quietly with his car only a few feet away. It felt good to finally cry. When my phone rang a few minutes later I knew it was him. I wiped my tears off, cleared my throat and answered.
“Hello.”
“Hey Padash…I see the train is pulling away. Did you manage to get on it?”
“I made it….I’m on the train….thanks so much for everything…”
“Padash…..listen….I…..”
“Hey Mustafa…I have to run…I have to go find a seat, I’ll call you later.”
I hung up and burst into tears again. When I covertly peeked from behind the pillar, I could see him scrolling through his phone. And then I watched him drive away. Once his car was no longer in sight, I sat down on the floor with my back resting on the pillar, weeping to my heart’s content. Passerby’s watched me as if I was a crazy vagabond. But I didn’t care. I had waited too long to cry in peace.
Once I had gotten the pain out of my system, I approached the ticket counter and was informed that the next train to Philly was not going to leave for another two hours. So I waited. With a ticket in my hand, my eyes bloodshot, I sat back at that pillar, listening to “Hands Clean” by Alanis.
I arrived at the 30th street station to a thunderstorm. Cabs were sparse and by then, I was in a completely different frame of mind. Without as much as a bite to eat all day, I walked home drenched in the downpour as I hugged my shoulders to stay warm. Over bridges with traffic and through downtown streets, I had officially reached rock bottom of my breakup.
I arrived at Khala 1’s doorstep completely soaked. It was close to midnight when I turned the key and quietly stepped inside. Everyone had gone to bed. All except my father, who stood at the foyer waiting for me with an expression of hurt and dejection, no different than my own. At first I was startled but then ashamed. As I stood there in the dark with only a splash of light illuminating our painful expressions, we stared deeply into each other’s eyes. No words were spoken nor necessary. He had crossed the ocean and flew over time zones to spend a weekend with his beloved daughter, yet had found himself alone and waiting for her to come home. It was the lowest I had ever felt in my entire life as I pleaded with my eyes for forgiveness.
“Go change out of these wet clothes…” his broken voice trailed “You’ll catch a cold. Put something dry to wear. I’ll fix you a warm cup of chai.”
When I emerged in a pair of dry PJs, he was seated on the couch still in the dark. Two cups of steaming chai were placed in front of him. With trepidation, I joined him and we stared out into empty space with hurt and shame. He asked me where I had been all day. He proceeded to describe how hurt he was. How he had spent his entire day at home waiting for me so he could take me out shopping. How he called me 15 times yet it kept going to voicemail. And then…he started to cry.
As I battled with the realization that I had succumbed to being the worst daughter in the world, with tears in his eyes he looked up at me and asked.
“Was it worth it Padash? That’s all I want to know. Was it someone who loves you as much as we do?”
I shook my head. It was unfortunate but I couldn’t nod. And as my chin trembled I too broke down.
He immediately embraced me and we sat on that couch crying together for the first time. I finally felt safe as he held me and I wondered what was going through his mind. The way he hugged me with his own body trembling, I knew. He had spent his entire life protecting me from every possible pain. Yet this was a pain he could not protect me from. The pain of a heartbreak.
His limo was to arrive at 5 in the morning so we spent the next few hours, talking over cups of tea. He kept insisting that I get some sleep and I kept apologizing for my mistakes. When the limo whisked him away at sunrise, I dove into my bed and bawled myself to slumber. Funny thing was, I had no clue who I was crying over by then. I crawled out of bed 20 minutes before my own cab arrived to take me to the airport. My mp3 player played only “Hands Clean” by Alanis throughout.
Jenny was there to pick me up from the airport. I had lent her my car so she and Julie could go clubbing all weekend. It was good to be home, it was good to see her and weeks later when Jenny and I talked about that moment she mentioned that when she saw me emerge from the airport, I looked like I had weathered a storm or had returned from war bruised and battered. Her only words to me were to ask if I wanted to drive and I shook my head.
As we drove home quietly, she turned to look at me a few times as if she wanted to say something. Yet I sat in the front, my body reclined, staring quietly out the window.
‘You ok?’ Jenny tried to end the uncomfortable silence “Julie is waiting to have dinner with us at the dining hall…she met a guy over the weekend who informed her that he had a parole officer…I swear that girl has the worst luck with men.”
I just smiled. In a way it was good to be home with my new family.
“I guess…I shouldn’t ask you how it went….” Jenny finally broached the subject.
“He doesn’t love me Jenny…”
I am sure Jenny opened her mouth to offer some comforting words but I finished my sentence.
“But I hurt the man who does….”
Jenny pulled over immediately on the side of a highway and held me till I cried for the last time that weekend.
Although he remains in my life through people and family, I never saw Mustafa again. I guess I never gave that relationship another chance. He never asked for one either. As for my father, I did ask for one more chance. And he gave me more than just chances back. Now that’s what I call true love.
To my Daddy’s little girls and Mama’s little boys, we should always remember that the man and the woman who raised us will continue to love us unconditionally no matter how much we hurt them. So I guess in the midst of it all, its never too late to tell them how much we love them back.
Why Yes!
Mustafa and I had been in a terrible relationship for almost four months. A relationship of infidelity, hurt, denial and guilt. Yet the funny thing with being blinded by love is, that though we pass every red flag in our journey, we continue to march forward…hoping….wishing…that maybe….just maybe….tomorrow will bring resolve. Replace anguish to the bliss we read about in novels and watch with bated breath in chick flicks.
It was in search of just this resolve when I ended up back in Mustafa’s New Jersey apartment one weekend. He left me sleepless at night…depressed at his infidelities which I never confronted him on…and angry at myself for being so weak….yet when my father informed me that he was going to be in the States on a business trip and that we should meet in Philly that weekend, I jumped at the opportunity. Mostly excited at the prospect of squeezing an evening with Mustafa in there somewhere.
I arrived in Philadelphia late Friday night and my father and I spent the night at Khala 1’s place talking over chai and Marie biscuits. In between, I would answer Mustafa’s calls and texts assuring him that I would see him the next day. Baba wasn’t too happy about my plans to go visit someone on Saturday evening but I was so blinded by my love that I paid him no mind. I just kept assuring him that I would be back the next morning. That I was only going to see a friend in Jersey that I hadn’t seen in a while.
When Saturday evening rolled around, I walked out of Khala 1’s house, bade my sad father farewell and hopped immediately on the train to New Jersey. By the time I reached the train station, Mustafa was nowhere to be found. A few texts and a couple of missed calls later, he finally informed me that we were all going to go to a club in New York City and since he was picking up his friends, he would be running late.
“Wait…are we going to the club straight from this train station?” I asked slightly confused and disappointed at the same time. I had hoped for a quiet and romantic evening.
“Yes babe…stay put…we will be there!”
An hour and a half after that conversation, I was still sitting in a large yet empty train station which was now inhabited by three souls; myself, an over-friendly African American man and a geriatric janitor. Every move either of us made would echo loudly in the marble walls of that train station. I tried to read a book…I tried to listen to my mp3 player….I walked around and window shopped through caged grills of closed newspaper stands. Mustafa was still nowhere to be found.
“How you doing Mam” Much to my chagrin…the dreaded moment finally arrived when the African American man inched his way closer to my bench to strike up a conversation.
I forced a fake smile and told him I was fine.
“You’s a beautiful somebody…you Spanish? Indian? I love women from your land…beautiful hair…beautiful skin…dag you is pretty as hell.”
“Thank you.”
“You married? You got a man? I can tell you aint feeling me too much!”
He had asked a loaded question and if he only knew that was the wrong question to ask a woman whose heart was breaking at exactly that moment. A question which could result in him watching the object of his lust bawl unattractively, loose her temper at him simply because he belongs to the male gender or just get stuck in a long winded conversation of her sorrows and misery. None of which would result in him getting a little something something like he had hoped to. But the nice girl that I was, I spared him that torture.
“Well all I gotta say is….” He respectfully acknowledged my disinterest and got up to leave “If I was your man….I would never make you wait at a train station by yourself. I would treat you like a queen.”
Ok….ok…yes I know that was a line. And yes I know that he probably has made plenty of girls wait on subway platforms and train stations but at that point his words stung like Dettol on a cement gash. I stared at him with welled up eyes as he walked away. It was one of the first realizations that weekend that I may be chasing after a lost cause. Maybe I was fooling myself and maybe it was time to take the blindfold off.
By 1am, the blindfold was still on. At least by then it was perched perfectly before my eyes but inside a massive dance club in the Big Apple. Mustafa was now by my side with his entourage of 7 other desi boys from Rutgers. Their impeccably shaped sideburns, trimmed goatees, pristinely gelled spikes and black leather coats, made it hard for me to tell any of them apart. Yet they surrounded me as if I was the queen bee of their Mafia and I basked in the adulation. From the corner of my eye, I would see them indicate their approval at my looks to Mustafa. I would even overhear them remark that “his girl was effing hot” and yes it was flattering. Mustafa too felt stroked by all this fawning over his arm candy by his male peers. It’s the little things that make boys happy. Dinky cars, action figures and a trophy on their arm that his boys envy him for.
The night was a blast and by the time we ended up at the Tick Tock Diner, I had forgiven and forgotten Mustafa for the train station fiasco. When we landed back at his place, we undressed, got into his bed and made love. I honestly don’t remember if the sex was good or bad. Funny thing is, as sexual as I am, with Mustafa, it was never about the sex. We could have never made love for the rest of our lives and I would still remain just as deeply in love with him. Funny how this world works.
Still naked and in bed, we shared our customary cigarette afterwards as the sun came up pouring in a radiant light blue into his bedroom through the curtain slits. We were both lost deeply in our own silent thoughts. Smoke escaped our lips and wriggled up towards the ceiling as I wondered why every time we met….I still felt just as confused with no resolution. What were we? Where was this heading to? Did he love me as much as I loved him? I looked at him from the corner of my eye and for the first time he too seemed to be lost in thought. Could he be thinking about the same things right now? Was he wondering where we stood also? Was he actually feeling guilty about his indiscretions?
“What are you thinking about?” I decided to ask him.
After a brief silence which seemed like an eternity, he uttered “I’m thinking about Sakina.”
There was nothing more that I could say. Yet he continued on.
“…I’m thinking…what she would do if she could see us like this right now. What would she think? You know I think of her often….”
“You do?”
“Yeah…I mean I wonder how she is doing. She never spoke to me after our engagement ended and she has a right to. I just hope she is well. I shouldn’t have hurt her.”
I rolled over, mostly because tears had now begun to make their way down my cheeks and I didn’t want him to see them. A part of me couldn’t bear to hear any more but another part of me wanted to know more of this honesty.
“She was my first love after all. You never forget your first love.” He continued.
I thought of asking him if he still loved her but then stopped myself. I wasn’t strong enough to hear the answer. Maybe I already knew. It didn’t matter if he still loved her…one thing was certain, he sure didn’t love me. Squeezing my eyes hard and holding back tears I would emit frequent “hmms” and “uh huhs” and even a “yes” making sure that even for a second he wouldn’t notice that I was stifling tears with my face turned away. That my voice was heavy with hurt.
Somewhere along the way, as he reminisced sweetly and audibly about his one true love Sakina, he fell asleep with his arm resting across my breasts.
Have you ever tried to weep in bed next to a person while trying to hide it? Nothing is more torturous, but that night I managed to succeed. His snores drowning out my whimpers. The room where we lay in bed was now completely bright. At sunrise, it was obvious that what seemed like passion in the dark was the remains of a broken heart in daylight. And then somewhere along the way, I too fell asleep.
I had promised my father that I would be back before noon on Sunday. It was supposed to be our last day before he headed back to Pakistan. But when I finally awoke from my slumber, it was almost 3pm. A Tina Sani ghazal played in the background as Mustafa surfed the internet. I lay there watching him and realized that inside this man was a little boy who didn’t know what he wanted. It may have been me a while ago but not anymore.
“Morning sleepy head….I’m starving…lets go grab brunch.” He greeted me as if last night’s conversation had never taken place.
I nodded and forced a smile.
“I’m going to jump in the shower and get ready. You can go after me!”
As he sang in the shower, I sat on the bed and looked around his room. Narcissistic photographs of himself. Little things that had brought amusement to this little boy and he just had to attain. A shirt that seemed like a good idea at the time, a book he never read but the cover was intriguing, a CD he never listened to but the singer looked hot. At that exact minute, I knew I wanted nothing more than to get out of his place. To get far away from him. I felt suffocated and desperately wanted a fresh start. I had no ill will towards him, I just wanted my old life back.
My cellphone had run out of battery the night before and I had never charged it. As I searched for a charger and opened his bedside drawer, I got my last and final answer. Staring at me was a photograph of Mustafa and Sakina from their engagement many years ago. Their smiles wider than I had ever seen. A photograph that obviously still rested on his bedside table even after all those years. As I sat on the bed, wondering whether to allow my tears to escape, I also heard him turn off the shower. I decided against crying because I didn’t want him to see.
“What’s wrong?” He asked me nonchalantly as he stepped out wrapped in a towel.
“Mustafa….can you please take me home…”
“But I thought….we were going to eat….aren’t we…” he pleaded with his eyes. He knew he could keep playing the game and I would end up staying there another night. But not anymore! My father had travelled thousands of miles to see me. And I had a long journey to make back to Philly. I had to start now.
“I just wanna go home Mustafa…please…” I guess the hurt and plead in my eyes was obvious because he immediately stepped back and acquiesced.
“Sure…get ready…I’ll drop you off at the train station.”
As we got in his car, I ran inside to grab my cell phone while he waited. I pulled out the engagement photograph from the drawer and placed it neatly back on his bedside table where it had always belonged. It was my way of letting him know, that I was finally moving on.
On the way to the train station, he tried to cheer me up with Bollywood songs and repeatedly asking “Do you hate me Padash?” I just smiled and nodded and told him that I didn’t. I honestly didn’t. As soon as he pulled into the train station, my heart was so heavy that I wanted nothing more than to burst into tears. But I had controlled myself so long, I could do it for a few minutes more. A train was already on the platform so I immediately dashed out of his car and yelled back that it was the train I had to catch. There was a large, almost colossal pillar at the entrance of the train station and I ran behind it. As soon as I knew I was veiled from his sight behind the giant pillar, I finally broke down. Right there at that station and hiding behind a pillar with a fist in my mouth, I sobbed quietly with his car only a few feet away. It felt good to finally cry. When my phone rang a few minutes later I knew it was him. I wiped my tears off, cleared my throat and answered.
“Hello.”
“Hey Padash…I see the train is pulling away. Did you manage to get on it?”
“I made it….I’m on the train….thanks so much for everything…”
“Padash…..listen….I…..”
“Hey Mustafa…I have to run…I have to go find a seat, I’ll call you later.”
I hung up and burst into tears again. When I covertly peeked from behind the pillar, I could see him scrolling through his phone. And then I watched him drive away. Once his car was no longer in sight, I sat down on the floor with my back resting on the pillar, weeping to my heart’s content. Passerby’s watched me as if I was a crazy vagabond. But I didn’t care. I had waited too long to cry in peace.
Once I had gotten the pain out of my system, I approached the ticket counter and was informed that the next train to Philly was not going to leave for another two hours. So I waited. With a ticket in my hand, my eyes bloodshot, I sat back at that pillar, listening to “Hands Clean” by Alanis.
I arrived at the 30th street station to a thunderstorm. Cabs were sparse and by then, I was in a completely different frame of mind. Without as much as a bite to eat all day, I walked home drenched in the downpour as I hugged my shoulders to stay warm. Over bridges with traffic and through downtown streets, I had officially reached rock bottom of my breakup.
I arrived at Khala 1’s doorstep completely soaked. It was close to midnight when I turned the key and quietly stepped inside. Everyone had gone to bed. All except my father, who stood at the foyer waiting for me with an expression of hurt and dejection, no different than my own. At first I was startled but then ashamed. As I stood there in the dark with only a splash of light illuminating our painful expressions, we stared deeply into each other’s eyes. No words were spoken nor necessary. He had crossed the ocean and flew over time zones to spend a weekend with his beloved daughter, yet had found himself alone and waiting for her to come home. It was the lowest I had ever felt in my entire life as I pleaded with my eyes for forgiveness.
“Go change out of these wet clothes…” his broken voice trailed “You’ll catch a cold. Put something dry to wear. I’ll fix you a warm cup of chai.”
When I emerged in a pair of dry PJs, he was seated on the couch still in the dark. Two cups of steaming chai were placed in front of him. With trepidation, I joined him and we stared out into empty space with hurt and shame. He asked me where I had been all day. He proceeded to describe how hurt he was. How he had spent his entire day at home waiting for me so he could take me out shopping. How he called me 15 times yet it kept going to voicemail. And then…he started to cry.
As I battled with the realization that I had succumbed to being the worst daughter in the world, with tears in his eyes he looked up at me and asked.
“Was it worth it Padash? That’s all I want to know. Was it someone who loves you as much as we do?”
I shook my head. It was unfortunate but I couldn’t nod. And as my chin trembled I too broke down.
He immediately embraced me and we sat on that couch crying together for the first time. I finally felt safe as he held me and I wondered what was going through his mind. The way he hugged me with his own body trembling, I knew. He had spent his entire life protecting me from every possible pain. Yet this was a pain he could not protect me from. The pain of a heartbreak.
His limo was to arrive at 5 in the morning so we spent the next few hours, talking over cups of tea. He kept insisting that I get some sleep and I kept apologizing for my mistakes. When the limo whisked him away at sunrise, I dove into my bed and bawled myself to slumber. Funny thing was, I had no clue who I was crying over by then. I crawled out of bed 20 minutes before my own cab arrived to take me to the airport. My mp3 player played only “Hands Clean” by Alanis throughout.
Jenny was there to pick me up from the airport. I had lent her my car so she and Julie could go clubbing all weekend. It was good to be home, it was good to see her and weeks later when Jenny and I talked about that moment she mentioned that when she saw me emerge from the airport, I looked like I had weathered a storm or had returned from war bruised and battered. Her only words to me were to ask if I wanted to drive and I shook my head.
As we drove home quietly, she turned to look at me a few times as if she wanted to say something. Yet I sat in the front, my body reclined, staring quietly out the window.
‘You ok?’ Jenny tried to end the uncomfortable silence “Julie is waiting to have dinner with us at the dining hall…she met a guy over the weekend who informed her that he had a parole officer…I swear that girl has the worst luck with men.”
I just smiled. In a way it was good to be home with my new family.
“I guess…I shouldn’t ask you how it went….” Jenny finally broached the subject.
“He doesn’t love me Jenny…”
I am sure Jenny opened her mouth to offer some comforting words but I finished my sentence.
“But I hurt the man who does….”
Jenny pulled over immediately on the side of a highway and held me till I cried for the last time that weekend.
Although he remains in my life through people and family, I never saw Mustafa again. I guess I never gave that relationship another chance. He never asked for one either. As for my father, I did ask for one more chance. And he gave me more than just chances back. Now that’s what I call true love.
To my Daddy’s little girls and Mama’s little boys, we should always remember that the man and the woman who raised us will continue to love us unconditionally no matter how much we hurt them. So I guess in the midst of it all, its never too late to tell them how much we love them back.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Bhai Jan and Me!!!
It may come as a shock to many of you – it does to me at times - but I wasn’t born an only child. Truth is, my parents always had another offspring tucked away in boarding schools on Hill Stations. My Bhai Jan. Yet, due to a decade of an age difference, we never really enjoyed the sibling camaraderie most of our peers did. To him I was a baby he could nuzzle and scold. And to me he was an old man I saw only on the weekends. A stranger in my immediate family who both intrigued as well as bored me. But then there was that one summer! A summer the two of us became surprisingly close for a brief moment in our lives. Secrets were suddenly shared. Advice was sought. And for a split second, a brother and a sister almost 10 years apart bonded over a woman neither of us had ever met. The Mystery Woman we called her, whose face we had never seen and voice we had never heard. Yet it was she who brought us close. The summer a brother also unknowingly taught his young sister an important lesson about life and love. If only I had listened!
Why Yes!
For as far back as I can remember, Bhai Jan’s presence in my life was fairly sporadic. The apple of Baba’s eye, my brother had a very specific trajectory in life charted out by our father dearest. Impressed by the disciplined offsprings of his friends, Baba immediately followed suit and decided to send Bhai Jan off to a boarding school at a young age as well. For years most of my visual recollections of Bhai Jan are in blazers and cadet haircuts. I would see him only on the weekends when he came home or sometimes when we zigzagged up windy roads for a daytrip to Murree. We would spend the day as a family on Mall Road and then end the day with Karhaee for lunch. He would buy me candy floss or a packet of Choco Chums, planting a kiss on my forehead while Mama always bade him farewell in tears before heading home. I never quite understood why. Sure, I savored my treats and watched the snaky roads of Muree lead us back with Vertigo to Islamabad but I wouldn’t be lying if I declared that I really didn’t comprehend the fact that the boy we saw on the weekends had occupied the same womb as I at one point. In fact quite often, I forgot that I even had a brother.
But I wasn’t just to blame for that. Bhai Jan barely made an effort to get to know me either. Whenever he came home for the holidays, he spent most of his time cooped up in his room listening to cassette tapes with friends. I would hear them bouncing tennis balls on the wall while I would try to decipher the inaudible mumblings of raging male hormones emanating from inside a forbidden lair. The room which was always a source of intrigue for me: from the giant stereo system which blasted pop songs to the awe-inspiring poster of a crazy looking woman with short curly hair, a mole on her upper lip and a lollipop in her hand. Later, I would learn that the crazy looking woman had a name to go with that appearance; Madonna. Yet if I ever dared enter his room, he would tease me with his friends. When I would ask them to take me out for drives, they would dismiss my requests with sarcastic sniggers. But every now and then, they would surprise me with a bar of Jubilee or a cup of Polka ice cream when they returned home from hours of ‘Poondee’ just to appease the insignificant toddler which was I.
Baba had always been an avid proponent of higher education so when Bhai Jan finished his primary schooling and moved back home with us, the pressure to start applying to foreign universities followed almost immediately. Although as a student at Lawrence College, Bhai Jan would complain about early morning drills and the strict regimen of hostel life, but now that he was home, he was often complaining about missing that exact same life. His friends in Murree, the Sirs and their quirks, the Gallian solidarity and how this yuppie, suburban existence of Islamabad bored him.
Shortly after he moved back, we all went to Gujranwala for Eid where Shumaila and Shabana giggled around him like giddy school girls while I remained the untouchable outcast. Now I know, that for every girl her brother – no matter what he actually looks like - is God’s gift to womankind but in my case I had no choice but to feel that way when I would see cousins like S&S flit around him doe eyed and all smiles. Even Mama’s friends doted over him like cougars till their eyes fell on me and their smiles curved down into disapproving frowns.
‘Uff your son is so handsome na, bas jaldee say shade kara do iss kee.’ Auntie Shamim would gush in our drawing room with her raised pinkie as she drank our tea. Then when it was my turn ‘Shakal kee tu yeh bhi achee hay…bas thora wazan kam kara do na is ka?’
Aunty Shamim was one to talk. With arms the size of Vin Diesel’s thighs and stomach rolls like Pajero tires bulging through her saris.
After Eid, Bhai Jan returned home early to complete some remaining college applications before the deadline while we stayed for an extra two weeks. Two weeks I spent being bullied by cousins who harbored a crush on my brother but had derogatory nicknames for me. I spent those weeks by myself reading Enid Blyton books in different corners of the Gujranwala house. When we returned to Islamabad, I noticed a complete 180 in Bhai Jan’s disposition. All of a sudden, he seemed like the happiest person in the world. Gone was his homesickness and the constant yearning for his former hostel life. He even seemed a little too excited to see me. Oddly he now displayed a sudden interest in his baby sister’s life, asking me questions about school, my friends, the class structure etc. That night as I examined the items in my pencil case and made sure my bag was ready for school, he came into my room with a twinkle in his eye and offered to drive me to school. Ok, now this chirpy side of Bhai Jan was getting stranger. The few times he had to drive me to school when our driver was on holiday, he complained and whined to no end. Now, he was offering to do the same voluntarily! With a smile and a hug no less? He insisted he was going to start hitting the gym early after he dropped me off at school. Alright! Sure! Whatever you say!
For the next few days, this new sunny disposition of Bhai Jan’s remained untainted. The door to his room was now wide open with curtains pulled to allow light in a room which was once perpetually and deliberately dark. If that wasn’t strange enough, I was now often invited inside his forbidden lair. Literally forbidden because it had a ‘No Visitors’ poster on the front door. On his stereo, he would play Vital Signs songs for me and then make chocolate bars in gilded wrappers appear from his sleeve like a magician. The boy who spent most of his hours locked up in his room sulking over how much he missed his school friends was now suddenly stopping by my room and taking an interest in my elementary school life. It finally fell into place when his questions and curiosity in my life morphed into a confession. The first secret he had ever confided in me. While we had been away, he had been communicating with an unknown damsel from the senior section of my school. It all started when he had returned home early from the Eid Holidays and found an anonymous love letter addressed to him in our mailbox. It was from an Fsc student who claimed to attend my school. She wrote that she had seen him pick me up from school one day and then found my address from school records. In poetic clichés, the love letter harped on like a mushy love song but gave absolutely no identifying information about the writer. It was signed only as ‘Mystery Woman’.
I would never think that my brother would ever fall for such cheap chipostree, but evidently he did. This sudden change in his personality taught me the first lesson about love. At least once in our lives, we all fall in love. Hard. Head over heels. The kind that humbles us. I say that because Bhai Jan was always the most arrogant person I knew. Now he had gone from being a cocky player to a vulnerable and love-struck puppy.
Bhai Jan and this girl corresponded mainly through letters. As much as he begged her for a phone number, she never obliged. So, carefully crafted letters would be handed for me to drop off at school. I would hide them on the top of a wall on the far end of our school building where the water fountains were. When he would return to pick me up in the afternoon, there would be a reply waiting for him in that exact same spot. We didn’t know anything about this Mystery Woman except for how she dotted her I’s and crossed her T’s. The bizarre thing was that Bhai Jan was so madly in love that he was content with that.
Those days became one of the most memorable chapters in our sibling relationship. A summer of a secret bond we now shared. Bhai Jan had sent out all his college applications and so letters to a mystery woman was a great way to keep himself busy. On the way to school or in his room, he would repeatedly play the song ‘Samjhana’ by Vital Signs. As we would sit together and sway our bodies to the song, I suddenly felt so grown up. Invited into a world where I had once been too young to step into because ‘No Visitors’ were allowed here. Especially if the visitor was your baby sister.
Even Mama and Baba were confused by this newfound amity between Bhai Jan and I. We would constantly be in each other’s rooms with the doors locked, afternoons spent examining every syllable in her letters as we looked for clues to unearth the identity of our mystery woman. When we would give up, we would stretch back on the floor next to each other, humming along to ‘Samjhana’ over and over again with the curtains drawn and staring at the ceiling till one of us would have another eureka moment.
‘You know what…Let me see her last letter again. I think I’m on to something!’ I would announce with surety channeling my inner Famous Five and Secret Seven.
‘I just thought of something too. Sometimes she capitalizes her L’s and sometimes she doesn’t. She isn’t consistent with that. What do you think that means?’ He too would jump up with childish excitement which resembled my own.
He began to drop and pick me up from school every day. I looked forward to it too. In the car, we would sing along to the same Vital Signs song and in between rewinding and forwarding, we would devise more ways to unmask the Mystery Woman. I cherished my responsibility of being the messenger between the two lovebirds.
At home, we would spend hours with his friends on the floor reading parts of the letter that I was allowed to see. His friends who had only thought of me as an annoying kid before were now encouraging me to put my Nancy Drew skills to work. No longer were they teasing me by snatching my dolls if I ever entered Bhai Jans room but they now relied on me as the mole who had sole access to the mysterious and mystifying world they only fantasized about from the other side of the wall. The world of an all-girls school. And everyday I would enter that turf and return with more clues to confirm or discredit our deductions.
‘Yaar Padash pata karo nay yeh kon hay.’ They would pester me.
‘I’m on it!’ I would roll up my sleeves like a bonafide sleuth.
Vital Signs in the background and crystal plates of French fries and ketchup like a painter’s palette besides us, we would huddle on the floor and come up with our own silly hypothesis. Like the time, we all pooled our pocket money and ran to Jinnah Super on a whim to buy all the different types of pens just to figure out which pen the mystery woman used. Then we argued as we narrowed down our options.
‘Yaar yeh Shaffer ka pen lagta hay…Confirmed! Taste acha hay bhabhi ka.’ A friend would compare her penmanship from the letters.
The next day I would run home from school, still in my school tunic and white shirt to exclaim ‘Mystery solved! Pyaree Saman Apa had a Shaffer pen in her hand today. It has to be her.’
But Bhai Jan was always the voice of reason. He instructed us to not jump to any conclusions. We had to be absolutely certain. And he was right because the letter the next day would be scribed in a Dollar fountain pen. The day after that would be a Piano ballpoint.
Still, all our clues began to point to one person. A girl called Saman Apa. All the young kids in school referred to her as Pyaree Saman Apa, as if the whole school had a lesbian crush on her. It excited me to no end to imagine that she could quite possibly be the Mystery Woman. She was beautiful, the school prefect, always topped her exams, born with perfect long hair, a fair complexion, wore pretty polka dotted hair bands and was always chosen to play the lead in school plays. The teachers adored her as much as the younger kids in school. She greeted everyone with melodious crooning, sweet smiles and perfectly shaped dimples. To naïve 3rd graders like us, she was as close to perfection as we could find in the four walls that contained us. During all-staff meetings, when seniors would be asked to monitor our class we would excitedly cheer whenever Saman Apa entered. She was so glamorous, even her ruler was pink! Surely, we didn’t gush over all our seniors the same way. Some were met with groans and grunts when they entered our class with their rulers. Saman Apa was one of the few lucky ones with the privilege of being referred to as ‘Pyaree’ by us kids. Others too had adjectives but not always as pleasant. Like Badrooh Apa (a scrawny and dark little thing with a high-pitched and nasal voice), or Football Faree Apa (a short and chubby girl who was as bland as her appearance) and then there was a Churail Laila Apa (who some girls claimed had inverted feet like the famed Pichal Pehrees who asked for lifts at Zero Point and then ate their victims). But like Pyaree Saman Apa there was a Pyaree Nadia Baji and also a Pyaree Sadaf Apa. Oh us 3rd graders, we were such losers!
Maybe I was biased, but I was completely convinced that our Mystery Woman was Saman Apa. Or at least I desperately hoped! All the clues led us to believe that. The letters were always on pink paper and everyone in school knew that Pyaree Saman Apa loved that color. Come on, all her hair-bands, scrunchies, bookbag and even her ruler was PINK. So while Baba lectured Bhai Jan everyday to buckle down and get serious about colleges, we ignored every word till he left the room. We had more exciting things to think about. Envelopes with pink hearts and clues took priority over those enclosed with college acceptances or rejections.
‘Padash!’ Bhai Jan would call me into his room elatedly as his friends circled around him on the floor in bad stonewashed jeans and baseball caps ‘Yeh suno. In her last letter, she let it slip that she has been attending a cousins wedding. Find out which Fsc student has a cousin who is getting married.’
‘Its her, its her…I knew it!’ I would declare excitedly the next day as I rushed to the car ‘Pyaree Saman Apa had Mehndi on her hands. Am I good or what!’
‘You’re the best!’ He would hug me!
If there were ever days when there was no letter waiting for my brother, it just so happened that it would also be the day that Saman Apa was absent from school. As far as I knew, the mystery was solved. Now we just had to make her my bhabhi! But Bhai Jan always irked me with his ‘proceed with caution’ attitude!
‘Not yet’ He would burst my bubble and carefully instruct ‘Whatever you do…don’t say anything to her. We don’t want to scare her away.’
I was getting impatient. Saman Apa and I had our own unspoken awareness between us. The furtive nods and the knowing smiles when we would pass each other in school.
Weeks and then months passed. All my brothers college letters had arrived and Baba was getting anxious. Bhai Jan who would never rip open those envelopes with the same excitement with which he would tear open a love letter retrieved from the corner wall of my school, kept avoiding the topic of colleges each time Baba brought it up. Every night Baba would come into his room and ask him if he had picked a university yet and Bhai Jan always came up with some lame excuse of how he was still weighing his options. Baba’s patience was beginning to wear thin. He wanted his son to attend his alma mater in Iowa but the truth was – and only I knew – Bhai Jan had already decided that he was not going to college in America. He planned to marry his Mystery Woman and stay in Pakistan. I approved of the plan wholeheartedly.
By mid-summer, it was time to concoct plans of a way for Bhai Jan to see what Saman Apa looked like. He had heard me go on for hours of how gorgeous she was but naturally he wanted to see for himself. I took his camera to school and then just as conveniently had it confiscated by nosy teachers. Dang! Plan B! Our only other option was the upcoming Annual Day where I could take part in a skit and Bhai Jan could attend as my family member. There he could see Pyaree Saman Apa in the flesh and on the stage. She would definitely be playing the role of a princess and then towards the end, she would always walk on and off stage continuously receiving trophies for her various academic and athletic accomplishments. The only problem with that plan was that our school Annual Day wasn’t till November and Baba’s pressure on Bhai Jan’s college plans were so strong that the way things were going he would have left for college in August. We even sat and brainstormed together to devise a way to convince Baba to allow Bhai Jan to defer his college plans for a year.
As days rolled by, it was getting harder and harder to avoid the college pressure from Baba. By now Bhai Jan was also getting anxious. He was in love with a woman he had never met. We had to come up with another plan, so we did. Sure the Annual Day wasn’t till November but if I auditioned for my class play, I could stay in school past 1pm and it was usually after that hour when Saman Apa left the letter for Bhai Jan in its usual spot. I could catch Saman Apa red handed myself and then I would ask her to at least meet Bhai Jan for one date. Immediately, I signed up for a tableau the next day and auditions were conveniently scheduled for that afternoon. The seniors would not have a clue that a few select 3rd graders were still in school.
On audition day, the few aspiring thespians in the 3rd and 4th grade were assembled in the library at 1pm. The term auditions is used very loosely here because it all boiled down to teachers scrutinizing every girl from head to toe as we sat like cattle on the floor tracing our names with fingers on the carpet or patty-caking ‘Das patay toray, aika pata kacha’ on each other’s backs. The teachers would whisper to each other with squeezed noses as they eyed us. As if purchasing mangoes in Jumma Bazaar, they deliberated over our physical traits in hushed whispers. Then they would reach a consensus on which girl would be perfect for which role. The fair skinned, Pathan girls or the teacher’s daughters were cast in the coveted roles. The dark skinned and chubby girls played the male parts or villains. The ability to act, sing or dance was of no importance here.
So, surrendering to a sea of pretty little girls, I sat through those excruciating auditions like a loyal sister on a mission for her beloved brother. At exactly 1:45pm, when the bell rang, I could see a flock of the Fsc girls walk by the windows of the library. All the different Apas talking animatedly amongst each other, flicking their long hair with their hands, some even with engagement rings on their fingers. That was my cue.
‘Madam can I go drink some water?’ I raised my hand.
‘Padash its “May I” and yes you may. Hurry back.’ The teacher corrected me.
With my head spinning with excitement, I rushed out of the library, making my way briskly towards the water fountains. I followed Pyaree Saman Apa, as her back glided through the school, her long hair swaying in the wind and her pink book-bag slung elegantly on her shoulder. She was headed straight for the water fountain. She approached the fountain, took a sip of water and then kept on walking. I was confused and for a second I even wondered if the Mystery Woman was not my beloved Pyaree Saman Apa. Still, I followed her with my eyes as she walked further and further away and then vanished around the corner. Strange, I thought but when I turned my eyes back at the water fountains, I spotted Football Fari making her nervously way to the wall. Just like me, even her eyes were fixed on Saman Apa. When Saman Apa was nowhere in sight, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pink envelope. Looking around one last time, she made sure that no one was watching but soon found out that someone was. Our eyes met, and as I saw a look of shock and fear in her eyes she probably saw disappointment and betrayal in mine. She was obviously startled to see me but I didn’t care. Then, just as quickly I spun around and dashed back to the library.
‘You look like you have just seen a ghost!’ my friend Zara asked me when I settled back next to her.
‘Something like it. ‘ I fought back tears.
‘They gave us our roles while you were gone.’ Zara informed me.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
But although I heard her voice it fell on deaf ears. Meaningless din in the background as I stared ahead.
She continued ‘I am a flower…most of us were chosen to be flowers….well Aliya from 3A is playing the Rose Princess and Shela from 3A is playing The Summer Breeze. But you know girls in 3A always get the best parts. I think they said you were going to play the part of the Giant Spider. At least its different than a flower. You know…you will stand out than the rest of us.’ Great! So that’s what they meant by insult to injury!
That afternoon, I walked out of the gate like a zombie with no idea how I was going to disclose the news to my brother. It was all my fault. It was I, who had raised his hopes so high. Going on and on about how his Mystery Woman was the most beautiful girl on this planet. But in reality it was the fat girl whose life seemed insipid and colorless. Bhai Jan was leaning against the car with his sunshades on like always. Without as much as a salutation, I slid into the car and without a word, he too sat down on the drivers seat. I was dreading his excited questions.
‘I guess our plan backfired!’ He sighed dejectedly as he started the car ‘I know she didn’t come to school today…I checked and there was no letter.’
‘There wasn’t?’
‘No… did you see Saman in school at all today?’
‘No…I didn’t…you’re right.’
‘All that planning for nothing! This is just stupid. Maybe I should just go home, pick a university, make Baba happy and start packing. Its all pretty stupid if you really think about it.’
‘Yeah…I guess you’re right.’ I surprised him with my equally pessimistic response.
‘Sorry you had to suffer through the auditions because of me…did they select you for anything?’
‘Yes…a giant spider. All the other girls are playing roses and tulips.’
‘No way’ Bhai Jan chuckled ‘Your Saman Apa owes you an apology. This is all because of her you know. Chalo let me buy you some ice cream.’
‘I don’t want any.’ I replied. And when the song ‘Samjhana’ wafted through the stereo, we both cringed just a little. He immediately switched it off.
‘Sorry, I’m just getting a little tired of this song.’ He remarked.
‘So am I.’
That afternoon, Bhai Jan came into the lounge with his friends quite a few times to cheer me up as I watched my cartoons.
‘Motoo, you don’t have to play the spider. I have a brilliant idea! We can forge a doctor’s note or something and say that you won’t be able to attend rehearsals.’ He ruffled my hair.
‘I’m fine, I’ll play the spider, I really don’t care.’ I pushed his arm away.
‘We’re heading out to the Covered Market. Do you want anything? Super Crisps? Jubilee? Frost?’
‘No…I’m fine…just let me watch my cartoons.’
I couldn’t really tell what it was that I felt. Disappointment? Anger? It felt like a fairy-tale dream yesterday had turned into a disappointing nightmare today. That and I didn’t know how to break that news to Bhai Jan. I decided to avoid the topic by avoiding him altogether.
It only got worse after that. There was no letter for Bhai Jan the next day. Or the day after. In fact an entire week passed and although Bhai Jan sent a letter with me everyday, there was never a reply waiting for him. He was now worried and quite visibly upset, yet each time he asked me, I told him that I had no idea. On the other end, Baba’s patience with Bhai was now wearing extremely thin. Every night there would be an argument between the two. The more Baba pressured Bhai Jan to pick a college before it was too late, the more Bhai Jan remained obdurate. He was now determined more than ever to not leave the country till he found out who his Mystery Woman was. One night, after witnessing a huge argument between my father and my brother, I stood in Bhai Jan’s doorway staring at his Madonna poster. He looked completely broken but when he saw me he immediately asked the same question he had already asked a million times before.
‘Are you sure your Saman Apa has been coming to school these days?’
I couldn’t believe it. It was almost as if he had ignored every word that had come out of Baba’s mouth. It was also the first time I had seen the face of someone blinded by love.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I replied.
‘Then why isn’t she replying to any of my letters? What do you think happened?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘I mean what do you think…’
‘What I think is that you should move on and forget about her.’
‘Wow’ he looked at me with amazement ‘My baby sister sounds more grown up than I do.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I cant Padash, I’m in love!’ It was the first time I heard the words on my brothers lips. It was also the first time, I saw tears in his eyes.
‘I don’t think its her Bhai Jan…’
‘Why…you were so sure before…’
‘I was….but I was being stupid….I have been giving it a lot of thought and I really don’t think its her.’
‘Well who else could it be then? Who hasn’t been coming to school this whole week. That’s our answer right there…’
‘Bhai Jan…listen to me….you’re not listening to what I’m saying. Its over. I think its time you forgot about her and pick a college. Baba is very serious.’
I couldn’t bear to look Bhai Jan in the eyes. I just turned around and retreated back to my room. I had betrayed my Bhai Jan.
Two weeks later, Bhai Jan came into the house as I was watching my afternoon cartoons still in my school uniform. He looked absolutely shattered as he walked across the lounge and stomped towards his room. I didn’t dare ask what was wrong because over the past two weeks, neither of us had brought up the Mystery Woman.
‘I’m going to go take a nap.’ He announced ‘If anyone calls…or if Mama Baba ask…just tell them, I’m not feeling well. Don’t let anyone disturb me.’
I nodded with my eyes still fixed on the screen. A few seconds later I heard his door shut, the lock clicked.
The phone rang, an hour later. It was Bhai Jan’s friend insisting I wake him up even though I tried to tell him that I had strict instructions to not disturb him from his sleep.
‘Padash yaar…please just tell him its me…I really need to speak to him…I need to find out what happened today. Do you know?’
‘He hasn’t said anything… just said not to wake him up. You will have to call back later.’
‘Aray Chotoo…just tell him its me. I was supposed to meet him at Usmania but he had already left when I got there…I need to find out what happened.’
‘Mustafa bhai, he was very serious when he said that he did not want to be woken up. Just call back later na.’
‘Try to karo Padash. Please Chotoo.’
‘Fine.’ I sighed and walked cautiously to Bhai Jan’s room. The room which was once off-limits, then became a regular hangout for me and was now reduced to a dark and dismal chamber with the lights dimmed, the curtains drawn. I knocked a fewhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif times before I heard his disgruntled voice.
‘Bhai Jan its Mustafa bhai…I told him you were sleeping but he keeps on insisting that I….’
‘Just tell him I’ll call him back when I wake up.’
I said no more and obediently relayed that message back to his friend. The friend thanked me for trying and promised me a candy bar the next day.
When Bhai Jan finally emerged from his room, his eyes were red. In his hand was an envelope which he handed over to Baba. He informed us that he had completed his college paperwork and Baba was ecstatic because he had chosen his alma mater. Only I knew, that Bhai Jan was doing this so he could leave Islamabad and all its memories. At the end of that memorable summer, Bhai Jan packed up and left for college. Dejected and heartbroken, he was probably ready for a new beginning. Before leaving, he held me tight and told me that he was glad that we had become so close that summer. He made me promise I would write to him and continue to share all my secrets. He also promised me he would never let anyone break my heart. We never mentioned the Mystery Woman to each other ever again to this day. I didn’t even know what happened that afternoon at Usmania.
‘He met her that afternoon.’ His friend informed me many years later. On a chilly night in an apartment in New Jersey. As Bhai Jan’s friend and I lay naked with unwashed bed-sheets covering our naked bodies. Sharing a cigarette after having just made love.
I listened quietly.
‘After weeks of pleading and begging, the girl finally agreed to meet your brother at that restaurant. I was supposed to meet him there afterwards but when I got there, he had already left. That’s why I was calling like crazy that day.’
‘So he got to meet her?’
‘Yes….but it wasn’t that Apa that you thought she was…some detectives we were.’
‘I know…’
‘Frankly, I still don’t know who it was. Never really got to see her…but at least your brother met her, which is more important.’
‘Did he say anything about her?’
‘Not much, just that he was madly in love with her… so I guess she must have been beautiful if he still felt that way after meeting her.’
‘Her name was Fari.’
‘Well whoever she was, she broke his heart pretty badly that day? When they met she told him that it was all just a prank to her. She had never thought he would get so serious. She came from some conservative family and begged him not to send a proposal or do anything silly. She said she was just having fun and was pretending to be another prettier girl in school. I was very angry but he said he didn’t care, he still loved her. He told her that too. And that he still wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Your literally begged her yaar. He even said that if there was as much as a slight chance that they could be together in the future, he was willing to give up college, stay in Islamabad and wait for her for as long as it took. But she really messed up, she had no idea things would get so out of control or that he would fall so madly in love with her. What did she look like, this Fari girl? Must have been drop dead gorgeous for him to act like that.’
‘She was to my brother, I guess…but back then I was too young and stupid to understand how love works.’
‘Love shove. its all stupid filmy stuff!’ Mustafa rolled over and fell asleep.
But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there next to him staring at the ceiling. Where had our journeys began, where were they intersecting and where would they end. I quietly crept out of bed and picked up Mustafa’s Rutgers sweatshirt off the floor. Tiptoeing over to his window with nothing on but his grey college hoodie, I sat down on the sill, pulled the sweatshirt over my legs and lit up another cigarette. I stared out at his college campus while Mustafa slept peacefully behind me, his face soaked in moonlight.
In the window’ reflection I could see myself. Although my brother and I have never looked alike, that night I saw only him in my mirror image. Bhai Jan’s face and how it looked the night I saw what someone blinded by love looks like. I looked exactly like that.
My Bhai Jan didn’t teach me much but he did teach me my first lesson about love and heartbreak.
I finished my cigarette and slid quietly back into bed with Mustafa who was now snoring.
If only I had listened…
Why Yes!
For as far back as I can remember, Bhai Jan’s presence in my life was fairly sporadic. The apple of Baba’s eye, my brother had a very specific trajectory in life charted out by our father dearest. Impressed by the disciplined offsprings of his friends, Baba immediately followed suit and decided to send Bhai Jan off to a boarding school at a young age as well. For years most of my visual recollections of Bhai Jan are in blazers and cadet haircuts. I would see him only on the weekends when he came home or sometimes when we zigzagged up windy roads for a daytrip to Murree. We would spend the day as a family on Mall Road and then end the day with Karhaee for lunch. He would buy me candy floss or a packet of Choco Chums, planting a kiss on my forehead while Mama always bade him farewell in tears before heading home. I never quite understood why. Sure, I savored my treats and watched the snaky roads of Muree lead us back with Vertigo to Islamabad but I wouldn’t be lying if I declared that I really didn’t comprehend the fact that the boy we saw on the weekends had occupied the same womb as I at one point. In fact quite often, I forgot that I even had a brother.
But I wasn’t just to blame for that. Bhai Jan barely made an effort to get to know me either. Whenever he came home for the holidays, he spent most of his time cooped up in his room listening to cassette tapes with friends. I would hear them bouncing tennis balls on the wall while I would try to decipher the inaudible mumblings of raging male hormones emanating from inside a forbidden lair. The room which was always a source of intrigue for me: from the giant stereo system which blasted pop songs to the awe-inspiring poster of a crazy looking woman with short curly hair, a mole on her upper lip and a lollipop in her hand. Later, I would learn that the crazy looking woman had a name to go with that appearance; Madonna. Yet if I ever dared enter his room, he would tease me with his friends. When I would ask them to take me out for drives, they would dismiss my requests with sarcastic sniggers. But every now and then, they would surprise me with a bar of Jubilee or a cup of Polka ice cream when they returned home from hours of ‘Poondee’ just to appease the insignificant toddler which was I.
Baba had always been an avid proponent of higher education so when Bhai Jan finished his primary schooling and moved back home with us, the pressure to start applying to foreign universities followed almost immediately. Although as a student at Lawrence College, Bhai Jan would complain about early morning drills and the strict regimen of hostel life, but now that he was home, he was often complaining about missing that exact same life. His friends in Murree, the Sirs and their quirks, the Gallian solidarity and how this yuppie, suburban existence of Islamabad bored him.
Shortly after he moved back, we all went to Gujranwala for Eid where Shumaila and Shabana giggled around him like giddy school girls while I remained the untouchable outcast. Now I know, that for every girl her brother – no matter what he actually looks like - is God’s gift to womankind but in my case I had no choice but to feel that way when I would see cousins like S&S flit around him doe eyed and all smiles. Even Mama’s friends doted over him like cougars till their eyes fell on me and their smiles curved down into disapproving frowns.
‘Uff your son is so handsome na, bas jaldee say shade kara do iss kee.’ Auntie Shamim would gush in our drawing room with her raised pinkie as she drank our tea. Then when it was my turn ‘Shakal kee tu yeh bhi achee hay…bas thora wazan kam kara do na is ka?’
Aunty Shamim was one to talk. With arms the size of Vin Diesel’s thighs and stomach rolls like Pajero tires bulging through her saris.
After Eid, Bhai Jan returned home early to complete some remaining college applications before the deadline while we stayed for an extra two weeks. Two weeks I spent being bullied by cousins who harbored a crush on my brother but had derogatory nicknames for me. I spent those weeks by myself reading Enid Blyton books in different corners of the Gujranwala house. When we returned to Islamabad, I noticed a complete 180 in Bhai Jan’s disposition. All of a sudden, he seemed like the happiest person in the world. Gone was his homesickness and the constant yearning for his former hostel life. He even seemed a little too excited to see me. Oddly he now displayed a sudden interest in his baby sister’s life, asking me questions about school, my friends, the class structure etc. That night as I examined the items in my pencil case and made sure my bag was ready for school, he came into my room with a twinkle in his eye and offered to drive me to school. Ok, now this chirpy side of Bhai Jan was getting stranger. The few times he had to drive me to school when our driver was on holiday, he complained and whined to no end. Now, he was offering to do the same voluntarily! With a smile and a hug no less? He insisted he was going to start hitting the gym early after he dropped me off at school. Alright! Sure! Whatever you say!
For the next few days, this new sunny disposition of Bhai Jan’s remained untainted. The door to his room was now wide open with curtains pulled to allow light in a room which was once perpetually and deliberately dark. If that wasn’t strange enough, I was now often invited inside his forbidden lair. Literally forbidden because it had a ‘No Visitors’ poster on the front door. On his stereo, he would play Vital Signs songs for me and then make chocolate bars in gilded wrappers appear from his sleeve like a magician. The boy who spent most of his hours locked up in his room sulking over how much he missed his school friends was now suddenly stopping by my room and taking an interest in my elementary school life. It finally fell into place when his questions and curiosity in my life morphed into a confession. The first secret he had ever confided in me. While we had been away, he had been communicating with an unknown damsel from the senior section of my school. It all started when he had returned home early from the Eid Holidays and found an anonymous love letter addressed to him in our mailbox. It was from an Fsc student who claimed to attend my school. She wrote that she had seen him pick me up from school one day and then found my address from school records. In poetic clichés, the love letter harped on like a mushy love song but gave absolutely no identifying information about the writer. It was signed only as ‘Mystery Woman’.
I would never think that my brother would ever fall for such cheap chipostree, but evidently he did. This sudden change in his personality taught me the first lesson about love. At least once in our lives, we all fall in love. Hard. Head over heels. The kind that humbles us. I say that because Bhai Jan was always the most arrogant person I knew. Now he had gone from being a cocky player to a vulnerable and love-struck puppy.
Bhai Jan and this girl corresponded mainly through letters. As much as he begged her for a phone number, she never obliged. So, carefully crafted letters would be handed for me to drop off at school. I would hide them on the top of a wall on the far end of our school building where the water fountains were. When he would return to pick me up in the afternoon, there would be a reply waiting for him in that exact same spot. We didn’t know anything about this Mystery Woman except for how she dotted her I’s and crossed her T’s. The bizarre thing was that Bhai Jan was so madly in love that he was content with that.
Those days became one of the most memorable chapters in our sibling relationship. A summer of a secret bond we now shared. Bhai Jan had sent out all his college applications and so letters to a mystery woman was a great way to keep himself busy. On the way to school or in his room, he would repeatedly play the song ‘Samjhana’ by Vital Signs. As we would sit together and sway our bodies to the song, I suddenly felt so grown up. Invited into a world where I had once been too young to step into because ‘No Visitors’ were allowed here. Especially if the visitor was your baby sister.
Even Mama and Baba were confused by this newfound amity between Bhai Jan and I. We would constantly be in each other’s rooms with the doors locked, afternoons spent examining every syllable in her letters as we looked for clues to unearth the identity of our mystery woman. When we would give up, we would stretch back on the floor next to each other, humming along to ‘Samjhana’ over and over again with the curtains drawn and staring at the ceiling till one of us would have another eureka moment.
‘You know what…Let me see her last letter again. I think I’m on to something!’ I would announce with surety channeling my inner Famous Five and Secret Seven.
‘I just thought of something too. Sometimes she capitalizes her L’s and sometimes she doesn’t. She isn’t consistent with that. What do you think that means?’ He too would jump up with childish excitement which resembled my own.
He began to drop and pick me up from school every day. I looked forward to it too. In the car, we would sing along to the same Vital Signs song and in between rewinding and forwarding, we would devise more ways to unmask the Mystery Woman. I cherished my responsibility of being the messenger between the two lovebirds.
At home, we would spend hours with his friends on the floor reading parts of the letter that I was allowed to see. His friends who had only thought of me as an annoying kid before were now encouraging me to put my Nancy Drew skills to work. No longer were they teasing me by snatching my dolls if I ever entered Bhai Jans room but they now relied on me as the mole who had sole access to the mysterious and mystifying world they only fantasized about from the other side of the wall. The world of an all-girls school. And everyday I would enter that turf and return with more clues to confirm or discredit our deductions.
‘Yaar Padash pata karo nay yeh kon hay.’ They would pester me.
‘I’m on it!’ I would roll up my sleeves like a bonafide sleuth.
Vital Signs in the background and crystal plates of French fries and ketchup like a painter’s palette besides us, we would huddle on the floor and come up with our own silly hypothesis. Like the time, we all pooled our pocket money and ran to Jinnah Super on a whim to buy all the different types of pens just to figure out which pen the mystery woman used. Then we argued as we narrowed down our options.
‘Yaar yeh Shaffer ka pen lagta hay…Confirmed! Taste acha hay bhabhi ka.’ A friend would compare her penmanship from the letters.
The next day I would run home from school, still in my school tunic and white shirt to exclaim ‘Mystery solved! Pyaree Saman Apa had a Shaffer pen in her hand today. It has to be her.’
But Bhai Jan was always the voice of reason. He instructed us to not jump to any conclusions. We had to be absolutely certain. And he was right because the letter the next day would be scribed in a Dollar fountain pen. The day after that would be a Piano ballpoint.
Still, all our clues began to point to one person. A girl called Saman Apa. All the young kids in school referred to her as Pyaree Saman Apa, as if the whole school had a lesbian crush on her. It excited me to no end to imagine that she could quite possibly be the Mystery Woman. She was beautiful, the school prefect, always topped her exams, born with perfect long hair, a fair complexion, wore pretty polka dotted hair bands and was always chosen to play the lead in school plays. The teachers adored her as much as the younger kids in school. She greeted everyone with melodious crooning, sweet smiles and perfectly shaped dimples. To naïve 3rd graders like us, she was as close to perfection as we could find in the four walls that contained us. During all-staff meetings, when seniors would be asked to monitor our class we would excitedly cheer whenever Saman Apa entered. She was so glamorous, even her ruler was pink! Surely, we didn’t gush over all our seniors the same way. Some were met with groans and grunts when they entered our class with their rulers. Saman Apa was one of the few lucky ones with the privilege of being referred to as ‘Pyaree’ by us kids. Others too had adjectives but not always as pleasant. Like Badrooh Apa (a scrawny and dark little thing with a high-pitched and nasal voice), or Football Faree Apa (a short and chubby girl who was as bland as her appearance) and then there was a Churail Laila Apa (who some girls claimed had inverted feet like the famed Pichal Pehrees who asked for lifts at Zero Point and then ate their victims). But like Pyaree Saman Apa there was a Pyaree Nadia Baji and also a Pyaree Sadaf Apa. Oh us 3rd graders, we were such losers!
Maybe I was biased, but I was completely convinced that our Mystery Woman was Saman Apa. Or at least I desperately hoped! All the clues led us to believe that. The letters were always on pink paper and everyone in school knew that Pyaree Saman Apa loved that color. Come on, all her hair-bands, scrunchies, bookbag and even her ruler was PINK. So while Baba lectured Bhai Jan everyday to buckle down and get serious about colleges, we ignored every word till he left the room. We had more exciting things to think about. Envelopes with pink hearts and clues took priority over those enclosed with college acceptances or rejections.
‘Padash!’ Bhai Jan would call me into his room elatedly as his friends circled around him on the floor in bad stonewashed jeans and baseball caps ‘Yeh suno. In her last letter, she let it slip that she has been attending a cousins wedding. Find out which Fsc student has a cousin who is getting married.’
‘Its her, its her…I knew it!’ I would declare excitedly the next day as I rushed to the car ‘Pyaree Saman Apa had Mehndi on her hands. Am I good or what!’
‘You’re the best!’ He would hug me!
If there were ever days when there was no letter waiting for my brother, it just so happened that it would also be the day that Saman Apa was absent from school. As far as I knew, the mystery was solved. Now we just had to make her my bhabhi! But Bhai Jan always irked me with his ‘proceed with caution’ attitude!
‘Not yet’ He would burst my bubble and carefully instruct ‘Whatever you do…don’t say anything to her. We don’t want to scare her away.’
I was getting impatient. Saman Apa and I had our own unspoken awareness between us. The furtive nods and the knowing smiles when we would pass each other in school.
Weeks and then months passed. All my brothers college letters had arrived and Baba was getting anxious. Bhai Jan who would never rip open those envelopes with the same excitement with which he would tear open a love letter retrieved from the corner wall of my school, kept avoiding the topic of colleges each time Baba brought it up. Every night Baba would come into his room and ask him if he had picked a university yet and Bhai Jan always came up with some lame excuse of how he was still weighing his options. Baba’s patience was beginning to wear thin. He wanted his son to attend his alma mater in Iowa but the truth was – and only I knew – Bhai Jan had already decided that he was not going to college in America. He planned to marry his Mystery Woman and stay in Pakistan. I approved of the plan wholeheartedly.
By mid-summer, it was time to concoct plans of a way for Bhai Jan to see what Saman Apa looked like. He had heard me go on for hours of how gorgeous she was but naturally he wanted to see for himself. I took his camera to school and then just as conveniently had it confiscated by nosy teachers. Dang! Plan B! Our only other option was the upcoming Annual Day where I could take part in a skit and Bhai Jan could attend as my family member. There he could see Pyaree Saman Apa in the flesh and on the stage. She would definitely be playing the role of a princess and then towards the end, she would always walk on and off stage continuously receiving trophies for her various academic and athletic accomplishments. The only problem with that plan was that our school Annual Day wasn’t till November and Baba’s pressure on Bhai Jan’s college plans were so strong that the way things were going he would have left for college in August. We even sat and brainstormed together to devise a way to convince Baba to allow Bhai Jan to defer his college plans for a year.
As days rolled by, it was getting harder and harder to avoid the college pressure from Baba. By now Bhai Jan was also getting anxious. He was in love with a woman he had never met. We had to come up with another plan, so we did. Sure the Annual Day wasn’t till November but if I auditioned for my class play, I could stay in school past 1pm and it was usually after that hour when Saman Apa left the letter for Bhai Jan in its usual spot. I could catch Saman Apa red handed myself and then I would ask her to at least meet Bhai Jan for one date. Immediately, I signed up for a tableau the next day and auditions were conveniently scheduled for that afternoon. The seniors would not have a clue that a few select 3rd graders were still in school.
On audition day, the few aspiring thespians in the 3rd and 4th grade were assembled in the library at 1pm. The term auditions is used very loosely here because it all boiled down to teachers scrutinizing every girl from head to toe as we sat like cattle on the floor tracing our names with fingers on the carpet or patty-caking ‘Das patay toray, aika pata kacha’ on each other’s backs. The teachers would whisper to each other with squeezed noses as they eyed us. As if purchasing mangoes in Jumma Bazaar, they deliberated over our physical traits in hushed whispers. Then they would reach a consensus on which girl would be perfect for which role. The fair skinned, Pathan girls or the teacher’s daughters were cast in the coveted roles. The dark skinned and chubby girls played the male parts or villains. The ability to act, sing or dance was of no importance here.
So, surrendering to a sea of pretty little girls, I sat through those excruciating auditions like a loyal sister on a mission for her beloved brother. At exactly 1:45pm, when the bell rang, I could see a flock of the Fsc girls walk by the windows of the library. All the different Apas talking animatedly amongst each other, flicking their long hair with their hands, some even with engagement rings on their fingers. That was my cue.
‘Madam can I go drink some water?’ I raised my hand.
‘Padash its “May I” and yes you may. Hurry back.’ The teacher corrected me.
With my head spinning with excitement, I rushed out of the library, making my way briskly towards the water fountains. I followed Pyaree Saman Apa, as her back glided through the school, her long hair swaying in the wind and her pink book-bag slung elegantly on her shoulder. She was headed straight for the water fountain. She approached the fountain, took a sip of water and then kept on walking. I was confused and for a second I even wondered if the Mystery Woman was not my beloved Pyaree Saman Apa. Still, I followed her with my eyes as she walked further and further away and then vanished around the corner. Strange, I thought but when I turned my eyes back at the water fountains, I spotted Football Fari making her nervously way to the wall. Just like me, even her eyes were fixed on Saman Apa. When Saman Apa was nowhere in sight, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pink envelope. Looking around one last time, she made sure that no one was watching but soon found out that someone was. Our eyes met, and as I saw a look of shock and fear in her eyes she probably saw disappointment and betrayal in mine. She was obviously startled to see me but I didn’t care. Then, just as quickly I spun around and dashed back to the library.
‘You look like you have just seen a ghost!’ my friend Zara asked me when I settled back next to her.
‘Something like it. ‘ I fought back tears.
‘They gave us our roles while you were gone.’ Zara informed me.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
But although I heard her voice it fell on deaf ears. Meaningless din in the background as I stared ahead.
She continued ‘I am a flower…most of us were chosen to be flowers….well Aliya from 3A is playing the Rose Princess and Shela from 3A is playing The Summer Breeze. But you know girls in 3A always get the best parts. I think they said you were going to play the part of the Giant Spider. At least its different than a flower. You know…you will stand out than the rest of us.’ Great! So that’s what they meant by insult to injury!
That afternoon, I walked out of the gate like a zombie with no idea how I was going to disclose the news to my brother. It was all my fault. It was I, who had raised his hopes so high. Going on and on about how his Mystery Woman was the most beautiful girl on this planet. But in reality it was the fat girl whose life seemed insipid and colorless. Bhai Jan was leaning against the car with his sunshades on like always. Without as much as a salutation, I slid into the car and without a word, he too sat down on the drivers seat. I was dreading his excited questions.
‘I guess our plan backfired!’ He sighed dejectedly as he started the car ‘I know she didn’t come to school today…I checked and there was no letter.’
‘There wasn’t?’
‘No… did you see Saman in school at all today?’
‘No…I didn’t…you’re right.’
‘All that planning for nothing! This is just stupid. Maybe I should just go home, pick a university, make Baba happy and start packing. Its all pretty stupid if you really think about it.’
‘Yeah…I guess you’re right.’ I surprised him with my equally pessimistic response.
‘Sorry you had to suffer through the auditions because of me…did they select you for anything?’
‘Yes…a giant spider. All the other girls are playing roses and tulips.’
‘No way’ Bhai Jan chuckled ‘Your Saman Apa owes you an apology. This is all because of her you know. Chalo let me buy you some ice cream.’
‘I don’t want any.’ I replied. And when the song ‘Samjhana’ wafted through the stereo, we both cringed just a little. He immediately switched it off.
‘Sorry, I’m just getting a little tired of this song.’ He remarked.
‘So am I.’
That afternoon, Bhai Jan came into the lounge with his friends quite a few times to cheer me up as I watched my cartoons.
‘Motoo, you don’t have to play the spider. I have a brilliant idea! We can forge a doctor’s note or something and say that you won’t be able to attend rehearsals.’ He ruffled my hair.
‘I’m fine, I’ll play the spider, I really don’t care.’ I pushed his arm away.
‘We’re heading out to the Covered Market. Do you want anything? Super Crisps? Jubilee? Frost?’
‘No…I’m fine…just let me watch my cartoons.’
I couldn’t really tell what it was that I felt. Disappointment? Anger? It felt like a fairy-tale dream yesterday had turned into a disappointing nightmare today. That and I didn’t know how to break that news to Bhai Jan. I decided to avoid the topic by avoiding him altogether.
It only got worse after that. There was no letter for Bhai Jan the next day. Or the day after. In fact an entire week passed and although Bhai Jan sent a letter with me everyday, there was never a reply waiting for him. He was now worried and quite visibly upset, yet each time he asked me, I told him that I had no idea. On the other end, Baba’s patience with Bhai was now wearing extremely thin. Every night there would be an argument between the two. The more Baba pressured Bhai Jan to pick a college before it was too late, the more Bhai Jan remained obdurate. He was now determined more than ever to not leave the country till he found out who his Mystery Woman was. One night, after witnessing a huge argument between my father and my brother, I stood in Bhai Jan’s doorway staring at his Madonna poster. He looked completely broken but when he saw me he immediately asked the same question he had already asked a million times before.
‘Are you sure your Saman Apa has been coming to school these days?’
I couldn’t believe it. It was almost as if he had ignored every word that had come out of Baba’s mouth. It was also the first time I had seen the face of someone blinded by love.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I replied.
‘Then why isn’t she replying to any of my letters? What do you think happened?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘I mean what do you think…’
‘What I think is that you should move on and forget about her.’
‘Wow’ he looked at me with amazement ‘My baby sister sounds more grown up than I do.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I cant Padash, I’m in love!’ It was the first time I heard the words on my brothers lips. It was also the first time, I saw tears in his eyes.
‘I don’t think its her Bhai Jan…’
‘Why…you were so sure before…’
‘I was….but I was being stupid….I have been giving it a lot of thought and I really don’t think its her.’
‘Well who else could it be then? Who hasn’t been coming to school this whole week. That’s our answer right there…’
‘Bhai Jan…listen to me….you’re not listening to what I’m saying. Its over. I think its time you forgot about her and pick a college. Baba is very serious.’
I couldn’t bear to look Bhai Jan in the eyes. I just turned around and retreated back to my room. I had betrayed my Bhai Jan.
Two weeks later, Bhai Jan came into the house as I was watching my afternoon cartoons still in my school uniform. He looked absolutely shattered as he walked across the lounge and stomped towards his room. I didn’t dare ask what was wrong because over the past two weeks, neither of us had brought up the Mystery Woman.
‘I’m going to go take a nap.’ He announced ‘If anyone calls…or if Mama Baba ask…just tell them, I’m not feeling well. Don’t let anyone disturb me.’
I nodded with my eyes still fixed on the screen. A few seconds later I heard his door shut, the lock clicked.
The phone rang, an hour later. It was Bhai Jan’s friend insisting I wake him up even though I tried to tell him that I had strict instructions to not disturb him from his sleep.
‘Padash yaar…please just tell him its me…I really need to speak to him…I need to find out what happened today. Do you know?’
‘He hasn’t said anything… just said not to wake him up. You will have to call back later.’
‘Aray Chotoo…just tell him its me. I was supposed to meet him at Usmania but he had already left when I got there…I need to find out what happened.’
‘Mustafa bhai, he was very serious when he said that he did not want to be woken up. Just call back later na.’
‘Try to karo Padash. Please Chotoo.’
‘Fine.’ I sighed and walked cautiously to Bhai Jan’s room. The room which was once off-limits, then became a regular hangout for me and was now reduced to a dark and dismal chamber with the lights dimmed, the curtains drawn. I knocked a fewhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif times before I heard his disgruntled voice.
‘Bhai Jan its Mustafa bhai…I told him you were sleeping but he keeps on insisting that I….’
‘Just tell him I’ll call him back when I wake up.’
I said no more and obediently relayed that message back to his friend. The friend thanked me for trying and promised me a candy bar the next day.
When Bhai Jan finally emerged from his room, his eyes were red. In his hand was an envelope which he handed over to Baba. He informed us that he had completed his college paperwork and Baba was ecstatic because he had chosen his alma mater. Only I knew, that Bhai Jan was doing this so he could leave Islamabad and all its memories. At the end of that memorable summer, Bhai Jan packed up and left for college. Dejected and heartbroken, he was probably ready for a new beginning. Before leaving, he held me tight and told me that he was glad that we had become so close that summer. He made me promise I would write to him and continue to share all my secrets. He also promised me he would never let anyone break my heart. We never mentioned the Mystery Woman to each other ever again to this day. I didn’t even know what happened that afternoon at Usmania.
‘He met her that afternoon.’ His friend informed me many years later. On a chilly night in an apartment in New Jersey. As Bhai Jan’s friend and I lay naked with unwashed bed-sheets covering our naked bodies. Sharing a cigarette after having just made love.
I listened quietly.
‘After weeks of pleading and begging, the girl finally agreed to meet your brother at that restaurant. I was supposed to meet him there afterwards but when I got there, he had already left. That’s why I was calling like crazy that day.’
‘So he got to meet her?’
‘Yes….but it wasn’t that Apa that you thought she was…some detectives we were.’
‘I know…’
‘Frankly, I still don’t know who it was. Never really got to see her…but at least your brother met her, which is more important.’
‘Did he say anything about her?’
‘Not much, just that he was madly in love with her… so I guess she must have been beautiful if he still felt that way after meeting her.’
‘Her name was Fari.’
‘Well whoever she was, she broke his heart pretty badly that day? When they met she told him that it was all just a prank to her. She had never thought he would get so serious. She came from some conservative family and begged him not to send a proposal or do anything silly. She said she was just having fun and was pretending to be another prettier girl in school. I was very angry but he said he didn’t care, he still loved her. He told her that too. And that he still wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Your literally begged her yaar. He even said that if there was as much as a slight chance that they could be together in the future, he was willing to give up college, stay in Islamabad and wait for her for as long as it took. But she really messed up, she had no idea things would get so out of control or that he would fall so madly in love with her. What did she look like, this Fari girl? Must have been drop dead gorgeous for him to act like that.’
‘She was to my brother, I guess…but back then I was too young and stupid to understand how love works.’
‘Love shove. its all stupid filmy stuff!’ Mustafa rolled over and fell asleep.
But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there next to him staring at the ceiling. Where had our journeys began, where were they intersecting and where would they end. I quietly crept out of bed and picked up Mustafa’s Rutgers sweatshirt off the floor. Tiptoeing over to his window with nothing on but his grey college hoodie, I sat down on the sill, pulled the sweatshirt over my legs and lit up another cigarette. I stared out at his college campus while Mustafa slept peacefully behind me, his face soaked in moonlight.
In the window’ reflection I could see myself. Although my brother and I have never looked alike, that night I saw only him in my mirror image. Bhai Jan’s face and how it looked the night I saw what someone blinded by love looks like. I looked exactly like that.
My Bhai Jan didn’t teach me much but he did teach me my first lesson about love and heartbreak.
I finished my cigarette and slid quietly back into bed with Mustafa who was now snoring.
If only I had listened…
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Just One of Life’s Many Tests!!!
Senior year of high school or the second year of your A-levels is a memorable time. A rite of passage, full of anticipation and fear, surety and uncertainty. Rebelling and conforming. A junction in life where we finally get to bid farewell to our present as well as our past and to embark on an exciting new journey. A journey that leads to a FUTURE the way we dreamt it. And as we desperately wait, we nervously also dread that exact same junction. The uncertainty of saying goodbye to a familiar present, the hesitation of embarking on an unchartered journey. A time of change….and waiting for change. Ending one era and starting a brand new one. One last year of dependence before a lifetime of independence. Fully aware that this life of both comfort and discomfort will never be the same once we board that plane and head off to college. Clutching on to our safety-belts we eagerly wait for what lies ahead. Decisions made on this year form the trajectory of years to come. Some refer to it as their long awaited escape (me), some simply view it as finally being able to return home (Peanut), some call it planning for the future while some are just following plans carefully charted out by their fathers. Plans, plans, plans. Mine was on a pizzeria napkin, for some it was on the back of a US News and World Report book and for some it was simply memorized words of expectations from patriarchs. A year when we are faced with some of life’s most important decisions, choices and tests. One of those just happens to be the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Or more commonly known in school corridors as the ‘bloody Ess – Ayyy- Teees!’
Why Yes!
The first time I ever gave those three alphabets any thought, was when a shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifenior slammed her thick SAT prep book in front of me. Jolting me back from a daydream of emancipated days in an American College, she was happy to remind me of a roadblock in those fading pen lines on a cherished napkin Alisha and I had once sketched my ‘escape’ plan on.
‘Have fun!’ she smirked and then with an equally sardonic laugh, she sauntered out of our school gates. She was hours away from boarding a plane to a much awaited liberal arts lifestyle. Me? I was still daydreaming. And her caustic exit taunted me because she had already crossed the bridge that I had yet to trudge on. The SATs were the first step!
A step that managed to put a damper in all our excited planning for escapes and futures. A three letter rain on our parade, in you will. Discussions of dorm room parties, shaving our heads, having threesomes and staying out without curfews were now suddenly replaced with vocabulary questions, math equations and crihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftical reading sections.
‘Just one more year of this hell hole’ Peanut used to say.
‘And then we can move abroad.’ I would reply.
‘And live life on our own terms.’ We would chorus.
‘As long as we can get these damn SATs taken care of.’ was now also added to our comfort chant!
Suddenly, it was not rare to walk into the common room to find a classmate engrossed in their colorful SAT prep book.
‘Why would you use the word ‘Pusillanimous’ when you can just say cowardly?’ They would ask a very poignant question with marked frustration.
‘What the hell did you just call me?’ The other would bark!
Ah the good old SAT books. Quite possibly the worst gift, I have received from a senor in high school. A book that was only good for two things, migraines and bigger biceps. Page after page of sample tests, high frequency vocabulary words and amorphous shapes of geometry that only reminded us of how stupid we really were.
Sweet Dreams and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles were now replaced with SAT prep books tucked under our arms. The overly ambitious ones even started to insert cumbersome yet antiquated words into their everyday jargon.
‘Yaar my driver has still not come to pick me up he is itnaaa indolent, ufff ab I am so truculent abhi!’ One would remark.
‘Benchod malefactor kaheen ka.’ Her boyfriend would reply.
It was also quite common to start noticing the geometrical shapes that our teacher’s faces were suddenly beginning to resemble. Urdu teachers were hexagons, English teachers were usually square-shaped and the Business Management teachers were always…and I mean always round. Don’t ask me why, it was just a probability theory Peanut and I came up with.
On some days our discourse was even reduced to multiple choice options.
‘Hey yaar what do you want from the canteen?
a. Coke
b. Chilli Chips
c. Samosa
d. All of the above’
But alas, the SATs were never that easy.
Sometimes we even took the traditional stab at group study. Some success that turned out to be! I remember going over to Peanut’s Flat after school to make flash cards of archaic words that we would never use once the test was over. We even pondered if these words were really part of everyday vernacular on American streets. Once I got here I realized the truth about American English; ‘bad’ meant good, ‘mugging’ meant glaring and ‘broke’ meant impecunious. Anyway, Peanut and I would barely get through 15 minutes of a math question or a paragraph from reading comprehension before we would find ourselves engaged in school gossip for the next three hours. The fault wasn’t ours. Studying for the SATs gave rise to excitement of going to college and moving abroad. Instead of vocab and math equations we would then end up fantasizing about parties, boyfriends, dorm rooms and roommates. Before you knew it, it was time to go home and we had made absolutely no progress on preparing for THE test which would be the only way those dreams of ours could come true. You see, to ‘move abroad and live life on our own terms’, we had to pass the SATs first.
A few weeks before the dreaded SATs, Muzna entered the common room with a stack of glossy black envelopes. They were invitations for a dance party on the night the darn test ended. She flipped through them before handing me the one with my name on it.
‘Someone just dropped these off with the chowkidar! Seems like there is a party that night and we’re invited!’ She exclaimed.
When I pulled out a card from the envelope, I discovered that some girl who went to ISAS was throwing a party. I say ‘some girl’ because I had no idea who she was or how she got my name. But - like most of the time during my A-levels - I would find myself on guest lists and invitations on parties by strangers I had never heard of. High school parties had a weird culture back in the 90s. Since I had attended parties with Alisha whose name was a common fixture on invite lists, I soon began to find myself invited to parties just because and all of a sudden, I was considered a fairly ‘cool’ girl (debatable I’m sure) who attended parties. And the more I went, the more I got invited! It was a sign of utter popularity in Islamabad’s high school world when you were invited to parties of other high schools by people you didn’t know. And although I should have been flattered – and I may sound cocky for saying this now – I was so used to it by then, it didn’t even matter.
‘This will be perfect, my parents are visiting my brother in Dubai so I can stay out past my curfew!’ I fanned my face with the invite.
‘I know, we take our SATs earlier that day so this will be a much-needed celebration. Uff Yaar, I haven’t even opened the book.’ Muzna replied.
‘What do you care….Daddy’s paying full tuition at any college…you won’t have trouble getting accepted anywhere.’
Muzna’s smile confirmed my statements veracity!
Then there was Wardah. The smartest of us all. And by smart, I don’t meant SAT-smart. That girl actually believed that England and the United Kingdom were two different countries. However, rumors were flying around school that she had paid one of the school geeks to take the SATs for her. The geek in question was Mohid; a bit of a loner with acne often competing with his dandruff. He adorned the quintessential spectacles and seduced Macro-Economics teachers with insightful questions about supply and demand while the rest of us rolled our eyes. He had already taken the SATs and on top of that he has also managed to score a 1330. Probably the only time, any of us ever spoke to him or may have even envied him. During a failed study session at the Flat after school, Peanut rolled up a joint for ‘good measure’ and discussed this latest, SATastic gossip in school.
‘How can Mohid take the SATs for someone else?’ I dismissed the lies.
‘Because he’s getting paid. And I’m not talking just money. Rumor has it, Wardah has not only offered to take him to the ISAS party that night as his date but some say she has even offered to let him feel her boobs at the party.’
‘That’s just BS…there is no way that’s possible!’
‘Why not….every other male in school has groped them. Well except for me of course.’
‘But she’s a girl and he’s a guy….’
‘Yeah it’s called heterosexuality! Unfortunately for me it’s quite common in this world!’
‘That’s not what I meant….I mean how can he pass for a girl during the SATs. Don’t they ask for IDs? They must have some system in place! Does Mohid realize that he can get caught and jeopardize his entire future.’
‘Well we already know she isn’t the brightest tube-light in the world but as for Mohid…I guess some men are desperate enough to gamble their futures for a quick feel of some Cha-Chas. Can I borrow yours?’
I slapped Peanuts head with a pillow but not before looking down to admire my own breasts. They were twice the size of Wardah’s…and for a second, I wondered if I too could put them to work for a 1300 SAT score!’
There were also some of us who were actually studying. Students with their noses buried deep in their SAT books and not using party invites as bookmarks. One afternoon, Peanut sat in the common room doodling on his SAT book while I sat next to him writing down the lyrics to ‘My Sharona’ from a dying walkman. Suddenly Metro Milan Agarbatti decided to sit down next to us. Ok, so obviously Metro Milan Agarbatti was not his real name. His real name consisted of the initials, MMA which he would often pen at the end of all his assignments and even on some bathroom walls with hero-maar calligraphy. Somewhere along the way, kids began to make fun of him and referring to him as MMA: Metro Milan Agarbatti. The name suited him like a glove and then just stuck like white on rice. An extremely skinny boy with a terrible mullet MMA often commuted to school on a wagon from Pindi. His most discerning physical features were his fixed-by-scotch-tape spectacles, his bony frame and an exceptionally dark complexion. The boy literally looked like an agarbatti. We never quite understood how he ended up at UCI or even in his A-levels, where his thick accent and bad grammar were often mocked and ridiculed by his burger peers. I may feel bad for him now but back then we didn’t blink twice before referring to him as Metro Milan – sometimes even to his face.
‘Studying hard.’ His flashed a wide smile at Peanut as he sat down besides us.
Peanut shot me a disgusted look, as I tried hard not to laugh. As I shoved my face deeper into my book to stifle my giggles, Peanut took that as encouragement to pursue his mockery of MMA.
‘So Metro Milan are you taking the SATs too?’
‘Yes….Standurr test….’
‘Oh yes…..Standurrrrr test…how’s the prep going?’ Peanut imitated his accent and I turned blue holding back my giggles.
‘Intrusting questions…verbal is difficult…but Math is no problems.’
I was now going insane from controlling my laughing and Peanut was enjoying every minute of it.
‘Oh no problems I’m sure….very intrusting subject.’
‘I am nervous about Toefel you know.’
‘Oh of course…so stressed out about the Toefel.’ Peanut egged on.
‘I have been studying very hard only.’
‘I’m sure you have been. What are you aiming for?’
‘Well if you set a high aim, you do not feel bad if it is less.’
‘And what’s your aim?’
‘550….a little high but I like setting high aims.’
Peanut who had already gotten a perfect score on Toefel emitted a sarcastic smile and said…’550 should be no problems.’
At that point, I couldn’t bear it any more and burst into hysterics. I ran out of the common room and Peanut dashed after me, We ran all the way to the other end of the school and spent the next half hour catching our breaths and laughing hysterically like the bullies that we had become. Later that day, when we saw him again, we still couldn’t hold back our giggles. Metro Milan Agarbatti just shot us an uncomfortable smile ‘You two are very naughty…I think.’
The day of the test finally arrived on a brisk, cool Islamabad morning. We arrived at the Marriott hotel more worried about our outfits than the critical reading sections or the probability and algebra questions we had suffered through for the past few weeks. Kids from all the other schools of Islamabad were there and for teens with raging hormones image is more important than a standardize test score. Looking our best didn’t necessarily entail dressing like bimbos though trust me there were plenty of those too. It was just an effort to look different. To look like a rebel. To fit in by standing out. While some lathered on dark eye makeup and glared through nose-rings and clip-on lip-rings to appear angry and gothic, there were also those that sat in the corner with their walkmans apathetic to the questions they were going to expect. Some skimmed through the books still determined to chase their Ivy League dreams. And as we walked into a hotel where we had walked through a million times to go dancing at Muddys on a Saturday night, today we weren’t going to a discothèque. However judging by some of the outfits, you could have fooled me. Still, we were there to take the most important test of our lives. When we found familiar faces we flocked straight to our groups of friends. Guys checked out girls. Girls secretly flirted with guys. Some just watched at this strange burger world from the periphery – the men intrigued and seduced by the girls who rolled their eyes back at them. Aware of the spotlight, the burgers performed for this lustful audience even more. The girls accentuated their physical contact with their male friends. For some it was rare to see guys and girls high-five, hug and joke so openly. Although most still freaked out about the test, it seemed like everyone was more interested in the ISAS party that night. Who was invited? Who wasn’t? What were we to wear? What lie and excuse were we to give our parents? Who was picking up who, who was dropping who? Who needed a girl since most parties back then were a couples only affair in order to keep the stags away. Nights planned around each others curfews and fabricated stories of sleepovers at friends. Guys made sure their girlfriends found a way to get there so they could make out. Girls reminded them how hard it would be to escape overly protective and strict parents. Swear words chorused in the lobby of a landmark hotel where I too stood and laughed with my friends. We were slightly shocked to see Mohid approach our group.
‘Mohid….what the hell are you doing here?’ I asked him ‘Didn’t you already ace the SATs. Or are you trying to get a better score?’
‘Sssh’ He winked at me ‘My name is Wardah today!’
Peanut and I just looked at each other and laughed. The pep in his step confirmed that he too was looking forward to the party that night like the rest of us!
The test came and went. Girls sashayed around the hall in their rehearsed catwalks and men followed them with their eyes full of lust. And as these men ogled with hungry eyes, they anticipated college life even more when girls and sex would both be easy. Once the test ended we all poured out into the parking lot hugging each other and rejoicing over the fact that it was finally over. Some discussed questions while most were just glad to be done. Now it was time to make plans. Outside, expensive cars blasted music as we jumped in and out laughing and high-fiving. Later, we all piled into different cars and whizzed off to Hot Spot for a celebratory ice cream. The entire time, aware of the non-member audience who followed us with intrigued eyes.
That night we partied past our curfews in rebellion. For me, it was easy because Mama and Baba were out of town. As far as they knew, I was sleeping over at a friends. And to be fair, it was the truth. The gender of this friend just happened to be male –a minor detail I had omitted. But in my defense once again, the male was Peanut. I was as safe as spending the night at a girl’s house. Literally! I got dressed that night in a white blouse and black leather pants. My frizzy hair that had gotten quite long by then were parted in the middle and with only a pack of cigarettes and the invite, I was as ready as I could be. Peanut picked me up with his driver and we headed straight to a party where we danced all night.
‘The SATs are finally over love.’
‘Brings us that much closer to moving abroad.’
‘And then we can finally live life on our own terms.’
In a way, the night and the party offered us a promise. We had done our part. We had taken the first step on the bridge to our escape. No longer just a bunch of spoilt rich brats dancing to pop music in the middle of a living room with bad strobe lighting and fog machines. We were high school seniors ready to graduate and start a new chapter in our lives. A chapter we had only witnessed through Pulse Global videos, flipped pages of paperbacks and glossy magazines or through shows on our Dish Antenna. Although we had a few weeks till our scores arrived in the mail, tonight we were just going to celebrate getting closer to our dreams. The song ‘Alane’ by Wes was thumping through the drawing room discotheque when I left the dance floor for some fresh air. Peanut’s dancing skills were raved about throughout the school so he always had a line of eager females ready to dance with him. I figured it was time to stop being greedy and let the others enjoy his slick moves. He could relish the female attention while I took a walk outside.
I lit up a cigarette and strolled through the perfectly manicured lawn of that large and fancy bungalow of F10-4. Ar a time in our lives when it was a sin to ever be spotted alone…especially at a party, I walked by myself and breathed in the moment as I looked around. Everyone had the same sparkle of excitement in their eyes. Something told me that we were all going to remember this night. The night we took our SATs. And as we laughed and giggled, swayed and wiggled, one thing was for sure, high school was ending. The present was quickly becoming the past. The future…OUR future…was just around the corner. I smoked my cigarette on a chair by myself, smiling as I observed my peers. Muzna was leaning against a tree, her body moving in rhythm to the exotic beats while her entourage of girls circled around her like moths hungering for her nimbus. Surprisingly, she did fairly well on her SATs when the scores arrived. She was accepted to UPenn and although, we were excited to meet up in Philly on my breaks, we never really hung out like we imagined we would. Apart from a few coffee dates at Xandos at 12th and Walnut, we barely connected in the States after my freshman year. After graduation, she returned home, married a banker and is now raising two lovely kids. Always a little plump, she gained some more weight and every now and then we run into each other when I’m home and in a matter of minutes we catch up on our lives through small talk. She became the Begum we all thought she would and the girls who surrounded her the night of the party, followed a similar trajectory in life too. Husbands, kids and country-club high-teas. The last time I ran into her was at a wedding. It was amusing how the sight of her was no different than what I saw at the party that night. She stood in the middle, leaning against a pillar as women enveloped her with eager eyes. On the night of the party they all wore jeans and blouses, years later they were doing the same in Saris.
Gossip flew (and Peanut shared) that Mohid got to feel not one but two boobs at the party. In fact Mohid and Wardah ended up making out on more than one occasions even after that night was over. The night of the party, I saw them emerging from a dimly lit make-out room upstairs. Although people thought it was random for a nerdy guy like Mohid to be holding Wardah’s hand that night, few knew the actual deal. This nerd had used his brains to literally score, pardon the pun, not just a 1330 on his own SATs but also second base before he left for college. He had earned it. And although Wardah may have looked uncomfortable that night, it turned out to be worthy investment for her too. When the scores arrived Wardah was ecstatic and Mohid was slightly irked. The rest of the school couldn’t stop talking. A girl who couldn’t get more than an 800 on her sample SAT tests, had score a 1400 on her SATs. It probably pinched Mohid when he wrote 1330 on his own college apps while Wardah penciled in 1400. I should mentione though that Wardah never completed her degree. One winter, when I was home from college, I heard that she had taken a year off from school to deal with ‘homesickness.’ The year turned into two and then she just never returned back to finish her degree. It doesn’t really matter because she too is married now and her husband probably provides for her and their kids in exchange for a feel of her breasts at night. Some things never change, I guess. Mohid did finish his degree and went on to get some more. Not exactly sure what he’s doing, but I do know that he married a goree that he met in college. According to Peanut, they had wedding receptions both in the States and in Pakistan.
From where I sat smoking my cigarette, I could see the dance floor and Peanut was right in the middle going from one girl to the next. His T-shirt was drenched in sweat but he loved the attention. Years later, I would see him move the same way but shirtless and at a dance club in Chelsea when he came to visit me. He too did fairly well on his SATs. In fact, he was one of the few kids in our class, who got accepted to their dream school. St. Martin’s in his hometown London where he got to study art. It was his wish and also revenge for his business oriented father. His lanky frame was replaced by a chiseled, gym body. After a brief stint at Sotheby’s, he is currently the curator of an independent art gallery in Soho and continues to date wealthy older men who pamper him but those flings rarely last because just like myself, he too isn’t ready to settle down. If we are both single by the age of 40, we have promised to live together like the Golden Girls.
Me, well you all know how I turned out! And will continue to know as you read my columns. The only thing worth mentioning is that my SAT scores were quite terrible. And to this day, my family believes that I got a 1220. I hid the scores when they arrived and then lied. Hey if Wardah can get a guy to take the test for her, I sure could manage to get a nerd to make me a fake score-sheet! ;)
That night at the party, I didn’t just think about the people around me. I even thought of those that were not there. Who had not been considered ‘cool’ enough to have been invited to the weekend’s happening dance party. Those who I had seen earlier that day at the large auditorium in Marriott watching us from he periphery. People like Metro Milan Agarbatti. I think the only time, he ever got to see a dance floor or dance next to a girl was at our Farewell later that year. Even on that night, I probably only thought of him for a few seconds before returning to the dance floor. He never had plans to go abroad for college and his future plans had very little to do with flying across the world. It was a luxury he couldn’t afford and never entertained as a thought either. Yet he did quite well on his SATs. A few months later, he was accepted to LUMS and IBA. He ended up going to LUMS where he was probably treated no differently than how we was treated at our school but then again none of us knew how our futures would really turn out. That he would go on to become a successful Chartered Accountant. He now makes more than all of us and travels the world, staying in five star hotels of cities that are yet to be checked off on our bucket lists. He married a cousin of his, and by her facebook pics she seems quite pretty. The smile on her face in those same pics, confirms that she has no issues with his agarbatti looks. Quite often on his travels, he passes through New York. Once, I even agreed to meet up with him for an hour at a Starbucks. After we said goodbye, I walked back to work with a smile. He still spoke with that same thick accent we often mocked. And someone at his job probably still refers to him as Metro Milan Agarbatti. They probably still secretly giggle in business meetings when he makes grammatical gaffes like uttering ‘No Problems’. But now as our futures have become our present, did any of that really matter? No.
Just like the SATs, I would one day take my GREs and several other tests and exams. I have never been and never will be a fan of standardized tests. I think they are pointless. But I will agree with one thing. The SATs are probably still the most important test in your life. I learned a lot from them too. Not from the test itself, or the critical reading section or the algebraic equations or the hour spent circling the best option with a Number 2 pencil in a large air-conditioned Shadee Hall at Marriott. I learned from the experience of taking the SATs with my classmates. And the lives that unfolded after. The SATs taught me a lot about life and the future that lay ahead after you walk out of that hall. You laugh with friends outside you who think will always be a part of your lives. You plan for a party you think determines your worth in this world. You snicker at people you think will be as insignificant in the future as they appear now in the periphery. But only time is able to tell that the future can actually prove us wrong!
If there are any readers who are talking their SATs, GRE’s or any important test in the near future. I certainly don’t envy you. But I do wish you the BEST of LUCK! You never know. You may learn something!
Why Yes!
The first time I ever gave those three alphabets any thought, was when a shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifenior slammed her thick SAT prep book in front of me. Jolting me back from a daydream of emancipated days in an American College, she was happy to remind me of a roadblock in those fading pen lines on a cherished napkin Alisha and I had once sketched my ‘escape’ plan on.
‘Have fun!’ she smirked and then with an equally sardonic laugh, she sauntered out of our school gates. She was hours away from boarding a plane to a much awaited liberal arts lifestyle. Me? I was still daydreaming. And her caustic exit taunted me because she had already crossed the bridge that I had yet to trudge on. The SATs were the first step!
A step that managed to put a damper in all our excited planning for escapes and futures. A three letter rain on our parade, in you will. Discussions of dorm room parties, shaving our heads, having threesomes and staying out without curfews were now suddenly replaced with vocabulary questions, math equations and crihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftical reading sections.
‘Just one more year of this hell hole’ Peanut used to say.
‘And then we can move abroad.’ I would reply.
‘And live life on our own terms.’ We would chorus.
‘As long as we can get these damn SATs taken care of.’ was now also added to our comfort chant!
Suddenly, it was not rare to walk into the common room to find a classmate engrossed in their colorful SAT prep book.
‘Why would you use the word ‘Pusillanimous’ when you can just say cowardly?’ They would ask a very poignant question with marked frustration.
‘What the hell did you just call me?’ The other would bark!
Ah the good old SAT books. Quite possibly the worst gift, I have received from a senor in high school. A book that was only good for two things, migraines and bigger biceps. Page after page of sample tests, high frequency vocabulary words and amorphous shapes of geometry that only reminded us of how stupid we really were.
Sweet Dreams and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles were now replaced with SAT prep books tucked under our arms. The overly ambitious ones even started to insert cumbersome yet antiquated words into their everyday jargon.
‘Yaar my driver has still not come to pick me up he is itnaaa indolent, ufff ab I am so truculent abhi!’ One would remark.
‘Benchod malefactor kaheen ka.’ Her boyfriend would reply.
It was also quite common to start noticing the geometrical shapes that our teacher’s faces were suddenly beginning to resemble. Urdu teachers were hexagons, English teachers were usually square-shaped and the Business Management teachers were always…and I mean always round. Don’t ask me why, it was just a probability theory Peanut and I came up with.
On some days our discourse was even reduced to multiple choice options.
‘Hey yaar what do you want from the canteen?
a. Coke
b. Chilli Chips
c. Samosa
d. All of the above’
But alas, the SATs were never that easy.
Sometimes we even took the traditional stab at group study. Some success that turned out to be! I remember going over to Peanut’s Flat after school to make flash cards of archaic words that we would never use once the test was over. We even pondered if these words were really part of everyday vernacular on American streets. Once I got here I realized the truth about American English; ‘bad’ meant good, ‘mugging’ meant glaring and ‘broke’ meant impecunious. Anyway, Peanut and I would barely get through 15 minutes of a math question or a paragraph from reading comprehension before we would find ourselves engaged in school gossip for the next three hours. The fault wasn’t ours. Studying for the SATs gave rise to excitement of going to college and moving abroad. Instead of vocab and math equations we would then end up fantasizing about parties, boyfriends, dorm rooms and roommates. Before you knew it, it was time to go home and we had made absolutely no progress on preparing for THE test which would be the only way those dreams of ours could come true. You see, to ‘move abroad and live life on our own terms’, we had to pass the SATs first.
A few weeks before the dreaded SATs, Muzna entered the common room with a stack of glossy black envelopes. They were invitations for a dance party on the night the darn test ended. She flipped through them before handing me the one with my name on it.
‘Someone just dropped these off with the chowkidar! Seems like there is a party that night and we’re invited!’ She exclaimed.
When I pulled out a card from the envelope, I discovered that some girl who went to ISAS was throwing a party. I say ‘some girl’ because I had no idea who she was or how she got my name. But - like most of the time during my A-levels - I would find myself on guest lists and invitations on parties by strangers I had never heard of. High school parties had a weird culture back in the 90s. Since I had attended parties with Alisha whose name was a common fixture on invite lists, I soon began to find myself invited to parties just because and all of a sudden, I was considered a fairly ‘cool’ girl (debatable I’m sure) who attended parties. And the more I went, the more I got invited! It was a sign of utter popularity in Islamabad’s high school world when you were invited to parties of other high schools by people you didn’t know. And although I should have been flattered – and I may sound cocky for saying this now – I was so used to it by then, it didn’t even matter.
‘This will be perfect, my parents are visiting my brother in Dubai so I can stay out past my curfew!’ I fanned my face with the invite.
‘I know, we take our SATs earlier that day so this will be a much-needed celebration. Uff Yaar, I haven’t even opened the book.’ Muzna replied.
‘What do you care….Daddy’s paying full tuition at any college…you won’t have trouble getting accepted anywhere.’
Muzna’s smile confirmed my statements veracity!
Then there was Wardah. The smartest of us all. And by smart, I don’t meant SAT-smart. That girl actually believed that England and the United Kingdom were two different countries. However, rumors were flying around school that she had paid one of the school geeks to take the SATs for her. The geek in question was Mohid; a bit of a loner with acne often competing with his dandruff. He adorned the quintessential spectacles and seduced Macro-Economics teachers with insightful questions about supply and demand while the rest of us rolled our eyes. He had already taken the SATs and on top of that he has also managed to score a 1330. Probably the only time, any of us ever spoke to him or may have even envied him. During a failed study session at the Flat after school, Peanut rolled up a joint for ‘good measure’ and discussed this latest, SATastic gossip in school.
‘How can Mohid take the SATs for someone else?’ I dismissed the lies.
‘Because he’s getting paid. And I’m not talking just money. Rumor has it, Wardah has not only offered to take him to the ISAS party that night as his date but some say she has even offered to let him feel her boobs at the party.’
‘That’s just BS…there is no way that’s possible!’
‘Why not….every other male in school has groped them. Well except for me of course.’
‘But she’s a girl and he’s a guy….’
‘Yeah it’s called heterosexuality! Unfortunately for me it’s quite common in this world!’
‘That’s not what I meant….I mean how can he pass for a girl during the SATs. Don’t they ask for IDs? They must have some system in place! Does Mohid realize that he can get caught and jeopardize his entire future.’
‘Well we already know she isn’t the brightest tube-light in the world but as for Mohid…I guess some men are desperate enough to gamble their futures for a quick feel of some Cha-Chas. Can I borrow yours?’
I slapped Peanuts head with a pillow but not before looking down to admire my own breasts. They were twice the size of Wardah’s…and for a second, I wondered if I too could put them to work for a 1300 SAT score!’
There were also some of us who were actually studying. Students with their noses buried deep in their SAT books and not using party invites as bookmarks. One afternoon, Peanut sat in the common room doodling on his SAT book while I sat next to him writing down the lyrics to ‘My Sharona’ from a dying walkman. Suddenly Metro Milan Agarbatti decided to sit down next to us. Ok, so obviously Metro Milan Agarbatti was not his real name. His real name consisted of the initials, MMA which he would often pen at the end of all his assignments and even on some bathroom walls with hero-maar calligraphy. Somewhere along the way, kids began to make fun of him and referring to him as MMA: Metro Milan Agarbatti. The name suited him like a glove and then just stuck like white on rice. An extremely skinny boy with a terrible mullet MMA often commuted to school on a wagon from Pindi. His most discerning physical features were his fixed-by-scotch-tape spectacles, his bony frame and an exceptionally dark complexion. The boy literally looked like an agarbatti. We never quite understood how he ended up at UCI or even in his A-levels, where his thick accent and bad grammar were often mocked and ridiculed by his burger peers. I may feel bad for him now but back then we didn’t blink twice before referring to him as Metro Milan – sometimes even to his face.
‘Studying hard.’ His flashed a wide smile at Peanut as he sat down besides us.
Peanut shot me a disgusted look, as I tried hard not to laugh. As I shoved my face deeper into my book to stifle my giggles, Peanut took that as encouragement to pursue his mockery of MMA.
‘So Metro Milan are you taking the SATs too?’
‘Yes….Standurr test….’
‘Oh yes…..Standurrrrr test…how’s the prep going?’ Peanut imitated his accent and I turned blue holding back my giggles.
‘Intrusting questions…verbal is difficult…but Math is no problems.’
I was now going insane from controlling my laughing and Peanut was enjoying every minute of it.
‘Oh no problems I’m sure….very intrusting subject.’
‘I am nervous about Toefel you know.’
‘Oh of course…so stressed out about the Toefel.’ Peanut egged on.
‘I have been studying very hard only.’
‘I’m sure you have been. What are you aiming for?’
‘Well if you set a high aim, you do not feel bad if it is less.’
‘And what’s your aim?’
‘550….a little high but I like setting high aims.’
Peanut who had already gotten a perfect score on Toefel emitted a sarcastic smile and said…’550 should be no problems.’
At that point, I couldn’t bear it any more and burst into hysterics. I ran out of the common room and Peanut dashed after me, We ran all the way to the other end of the school and spent the next half hour catching our breaths and laughing hysterically like the bullies that we had become. Later that day, when we saw him again, we still couldn’t hold back our giggles. Metro Milan Agarbatti just shot us an uncomfortable smile ‘You two are very naughty…I think.’
The day of the test finally arrived on a brisk, cool Islamabad morning. We arrived at the Marriott hotel more worried about our outfits than the critical reading sections or the probability and algebra questions we had suffered through for the past few weeks. Kids from all the other schools of Islamabad were there and for teens with raging hormones image is more important than a standardize test score. Looking our best didn’t necessarily entail dressing like bimbos though trust me there were plenty of those too. It was just an effort to look different. To look like a rebel. To fit in by standing out. While some lathered on dark eye makeup and glared through nose-rings and clip-on lip-rings to appear angry and gothic, there were also those that sat in the corner with their walkmans apathetic to the questions they were going to expect. Some skimmed through the books still determined to chase their Ivy League dreams. And as we walked into a hotel where we had walked through a million times to go dancing at Muddys on a Saturday night, today we weren’t going to a discothèque. However judging by some of the outfits, you could have fooled me. Still, we were there to take the most important test of our lives. When we found familiar faces we flocked straight to our groups of friends. Guys checked out girls. Girls secretly flirted with guys. Some just watched at this strange burger world from the periphery – the men intrigued and seduced by the girls who rolled their eyes back at them. Aware of the spotlight, the burgers performed for this lustful audience even more. The girls accentuated their physical contact with their male friends. For some it was rare to see guys and girls high-five, hug and joke so openly. Although most still freaked out about the test, it seemed like everyone was more interested in the ISAS party that night. Who was invited? Who wasn’t? What were we to wear? What lie and excuse were we to give our parents? Who was picking up who, who was dropping who? Who needed a girl since most parties back then were a couples only affair in order to keep the stags away. Nights planned around each others curfews and fabricated stories of sleepovers at friends. Guys made sure their girlfriends found a way to get there so they could make out. Girls reminded them how hard it would be to escape overly protective and strict parents. Swear words chorused in the lobby of a landmark hotel where I too stood and laughed with my friends. We were slightly shocked to see Mohid approach our group.
‘Mohid….what the hell are you doing here?’ I asked him ‘Didn’t you already ace the SATs. Or are you trying to get a better score?’
‘Sssh’ He winked at me ‘My name is Wardah today!’
Peanut and I just looked at each other and laughed. The pep in his step confirmed that he too was looking forward to the party that night like the rest of us!
The test came and went. Girls sashayed around the hall in their rehearsed catwalks and men followed them with their eyes full of lust. And as these men ogled with hungry eyes, they anticipated college life even more when girls and sex would both be easy. Once the test ended we all poured out into the parking lot hugging each other and rejoicing over the fact that it was finally over. Some discussed questions while most were just glad to be done. Now it was time to make plans. Outside, expensive cars blasted music as we jumped in and out laughing and high-fiving. Later, we all piled into different cars and whizzed off to Hot Spot for a celebratory ice cream. The entire time, aware of the non-member audience who followed us with intrigued eyes.
That night we partied past our curfews in rebellion. For me, it was easy because Mama and Baba were out of town. As far as they knew, I was sleeping over at a friends. And to be fair, it was the truth. The gender of this friend just happened to be male –a minor detail I had omitted. But in my defense once again, the male was Peanut. I was as safe as spending the night at a girl’s house. Literally! I got dressed that night in a white blouse and black leather pants. My frizzy hair that had gotten quite long by then were parted in the middle and with only a pack of cigarettes and the invite, I was as ready as I could be. Peanut picked me up with his driver and we headed straight to a party where we danced all night.
‘The SATs are finally over love.’
‘Brings us that much closer to moving abroad.’
‘And then we can finally live life on our own terms.’
In a way, the night and the party offered us a promise. We had done our part. We had taken the first step on the bridge to our escape. No longer just a bunch of spoilt rich brats dancing to pop music in the middle of a living room with bad strobe lighting and fog machines. We were high school seniors ready to graduate and start a new chapter in our lives. A chapter we had only witnessed through Pulse Global videos, flipped pages of paperbacks and glossy magazines or through shows on our Dish Antenna. Although we had a few weeks till our scores arrived in the mail, tonight we were just going to celebrate getting closer to our dreams. The song ‘Alane’ by Wes was thumping through the drawing room discotheque when I left the dance floor for some fresh air. Peanut’s dancing skills were raved about throughout the school so he always had a line of eager females ready to dance with him. I figured it was time to stop being greedy and let the others enjoy his slick moves. He could relish the female attention while I took a walk outside.
I lit up a cigarette and strolled through the perfectly manicured lawn of that large and fancy bungalow of F10-4. Ar a time in our lives when it was a sin to ever be spotted alone…especially at a party, I walked by myself and breathed in the moment as I looked around. Everyone had the same sparkle of excitement in their eyes. Something told me that we were all going to remember this night. The night we took our SATs. And as we laughed and giggled, swayed and wiggled, one thing was for sure, high school was ending. The present was quickly becoming the past. The future…OUR future…was just around the corner. I smoked my cigarette on a chair by myself, smiling as I observed my peers. Muzna was leaning against a tree, her body moving in rhythm to the exotic beats while her entourage of girls circled around her like moths hungering for her nimbus. Surprisingly, she did fairly well on her SATs when the scores arrived. She was accepted to UPenn and although, we were excited to meet up in Philly on my breaks, we never really hung out like we imagined we would. Apart from a few coffee dates at Xandos at 12th and Walnut, we barely connected in the States after my freshman year. After graduation, she returned home, married a banker and is now raising two lovely kids. Always a little plump, she gained some more weight and every now and then we run into each other when I’m home and in a matter of minutes we catch up on our lives through small talk. She became the Begum we all thought she would and the girls who surrounded her the night of the party, followed a similar trajectory in life too. Husbands, kids and country-club high-teas. The last time I ran into her was at a wedding. It was amusing how the sight of her was no different than what I saw at the party that night. She stood in the middle, leaning against a pillar as women enveloped her with eager eyes. On the night of the party they all wore jeans and blouses, years later they were doing the same in Saris.
Gossip flew (and Peanut shared) that Mohid got to feel not one but two boobs at the party. In fact Mohid and Wardah ended up making out on more than one occasions even after that night was over. The night of the party, I saw them emerging from a dimly lit make-out room upstairs. Although people thought it was random for a nerdy guy like Mohid to be holding Wardah’s hand that night, few knew the actual deal. This nerd had used his brains to literally score, pardon the pun, not just a 1330 on his own SATs but also second base before he left for college. He had earned it. And although Wardah may have looked uncomfortable that night, it turned out to be worthy investment for her too. When the scores arrived Wardah was ecstatic and Mohid was slightly irked. The rest of the school couldn’t stop talking. A girl who couldn’t get more than an 800 on her sample SAT tests, had score a 1400 on her SATs. It probably pinched Mohid when he wrote 1330 on his own college apps while Wardah penciled in 1400. I should mentione though that Wardah never completed her degree. One winter, when I was home from college, I heard that she had taken a year off from school to deal with ‘homesickness.’ The year turned into two and then she just never returned back to finish her degree. It doesn’t really matter because she too is married now and her husband probably provides for her and their kids in exchange for a feel of her breasts at night. Some things never change, I guess. Mohid did finish his degree and went on to get some more. Not exactly sure what he’s doing, but I do know that he married a goree that he met in college. According to Peanut, they had wedding receptions both in the States and in Pakistan.
From where I sat smoking my cigarette, I could see the dance floor and Peanut was right in the middle going from one girl to the next. His T-shirt was drenched in sweat but he loved the attention. Years later, I would see him move the same way but shirtless and at a dance club in Chelsea when he came to visit me. He too did fairly well on his SATs. In fact, he was one of the few kids in our class, who got accepted to their dream school. St. Martin’s in his hometown London where he got to study art. It was his wish and also revenge for his business oriented father. His lanky frame was replaced by a chiseled, gym body. After a brief stint at Sotheby’s, he is currently the curator of an independent art gallery in Soho and continues to date wealthy older men who pamper him but those flings rarely last because just like myself, he too isn’t ready to settle down. If we are both single by the age of 40, we have promised to live together like the Golden Girls.
Me, well you all know how I turned out! And will continue to know as you read my columns. The only thing worth mentioning is that my SAT scores were quite terrible. And to this day, my family believes that I got a 1220. I hid the scores when they arrived and then lied. Hey if Wardah can get a guy to take the test for her, I sure could manage to get a nerd to make me a fake score-sheet! ;)
That night at the party, I didn’t just think about the people around me. I even thought of those that were not there. Who had not been considered ‘cool’ enough to have been invited to the weekend’s happening dance party. Those who I had seen earlier that day at the large auditorium in Marriott watching us from he periphery. People like Metro Milan Agarbatti. I think the only time, he ever got to see a dance floor or dance next to a girl was at our Farewell later that year. Even on that night, I probably only thought of him for a few seconds before returning to the dance floor. He never had plans to go abroad for college and his future plans had very little to do with flying across the world. It was a luxury he couldn’t afford and never entertained as a thought either. Yet he did quite well on his SATs. A few months later, he was accepted to LUMS and IBA. He ended up going to LUMS where he was probably treated no differently than how we was treated at our school but then again none of us knew how our futures would really turn out. That he would go on to become a successful Chartered Accountant. He now makes more than all of us and travels the world, staying in five star hotels of cities that are yet to be checked off on our bucket lists. He married a cousin of his, and by her facebook pics she seems quite pretty. The smile on her face in those same pics, confirms that she has no issues with his agarbatti looks. Quite often on his travels, he passes through New York. Once, I even agreed to meet up with him for an hour at a Starbucks. After we said goodbye, I walked back to work with a smile. He still spoke with that same thick accent we often mocked. And someone at his job probably still refers to him as Metro Milan Agarbatti. They probably still secretly giggle in business meetings when he makes grammatical gaffes like uttering ‘No Problems’. But now as our futures have become our present, did any of that really matter? No.
Just like the SATs, I would one day take my GREs and several other tests and exams. I have never been and never will be a fan of standardized tests. I think they are pointless. But I will agree with one thing. The SATs are probably still the most important test in your life. I learned a lot from them too. Not from the test itself, or the critical reading section or the algebraic equations or the hour spent circling the best option with a Number 2 pencil in a large air-conditioned Shadee Hall at Marriott. I learned from the experience of taking the SATs with my classmates. And the lives that unfolded after. The SATs taught me a lot about life and the future that lay ahead after you walk out of that hall. You laugh with friends outside you who think will always be a part of your lives. You plan for a party you think determines your worth in this world. You snicker at people you think will be as insignificant in the future as they appear now in the periphery. But only time is able to tell that the future can actually prove us wrong!
If there are any readers who are talking their SATs, GRE’s or any important test in the near future. I certainly don’t envy you. But I do wish you the BEST of LUCK! You never know. You may learn something!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The day a Princess died....
It was the day Versace died. The same day a girl kept up with the news to soothe her boredom and a young boy in the UK fell asleep on his suitcase with tears in his eyes.
Why Yes!
Gianni Versace had died. On an uneventful day, outside his mansion, after a morning walk. Just like that. Gunned down by an old flame, an old trick, an old friend – BBC, CNN, PTV. Years later on a trip to South Beach with Dario, I visited that mansion and sat in front of those steps. I tried to imagine where his silhouette was chalked in that summer of 1997.
The summer when he died. The summer after my O-levels. I had returned after a month in Karachi teaching English to underprivileged girls at a Coaching Center while receiving my own coaching in a staff-room by colleagues from Nazimabad who allowed me a glimpse into a world completely different from my own. The summer I had bid farewell to my first true friend; the person who helped me, taught me, shaped me, formed me and then when her work was complete, left me. It was the summer I lay around in constant boredom, sneaking cigarettes from my bedroom window and watching The Wonder Years and Chicago Hope on the Dish. Sometimes, I would lie down on floor cushions and re-read An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa for the sixth time. Skipping over the gratuitous parts about Benazir Bhutto but savoring the descriptions of Feroza’s move to the States; even harboring a slightly ludicrous crush on Manek. A book read, simply because it reaffirmed and motivated my plans for escape to a land called America. A plan, I had carefully concocted on a pizzeria napkin one day with the friend I had just bid farewell to in Karachi but never heard from again.
News that day was saturated with descriptions of a murderer on the loose. He had killed many, including….actually….especially the founder of a multi-million dollar fashion empire. Emphasis on million and dollars; my first lesson that it isn’t the actual crime but more the value of the victim’s name which makes the news. This name happened to be stitched on the denim that covered my ass. Yes, he had died that day.
That same day a young boy in England walked home with a lump in his throat. Although he lived for fashion and the men who created it, today it wasn’t this news that grieved him. He had never felt so alone, so helpless and so betrayed in his life. He had no one. The ones around him had all lied to him. A boy who had lost his mother earlier that year, so death was already all too familiar to him. He had begged and pleaded to stay in London after his mother’s death but had no choice. He was made to move to his father’s mansion in Islamabad. This summer was supposed to be the end of that punishment. The tormented few months of living in Pakistan were now past him, or so he had thought. A boy I had only briefly seen and once caustically smirked at with pity in Froebells. The insignificant new kid in school, the target of bullying. The ‘weird new Brit kid’ who masked his effeminacy in gothic garb, frilly black shirts and an arm full of black jelly bracelets. The bullies aped his accent and mocked his walk and I? I smirked along as a passerby before moving on. As BBC narrated their own facts of horror about Versace’s death, the boy cried some more. He had walked around London all day, riding the tube to all his favorite places and then ending up on a bench at Hyde Park where he rolled up a joint in solitude. Stoned and despondent, he walked back to the house where he had just discovered that he was a guest not a resident. He had wished for the latter. The house was owned by his mother’s close friend, referred to lovingly as ‘Auntie’. A woman he had, in his mind, already moved in with but he was now told that he had to go back. His father called, sometimes persuading him with babied affection and sometimes scolding him to ‘be realistic and act his age.’ Act like a man! A man! A man!
At the young age of 16, he discovered the harsh realities of life. His Auntie was there for him and her house was open to him to spend his holidays but she was not going to take the responsibility of adopting a friend’s teenage son. Those were improbable and fatuous fantasies of grieving child. So, he reacted like most teenagers. Instead of agreeing with the facts, he slammed doors and thundered at the only woman he thought was his friend.
‘You ditched me too…you’re all the same…I have no one…I want to die. I want to go to heaven and be with my mother!’
When he found out that Versace had died, he went for a walk. After a day of soul-searching he returned to Auntie’s house and came to terms with reality. Sure, he felt defeated. Three months in Pakistan had seemed interminable. Now that his prison sentence was finally over, he was being told that he had to go back. Not three months this time but two whole years.
Curled up on the sofa he surfed the television on for any developments in Versace’s death. Still no sign of Cunanan but strangers who claimed to know either the prey of the predator were stepping up for their own five minutes of airwave fame. As their hyperbolic tales droned in the background, he recounted his conversation with Auntie and wondered if had been unfair to her. After all, she had sat by his mother’s bed when she barely breathed and stayed there even when she had stopped. She had held his weeping face in her hands and brought him to her house. She never stopped him from smoking fags in her house as she finished her own pack grieving the loss of a friend. Sometimes, she even sat with him and shared her own despise for his father. Other times she became the cold and austere middle-man between the two during phone calls between Islamabad and London. When his father convinced him to leave everything behind and move to Pakistan, she promised the boy that he would return to London for the summer holidays. She would see to it! But the summer was ending. And he had to return to his father. She had no claim to him. Her words rang through his mind.
‘Its only two years…’
‘Think of it as an extended vacation…’
‘As soon as you get there, you can start applying to Unis in London and then you can come back here. No one can stop you then. You wont even need an Auntie to crash with…you will have your own place.’
‘Trust me it wont be that bad. You will live in a huge house with a pool and servants and…’
‘You don’t have to go back to that school…I will demand that your father enroll you into another school.’
‘I will make sure your father promises that even in those two years you will spend all your summer holidays here with me…I assure you.’
Wiping off his tears, he accepted his fate. Two years and then he could return. 24 months of putting up with the bullies, his father and the despicable new step-mom. After that, he could return back and never look back. A plan, albeit never charted on a napkin, but very similar to my own.
He would ask Auntie to relay one more demand. He would only move back if he could live in the pool house. It was his way of knowing that he wasn’t sharing a roof with the man he loathed and the woman who tried to replace his mother.
Slowly he walked over to his suitcases, which lay dejectedly in the corner. He began to pack…again. Throwing in his frilly shirts and picture frames, he eventually fell asleep on a suitcase. There were tears in his eyes.
It was now August. Back in Islamabad, a girl dreaded her return to her peers. She had enrolled in a new school called UCI. A decision she had made on her own. Her mother displayed her anger and disapproval in strange ways. And each time the girl was reminded of returning back to the dreaded walls enclosing despised peers, she reacted to her teenage angst by hardening her appearance some more. An angrier haircut, a meaner face, shirts and jeans ripped up to wear. And with every snip, scowl and tear a mother’s frown drooped lower and lower. That girl was I.
A few miles from my house, the boy landed at Islamabad International airport. Eyes swollen and crimson with tears. In the backseat of a car driven by the man he cringed to call his father and besides him the woman who had replaced his mother. Long before her death. Once in secret but now in broad daylight. The boy’s only recollection of the girl with the new haircut and ripped jeans were of gossip. A rude girl who was rumored to run with a dangerous and morally depraved crowd. Who did drugs at parties and gave head in backseats. None of them were true…yet…but my appearance and my reputation urged otherwise. The boy still claimed to have been drawn to me and had even tried to befriend me. Unfortunately, I had been engaged in a similar charade of being unapproachable and unwelcoming. Besides a brief exchange of a cigarette on the roof of our old school, I had not responded warmly to any of his greetings.
When he arrived home from the airport that day, he claimed of a fictitious jetlag, and then immediately headed for the pool-house. When he switched the TV on, he was met with more unfortunate news of the summer. Princess Diana had died in a car crash.
‘Padash, I closed my eyes and cried more than I ever did all year….’ He told me a year later as he reminisced of that day.
The world gathered in front of their television sets. Local news tried to zoom in on Imran Khan and Jemima as they waltzed into the memorial. Unlike other girls, my crush on him had lasted only a week. Although the only person close to a heart-throb, his arrogance was quite a turn off. Afterwards, I grabbed my driver and rushed to Radio City to buy a cassette tape of Elton John’s song ‘Candle in the Wind.’ I played it over and over again in my room. For an odd reason, the voice more than the song gave me a strange boost of strength. As if it assured me that it was going to be ok. I was ready for my A-levels. Two more years of this hell-hole and that was it! Then, I could leave for good following my napkin plan. Finally live life on my own terms. I didn’t realize, that Elton John would not be the only homosexual Englishman to give me strength for the next two years.
The boy too watched Diana’s funeral in his room which he decided he was going to call, his ‘Flat’. He watched the service alone and then wept uncontrollably. He would later share with me that the lyric ‘Your candle burned out long ago but your legend never will’ was when he broke down and cried the most. The words finally served as closure to his mother’s death. Two years of this hell hole was all he had to suffer through. And then he could return back for good. Live life on his own terms.
So tell me dear readers. Where were you when Versace died? Where were you when Diana died. What do you remember most about that summer? And how has your life changed since then?
Why Yes!
Gianni Versace had died. On an uneventful day, outside his mansion, after a morning walk. Just like that. Gunned down by an old flame, an old trick, an old friend – BBC, CNN, PTV. Years later on a trip to South Beach with Dario, I visited that mansion and sat in front of those steps. I tried to imagine where his silhouette was chalked in that summer of 1997.
The summer when he died. The summer after my O-levels. I had returned after a month in Karachi teaching English to underprivileged girls at a Coaching Center while receiving my own coaching in a staff-room by colleagues from Nazimabad who allowed me a glimpse into a world completely different from my own. The summer I had bid farewell to my first true friend; the person who helped me, taught me, shaped me, formed me and then when her work was complete, left me. It was the summer I lay around in constant boredom, sneaking cigarettes from my bedroom window and watching The Wonder Years and Chicago Hope on the Dish. Sometimes, I would lie down on floor cushions and re-read An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa for the sixth time. Skipping over the gratuitous parts about Benazir Bhutto but savoring the descriptions of Feroza’s move to the States; even harboring a slightly ludicrous crush on Manek. A book read, simply because it reaffirmed and motivated my plans for escape to a land called America. A plan, I had carefully concocted on a pizzeria napkin one day with the friend I had just bid farewell to in Karachi but never heard from again.
News that day was saturated with descriptions of a murderer on the loose. He had killed many, including….actually….especially the founder of a multi-million dollar fashion empire. Emphasis on million and dollars; my first lesson that it isn’t the actual crime but more the value of the victim’s name which makes the news. This name happened to be stitched on the denim that covered my ass. Yes, he had died that day.
That same day a young boy in England walked home with a lump in his throat. Although he lived for fashion and the men who created it, today it wasn’t this news that grieved him. He had never felt so alone, so helpless and so betrayed in his life. He had no one. The ones around him had all lied to him. A boy who had lost his mother earlier that year, so death was already all too familiar to him. He had begged and pleaded to stay in London after his mother’s death but had no choice. He was made to move to his father’s mansion in Islamabad. This summer was supposed to be the end of that punishment. The tormented few months of living in Pakistan were now past him, or so he had thought. A boy I had only briefly seen and once caustically smirked at with pity in Froebells. The insignificant new kid in school, the target of bullying. The ‘weird new Brit kid’ who masked his effeminacy in gothic garb, frilly black shirts and an arm full of black jelly bracelets. The bullies aped his accent and mocked his walk and I? I smirked along as a passerby before moving on. As BBC narrated their own facts of horror about Versace’s death, the boy cried some more. He had walked around London all day, riding the tube to all his favorite places and then ending up on a bench at Hyde Park where he rolled up a joint in solitude. Stoned and despondent, he walked back to the house where he had just discovered that he was a guest not a resident. He had wished for the latter. The house was owned by his mother’s close friend, referred to lovingly as ‘Auntie’. A woman he had, in his mind, already moved in with but he was now told that he had to go back. His father called, sometimes persuading him with babied affection and sometimes scolding him to ‘be realistic and act his age.’ Act like a man! A man! A man!
At the young age of 16, he discovered the harsh realities of life. His Auntie was there for him and her house was open to him to spend his holidays but she was not going to take the responsibility of adopting a friend’s teenage son. Those were improbable and fatuous fantasies of grieving child. So, he reacted like most teenagers. Instead of agreeing with the facts, he slammed doors and thundered at the only woman he thought was his friend.
‘You ditched me too…you’re all the same…I have no one…I want to die. I want to go to heaven and be with my mother!’
When he found out that Versace had died, he went for a walk. After a day of soul-searching he returned to Auntie’s house and came to terms with reality. Sure, he felt defeated. Three months in Pakistan had seemed interminable. Now that his prison sentence was finally over, he was being told that he had to go back. Not three months this time but two whole years.
Curled up on the sofa he surfed the television on for any developments in Versace’s death. Still no sign of Cunanan but strangers who claimed to know either the prey of the predator were stepping up for their own five minutes of airwave fame. As their hyperbolic tales droned in the background, he recounted his conversation with Auntie and wondered if had been unfair to her. After all, she had sat by his mother’s bed when she barely breathed and stayed there even when she had stopped. She had held his weeping face in her hands and brought him to her house. She never stopped him from smoking fags in her house as she finished her own pack grieving the loss of a friend. Sometimes, she even sat with him and shared her own despise for his father. Other times she became the cold and austere middle-man between the two during phone calls between Islamabad and London. When his father convinced him to leave everything behind and move to Pakistan, she promised the boy that he would return to London for the summer holidays. She would see to it! But the summer was ending. And he had to return to his father. She had no claim to him. Her words rang through his mind.
‘Its only two years…’
‘Think of it as an extended vacation…’
‘As soon as you get there, you can start applying to Unis in London and then you can come back here. No one can stop you then. You wont even need an Auntie to crash with…you will have your own place.’
‘Trust me it wont be that bad. You will live in a huge house with a pool and servants and…’
‘You don’t have to go back to that school…I will demand that your father enroll you into another school.’
‘I will make sure your father promises that even in those two years you will spend all your summer holidays here with me…I assure you.’
Wiping off his tears, he accepted his fate. Two years and then he could return. 24 months of putting up with the bullies, his father and the despicable new step-mom. After that, he could return back and never look back. A plan, albeit never charted on a napkin, but very similar to my own.
He would ask Auntie to relay one more demand. He would only move back if he could live in the pool house. It was his way of knowing that he wasn’t sharing a roof with the man he loathed and the woman who tried to replace his mother.
Slowly he walked over to his suitcases, which lay dejectedly in the corner. He began to pack…again. Throwing in his frilly shirts and picture frames, he eventually fell asleep on a suitcase. There were tears in his eyes.
It was now August. Back in Islamabad, a girl dreaded her return to her peers. She had enrolled in a new school called UCI. A decision she had made on her own. Her mother displayed her anger and disapproval in strange ways. And each time the girl was reminded of returning back to the dreaded walls enclosing despised peers, she reacted to her teenage angst by hardening her appearance some more. An angrier haircut, a meaner face, shirts and jeans ripped up to wear. And with every snip, scowl and tear a mother’s frown drooped lower and lower. That girl was I.
A few miles from my house, the boy landed at Islamabad International airport. Eyes swollen and crimson with tears. In the backseat of a car driven by the man he cringed to call his father and besides him the woman who had replaced his mother. Long before her death. Once in secret but now in broad daylight. The boy’s only recollection of the girl with the new haircut and ripped jeans were of gossip. A rude girl who was rumored to run with a dangerous and morally depraved crowd. Who did drugs at parties and gave head in backseats. None of them were true…yet…but my appearance and my reputation urged otherwise. The boy still claimed to have been drawn to me and had even tried to befriend me. Unfortunately, I had been engaged in a similar charade of being unapproachable and unwelcoming. Besides a brief exchange of a cigarette on the roof of our old school, I had not responded warmly to any of his greetings.
When he arrived home from the airport that day, he claimed of a fictitious jetlag, and then immediately headed for the pool-house. When he switched the TV on, he was met with more unfortunate news of the summer. Princess Diana had died in a car crash.
‘Padash, I closed my eyes and cried more than I ever did all year….’ He told me a year later as he reminisced of that day.
The world gathered in front of their television sets. Local news tried to zoom in on Imran Khan and Jemima as they waltzed into the memorial. Unlike other girls, my crush on him had lasted only a week. Although the only person close to a heart-throb, his arrogance was quite a turn off. Afterwards, I grabbed my driver and rushed to Radio City to buy a cassette tape of Elton John’s song ‘Candle in the Wind.’ I played it over and over again in my room. For an odd reason, the voice more than the song gave me a strange boost of strength. As if it assured me that it was going to be ok. I was ready for my A-levels. Two more years of this hell-hole and that was it! Then, I could leave for good following my napkin plan. Finally live life on my own terms. I didn’t realize, that Elton John would not be the only homosexual Englishman to give me strength for the next two years.
The boy too watched Diana’s funeral in his room which he decided he was going to call, his ‘Flat’. He watched the service alone and then wept uncontrollably. He would later share with me that the lyric ‘Your candle burned out long ago but your legend never will’ was when he broke down and cried the most. The words finally served as closure to his mother’s death. Two years of this hell hole was all he had to suffer through. And then he could return back for good. Live life on his own terms.
So tell me dear readers. Where were you when Versace died? Where were you when Diana died. What do you remember most about that summer? And how has your life changed since then?
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Going Home…to memories!!!
“We’ll fast forward to a few years later…
No one knows except the both of us…
And I have honored your request for silence…
And you’ve washed your hands clean of this…
Just make sure you don’t tell on me… especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse…”
(Alanis – Hands Clean)
Why Yes!
The song plays on a loop in my laptop. Five in the morning. The house is silent. Everyone is asleep. I sit in my childhood room, as the glistening streak of daylight strokes across my Islamabad sky. Painting into vision, broad strokes of memories, both good and bad. A mug of doodh patti placed next to the computer; carefully prepared by me (a common activity back in NY, but an idea which will now amuse Jajee Baba). Jajee Baba is the cook who watched me grow; inept, sheltered and incapable of lifting a finger on my own. He, now witnesses my independence, uncertain of whether to smile with pride or smirk with ironic bafflement. Alanis’s lyrics continue to croon me back towards memories. The same way I am reminded of my past when I sip that distinct taste of Tapal’s homegrown patti vs Jackson-Heights-purchased teabags. The same rush of memories, redolent with the teenage aroma of my room. Four walls with posters of Boyzone still tacked on carefully. Teenage secrets buried in its walls, its pillows and plastered in its crevices. Transporting me back to the past. A room, once and still my own. A peaceful haven for the rebel I thought I was. Time for a cigarette break!
And now I’m back. I sat and ashed my cigarette out of the same windowsill where I spent years guiltily seated with Alisha, Afia and even Peanut surreptitiously sharing cigarettes and joints. Now I no longer hide the evidence. The gray of smoke conspicuously wriggles its way across the same room…and even escapes from beneath the door. My bad habits are no longer a secret. Memories, memories and more memories. Why? Why so sudden, why already? I’m jet-lagged and I want to sleep. But the minute I rest my head on the pillow, recollections of a forgotten past replay in my head. Over, over and over. Some good, some bad…yet both stimulate too much to allow slumber.
With memories, my head spins. All because of that damn dinner I was subjected to last night. I knew it was a bad idea, the minute it was suggested. And I never should have relented. Usually I need a few days on my own before I can face all the people from my past. But Ma, she never listens. Dragged to a stupid family dinner where memories greeted me right at the door like the forceful rush of a waterfall. Splashing me in the face, soaking me with guilt. Too late now, this Pandora’s box will close back on its own sweet time. So this month, as much as I would love to write about an interesting and juicy escapade from a bad one-night stand, this column will serve more of a catharsis for myself than entertainment for you. Feel free to skip until next month!
Readers when you email me this time, tell me about your cousins! Interesting concept, don’t you think? Those of you who have enjoyed a good relationship with your cousins are truly blessed. The perfect balance between friends and family. Unfortunately, I never had such a relationship. Though I always wanted to. For me cousins have always stood for three names; Shabana, Shumaila and Sakina. The cousins who once rejected me! Regrette rien! But the funny thing is that as a very young girl I neither imagined nor aspired to be an iconoclastic harlot living in the Bronx on my own. In fact, when I was very young, I wanted nothing more but to be a nice little girl who would have a nice arranged marriage, lots of kids and then spend her life discussing baby diapers with the likes of cousins such as Shabana, Shumaila and Sakina. Good thing it never happened, of course. But it’s the crowd I thought I belonged in. And the harder I tried to fit in, the more I was alienated from the seedha saadha click. Queen bees exist not just in the pristine walls of English medium high schools. A woman’s worst enemy, will always be…another woman.
Because I was never accepted by this ‘shareef’ crowd…I decided to cross over to the taboo crowd that my cousins had only read about in books and watched in movies. A crowd with intimidating infamies yet the rebels and prodigals accepted me and gave me the self-esteem that I have today. It was my sweetest revenge against what I deliberately referred to as the ‘middle class’ in front of Shabana only because that word, I soon discovered was my cousins jugular and eventual defeat. Not one to sound like an ignorant elitist but in this instance I retaliated by reminding those same cousins who once mocked me of the chains of mediocrity they were bound to and what I now could mock and make fun of. But the truth is, that though I may have given off airs of a girl who pitied their boring lives, only you know …that it was a life I had once tried hard to have.
When Ma told me last night that a distant relative was having a dinner party at their house, I tried my best to flake. Not only was I jet lagged but it was just too early in my trip to meet people I would much rather avoid or strategically encounter in slow doses. But as my mothers pleas grew more and more desperate, I soon knew I was cornered.
‘Everyone will be there, Shabana and Sakina are visitng with their husbands…they will be so happy to see you.’
‘Ma…you act like we’re friends. Those girls and I have never had anything to say to each other.’
‘You can be such a snob sometimes, Padash. They’re such nice girls. Sakina always asks about you. She has always wanted to be your friend.’
‘Well they had their chance…its too late now!’
Sigh! If only Ma knew the whole story. I’m not even sure if Sakina knows the whole story. But pretty much, that’s the way the world works. Be nice to them and they treat you like dirt. Make them feel like dirt…they want to be your friend. Why do we all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome? By 9pm, I was seated in the backseat of my parents car like a kid. Dressed in a sleeves white lace kurta, red bull in hand and dreading the superficial niceties I would have to summon just to stomach some of these people.
No sooner had I walked in that I was checked out hard-core, visually undressed and made love to by a 70 year old…woman. Yes my friends…here in Pakistan, you’re hit on more by mothers of eligible bachelors than the bachelors themselves. Not too different than the looks we often get by construction workers that whistle at our legs or fat wall street losers who haven’t made love to their wives or had an affair in years. I see her scrutinize me and beam at me warmly. I smile back and look forward to the change in her more than cordial disposition when she find outs that I’m not really as young as she thinks. As she makes her way to a mutual acquaintance who will then oblige her investigation of me, I am immediately greeted just as flirtatiously by a slightly balding male specimen who I aptly deduce as ‘Taroo Aunty’s’ son. We exchange smiles and I have barely sipped the ‘cole drink’ offered to me when he makes his way and begins to converse in a rehearsed American accent complete with forced rolls of his tongue and pronouncing his t’s with an added ‘th’. I patronize!
Biodata: He works in San Diego doing IT. How avant garde of him! We discuss the difference between the East and the West Coast. I tell him, I’m not one of those die hard New Yorkers who swear by the City only because the world expects me to. Yet the West has a very strawberry shortcake feel to it, which would also drive me insane. San Francisco excluded of course! He seems impressed by my career and independence. Of course he brings up Broadway when I mention the Big Apple and seems enthused that I have seen a few plays, read a book or two and seen the bare minimum of Indy movies at the Paris to deem myself a pseudo intellectual trophy wife. He proudly shares that he has seen the Lion King musical, Read DaVinci Code or Outliers and watched Slumdog Millionaire. Homeboy is really breaking ground here!
I have barely finished my drink – hoping it was spiked by now – when his mother begins to hover around us like a moth to a flame. The worry and concern in her eyes is as axiomatic as her son’s bulge through his pants. Noticeable yes, wondrous nah! She has probably just discovered that I am 30 years old. Now she desperately tries hard to distract her own 30 year old offspring away from this old cougar. All quite amusing, yet I smile as I excuse myself to go mingle.
‘My local number is on the back’ he pulls out a business card and I puke just a little ‘Let’s get together in the States but I’m here for a few weeks also just like yourself. Maybe we can see what Islamabad has to offer.’
I grew up here you duffer, it has a lot to offer me. How quickly they seem to forget the day they boarded the plane out of this country in tight stonewashed jeans, white sneakers, a fanny pack with their green passport, a mullet and moustache. Your accent doesn’t fool me baldie, once a FOB, always a FOB! Applies to the best of us!
An hour after I have arrived at the dinner, in walks Shabana with her husband and three kids in tow. She is three times the size of when I last saw her yet interestingly she looks exactly how she had imagined her future to unravel. I purse my lips when she slowly makes her way towards me.
MUST REMEMBER TO BE FAKE! I repeat over and over to myself.
‘Hello Padash’ She greets me ‘Sakina told me you were in town. How long are you here for?’
‘Just a few weeks.’
‘Aur, how’s America?’
‘Great.’
‘Job kar rahee ho?
‘Haan’
‘Buhat mazay kar rahee ho gee, hamay tu bhool hee gayee.’
‘Yes’
And then, silence. Sure she has made an effort. I just cant find the motivation to do the same. My eyes are probably glazing over at this point because I’m sleepy…or just not interested.
‘Excuse me, I’m gonna go look for some caffeine.’
‘Haan…you must be jet-lagged. Baad may gup shup kartay hain.’
Yeah right!
Begin Memory: When I was young, I wanted nothing more than to be friends with Shabana and Shumaila. During the holidays when we would go to my father’s side of the family, everyone assumed that since all the girls were the same age…we would instantly become best friends. Much to my dismay it never happened. The harder I tried to befriend my prettier cousins the more they mocked me, avoided me and often ridiculed me for my braces, my glasses and my weight. I would still follow them around trying to understand their conversations…not completely oblivious to the fact that they had code names for me and would often make fun of me while I sat right next to them. I remember when my father once found me crying in a corner because of them. He told me to be strong.
‘Remember there is always something you can have that they cant…just find it and then you wont need them anymore. They will come running after you then.’
Golden words of advice. Advice I followed. Just in a roundabout way.
After I befriended Alisha and found my own niche of burger infidels, I discovered that I had become part of a crowd that these cousins could only be intimidated by. My reputation in the family quickly spread like wildfire of how I had become a ‘Patakhee’…a disparaged ‘Ameer larkee’. I preferred that much more than being thought of as a fat loser. The few times I would then meet my cousins, they found me completely changed. No longer shy, I would then be rude and snooty. I would remind them that I found their lives to be boring and mundane in comparison to what I was now experiencing. If they ever came over, I would smirk at their attempts at conversation and then leave them to go off in a car with Alisha or Peanut, never inviting them along as they sat in my drawing room. Even when I spent the summer in Karachi with my brother, I spent my nights partying with friends and if they were ever over, I treated them like insignificant bystanders because truly by then…that was what they had become to me. End Memory.
Dinner was served at 11. Yes….my eyes were bloodshot by then. As I nibbled through the entrees and Shabana watched me being wooed by baldie, I hoped for sleep instead. Then Sakina walked in with her husband; Shabana’s younger sister.
Awwwwwwkward!
My relationship with Saks is very different than Shabana. She was never really mean to me but by the time we really got to our teens, I had already become the notorious patakhee. Saks in fact admired my wild lifestyle and was almost tantalized by it. Though she was two years older than me, I heard she often tried to emulate me. Yet because of Shabana, I never ever gave that poor girl the time of day.
At dinner last night she looked absolutely beautiful. As always. Stunning in a peach sari she sauntered in with her husband in tow. He was pleasant-looking in a ‘shareef’ and chubby sort of way but no where near as handsome as the man she once loved. The same man I once loved. I watch the sisters talk for a few minutes and then Sakina’s face lights up when she sees me.
‘Padash’ she exclaims excitedly and I am always shocked by her enthusiasm towards me ‘I heard you were in town! Such a nice surprise.’
‘Yeah I just got here a day ago…still a little jet-lagged.’
‘Yes, we got in a few days ago ourselves, you must have heard I moved to Qatar after I got married.’
‘Yeah Ma mentioned. Do you guys ever make it to the States?’
‘No but I would love to’ she smiles back ‘I keep telling Hassan I really want to see New York. It seems so amazing in movies.’
‘It has its moments.’
‘What about you…why don’t you ever stop in Qatar on your way home. You must.’
‘Maybe next year.’
Another awkward silence. But this one is different. Much more loaded. I always detest the guilt I feel when I meet Sakina now. The feeling of defeat yet being made to feel like a victor through her gaze. We stare at each other raising only safe and euphemistic questions yet hoping for answers to secrets only we share…and one other. Memories we have both tried hard to forget.
From her eyes she wants to ask me if I am still in touch with Mustafa. Yet her new husband and her new life stands just a few feet away from us.
Funny thing is, that I want to ask her the same question.
We stand and stare wondering which one of us is more victorious after all. Who ended up being luckier? The single one or the married one? Neither of us would ever really know. If anything we both feel defeated. She may wish to see the world on her own as a progressive woman of today. But then I wonder if she is luckier; finally married and settled. We will never know and as people around us begin to get curious (i.e Shabana,) we curve our lips into another smile, a gentle kiss planted on each other’s cheeks, plans made for coffee which will never be kept and then go our separate ways.
‘Hey, do you still have that song I gave you?’ I ask.
‘Hands Clean by Alanis! Absolutely.’
‘Do you still listen to it?’
‘Nah…haven’t heard it in years.’ she lies and I know it from her face.
‘What about you?’
‘Well I don’t have the CD anymore, I gave it to you remember…’
‘No, I’m talking about the Nazia Hassan song I gave you that day?’
‘Oh that song? I remember. I don’t even know where that CD is anymore.’ I lie also. I know exactly where it is.
Its still carefully placed on a special rack of memories in my apartment in the Bronx. Right next to the CD with ‘Hands Clean’ by Alanis.
In code words we speak, and unearth answers and some form of closure at such awkward and rare meetings. Alas, we will forever have this awkward bond amongst each other. A bond called Mustafa. A bond we try to forget and then try to remember.
Dinner was barely finished when I informed my mother that I couldn’t stay up any longer. Luckily Ma obliged my request immediately and after long, drawn-out goodbyes where we declined the host’s request to taste her ‘Swedish’ we exited the dinner party. Baldie reminded me to call him because he will be very bored the next few days. His mother scorns at his plea. I have half a mind to wink at her. On the way home, I fall asleep in the backseat and wake up in my room just an hour ago. Memories from last night still very fresh now all of a sudden.
It is almost 6am now. Jajee Baba will walk through the kitchen. The song by Alanis is no longer playing. Its time for another. So I youtube ‘Dil Ki Lagi’ by Nazia Hassan. A song Sakina once told me about. It reminded her of her one true love…Mustaffa. She wanted to never listen to it again. So I told her about a ‘cool, new song’ called ‘Hands Clean’ by Alanis. I just never told her it was a song that reminded me of the same man.
And yes we both probably still listen to our songs. I wonder if she is listening to them right now as well. Her husband fast asleep next to her. We may have both lost, we may have both won. As Nazia Hassan croons mellifluously in the background.
‘Dil ki lagee…kuch aur bhi…dil ko deewana karay…
Jisay ham say milna…gawara naheen…
Woh ham say mila na karay…’
(Late Nazia Hassan)
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