I am allergic to...

1) Dust
2) Grass in the spring
3) Crushed red chillies
4) Shallowness
5) Chinese salt
6) Lack of self-respect
7) Iron tablets
8) Conceit
9) Unmade beds

Abdullah...

...and typhoid don't belong together.
Tomorrow he'll be here and my heart will break.

perfecting

Hidden away in a slender plastic miracle of science are three hours of memory-triggers.

There is a khushboo everywhere: Plants exhaling thick, sweetly languid scents riding on carbondioxide to noone in particular in the airless still of the summer night. I know I have held my breath to make space for you, for the way you fit the puzzle so perfectly.

Childhood is pulling away the way a child's tight grasp on a hand is loosened finger by finger, and then let go.

Irony is in small things. It is in the pain of accessibility, signifying healing, and coming of age. It is in my reflection wearing rockstar sunglasses that Ali hates as my face dips into depressions and contours that never came when I waited for them and are here when I don't care. It is in the smell of Bvlgari in the guest room downstairs. It is in the way I still bend over backwards, eager to please, in the way I let you expose me as the weaker one. It is in surrender, in maturity and compromise, in a smile that understands everything, and yet moves on whole.

[ ]

My heart isn't beating quite right today.

22nd May: 8.42 a.m.

I step out of the bathroom quietly, eyes still adjusting to wakefulness, slightly burning from sleeplessness, hours of monitors and three hours of Rang De Basanti. The silence of people still sleeping fills the room. I move forward on tip toe.
On my mattress on the floor is a little bundle of blue and white flannel, narrow brown eyes looking at me, hair standing on end, a smile playing upon the lips dangerously close to turning into a loud squeal of laughter. I smile back at him and Abdullah looks at me and I am late and he flings his arms open and in an instant we are wrapped up in a white sheet and a little leg is thrown across my waist and he has an arm around my neck and his round nose is under my chin, he blinks his little eyes and the eyelashes brush against my cheek. In the curtained darkness of the morning and the silent uniform hum of the a.c he whispers to me 'Lala, so jaayen.'
Shampoo mixed with sweat from the park in his hair and its morning but he doesn't have bad breath we stay there nose to nose and then it's 8.50 and I have to get dressed.


8.00 p.m

The worst kind of unannounced dinner guests at the end of a gruelling day. I can barely walk. But there's dinner, and I am alone in the kitchen and my hands smell like onions and even through a light film of sweat and a smattering of hot oil from the frying pan on my feet I find small talk and sweetness and niceness and I am asking myself over and over again: where is this coming from?
Where is my frown where is my attitude where is the sarrialpan why am I not tired all of a sudden?

The little girl adores me and I humour her, show her things I don't know how to do, because I am not your vision of perfection, I can be fat and I am not quite the same pretty person you saw so many months ago with makeup and my dressing table is gathering dust mixed with stale rose petals I am asking where is all this positivity coming from?


11.50 p.m

The guests have left. The sheets should be changed. My room smells like someone else, of fruity soap, and possibly of illness and sorrow, but Puppho won't be here for another ten days. There are a few rose petals on the dusty dressing table. I don't know what to do with them.
I know I have been wondering for the past four days how I have survived giving my room up to strangers to cancer to hospital-ness and vomiting and a smell of medicines. How have I become so fluid and giving and accomodating. I have been wondering and I don't have answers but I have a smile and that is enough.

The stereo that played Surah Rehman to Puppho is still on the floor in a corner under the chair that doesn't belong there and I think what the hell and I turn the radio on and three crazy happy songs from last year and one from the last time I watched tv and I am lying on my bed with my head hanging down on one side, my hair grazing the carpet. What do I do with this completion? I've had my fill and it's time to share, so I message N and stay in the blast of the a.c till it's time to stop the music again.

23rd May: 9.50 a.m

It's overcast and still my eyes burn and I soak up the rapidly passing green to soothe my eyes it's instant therapy and on Constitution Avenue all of a sudden my hand is pressed down over my eyes and there is extreme gratitude spilling forth.

Getting there

Where do all my beautiful incoherent thoughts from right before the moment I fall asleep go?

The liability of newness

Thawing clarification like a slowly spreading unidentified burning between my fingers until it's known as the sting from the green chillies cut three hours ago. Things are only ever clear in retrospect.

The clean warm marble squeaks under my bare feet late at night when I walk to and from the kitchen wondering why the day won’t start. 3 a.m is a lonely time.

The wind is crazy there is dust in my eyes the streets are deserted and inside I find a thank you note and nobody knows how thankful I was to be there, immersed in three text books speaking, being heard, changing opinions and forming ideas. Clouds clearing and clarification dawning in eyes heads nodding hands writing and I, learning myself most of all.

Faiqa is in Islamic and I am in a constant state of panic on the wrong side of worried my heart isn't beating right and what do I do with this helplessness this rush of love this extreme hatred for examiners and why why why does she have to do this how dare you doubt her intelligence? She hibernates, I live with my heart in my mouth from three p.m to nine a.m the next morning and why won't she wake up and why won't she tell me and why couldn't I have been a lawyer or taken her exam for her.

whoami

God this extreme distraction this skinlessshapelessfacelessness is left as I successfully break all addictions slow and steady over one year. Only I am left when tv music reading writing sleeping and people are gone. I don't wait for the radio in the morning and don't wait for my phone to ring when I fall asleep with it on my stomach and I don't wait to be asked how I am. It's a little more dead, a little less interesting, a little more quiet and the bubbles fizzled out a while ago but isn't s t a b i l i t y what we craved for the longest time?

To perfection

White edged with red eyes wide open hair across forehead I smile and I walk and my feet just might be screaming inaudibly but accomplishment is the only legal high I am aware of. GRE-ing and happy, people sitting up as I clear my throat and start, are you just breaking out their eyes are asking their smiles and nods approving as I fumble and learn and over food I am a person I can be a force just give me some time. I catch myself in mirrors young and hopeful and trying and slowly, very slowly, getting there.

Almost

Oh God.
Happiness is also relative.

I noticed the moonlight emanating from a less-than-even-half moon for the first time in my life. Why is it that everything looks so ghostly-alien-haunted and beautiful near the Ghazi Barotha part of the drive to Peshawar bathed in man-made white and moonlight?
And I can finally see what it is about meat that fascinates Pathans. Funny that it should happen in a sleep-deprived moment at a bustling road-side Army Cantt. restaurant in the NWFP.

Happiness is washing tired feet with cold water.

Puppho just might be dying and all I can think about is Papa.

buss.

Easy conversation cuts through tangible heat swimming undersea and emerging three years later we are taken by surprise.
Not easy.
Blushing hides behind fingers spread over face, uncertainty guilt behind hair obscuring eyes faltering voice behind nervous laughter only in the end relief and there is satisfaction. There is life after. After everything.