7 a.m. I don't remember the last time I was up at this time, let alone standing outside the gate. The sun is at an unfamiliar, low angle. On our way to E-11 I see school vans stuffed with freshly-scrubbed children. Kids line the sides of the main road, standing at the wagon-stops, or trudging schoolward slowly. There is a pick-up with two children in the back, a girl and a boy looking slightly irritated, doing something to a pink water-bottle. I wonder if they'll get to school still clean.

In E-11 the raods are empty. 40 kmph feels so very fast and I'm surely going to die, killing Papa with me.

Faster, faster, slow, look to the side, good, good, there - that's it. Excellent. Don't be scared. Very well done. Shabaash. Dekha? It's so simple.

All of a sudden - tyres squishing over green and brown piles of cow dung bang in the middle of the road, behind the wheel with a stiff neck, for a second I can't figure out where I am.

In Karachi behind the flats in front of the garages, on the gravel-covered pathway, Papa held the back of the seat of my cycle and worked the pedals hesitantly, and he told me he was holding it, not to be scared, he wouldn't let go. And then I was flying down the path, pumping the pedals furiously, finally balancing and ecstatic and I half turned around to say Papa I did it! (But. He was too, too many yards away, far enough for him to seem significantly smaller. It was almost as if the distance signified the breach of trust. All the joy evaporated in one millisecond. For days afterwards I couldn't get over it. You said you wouldn't let go. How could you?)

Shorkot. Papa stood waist-deep in the shallow end of the pool, his hand on my stomach and I tore at the water awkwardly with my hands, legs, horizontal after days of practice. He walked breadth-wise, holding me as I half swam. See? you've got it, it's so simple, keep going, good, we're almost there! And all of a sudden I was weighing down on the water and then in it and gasping for air and angry but swimming.

Back in Islamabad, August 2006, I'm wondering exactly when this tone of voice that tells me to stop, start, look both ways, do that again, well done, went from rewarding, all the way straight to pissing me off. So I looked a little more carefully at Papa's face before I left the car, and said thank you, and I think he knew that I meant it.

Pulse-ating (I)

(In the middle of the afternoon Ammi reminded me of Amna and Amber baji's first wedding anniversaries. I was shocked. It's been a whole year. It's only been one year. Who knew 365 days would feel so few and so many all at once?
My mind stayed boggled for quite a while. I tried to remember. Surely they got married in the first few days of August? And had I really been in Karachi today, last year? Then, inevitably, where, and who I was in August 2005.

I trawled through my archives. There is July 2005, and there is October 2005. Today I can't bear this. I want to see what where how when why, (because Karachi last year was so tragically beautifully complete and unwhole) but there is nothing. This week, this day, this year. My life is momentous and I will write what I want to read many, many years hence, so that I have a smile on my lips when I can almost taste the Mirinda in my mouth and think yes, that wasn't a bad day at all.)

It's just after 8 in the morning and I'm in the shower. My panicked eyes scan the bathroom as if the answer lies here somewhere. But the question is critical - how do I deal with this unbearable craving for cheesecake?

In clean clothes from last night and a wet pony tail I fall asleep on my bed with my face in the cushion. At ten my cross-dressing driving instructor is here for my second-ever driving class and in ten minutes I am obliviously driving our merry way to G-10, cross-dressing lady's feet firmly on the second set of clutch and brake. From second to third the gear always gets stuck, but then it's only my second day. The car is so ancient I wonder how this skeletal vehicle moves at all, and when I shut the doors on either side the body rattles in the most spine-chilling manner. More than once my mind floats to an image of myself in this vaguely white Corolla sometime-post-1960 and I wonder what I look like, wonder what the people behind me are thinking as the car stalls at a redthengreen signal.

The day goes by online, between self-exploration, amorphous cravings ranging from a taste in my mouth to a feeling in my gut reading blogs, putting my best foot forward, blog-khala inquisitiveness, random online conversations, future planning with the parents, listening to John Mayer out of the blue, closing deals, taking chances, and many disappointed sighs and hopeful smiles later I am tugging on fresh clothes and straightening my bangs and sharpening Faiqa's eyeliner pencil and she gives me a slow, slightly disgusted look. I am dressing up because I feel like it?

And I drag the parents to F-7. To the ATM and Bareeze and Chen One and Shaheen watching goofy A-Levels kids floating by happily in their cars grinning, their mouths singing along to songs I can't hear and and too many silly, satisfied rupees later I am perched on the edge of a leather sofa in Espresso Lounge across a bunch of Arab boys and a group of silent typical Islamabadi girls in a room thick with smoke, and after so many years that I don't quite recognize the taste at first, I sip Mirinda.

Ironically, I want to relish it but I have eaten so much brown rice as a prequel that I can only manage one quarter of the slice of the cake. I put the rest away in the fridge in a white plastic dabba with a tight dhakkan on top for later. I know I won't be panicking in the shower tomorrow morning.

saturday

My mouth tastes of overslept. The faint sound of the gently falling rain slips inside from the cracks under the doors and windows. A bird seeks refuge in the bathroom exhaust fan and chirps now and then. Benadryl-induced sleep and valium-induced calm. My mind is blank, empty. On a corner of the pillow-case, a memory struggles to die.

When my eyelids touch they create a horizontal line of fire across my eyes. Ammi strokes my wrist and says something. I can’t hear her; there is a cloud in my head. The world is muffled, shapes and sounds are indistinct. Life meets my perception filtered. Somewhere far, far away, time is passing.