13th November 2006

I'm packed and I'm holding,
I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden and
she lives for me, She says she lives for me,
Ovation

I'm out of bed before ten and not taking twenty minutes to brush my teeth. And as I tug on my hair, straightening it quickly there's Jhuki Jhuki on the radio and I'm smiling and I'm getting ready and it's a little colder today, we're falling into winter a little more everyday, and this is just like the good parts of school, I sms-ed Adil before stepping into the shower.

And it's sunny, it's anticipation, I'm balancing file papers tea sunglasses and a bag that slips off my shoulder telling the world I'm a novice at this shoulder-strap-bag thing. The Nazim-ud-din road in F-8's been expanded, and I don't remember the last time I was here but I pick up a thaila full of fluffy winter slippers from Apya, her scarf is lilac and she's wearing kajal and there's Abdullah behind her, in his uniform sweater that he's been wearing to school since early September, the little chooza, and later on he would probably wonder if he had really met me for five seconds that day or if it had been a dream.

And off to college, with my papers and bag and I wait for Ali outside Catalina's office on the revamped waiting-couch and this place now has a carpet and I end up talking to Zeeshan, my phone beeps at the most unfortunate time and he takes my number and there's Annie and Mehdi and there's Hishy, do I want to meet Hishy? no, thanks, the backstabbing bastard I don't want to lay my eyes on his face but right then I smile and I clam up till there's Ali and then Sandy minus his hair and the sun's out, so Ali and I escape upstairs, carefully avoiding the B.Sc side, the Zee's and Hishy's, and over Pepsis and fries we're both spilling papers and research and this - is too much. After two years of whining how we'll never get anywhere in life we're thinking Yale. We're thinking Berkeley. We're thinking, will we be able to see each other? We're thinking God how - when - did this happen?

There's Adil, the thinnest, buffest I've ever seen him in my life and my jaw kind of drops and we sit and talk, laughing maybe, it was yesterday and I don't remember. But there had to be laughing, and insulting each other, the card story and the spitting story and Ali and I are having a hard time keeping our shit together because it's sunny and the three of us are in college together and we're happy, we're on our ways to becoming somthing.

There's an abandoned foosball table on the abandoned terrace and we're filling the goddamn British Council forms, and Sandy is there without his hair and we're so wrapped up we don't talk to Sandy and there must've been more laughter, there always is.

I bring the big pile of books into the library from my car and get my clearance, about a year and a half too late, and the librarian forgives me books that I may or may not have returned. And then I'm off to Standard Chartered, in the winter breeze, in brown chappals that catch the sun and sparkle, to the new building, and I walk in and my ATM card won't work. In two minutes flat there's Ali, he waves five hundred rupees at me, and I ask him to stay til I get the draft made, getting him to recheck the form I've filled, large empty spaces make me feel small and I get flustered.

On to the British Council, in a small lane in F-6, the perfect part of Islamabad, and I get out in front of the wrong house and I walk between the black iron gates and the breeze is in my hair, there's mud from yesterday's rain on the edges of the road and in the chill of the air I hear a crow crowing loudly, I look up into the tops of the pine trees, there's a pine-smell everywhere and - let's freeze this moment - because this is the most perfect moment ever, there's the sound of water falling into some gutter but it sounds like a stream, and this is me walking in some random empty street in Islamabad under the winter sky and this is beautiful.

I come back home, and eat enough haleem for two people, and my face breaks out into a sweat with the mirchein, and if this isn't the most perfect day ever then what is?