halfacupoftea

choti eid 2010

2010-09-13T11:37:00.003+05:00

Driving driving driving SW on 275, the sunset imminent, freshly napped in the gas station parking lot and coffee-ed and pretzel m'n'm-ed (150 calories between two people, I'll take that). On an impulse I get inside my Lucky Ali playlist, the one I downloaded and created during the first ugly, crying and laughing by myself all day, dancing as I dusted the house it's crazy how distinctly I remember the first few times I listened to Lucky Ali here, on the clunky Dell laptop room to room and in my head on my way down Cross Creek to the Publix under a crazy cloudy sky. And Lucky Ali sings, clean and clear and awkward and suddenly it's not the sugar or the caffeine or the heading home from one of the most difficult Eids in history that is making me smile but 1998, 1999, and 2000.

aisa naseeba hum dil waaloon ka hai yeh

mil kar na mil paaein yeh faasla hai yeh

sachi wafaaoun ka shayad sila hai yeh

paayen gai phir bhee tujh ko hausla hai yeh

Staying up all night running out of internet minutes, downloading music from Napster, translating Anjaani Raahoon Mein into the original Opendiary, a time where everything you wanted to learn or know or get could not be found on the internet and there were winters and birthday cassettes and dark, desperate days completely unlike dark and desperate days now.

It is impossible to sing along in any melodious way but I do it, and then I replay it and I translate it for T and I don't know, I don't know, it doesn't make sense in English, does it?

kehnay se bhee mein darta hoon

apno ke dhunn mein rehta hoon

kar kya sakta hoon?

dai sakta hoon mein thora pyar yahan par - jitnee haisiyyat hai meri

reh jaaoun sab ke dil mein dil ko basaa kar - ik aisi niyyat hai meri

What an amazing Ramzan this turned out to be. Fulfilling and productive and clean. And late into the month, three magical mornings as I sank into the words and the voice and quivered and felt small and insignificant and wrung out my soul - sleepy teary burn-y eyes too early for contacts - and prayer so utterly magical until I cried so hard again that I was entirely too preoccupied by what I would do with all the snot.

Eid day and post Eid all I want is to go back. And it's scary as I get attached, and I wonder about what the future of my belief and my faith will be when I spend hours at the masjid at night strong and believing and yet my hair is the biggest fashion accessory I wear, bangs obscuring eyes as I float in oversize 80s t-shirts and (skinny) skinny jeans furtively flaunting Ramzan-assisted weight loss.

Ek pal jo mil jaaye phir woh chala jaaye door kaheen

duniya mein is dil ke jaisa koi majboor naheen

2010-09-03T07:45:00.001+05:00

How strange is this?

(I would think, I can even drive on the interstate now. I remember to roll or not roll the Rs according to the situation most of the time. I can buy things online without having to try on a million different items of clothing because I know my sizes. I convert units quicker and think in quarts and gallons and miles and pounds. I can ask people at school to donate money for Pakistan without embarrassment or apology. I don't even have the number of daysmonthsyears I have been here on the tip of my tongue anymore. I would think, in my American-think I got this.)

But for the past few days, I have woken up every morning expecting to feel a little chilly when I get out of bed.

I knew August was ending but it hadn't registered that today was the 2nd of September until I looked at the calendar. My weeks are constructed according to day, not date. I suppose I'm still in the haze of dateless, dayless, timeless summer.

My body hunched of its own accord to block out the cold, relaxing little by little when it realized it wasn't. I walked around the house, my brain prepared for a slight difference in the temperature in the air between my clothes and my body, the air that enters my nose as I breathe.

It's 88 - or 31 - degrees outside (and it will be for another three months) but in my head it's autumn. Only because my body insists that according the rotation of seasons that it is used to, expects, wants, demands, it's time.

Oh, September.

2008-04-09T20:33:00.003+05:00

So what do I name this feeling? Walking in the park at night with Ammi and Papa on either side, little drops of rain falling on the pavement in front of my feet, on my shawl over my head, there is a name for this. A frustration is ballooning inside me and soon, very soon there will be no way to stop talking, to turn away and say I don't want to go with you, to laugh at this balloon.

Collecting moments watching Jab We Met in Khala's lounge atop Khala's chatt at 3 a.m in the rain and in Roasters at a table by the window in a white shirt that billows in the bathroom mirror looking at my smile and making pulao as Ammi gives instructions and stealing them from Yumna's inbox a perfect sad little happy story making me perfectly sad and happy and in a Tuesday night in a flooded McDonald's wishing Elizeh wasn't there.

There is a rise and fall every day. I ask Ammi, what's going to be in the fridge? He's going to ask me what I did in London, if I'm tired, will he show me the house? And too soon after, bitter as I try to step only on the vertical bricks in the pavement, beginning or end?

December 31, 2007

2008-01-10T01:35:00.000+05:00

If I had to describe how it is, I have one night that does - all of it to perfection: feeling small in glass and steel, chinky-eyed girls and funny English, and fireworks outside, and inside, and watching his hands and lips and eyes as he talks and I smooth over my goosebumps and hide behind cushions and a quivering lip that no hugs, no biting down would still and a shower and a quiet, warm sunrise and a namaz on a towel on a balcony and a naashta with too much blueberry goo on my knife and hands and three cups of weak Twinings breakfast tea and a breeze in my crazy hair and a hand in my hand as I sway in the elevator, can't stand still in the room and I laugh and laugh and laugh and he laughs along, I think he watches and laughs uncomprehending, 8 a.m. and we fall asleep on the other bed arms and mumbles and wakeup calls and newness.

Last few:

2007-12-25T18:40:00.000+05:00

Squeezing lemons into a water bottle at two a.m by myself in an empty kitchen, barefoot. Talking to Faiqa using impossible sign language while bleaching our teeth in the bathroom. Apya's laughter coming from Ammi's room where Ammi, Bhayya, and her are unwindin after yet another day of crises, two a.m again. A hysterical triangular tickling match on my bed with Yumna and Faiqa late at night. A drive to Mee Lee in the dazzling winter sunlight. Wearing yellow for eight days straight.

See you on the other side :)

2007-10-05T13:08:00.000+05:00

I am a Friday night. I laugh the hardest, the longest and the real-est on the phone when Faiqa tells me about the bellati, and we talk about ammi papa, and read The Raven and Wodwo, over and over, and google eman-e-mufassil.

The silences grow longer. The ACs stop humming in the afternoons, the fans slowly stop whirring. There is a khamoshi to kill before aftari every afternoon and after aftari every evening. I wear kohl in my eyes, try to fight little disappointments.

-abandoned post

2007-09-02T02:30:00.000+05:00

Faiqa is leaving in a week and I think I am dying.

This is not sudden and we are not unique, but it's late at night and I am sleepy and she is watching tv and none of it feels right. I don't want to waste a minute, after refusing to go for walks with her for years, after never managing to keep our movie plans, after thousands of door-slams and millions of throttling fantasies. Her size doesn't feel right why is she sleeping in the middle of the day why does she look so small how will she carry this what will she do when she gets lost and she gets lost so very often.

Seven more days and how will we know what to do what to wear what to say how to be? How does it feel not to know where we are what we've learnt how we've changed? How do we balance, each on our own? There is a suitcase she's filling up and I turn boxes over her bed and match earrings and we construct survival strategies for her but we do not talk about apartments and cars. We do not talk about independence, we do not talk about what we were supposed to do. We do not talk about whens, only ifs. And this is the hardest, this is the hardest part of leaving and I never intended for it to stretch over four long months.

17th July, 2007 - A day in the life of

2007-07-18T23:29:00.000+05:00

8:40 a.m: Two beeps and I wake up with a smile that widens as I prop myself up on my elbows and go beyond the surface of the phone's screen covered in greasy fingerprints and fall back into the bed into a place where night is just beginning I swirl between sleep and wakefulness and bliss.

9:00 a.m: I swing out of bed floating into the day, to the toothbrush, the breakfast and morning news and Ammi and Papa. There's a giveaway expression on my face that Ammi tries unsuccessfully to ignore and there is no need but I blush and concentrate on the toast.

11:00 a.m: I am handling a crisis tea-situation in the kitchen, freshly showered wet hair getting in the way. New maid as usual and Bilal Malik bhai's dad in the drawing room, and as soon as that's sorted I speed to Yumna's school where I am sat in a waiting room and Yumna is prancing around in chappals swinging a bag full of DVDs Apya's sent. We stand there and goof off, cracking jokes and I look around furtively to check for any angry teachers, with my yellow and red clothes too bright in the sun and I tune out as Yumna rattles on, trying to draw a map of some sort in the air with her fingers I'm noticing that we're both wearing our glasses and watching her nostrils flare as she gets more animated and I kiss her sweaty forehead a number of times before I leave.

3:00 p.m: Still in a trance, bounding up and down the stairs in spite of the post-lunch drowsiness, having bitter double tea-bagged tea after ages. It doesn't worry me that I am still stuck on the first damn paragraph of the introduction and I am searching for youtubing downloading wonderful 90s music of summer afternoons in B-9 spent watching MTV Alternative, Julie Tearjerky on the phone, and googling the lyrics singing along and feeling a foolish sense of accomplishment.

6:00 p.m: Filling out the voter list form poking fun at Faiqa's Urdu spellings and tightly-pressed script with Ammi and Papa and stapling the photocopied shanakhti card and laughing at Faiqa's interpretation of baikhwaabi with tea and biscuits in the heat and the TV in the background and I'm already thinking wow this is a good moment, Bhayya comes back from namaaz and I'm writing my maiden name on the forms in Urdu and signing in English and I'm thinking there's something different about today.

8:00 p.m: I come into the pink-walled room to use her computer and against my better judgement end up reading the 20 or so items on her list, 'the final countdown' and I'm thinking no no no and open my Introduction but the blurry image that comes to my mind is of Faiqa dressed in green, bending her knees to look into my eyes and squeezing my hand so tight her fingernails dig into my palm and she looks a little terrified but smiles and whispers 'Teri shaadi hoti' to me and in spite of the tears and the makeup and the sheer inappropriateness of it all I break into a laugh. I tell myself NO but I'm sobbing uncontrollably anyway, stupid thoughts flooding my head: no more fights over where all our white shalwars disappear, no more asking for permission before using her bathroom, no more bowls of icecream getting shoved under my face when I am refusing to speak to everyone but her, asking her what the eff was I doing, Faiqa. I think of us ducking back into my room when a curse word escapes from her lips in full hearing range of the parents, I think of arguing over whose feet get propped over the table, I think of restless evenings when she is away at LUMUN I'm thinking of 'why isn't the istree working' and 'what you doing? whose house? is it fun?' sms-es while I'm in Karachi and my wet eyelashes sprinkle droplets of tears on the inside of my glasses, and she wasn't supposed to leave first, I've been trying to delay this and I have to start dealing with empty rooms and unspoken rants too soon.

And then the maid comes into the room with a plate of chawal in her hand looking at me funny and asks 'yeh gall gaye hain?'. When she's gone I burst into laughter at the image of myself to Irum, she must be thinking I'm nuts, and I'm laughing, wiping tears and looking for a tissue paper for my nose and this is me aged 6, 10, 12, 18, laughing and crying at the same time.

10:00 p.m: I'm wasting all my time, I'm panicking, and I give up everything and take my puffy eyes down to the basement to watch TV with Faiqa, feeling stupid. We watch the coverage of the blast in F-8, turn the TV off, sickened, and watch a movie instead.

1:00 a.m: We eat ice cream and get yelled at for being too loud, get pissed off and troop into her room to discuss when things will ever change, then go to bed.

Dear Cheesoo

2007-07-11T13:46:00.000+05:00

...I have not had access to your blog for the past 5 months. Fix this, please?

Love,
Azka

10th July 2007

2007-07-10T15:29:00.001+05:00

(The things that we're afraid of
are gonna show us what we're made of
in the end)

If Ammi had a superpower, it would be killing lizards with uncanny speed and precision. In addition to the loving/healing/forgiving superpowers all mothers possess, of course.

So the Lal Masjid drama keeps us at home, always within hearing range of the TV. Not because of fear but a need to know what's going on. There's the usual traffic on the roads as we do our grocery shopping on the second day, on the fourth day as I try reluctantly to get my stuff together and ready for the darzi, a very un-bride-to-be mindset as I sit and vegetate at home, packing on the pounds with cheerful, reckless abandon :) And the one time I feel up to meeting friends I can't be arsed to straighten my hair or wear makeup, but getting out is worth it - I have to clear my throat often because we're speaking so loudly and laughing so much that my voice box protests. Hamza and Ali play with the stem glasses, oblivious to the looks we're getting from the goras around us and Afza is greeted with a silver plastic-flower garland. The food is good and confusing and entertaining and at the end we all become a little broke. And at Hotspot afterwards I stop mid-sentence and my eyes go wide as I see a Chinese girl in teeny tiny ... shorts?! Do the Jamia Hafsa horrors mean nothing to her, I wonder, and they're all laughing at my face and I tell them to move out of the way so I can stare properly. Nothing happens at all when I hear the gunshots over the music outside Gelato, all the usual beggars are there, as are the weekend-cruising pre-pubescent Islamabad boys and the kohl-laden O/A levels aunties.

But Ammi tells me about the SSG jawan's delirium, 'mein acha sipahi hoon', and I crack good and proper. I don't know if it's all of the last seven days, the five hundred or so people who've been killed already, or the children in the underground bunkers who don't have a fucking clue what's going on. Maybe it's just the inability to tell who's right and who's wrong.

Being a khala is knowing instinctively which wrist-watches your niece and nephew had chosen for themselves in a shop in your absence.

I talk to Apya. On the phone, at home, in the car, as we try to kill time in F-6 waiting for the JJ store's lunch break to end. For the first time in my life we speak the same language and we have in-jokes and we turn against Ammi as she gets into her besharam humour mode just because I'm getting married and for some reason am allowed to enter the realm of married women already. So we pile into the bathroom and giggle into our palms when we can't fight Ammi's determined-to-corrupt-me comments. Apya wants to show me how she makes her chicken and I'm running upstairs, online, and she still holds my hand as we sit on Ammi's bed watching TV, and squeezes it.

A jalebi is a beautiful thing.

I can't wrap my brain around the concept of leaving, still. Breakfast after breakfast as I sit at the table groggy-eyed with Ammi and Papa, eggs and toast and tea, and then e-mail. Days fall into patterns for weeks, time whizzes by and yet brings us no closer, it seems. Time with Faiqa is filtered through different sleeping routines and the friction that persists despite the knowledge that this is the end. And there's two ways of looking at it everyday, as Tariq makes me smile more and more often, I think waiting is not always a bad feeling.

Halfway

2007-06-22T19:36:00.000+05:00

I tip-toe around time. Sit in the rain, dialling random numbers and having meaningless conversations, as the rain soaks through my clothes, blurs my glasses and I can't see anything but the smell of the rain and the headlights reflected on the road are enough. And persistent mosquitoes eat at my toes no matter how far into my painchas I hide my feet and sometimes on the terrace there is no conversation and blobs of light instead of plazas and I'm still there. And I sink into a mango at 2.30 a.m, the most barbaric way to eat a mango and everything is laced with desperation, the wind, Yumna Abdullah, Kalabagh, the glasses of milkshake.

We defend ourselves from dragonflies and moths and monkeys with weak, twiggy branches, and Faiqa falls asleep under a tree, her head is on my shoulder and our breathing becomes rhythmic. She tapes the silence and I take pictures of the daisies and I take twenty minutes to pry out a headless nail from the sole of my shoe and her wrist is decorated with insect bites from an adventure and we listen to the wind, and read our books, and this is a perfect day that we just don't want to end.

She's testing out the tangibility of her dream and I am living the logical consequences of rational decisions. And all this emotion stuns me most days, wakes me up with the most filmi smiles as I look at my phone without my glasses and for that moment I want to be there right now. Just a little disappointed with God and the passive aggression comes out as I try to figure out what it is that needs to be fixed, the wisdom of the faith argument wearing thin for the moment.

Two crazy weeks, by far the two best weeks of the summer I'm expecting, peppered crayons, Lost, Slims, the rain and zits. The Waleed kid touches my toes as he sits at my feet and the Momin kid asks me why I smile so much (often reflective of your past? he says) and the Fahad kid gets me a present and I wear makeup everyday and miss Abdul Muizz and this is insanity, this is not me.

I haven't even begun to figure out where this is heading.

2007-03-27T12:40:00.000+05:00

The day is gorgeous. I stand in the sun, palms overturned, and melt in the warmth. I miss college today.
The grass is green, all of a sudden. I am slathered in malai. I will be a princess in this house for the next eight months, I will get random hugs and kisses from Ammi, tail maalishes from Papa. But I haven't seen Faiqa in days. I don't count a one a.m meeting over chicken patties and Pepsi and Dew in the kitchen two days ago.
I shield my eyes from the sun with my dupatta, and stand in the garden with arms outstretched, like a sombre messiah, like someone waiting for an embrace.

(There was so much more to write. Now I've lost my nerve.)

redefinition.

2007-03-23T16:09:00.000+05:00

It's recent enough that I have faint mehndi stains on my palms and running along the backs of my index fingers, new enough that wearing articles of jewellery constantly causes pleasure and discomfort simultaneously. If I try hard enough I can feel hesitant fingertips around my ring, and smell tube roses in the corners in my room.

We perfected the Before Sunrise music room scene, bitten-down smiles and averted eyes.

It hardly took a minute and I am left neither here nor there.

Emmeline.

2007-03-01T23:20:00.000+05:00

I drip into Faiqa's living space while mine is painted mango. Toothbrush, books, socks, contacts, music. Her elbows rest against my back as we sleep. We wake up to the radio, to Avril Lavigne. To promises of greatness, and to fucked up days.

We'll remember this one hurting like a bitch, she said later. She's got period cramps. I've got a headache and unwept tears. We find our way to London Book Co. and hover around the man and woman trying to sort out relationship politics, we look for books and then nestled between two looming shelves of books we open Wordsworth and crisps and ketchup and it's a miracle we read out loud to each other without our voices cracking, without tears, murmuring sometimes, racing through verse to get to the end and the essence and repeating the childhood the childhood, and sometimes we shut up at the end of a poem, speechless, in our own thoughts, and sometimes it's too much and we're quiet and we look at each other with sad sad smiles and we don't know whether to laugh or cry, and there's nowhere else to look. And it's so beautiful it aches instantly. Before, during, and after. And she says, as I finish one, that's us, Azka, that's us!

Each Scrabble match reduces one from the total we'll ever have. The finite-ness of everything is the elephant in the room. Still can't articulate two nightmares dovetailing into one, though words creep in lending tangibility to most of what we never stated.

I mistook my own reflection for her in a mirror in Saeed Book Bank once.

We'll remember this one hurting like a bitch.

The other side.

2007-02-25T21:27:00.000+05:00

Finally able to access my blog via the newversionthingymajig.
Life is crazy, unpredicatable and amazing as ever :)
Happy. Sad. Scared. Happy.
All it boils down to is adjectives, descriptions - all inadequate. Real updates later, for those who are bothered.

the one in which she was happy

2006-12-15T23:32:00.000+05:00

This has to be the most beautiful winter ever.

Morning after morning of sun that I swim in, in tea that almost scalds, slides smooth along my insides like John Legend drenches my eardrums, my senses, slowly, I slide into the plastic lawn chair, cold, ticklish grass underfoot and this could be the new definition of bliss in my book.

And this is just the perfect mix: of hope, a sense of achievement, a little disappointment, a few reality checks, just the right amount of heartache and tears, the balance of uncertainty and faith, the best friends, the right attitude, confidence with a dash of self-doubt, of memorable afternoon drives, and aloneness-in-crowds, of long, cold yet warming bathroom-floor conversations, of goodbyes, and realisations, and lessons.

I stand on the edge of the Margalla road, emerging from a strangely liberating three hour meeting, in the three o' clock sun, as cars whizz by me and I am aware I never learnt how to cross roads, and I am small again as the road stretches out ahead of me, and my bright red dupatta dances in front of my face but there's a taste of green tea and success in my mouth and as I walk along the road at the foot of tall, swaying trees, me - tiny and insignificant, I still feel invincible.

The city of intertwined fates

2006-12-09T03:39:00.000+05:00

In the residue of last week's concert - in alienation brought on by alcohol, by better-halves of bestfriends, while looking at the hunched shoulders of the drummer from backstage, mesmerised, I do. In loud music at Ashi's dholkis, in 9 a.m phone calls that wake me up, in the quiet, in the quiet, in distracting new music that sounds like the old, while getting dressed, talking by proxy, wondering, in long-forgotten passwords, in a pointless argument just the night before that strangely brings on tears, in frustration when there is not one place where I can hide where I will not find criticism, I do. In old clothes, at Ashi's mehndi, in conversations full of laughter, in the halos around the lights, in the spectacular, too-close car crash that I see in slow motion at the very very end of the day, from lightyears ahead and beyond, I do.

And I am afraid to say this out loud, but in my own way I do mark the days.

13th November 2006

2006-11-14T21:06:00.000+05:00

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?

Pencil and paper, last night.

2006-10-12T15:25:00.000+05:00

I am lying on my side on the carpet in Ammi's room, the hardness of the floor against my pelvic bone. I play with the three black hairpins that keep my boy-hair away from my face, two longer than one. I look out the door into the hall through their loops.

And in my room on the bed there is a mess of lifafas and books and I walk closer and am reminded of how a few hours ago in the bookshops my mind was reeling. God there was Ulysses on the shelves! And a collection of Saki but no Noon Meem Rashid and I vowed to one day pay for a book all with vouchers without having to pay even one rupiah but on the bed there are other books, from Faiqa's room. Faiqa who had made off with the bit of my makeup I forbade her to put in her bag, Faiqa who I messaged an angry ulloo ki pathi when I asked where's my blush and she replied I have it, I love you too. There's her cross-word book here and her lawyer-ly books I wanted to borrow on my bed, these are peace offerings and I want to go into her room where she still has the a.c on and I want it to be yesterday, on her couch reading out Wodwo to her from the 7th-grade Dragon Book of Verse, looking up from the page as I say 'what shape am I what shape am I am I huge' to see her half-smile with her eyes closed with post-aftari sleep and the ache in her stomach that is her life.

And in the car on the way back from an excursion where I saw two wild boars and a little piglet six feet away from me bang in the middle of the city, where Papa held my hand while crossing the road, and we went from ATM to ATM finding only ones that were too shady or just won't work, at a signal I see a baby in the car next to ours. And the baby looks familiar in the way babies make you think 'Doesn't he/she look just like xyz?' And I think that baby reminds me of how Yumna used to look eight years ago when all of a sudden I realise that the only image of Yumna as a baby in my head is from a photograph, not my own memory.

I am disappointed in myself, what am I if I can't retain the memory of a face, so what if it insisted on changing every weekend we met, what kind of love is this? And just a few days ago my heart stopped beating when I thought that some day, some day soon it seems, Yumna and Abdullah will forever be 9/10, 4/5 in my head, there will be no minute-by-minute accounts, first step, first tooth, word, day of school, slap, joke, roza, sleepover, everything will freeze, will I be as much of a Khala when I stop witnessing them in a flow, how will it be if I see them year after year, summer vacations perhaps, jumping years and experiences and exams and birthdays?

But my heart stops beating entirely too often- an ad on TV, a tightly-played Coven song in the middle of the night on a request show on the radio, stepping over a shallow stream of water in Jinnah stung by a too-familiar fragrance eyes fixed firmly on the ground. And all this seems really funny just now because an hour ago, when I was online, on the computer, I wondered: when will I write again?

heh.

2006-09-11T13:59:00.000+05:00

Tagged by Mina.

I am thinking about
last night

I said
everything I meant, at the time

I want
more!

I wish
upon stars. Silly, I know

I miss
not thinking twice about everything

I hear
what’s not being said more often than what is

I wonder
if things really are the way they are supposed to be

I regret
not spending enough time with my parents

I am
not most things that I want to be

I dance
a shaadi-dance when Mitwaa plays on the radio

I sing
to kill the silence sometimes

I cry
far too often

I am
discovering myself

I write
when something is too precious to forget

I confuse
what I ‘should’ with what I ‘want’ sometimes

I need
more time

I should try
cleaning my cupboard some day

I finish
what I want to say before I start listening to anybody else

lest I forget.

2006-09-09T22:42:00.000+05:00

Last weekend:

I heard Abdullah struggling with something that sounded suspiciously like it used to when he was little(r) and struggling with constipation (concentrating very, very hard). Delighted at this opportunity to barge into the bathroom to embarrass the (shit out of) incredibly skinny, extremely modest five year old little boy, I burst into the toilet only to behold the most amazing Abdullah-stunt yet, Abdullah resting his stomach on the marble vanity around the sink, feet skyward legs in the air, washing his hands. He had made an S out of himself and hooked into the sink (little shit is too short to reach the faucet), could barely breathe but had successfully, independently washed his hands.

Yes.

Also noteworthy was lunch at Pir Sohawa because both Abdullah and Yumna were gaping at the brats on the next table like they were exhibits at a zoo, and Yumna told us a (very unfunny) joke that lasted the entire drive from Pir Sohawa to F-6, Abdullah was feeling queasy (Meray dil ko kuch ho raha hai – How do kids learn how to articulate these feelings? What’s a dil and what’s the ‘kuch’ that’s happening and – uff, mindboggling) and at one priceless moment said to himself very quietly “Baarish ki khushboo aa rahi hai”.

Also last weekend:

My first reading circle meet. The house in a cricket-infested corner of F-7, a light breeze blowing and myself, supremely aware of wearing too much perfume, that fact leaving me self-conscious for the entire time I was there. Predictably the youngest, dumbest person there, only having read ‘about’ Karl Jung in managementpsychologysociology textbooks and I am sitting there staring at the floor and not participating and listening very hard trying to make sense of the stories and ideas being thrown around from all directions and despite that ineptitude, that feeling of incredible stupidity and ignorance, as the conversation flows from Greek mythology to archetypes to the collective unconscious to dreams and fairytales and folklore, on the drive back home it feels as though someone has watered my brain.

Last night:

Ammi Papa out of town and Faiqa’s got two friends over, making dinner in the kitchen and I move from one room to the other, empty and restless with nothing to do (howisthatevenpossible). Bad cable reception and too-black hair. Too sleepy to be awake but too awake to sleep I decide upon the phone and dial a number, three rings later REM start singing everybody hurts and I just lose my nerve.

Many hours later it’s time to pray and I sit on the floor and ask for more and more and more. More, sorrier, and smarter, hungrier, and more cautious than last year.

One week at home and I’m already beyond redemption. One more week of MERVs, SoEs, RTAs and coffee breaks and seeing Ali everyday and buss. Buss?

2006-08-28T15:29:00.000+05:00

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)

2006-08-22T00:20:00.000+05:00

(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

2006-08-07T12:30:00.000+05:00

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.

From Beirut

2006-07-26T16:27:00.000+05:00

I am apolitical. I do not believe in propaganda. I am shameless enough to admit that other people's wars do not move me very often. However, this does.

I received this first-person account of the war in my office e-mail. It was written by the acquaintance of a SOAS Ph.D student conducting fieldwork in Gaza right now.

"I have to confess that writing is becoming increasingly difficult. Writing, putting words together to make sentences to convey meaning, like the small gestures and rituals that make-up the commonplace acts of everyday life, has begun to lose its meaning and its cathartic power. I am consumed with grief, there is another me trapped inside me that cries all the time. And crying over the death of someone is a very particular cry. It has a different sound, a different music and feels different. I dare not cry out in the open, tears have flowed, time and time again, but I have repressed the release of pain and grief. My body feels like a container of tears and grief. I am sure it shows in the way I walk.
Writing is not pointless per se, but it is not longer an activity that gives me relief. The world outside this siege seems increasingly far, as if it had evacuated with the bi-national passport holders and foreigners.
The past few days have been MURDEROUS in the south and the Beqaa Valley. The death toll has been increasing in a horrific exponential invigorated with the White House giving a green light for the military assault to persist. Beirut has been spared so far, but not the southern suburbs. Today is Day 12 of the war; the Israeli military has conducted 3,000 air raids on Lebanon in 12 days. Out of the total deaths so far, which range close to 400 (numbers are not definitive), almost 170 are children. The numbers of the displaced are increasing by the hour. Have you seen the pictures of the deaths? The mourners in Tyre? Have you seen the coffins lined up? And the grieving mothers?
It is impossible not to grieve with them, it is impossible to shut one's ears to their wailing. It haunts me, it echoes the walls of the city, it bounces off the concrete of destroyed bridges and buildings. In trying to explain what drove Mohammad Atta to fly an airplane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, someone (I forget whom- sorry facts-checkers) once said to me that Atta must have felt that "his scream was bigger than his chest". That description stayed with me, I don't know if I agree with it, or if that's how Atta felt in reality, but it comes back to me now because I feel that my grief is bigger than my chest and I have no idea how to dissipate it.

The Southern Suburbs

I accompanied journalists to Haret Hreyk two days ago. I suspect I am still shell-shocked from the sight of the destruction. I have never, ever seen destruction in that fashion. Western journalists kept talking about a "post-apocalyptic" landscape. The American journalists were reminded of Ground Zero. There are no gaping holes in the ground, just an entire neighborhood flattened into rubble. Mounds and mounds of smoldering rubble. Blocks of concrete, metal rods, mixed with furnishings, and the stuff that made up the lives of residents: photographs, clothes, dishes, CD-roms, computer monitors, knives and forks, books, notebooks, tapes, alarm clocks. The contents of hundreds of families stacked amidst smoking rubble. A couple of buildings had been hit earlier that morning and were still smoking, buildings were still collapsing slowly.

I was frightened to death and I could hear my own wailing deep, deep within me.

I stopped in front of one of the buildings that housed clinics and offices that provide social services, there seemed to be a sea of CD-Roms and DVDs all over. I picked up one, expecting to find something that had to do with the Hezbollah propaganda machine (and it is pretty awesome). The first one read "Sahh el-Nom 1", the second "Sahh el-Nom 17". "Sahh el-Nom" was a very popular sit-com (way, way before the concept was even identified) produced by Syrian TV in the 1960s. It was centered on the character of "Ghawwar el-Tosheh", who has become a salient figure in popular Arab culture. I smiled mournfully, at the irony. Around the corner passport photos and film negatives covered the rubble.

Haret Hreyk was a residential area. The residents, I was told by our driver who lived a few blocks away, were evacuated by Hezbollah to other places before the shelling began. Those who refused to leave then, left after the first round of shelling. Haret Hreyk is eerily ghostly, there are practically no people left in that neighborhood. In the two hundred meters radius removed however, life is on-going. Residents testified that Hezbollah was securing food, electricity and medicines to all those who stayed.

Haret Hreyk is also where Hezbollah had a number of their offices. Al- Manar TV station is located in the block that has come to be known as the "security compound" (or "security square"), the office of their research and policy studies center, and other institutions attached the party. It is said that in that heavily inhabited square of blocks, more than 35 buildings were destroyed entirely.

Hezbollah had organized a visit for journalists that day, as they had the day before. They provided security cover for the area for the international media cameras to document the destruction. There was a spokesperson greeting journalists. A small rotund man, dressed in a track suit, fancy sunglasses, two-day old stubble carrying two state of the art cell phones. He spoke in concise soundbites and was affable. There was nothing menacing about his demeanor, in fact were it not for the destruction around him he looked more like he would be an assistant to Scolari (similar dress code and portend) than part of the media team of a "terrorist organization".

The security apparatus of Hezbollah was also impressive, underscoring the identity of Hezbollah. They were all affable, welcoming, dressed casually and unarmed. They all held walkie-talkies, and when looming danger of another Israeli air strike seemed tangible, they all ushered the group of some 30 (and more) journalists to clear the area. They issued their warnings calmly and confidently.

One of the buildings was still burning. It had been shelled earlier that day at dawn. Clouds of smoke were exhaling from amidst the ravages. The rubble was very warm, as I stepped on concrete and metal, my feet felt the heat.

Israeli Warfare Mystery

Doctors in hospitals in the south have testified on television that they a number of bodies that have reached them have an unusual, unfamiliar skin color. Some of surviving injured exhibit a pattern of burns that doctors have also never seen before. The question is beginning to get attention for the world community of physicians and human rights organization. Israel is suspected of loading its missiles with toxic chemicals. The fear, in addition to their toxicity being immediately lethal on its victims, is that the waters and earth may now be poisoned. The inhabitants of the south may have to suffer from Israel's wrath for a very, very long time, in chilling cold blood. The as-Safir newspaper, the second largest running daily in Lebanon, has taken up the task to investigate the question.

Beyond the crime of toxic poisoning, the type of shells and bombs used is also astounding. I met a woman who was displaced from the borderig village of Yater. She is a native American, blue blood and apple pie, but with a hijab. She, her husband, her three babies and her husband's family, a total of 14 people were trapped in one room in their house in Yater. On the 6th or 7th day of shelling, she cracked and her kids could not longer handle the violence. Risking their lives, they jumped into their car, and decided to take their chance. They drove straight without stopping, taking circuitous ways when the main roads were impossible to tread. They expected to die on the road. After 14 hours of driving they made their way to the US embassy in the northeastern suburbs of Beirut. They were not aware of evacuations. They were lost on the way, and someone stole her husband's wallet with the 400$ in cash they carried (the totality of their fortune), his green card and her US passport. I came across her at the US embassy compound. She was trembling. She could barely tell her story coherently. She repeated over and over that she had seen houses fly, that the shells made the houses fly in the air and then collapse on the ground. She repeated that she ought not to have gone to the window, but she could not help it, she was curious, and she saw the houses fly.

I don't know what happened to the American mother from Portland Oregon and Yater south Lebanon. I know her babies are lactose intolerant and their only food was the stock of soy milk she had with her. She was very young, a face earnest, her skin transluscent white. In her pale blue eyes there was despair and fright that she will not recover from for a very long time.

The Displaced

The displaced have been dispersed in the country. They have been placed in schools, universities, government owned buildings. Aid is arriving, but still in chaotic manner. Volunteers are beginning to get tired. However nothing compares to the distress of the displaced. They are in a state of complete emotional upheaval. Their presence has already changed the habits and rituals of the neighborhoods where they have been placed.

As the sun begins to set and the harshness of its rays begins to dim, you find families strolling on Hamra street (a main commercial thoroughfare in West Beirut). Shops are closed, sandwich shops are closed, cafes are intermittantly open, but the sidewalk provides an opportunity to escape the confinement from the shelter where they been relocated. You can see it in their walk, their body language. Their pace searches for peace of mind, not for a destination, their lungs expand drawing in oxygen to inspire quietude and calm, not for cardiovascular pressure. They have a deep, mournful, sorrowful gaze. They left behind their entire lives, maybe even their beloved.

In Ras Beirut, small backstreets have come to life. To escape the heat of indoor confinement, displaced families relocated to old homes or government-owned buildings, have grown in the habit of placing plastic chairs and their narguiles on small front porches or entrance hallways of buildings. I had to walk home after a long day of working with journalists, two nights ago, and as I zigzagged through these back streets, I was comforted by their gentle presence. They chatted, softly, quietly, huddled in groups, watching the night unfold, fearful of the sound of Israeli warplanes.

The ceaseless newscast from a radio kept everyone informed. It too sounded softly. It was a gentle summer night, and the families dispersed and uprooted surrendered to the gentleness of the night.

On the next block, three young women stood in line, queuing for access to a public payphone. That too has become a familiar sight in Beirut: people lining at public payphones. They stood, clearly tired but resilient. To my "good evening", I was greeted back with smiles and another "good evening". I was relieved to see that they felt safe, that they roamed the city at night without qualms. How long can they afford to pay for these phone calls is another question. There is a definite need for a long term plan. This emergency solution will soon reach a crisis, and state structures need to be prepared to face the anger and frustration of nearly 500,000 people.

On the next block, a Mercedes car packed with people was parked at a corner, in front of the entrance of a building. The car's doors were flung open and the radio broadcast news. It was a visit. Two displaced families on a nightly visit. Everyone was gentle, and a soft breeze blew with clemency."

I forget who this was for.

2006-07-17T13:53:00.000+05:00

I whisper.
You whisper back.
I do not understand the language you speak.
It is beautiful, the consonants are somehow more musical, more soothing.
You are beautiful.
A foreign candidness in your eyes, amazement and joy in the alien colour and dilation of your pupils.
You clutch a curly strand of my hair, bury your nose in its shampoo smell.
I hold my breath.
You smile and utter a soft sentence that I do not comprehend.

- 22nd March 2003

16th July 2006

2006-07-16T14:20:00.000+05:00

From the moment I land in Karachi I am waiting for it, for the tectonic shift inside that brings me calm.

The crazy wind whips around me, destroying my carefully straightened hair, and I can’t help but smile. We run from mall to Gulf to wedding to visiting friends to mall in the ever present salty wind, the wind playing havoc with my carefully straightened hair. I can't help but smile. I am in Karachi.

But I am also alone. In these four days it feels as though somehow my loneliness from home hid in the empty curves and corners of my suitcase and travelled with me. It creeps in at the oddest of moments. Standing on the roadside outside at night waiting for the driver to show up, headlights blinding and sweat and salt mixing plastering my hair to my forehead I am small and alone. In Liberty books loneliness is in the space between my hands reaching out to touch and the covers of the books and I retract. I carry a gulf around me, something separating me from everything. I am walking around aimlessly, cluelessly.

Little by little I get caught up by the speed of the city. Life flows here, and if you try hard enough, you can lose yourself in its momentum. Things don’t stop and start, life is not hesitant here. It is assertive, and it keeps going on. That is what I love about this city, that is why I return. I never leave unsorted.

II)

I meet Bilal Bhai’s wife, the IV person now in Gulshan out of choice, Karachi is a place of diversity. Two weeks ago I sat with him in our drawing room for four hours talking non-stop and easy, the first real conversation I had had in weeks. We vowed to nurture our dreams, promised we’d start a crazy venture in the next five years, felt sad and happy for our generation and I meet his wife. I marvel at the dynamics of love.

I meet Insiya and Khizzy in a Dunkin’ Donuts full of Chinese people and a girl sits with her head on the table. The traffic flows outside and Insiya insists upon paying for my food. There is warmth and genuine interest in her eyes. Khizzy joins us. We talk. They talk and I listen. Khizzy says eggs are the perfect thing when there is no dinner at home. I have a flashback of myself eating cold alooqeema with bread in the middle of the night in F-8 in A-levels. We’re talking about marriage, relationships. I tell them about Saba. I am aware of my smile, at the lack of discomfort I feel. The ever-present discomfort I feel around people is oddly missing when I am sitting with two quasi-strangers and I am happy. I drop them back. I want to hug Insiya for making this possible, but there is no time. They don’t realize what they’ve done. I spent an hour and a half with strangers just now and I am happy.

We’re on our way to Park Towers and I tell the driver to turn around for the seaside. It will be dirty and crowded but it won’t be any less the seaside. I am hurrying out of the car, too impatient to wait for a parking spot. On the sand I am quiet and Ammi is giving me my five minutes here. The wind is almost water and angry and friendly at once and I can hardly stand against its push but I do and there is sand between my toes and later on in my stylo chappals and the sky and the water are grey, angry and friendly at once.

My hair stays miraculously straight all along. Could it be that the city has embraced me, I wonder with mild amusement.

III)

It is night and I am alone on the terrace. One, two, and three a.m find me outside. The wind is invasive, laden with salt and vapour. There is an ocean here and I find it marvellous that I am facing in its direction, this crazy wind is touching me everywhere and on my lips I kiss the salt and I am here. I’m in Karachi.

This is the first time I am by myself, and I know this will be enough. In my head I come to conclusions. Conclusions that make perfect sense, are perfectly logical in my sleep-deprived, heightened state of being. I know I will still have to think about everything in the morning, when all of my logic will seem incredulous, but for a few hours this will buy me quiet.

Things are sorting themselves out. I know this will hurt. The deepest most intimate most urgent of my feelings comes out in a text message wrapped bundled hidden away in a layer of words which crumples my feeling into a tight little unidentifiable ball of nothing bruised and battered and I send it out. In a few seconds I feel guilty and I send it out twice more, to different destinations. Everywhere it is translated differently, and the responses that do come interpret it in a way that offers relief, occupies my mind.

Somebody’s servant is sleeping on the roof next door. I turn my back to him, stand against the concrete railing. My eyes are not working. The moon has several blurry halos around it, but it’s all right.

Just before our departure I am treated to a light Karachi drizzle. The flight is delayed, too much rain at Chaklala. I stand outside on the tarmac on the edge of the runway, watching the droplets on the screen of my phone, unable to decide whether I want to sit inside the lounge and ignore this ache or to be outside and experience it. I stay outside.

Gently, the tectonic plates click into place. I go inside the lounge and fall asleep on the sofa.

little Isloo poo

2006-07-15T20:38:00.000+05:00

(as seen from a plane window)

these are the hangars,
the airforce things, and these,
houses.

this is pindi, the roads curve,
go everywhichway

someone in that box is hearing my plane take off,
being stirred from sleep.

a congregation of lorries,
or buses, could it be the
Daewoo place?

this is your Layyeh. the
nala running through. what
happens to all the houses around you, when you
flood?

and here you have a
pool, the water crystal clear for me
peering from above. you, swimmer, have
no privacy.

(do you find it strange
that I am talking to you?)

your roads are getting
straighter, boxed,
this must be you, then,
Isloo. unmistakably neat, and cars crawling along.

but this, i don't recognize.
some electric pole, an
unfamiliar curve of a road,
a landmark that just looks different from above.

and now you grow faint,
behind the thin cover of cloud.

-10th July, 2006

yum

2006-07-10T01:34:00.000+05:00

The meat in the aloo-gosht I just had was pink on the inside.

Thoroughly appetizing.

erase.

2006-07-06T12:34:00.000+05:00

This, then
is the perfect escape.
Like folding a sheet of paper and refolding it, reducing it to a tiny little dot that vanishes.
Picking up bits of me from every corner, the space under the chairs beneath the bed the place between the windows and the curtains.
Clean. Traceless.

05/07/06

2006-07-05T23:29:00.002+05:00

In the car coming home from the office I try to recline in the back seat and put my head in the small gap between the head-rest and the door and close my eyes and
nothing.
I suddenly realise I'm beyond sleep.
I have officially been working hard.

Later on Ammi's stomach talked to my palm laid flat against it as our heads talked to each other and I tried to fill the silence she sometimes seems to start breathing.

Disenchanted

2006-07-04T15:16:00.000+05:00

The rainbow turns pale, colourless, a greyblue, and merges with the distant sky. The sun comes out tired and weary. Ugly, defeated, the clouds go away.
Window curtains flap in an unseen, unfelt breeze in the cold sunlight.
Someone has left a song, words in the air, near the crumpled balls of paper in the tall grass in a park. A wheel spins noiselessly as a bicycle lies on its side.
Pain is strewn about on the ground, glamorous and worshipped. The embers of a bonfire remain, a few half-burnt thankyous still smoldering.
Echoes bounce back and forth till they run headlong into rocks, cliffs, mountains of stone, are crushed to pieces and silenced forever.
Water stands still; reflective, impermeable, solid; bitter, honest and cold like a mirror.
Memories, clean as new slates (so new that even colours couldn’t be differentiated by them) hang from the edges of tree leaves like raindrops, and fall down into a multitude that fell before, so that noone can tell which fell first, or find the one just seen falling.
On the roadsides, trampled upon and yet untouched, grow sad little flowers that no one has seen.
Silence flies by. Above, below and inside, a vacuum grows stealthily, without a sound.

-31st January, 2003

In loving memory

2006-07-04T12:20:00.000+05:00

16th December 2004 - 3rd July 2006

Dear straightening iron, may you rest in peace. Amen.

hydration

2006-07-03T23:34:00.000+05:00

It's been almost a year and some of the pieces in the Alhamra Literary Review still take my breath away.
I can't wait for this issue.

uninspired

2006-06-27T12:24:00.000+05:00

i can be wrong and you
you

can be
beautiful.

lost
(in the space of you)
between two heartbeats
is a reckless
wish

come on,
let’s go.

(the space of you
is
an ache)

26/06/06

2006-06-25T23:54:00.000+05:00

I am a hundred different shades of tired tonight. A hundred kinds of lonesome.
In the back of my mind I have a feeling that I have lost something.
(And I suspect I know what it is.)

Tonight I am resigned the way a pebble meeting the toe of a kicking shoe is resigned.

Escape just might be one flight away. But what hurts is the knowledge that I have myself to return to.

space/older

2006-06-24T22:53:00.000+05:00

I don't have the heart to tell them that they are old and I have a crippling, morbid fear of leaving them all alone.

(Ammi says life is like the GRE; the harder you try to become a better person, the more difficult it becomes to do the right thing. Ammi says the 'right thing' is determined by your heart, not your brain. Ammi still knows everything.)

If I reach out far enough, will I touch you?

1:21 a.m

2006-06-21T10:45:00.000+05:00

I need to mark this day.
Puppho passed away, and I learned another billion things.
This bridge crossing over from childhood to adulthood just won't come to an end.

: )

2006-06-19T01:05:00.000+05:00

Uff khudaya everybody needs to be in my head right now because I have Third Eye Blind and Sarah Mchlachlan playing inside.
A baby lizard is dancing on the kitchen floor.
I am going to miss my deadline.
I need to take a bath.

~ t h e e n d ~

All the obvious answers are wrong.

2006-06-18T00:03:00.000+05:00

I am torn between the desire to let this pass, and to dissect it.
Positivity’s on vacation.

(The blue arc'd, rising quickly up in the air and then descending, slowly at first then gathering speed, ending with an oddly satisfying, almost melodic ch-ing and I know milnayjulnay are dead in their rain-proof wrapping paper. That’s the end of that source of dissonance.)

I re-read bits of The Lovely Bones, that pedestrian hollywood-esque story where all ends are tied up neatly eventually and still it wrenches my heart which is not in its place already because

this is the aftermath ... and everything dissolves.
I clean the inside of the microwave with the world’s biggest lump in my throat.

Everything that is no that is not right that is given up that is smoothed over that is compensated for that is made okay because of this is wrong again today and I am distraught. Despite this studied, carefully embraced detachment I am unaccustomed to new kinds of silence, a new type of loneliness, a new sort of independence that leaves my knees buckling. The one long moment of simultaneous betrayal and elation behind the flats when Papa let go of the blue bicycle and it kept going under me over the gravel is happening again. I am left debating whether or not I can do it, do I run, or do I hide? I am left debating who I am, am I strong enough?

I am left debating. I am left.

In my peripheral vision I see myself closing doors.

14th June 2006

2006-06-15T00:45:00.000+05:00

I stood outside the door to Asma's living room for two slow minutes. Hysterical giggling obscure remixed Indian songs and shrieks spilled out from under the door and I said to Allah Mian 'please make this easy' and in fifteen minutes I had the perfect exit strategy, of course Ali and Umair weren't coming over to study, of course I went home and slept, relieved.

I call Apya at her house and she's really at our house and she says these two people were asking about you and that's exactly who they are: People. Two little persons, so very real, Yumna's hugs are real and warm and fat and Abdullah watches clean and they smell clean and beautiful.

I GREed and the essays are my favourite part I want to do this again they leave the doors open for sociologists and psychologists and dreamers and economists and isn't that just my niche.

But this score I don't have the heart to tell Bhayya and fuck this music filling up my brain again slowing me down filling out the empty spaces where t h o u g h t s should be.

And I don't have the heart to say it but there's just so many things happening at the same time and yet as the urgency disappears rapidly and expectation dies one germ at a time I give myself time and this too shall pass but I feel like a helium balloon with a stone in the middle. I'm grounded, but dude, I could float.

So whatisitwhatisitwhatisitthatkeepsmesofuckingedgy? I can understand this feeling of my life falling into place and the dislocation this unfamiliarity of having myself as the vortex the very centre of my universe the clarity the feeling of never belonging in a place for more than five minutes easily bored and shifting and twisting myself in new directions to find out who I am but what I don't understand is really, how light my body feels on the mattress.

exhaling

2006-06-07T15:24:00.000+05:00

I am thinking doctorate now I am thinking settling down I am thinking solitude and then

There's a song by Frou Frou on the radio that does it. In the dying light of the setting sun in the darkened room I hold my fake redbrown hair away from my forehead in the mirror and today

I could be a post-modernist's vision of deconstructed, shattered beauty with manicured hands I could
and my face melts into the shadows and I let myself fall on the bed delicately

my bones must be tinkling inaudibly somewhere

Deep into the night we sit in the basement working on squares inscribed in circles and circles inscribed in squares and I think of how it takes Ammi just one hour of cupboard cleaning to leave me so completely displaced.

(Someone wrote: I'm nowhere and there's nothing. It's as if there's no time and space here. Just the moment, with no hint in my mind as to what might have preceded it. It's not that I am, it's more like I merely do.)

I am allergic to...

2006-05-29T20:19:00.000+05:00

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...

2006-05-28T01:00:00.000+05:00

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

perfecting

2006-05-26T23:37:00.000+05:00

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.

[ ]

2006-05-23T13:59:00.000+05:00

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

2006-05-19T12:57:00.000+05:00

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

2006-05-07T01:43:00.000+05:00

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.

2006-05-01T21:19:00.000+05:00

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.

2006-04-27T23:32:00.000+05:00

I think it's time to strangle the tailor.
Or burn him slowly.

surfacing

2006-04-25T03:04:00.000+05:00

Finally, I find my voice returning.

In bubble-induced calmness am I living it right? and the answer is an overwhelming, resounding YES, threatening to spill out of my head, coming out of my mouth instead I sing along, it oozes from my pores as satisfaction.

A strange nervousness runs through my nerves, my fingertips tingle, my voice is shaking. This is my first vacation from work. This is my second home, over lunch I was thinking today of how steaming mugs of coffee first thing in the morning in the winter how Ali P. and his camera how violent, sudden moodswings, how many months now? So will my pc stay germ-free when I'm away for three whole weeks?

There is a koiyal in the trees behind the parking lot behind the creche singing all day long, and somehow it sounds so wrong, koiyals are supposed to sing in the languid heat of Karachi, not the piercing heat of Islamabad, they are the first thing I wait to hear as soon as I get there, opening mess-bathroom windows, eucalyptus swaying in the sea-breeze, a koiyal in Islamabad is cheating.

Ammi and Papa 30 crazy years I am awestruck and humbled and in wonder.

I think I might be unearthing treasures flashes of old and new inside and I think I'm scared to step out but I'm beginning to feel whole.
Bliss, and yet not quite.

morphed

2006-04-21T00:07:00.000+05:00

Words are changed, particles of dust are displaced, air is breathed in, objects are touched. Somewhere there is you, living, breathing, being, and this thought is enough to thrill me, to leave me ecstatic, and then suddenly alone. You are learning, growing in my absence, but somewhere, there is you, there is an existence that matters to me.

On top of a heap of morbidity, dreams are dreamt and sleep is yearned for. Deep into the night my abandoned head is resolving its issues on its own, it's dealing with problems, it's dealing with the strange quiet that haunts it during the day and its playing Live.

A mosquito leads me into my room. Summer is here.

Somewhere: The space that's left here is bigger than you. It's you and I, combined.

2006-04-12T11:52:00.000+05:00

'You didn't create your body yourself and it's not yours to keep, so don't criticise it.'
Sometimes her words send me reeling. Could I be more awestruck? It's a small thing to say, but how can someone be so focused on the bigger picture? How can you live each day treating your life as a mere phase? Her disinterest, her indifference makes sense on days like this. She yells and calls me to her room to show me the bird she's adopted that lives, mysteriously, on the neighbour's PTV antenna and she calls him 'Chirpy'. And she tells me that 80% of her is me so if I love her so much, I should know that I should love myself too. I still love her more.

Alone in the backseat of the car, after years pehaps, I sit in the middle of the seat and put my elbows on Ammi's and Papa's seats, aligned with the AC vents and the rear view mirror. I have to keep my head ducked so as not to be in Papa's line of vision, but all of a sudden I remember Karachi, or my childhood, I don't know which. Except that our cars used to be smaller, and I used to have no choice but to be in the middle seated like that, Apya and Faiqa on one side and Bhayya on the other. Why does every day feel like I am only here for a short while? I need to study ammi's face, commit the lines on her forehead and around her eyes to memory. To look at Papa's hands and wonder if any other man in the world has hands like his, do other people's fathers know the names of the shampoos their daughters use? Do they hide toffees under their kids' pillows so they can accidentally find them?

I find them sitting close together on their sofa quietly staring at the floor and panic grips me. What's wrong? Did you just speak with Bhayya? Is everything ok?

At Khala's house the silence is the broken trust. The tray of dirty plates taken from my hands might be love, or respect, or just plain old formality. Death still hovers somewhere near the ceiling, hides in the shadows behind furniture, in headaches and laughter ending in sighs.
As we leave, Maqsood bhai hugs me and quietly says 'Thank you'.

spoilt

2006-04-10T15:46:00.000+05:00

What a strange time this is.

In the haze of the sheesha, the noise, the standing ovation for the short film and the mad dancing, somewhere there was me alone, trying to see where I fit in a flurry of silk and makeup.

Somewhere, hidden away from me just now, is a great future waiting for me to stumble upon it.
I just know.

Halved

2006-03-31T13:33:00.000+05:00

There is a DJ in my head who plays music all night so the first thing I hear when I open my eyes in the morning is a song. It's ok when it is Third Eye Blind or Lisa Loeb or even The Cardigans but today it was Britney Spears.
Not cool, DJ Subconscious, not cool.

Nothing like the good old lightning bolt to jolt you out of your reverie and put things in perspective. Nothing, I say.

But right now there is shit to be sorted out. I can mull over the meaning of friendship and friends-formerly-known-as-best later. Really. Promise. For now, applications must be sent out before the 12th of April. GRE sessions must commence immediately. Ass must be transported out of present predicament in no longer than five months. Five months is a long time to sort out the rest of your life and if you can't do it by then, you don't deserve a chance at anything.

Feeling reckless today. And loud. And random? I hate when people leave taps running and toilet tanks leaking water in the office washroom. What, just because it's not your own house you don't believe in conservation anymore? This at a place championing the causes that will save the world. Disgusting.

Something oddly satisfying about sneezing thrice in a row. Oddly satisfying. Do I repeat myself over and over? Yes, yes I do. Kill me.

25th March 2006

2006-03-26T00:11:00.000+05:00

someone plays call
rem and dave matthews
in the common room too
alien

(andnotmineanymore)

push handle lower
slow and cautious,
inch after inch of blue carpet
slowly comes into view
door slides smooth

emptiness reveals itself
cushion-upon-misshapen-cushion
lazing around staring blankly
at me, now
music touches my ears
closer to the inside

to one side girl
looks at her mobile
someone slides over a table
silence over the music
and I want to ask

excuse me, but
who allowed you to live

o u r
moment?

All the things a straightening iron wouldn't fix

2006-03-17T12:04:00.001+05:00

My mind plays a visual of the thousands of concentric circles dancing upon the surface of the water that stood on the rooftop I did not dare to step on in the pouring rain. In the doorway raindrops fell on my toes spoiling my favourite ECS chappals. In my hand the tea lost its flavour and warmth, steaming into oblivion. Zen and acid combined, nature and Japanese gardens and hippies in my mind, a raindrop dives into the uniform puddle and a newborn circle merges with a dying repercussion and runs into another repercussion and joins it and runs to the edge of the water and runs back and in the millions of collisions per second there is no noise, irta'ash I think and I am drowning in the large, shallow sheet of water, marveling at the simple beauty of the laws of physics, of circles running into each other.

On a trip to introspection with Ali the shahtoots damp from the rain covering up the floor send whiffs of salt and humidity our way and it smells like Karachi, it smells like the beach.

In a living room crowded with thirty odd people I sit with Nani Amma trying to hear what Mamoo is saying to someone about those cartoons and Nani Amma is saying something, drowning them out and I don't want to listen to her, the other conversation is so much more interesting and I nod my head as she speaks, not listening. I follow her hand with my gaze as she points to Abdullah and Elizeh sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room looking at a picture dictionary together and looking at each other and talking, four year old midgets in a room full of grown ups and Nani Amma says do you see those children? Do you see them talking? That's God you can see between them.

Anthem for doomed youth

2006-02-28T11:16:00.001+05:00

In another world I would be making all the correct decisions right about now.

24th February 2006

2006-02-25T00:00:00.000+05:00

I. I killed a cold just as it began but the universe threw it right back at me. The universe doesn't like me today.
It sends me forebodings.
It stubs out my coffee-induced, project-ending hyperness and gives me emptiness in my stomach, withdrawal symptoms.
I think I don't like the universe today. But

II. I step out and the wind rushes at me and holds me. It forces me to smile, to like it. I begin to miss it as soon as I get in the car, and when I get out a stray raindrop kisses my cheek. Inside,

III. My goosebumped self needs escape. And even with a heart full of sadness when we walk through the market, my clothes move against my skin, I inhale the freshly-painted markaz, listen to the music from Spiral and find a spring in my step. And still

IV. The persistent little sadangry spot returns and sits in my stomach. And though the raindrops leave my glasses specked and alive,
I decide that I don't like the universe today.

spring exactly

2006-02-23T20:19:00.000+05:00

Every single branch smiling silently holding out two unfurling green leaves on the very very edge as a surprise poised offering them out to me as the branches sway gently and the new comers ride the wind.

Bathroom revelations: I swear something deep and meaningful swam into my head as I looked down into the sink in my sleepy haze in the morning smiling watching the water swirl down into oblivion and then wakefulness stole it away. Maybe tomorrow.

medium

2006-02-21T22:29:00.000+05:00

There is a certain kind of perverse pleasure to be derived from missing deadlines, from googling yourself, from smoking-nonsmokerness.

Standing in Khaadi this morning sleep still stinging in my eyes I could almost taste the tangibility of moments coming my way. Smiling all the way to the car, to work, to tea and breakfast consisting of lunch I promise to be a better person, maybe just for the day, and it all seems to work out.

The morning after

2006-02-20T12:09:00.000+05:00

When was the last time it ever occurred to me to call up a destination even before venturing out of the house just to ask if it was safe to come?
The ugly side of Pakistan has become so much uglier that I am almost tempted to disown it. As if having a mob rioting and pressing down against our building, breaking into the Diplomatic Enclave then breaking glass at Standard Chartered our next-door-neighbours weren't enough, teargas has to become the norm in Islamabad. Since when? I listen to Moeed tell the boss how sitting out in the Club was impossible because the teargas from Aabpara was wafting over to that side all day Sunday. Yesterday I saw the largest single movement of Rangers crawling from the Peshawar end of the city to the Pindi end that I have ever seen in my life, I never saw this in Karachi, not even when we used to duck down low driving over Shah Faisal Colony at any time after 10 p.m. way back when things were so ugly we used to wake up to 7 a.m gunshots sometimes.
I don't like this.

No memories of four monsoons' worth of rains could stand up against a paintbrush dipped in off-white. I find myself feeling suddenly empty looking out of the window at the boundary wall in the morning. I wonder if the wall will bear the same dusty brown pattern again, and if raindrops will still always follow the same course that is charted by the first rain drop of the first rain, like a tearstreak along the wall. I think about this, and about other things, and then I brace myself to face the day.

Outside the sun is cheerful, the city is normal. A man is getting a ticket for being on the zebra-crossing at a red light and I am delighted.

2006-02-18T00:55:00.000+05:00

Three hour naps in the late evening and one day is effectively used as two instead.
Ammi comes back and the lights shine brighter. There is dinner on the dining table for the first time in many, many nights. We go up and down the house in every room as she inspects the paint job and all the furniture that's come during this time she's been away and Papa fumbles in his attempts to impress her, like he always does.
At work three Chinooks fly low over our heads, so low that I can see the pilots and their American-goray arms. Ali P. walks around the chatt with arms in his pockets muttering obscenities. I laugh at him, the way he always has a camera slung around his neck to take pictures of a random assortment of people out on the chatt during lunch everyday but not when the crows decide to put on a show of numbers all rising from treetops at the same time in thousands, or when the Chinooks decide to appear out of nowhere to fly over our heads and drop off Mr. Clinton at the American Embassy around the corner. I tell him that the machines were so close the pilots could have seen us waving extended fingers at them. He says that they weren't. I insist. He tells me to fuck off and I laugh.
Faiqa sets up a 'seat of learning' in my room. One floor cushion, two pillows and one smaller cushion make it impossible to access the bathroom without having to jump over her Tort books. I think it's a small price to pay for the Caesar salad she makes for us later, or for the beautiful things that she tells my friends behind my back.

breathing

2006-02-16T12:26:00.000+05:00

Talking to Chacha as he drove me along Margalla Road I saw a cloud's shadow over the hill which nestles the Redco cricket ground and has a random mazaar-masjid on a terrace. The light green and dark green of the trees flowing with the curve of the hills became a frozen-fluid image in my mind and Faiqa's words echoed in my ears: How can you not write about this?