life
It is hot inside. I see you breathing next to me. You have kicked the sheets off your body, and I can see beads of sweat forming on your forehead, your nose, your upper lip. I can almost see the sweat misting off your skin. It makes a haze around you. I extricate myself from the sheets. I lie on my back. I turn my head to the left to face you. We are lying, skin-to-skin, in the hot, humid stillness of the room. I hear a generator start up outside. It is not mine. Your body glows in the neighbours’ sudden lamplight. It glistens. You shine next to me. You are beautiful, because I love you.
You shift, and I see the muscles move underneath your skin. I smell the sudden scent of sweat and sex. I smell the remnants of this morning’s deodorant. I smell myself on you. I smell us. We smell like Old Spice and coconut shampoo and wood-smoke and flowers and salt and humans and the lovely, musty smell of air from old-fashioned air conditioners. You smell like love. When I think of love, I think of this smell. When I think of love, I think of your heart beating against my back, your laugh, your breath, your warmth, your touch. When I think of love, I think of us.
You prop yourself up on one elbow and peer out the window. The moon is overhead, clear and bright, you report, but it isn’t fully eclipsed yet. I don’t turn to look. You shift closer and cradle your head in your hand. Your neck tautens and I can see an artery pulsing at your throat, so close I can almost feel it vibrating. I can see your heart beating; I know when it will beat again. I reach out my hand to touch the silky, warm skin of your neck, I anticipate your heartbeat, I bring our bodies into sync again. My fingers vibrate minutely to the beats of our hearts.
“It has only just begun,” I tell you, “and it’s meant to last a while. You can’t rush these things. They are natural and beautiful and they happen in their own time.”
You look at me, straight in the eyes, and my heart automatically beats faster, my stomach drops as I am reminded of things we share – kisses and contact and ourselves – and the memory makes me breathe a little harder and you smile at me. I have to take several deep breaths before I can think straight again. I realize your pulse has quickened along with mine. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and sticks a lock of hair to my skin. You wipe it off my face slowly, painstakingly, with such delicacy, like I am beautiful and fragile, like I am priceless, like I am some work of art, or something so perfect that you don’t want to disturb it, but so beautiful that you can’t help risking just a small touch. I know exactly how you feel. I am equally enamored of you.
You make me feel beautiful.
The room is very warm. The neighbours’ wedding party resumes. Our window hums with every amplified drumbeat. The air is very still, but restless all the same, brimming with energy. Or, we are very still, but restless. We are brimming with energy. Inside, I feel our hearts beating; outside, I feel the world beating – it thrives; it is joyous and alive. A bead of sweat trickles down my back and tickles me into shivering. I feel the pent-up energy in the room dissipate. The air seems to breathe again. My heart resumes a restful pace. I draw my hand from your body.I sit up.
Let’s go, I tell you. We dress ourselves lazily. We climb onto the roof in the moonlight. It is strewn with broken doors and broken flowerpots and broken furniture and other debris from the past. My house is old and weary. The roof inclines slightly. A cat, startled by our appearance, steals out from behind a sheet of discarded corrugated metal. You put your arm around me. Your hand slips under my shirt and rests on my hip. Skin-to-skin, once again, I lean against you.
The neighbours’ wedding party begins to dwindle. The music turns off. One-by-one, the guests begin to shuffle out, brightly attired, sweaty, happily full and exhausted. Some turn their faces upwards to look at the eclipse; the moon is fully eclipsed and is glowing orange in the sky. I can hear their awed murmurs. They do not know that we are here. They do not know that we can hear them, that we are seeing what they are seeing. They do not know what we share. They do not know that we are connected. They do not know that we are alive.
We share this moment with strangers.
I put my hand on top of yours. I smile, but nobody knows.
It’s only words
Without words, we are alone. Words are a bridge between my loneliness and yours. They let us share our worlds, they let us find common experiences, they let us be human. Without words, only I can know the feeling of your palm beneath my fingers, the smell of your breath when you lean in close to whisper in my ear, the joy of your smile, the barely-perceptible touch of your body standing next to mine. Without words, I couldn’t share with you the smooth bark of trees, the rainbows on my skin, the sun setting, the full moon on a clear night, the perfect evening temperature, the taste of fresh juice, the drenching rain, the sound of wind winding through trees, the scalded tongues from mix chai, the feeling of flowers in my hair, the crunch of guavas, the eerie solitude of a bat-infested shrine, the flickering of candlelight, the soft purr of a cat on my belly, the crashing of waves lulling me to sleep. Without words, my nightmares would be mine alone, and my dreams, and my joys, and my fears. We would be strangers in love, without the words to say it.
kissing and telling
He grabs a bottle of wine from the fridge, and some glasses. We ascend the spiral staircase to the sky and suddenly I find myself kissing him, or him kissing me, and I don’t mind. I am kissing an almost-stranger, on a rooftop in full-moon light. He kisses me like he wants to kiss me, like we are familiar, like we have been kissing each other for a long time. I think when he kisses me, I am, at least, guilty of pretending like this is perfect. I run my fingers lazily up and down his back like he does mine, I kiss him softly and gently like he does me, with all the tenderness of love and caring, and then we press our foreheads and noses together and close our eyes and breathe deep, contented breaths and we smile blindly to ourselves and savour this moment in which we can feel the close warmth of somebody’s presence, this moment in which we are not alone.
29 July 2011
In this fairytale,
you are the perfect
prince
and I am the
sad, plain, lovestruck
stepsister.
I try on the shoe but
it doesn’t fit.
It never
fits.
In this fairytale,
it never will.
I wet my foot before
putting it on.
I bind my foot.
I pinch my foot.
I wedge my foot
in.
But it is not my
shoe to wear.
I am in this
fairytale
but
I am watching
yours
come true.
Standing Still
We have spent entirely too much time at home. I am not complaining yet, because being at home means lying tangled in Ben’s legs on the couch, mindless television providing a soundtrack to the witty, humorous banter involved in getting to know somebody better, but I am starting to realize between perfect, soft kisses that his house is too big, too empty, too bland, and it is really beginning to get me down.
I ask Ben if he is hungry.
“I guess I could eat before the party,” he says.
I think about this for a moment. “I don’t know how many places will be open at this hour.”
“Pizza Hut?” he suggests.
“Had it yesterday.”
“Cock ‘n Bull.”
“Closed.”
“Tiramisu.”
I look at him incredulously. “Long closed.”
“So we’re fucked.”
“Well,” I say slowly, “We could always go to Jinnah. The shawarmas are bomb.”
“Shawarma, like the meat wrapped in the pita, yeah?”
I nod.
“Okay, let’s do that.”
“Alright, let’s.”
He kisses me. “Okay, let’s go.” He kisses me again, longer this time. His mouth finds its way to that sweet spot at the back of my neck. His lips move against my skin: “Come on. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I guess it can wait a little bit…” Suddenly I would rather stay here with him, holding on to this feeling of belonging that is so elusive and so desirable, locked into this pulsing heap of newly-introduced hormones. We are almost exactly in tune. We understand each others’ jokes. We actually enjoy each others’ company. I make him laugh. I think that we are perfect for each other. I hope he feels the same way. I am almost sure he does. I hold my breath, hoping he’ll see me this way forever, hoping he will never realize how much I want him to stay.
Right now, we are recklessly and unabashedly attracted to each other, and right now we are tongues and mouths and gasping breaths until my stomach grumbles, so loud that he feels the vibration on his own belly; he leans away from me, smiling. “Come on. You’ve got to eat.”
One last peck and a naughty smile for the road, and we are in the car, searching for that perfect parking spot.
“Try not to look so white,” I tell him when we get out of the car.
“You think so?” he says, and he pulls the hood of his hoodie over his head. He grins at me. “Is that better?” Of course it’s not better. Ben is blindingly white and sticks out like a sore thumb in Islamabad, especially at midnight in Jinnah Supermarket – with a girl. I nudge him playfully. “Much better. You’re practically invisible.” I resist the urge to kiss him. “Come on, I’m hungry.”
As we wait, shivering in Gol Market’s cast-iron chairs, for a server to take our order, we are inevitably approached by two boys begging for money. They are no older than 10. I know any money I give them will not stay in their possession for long, so I ask if they have eaten yet. No, they say. I tell them, “I’ll buy you dinner, but you have to sit here and eat it with us.” I want to make sure nobody takes their food from them.
They promptly sit down, grinning. The waiter arrives. We order our respective burgers and shawarmas. Then, almost in unison, their attention is drawn to Ben.
“Baji, is he angraiz?”
“Yes, he’s from London. His name is Ben.” They ooh and ahh at his exoticness.
“What are their names?” Ben asks. I duly translate.
“My name is Basharat,” says the first boy. He points to the other one. “This is Dildar.” Then, without skipping a beat: “Baji, does Ben know Michael Jackson? I know all of Michael Jackson’s dances.”
“What are they saying about MJ?” Ben asks.
“They’re asking if you know Michael Jackson.”
He laughs, and the boys smile at us. “I don’t know him personally, but I do know why he was grounded.”
“Oh god.”
“He was ‘bad’!”
“I hate you. I have no words.”
“Go on, tell them.”
“They’re going to overdose on corniness, Ben.” Instead, I ask the boys what they are doing here so late at night. Instantly, the two children begin chattering.
By the time our food arrives, I have learned a lot about Basharat and Dildar. Now I know that they play cricket on Sundays, that Dildar is Basharat’s cousin, that their parents send them here to beg at night. I am not sure how much of what they say is true, but at this point they are both gesturing energetically, so I continue to ask questions. Then, halfway through his burger, Basharat asks, “Baji, why is he here? Is he working?” Abruptly I realize that Ben hasn’t said anything in a while.
“Are you getting bored?” I ask.
“Well I don’t really understand much of what’s going on. You’re not much of a translator.” Not mean, exactly, but definitely a little curt, a little frustrated.
“Sorry. They’re talking so fast I can hardly understand them.”
I am frantically formulating a summary of my conversation with the boys in my head for Ben, when I realize we have company. The man who has been emptying the nearby trash cans is now hovering over our table. As soon as I look up he starts off: “Baji please give me something as well, baji please, anything.” His small, yellowed eyes start leaking tears. “Baji, I am hungry too, baji please.”
I guiltily tell him to go away, but he still stands there, trembling, hovering. I am acutely aware of four pairs of eyes on me, curious, wondering what I will do. I wonder how many Jinnah beggars are going to ask me to feed them tonight. I am about to tell him to get lost again, but then a small voice pipes up: “Baji can I give him the rest of my burger?”
I am at once at a loss for what to say. I feel unreasonably possessive of the burger. I want Basharat to finish it; I don’t want him to have been guilted into giving it away to this man. But I am uncomfortable with the fact that he is asking my permission to give away something that is his now, especially something that is so trivial to me but worth so much more to him. I am suddenly absurdly glad that Ben can’t understand what is going on. “If you want,” I tell him, reluctantly. “It’s your burger, not mine.”
“Thank you, baji,” he says, visibly relieved. “Come here,” he says to the garbage man. “You can eat this.” The garbage man grabs the tray and practically scurries away to eat.
I ask Basharat if he wants something else. “I can order you another burger if you want. Do you want another burger?”
“No baji, I am full. I have no desire for more.” Then, in English to Ben, “I no tamanna.” He pats his belly to drive his point home. “I no more tamanna.”
He looks at the garbage man scarfing down his french fries, then turns to me, this thin little beggar child, this scrawny ball of vibrance and energy so inadequately dressed for the winter, this unlikely Michael Jackson fan forced by his parents into a life of begging and labour. “Baji,” he says to me, almost apologetically, “today you fed me, so now I will feed him.”
I am awestruck by the simple logic of his kindness. I am speechless. I am humbled. I am ashamed. I can’t believe that such a big heart can come in such a small package. I nod mutely. I look at Ben. He is looking at Basharat. He turns and looks at me, plainly aware that something important is happening, plainly irritated that he does not understand. “What’s going on? What did he say to me?”
I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to explain the enormity of what Basharat has just done. I tell Ben, “He wanted to give that man the rest of his food. He said that, since we bought him dinner, he was returning the favor by feeding the beggar. ‘I no more tamanna’. It means he doesn’t want anything else, although I really doubt he’s full. Can you imagine? Did you ever think that someone so young and poor could be so selfless?”
“Oh,” replies Ben. “Wow,” he says. He smiles at the two boys, but he seems lost in thought. Absent-mindedly, he pays the waiter, and we shake hands with Basharat and Dildar.
“Goodbye!” they both say, and salute us. We laugh and salute back, but on our walk back to the car, Ben is utterly silent. I am overcome with an intense fear that I am losing him, like I have lost so many others. I think back frantically to what could have gone wrong in the past hour. Should I have translated each word faithfully so that he didn’t feel left out? Did I forget to include him? Did I do something wrong, buying those children dinner? Should I have bought the garbage man something too? Where did I make the wrong move? I wish I could read Ben’s mind.
This always happens to me; I always get exactly what I want, but it is always so fleeting and uncertain that it leaves me breathless, like even moving a fraction of an inch could blow it all away. But who can hold completely still like that? We move. We always move. We breathe. We pulse, we hum, we beat. We can’t hold still for a second. I can’t hold still for a second, and always I move and I lose it, that feeling of being perfectly at home with someone, of belonging. Always, I hold my breath so long that I inevitably gasp for air, and that sudden movement, it blows my cover, and I can’t hide behind bated breath anymore, and I breathe and gasp and fight for air, and always, equally inevitably, I blow them far, far away.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. I steel myself for disaster.
And then I feel Ben’s hand on my leg, caressing, reassuring. I turn and look at him, and he smiles at me, a smile like we are in the same place, just like an hour ago, like we shifted together, not apart, and I slowly feel myself breathing again.
Happiness is all the things you said. Happiness is creating something. Happiness is flowers in hair. Happiness is old, comfy sweatshirts. Happiness is watching snow fall. Happiness is the feeling of snowflakes being caught in your eyelashes. Happiness is Mehdi Hassan’s ‘zindagi mein toh sabhi’. It is learning how refrigerators work. It is the anticipation of kisses, the fluttering in your stomach when you remember past kisses, the long vibration that signals a new email on your phone, laughing out loud at private jokes. Happiness is a release; it is crying because, damn it, sometimes you just have to. It is the feeling of mouths and fingers on skin. It is mango shakes. It is dressing up for the people that already think you are beautiful. Happiness is sunny days, and rainy ones as well. It is the sting of sweat in your eyes after a good workout. It is punching the crap out of a bag after a bad day. It is Calvin’s expressions. It is knowing that you are not alone.
the hair incident
I’m a lucky girl. I get to travel to lots of cool places. I get to meet the women and children that keep our country afloat. I get to go shopping. I get to see archaeological sites that will probably not exist for my children to see. Field visits are pretty awesome, once I’m there. It’s the travelling that is the hard part.
Last week is the first time I have departed from the Bahawalpur airport. Previously, we have always gone to and from Bahawalpur by car; twelve excruciating hours in an ancient double cabin with shocks that are virtually non-existent, on roads that are hardly anything more than a series of potholes. As desperate as I was to go back to Bahawalpur this time around, I had to put my foot down. I looked up flight schedules. I planned the training accordingly. I was going to travel in style, damn it.
Who am I kidding? In Pakistan, there is no such thing.
Granted, the flight to Bahawalpur was relatively uneventful. The Islamabad airport was deserted. There were no lines. We left on time (sort of). The flight was half-empty so I had two seats to myself. The cake and tea left something to be desired, but on a PIA flight, I wasn’t really expecting much. There was some turbulence, but since we were nowhere near the Margallas, I wasn’t too stressed. It was, all in all, a nice flying experience.
I wish I could say the same for the return.
My flight on Friday was at 2:30. We had no work to do on Friday, since our training had ended the day before, so I was really hoping to be able to sleep in, at least until 10 am. The overzealous wait staff had other ideas. At 7:30 sharp, there was a loud knock on my door. “Breakfast is ready.” I’ve tried to refuse breakfast at this guest house before. Every time I say the words “Thanks, but I don’t want any breakfast,” the only response I have ever gotten is a confused stare, after which I am told again that breakfast is ready, so I always end up eating breakfast anyway. I have also tried to ignore the breakfast summons, which is a terrible idea, because the waiter will just continue knocking until you leave the room.
So I got out of bed. I had a cup of tea. I tasted the eggs. I came back to my room at 8. And I realized I had nothing to do until we left for the airport. When I am bored, I turn to bobby pins and makeup. I experiment with eyeliner. I put on way too much blush. I paint my lips pink. After all this, I still had hours to spare, so I put together a complicated and elegant (if I do say so myself) coif, held together with four bobby pins. When I emerged from my room, I looked good. (This is me: more dressed up for a flight back to Islamabad than I have ever been for any kind of wedding or party.)
Now, Bahawalpur airport is a very, very small airport. It is the kind of airport where only one flight leaves at a time. It is the kind of airport where they hand-write your flight and seat numbers onto your boarding card. It goes without saying that it isn’t exactly the bustling, professional kind of atmosphere that you would see in Karachi or Islamabad.
So, I entered the departure area, which consists of one pretty average-sized room, in which most of the space has been taken over by x-ray machines. There are only two counters in the entire airport. I scanned my luggage and walked through the metal detector. I beeped. Nobody said anything. I am used to this by now, so I just picked up my bags and walked the five steps to the counter. Here, the lady handed me my boarding card with seat and flight numbers written semi-illegibly in permanent marker, then directed me to another x-ray machine three paces away. I put my purse on the belt. I was about to put my laptop bag on the belt when the man asks me if I have a laptop in there. Resisting the urge to say ‘Duhh’, I politely told him that I did, and let the bag go through the machine. He stopped it.
“You have to take your laptop out of the bag.”
Now, let me explain to you why this struck me as an outrageous demand. Because this never happens. Not once, in all the times that I have flown domestic, or even in all the times that I have flown out of Pakistan, have I ever, ever been asked to remove my laptop from its bag. It’s one of those formalities that we just don’t worry about over here. So, naturally, I looked at him agape. He must have started doubting my comprehension skills, because after having to deal with my blank stare for a few seconds, he repeated his request, a little doubtfully. “Madam, you have to remove your laptop from the bag, and PUT IT INTO THIS BASKET, HERE.” If I wasn’t absolutely sure before that he thought I was a complete moron, the deliberately delivered instructions made it perfectly clear (as did the sympathetic expression on his face).
Well, I followed his instructions to the t. I removed my laptop. I put it in the basket. I let the basket go through the machine. I started walking to the other side.
“Madam, you have to put the bag through the machine as well.”
Fine. I started walking to the other side, to retrieve my purse, my laptop, and my laptop bag.
“Madam,” he said a little despairingly, “please. You have to go this way, through the security.”
Look, I’m a little flustered, okay? You can’t throw me into a Pakistani airport situation in which they are actually following procedure, and expect my poor brain to be able to immediately cope with the shock. I need a little time to recover. My brain is not good with new and stressful situations.
Still flustered, I let the man herd me towards the curtains that house the women security officials. I entered. I said salam to the woman inside. She asked me to hold my arms out on my sides, and then, without warning, without explanation, without any kind of reason whatsoever, she promptly lunged at my head and plunged both hands into my hair. Before I knew it, I was standing, arms in the air, staring into the face of a fat, 5’3” woman who was, inexplicably, wrist-deep in my oh-so painstakingly elegant hairdo.
I didn’t know what to do.
I could feel her fingers rummaging around the back of my head. Finally, she made contact with a bobby pin, which she promptly tugged with enough force to jerk my head sideways.
“What is this,” she asked as more fingers found more bobby pins to tug at. “Are these bobby pins?”
I actually found myself at a loss for words. Did I really have to explain to this woman that my hair is, in fact, being held in place by bobby pins and not a lethal weapon? I nodded mutely.
“Acha, are you sure? How many bobby pins do you have in there?” Her fingers began probing mercilessly. A few tugs later, I snapped.
“Excuse me,” I said, as nastily as I possibly could without being downright rude, “Do you mind? These are just bobby pins.” She tugged a bobby pin especially hard.
“Excuse me!” I said again. “Please stop doing that. They are JUST bobby pins.”
Fingers still molesting my head, she looked at me and said scornfully, “Just relax. Don’t worry, I won’t ruin your STYLE.”
Honestly, honestly, I don’t know how that woman made it out of there alive. I had to clench my fists to resist the urge to tug at her braid until she screamed for mercy. If she had felt my underwire and asked me what it was, I don’t think I could have stopped myself from assaulting her. Fortunately, once she had thoroughly violated my hair, she only just barely patted me down before sending me on my way. Security.
Psh. And she totally ruined my style.
