Your eyes well up and your facial muscles lose all sensation. You do not feel anything apart from the the creeping movement of the teardrop that seeps through the crevice of your lips and meets your tongue. You enlarge your eyes involuntarily because vision is blurred and it is getting very difficult for you to see now. Your nostrils struggle to keep up with the movement of the breathes you take in and exhale out. You are still. You are silent. You are breaking. They have told you that the best thing to do at such a time is to wait for it to pass because it always does. But that is the one thing you forget every single time. You remember events of the past that you had stuffed in boxes, packed up and thrown away into the vast ocean of oblivion. Everything comes back except the realization that it will pass. Because for you, it never fucking passes.
"Piddar shahi khatam karo! Piddar shahi khatam karo!", screaming at the top of their voices these women were marching alongside. As much as I wanted to lose myself in the energy of the crowd I was reminded of the responsibility of making sure the crowd doesn't lose itself in the energy. Positioning myself adjacent to the forward direction we were moving in I continued to pace very slowly forming a chain with other volunteers; a broken chain. Much like the systems we had in place, much like the systems we were trying to dismantle. Much like the voices hitting crescendos and breaking at the seams, much like the way we feel some times. Wearing Qandeel Baloch masks, carrying the metaphorical corpse of patriarchy on our shoulders we marched. It was a melting pot of emotions; I could breakdown due to the sheer intensity of what I felt. The diversity, the rage, the collective anger against an oppressive structure. Pristine.
The surroundings blur out. You can feel everything moving past you very quickly. Nobody is going to wait for you. Nobody is going to wait for anyone at all. There is this strange pull again. This force which against your will continues to dwell within you. The relationship is parasitic - you are the host and it feeds off of slowly and gradually until there's nothing left but a carcass that even the hungriest of the vultures would not want to go near. Smack in the center you feel a gravitational pull and as much as you wish that it buries you into your grave, it doesn't. It's an endlessly dense pull and it's also your only friend now. You give in.
"You see Reham, I am not the type of person who would indulge in such behavior."
"You see my faith and community does not allow me to even think of what you have been trying to accuse me of."
"It is unbelievable that you would think this way. I thought you were a chill person."
His sentences were laden with the burden of guilt, the fear of ostracism and the confidence of a manipulative genius. The aura of the room had changed, as I looked around the space, searching for responses on the walls and the roof - finding none. I had associated very distinct memories to this room before today. It used to remind me of the confrontation with a flat-earther, of the first session on gender fluidity, of meetings which made perfect the illusion of productivity, of rigorous interviewing, of feeling control and certainty. Now it only reminded me of how much distance I wanted from that room. Of how gas-lit my harasser made me feel. And of all the guilt that will never stop haunting me.
Different shades of scarlet spread across your face and eyes and nose. You are pulling on your hair as you unconsciously think that maybe this way you can control what happens underneath them. Your entire body aches and you feel the impending doom of your head exploding and your brain being smeared all across the bathroom walls. Droplets drip down and hit your accentuated clavicle. You are reminded of how excessive your hair-fall has become and how much mass your body has shed. If only you were a snake and could shed of your skin instead of relentlessly trying to build a thicker one. You want to scream at the top of your lungs but you can't because there are other people in the house. You can't look in the mirror, each new glimpse gets exponentially frightening compared to the last one. Your knee caps crumble to a powder which is blown away by the wind that is now dense with the burden of your desire to escape.
I was sitting on the table outside SEMS, under the white tent, my legs dangling as my eyes quickly skim over the notes I had made last night. Nothing really settled in or stuck to my mind but I keep reading anyway. At least this way I could delude myself into believing that I had worked hard, that I tried my best. The strangely shaped lines of ink on paper seem like a work of art, in awe of which I keep getting distracted. But it also ceased to matter and so the brain itself doesn't feel it worth to muster the energy to actually try to memorize. I check my pockets; two pens, a school ID card and my CNIC. I guess that is all I needed. Guess that is all I will walk into the exam hall with. Preparation and focus can take a backseat this year.
You are running as fast as you can, sprinting. But the scenery on either side of your vision is still. Unchanging. Absolute. You are a hamster on a running wheel and the worst part is there is no carrot that keeps you going. You are running nonstop and you are simultaneously also in search of your carrot. You are aimless.
The same sentences echoed in my head as if it was a big empty hall only decorated by the paintings that looked like the psychiatric drawings of my insecurities. My friends were sitting right in front of me asking me if I wanted to roll the next one but I could only hear the echo of the same god damned sentence. It's as if my brain had installed a text-to-speech software and the only things it read were the documents I'd sent to the Dustbin folder of my consciousness. I looked at their faces and imagined their expressions contorting with disgust at the mention of my name. I imagined tearing down the wallpaper off invisible walls with my bare hands with so much vigor that my nails break and my fingers bleed only to find embedded, carefully masked hatred, disgust and desire to abandon. I imagine entering the room full of strangers I converse with every single day.
A belt is wrapped around the bicep of your left arm because you are right-handed. You clench your fist around a ball of rumpled paper and you wait for the blue smudge of a vein to surface. The injection in your right hand keeps slipping from your fingers because of the sweat that keeps accumulating. There is a power-cut and obviously there is no one around to help you out. Like it has mostly been the case. The tip of the stainless steel punctures your skin and you press the plunger and then pull it out. You see the brown liquid trickling down the barrel, you pull the plunger back to notice traces of a different, more viscous liquid - on finding none you continue to press the plunger. As the barrel empties you struggle to find the alcohol swab, but before you do: the juggling ends...
"Piddar shahi khatam karo! Piddar shahi khatam karo!", screaming at the top of their voices these women were marching alongside. As much as I wanted to lose myself in the energy of the crowd I was reminded of the responsibility of making sure the crowd doesn't lose itself in the energy. Positioning myself adjacent to the forward direction we were moving in I continued to pace very slowly forming a chain with other volunteers; a broken chain. Much like the systems we had in place, much like the systems we were trying to dismantle. Much like the voices hitting crescendos and breaking at the seams, much like the way we feel some times. Wearing Qandeel Baloch masks, carrying the metaphorical corpse of patriarchy on our shoulders we marched. It was a melting pot of emotions; I could breakdown due to the sheer intensity of what I felt. The diversity, the rage, the collective anger against an oppressive structure. Pristine.
The surroundings blur out. You can feel everything moving past you very quickly. Nobody is going to wait for you. Nobody is going to wait for anyone at all. There is this strange pull again. This force which against your will continues to dwell within you. The relationship is parasitic - you are the host and it feeds off of slowly and gradually until there's nothing left but a carcass that even the hungriest of the vultures would not want to go near. Smack in the center you feel a gravitational pull and as much as you wish that it buries you into your grave, it doesn't. It's an endlessly dense pull and it's also your only friend now. You give in.
"You see Reham, I am not the type of person who would indulge in such behavior."
"You see my faith and community does not allow me to even think of what you have been trying to accuse me of."
"It is unbelievable that you would think this way. I thought you were a chill person."
His sentences were laden with the burden of guilt, the fear of ostracism and the confidence of a manipulative genius. The aura of the room had changed, as I looked around the space, searching for responses on the walls and the roof - finding none. I had associated very distinct memories to this room before today. It used to remind me of the confrontation with a flat-earther, of the first session on gender fluidity, of meetings which made perfect the illusion of productivity, of rigorous interviewing, of feeling control and certainty. Now it only reminded me of how much distance I wanted from that room. Of how gas-lit my harasser made me feel. And of all the guilt that will never stop haunting me.
Different shades of scarlet spread across your face and eyes and nose. You are pulling on your hair as you unconsciously think that maybe this way you can control what happens underneath them. Your entire body aches and you feel the impending doom of your head exploding and your brain being smeared all across the bathroom walls. Droplets drip down and hit your accentuated clavicle. You are reminded of how excessive your hair-fall has become and how much mass your body has shed. If only you were a snake and could shed of your skin instead of relentlessly trying to build a thicker one. You want to scream at the top of your lungs but you can't because there are other people in the house. You can't look in the mirror, each new glimpse gets exponentially frightening compared to the last one. Your knee caps crumble to a powder which is blown away by the wind that is now dense with the burden of your desire to escape.
I was sitting on the table outside SEMS, under the white tent, my legs dangling as my eyes quickly skim over the notes I had made last night. Nothing really settled in or stuck to my mind but I keep reading anyway. At least this way I could delude myself into believing that I had worked hard, that I tried my best. The strangely shaped lines of ink on paper seem like a work of art, in awe of which I keep getting distracted. But it also ceased to matter and so the brain itself doesn't feel it worth to muster the energy to actually try to memorize. I check my pockets; two pens, a school ID card and my CNIC. I guess that is all I needed. Guess that is all I will walk into the exam hall with. Preparation and focus can take a backseat this year.
You are running as fast as you can, sprinting. But the scenery on either side of your vision is still. Unchanging. Absolute. You are a hamster on a running wheel and the worst part is there is no carrot that keeps you going. You are running nonstop and you are simultaneously also in search of your carrot. You are aimless.
The same sentences echoed in my head as if it was a big empty hall only decorated by the paintings that looked like the psychiatric drawings of my insecurities. My friends were sitting right in front of me asking me if I wanted to roll the next one but I could only hear the echo of the same god damned sentence. It's as if my brain had installed a text-to-speech software and the only things it read were the documents I'd sent to the Dustbin folder of my consciousness. I looked at their faces and imagined their expressions contorting with disgust at the mention of my name. I imagined tearing down the wallpaper off invisible walls with my bare hands with so much vigor that my nails break and my fingers bleed only to find embedded, carefully masked hatred, disgust and desire to abandon. I imagine entering the room full of strangers I converse with every single day.
A belt is wrapped around the bicep of your left arm because you are right-handed. You clench your fist around a ball of rumpled paper and you wait for the blue smudge of a vein to surface. The injection in your right hand keeps slipping from your fingers because of the sweat that keeps accumulating. There is a power-cut and obviously there is no one around to help you out. Like it has mostly been the case. The tip of the stainless steel punctures your skin and you press the plunger and then pull it out. You see the brown liquid trickling down the barrel, you pull the plunger back to notice traces of a different, more viscous liquid - on finding none you continue to press the plunger. As the barrel empties you struggle to find the alcohol swab, but before you do: the juggling ends...
