Short story: When I Stopped Juggling

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...

Short story: میڈا اشق وی تو

I shield my eyes from the sun as I lift my face up to look at the board on the right that says "TO  N  PLAZA", the "W" from Town was nowhere to be seen, much like the harmony that lingered in the air when Nana was alive. This was the same building in which he was housed last, the last house which housed all nine siblings and both their parents, the last abode which had the honor of seeing the entire clan in all its glee and togetherness. It has been thirteen years now but I still can not seem to get rid of the whiff of his old-people smell which my nose catches every now and then in his memory. It was something between talcum powder and cinnamon. The only regret that still sinks in with my heart every time I think about him, is that I never got to know him as much as I would like to. 

It was in the same apartment in Town Plaza, when on one of his last days with both of us equally unaware of what was to come next I lay in his lap as he ran his fingers through my hair. A lost beam of sunshine reflected against the metal rim of his glasses which were set like a burden on his sharp small nose. He had a beautiful nose and as much as my mother would like to think that I got mine from him, I can never believe it to be held parallel against the carefully sculpted one that he had. His hair was an assortment of browns, silvers and blacks. He taught me that there are shades to everything in life, to colors, to people, to emotions, to foods. Everything is a different shade of something. Every phase of life is a shade of what is to come next. So one should never dwell in the moment, because just like everything else that has shades, it changes and is never constant. 

"And then I stole one of the doors that faced the Masjid in the next lane. And do you know what I did with it?"

"But Nana, stealing is haram!" I exclaimed, appalled at his hidden secret that I thought I was the first person he was sharing with. You see, even as a child I wanted to be the person who said all the right things.

"Arey suno tou meri baat" Hey, listen to me first.

"I sold it in Bijnor, took the next train to pick your Nani and then came to Pakistan."

It was one of the seven silver plated doors in his father's haveli in the old mahalla of Lucknow. After having spent seventeen years in orphanages and sleeping on the streets with the faqirs and waking up every day not knowing what will follow dawn to dusk, he received a letter from Gulab Jaan Zaidi. Until that day he had lived his life under the impression that he was aimless, kin-less and hence also reckless. That he was one of God's children and only God will help him live and figure out his ways, that he did not need anyone because he never seemed to. And the moment he realized his mother was on her death bed his knees turned to dust and failed to provide the same support that they always had. He thanked all the turn of events and incidences which lead to him self-teaching reading and writing Nastaliq. It was meant for this day, for him to one day to be able to decipher scribbles of ink on a paper which let him imagine a frail woman in frilly blue gharara saying "Beta ghar ajao" Son, come home. He was not kin-less, and now had a newfound ambition, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, that day changed the way he viewed the world, it changed his darveshesque way of living and gave him the wisdom of a seventy year old. This adolescent young boy who had no one to look for and no one to look after had aged decades in a matter of seconds as his world had changed. 

As he sat beside his mother's bed, sitting on his knees, enclosing her delicate fingers in his rugged palms, warm tears rolled down his cheeks and he could feel the saltiness at the corners of his lips. He listened intently as she revealed his lineage and his father's and how much wealth and estate Nawabzada Ghulam Rasool Zaidi had left him. Instead of a sharp sound of glistening greedy eyeball, the room echoed with the sound of a heart aching to elope with the beloved to the land of the pure, Pakistan. Ashraf un Nisa, my grandmother was his first and most deeply loved association with humanity. He had always referred to her as Chhammo, in his letters, in his calls of endearment, on his deathbed, from the bathroom when he would forget to take the towel, when his body would writhe in endless pain and when he would squeal with excitement at the birth of his first grandchild. Chhammo would never let go, and neither would he. There was no reality, or alternate vision of the world which facilitated a life where Chhammo was without Syed Ahmed Zaidi. When blood bubbled out of his mouth having traveled all the way from his deteriorating liver to his throat as he choked on it, there is no other word he wanted to utter and no other thought he wanted to harbor in his fading consciousness.

******

We pass Town Plaza in Federal B Area and head on to our way towards Bufferzone, to meet Ashraf un Nisa some fifty five years after the day she entrusted her life in the hands of a seventeen year old boy with wild eyes and experiences of a sage. I might never be able to understand what thought processes must have materialized in her mind at the moment. At the thought of running off to Jamshoro in Pakistan in the midst of blood and hate and war and grief. At the sheer uncertainty of what could and could not become of them. Her grey eyes must have fluttered and flinched and she must have felt weak in the knees but looking at her now I think maybe she just did not think about it a second time. When you look at him in his excitement and thrill, disapproval is not a possibility. I would say my Nani was no less than the most fitting partner he could have spent his life with. I doubt any one else would have been half as patient with his ways of uncanny uniqueness. They settled in Jamshoro during the infancy of Pakistan. It was a small settlement of immigrants near Kotri Barrage; families of officers, workers at the irrigation workshops, fishermen and undertakers. After a few years and two daughters, Nana was posted as the Chief Operator at the workshop. From Ahmed to Zaidi Sahib, the journey was an endless series of circumstances unseen and instances unexpected and hopes lost but found again. Outside the small 250 sq feet cemented house was an expansive garden shaded by neem and mulberry trees. They tell me that the entire garden that Nana built from scratch is now all gone, inhabited instead by pan shops and grocery stores. He was a man of devotion, of utmost undying relentless devotion, he would put his life and soul into whatever he set his mind to. The garden was one of the most note-worthy places in the entire community. From the pitch black Turkish Halfeti rose to bottle-guards and eggplants, there is barely any thing that he didn't try to grow there. Surrounded with that snippet of the gardens in heaven he managed a family of twelve people with him being the only one who earns. The era of Ahmed the darvesh had ended and that of Zaidi Sahib the godly elder had begun. 

The aura around him was that of a man who carried happiness on his shoulders, tinge of orange, red and other colors representative of warmth and compassion would get slightly more saturated when he enters a vicinity. The fishermen would send some from their first catch of the day to the Zaidi household every morning, the milkman would always add an extra kilo for free, Amjad Bhai's mother would send fresh apricots from her garden only for Zaidi Sahib and his kids. Gradually, the number of kids started to grow and eventually reached the overwhelming number nine. As the number of dependents grew, the number of books in his invaluable treasure reduced. He had one of the most interesting collection of books in his possession. Books on mind reading based on the ways of the ancient Egyptian civilization, on palmistry, on astrology, books on the multitudes of religious inferences of the day of judgement written by old Persian authors, books that he wrote by hand on the knowledge he had gathered. There was a distinct parrot green leather-bound notebook which in tatters had his entire family tree traced all the way to Mohammad. It has been decades since anyone last saw it, but every single member of the household still takes the utmost pride in how their royal bloodline has been preserved. His scholarly friends from Iran had brought for him one of each of the zodiac stones, original and precious. Some of them so unbelievably rare that he didn’t let most people see them. And all I know, they were all one by one sold for pennies after his death to make up for my all my mamoo’s financial failures and gambles. All I know, the books were given to far-off relatives and whoever asked because after his death nobody wanted to preserve them. All I know I was too young to voice my concerns of the future when all of this was happening. All I know is that I still know a lot less about him than I would like to.

*********

"Meda Ishq Vi Tu
Meda Yaar Vi Tu"

Pathanay Khan played in the background as feelings of melancholy stirred together with nostalgia creating an unsettling mixture of emotions at the bottom of my gut. Nana had introduced me to ghazals and raag; tumri, alaab, etc. He would make me listen to Begum Akhtar and Pathanay Khan, his ultimate favorites. It was not until my uncle sold his tape recorder to pay back his debt without ever informing him that the music stopped. A few months after the music his heartbeat too stopped.

It is a twisted feeling to be growing up and witnessing your memory of the one person you derived so much strength from, fading. With the jaded images of him at the back of my mind, I try my hardest to keep him alive in memory, in writing, in pictures. But I am slowly blacking out, and he is gradually waning away from my conscience. I am the same person, who is trying her best to forget certain things about the recent past which cause the utmost hurt and pain and they keep on coming back, stronger than ever. The same person who is also grappling on straws to keep together the memory of some one who had meant so much. If only our mind had a heart of its own, if only it could realize that some people are ought to be remembered and some you specifically have to forget, if only it did not keep mixing the two.

یادِ مازی ازاب ہے یا رب

چہین لے مجھسے حافزاہ میرا

Short story: Don't Pass Out

Her confused face was turning crimson as the muscles of her cheek tensed up with anxiety. Warm tears rolling down, covering the length of her face and gathering in the chiseled groove of her clavicle; she was a mess. Her clumpy eyelashes bespoke lack of knowledge on grooming but her eyes were so honest and so gullible, you can forgive them for anything and everything. The newly pierced nose was now covered with the salinity of sweat and tears and I was helpless. I was as helpless as a toddler whose parents had lost him in a Sunday bazaar, as the kitten who was trying to catch a laser beam spot, as a mellow middle school teacher stuck in a class full of raucous twelve year old boys. As helpless as I could have ever been. It is not my unwillingness or laziness that leads to this loss of faith in my ability do something for her, it is my emotional incapacity, it is my vulnerability that I have covered up with carefully crafted layers of nonchalance. It is the fact that I never have and I never could. I could fool her into believing how empirical I was but I couldn’t fool myself. I have always been too self-aware for that; curse or a blessing, I can never say with certainty.

I nervously took another puff of the joint she had rolled. The hash suddenly tasted different in my mouth, it tasted of shame and devotion. . I was ashamed of myself, of being who I am, of failing her along with so many others, but I was devoted to the idea of me, to this person I have put so much effort into building who was immune to heartaches.  I still cannot explain why I felt what I felt in that moment but I knew this is something that will haunt my conscience for a very long time.

Her hair shown a shade of mahogany in the filtered sunlight falling on us and my gaze fixated on her portrait; dim sun light, heavy smoke and her perfectly shaped crossed legs. Our faces facing each other we were sitting comfortably disturbed, the space between the two walls was perfect for this setting. Sometimes it feels like it was specially crafted keeping in mind we will want to rest our backs while we smoke away the burdens of the world. I had never noticed how stuffy the bathroom was or how luscious her lips were until then. Thank Lord for the music which filled the silence until the gloom in her aura died down slowly.

“Kia hogaya yaar?”

“Nothing. Sometimes I just break down and I don’t…” I had stopped listening as her voice trailed off in my mind. I was just staring at her hand gestures as she kept pushing her hair back out of nervous tension, baring the clear skin on the junction of her collarbone and shoulder. We were talking again; she was calming down, telling me everything that made her upset. It was her, it was me, and it was the world. And I could only either laugh it off or kiss it away. Her impressionable mind is incapable of understanding the extent of my discomfort over discussions like these. I would rather argue the string theory than explain to her why I am the way I am. But you see the cycle follows. I will comfort her with words I know are never going to be good enough but somehow for her they are. And just like that everything is fixed. I am the Major Quick-fix Fun-boy and I like to keep it that way and I like to think that everyone else likes that I like to keep it that way.


***


The loud EDM music does not make me uncomfortable, nor does it lift my spirits up and get my feet dancing. My senses are at ease and my eyes feel heavy, not my eyelids, I am droopy but I am slowly moving my body to the beat, trying to mirror the movements in the curve of her silhouette. I am stoned but my high is holding onto her petite frame dancing. The splash of the kaleidoscopic lighting on the dance floor was flattering her skimpy dress and buffed up hair. I can’t say with absolute uncertainty whether it is because of the chemical reactions in my mind or the trickery of the atmosphere but I just cannot seem to take my eyes off her. Streaks of sweat are running down her neck as she flips her hair back and forth. I want to trace them with my tongue but I know I can’t and it honestly doesn’t bother me anymore. Nothing bothers me because nothing really matters, it is this state of mind that is costing me so much, but it is also this state of mind, to which I owe the eternal peace that I have made with situations in life.

She is drawing everyone’s attention as she forgets that everyone is watching her draw groovy eights with her body. I couldn’t have known that light-headedness would throw her so comfortably into her element, making her the most dazzling attraction for the night. My interior monologue just helped me stay in the moment and prevented my thoughts from drifting off to faraway places. I really appreciate that. I don’t think anyone else sees her this way, even I rarely do. She has the most average face and the most common body type and nothing special happening. But it is in moments like these that her irresistibility dawns upon me, a random breath she takes between two quick puffs, or when she loses her mind to the music and dances how she is dancing right now, or when she has fire blazing in her eyes because the world has failed to comply to her whim, or when she is calmly just sitting there looking at me with those larger than life eyelids wondering how boring a sunny day can be. My rationality tells me I do not have any romantic feelings for her but the fascination and the sexual tension between us is as uncanny as can be. The intricate understanding of how her mind works and how she feels things strikes a sharp contrast with my occasional indifference and shudders me to the bone because maybe somewhere deep down I really do not want to be this person who has reached the apex of detachment.


***


I think around six minutes had passed and I did not want to stare at her sleeping face anymore.

“Listen, you can’t pass out like that”

“Why can I not? Who will stop me? You?” the series of incredulous questions was followed by a dull and droopy laughter. It looked as if it hurt her face muscles to laugh at this point. I really wanted to let her sleep but I figured that maintaining this tradition of the redundant dialogue about her exhaustion post smoking was more important to me.

She just dropped her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. I could feel her heavy breaths on the side of my neck. I threw my head back to the wall and closed my eyes. The world really makes you tired. The thought of how many arbitrary boundaries there are to every sort of relationship that you have and everything you ever want to do came back running to my mind. Why can I not have things the way I want them to if I really have all this free will everyone keeps talking about?

There was a spasmodic outburst of knocks on the door which led to both of us being shaken out of the intoxicated slumber that had enfolded us, making us feel the comfort of being unborn. I stood up to open the door and she fixed her hair. And so again, it rekindled the world of arbitrary boundaries, unspoken cravings and selfish compromises. We cannot be what either of us wants, we cannot have what either of us desire and we definitely can never reach a settlement after having battled it out. So we will run to escape, rushing all around this madhouse, unlocking each door only to find ourselves standing at another labyrinth, and in the time that we try to find our respective paths our tracks will collide, and I don’t think we should do anything to prevent this collision despite the temporary discomfort. Maybe it is this collision that I find worth the trouble we have to go through to search out the path for. It is worth the drama, the constant bickering and the abrupt realizations in the middle of the day. I thinks it is all worth it in the end.

Short story: And She Said "No".

I stood at the edge of the concrete slab as the wind slapped into my face continuously, the force strong enough to make me lose balance. My clammy hand strongly clasped Hasma’s, who unlike me stood straight up, no movement. Her face contorting with fear and shock, she took a deep breath and left my hand; I have always marveled over the magnitude of her trust in me. Not that I ever took advantage of it, but the possibility of a person having so much faith in another piece of flesh never made sense to me in the way it did to her.

“Are you ready, jaan?” I asked. I knew that she was but I wanted this to be dramatic. I had always been sadistic. Then the feeling of ambiguity got hold of me, I was scared that I might not do it, that I might betray her. And so without waiting for her to answer, prompted by the guilt inflicted on me by my own insincerity, I jumped.

And she said “No”.

Darkness.

*****

I never liked the way she wore her hair, tightly held back in a ponytail. But I loved how that enabled me to gawk at the entirety of her face. Of course she hated me, I had figured her out, decoded her and opened up to her and made it known to her how we were the same. Even after multiple attempts at friendship she never gave the sort of response I did not already expect. An eye roll, a scowl, a sweet little “excuse me”, and at extremely blessed occasions a little nudge at the shoulder. It was not until we interned for SIUT together that she finally gave me the sort of attention I wanted. Ergo, we became friends and then of course other feelings followed suit. Was it not why I wanted to befriend her in the first place?

I never loved her, if I truly am to be deadly honest about this. If not to her, but at least to me, it was always just mere superficial attraction that evolved into a deeper emotional connection due to our daily conversations. Every time I saw her at campus, my heart did not skip a beat and the background music did not play. But of course I never told her that, I could never tell her that her feelings were unrequited. In my relationship with her I saw my share of rebellion; against the norms of my family, religion and society. 

I understand that you may not completely grasp the logic behind my actions, I mean my favorite book is “The Catcher in the Rye”; expect no great things out of me. My death was based on indecisiveness. Days passed and nights went by, we stuck together at the campus and like distanced lovers, talked to each other all night, every night. Gradually and invincibly so, reality knocked on our happy abode the day college ended and Hasma’s mother told her that she plans on accepting her aunt’s proposal from her oldest cousin, Adil. I felt angry, not because I loved her too much to accept the idea of her getting married to someone else, but because things were not going as I planned. The scene I had to create in front of my family was to come before the entire fiasco of breaking up.

All hell broke loose the day she informed her mother.

Now here we are, two girls who were seen as a ”threat” to the society, standing at the rooftop of the apartment building, gazing down into nothingness, holding hands, implementing the vow I made in jolly mockery. “Till I die,” I had repeated after her.

Till death, I did.

Short story: A man who robbed his son.

With her hand hovering in the still air above her head, shaking with fury and aggravation, with her eyes bulging out and tears rolling down her pale fluffy cheeks she stood there, yet again in awe of what Shambeel had said. This was the third time now and he never learned, the idea of him being adamant and un-moving had sunk into her as she took a deep breath. Wiping her face with the helm of her burgundy chador, she walked away, this time she will try a different technique of taming this shrew. But at the back of her mind she knew perfectly well how neither was he a shrew nor did he require any taming. He was an eleven year old lad who innocently and accidentally had been asking for what was his right and had been waved off by the only person he had the courage to approach; his mother.

“Anila where is my tea? I cannot see it in front of me! Anila,” shouted Qazi Sahab sitting on the flaking charpai in the veranda.

“Anila, are you dead already?”

“Women, always useless,” he breathed as he recited the words from the Holy Quran with the speed of a formula one race car.

Striding briskly towards the kitchen Anila thought about all the evil she had ever done to deserve a marriage like this and a situation like that. Qazi Sahab was twenty five years older than her because of which she could never muster the nerve to call him anything other than “Qazi Sahab”. He was her poor father’s comparatively wealthier Maulvi friend who had accepted and honored his companionship for charity, who accepted to marry his fifteen year old for charity, who refused dowry for charity. Qazi Sahab, the hero of the town, Anila, the whining shrewd woman who even at the age of thirty-three complained about having inadequate quality of life. How can she not be happy in marriage with the moazzin and curator of the local mosque? How can she not be happy with the fact that she got married despite her family living in ruins? How can she not be happy with the fact that she had bore three sons and no daughters?

The touch of the hot lid burned her delicate fingers as she rushed about to bring the cup of hot elaichi chai to him. She was reminded of his wrath every time he shouted in anger. She was reminded of the harsh forms of affection, the ruthless way he would treat her until she is bruised, the tyranny of the bed room and her dupatta filled mouth muffling all her cries of pain and wonder. Wonder over the power of God who can turn man into monster and vice versa. On her way from the kitchen to Qazi Sahab, under the blistering heat of the situation, her mind went wild with the idea of confessing it to him. She was decaying inside, dying to tell him how Shambeel was molested by his Quran Instructor, Ghafoor uncle. How she has been disturbed since last Monday when he told her about this. How he had an idea of how this is an unusual treatment and should be questioned about. She longed for an understanding face which would care about her position in this, who would agree that being quiet is not the solution. Her mind stopped working as she placed the cup of tea in front of Qazi Sahab. He lifted his face up and hmphed. She knew there and then that she could not tell him. Well how could she, tell the thief who robbed her that their son just got robbed. And so she didn’t. She stayed silent like she did twenty years ago and in a few days she made her son stay silent as well. The cycle is never-ending.