That you are given a chance at life is the greatest blessing. Death no longer terrifies you as much as a life that is not lived.
Little girl standing at the red gate, I remember that the poster outside the Computer Lab is something you always stopped to read. That you smiled at the girl smiling in that picture. That you dreamed too.
Remember Arfa, not because she is no longer there but because she lived.
Remember.
There is something liberating about taping together a broken plastic globe. The same globe which you have grown up spinning and memorizing as a child.
My grandfather brought it from Germany. The cartographer has inked in his name at the bottom. I find it difficult to pronounce it.
Toppling over caused the globe to be freed from the steel clasps and wooden stand that held it in place. It rolled across the room noiselessly. Amongst other things, it too became a casualty.
My little sister was the first to tape it together but it ended up with northern Africa having South America as its base. So I took it and gently removed the tape. The globe was repositioned, with the continents and cities repositioned the way they are, and then taped back together.
With time, that is what you learn to do. Owning the broken and messed up as yours. Fixing it. Holding it close to your chest. Knowing that it is yours- cracked, broken, but never beyond repair.
That is why I went to the rally. That is why I filled out my brother’s Lyceum form. That is why I know I won’t forget how to smile.
I only ask this of you: for a minute forget your political, cultural and ethnic associations and see this:
I wasn’t there because I have made up my mind. I don’t know who I am going to vote for, nor do I know if I’ll live to see that potentially world-changing election. I do know however that I was there because I wanted to know what they had to say. What Mr. Imran Khan had to say. And he said it. Perhaps not all of it, perhaps not what many wanted to hear, but he did talk of things that matter.
You can call me naive, but having a leader speak of animal rights in a speech being broadcast to millions was worth the long wait. There were times when his speech wasn’t grammatically correct but the audience did not laugh nor ridicule him. I think that in itself says a lot.
In all honesty, it was worth it.
It was worth getting almost killed at the jam packed entrance. How I braced myself, how the men made human chains to get the women, children and elderly through.
It was worth singing the national anthem only Allah knows how many people. Admittedly not everyone had the best pitch or were in sync but if I could, I’d sing it all over again.
There were moments which still resound in me. How people spread the PTI flags on the dusty ground and prayed Asr. How it started with a few people and then became an entire group.
Even the picture of Mohammad Ali Jinnah was something I will always remember. It wasn’t the stern expression or the distant look he has in most pictures, many of them in banks, notes and other official things. He was smiling. And Mr. Jinnah has an amazingly reassuring smile.
25th december was my first concert but most importantly it was the only 25th december I remember in which i have smiled, cried and laughed along with Pakistanis who I may never meet again.
To have my city and country reunite, to have people smile again, to have hope. What more could I ask for.
Yes there is still pain here. People are dying and there are still those who do not find the strength to live. But reaching out for your people, embracing them, telling them it’s going to be OK again is not that hard. There will be times when you will find it difficult to believe your own reassurances, but there will be times when in some flash of understanding, you will find what you never knew was lost.
makola
city of lights
P.S. 2:01 to 2:06 was the best part. I have never seen a Pakistani leader this close to crying.
I search for you in photographs. To see if they have captured that smile I know and remember so well. To see if they have seen in you what I’ve seen all these years. And if they have held onto it, just like I have.
You “make” friends like I knew you would (see, it wasn’t so hard after all) and I wish they were my friends too so that we could have memories in common. Laughter. Tears. Memories.
Do you trust me to understand everything that has happened so far? Because I don’t understand and I don’t trust myself. I do know however that there is a wisdom behind everything and some day, I will know it too. Just not today.
Distance, time and a void of shared “magic moments” has become the measurement of the gap between us. In all this, I’m surprised at how well I seem to be taking it. I know that you aren’t surprised. You’ve deemed me strong. And some part of me wants to believe that.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is, it makes me happy to imagine you happy. You know me, it does.
I know it’s not much but I keep praying and hoping you truly are happy and that you remember you’re loved.
Ayesha
The right word
by Imtiaz Dharker
Outside the door,
lurking in the shadows,
is a terrorist.
Is that the wrong description?
Outside that door,
taking shelter in the shadows,
is a freedom fighter.
I haven’t got this right .
Outside, waiting in the shadows,
is a hostile militant.
Are words no more
than waving, wavering flags?
Outside your door,
watchful in the shadows,
is a guerrilla warrior.
God help me.
Outside, defying every shadow,
stands a martyr.
I saw his face.
No words can help me now.
Just outside the door,
lost in shadows,
is a child who looks like mine.
One word for you.
Outside my door,
his hand too steady,
his eyes too hard
is a boy who looks like your son, too.
I open the door.
Come in, I say.
Come in and eat with us.
The child steps in
and carefully, at my door,
takes off his shoes.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
We built memories together. Do you remember how I laid the foundation and you cast the roof? We built them, that was we why we knew where the cracks were. Whenever someone would come to investigate or perhaps even just appreciate what we were working so happily on, I saw how your eyes strayed towards the cracks and how you bit at your lower lip, hoping no one would notice. I knew then that this is how it would be from now on. We would build sandcastles and you and I would ignore the presence of the crumbling walls, the irregular flooring, and the not-so-hollow tunnels.
I remember looking towards the vast expanse of blue, telling you how near the water was. We built ditches so that the ocean would not crash into the walls, would not wreak havoc, and would not cause the demarcations to dissolve. It was hard being cheerful then. I marveled at how coolly you dug at the sand, your hands getting lapped with the cold inrush of water, mine still working on securing the boundaries.
Once the sea could not be avoided, I thought of how years ago I would have leaped back choking out laughter and perhaps some tears. But now, I was with you and I knew right then that no matter which storm struck, we would remain where we were as the ocean reached out and erased our sandcastle from the canvas of the world.
As much as this city has given me pain, it has given me love. Raw, real and powerful love. The kind and form that matters. It would be cliche to suggest that I am nothing without it, that it is too large a part of me and that being the traveler I am, all my journeys and trips are to end here.
But it is true.
Karachi has been more than a lighthouse. It has been home.
And for that, I will be forever thankful.
makola
city of lights
They speak of growth as though it is painless.
Natural yes.
Easy never.
They speak of other things too. Things which can latch themselves around the very air you breathe, acting as the cocoon. But never the butterfly.
The city no longer roars as it did. You try to lean in, try to fathom its heartbeats but they are nothing more than gentle thuds, sounding as though they are miles away when really they aren’t. They can’t be.You’re still here. The distance was never covered but mostly because there wasn’t much cloth left.
The cloth was warm. Like the dupattas you speak so often of now. Like the handholds you miss so frequently these days, weeks, months. Like the hugs in which you now wish you hadn’t been the first to let go.
makola
city of blinding lights
“I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”
-the catcher in the rye by j.d. salinger
You could shut off the computers, your TV screens and remove the battery from your phones.
Only then will you realise there is everything but silence.
More than any band-aid or the corner of a dupatta could, this noise heals. This warmth of words, these handholds… they heal.
Thank you for the lights, City.
You shine brighter. (Always!)
makola
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
-Oscar Wilde
I’ve started reading again. The usual culprits of course. Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes because I know what it is like to be bullied, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because… lets leave that for later.
And Roald Dahl. Word by word, I find sense and beauty and purpose in his books again.
There is pain here, but it’s made me realise and appreciate the joy. There are tears, there are regrets. They hide in corners but they can never quite cover themselves well. Camouflage. Such a strange word.
And it’s september.
And I have to leave.
In other things:
My way of wishing you a happy eid:
“Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. He can make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds’ eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little dark-red sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue.”
-charlie and the chocolate factory by roald dahl
I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin break for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.
- Suheir Hammad
For some glorious days I thought they would spare us.
But once the news started echoing across the walls of my house I thought, It’s Ramadhan. They wouldn’t.
And then today:
That’s the glass in my father’s car.
On his way to the hospital where he works, he was attacked by four men on motorcycles.
He’s home now. Safe.
In my head:
It scares me
If they burn the city down, promise me you will
