Short Fiction: "0119221"

By Fawzia Naqvi

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
September, 1997

"It’s your birthday! I've missed your birthday!" she says without so much as a "hello." "No of course not," I tell her, remembering that I missed calling her on hers. "But it’s in September....26th right?" She persists still convinced that my birthday is the reason for my call. "That's my cousin's birthday, funny how you always remember that one huh?" "id-yiot!" She responds. Giving me her unique rendition of what is otherwise the common insult, idiot, and her term of endearment for me. After arguing and debating for the nth time as to why I cannot and will not return to Pakistan permanently, she tells me that she will come to see me in New York in April, but, is giving me three months to think about coming back to Karachi.

Sounding exhausted she continues, "I'm ready to pop. Just pray for me yaar, you know with the surgery and all." I make her promise that her husband will call me with the news as soon as the baby is delivered. I want to tell her that I'll be there if she wants me to come, but I know that she knows I would, in spite of all which keeps me away from Karachi these days, and perhaps for a long time to come.

I always wanted Saira to have a baby girl, a replica of her. And that is why when she called me 9 months ago to say that she was pregnant with her third child I was ecstatic. It was 4:30 p.m. in New York, 1:30 a.m. in Karachi. She always called me late at night but this time I could tell there was something different going on. The news made me gasp. I sat on top of my desk at the office with my feet on the chair, my chin in my hand, tears brimming on the edges of my eyes as I listened to her. "Its hard enough raising two boys and the younger one is still too young. I hope I can handle a third. I think I am being tested by god. “God has more important things to worry about than you my dear, as hard as it is to believe!" I quipped. My commentary elicited the usual "id-yiot!"

It meant many things depending on the matter at hand. It expressed her opinion on whether I was dressed appropriately or not, whether or not I had taken the right course of action in a particular crisis, usually of the heart. Or when I was completely accurate in my re-enactment of a terrifyingly mind numbing social occasion in Karachi, which she had dragged me to.... "for the last time!" I had sworn. And once again "id-yiot", confirms that I am right, the child could be a daughter and that would be one of the most delightful gifts, the coming true of my often expressed wish to her, "hai Saira, can't wait till you have a beti..." followed shortly by, "since it doesn't look like I'll be producing one in the next millennium, you'll just have to do it for me."

And now I tell her that I have my Green Card approval and can get on a flight tomorrow if she wants me to be with her. That was then. Two months ago when I called her at her summer home in Australia she told me she was indeed having that daughter. Ten more days to go.

Of Days Gone By
September, 1995

What a beautiful September evening. My balcony is still bathed in sunshine. I have recently moved in to this apartment, just down the hall and around the corner from my previous one. I spent four years in my last apartment, probably four of the most crucial years of my life. Isn't it amazing how quickly one can dismantle one's life in this town and shift it somewhere else? It took me a weekend to physically up and move, although it has taken me years to leave behind the memories embedded within that space I called home just a few weeks ago.

I have never been good with change. Always equating change with uncertainty and uncertainty with insecurity. And that is why I am constantly trying to build a net of security around myself, avoiding disorder at all cost and maniacally creating order in my life. I call no country home. Home is the four walls within which my clothes are hanging; my shoes are neatly stacked up in boxes one on top of the other and where my collection of books and CDs are readily accessible.

Every where else I am a visitor. Home is a state of mind for me, or rather a state of emotional comfort. And now it seems I am truly comfortable only within the confines of my four walls however temporary these might be. But I can't believe my luck, an apartment with a balcony. From here I can see the Hudson River and the setting sun. But fall is already in the air, and soon enough it will be dark by the time I get home from work and probably too cold to sit outside. And that is why I have spent hours sitting in the sunshine this long Labor Day weekend, which symbolizes the end of summer in this country.

I have been marvelling at how gorgeous the weather has been these last three days. Picture perfect as they say. Lying on my balcony I could almost make believe that this was some beautiful tropical island; that is if I focussed only on the clear blue sky and ignored the surrounding buildings coming down at me, the men shouting on 96th street, the fire engines, police cars and the general mayhem which 96th and Broadway is sometimes all about.

When I get up to go back inside for a drink I notice my new neighbors. Men. If I stand on my balcony I can see in to their living room, but only if I stand up can we see each other. What happened to the Korean family? Earlier on I had seen a blondish guy shifting things in to the apartment. I think he had smiled at me, even said "hello". There is too much on my mind, I haven't even bothered to wonder who he might be. But here they are sitting on a couch talking. They look so civilized.

Four years in my old apartment. Fours years of big moments, comfortable moments and yes plenty of painful ones. The biggest moment was moving in to my own place, living alone in New York city. Albeit with my older brother living 10 flights up and close friends living just one floor above mine. But here I was with my own furniture, my own address and telephone number. A big moment for someone who did not even know how to use a pay phone in New York.

How vividly I remember the afternoon I arrived in New York from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I knew a few addresses and buildings only of course, and Citicorp Center, on 53rd and Lexington Avenue, was the first one I would spot and hold with my gaze with much relief, as the bus made its way past the Manhattan skyline, all the way until we entered Manhattan's daunting streets and avenues.

Citicorp Center was where my brother worked and waited for me so often on Friday evenings when I visited from college. But this was the first time I was downstairs and he upstairs on the 21st floor. He had asked me to call him when I arrived and so I attempted to do so. Hence my very first encounter with a pay phone. Luckily for me a gentleman was watching my struggle with amusement and came to my rescue just before my brother began to panic upstairs and consider sending a search party.

How would it have looked had he found me staring at a pay phone in hopes that it would magically make itself work? Well the concept was unheard of while I was growing up in Lahore. Which girl ever stepped out on to the street to make a phone call from a pay phone? If one could find such a thing. Unheard of. Then again there were many concepts which were unheard of in Lahore back in the 1970s, and perhaps even now. A young woman living alone being on top of the unheard of list.

Danca da Solidao
July, 1993

Saira came back in to my life a month before, after a seven year hiatus during which she produced two sons and I produced one shell shocked heart. I had completely lost touch with her during this time, once hearing that she was in Australia for the summers, and always hearing how she was the ultimate belle of most Karachi balls.

We had met twice after I graduated from Mount Holyoke, our lives suddenly becoming starkly contradictory. Saira and her new life were a shock to my nervous system. Everything about her became alien, everything she said was foreign, and she spoke in a different language. Everyone surrounding her was so different from me, from us, from what she and I had been. And that was the source of our disorientation with each other. We met again so many years beyond Lahore. It could have been light years, millennia.

I did not see her progression through life, nor did she have time to witness mine. She was grappling with married life and in-laws, adjusting to Karachi and Karachiites, accommodating society and yes, socialites. She had even transformed physically, more beautiful now than I remembered her in Lahore. She was trying to fit in, meet expectations, keep up appearances and most importantly survive. She was beautiful, beautiful all the time. Meanwhile graduate school and finding my way in life were overwhelming me. Neither she nor I were equipped to deal with the other's realities, nor relate to each other's lives. She was 21 then and I was 23.

Out of Holyoke and on my way to Columbia, I was too imbued with my new credentials. Unsure and yet convinced that "my way or the highway" was the only the only way to go. Saira and I inevitably grew apart. I felt out of place in her world and unable to cope and relate with her new status.

There was a definite imbalance. She had now acquired legitimacy, authority and freedom by virtue of her marital status. I on the other hand, irrespective of the Seven Sister stamp, became subordinated and treated like a child. I had had so much more freedom than she growing up in Lahore. Albeit always fatter than she, I was undoubtedly freer. But now the tables had definitely turned. I was unmarried and although two years her senior, did not have the same rights and privileges. But it was no fault of hers or mine. It was what our society dictated. The rules were different for the married and the unmarried woman. That was how we were defined. She and I didn't make up these rules and our relationship remained unaffected by them, until one of us got married.

Growing up outside of Pakistan, being single meant simply not married, a normal stage of life....not an issue and certainly not a sum total of my being. Saira had stayed in Pakistan and had defined and moulded herself accordingly. She had done a marvellous job of it and had evolved in a way which made me want to have a life like hers one day. But I was too immature then to understand and besides at that time she simply grated on my nerves! I think we finally found equilibrium when I too got settled, but in a different way than she. I stumbled on to a career and began living in my own home, no longer a dependent.

It was an odd series of events which brought us back together. My summer intern at work asked me if I would be so kind as to let him know if a particular friend of his called and by the way his friend's sister was just starting at Mount Holyoke. Both friend and sister were Saira's siblings, kids when I left Lahore. He still in shorts and she barely up to my waist. I remember trying desperately to stop Chandi's nose bleed one night when her parents were out and Saira and I were left in charge. Saira was too queasy and so I was left cleaning up so to speak. Raza was now at Harvard and Chandi was...well, my goodness she was at my alma mater.

And now all grown up, beautiful and poised she stood leaning against the doorway of my bedroom, watching me speak to her sister after so many years. "I have two sons now...I'm sure you've heard all the news from Chandi. Don't be shocked when you see me in June, with my thunder thighs!" "Good." I told her, "I hope you're finally fatter than me!" "Some things never change huh?" she said laughing "yeah," I said with relief "some things really never do change."

Don't they always say though, when God shuts a door he opens a window? And that is exactly how it was when Saira came to stay with me for the very first time that summer. The pretence of what we had become individually would begin to fall away with time. When we dipped in to our collective past it was not long before both of us understood that we had shared memories of an entirely different era and yes, not much had changed, not for us and not for what still remained important to both of us as we traversed down different paths to pursue the same dream.

But it was the first time we were meeting after many years. I was extremely anxious as to what she would think of me, my clothes, and my apartment. Would she be comfortable? Would she approve of me, my lifestyle? I cared. Of course I cared. What she thought mattered a lot. I tried to account for an entire 20 year time period to evaluate whether I had succeeded, failed, measured up...to what? I didn't know. I tried to look at myself through her eyes and gave up. I was afraid that perhaps I would have more in common with her baby sister now than with Saira.

I had no more time to think when the doorman buzzed to tell me that my guests had arrived. Running a brush quickly through my hair, I opened the door and waited for her in the hallway. When she came off the elevator she was a show stopper. We both ran down the hallway to give each other a big hug. And now she sat on my sofa glamorous in her latest Shalwar Kameez, designed by her of course, sun glasses still perched fashionably on top of her jet black perfectly styled hair, while I sat opposite her on the floor still in my business suit. If someone had taken a photograph of us at that moment it would have been an amusing juxtaposition, "what's wrong with this picture?" they would ask. Nothing, it is Saira and I. It is she and I as we have always been.

It took some time for her to take in my life, starting from my closet of course. We talked a lot, until 3:00 am every night. Needless to say I was dizzy at work the following morning. There was a lot to say. A lot to tell each other while we consumed of whole lot of milk, walnut Danish and bagels, her favourite cuisine in America. I had a lot to tell her.

Each day she would plan to stay a little longer and stayed almost three weeks. Her husband and I became well acquainted over the phone with each notice of extension. Each evening when I would get home from work she would just have come back from Bloomingdale's or Saks or some boutique on Madison Avenue, laden with the latest cosmetics, shoes and purses. She was my walking talking Vogue magazine. In the three weeks she stayed with me I learned all I needed to know about make up, and the value of looking good. We would sit for hours on the floor of my living room among department store packages and products, evaluating lipstick shades and the optimal lip liners. With her gentle encouragement and coaching I was happily about to transform. And I have to admit, it was she who gave me a fresh perspective and most definitely a new look. My one regret-- I never looked good in the swanky sunglasses she bought for herself and I attempted to pilfer. "Saira" I would lament handing her back her new purchase "only you can pull off the I'm a bitch, I'm rich and soooo bored look."

But the phone calls from Pakistan kept intruding while Saira was here, and no amount of good make up or hip sunglasses could hide the affect they would have on me each and every time.

Saira took her time figuring out whether she liked what she saw of my life or whether she disapproved. I know all along she was evaluating whether my life was good for me and if this was the life her sister might have one day. I think she worried about me a lot. I know she did because each time she came to see me she would express the same fear. She worried that I was alone. That although I had independence and freedom, I was alone. She said she worried about that a lot. And when she called from the airport lounge to say goodbye that first time, she told me "I don't want you sitting in the apartment alone and being upset. Go out. Meet people. I am only worried about that."

Of Politicians and Players

Imran Khan was not the first one to be obsessed with both cricket and politics. Saira and I beat him to it 20 years ago. We spent 50% of our time swooning over him and the other 50% worshipping Mr. Bhutto. 20 years later I believe it was I who got over Imran Khan and Saira who got over Mr. Bhutto. Although I must confess, it was Imran who adorned every inch of wall and closet space in my dressing room, the "shrine" as my brother labelled it. And it was Imran's picture which popped out of the inside cover of my high school notebook. During moments of boredom and droning lectures I would stare at his picture for an hour straight and muse and sigh over the fact that one could see his house from the balcony of our school and perhaps today might be the day when he would come to pick up his sister from our school. The God, the Adonis, Imran was it for both of us.

I don't know how Saira became an Imran groupie. I do recall well how I did. I was taken to my first ever live cricket match in 1976. My brother's best friend pointed toward the field from high up in the spectator stands to what looked to me like white dots, and told me with much seriousness in his voice, "there over there is the most handsome man you'll ever see..." and then he made his most remarkable claim, "he's so handsome you'll forget about Izzy!"

How could I forget about Izzy? My first crush in a series of crushes on my brother's friends. I strained my eyes to distinguish one dot from the other moving about on the green cricket field of Qaddafi Stadium, but Imran's qualities remained a mystery to me until Sikoo produced evidence, a colour photograph, proof that he wasn't kidding. Two life altering revelations were made to me that day; I definitely needed glasses and yes Izzy was indeed history.

Pigtails and Ponytails

Lahore, 1977

I am sitting in the back seat of our second hand black Ford Cortina. My sister and I are being driven to school as usual by Painda Khan on a crisp Lahore winter morning. The lush green grounds of the Lahore Gymkhana appear temptingly in front of us every morning as we leave the gates of the Wapda Colony. Our car comes to a halt just before making a U-turn on to the main Mall Road. We are cut off by a convoy of brownish trucks rumbling down the Cantonment Bridge and passing in front of us one after the other, imposing their heavy presence on the otherwise open and pristine route to school.

We finally manage to turn on to Mall Road and are now squashed between two army trucks carrying soldiers. Soldiers with guns. Guns pointing down at us. The soldiers are perched high above in their trucks; their guns are levelled directly at the cars below. I glare at two soldiers glaring back at us all the way down the road until once again our car makes a U-turn just before Atchison College and on to Canal Road, leading to the old stately mansion which houses the Lahore American School. It is the year of the coup d’ etat. 1977. The year I began to separate everyone I knew in to those who were for and those who were against. It was also the year I met Saira.

The first time I saw Saira she wore a white shalwar kameez with a pink and white chequered sash, Esna Foundation's uniform. Her thick wavy jet black mane was tied in two long pigtails which hung in front. I on the other hand was sporting the blue and yellow uniform of the Lahore American School girls' soccer team. Blue shorts and yellow t-shirt, black soccer cleats and not so thick long brown hair in two ponytails hanging limply in front.

Saira had convinced me one night which I spent sleeping over at her house that she could do wonders with my hair and make it look straight, gorgeous and cascading at the ends just like hers. It was all in the blowing drying of course. My head was ducked under the tap, shampooed and conditioned. At 2 a.m. she began to curl and blow-dry my hair. At 4 a.m. after much tugging and pulling, rolling and unrolling, my hair was straight as a sheet, limp as a weed and smelling like a fresh fruit basket. Alas, she relented, our hair was different and we went to sleep exhausted with her efforts. But two decades later, forgetting that night in Lahore, she tried fixing my hair once more this time in New York. Unwilling to accept even now, that her ritual of a four hour blow dry every other day will only fry my head to a crisp. The results this time around were as expected, disastrous.

Almost a year after we had met Saira had begun her incredible metamorphosis in to one of the most attractive, and sought after young ladies in Lahore. While I remained much the same girl. Another year older and on my way to plumpness. The only positive change to my appearance was that I no longer wore what I considered thick ugly eye glasses all the time. I had made the revolutionary transition to soft contact lenses, which my sister bought for me from her hard earned money. I cannot recall the Optical shop. All I remember is that it was dark and somewhere near Ferozesons Bookshop.

The eye examination was quick, the lenses took forever to arrive, coming from Karachi via "abroad" I believe. Almost every day we would anxiously check to see if the lenses had arrived and when they did, I wished they hadn't. The ordeal of putting alien objects inside my eyes was bad enough when the optician placed them inside each eye. But my first attempt at home was impossible. Moreover, the saline solution came in a drip form and had to be hung from the bathroom doorway. It was my brother who stuck each lens inside my eye for the first time at home, telling me I was on my own the next time around.

However, despite my new look; incredibly, Imran Khan did not notice me any more than before. But then again he didn't notice Saira much either. On that score at least, she and I remained equally unrequited. To this day I am incredulous about Imran not noticing Saira and wonder if there is something she hasn't quite told me yet. She does though tell me on a regular basis about this or that dinner party she attended where Imran was present and continues the same lament, "hai, he didn't even notice me! Mai ithni aah… chheeeeee laag rahi thi (I was looking so good) I even plonked myself down in front of him. He must have been scared off by my thunder thighs!" "Just not possible," I would tell her. "Regardless of your thunder thighs...I don't see what you still see in him?" "Hai naah….. heen. He still has that something...." "Yeah, that Missing Link kind of something," I chime in. "Idyiot. How could you be so disloyal?" She chides me laughing, putting her feet up on the centre table in her upstairs lounge and dragging on her 20th cigarette of the day.

Looking back at our girlhood years I have to say, when your best friend looks like Saira, there is only one thing left to do. Leave the country and work on your brain.

One of my most vivid memories is of Saira and I sitting on the front steps of my house. She in her uniform and I in mine. It was the first day we had met. We met by chance really. She had come to visit our neighbours whose daughter and been out at the time. I was commissioned to rescue Saira from boredom, which I promptly did by suggesting that we take refuge next door on my front steps. Some where between the openings in the hedge dividing Auntie Saleem's house from ours, she declared quite proudly, "my father is a baar-is-ter." And noticing that it clearly made no impact on me mainly because I had no idea what a baar-is-ter was, she went on to reveal that in fact he was one of Mr. Bhutto's baar-is-ters. My awe struck expression revived her fast sagging spirit enough to tell me more, "Abu says that he can arrange for me to go to the High Court and watch the trial, if you want to come." I was even more awe struck now. And relieved. I think both of us were. We agreed on Mr. Bhutto. There would be lots to talk about now. Imran Khan had yet to make his debut in to our conversation.

We immediately sat down on the steps and started talking about how we could possibly help get Bhutto Shahib out of jail. Saira informed me that her father visited him regularly in jail and that her mother sent food and was also going to bake a cake. How simple it all seemed then. A momentary drama ending inevitably, with our hero charging out of Lahore jail, and taking control of matters once again. Capturing our imaginations he would once more be jumping on to podiums making noisy speeches to adoring crowds, waving his arms about, voice cracking at a higher pitch. Bhutto would be back at the helm, we just knew that to be the truth. The undercurrents of his removal from the stage remained largely beyond our realm.

That day on my front steps no other possibility existed in our 12 and 14 year old imaginations. We delighted in the thought that perhaps we could help him to freedom by talking about it and planning little schemes. We decided that we would hide a nail file in the cake Saira's mother would bake and attach a little note to it with instructions just in case Mr. Bhutto did not know what to do with it. We planned which day we would attend the court session. But we never did. Soon after our plans were made the trial and the courtroom became restricted to pre-approved individuals. And before we knew it Bhutto was taken from Lahore to the Central Jail in Pindi.

Pigtails and ponytails flying, Saira and I have learnt to ride bicycles. We have been learning for days, our teachers are the neighbour’s 9 and 10 year old sons. Now we have finally gotten the hang of it and have broken free of our instructors. We are racing down the road inside the walled Wapda Colony and trying to reach its front gates, our absolute limit. Saira rides Suloo's bike and I have commandeered our cook's bicycle. Just before we turn the bend we pass my special tree which stands like a sentry at the corner. On its trunk I have recently engraved with a sharp stone a heart shape with the letters 'FN + IK'. The heart was still visible in 2001, the last time I went back to visit Wapda Colony.

We hear the drone of an airplane; we already know what it is. It is a surveillance plane which begins its rounds every day around 5pm or so. As always curfew will be imposed around 7pm. We are already at the gates of the colony and both of us feel the same anxiety. We must get home before the plane spots us, afraid of some unknown reprisal. Martial Law has been imposed since July 5th, neither she nor I understand it's do's and don'ts.

We hear our parents talking, worrying, predicting. Everyone speaks in hushed tones all around us. The presence of an army uniform creates tension, nervousness. We know times are different, restrictive. The opposition newspaper "Musawat" keeps appearing in both our homes with blank columns and entire pages blanked out, it is our first taste of censorship. And yet in a bizarre sort of way, like an amusing game we wait every day to see what shape the paper will appear in. I cannot read Urdu but my parents read every remaining, permitted word aloud to us and translate what I cannot understand.

I begin saving every copy. I don't know why, perhaps I begin to sense a need to show evidence at another time, a testimonial to the days we are witnessing. I begin to understand that there is something acutely different a foot and I shall live through it.

This summer Saira and I peeked in to our past by rummaging through my trunk of letters to each other, diaries and memorabilia which lie safely in my parents’ home in Karachi. In between sips of homemade whipped up espresso, we laughed hysterically at ourselves and at our naivety, mostly about boys. Usually those boys who were crazy about Saira and those I was crazy about. We laughed at our seriousness and at our firm belief that the world did indeed rest on our shoulders. As we dug deeper in to the trunk we found at the bottom saved copies of "Musawat" which still lay neatly wrapped in plastic bags. I still cannot read Urdu so Saira reads to me the headlines among blank yellowing columns and pages.

We find the one edition we are searching for. April 4th, 1979 there is a poem written on the side of the front page... "Mai Islamabad kay Koofay say Sind Madinay Aayin Hoon...." A poem written about Bhutto’s widow and her mournful journey back to his hometown the day he was hanged in Rawalpindi’s central jail. It makes both of us pause; go back to another place in time.

The gates of the colony are still open; the main Mall Road usually buzzing with cars speeding by is now barren. A sudden din of silence falls over the colony and the surrounding area, and now the dominant sound comes from the airplane above. We know that any moment army trucks will appear over the bridge and begin marching down the now virtually empty Mall Road. We must not be seen by them. Why? We don't quite know. We just know that we must not be visible when they appear. Saira and I turn our bikes around quickly.

Pigtails and ponytails flying once more, we tear down the road, peddling furiously and hurtling over speed bumps. We get to the colony's Mosque and turn in to the lane of my house. We are now safely out of sight of the main road. Looking up at the plane which is hovering above the colony, we are sure it is watching us.

Two girls breaking Martial Law.