Re: ~som thing special Only for u ~
read out this chowk story ...u will love tht
I walk into the dark crowded auditorium. It is small, but packed. About one hundred and fifty people. A desi student, part-timing as an usher, looks at my ticket, and points me to my seat. “Third row; isle seat,” he whispers with a surprisingly American accent.
“Thank you,” I reply, trying to figure out whether he is Pakistani, Indian or Bangledeshi.
I have no interest in classical music. Only in ghazals. I am not even interested in any of the, “new age” Urdu poets, who are making a presence. “The best new Urdu poets in North America,” the brochure stated. I am only here because a friend gave me a free ticket. Also because, I am in the USA for eight months of training, and am bored beyond bits, after my first two weeks in Denver.
And, of course, I am here to listen to the Ghalib recitations. Now that is something worth making the forty-five minute trip to the campus of the Colorado College of Fine Arts.
I am a half an hour late; not realizing such functions, start on time, here in the USA. A group of six girls, in their late teens, is finishing a tableau of Sattriya, to the beats of an overly-excited tabla player.
“Not bad,” I say to myself. Even though I have no idea what they just performed.
“Yes, you missed it,” the elderly Indian lady sitting next to me replies, when I ask her about the Ghalib recitals.
“What a waste of time!” I say rather angrily and get up from my seat to leave. As I am walking, up the aisle, towards the exit, I hear the crowd clap loudly. I turn around, and am stunned - like a deer caught in headlights.
The dancers are gone. The tabla player, dressed in a white shalwar qameez and a black vest, has moved to the center of the small stage. He is joined on the other side by a harmonium player and a sitar player. Both dressed identically. And there, standing barefoot in a bright red sari, in between, and slightly behind them, is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life!
“Dear Lord, I never ask for much. Please let her be a Pakistani. Please,” I find myself, all of a sudden, praying at a very fast pace. She seems a few inches shorter than me, and about my age. Perhaps five feet six inches, or so, I quickly calculate. “Kind of tall for a Pakistani girl,” I think, discouragingly, to myself.
She adjusts her sari, and slowly sits down; folding her legs to the side, with both feet pointing to the back. As if she is sitting down for her afternoon prayers. Her bare arms are completely visible; extending outwards from a small sleeveless red blouse. I find myself trying to locate her belly-button, which is vaguely visible, through her partially see-through sari. She is wearing a gajra of chambailis around her wrist. “Where did she find jasmines in Colorado?” I think to myself. Unlike most ghazal singers, she has not tied her hair. Long dark wavy black hair; flowing freely, in front of and behind her shoulders.
I look around at the crowd. Everyone is in a state of stunned silence, staring at her, as if they have just seen a ghost. “She could just sit on the stage; not say a single word, and the audience would go home happy,” I whisper to myself. The lights start to dim, and slowly, only a solitary spotlight is shining on her and her small orchestra. Her bright red sari makes her stand out like a blooming rose, caught in between her thorny and stale orchestra colleagues.
“I am a graduate student, studying Creative Writing, here, at Colorado College,” she starts off, in a melodious soft voice that displays years of classical training. “I fell in love with Ghalib, in high-school, and will perform some of his ghazals, today.” She moves on to introduce her orchestra…
“The face of an angel; the body of a goddess; the voice of a nightingale. And she loves Ghalib.” I whisper out-loudly. “Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please…”
“I started singing during my college days in Karachi………”
“Thank you! Thank you!” I look upwards at the heavens, and raise both my hands, almost hitting the lady, sitting next to me.
She nods to the tabla player to begin the proceedings. She bows her head, strangely locking her eyes onto the keys of the harmonium, and starts off with her first song:
ba-aaa zee-eee cha-eee-Itfa-aaal hae, dunyaaa mairay aaaagay
ho-ooo-taaaaa hae shub-o-ro-oooz, tamaa-shaaa mairay aagay
For the next half-hour, I sit there; mesmerized. I am in heaven.
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It is still only late afternoon. Warm enough to wear the polo shirt that I am wearing, in the summer Colorado weather. A gentle breeze is blowing down from the Rockies, crackling the drying leaves in the gambel oak tree branches that cover the road, outside the auditorium.
I am standing at a distance of ten yards, with my back to the auditorium door, trying to look as casual as possible; staring downwards at my white Reeboks. I find myself, anxiously, adjusting my white shirt, into my faded blue jeans. “Calm down. Calm down,” I repeat to myself.
My palms are starting to sweat.
It has already been a half an hour since the show ended, and there is still no sign of her. I even circled around the building, to ensure there was no backdoor.
Finally, my prayers are answered. I see her walking out the door. She has changed into jeans and a tan tank-top. Her long hair is tied in a purple scarf. The gajra is still on her wrist. The transformation is remarkable. From a traditional sari-clad classical ghazal singer to an American college student. She looks at least five years younger. For some reason, I feel less intimidated, seeing her in this get-up.
“Assalam-o-Alaikum,” I struggle to speak loudly, as she passes me. She walks by, as if not hearing anything. “English, yaar! English,” I remind myself. “Everyone here speaks English.” She accidentally drops her bag, and I quickly rush to help her pick it up.
“Thank you,” she replies, looking straight at me, as I reach her bag before she does.
“I am such a klutz,” she laughs loudly, throwing her head back, as I hand her the bag.
“Yes! Success!” I think to myself. “Hansee tou phansee.”
“Are you going in this direction?” I ask, pointing in the direction she was walking.
“Yes. Obviously,” she rolls her eyes, and replies in a perfect American accent. I start to feel slightly intimidated again.
“So am I,” I quickly add, trying to sound as much like a yuppie Pakistani-American, as I possibly can. “Do you…I mean…Would you mind if I join you?” I ask, trying hard to get my grammar correct.
She doesn’t seem interested, and starts to walk away, still looking straight at me, for some strange reason.
“You know, I translate Ghalib.” “Into English!” I lie with the desperation of a fatally thirsty man, looking for water. “I am writing a book, on his ghazals,” I lie again; though with more control, this time.
“Really!” she seems excited, all of a sudden. “I love Ghalib!” She thinks for a few seconds. Then shakes her head, telling me to join her; with the confidence of a beautiful young girl, who knows she can have any man, she wants. I take it to be a gesture - indicating she is allowing me a small opening, in the next few minutes, to impress her with my knowledge of Urdu poetry.
The minutes turn into three hours. We walk and we talk. We talk and we walk; straight into the most beautiful evening of my life.
Her name is Nadia, I find out. Her father is heart surgeon in Karachi. Her grandfather was the ex-Nawab of some princely state that I cannot pronounce. That makes her royalty, I assume. Her grandmother is Persian.
“That’s where my family got our interest in the arts,” she tells me.
“You know the Mughal kings used to marry Persian women, for this same reason,” I try to impress her with my knowledge of history.
Her mother is an author and critic of Urdu novels. “That’s where I got my interest in writing and poetry,” she tells me.
She has been taking classical dancing and singing lessons, since she was nine. She tries to explain the differences in the various types of dances, in which she has trained: Kathak, Kathakali, Manipuri and even some ballet. I try to follow along, but it is beyond my comprehension. Ballet being the only one I have ever heard of. “My experience in classical dance is limited to Bhangra,” I explain to her. She has been at the college for two years, and will be finishing in another four months. She likes Chinese food and hates Italian food. Italian food makes her skin pop into zits, for some unknown reason.
I find myself, walking quietly, next to her, staring into her large dark blue eyes, as she goes on and on about Urdu poetry; Ghalib to Mir, back to Ghalib; to Momin, back to Ghalib; to Faiz, and then back to Ghalib again.
Our hands rub together, occasionally, as we slowly complete countless circles around the college’s main education block. I, gently, grab her little finger, with mine. She does not resist, and keeps chatting away, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
“It’s getting dark. I better get back to my room. I am going to have to let you go, now.” “I hope I didn’t bore you with all my yapping.”
“No,” I reply with a content smile on my face.
She turns around to leave.
“Can I call you, Nadia?”
She does not answer, and continues walking, as if she didn’t hear me.
I quickly run after her and tap her on her shoulder, “Can I have your phone number, Nadia?”
“No. No! Not now,” she answers quickly, getting extremely anxious all of a sudden.
I am surprised by her blunt response. “Perhaps I should have waited for a few more days, before asking,” I tell myself.
We say our good-byes, promising to meet at the same time, same place, tomorrow.
xxxxxxxx
We meet every afternoon, for the next two weeks, at the same spot, in front of the auditorium. Each day, I can see her, from a distance, standing there, in front of the door, anxiously waiting for me. Walking back and forth in circles, hoping that I will not be late. Then, as soon as she spots me, she tries to look busy, as if surprised at my arrival.
The small city surrounding the mid-sized campus, in the summer time, is the most beautiful University town in the world. The skies are a clear – almost transparent – blue. Hundreds, thousands of young, idealistic students, rushing from one building to another. The large open green grassy fields, starting from the base of the greyish-brown Rocky Mountains, extending all the way through the campus down to the city below. Each road covered, from one end to the other, with thickly-leaved branches of large oak, pine, willow and elm trees. All enveloped bewitchingly in the gentle cool Colorado summer breeze.
In the middle of this soothingly beautiful postcard setting, each day - between the late afternoon hours of four to seven – we walk hand-in-hand, totally lost in each other.
She is a chatterbox. For every twenty sentence she says, I struggle to utter one. I am amazed at how quickly she moves from philosophical discussions, way beyond her years, to the naïve innocence of a fifteen year old teenaged girl. Invariably, we end up discussing Urdu poetry; trying to outdo each other, by finishing off the other’s verses.
She is obsessed with Ghalib. And slowly, but surely, through her, I am, as well.
“Is he related to you?” I joke.
“No. He was from Agra. We are from outside Bhopal,” she replies, as if I had asked the question seriously.
“Did you know he wrote most of his good stuff in Persian? I can understand it because I speak Persian,” she informs me.
“Are you saying that I am illiterate since I can’t?” “And by the way, he spoke Farsi; not Persian,” In self-defence, I inject the only Persian verse, belonging to Ghalib that I know:
farsi bein taaba beeni naqsh haayee rang-e-rang
bagzar az majmua-Urdu kay bay rang man aast
She ignores my comment, like she has ignored so many before. As if she didn’t even hear it. She waves at an American friend, who passes by staring at me.
“Would you call Ghalib a poet-philosopher or a philosopher-poet? You know Jacque Pierre Jean Louise – the famous French playwright - translated him and said that he found Ghalib’s poetry to be an exquisite combination of the styles of the modernist Greek poets and the colonial poets of the post-renaissance liberal genre. What do you think?” she speeds through her long sentence, in one single breath; expecting a quick answer.
I raise my left palm and wave it over my head, “Oupar say guzar gaya.”
She throws her head back; her long black hair flowing in the breeze; and starts to laugh. “You’re so stupid!” she continues to laugh uncontrollably - a carefree laugh of a habitual optimist, enjoying life to its fullest.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asks, surprising me with her question.
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“You were in love, at the age of eight?” she smiles.
“Afshan Maqsood, from Peshawar,” I reply. “She sat in front of me, in Miss Jehan Ara’s third grade Math class.” “She had the most beautiful little ponytails, I will ever see.” “Her mother made her eat paratha-andaa for breakfast every morning. She always had a little bit of fried egg, hanging on the end of her lips. But, unlike the other kids, I never made fun of her, for that.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left me for someone older and more settled - a good-looking boy in the fifth grade.”
“What!”
“Yes. I used to give her the chocolate that my mother would pack in my lunch, each day.”
“Then?”
“It turned out she had been taking chocolates from five other boys, and was selling them to her girlfriends for a profit.”
“That little whore!” she screams, trying to hold back her laughter.
“Yes. She broke my heart. Traumatized me for life. It took me fifteen years to recover.”
We have detoured off the main road, and are walking through a mesh of large oak trees, on our way to the lake. Nadia is dressed in blue jeans, with a brown shawl wrapped completely around her. Her daily chambaili ka gajra on her wrist. She is looking as beautiful as ever. Continuously giggling and laughing at everything I say; even if it isn’t funny. She trips on a rock and almost falls backwards. I bring my right hand behind her waist, trying to break her fall, and pull her up right next to me.
We are standing face-to-face. I can feel her heart beating against mine. I notice her eyes quickly moving left and right - the instinctive reaction of a young Pakistani girl, afraid to be seen, publicly, in the arms of a boy. She closes her eyes; her long eyelashes almost hitting my cheeks. I can feel her breath on my face. Our lips, barely an inch from each other.
I don’t know what to do. It’s the first time in my life that I have found myself in such a situation. I feel her lips slowly moving closer to mine. I am trying hard - extremely hard - to control myself and not kiss her on her lips.
I, instinctively, run my fingers through her hair; lower her head and gently kiss her on her forehead. She lays her head on my shoulder. I lay my head, sideways, on top of hers. My arms around her. We stand like this, without saying a word, for the next ten minutes. Two young innocent souls….lost….somewhere in the golden-brown oak forests of a beautiful foreign land.
The cool breeze picks up speed; drenching us, completely, in the sweet fragrance of freshly picked jasmines…..We are in love.
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There is a solitary brown marble bench, at a remote edge of the lake; which, itself, is right outside the south-eastern edge of the college campus. It allows a perfect view of the mountains to the right, the city to the left and the evening sun, setting, at a distance, into the heart of the gorgeous lake.
We have decided to meet at, “our brown marble park bench” (as she likes to call it), from now on; instead of in front of the campus auditorium. I have been away for a week, and Nadia, as usual, has refused to give me her phone number.
I am sitting quietly at the end of the bench. She is lying on it, looking up at me; her head on my thighs; her long wavy black hair hanging over the edge, almost touching the grass. It is the first time in my life I have seen a Pakistani girl in a t-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes. I am having difficulty keeping my eyes off her perfectly tanned legs.
“You have big beautiful round….umm…eyes,” I finally move my eyes upwards from her legs, and find myself staring at her chest.
“Those aren’t my eyes, silly!”
Her comment catches me off-guard, and I feel embarrassed.
“You’re blushing,” she breaks out into her characteristic laugh.
“I saw you staring at my legs, earlier.”
“I wasn’t staring. Just contemplating.”
“Pakistani guys are so frustrated. Aren’t they?”
“Look….I have been locked up with men in uniform, in the boondocks of Pakistan, since I was fifteen,” I respond in justification. “There were times, when we didn’t even get to see a girl, in a burqa, for months.” “So I get excited when I see a bare ankle. What to talk of a full bare leg!”
“Hmm…I never took you to be a perv.”
“Well, now you know.” “Don’t tell me you dress like this in Pakistan, also.”
She winks at me, “Of course I do.”
“You know my mother would kill me if she saw me, lying on this bench, with you, like this.”
“So would mine,” I reply.
“Your mother would kill me! Why?”
“Not you! Me.”
“Why would your mother kill you? “You’re a guy. Everything goes for guys.”
“I’m sure your mother did these kinds of things, in her day, also,” I tease her.
“What about your mother?”
“My mother wasn’t that kind of a mother.”
“So you are suggesting that my mother was a slut?”
“No! I don’t even know your mother,” I reply. “Forget it. I should have never mentioned your mother.”
“What if you saw your daughter, with someone, like this?” she continues with her irritatingly inquisitive questions.
“I think,” pausing for effect, “I would probably….ummm… kill her.” “And then I would kill her boyfriend, also.”
“So you have no problem sitting here with someone else’s daughter. But you would kill your own daughter, if you caught her with a boy?”
“I told you, I would kill the boy also.” “In fact, I would expect your dad to kill me, if he ever caught me with his daughter, like this”
“And what if he didn’t kill you?”
“Hmm…then…I think….I would lose a lot of respect for him.”
“Do you fly fighter jets?”
“No. I just fix them.”
“Do you like your job?”
“No. I hate it.”
“Do you like the military?”
“No. I hate it,”
“Then why did you join?”
“It was your poet friend.” “I flunked Urdu literature in high-school, and didn’t have enough marks to get into any decent Engineering college.” “Not to mention strange family traditions of military service, going back to my great-grandfather.” What did your great-grandfather do?”
“He was a womanizing Nawab. Two wives. A few concubines. And countless mistresses.”
“My kind of guy,” I reply in an unsuccessful attempt to introduce some humor into the discussion.
The light orange sun starts kissing the horizon. “Time to go home,” she says. I put one arm under her knees; the other under her back and try to lift her up. She locks her hands around my neck, but I am still having difficulty holding her up.
“Awww! Isn’t this cute. My He-man. My Prince Charmiiii……nnnn….gg,” her voice tapers off, as she slips out of my arms, and with a loud thud, falls flat onto the grass.
xxxxxxxx
We have been meeting at, “our brown marble park bench” for a month and a half, now. It seems like we have known each other for years. I have no interest left in my training course, and am barely passing. Though, least bothered. I have attended three more of her singing performances. Each better than the other. I have now, myself, started taking interest in music. She has turned out to be a good teacher.
“Sawaras defining the ragas. Ragas defining the gamakas. Gamakas defining the melodies. The melodies defining the composition. And finally, the compositions defining the whole performance. This is the hierarchy of classical music,” she tutors me. “Oh yeah. I forgot. There are thaats and jatis also.”
Ragas, talas, kafis, khamaj, behr, atvar, radif. kayada, tukra, thaats, jatis: I am surrounded by things that, just two months ago, I wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot pole.
It is early Saturday evening. The stage is set in the exact same layout as before. The lights are low. The audience is quite and packed into the mid-sized auditorium, again.
“I am going to perform a small behr ghazal in raga bhimpalashri,” she starts of with the introduction. She glances over at the orchestra and gently nods.
The tabla player takes his cue. His right hand resting on the single headed bass byha tabla, with his wrist in the center and his fingers touching the front edge; his left hand on the cylindrical high-pitched dynha tabla; the index and middle finger straight on the trailing edge, with the ring finger at a forty-five degrees. He starts off by a set of ge, te and na strokes, performing a slow solo as he moves into a rhythm: ge ge te te ge ge na na; ke ke te te ke ke na na. His fingers moving back and forth on either tabla, adjusting to the technical requirements of each sound. He repeats this set of beats again and again, as if warming up the orchestra. As he accelerates, he jerks his head, nods to himself and breaks into a stream of the seven beat Rupak taal.
As the tabla player holds the beat, the sitar player joins in to handle the transitions between the ragas. The mizrab on his right index finger, shining in the light, his right thumb clinging to the edge of the sitar’s dand. He moves the mizrab across the four playing strings of the sitar gelling the gentle sitar melody with the bellicose beats of the tabla. His right hand moving up the strings in a dha stroke and downwards in a ra stroke.
The beat and transition established, the harmonium player finally decides to join in. Defining in music, the up and down sawaras (tones) of the raga the singer will be performing in voice. His left hand pressing the bellows the harmonium as the fingers of his right hand gently caress its black and white keys: seven tones of ne Sa ga ma Pa ne sa on the way up and eight tones of Sa ne Da Pa ma ga Re Sa on the way down – the aarohana and avarohana of rag bhimpalashri.
With the orchestra fully revved up, Nadia raises her right hand, her open hand facing upwards and starts off, perfectly matching the raag established by the harmonium. “Aaa-aa-AA-aa…,” her voice moving up and down the scale, in synch with the fingers of the harmonium player. She is a natural artist. Every person in the auditorium completely in the palm of her hand, as she utters the first Urdu verses:
jala-aa hae jiii-ism jaha-aaaaan, dillll bhi jal gayaaaa hooo ga
kuraaaaiiidte ho jo abb ra-aaakh, justajooooeee kiya hae……..
She moves from one ghazal to the next, switching between English during the introductions, and Urdu during the singing, with the command of a maestro. The audience - stunned by her good looks, impressed by her vast knowledge of poetry, and charmed by her beautiful voice is in complete daze. . Each man wanting to be next to her. And each woman wanting to be her.
I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
The show ends. I meet her backstage after she has changed, and we walk out of the auditorium.
“Did you see! Did you see how I had them glued to their seats?” she gloats. “They can’t get enough of my voice.”
“They can’t get enough of the see-through saris, you wear.” I reply.
“Yeah, right!” she punches me on my arm.
A week has passed since her last concert. On my insistence, she finally agrees to show me where she lives. We decide against the bus and take a slow twenty minute walk to her place. The tiny living room of her small student apartment is exquisitely decorated. A large TV. Extra-large speakers. A set of tablas next to a vintage harmonium. Three half-finished water colors resting on small stands, next to large glass window. And tons of books. Books on literature, music, dancing, and of course, a complete set of Ghalib’s works.
“It’s good to finally see your place.” “Very unstudentlike.”
“Yeah. I’m a clean freak.” “And I don’t like having roommates.”
“Does this place have a bedroom?”
“What kind of stupid question is that? Why do you want to know that?” “I’m not that kind of girl, you know?” she smiles.
“I was just asking,” I reply innocently.
“You probably wouldn’t know what to do, in there, anyways.”
“Yes,” I clench my teeth. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
She pulls my arm and drags me down to the sofa, next to her, “OK. Let’s lay down some ground rules, before you get too frustrated and jump off a bridge.”
“Ground rules?”
“Here is my best offer: everything below the shoulders is out of bounds. Everything above the shoulders is fair game.”
“Hmm,” I think for a while. “Here is my counteroffer: how about everything below the waist being out of bounds. And everything above the waist, in-bounds.”
“You get something out of that,” she smiles, looking down at herself. “But what do I get?”
“All of this,” I reply, flexing my muscles, doing my best impersonation of a muscle-bound Arnold.
“Sorry. No can do,” she lets her head fall into my lap. “Your offer is loaded in your favour.”
“Can I use your phone?”
I notice her getting very nervous, “I…I don’t have a phone.”
“What kind of an apartment doesn’t have a phone?” “You can afford a car, but you can’t afford a phone?”
“It’s none of your business,” she surprises me with the rudeness of her reply, and starts walking away, angrily, towards the kitchen, without looking back at me.
“Nadia.” “Listen to me Nadia.” “Nadia,” I scream out her name.
She finally turns around.
“Yaar, soe rahee ho kia?” “Suntee kiyon nahin?” I am starting to get irritated.
“Sorry?” “Sorry for what?”
“Sorry naheen. ” “Soe rahee! Soe rahee; as in sleeping!” “Are you deaf? And do we have to speak English twenty-four hours a day!”
Her face turns white with shock. She is starting to sweat. It’s the first time I have seen her so confused and out of control. “Can you leave?” “Just leave.” “Please leave me alone.” “I want to be alone,” she yells repeatedly, and points me to the door.
“What the hell is wrong with this girl,” I whisper silently, to myself, in frustration.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” “Nothing! Nothing!” she is screaming uncontrollably now.
“How did you hear that?” I ask. “How did you hear that from so far away?” I move my lips again and again, without making a sound. She answers correctly every time.
“What’s going on,” I think to myself. I turn the lights on and off, and call her name, asking her to reply. I repeat this for the next thirty seconds, not realizing the agony I am putting her through.
“Stop it! Stop it!” she screams. She is down on her knees, bent over; her hands on her face, sobbing profusely. All of a sudden, everything starts to make sense.
She doesn’t have a phone, because she can’t hear it ring. She won’t introduce me to any of her close friends, because she doesn’t want me to find out her secret. She returns home, before sunset, from the lake, every day, because she can’t see my face clearly, at night. She doesn’t need to hear me speak, because she can read my lips. She always uses English, because she isn’t proficient in Urdu lip-reading. She locks her eyes onto the harmonium keys, while performing, so she can adjust her voice to the music, visually. She doesn’t ignore half of my comments, on purpose. She just cannot hear them!
I walk up to her, half in shock, half in sympathy. I don’t know what to say. I lift her up from the ground. “I’m sorry.” “I’m so sorry, Nadia……I didn’t know.” I cannot stop apologizing. I start wiping the tears off her cheeks.
She raises her head. Slowly opening her eyes. They are filled with a strange mixture of sadness and anxiety that does not suit her personality. I can hear the next three words coming out of her mouth, before she has even uttered them.
“I am………...deaf.”
I don’t know what to do. I want to hold her. Hug her. Kiss her….Protect her? I want to do whatever she wants me to do. I want to say whatever she wants me to say. Anything! But, strangely, there is only one thought circling in my mind, “How do you sing?”
“Please leave,” she almost begs. Her black mascara streaks down her cheeks, marking the lines of her tears. She points to the door again, “Please…..Please leave me alone.”
I am totally devastated.
xxxxxxx
It’s two o’ clock at night. I have been tossing and turning, and cannot sleep. I walk into the bathroom, wearing only my shalwar. I wash my face and stare, straight, into the mirror above the sink. I cannot recognize the person I see in the mirror. I am extremely angry at myself, for what I have done. Most of all, I cannot stop thinking about the anguish Nadia must be going through. There is an extremely painful knot in my stomach, and I feel like I am going to vomit. The emotional roller-coaster of the past few months is something I am not used to. I take a deep breath to calm myself and try to analyze the situation objectively.
“I am twenty-five. She is twenty-four,” I try to move towards a logical solution. “We obviously like each other.” “She is very rich and I am not poor.” “Same country, same language, same culture, same religion. And most of all, the same approach to life. In a few months, we’ll both be back in Pakistan.”
“Marry her?” “Yes, why don’t I just marry her!” “I am going to end up marrying someone, someday. Why not her?” “Simple.” “Chiragh talay andhaira!” I am surprised at myself for not thinking of this earlier.
I ride my motorbike to the university, each day, for the next two weeks. But there is no sign of her. The same routine, everyday: a quick trip to the auditorium, hoping to find her there; a walk to her apartment, where I slip my daily note under her door, apologizing, in a different language each day: Urdu, English, Punjabi, French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic. I am starting to run out of languages. Each note signed with a smiley face; just like she draws them - one eye bigger than the other. And after all of this, I walk to down to our brown marble park bench, where I wait, each day, for hours.
Finally, on the thirteenth day – the first Friday of the new month - I find a pink sticky note stuck to the bench, “You’re a jerk. I hate you!.....But I want a ride on your bike. Tomorrow. 11 am. In front of my apartment. Don’t be late, or you’ll regret it.”
The sun is out. The sky is clear. The birds are singing. Life is good again. It is a very sunny Saturday morning and I am on my way to the campus. My standard attire: faded blue jeans, polo shirt, white Reeboks, and a brown leather jacket.
“Gataaaa rahaaa-aaay mera dil-lll…Tou he mairee-eee-e manzil…Kaheen beitein naaa….,” I find myself swaying, from the left end of the road to the right, on Hwy 287, trying to imitate Mukesh’s rendition of the famous Hindi movie song.
“Get in your ****in’ lane, you moron!” a bald man sticks his head out of his pick-up truck window, and gives me the finger. I smile at him, from underneath my red helmet, and continue singing; lost in my own world.
I am totally un-irritable, today.
I park my motorcycle right outside her apartment building, looking at my watch. She comes out of the door, exactly at 11:00. And once again surprises me with her choice of dress: black leather pants and black boots. The upper half of her body, half naked, in a grey sleeveless cut-off shirt.
She gives me a dirty look, indicating she is still angry at me. I try to return the look and we both break up into laughter. All is forgiven and forgotten.
“Ishq nay Ghalib nakamma kar diya…..warna…..warna….warna….,” I try to interject an appropriate verse, for the situation, expecting her to complete it.
“Yeah….whatever,” she replies casually.
“Which men’s magazine did you just step out of,” I find myself enunciating each word more clearly than before, for her convenience.
“I dress like this in Pakistan also,” she gives me her standard reply.
“No gajra today?”
“Us biker chics don’t wear gajras!” she spits out her chewing gum and answers with an attitude.
“Since when did you become a biker chic?”
“When in Rome, do as the Romanians do.”
“You’re going to freeze your ass off in that shirt,” I warn her.
She points to her backpack, “My jacket is in there.” “And quit staring at my belly-button, you pervert.”
“I can’t help it.”
“What is it with you and girl’s belly-buttons, anyways?”
“Mullah ki dhor masjid tak,” I reply in Urdu, making sure I enunciate clearly, once again.
“Haven’t you ever seen a girl’s belly-button before?”
“Hmm…I have seen American, French, Spanish, Mexican, Indian and Chinese belly-buttons. I even saw one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a National Geographic special, once. But, no, I have never seen a Pakistani girl’s belly-button, in real life, before. At least not up close, like this.”
“OK, cut the crap, and get on,” I point to the back seat and hand her a helmet.
“Wait. We still have a score to settle. You owe me an apology.”
“I’m sorry. Is that enough?” I say quickly. “Now let’s get going.”
“Nope, not like this. I think we will have to settle this, like men.” “I get to take one free shot at you,” she clenches her fist and puts in front of my face.
“You want to hit me?” “Are you nuts!”
“Yes. I am.”
“OK,” I play along. “Take your best shot. Let me have it. Anywhere you want,” I take off my jacket and raise my hands over my head.
She places her left foot next to my right foot. Screams, “Yaaaaaaaa,” and swings her clenched right fist, with all her might, straight into the middle of my stomach!
“Dear God, Naaaa--diaaa!” I buckle over in pain like a pretzel, grabbing my stomach with both hands, and fall sideways onto the grass. “Where the hell did you learn to hit like that?” “Don’t you know I bruise easily?” I scream out, rolling on the ground in agony.
“Just be glad it wasn’t five inches lower,” I hear her laughing uncontrollably, at my plight. I look upwards and see her standing on top of me, admiring her biceps.
“OK, you sissy. Let’s go,” she helps me up and I, slowly, limp onto my motorbike. She jumps on the passenger seat; nudges herself right next to my back, and locks her arms around my stomach. I had purchased the bike third-hand, hoping it would last me for my eight months stay in Denver. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined, in a million years, that one day, I would be riding it up to Pikes Peak with a Pakistani girl – or any girl, for that matter - on the back seat.
I rev up the engine of my used yellow Suzuki Ninja 500. “Don’t let me down now,” I find myself talking to my bike, as if it were a horse.
And we’re off! Out the university entrance, through a side road and onto Hwy 287. We take an exit towards 85 South, which eventually turns into Interstate 25. The mountain ranges are visible to our right as we reach the suburbs of Colorado Springs and make a U-turn onto the small roads going through the woods towards the trails up to Pikes Peak. The nineteen miles Pikes Peak road is in front of me. I pay the $10 toll, shift into the lowest gear and point my motorcycle upwards. I am negotiating the uphill turns at high speed; however, Nadia seems least bothered and totally relaxed. Her head turned sideways; her helmet resting on the back of my neck. I feel her actually loosen her grip around my stomach.
She seems completely confident that I will not let anything happen to her.
We make it up the winding single-road to a scenic park, halfway to the peak. It is quite a bit colder up here. At 11,000 ft. above sea level, we find ourselves standing at the base of one of the highest points in the USA. The whole areas is filled with fog; the ground disappearing and re-appearing, as we walk through the fog, towards the edge of the park. The scenery is beautiful – the mountain range to our right, the snow-tipped peak up and behind our backs and the lush green tree-covered valleys below us.
I notice Nadia walking all the way to the front edge of the park and standing right next to the boundary fence. There is a very steep fall, into a deep valley, just five feet ahead of her. She gazes down, over the edge, into the emptiness; takes a deep breath, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, breaks out into one of her songs.
She has caught me, and the other tourists, completely by surprise. Slowly a small crowd gathers, around -totally intrigued by the beautiful voice of a beautiful girl, singing in language they cannot understand.
“aa-aaa-aaaa-aaaaaa-aa…,” she starts off in the thaat parent raag kalyan – going through each of the natural tone sudha swaras on the way up and reversing them on the way down: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ne Sa – Sa Ne Da Pa Ma Ga Re Sa. Each note, effortlessly flowing out of her mouth, piercing through the fog, resonating off the surrounding mountains and filling the air with an irresistibly sweet melodious harmony:
lagay tumm say mann kee lagan……….
lagan…lagay tumm say mann kee lagan
lagay tumm say mann kee lagan……….
lagan…lagay tumm say mann kee lagan
She is completely cut-off from everyone now – lost in her own world. Singing at the top of her voice; hitting every note perfectly; her eyes closed; her head swaying slowly from side to side; her index finger and thumb, together, drawing out the invisible tunes of the song, in thin air.
gali gali ghoomaaa--aaaaaay
dil tujhay doondhaaa-aaay….
teray bin tarsein nayaan…….
lagan, lagay tumm say mann ke lagan……….
lagan…lagay tum say mann kee lagan
She looks over to me as she sings the next lines of this classically melodius song.
aaaaa jaa--ooooo maairii jaa--aaan
mairay dil kaa jehaaannnnn…….....
maa-aaa-ngaa-aay taairie khabarrr
dhooo-nndaaay tera-aa nishaa-aannnn
She gestures over to me, asking me to join her. I hesitate, reminding myself that I have never taken a shot at singing, outside my bathroom shower. She is singing and simultaneously gesturing to me. It is obvious; she wants me to join her in a peak-side duet. The small crowd of American tourists – mostly old retired grandfathers and grandmothers – claps and almost in unison, screams, “Get up there.”
She continues with her lines, as I slowly and very nervously, step right next to her at the edge of the mountain range; not knowing how I will pull off this strangely impromptu duet. I am scared of heights, but, at the moment, quite a bit more scared of singing in public.
teraaa-aaaaaa tujh ko-ooo soooo-oooomp dae
kiyaaa laa-aaagat hai mooo-ooore……………
mai-iiira mujh mei-iin kuch naaa-aa-aaa-heen
jo hoowat so too-oouuu houu-ooot……………..
She is truly in her element, now. Her classically trained voice hitting the very high notes . Moving from one clearly and crisply articulated octave to the next. Not a hint of effort on her face. She can hear the whole orchestra in her mind - the sitar rhythms straddling in between the tabla beat and the harmonium’s ragas.
She opens her eyes, as if telling me to sing the next line. I say a quick prayer, hope for success, and try to do my best impersonation of Mehdi Hassan.
“taaee-raaa-aaay bin mera-aaa mann,” I start off.
“jaaa-iisa-aaay bann mein hiran-nnn,” she steps in.
“jaaa-iisa-aaay pagliiii pawan-nnnn,” I start to feel a bit more confident now.
We are now in full flow; alternating lines, as we move through this difficult song. She closes her eyes, when she sings. And then opens them to read my lips, when I start. I wonder if she can hear our voices echo off the surrounding mountains.
A lone cloud descends from the peak and surrounds our audience and us, completely in fog. I put my right arm around Nadia’s shoulder; she puts her left arms around my back, still drawing lines through the air, with her right hand, as she sings. We are slowly swaying side to side, looking at each other. For the next five minutes, we continue our impromptu performance, in front of our impromptu audience, surrounded by the misty fog of a garden on the heavenly peak.
lagay tum say mann kee lagan….…...
lagan, lagay tum say mann kee lagan
lagay tum say mann kee lagan…..…..
lagan, lagay tum say mann kee lagan
With every note, whatever little doubts I may have had in asking Nadia to marry me, are drifting away – far far away – tumbling, end over end, into the deep cravesses of the valley below.
xxxxxxx
Two more weeks have passed. Nadia only has one more month left at the university, but I still haven’t developed the courage to ask her to marry me. “It’s now or never,” I keep telling myself.
It turns out that I don’t have the faintest idea of how marriage proposals are carried out in Pakistan. “Isn’t my mother supposed to talk her mother, first. Or is that just in the movies,” I ask myself, again and again. “Am I supposed to meet her father, first?” “Do I get a ring and get down on one knee?”
Most of all, I am scared to death that she will say, “No.”
“It’s called otosclerosis. I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty. As long as I am looking straight at someone’s face, I am OK,” we are sitting together, next to the lake again.
“It’s an abnormal growth of the middle ear,” she continues. “It usually starts around one’s early 20s. It can happen gradually. Slowly, it started happening to me, also. I couldn’t hear low-pitch noises. I couldn’t hear whispers. I eventually had surgery and a prosthetic device was placed in my ear. Unfortunately, that did not help. When the otolaryngologist told me I would lose all my hearing, I didn’t want to believe him. The music got fainter and fainter. The birds stopped singing. The TV had to be turned to full volume. My parents had to speak louder and louder to communicate with me.”
“I went into severe depression, thinking my life was over.” “How could I live in a totally silent world? How could I live without my music and my songs?” “My parents enrolled me in lip-reading classes.” “When nothing was helping, they decided to send me here. “I enrolled for a Masters degree at Colorado College, and threw myself into the programs for the hearing disabled.” “Lip-reading, sign language, finger spelling, audiologists and speech-language pathologists: you name it, I have tried it.” “It’s been great and I am slowly starting to adjust back into my life.”
I walk into the dark crowded auditorium. It is small, but packed. About one hundred and fifty people. A desi student, part-timing as an usher, looks at my ticket, and points me to my seat. “Third row; isle seat,” he whispers with a surprisingly American accent.
“Thank you,” I reply, trying to figure out whether he is Pakistani, Indian or Bangledeshi.
I have no interest in classical music. Only in ghazals. I am not even interested in any of the, “new age” Urdu poets, who are making a presence. “The best new Urdu poets in North America,” the brochure stated. I am only here because a friend gave me a free ticket. Also because, I am in the USA for eight months of training, and am bored beyond bits, after my first two weeks in Denver.
And, of course, I am here to listen to the Ghalib recitations. Now that is something worth making the forty-five minute trip to the campus of the Colorado College of Fine Arts.
I am a half an hour late; not realizing such functions, start on time, here in the USA. A group of six girls, in their late teens, is finishing a tableau of Sattriya, to the beats of an overly-excited tabla player.
“Not bad,” I say to myself. Even though I have no idea what they just performed.
“Yes, you missed it,” the elderly Indian lady sitting next to me replies, when I ask her about the Ghalib recitals.
“What a waste of time!” I say rather angrily and get up from my seat to leave. As I am walking, up the aisle, towards the exit, I hear the crowd clap loudly. I turn around, and am stunned - like a deer caught in headlights.
The dancers are gone. The tabla player, dressed in a white shalwar qameez and a black vest, has moved to the center of the small stage. He is joined on the other side by a harmonium player and a sitar player. Both dressed identically. And there, standing barefoot in a bright red sari, in between, and slightly behind them, is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life!
“Dear Lord, I never ask for much. Please let her be a Pakistani. Please,” I find myself, all of a sudden, praying at a very fast pace. She seems a few inches shorter than me, and about my age. Perhaps five feet six inches, or so, I quickly calculate. “Kind of tall for a Pakistani girl,” I think, discouragingly, to myself.
She adjusts her sari, and slowly sits down; folding her legs to the side, with both feet pointing to the back. As if she is sitting down for her afternoon prayers. Her bare arms are completely visible; extending outwards from a small sleeveless red blouse. I find myself trying to locate her belly-button, which is vaguely visible, through her partially see-through sari. She is wearing a gajra of chambailis around her wrist. “Where did she find jasmines in Colorado?” I think to myself. Unlike most ghazal singers, she has not tied her hair. Long dark wavy black hair; flowing freely, in front of and behind her shoulders.
I look around at the crowd. Everyone is in a state of stunned silence, staring at her, as if they have just seen a ghost. “She could just sit on the stage; not say a single word, and the audience would go home happy,” I whisper to myself. The lights start to dim, and slowly, only a solitary spotlight is shining on her and her small orchestra. Her bright red sari makes her stand out like a blooming rose, caught in between her thorny and stale orchestra colleagues.
“I am a graduate student, studying Creative Writing, here, at Colorado College,” she starts off, in a melodious soft voice that displays years of classical training. “I fell in love with Ghalib, in high-school, and will perform some of his ghazals, today.” She moves on to introduce her orchestra…
“The face of an angel; the body of a goddess; the voice of a nightingale. And she loves Ghalib.” I whisper out-loudly. “Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please…”
“I started singing during my college days in Karachi………”
“Thank you! Thank you!” I look upwards at the heavens, and raise both my hands, almost hitting the lady, sitting next to me.
She nods to the tabla player to begin the proceedings. She bows her head, strangely locking her eyes onto the keys of the harmonium, and starts off with her first song:
ba-aaa zee-eee cha-eee-Itfa-aaal hae, dunyaaa mairay aaaagay
ho-ooo-taaaaa hae shub-o-ro-oooz, tamaa-shaaa mairay aagay
For the next half-hour, I sit there; mesmerized. I am in heaven.
xxxxxxxx
It is still only late afternoon. Warm enough to wear the polo shirt that I am wearing, in the summer Colorado weather. A gentle breeze is blowing down from the Rockies, crackling the drying leaves in the gambel oak tree branches that cover the road, outside the auditorium.
I am standing at a distance of ten yards, with my back to the auditorium door, trying to look as casual as possible; staring downwards at my white Reeboks. I find myself, anxiously, adjusting my white shirt, into my faded blue jeans. “Calm down. Calm down,” I repeat to myself.
My palms are starting to sweat.
It has already been a half an hour since the show ended, and there is still no sign of her. I even circled around the building, to ensure there was no backdoor.
Finally, my prayers are answered. I see her walking out the door. She has changed into jeans and a tan tank-top. Her long hair is tied in a purple scarf. The gajra is still on her wrist. The transformation is remarkable. From a traditional sari-clad classical ghazal singer to an American college student. She looks at least five years younger. For some reason, I feel less intimidated, seeing her in this get-up.
“Assalam-o-Alaikum,” I struggle to speak loudly, as she passes me. She walks by, as if not hearing anything. “English, yaar! English,” I remind myself. “Everyone here speaks English.” She accidentally drops her bag, and I quickly rush to help her pick it up.
“Thank you,” she replies, looking straight at me, as I reach her bag before she does.
“I am such a klutz,” she laughs loudly, throwing her head back, as I hand her the bag.
“Yes! Success!” I think to myself. “Hansee tou phansee.”
“Are you going in this direction?” I ask, pointing in the direction she was walking.
“Yes. Obviously,” she rolls her eyes, and replies in a perfect American accent. I start to feel slightly intimidated again.
“So am I,” I quickly add, trying to sound as much like a yuppie Pakistani-American, as I possibly can. “Do you…I mean…Would you mind if I join you?” I ask, trying hard to get my grammar correct.
She doesn’t seem interested, and starts to walk away, still looking straight at me, for some strange reason.
“You know, I translate Ghalib.” “Into English!” I lie with the desperation of a fatally thirsty man, looking for water. “I am writing a book, on his ghazals,” I lie again; though with more control, this time.
“Really!” she seems excited, all of a sudden. “I love Ghalib!” She thinks for a few seconds. Then shakes her head, telling me to join her; with the confidence of a beautiful young girl, who knows she can have any man, she wants. I take it to be a gesture - indicating she is allowing me a small opening, in the next few minutes, to impress her with my knowledge of Urdu poetry.
The minutes turn into three hours. We walk and we talk. We talk and we walk; straight into the most beautiful evening of my life.
Her name is Nadia, I find out. Her father is heart surgeon in Karachi. Her grandfather was the ex-Nawab of some princely state that I cannot pronounce. That makes her royalty, I assume. Her grandmother is Persian.
“That’s where my family got our interest in the arts,” she tells me.
“You know the Mughal kings used to marry Persian women, for this same reason,” I try to impress her with my knowledge of history.
Her mother is an author and critic of Urdu novels. “That’s where I got my interest in writing and poetry,” she tells me.
She has been taking classical dancing and singing lessons, since she was nine. She tries to explain the differences in the various types of dances, in which she has trained: Kathak, Kathakali, Manipuri and even some ballet. I try to follow along, but it is beyond my comprehension. Ballet being the only one I have ever heard of. “My experience in classical dance is limited to Bhangra,” I explain to her. She has been at the college for two years, and will be finishing in another four months. She likes Chinese food and hates Italian food. Italian food makes her skin pop into zits, for some unknown reason.
I find myself, walking quietly, next to her, staring into her large dark blue eyes, as she goes on and on about Urdu poetry; Ghalib to Mir, back to Ghalib; to Momin, back to Ghalib; to Faiz, and then back to Ghalib again.
Our hands rub together, occasionally, as we slowly complete countless circles around the college’s main education block. I, gently, grab her little finger, with mine. She does not resist, and keeps chatting away, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
“It’s getting dark. I better get back to my room. I am going to have to let you go, now.” “I hope I didn’t bore you with all my yapping.”
“No,” I reply with a content smile on my face.
She turns around to leave.
“Can I call you, Nadia?”
She does not answer, and continues walking, as if she didn’t hear me.
I quickly run after her and tap her on her shoulder, “Can I have your phone number, Nadia?”
“No. No! Not now,” she answers quickly, getting extremely anxious all of a sudden.
I am surprised by her blunt response. “Perhaps I should have waited for a few more days, before asking,” I tell myself.
We say our good-byes, promising to meet at the same time, same place, tomorrow.
xxxxxxxx
We meet every afternoon, for the next two weeks, at the same spot, in front of the auditorium. Each day, I can see her, from a distance, standing there, in front of the door, anxiously waiting for me. Walking back and forth in circles, hoping that I will not be late. Then, as soon as she spots me, she tries to look busy, as if surprised at my arrival.
The small city surrounding the mid-sized campus, in the summer time, is the most beautiful University town in the world. The skies are a clear – almost transparent – blue. Hundreds, thousands of young, idealistic students, rushing from one building to another. The large open green grassy fields, starting from the base of the greyish-brown Rocky Mountains, extending all the way through the campus down to the city below. Each road covered, from one end to the other, with thickly-leaved branches of large oak, pine, willow and elm trees. All enveloped bewitchingly in the gentle cool Colorado summer breeze.
In the middle of this soothingly beautiful postcard setting, each day - between the late afternoon hours of four to seven – we walk hand-in-hand, totally lost in each other.
She is a chatterbox. For every twenty sentence she says, I struggle to utter one. I am amazed at how quickly she moves from philosophical discussions, way beyond her years, to the naïve innocence of a fifteen year old teenaged girl. Invariably, we end up discussing Urdu poetry; trying to outdo each other, by finishing off the other’s verses.
She is obsessed with Ghalib. And slowly, but surely, through her, I am, as well.
“Is he related to you?” I joke.
“No. He was from Agra. We are from outside Bhopal,” she replies, as if I had asked the question seriously.
“Did you know he wrote most of his good stuff in Persian? I can understand it because I speak Persian,” she informs me.
“Are you saying that I am illiterate since I can’t?” “And by the way, he spoke Farsi; not Persian,” In self-defence, I inject the only Persian verse, belonging to Ghalib that I know:
farsi bein taaba beeni naqsh haayee rang-e-rang
bagzar az majmua-Urdu kay bay rang man aast
She ignores my comment, like she has ignored so many before. As if she didn’t even hear it. She waves at an American friend, who passes by staring at me.
“Would you call Ghalib a poet-philosopher or a philosopher-poet? You know Jacque Pierre Jean Louise – the famous French playwright - translated him and said that he found Ghalib’s poetry to be an exquisite combination of the styles of the modernist Greek poets and the colonial poets of the post-renaissance liberal genre. What do you think?” she speeds through her long sentence, in one single breath; expecting a quick answer.
I raise my left palm and wave it over my head, “Oupar say guzar gaya.”
She throws her head back; her long black hair flowing in the breeze; and starts to laugh. “You’re so stupid!” she continues to laugh uncontrollably - a carefree laugh of a habitual optimist, enjoying life to its fullest.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asks, surprising me with her question.
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“You were in love, at the age of eight?” she smiles.
“Afshan Maqsood, from Peshawar,” I reply. “She sat in front of me, in Miss Jehan Ara’s third grade Math class.” “She had the most beautiful little ponytails, I will ever see.” “Her mother made her eat paratha-andaa for breakfast every morning. She always had a little bit of fried egg, hanging on the end of her lips. But, unlike the other kids, I never made fun of her, for that.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left me for someone older and more settled - a good-looking boy in the fifth grade.”
“What!”
“Yes. I used to give her the chocolate that my mother would pack in my lunch, each day.”
“Then?”
“It turned out she had been taking chocolates from five other boys, and was selling them to her girlfriends for a profit.”
“That little whore!” she screams, trying to hold back her laughter.
“Yes. She broke my heart. Traumatized me for life. It took me fifteen years to recover.”
We have detoured off the main road, and are walking through a mesh of large oak trees, on our way to the lake. Nadia is dressed in blue jeans, with a brown shawl wrapped completely around her. Her daily chambaili ka gajra on her wrist. She is looking as beautiful as ever. Continuously giggling and laughing at everything I say; even if it isn’t funny. She trips on a rock and almost falls backwards. I bring my right hand behind her waist, trying to break her fall, and pull her up right next to me.
We are standing face-to-face. I can feel her heart beating against mine. I notice her eyes quickly moving left and right - the instinctive reaction of a young Pakistani girl, afraid to be seen, publicly, in the arms of a boy. She closes her eyes; her long eyelashes almost hitting my cheeks. I can feel her breath on my face. Our lips, barely an inch from each other.
I don’t know what to do. It’s the first time in my life that I have found myself in such a situation. I feel her lips slowly moving closer to mine. I am trying hard - extremely hard - to control myself and not kiss her on her lips.
I, instinctively, run my fingers through her hair; lower her head and gently kiss her on her forehead. She lays her head on my shoulder. I lay my head, sideways, on top of hers. My arms around her. We stand like this, without saying a word, for the next ten minutes. Two young innocent souls….lost….somewhere in the golden-brown oak forests of a beautiful foreign land.
The cool breeze picks up speed; drenching us, completely, in the sweet fragrance of freshly picked jasmines…..We are in love.
xxxxxxxx
There is a solitary brown marble bench, at a remote edge of the lake; which, itself, is right outside the south-eastern edge of the college campus. It allows a perfect view of the mountains to the right, the city to the left and the evening sun, setting, at a distance, into the heart of the gorgeous lake.
We have decided to meet at, “our brown marble park bench” (as she likes to call it), from now on; instead of in front of the campus auditorium. I have been away for a week, and Nadia, as usual, has refused to give me her phone number.
I am sitting quietly at the end of the bench. She is lying on it, looking up at me; her head on my thighs; her long wavy black hair hanging over the edge, almost touching the grass. It is the first time in my life I have seen a Pakistani girl in a t-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes. I am having difficulty keeping my eyes off her perfectly tanned legs.
“You have big beautiful round….umm…eyes,” I finally move my eyes upwards from her legs, and find myself staring at her chest.
“Those aren’t my eyes, silly!”
Her comment catches me off-guard, and I feel embarrassed.
“You’re blushing,” she breaks out into her characteristic laugh.
“I saw you staring at my legs, earlier.”
“I wasn’t staring. Just contemplating.”
“Pakistani guys are so frustrated. Aren’t they?”
“Look….I have been locked up with men in uniform, in the boondocks of Pakistan, since I was fifteen,” I respond in justification. “There were times, when we didn’t even get to see a girl, in a burqa, for months.” “So I get excited when I see a bare ankle. What to talk of a full bare leg!”
“Hmm…I never took you to be a perv.”
“Well, now you know.” “Don’t tell me you dress like this in Pakistan, also.”
She winks at me, “Of course I do.”
“You know my mother would kill me if she saw me, lying on this bench, with you, like this.”
“So would mine,” I reply.
“Your mother would kill me! Why?”
“Not you! Me.”
“Why would your mother kill you? “You’re a guy. Everything goes for guys.”
“I’m sure your mother did these kinds of things, in her day, also,” I tease her.
“What about your mother?”
“My mother wasn’t that kind of a mother.”
“So you are suggesting that my mother was a slut?”
“No! I don’t even know your mother,” I reply. “Forget it. I should have never mentioned your mother.”
“What if you saw your daughter, with someone, like this?” she continues with her irritatingly inquisitive questions.
“I think,” pausing for effect, “I would probably….ummm… kill her.” “And then I would kill her boyfriend, also.”
“So you have no problem sitting here with someone else’s daughter. But you would kill your own daughter, if you caught her with a boy?”
“I told you, I would kill the boy also.” “In fact, I would expect your dad to kill me, if he ever caught me with his daughter, like this”
“And what if he didn’t kill you?”
“Hmm…then…I think….I would lose a lot of respect for him.”
“Do you fly fighter jets?”
“No. I just fix them.”
“Do you like your job?”
“No. I hate it.”
“Do you like the military?”
“No. I hate it,”
“Then why did you join?”
“It was your poet friend.” “I flunked Urdu literature in high-school, and didn’t have enough marks to get into any decent Engineering college.” “Not to mention strange family traditions of military service, going back to my great-grandfather.” What did your great-grandfather do?”
“He was a womanizing Nawab. Two wives. A few concubines. And countless mistresses.”
“My kind of guy,” I reply in an unsuccessful attempt to introduce some humor into the discussion.
The light orange sun starts kissing the horizon. “Time to go home,” she says. I put one arm under her knees; the other under her back and try to lift her up. She locks her hands around my neck, but I am still having difficulty holding her up.
“Awww! Isn’t this cute. My He-man. My Prince Charmiiii……nnnn….gg,” her voice tapers off, as she slips out of my arms, and with a loud thud, falls flat onto the grass.
xxxxxxxx
We have been meeting at, “our brown marble park bench” for a month and a half, now. It seems like we have known each other for years. I have no interest left in my training course, and am barely passing. Though, least bothered. I have attended three more of her singing performances. Each better than the other. I have now, myself, started taking interest in music. She has turned out to be a good teacher.
“Sawaras defining the ragas. Ragas defining the gamakas. Gamakas defining the melodies. The melodies defining the composition. And finally, the compositions defining the whole performance. This is the hierarchy of classical music,” she tutors me. “Oh yeah. I forgot. There are thaats and jatis also.”
Ragas, talas, kafis, khamaj, behr, atvar, radif. kayada, tukra, thaats, jatis: I am surrounded by things that, just two months ago, I wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot pole.
It is early Saturday evening. The stage is set in the exact same layout as before. The lights are low. The audience is quite and packed into the mid-sized auditorium, again.
“I am going to perform a small behr ghazal in raga bhimpalashri,” she starts of with the introduction. She glances over at the orchestra and gently nods.
The tabla player takes his cue. His right hand resting on the single headed bass byha tabla, with his wrist in the center and his fingers touching the front edge; his left hand on the cylindrical high-pitched dynha tabla; the index and middle finger straight on the trailing edge, with the ring finger at a forty-five degrees. He starts off by a set of ge, te and na strokes, performing a slow solo as he moves into a rhythm: ge ge te te ge ge na na; ke ke te te ke ke na na. His fingers moving back and forth on either tabla, adjusting to the technical requirements of each sound. He repeats this set of beats again and again, as if warming up the orchestra. As he accelerates, he jerks his head, nods to himself and breaks into a stream of the seven beat Rupak taal.
As the tabla player holds the beat, the sitar player joins in to handle the transitions between the ragas. The mizrab on his right index finger, shining in the light, his right thumb clinging to the edge of the sitar’s dand. He moves the mizrab across the four playing strings of the sitar gelling the gentle sitar melody with the bellicose beats of the tabla. His right hand moving up the strings in a dha stroke and downwards in a ra stroke.
The beat and transition established, the harmonium player finally decides to join in. Defining in music, the up and down sawaras (tones) of the raga the singer will be performing in voice. His left hand pressing the bellows the harmonium as the fingers of his right hand gently caress its black and white keys: seven tones of ne Sa ga ma Pa ne sa on the way up and eight tones of Sa ne Da Pa ma ga Re Sa on the way down – the aarohana and avarohana of rag bhimpalashri.
With the orchestra fully revved up, Nadia raises her right hand, her open hand facing upwards and starts off, perfectly matching the raag established by the harmonium. “Aaa-aa-AA-aa…,” her voice moving up and down the scale, in synch with the fingers of the harmonium player. She is a natural artist. Every person in the auditorium completely in the palm of her hand, as she utters the first Urdu verses:
jala-aa hae jiii-ism jaha-aaaaan, dillll bhi jal gayaaaa hooo ga
kuraaaaiiidte ho jo abb ra-aaakh, justajooooeee kiya hae……..
She moves from one ghazal to the next, switching between English during the introductions, and Urdu during the singing, with the command of a maestro. The audience - stunned by her good looks, impressed by her vast knowledge of poetry, and charmed by her beautiful voice is in complete daze. . Each man wanting to be next to her. And each woman wanting to be her.
I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
The show ends. I meet her backstage after she has changed, and we walk out of the auditorium.
“Did you see! Did you see how I had them glued to their seats?” she gloats. “They can’t get enough of my voice.”
“They can’t get enough of the see-through saris, you wear.” I reply.
“Yeah, right!” she punches me on my arm.
Jasmines in Colorado (part 2
“How long before…How long before….”
“How long before I lose all my hearing?” she completes the difficult sentence for me.
“Yes, how long.”
“I don’t know. It is getting worse and worse.”
“Will you be able to adjust?”
“It’s so hard. One moment your mind is filled with the sounds of the world, and the next day it is an empty silence. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t gone through it.”
“Can you hear yourself sing?”
“Yes, I know my voice in my mind. And I can still faintly hear the instruments. I follow the keys with my eyes. But the musicians have to adjust to my lead. I cannot follow them, now.”
“How do you cope, Nadia?” I reach out to hold her hand.
“We are more powerful than we realize. Our mind adjusts to stresses, in ways, one cannot imagine. Doctors have helped. Psychologists. My parents. The campus environment. My belief in God. My music and poetry. And friends; friends like you. And others,” she looks straight at me, her eyes filled with sincerity.
“ghum say kho-gar ho jo insaan tou phir mit jaata hai ghum…mushkalain mujh par pareen itni”
“kay aasaan ho gayeen,” she finishes off my sentence, exactly on cue, with a tear rolling down her cheek.
I gently wipe the tear off, with my thumb. I run my fingers through her hair, and once again, kiss her on her forehead. We start our long walk back from our bench to her apartment.
We walk along the grassy fields, towards the narrow path that we always follow through the small oak forest. I start to notice, more closely, every single sound in the air. Sounds that I had always ignored before: the birds singing; the crackling of the dry leaves, under our feet; the wind blowing through the branches of the trees; the students screaming out each other’s name; the sound of cars, at a distance.
“I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty… I can still hear, but with a lot of difficulty,” her words keep echoing through my mind, as I quietly walk, slightly behind and to the left of her. “How much can she hear? And with how much, “difficulty?” Can she hear the noises, in our surroundings that the rest of us take for granted. Or does she live in universe of complete silence? What does she do at night, when the world of sight changes to the world of sound? How does she hear her professors when they are teaching, if they are not facing her? And most of all, how does she hear the music, when she is singing? How does she stay in rhythm with the instruments? Does she feel the vibrations from the tabla, or can she actually hear it? What about the sitar and the harmonium? What about her own voice? Can she hear her own voice? How is she able to hit all the notes, so correctly, if she cannot hear herself?
I have so many questions.
We are walking silently towards her apartment, and haven’t said a word to each other for five minutes. Both lost in our own trains of thought. I feel like, deliberately, dropping the stack of library books in my hand, to see her immediate reaction to the loud noise. However, I, wisely, decide against this ridiculous idea.
“Quit staring at me,” I find myself staring at her again. I always wondered, why she rarely talked, whenever we are walking back in the evening. Now I know why. She cannot see my face clearly. Even in the afternoons, as we stroll around the lake, she always spends much of her time, walking backwards, in front of me, her arms crossed behind her - a habit, which I had written off to childlike playfulness, actually turns out to be a lot more than that. We have never gone anywhere, together, after sunset. Not even to a restaurant. And, it occurs to me that, until she disclosed her hearing loss to me, we had never even sat in a car or a cab, together. I have never even seen her driving her own car.
I am slowly starting to admire the dexterity and shrewdness with which she has hidden her hearing disability, from me.
“Why don’t you use a hearing aid?” I am not sure whether I should have asked this question or not.
“I do. But just not…” she starts off with her reply and then stops.
“But just not in front of me,” I complete her sentence. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want you to find out,” she finishes off her explanation.
“If this isn’t true love, then what is?” I start thinking to myself.
Jasmines in Colorado
Nadia only has ten more days remaining at the college, and I am helping her pack up whatever is left in her apartment. I still haven’t asked her the question. She doesn’t seem like the marrying type. And I don’t want to put any more pressure on her, in her current situation.
“Nadia, will you marry me?” “Will you marry me, Nadia?” “Marry me. Please don’t say No. Please?” “Do you have any plans for marriage. How about with me?” I run through as many possible proposal lines, in my mind that I can think of, without being able to settle on any.
“Do you like babies.....Oh, only fat ones…..Same here…..Well then how about you and I….”
“Marriage; weird concept. Isn’t it? Oh you don’t think it’s weird.…..Well then how about you and I get…”
“Man! Aren’t everyone and their grandmother getting married, nowadays?”
“You know twenty-four for a girl is almost like fifty-four for a guy……You’re almost over the hill……Haven’t you ever thought of marriage?”
Still no luck. I am unable to think of a single potentially successful line.
“Quit dozing off and get to work,” she shoves a 4 x 4 cardboard box into my chest.
“How come you’re not working?”
“I’m management,” she replies.
“And I am your only employee?”
“Yes.”
“Nadia, sit down,” I pull her down to the wooden floor, where the sofa used to be. “I have to discuss something important with you.”
She sits cross-legged, with her back against the wall.
“What happens to us, after you leave?” I ask.
She remains quiet.
“Where do we go from here?” I repeat.
She has turned into a statue; quietly gazing out of the window.
I start speaking slowly and enunciating clearly, thinking she is having difficulty hearing me, ”You and me. Where do we go from here?”
“I heard you the first time,” she replies slowly, clearly not wanting to discuss the subject.
“Well?”
There is a long silence, and then she starts off, all of a sudden.
“I don’t want to hurt you! I never wanted to hurt you! I don’t know how we ended up like this! I never thought it would get this far! I don’t know what I was thinking!” Her tone is desperate for some reason. She is taking the conversation, in a strange direction.
“Nadia, we will both be back in Pakistan. I don’t know how all this stuff works. But I want to marry you,” I surprise myself with such a straightforward approach.
“I…I…,” she seems to be in two minds. “I can’t! I can’t!”
“Why not?” I am confused. “You can’t or you don’t want to?”
“I can’t…and…and…I…don’t…want to.” “I just can’t.” “I don’t want to talk about it.”
We continue packing. There is a strange unfamiliar tension in the air, now. She seems very uncomfortable; unsuccessfully trying to avoid me in the confined spaces of her tiny apartment.
“What about all of this?” I remind her of the past four months.
“I don’t know,” she seems visibly uneasy, again.
“What do you mean you don’t know,” I try, unsuccessfully, to control my anger and confusion.
“I don’t know.”
I try to figure out the reasons behind her uneasiness: “I don’t make a lot of money, but we’ll have enough to support ourselves,” I think to myself. “We won’t be living in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad, but we’ll have some sort of a place to live.” “You probably won’t be able to do much of your singing and dancing, but you could keep working on your paintings.” Suddenly, like a losing contestant, on a dating show, I start to realize my comparative uneligibility as a marriage prospect.
“I probably wouldn’t marry me!” I conclude. “No wonder she keeps saying, “I don’t know,” I think to myself.
“I could move into a new profession,” I state excitedly, “Though it would be a bit hard to do that, for the next five years,” I add in a deflated voice, realizing the difficulties involved.
“It’s not that,” she finally stops repeating herself.
She walks into the bedroom, brings back her purse and pulls out an envelope that is strikingly similar to the one I had notice in her room a few weeks earlier: white, with purple flowers drawn on its left corner.
I open the envelope, pull out the letter inside, and start reading. Each line of the letter is more unbelievable than the next. I look up at her and then down at the letter, and then back up at her again. She seems completely unwilling to look me in the eyes. Her eyes locked onto the ground.
I finish reading the letter. “When were you planning to tell me about this!” I question her like an overpowering interrogator threatening a scared prisoner.
“I don’t know,” she seems visibly scared now, like a vulnerable wife standing, defencelessly, before an abusive husband.
“I…I owe…I owe you an explanation,” she stutters her way, through a very difficult sentence.
“You owe me a lot more than that, Nadia,” I start to walk out her apartment door.
“Wait….Please wait,” she replies in a tearful voice, as I slam the screen door shut, on my way out.
I get on my motorbike, look back at her apartment, and see her standing at the door, with her face in her hands, crying.
xxxxxxx
The next nine days are the worst days of my life.
I sleep. I wake. I eat. I go to work. I come back to my room and quickly try to sleep again. My only companion, during this whole time, is my trusty VCR.
It has slowly dawned upon me how ill-prepared I am for handling the complexities of close personal relationships. I am completely out of my league. Nothing in life had prepared me for the past four months. The highs and the lows; the excitement and the pains; and most of all, the truths and the lies. I feel like an amateur caught in a world made for professionals.
“All of this is too much for the emotionally stale and, otherwise, boring and humdrum life of mine,” I conclude. “It’s not worth it,” I try to convince myself.
“How does one learn to hate a person one loves,” I ask myself again and again. It is a process I am going through, with great difficulty, and without much success. The only thing I have done, over the past four months, is spend time with Nadia. “I have not even taken the time to see downtown Denver,” I scold myself.
A small red light, blinking once every second, indicates a message, awaiting my response. I haven’t checked my answering machine since yesterday.
The voice, at the other end, is familiar, though I have never heard it on the phone before:
“I don’t know if you will get this message. I can barely hear the beeps on your phone,” there is extreme desperation in her voice. “You know my hearing is not what it used to be,” the voice breaks down into tears. “I hope you get this message. I really hope you get it,” “I am leaving tomorrow evening for Pakistan.” “Please come and see me…Please…. Please….I can’t even hear myself speak,” I hear her sobbing. She continues to cry until the tape on the answering machine ends.
There is something very strange about the message. This is the first time I have heard Nadia show any kind of desperate sadness for her disability. Until now, she has always laughed and smiled away any difficulties, she has encountered due to her hearing loss, with a stubborn courage that I cannot help but admire. I have seen her on so many occasions, handle the most difficult hearing-related faux paus and otherwise embarrassing situations with the utmost grace and self-confidence.
Her uncharacteristic mention of her hearing loss is a final attempt to get me over to her apartment, to hear her side of the story. Suddenly, I find feelings of sympathy overtaking my feelings of anger. Perhaps, unconsciously, I have been looking for such an opening, myself, also.
I get on my motorbike to make my last trip to Colorado College. More importantly, I make my last visit to meet a girl, with whom, just two weeks ago, I was dying to spend the rest of my life.
As I knock on her empty apartment’s door, I see her reflection in the adjacent window, walking up behind me, with two cups of coffee in her hand. She is wearing a dark blue shalwar qameez – matching the color of her beautiful eyes - with a light blue dupatta. Her dark black hair, combed back and tied into a long ponytail. It is the first time I have seen her in such a traditional dress.
I turn around and see her standing at the bottom of the patio steps.
“You look nice.” “You should dress like this, more often,” I blurt out, like an over controlling husband, subtly, trying to influence his wife’s choice of clothes. For a moment, it feels like old times again; with me, instinctively, expecting a witty reply.
She remains quite and walks up the steps to the small patio, turns around, and sits on the top step. She places the second coffee cup down, and points me to the spot next to her. The look of nervousness, fear and anxiety, that was so apparent on her face the last time we met, has been replaced by a quite, but sad confidence. She has obviously been thinking over the whole situation, and knows exactly what she wants to say to me.
I walk across the patio, pick up the coffee cup, and sit down next to her. Unlike the physical closeness of the past four months, there is a two-foot wide invisible wall of formality between us, now.
“Is the second coffee cup for me?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies in a serious voice, which indicates she is not in the mood for small talk.
“How did you know I would come?” I continue with the small talk, not wanting to get into a difficult and complex conversation.
“One gets to know a person, after a while,” she replies.
“His name is Nadir,” she starts the conversation at a point where I had expected it to end.
“Is that what the Love, N., at the end of the letter, stands for?” I ask.
“Yes,” she answers, surprised at my strange question.
“I was twenty-one when my parents decided my engagement. I was…”
“Your parents decided your engagement?” I cut her off, before she can start her story. “You don’t seem like…”
She starts getting a bit agitated at my repeated unnecessary questions. “This is what I am normally like,” she points to her get-up. “I hope you don’t really think I go around Pakistan, in leather pants and cut-off shirts.”
“Actually, I wasn’t quite sure, one way or the other,” I reply.
“And girls like me, also, do get engaged to boys of their parents’ choice.” “I met him once, and he seemed nice,” she starts her well-rehearsed story again. “As nice as any other boy I could end up marrying,” she looks at me, hoping she hasn’t offended me.
She continues through the details of her story, looking at me, every now and then, to check my reaction.
“Two months after my engagement, before we had even had a chance to get to know each other, I found out I was going to lose my hearing.”
“Then a strange thing happened…..Nadir didn’t break off the engagement, like everyone thought he would.” “Even though he knew I was going to lose all my hearing, in a few years.” “Instead, he started calling me every week.” “But I ignored him…every week.”
“Why?” I interject curiously.
“I was in an extreme state of depression. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t get out bed. My whole life was shattering, right in front of me. My engagement was the last thing on mind.” “But he kept calling and kept sending me all kinds of gifts.”
“My parents fell in love with him.”
“What about you?” I ask.
“I barely knew him,” she replies.
“Do you love him?”
“No…. I still….I still don’t know him.” “But….,” “But…,” she looks at me again, trying hard not to offend me. “But, I respect him,” she replies, with an extra emphasis on the word, “respect.”
“When my parents decided to send me to the US, they were extremely nervous - certain, this time, his family would break off the engagement.” “There was no way Nadir was going to wait another three years to get married, we thought.”
“Once again he surprised me.”
“He didn’t break it off,” I find myself developing a strange sense of respect for this man - whom I have never met and who, in the present situation, is my competitor in this bizarre game of love.
“No. He didn’t.” “And I didn’t know what to do.” “Ever since we were engaged, I haven’t written back to him once. But he still writes to me to me twice a month.”
“Why haven’t you written back to him?” I ask, trying to sound as sympathetic as I can.
“The last three years have been very hard, for me. I was trying to get my life back together. My engagement and marriage were the last things on my mind,” she repeats the same words, as if pleading a case before a jury.
“But you know what?”
“What?” I ask.
“After a while, I realized it was only his letters that were keeping me going. He was so supportive. Precious words of encouragement, once every two weeks, from an almost unknown stranger.”
“And then, nine months ago, I received a letter from my parents telling me that I was going to get married.”
“Married?” I reply. “But you don’t seem like the type of girl who would let her parents…”
“There is a lot you don’t know about girls. Especially Pakistani girls,” she cuts me off mid-sentence. “I flew back to Pakistan, for a simple nikaah ceremony. I met him again, for the second time, and then immediately flew back.”
“You’re married!” I scream out.
“Yes,” she starts to lose her composure. “Yes….,” she takes a long pause. “Technically… speaking….Yes,” once again she seems vulnerable.
“But, do you love him?” I find myself getting angry again.
“No. I don’t even know him,” she is visibly shaken, now.
“Have you two…have you two,” I feel uneasy asking the question. “Have you two sl…”
“No!” she answers quickly, as if reading my mind.
“So you are still a…” I feel strange asking her such private questions.
“Yes. Of course!” she replies loudly, as if trying to justify her virtues.
“Can you leave him?” I surprise myself with my bluntness.
“No,” she replies. “I……I can’t.”
“Is it your parents?”
”No.”
“Then what?”
“I’m married. I can’t break my marriage,” she looks at me, hoping for some sympathy.
“You don’t love him! You barely know him!” we are back to square one and she can tell from the exaggerated gestures of my face that I am screaming again. “Your parents got you married to him. And you can’t leave him!” “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Stop yelling at me!” she finally gets defensive. “You have no right to yell at me!”
Once again, I am faced with a sight I am not used to. Her confidence has proven short-lived. The steely exterior has broken down and she has started to cry again.
We sit silently for the next five minutes. Not knowing what to say to each other. Then she finally develops the courage to continue the conversation, from where she had left off. “He……He wanted me…He wanted me….when no one else did,” she does her best to justify her decision. “You don’t know what it was like.” Her explanations get more and more detailed as she tries, desperately, to describe a condition to me that I can never comprehend.
Finally, overwhelmed by the situation, and by my lack of understanding, as if a dam has broken, she lets out three years of frustration, in one scream. It is a scream filled with pain and sorrow - a stubbornly frustrating acceptance of her physical limitations. Like a proud warrior, who has gallantly fought against overwhelming odds, but is eventually forced to, unwillingly, accept defeat, in a stream of tears, she yells out,
“Who will marry a deaf girl in Pakistan!”
“I will……..I will,” I desperately want to say to her.
Everything starts to fall into place and make sense. I put my hand on her shoulder. It’s the first time we have touched each other, all day. “I understand,” I reply; successfully controlling my desire to say, “I will.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when we first met?” I ask her. “I would have understood.”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “I didn’t expect it to go so far. I never thought you would ask me to marry you!” she replies, as if she is still surprised at my proposal.
“You swept me off my feet and I didn’t want to think about anything else. For four months, I forgot all my problems. Life became simple again. It became fun, again.” “I didn’t want to think about anything else….I stopped opening Nadir’s letters….I even forgot….even forgot….that I am married.”
I look over my shoulder to ensure she is talking to me. “Me!…,” I point to myself. “I swept you off your feet!” “I couldn’t sweep a professional call-girl off her feet, if I offered her five thousand dollars,” I try to put her at ease.
She laughs for the first time in the day. “Well, you did.” “I forgot about my problems, my pressures, my parents. I guess….I guess….I even forgot about my husband.”
“aashiq huun per maashuuq_farebii hai mera kaam
majnu ko bura kahtee hai, Laila maray aagay,”
I try my best to keep her smiling.
“You’re a good teacher, Nadia. I am getting pretty good at this poetry stuff,” I add.
“Yeah,” she smiles, as she wipes off her tears.
“That’s much better. I don’t like seeing you cry.”
She has gotten everything out of her system. And seems more relaxed. “I have hurt you. Haven’t I?”
“No,” I reply.
“No?” she seems almost offended.
“I was never attracted to you, Nadia.” “You talk way too much. And you are far too high-maintenance, for my taste.” “And I don’t agree with your choice of clothes. I am far more conservative.”
“Oh really!”
“Yes.” “I was just using you for four months. Then I was going to throw you away like a used piece of lingerie.” “That’s what I do to all my girls.”
“How many other girls do you have?” she asks, emphasising the word, “other.”
“Eight, ten….maybe twelve….I try to keep them in even numbers. It’s easier to keep track of them, that way,” I reply.
“Hmmm….and you wear lingerie? I didn’t know that,” she tries to act surprised.
“You’re not the only one, who has secrets in life, Nadia.” “We all have a past,” I try to sound as serious as I can. “You’re married. And I wear lingerie. I was going to tell you earlier, but the situation was so diffi..”
“OK. Stop it,” she gently kicks me on my ankle. She is smiling from ear to ear.
“I am like a wild stallion,” I add. “No single girl can ever tie me down.” “I can’t afford to lose my bad-boy image.”
“Bad-boy image and you!....hmm.”
She puts her hand on my knee, “Thanks for understanding.” She seems very relieved - emotionally exhausted and relaxed, at the same time.
For the next three hours, we sit on the patio, at a careful distance from each other, and talk. The sun will start setting soon. It’s getting to the time for her to leave.
“I wonder what Ghalib would have said, in a situation like this?” she asks.
“He probably would have said, “Mujh say pehli see mohabbat mairay mehboob na maang,” I answer.
“That’s Faiz. Stupid!”
The Yellow Cab arrives, exactly as ordered. 7:00 pm. It’s time for her to leave. We are both trying to act as casual as possible; knowing fully well that in a few minutes, our lives are about to take two completely divergent paths.
I help her load her suitcases into the cab.
The past four months have taken too much out of both of us. We do not have any more emotions left to express. She turns towards me – a model of grace, beauty, wit and courage. I can tell she is trying hard to hold back her tears, again.
“This is so difficult.”
“Pakistani men aren’t as bad as they are made out to be. Are they?” I ask her.
“No,” she replies softly, as if talking to herself ……”Not the two in my life.”
“Your husband is a very lucky man. Make sure you look after him.”
She looks straight into my eyes, “I am so sorr…..”
“Shhhh….,” I put my index fingers on her lips. “Ishq pay koee zour naheen, hai yeh woh aatish Ghalib,” I struggle through, what will probably be our last ever exchange of poetry.
“Jo lagaaee na lagay,” she stops in between, and then quietly completes the verse. “Bhujayee na bhujay.”
We stand, face to face, possibly, for the last time in our lives. Ready to say our final goodbyes. Both of us, doing our best to maintain the formalities of our new relationship; on the edge of our toes, trying hard to resist the temptation of giving each other a long parting hug. I walk to my motorbike, reach into my helmet, and pull out my final gift for her. The flowers are still fresh and a little wet, even though I purchased them five hours ago. I gently grab her left hand in mine, and roll the gajra onto her wrist.
“You finally found jasmines in Colorado!” she looks amazed.
I try to keep my eyes on her fading silhouette, in the back seat – her face lowered and covered with both her hands - as the cab, slowly, drives away out of sight.
“Khudaa……..hafiz, Nadia” I whisper, silently, to the girl who has shown me parts of my personality that I didn’t even know existed. “Thanks for everything, Nadia….I will never forget you…Thanks for….Thanks for being you.”
And just like that, it’s all over.
I decide to take a quiet lonely walk, through the small oak forest, to the lake. Summer is changing into autumn. The weather is getting colder. A blue jay, flutters its wings, and flies off the top branch of an oak tree, causing a few dry leaves to slowly drift downwards, in front of me. I notice a small group of professors, laughing and talking as they casually jog around the track, next to the lake. Some students are throwing a frisbee, back and forth, on the open grassy fields. A few couples, walking, hand in hand, at a distance. The sun is just about to set. There is a small amount of snow, visible, on the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, in the background.
The scenery is still as beautiful, as ever; totally unaffected by the events of the past four months.
I sit there for the next two hours, contemplating my future, as night starts to set in. I am all alone; staring aimlessly into the depths of the lake in a quiet nostalgic silence. It occurs to me that this will be the last time in my life that I will sit on, “our brown marble park bench.”
I find myself exiting out of these four months, with the same speed as I entered into them.
xxxxxxx
“My Dearest Umair,
I had promised I would write; so here I am. The last four months have been so hectic. Have you finished your training? Is it snowing yet? Do you still take the daily walk to our bench on the lake? Is it still, “our” bench?
I am married. I don’t mean married, like before. Baraat, rukhsati; the whole nine yards. Everyone says Nadir and I make a lovely couple! Nadir and Nadia - they seem to like the similarity in names. I wish you could have been at my wedding. Actually, no I don’t. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. How would you have handled it?
There hasn’t been a day, when I haven’t thought about you. I tried writing to you every afternoon, but couldn’t gather enough energy to do so. I cried myself to sleep, every night, till my wedding day, thinking of you.
It’s fate, Umair.
Had our paths crossed a year earlier, things would have been different. Perhaps, God meant it to be this way. Nadir is a good man. Don’t worry. He will look after me. I can see it in his eyes. In the way he looks at me. He loves me. And over time, I will learn to love him, as well.
A small house, a small child, a loving husband and a pet goldfish; what more could a Pakistani girl want? Isn’t that what you always told me?
Do you still think of me, when you read Ghalib? Do you miss me? Do you cry? Promise me you will always think of us, when you read poetry. Promise me you will write your book someday. Promise me you will learn to sing. Learn to dance. And no, it’s not gay. Men do dance.
Promise me, you will fall in love again. Promise me, you will get married. You will make a wonderful husband, Umair. I know it. Promise me you will love your wife and look after her. Promise me, someday, you will take her to our brown marble park bench, by the lake, and kiss her on her forehead. Like you used to kiss me, every evening. Promise me, you will have children. Will you name your first daughter after me? Will there be a little Umair running around in my house, and a little Nadia in yours?
I am so sorry about not telling you everything, the first day we met. I am sorry for hiding my hearing loss. I am sorry for not telling you about my nikaah. I will never forgive myself for that. I know I have hurt you, greatly. Will you ever forgive me? Will Nadir ever forgive me, if I tell him about us?
If, only, there were two of me.
What could I do? Love is blind; isn’t it? “Ishq pay koee zour naheen…” Right. One cannot plan love. One, “falls” into it, completely unexpectedly, and keeps falling, until it’s too late to get out. Doesn’t one? The four months we spent together, were the best four months of my life. I will cherish them, forever. What we had was special. How many people ever get to experience that? How many people have the good fortune of sharing their love with the one soul mate of their lives; even if only for four months?
Did I tell you I am thinking of opening a classical dance school, for girls, in Karachi. The doctors have told me my deafness is not going to improve. Don’t worry, Umair. I am getting used to it, now. God doesn’t give everything to one person. Does He? He has already given me more than my shares of joy, in life. As have you. Nadir is learning sign language. We are attending lip reading classes together. He has been so supportive.
And I am pregnant! I guess I won’t be riding any motorbikes for a while, now. Yes, me; the girl who always insisted women shouldn’t have kids till they have their careers established, is pregnant at twenty-four! Marriage changes a girl’s outlook on life. Specially a Pakistani girl’s. I want Nadir to have someone to talk to, with ease, on a regular basis. And I want to feel motherhood. It’s a wonderfully exciting feeling, Umair. As exciting as riding a motorbike up Pikes Peak, on a cool Colorado afternoon.
I will always sing. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? It’s more difficult now, since I can barely hear anything. But I will sing. Singing is who I am. It’s my identity. I will sing for my husband. I will sing for my child-to-be. I will sing for all the music lovers. For the birds in the trees. But most of all, I will sing for you. And for all the wonderful memories, we shared.
I want to ask you to try to forget me. But I know you will not be able to. Believe me; I have tried everything to forget you. I cannot. I will never be able to. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Somehow. And I know you will be, as well.
Now, it’s time for both of us to move on.
I am crying. I can’t write anymore. I must end this letter.
dil hee to hae, na sung-o-khisht; dard sae bhar na aayee kiyoon
ro-aien gae hum hazaar baar, koee hum-aien sa-tae kiyoon
I will always love you Umair…………………for the rest of my life……
Nadia”
I gently fold the letter, along its old creases. I slowly run my fingers across the text I had written, twelve years ago, on the back of the paper: “’`Tis better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all….” The ink seems as fresh as the day I wrote it.
“Two soul mates?” she asks, trying hard to hold back the tears swelling in her eyes.
“Yes,” I reply softly, as I slowly turn my head, towards my wife, to answer her question. The sun is setting, over the lake, behind her right shoulder. The autumn leaves have completely covered the grass, forming a golden-brown carpet that merges nicely with the light orange horizon in the distance. The cold evening breeze has started to blow across the lake, and through her hair. She pulls her sweater sleeves over her fingers, and hugs her large hot coffee cup, with both hands, for warmth.
It’s our ten-year wedding anniversary – an arranged marriage, which has successfully survived the various ups and downs that life has thrown our way. I have put on a bit of weight. I have lost some hair, and the rest will start greying soon. Preparing to cross the inevitable bridge into the midlife of my late thirties – from where age will finally start to show.
“I can’t even understand Ghalib.” A tear finally rolls out of her eye, down her cheek, and splashes, soundlessly, on the brown marble park bench. As if in slow motion.
“Did you ever get a chance to see her again?”
“No,” I reply slowly, pointing to the letter. “This was the last time we ever communicated.”
“Do you still love her?” she asks, without a hint of jealousy in her voice.
“Yes, I do,” I answer quietly, gazing deep into the surreal quietness of the lake. Surprising even myself with the spontaneity of my reply.
“More…,” she hesitates. “…More than…more than you love me?” she finally completes her question, as she turns to face me; wanting and not wanting an answer.
I smile gently. I raise my head and stare into her eyes. She is still as beautiful as the day I married her. “No,” I reply softly.
I put my left arm around her shoulder, bringing her close to me. I run my right hand through her hair, and, gently, kiss her on her forehead.
Suddenly, I sense the fragrance of jasmines in the air. Or is it just my imagination?
most, coz if they cant understand ur silence they can never understand ur words.
