"I used to fantasise about a conversation we never had
in which she said: Darling, I'm overstretched and this is what my work diary
looks like, and these are the uncertainties I have to factor in. Would you mind
if we kept our plans tentative? I'll let you know as soon as I can't make it.
The dream I imagined would fill me with love. In the daydream, I felt wanted,
cared about, I felt thought of. Once I met Marcy for lunch in London - this was
before I started seeing Emily. Marcy was visiting on business. She had brought
Josie with her, who was four at the time, and in fact I had arranged a
babysitter so that Marcy could go to her meetings. I arrived with a present for
Josie, a toy giraffe, giraffes being something of an obsession of hers. When
she took the toy, this child of four said, with her soft brown eyes looking
straight into mine and in a voice containing a tiny element of surprise that
almost broke my heart, You thinked of me. The daydream I used to have was one
in which I felt thought of by Emily. Life is short, as the old saw goes, and
there is so little time on this earth, none of it, not one minute, ever to be
recovered, the years of the locust restored not here if anywhere, lost time
never to be found, time so dear that the respect for another's time must be the
very beginning of respect, so that if a lover can't give you that first respect
then...well."
From In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rehman.
From In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rehman.
Fall of Junior year, post Economic Development at Hampshire.
I remember driving back to school with about four other girls in the car, but
no one whom I’d be comfortable shedding tears in front of. If you knew me even
a little bit, which I sometimes doubt if you do- because you always loved, only
ever learnt to love, carefully sculpted versions of me that fit neatly into
your imagination of the idea of I, you would know that I hated, hate, being
vulnerable. That I had let down certain walls with you in the blind hope that
you would not violate what was behind them. I was, of course, mistaken. I’m
still hoping, and therein lies my naivety (although I doubt it can be called
that now, after all this time, and my own obtuseness.
That day we had an argument, and like most of ours, it was
stupid. You told me you didn’t enjoy talking to me anymore, that it felt like a
burden, that you wanted this to end. It wasn’t the first time you had said
this, and it wasn’t the last time you would. I remember breaking down in the
car, and I remember that no one knew what to do- what could they have done?
Hand me a tissue and say “There, there, it’ll be fine”? How do you respond to
ugly, uncontrolled emotion from someone who is normally so composed?
So they let me be. A pat here and there, but they left me
alone. They never brought it up again, and whenever I revisit the incident in
my mind, I am grateful for their understanding, for not asking.
I got home and called you, that was the day I ran up a
massive phone bill- which you paid for. $3 dollars a minute for a conversation
where I was begging you to rethink, and we know that begging is a torturous,
long winded process. A hundred and eighty dollars, eighteen thousand rupees,
and God knows how many dirhams. And I suppose it was a transaction we made to
absolve you of the guilt of my humiliation, the unnecessary pain you caused me
time and again.
Oh, love makes fool of all of us.
Even now, you make me buckle down in front of my own demons.
