"You were a wreck back then."

Excuse me while I try to decode realities in my little coffee shop bubble. And not just any coffee shop, a Starbucks- doesn't get better than that. As the days draw closer to the seven years it's been, I find myself dwelling on the way things played out, with a friend's words echoing in my head. Funny I can even refer to him as a friend now, because somewhere in there I remember immense pain, and then another realization- did it matter how it felt then? Does it always matter to feel when you're young, or is there a defined line between when whatever happens in your heart becomes consequential and before that, when everything is as raw as the blacks and the whites of your existence?
What does it mean to get to a place where you look back not only at yourself and your own trainwrecks, but also those of others and think oh, but if only we'd listened, if only she'd listen and save herself the sorrow. Because the tumultuous back and forth between reality and melodrama aside, what always stands out is the immense strength of raw pain that disregards completely how much it matters or whether it even will five years down the road. What makes sense is the indignation when someone informs you that this is all deja vu, and you swear it's different.
It is, and it isn't. Neither here nor there, uncontrollable and just how it is.
So is there an answer to the happiness question? Maybe not, and strangely enough, the more you learn, the murkier it gets. But there might be a certain pride to be taken in pulling yourself together from the worst of times. I think perspective and the acquisition of it is the biggest gray area I know.

I remember when they inaugurated the activation of this very unremarkable fountain in the middle (?) of the sea. There were fireworks, and the people of Karachi had something to look forward to that weekend. The police cordoned off Seaview. If there's one thing you should know about the security forces in Karachi, it's that they're perpetually found cordoning off one area or another. We went to our khala's place and stood in her balcony on the tenth floor, obnoxious male cousin in tow, watching as the bright lights and smoke filled the air. I remember looking at the the men who were setting these gigantic fireworks off, they looked like ants from that high up. I remember being concerned for their safety and hoping they didn't get burnt. But it was gorgeous, and for those fifteen minutes I forgot all about all the sadness I felt back then.
Too much teenage angst, coupled with feeling betrayed and too saddened for my own good. Those really were the days.
A year or two went by. The fountain no longer worked, and I was probably still angry. No one seemed to remember the fireworks, and in school people cracked dirty jokes about the now inactive fountain, the nature of which shouldn't be too difficult to guess.
And now I'm here, and I remember the fountain and the fireworks, but most of all I remember the sea it was in the middle of.

scrap metal queen.

It's countdown time again, three and a half months and then I'll be in my mother's car on the forty minute drive to our house, and I'll feel the rush that comes from being exhausted and ecstatic at the same time, make the customary joke about Bilawal house and Zardari's inconvenient blocking of the main road, and settle into life at home like I never really left again.

That car, which is more like a pile of scrap metal, is one of the many mechanisms I've somehow learned to use in order to screen people and decide whether they're worth the trouble of keeping or not. One of my friends jokingly referred to my mum as the scrap metal queen once, and we both laughed. I find it hard to be offended by it still, simply by virtue of the fact that she came over one day in her fancy car, with the driver and the works, and accepted those facts of our different lives with an ease that very few people have stomach to digest. She sat on the tiny stool in the kitchen while I poured chai out for her and myself, and told her how my prospects in life were probably better than her's since I can make some damn good chai,and that's what you need to find a great husband. The irony of our shared feminism lingered in the air, a kind of camaraderie that comes from knowing you're sailing in the same boat on a level that most people can't fathom. But most of all, I'm grateful to her and to my friends for making me feel comfortable in my own skin. It's not easy to be poor amongst the rich, and it's not easy to start telling your story from square one. Besides, I never want to tell anyone who feels the need to ask. How are you worth anything if you can't wait?

I have another anecdote about that car. It breaks down nearly every day, by the way. Flat tires, dead battery, something or the other. Sometimes I like watching people's reactions when I step out of that car with my sisters. We don't look like the sort of girls who'd step out of something that dilapidated, but in this case appearances become that hilarious inside joke that makes you laugh out loud at the world repeatedly. Everything is relative, especially appearances, but I digress. That car. When I finally saw him again, it wasn't a face to face encounter, but me staring down from the balcony watching him walk across the parking lot towards my mother's pile of scrap metal (which had a flat tire), and ask her if she needed help with it. And that's when my mother accidentally met him. I suppose that's when I thought he was a keeper too. Different worlds, and he didn't miss a beat there, nor did he ask questions. I guess I can forgive him for not being a chai connoisseur. 

As for that car, I have a feeling that long after these struggles are over, my mother will keep it just for sentimental value. It's a member of the family, 15 years is a long time to have anything. She can swear it listens to her, and isn't just an inanimate object. I don't know the details of their conversations, but I hope they like talking to each other.

I'll keep the people who've made me accept the way things are, and that I don't have to be ashamed.

November 7th, 2010

So you allow yourself to stand there, in the middle of all that vast endlessness, right in the center, and feel like the world's spotlight is shining down on you and you're looking up at it. You can't decide whether it makes you feel important or impossibly small, whether you want it all or none of it, and if it even makes a difference now that you're here and this is life.

it comes and goes and comes and goes and comes and goes, and i'm up and down, then down and up, until it's churning in my stomach and it becomes me, or am i it?
never invited, never announced
these monsters, they come and go.

nearly 7.

There is a while remaining. You haven't left yet, and I am half a month short of my 14th birthday. The sequence of events isn't clear in my head, and it's probably unclear in her's as well. I wouldn't want to bother her with the trivialities in my mind anyway, she has enough demons of her own. So half a month short of my 14th. I divide my time between the hospital and home. I don't really want to be there, and I don't quite understand a dying man's need to see his children. I'm strangely aloof. Not old enough to know what it means to be above it all, and even if I was, not above it anyway. Just not there. There's a garden near the conference center, around a housing unit of sorts. In that garden are swings. We play there, 13, 10 and 3. He forgets our names sometimes. You can tell by the look in his eyes, it's vacant but trying to place us, he knows but not quite. 3, she's the hardest to remember, she hasn't been there long enough. She is the most cherished, with her honey colored hair that glows red in the sun and her little teeth and infectious smile. Too young to lose that twinkle in her eyes. She's the beautiful one, I wonder if he thinks he's imagining her. I do. Sometimes I'll get bored waiting and make a few phone calls to no one important. A few months later you will be gone and after that I will be in love and suffering from a malady I will never quite be able to cure in myself. A month and a half later I'll be sitting in the balcony I often stand in alone, in the middle of the night and watch the cars going round and round and round the roundabout. Everything is a blur. But then a sudden 3 am wake up, and in the morning there's rain, and then in the night you're gone. Between today and tomorrow you cease to be.
Another hospital. I hold your dying hand. You're breathing but gone. I shed a few tears, and no more after that. Not for a while anyway.
She's asking doctors if there's any way to save you, they say no. Do you want to hook him up to life support? There is no point, 80% organ failure. There is twenty percent of you left, neatly divided. Which part of you remains?
She signs the papers that will allow the twenty to join the rest of you. Her hand is shaking, but composure hasn't been lost. There are tears, oh there are more than tears. Seventeen years gone. You gone. She holds the pen and stares at it, then sinks down against a wall.

put yourself back together.
no one else will.