Tunnel Vision (25 page)

‘
Saad,
'
the words tumbled out with a terrible urgency, as if my mouth wanted to get its two cents in before demon Ayesha kicked in again,
‘
marry me. Marry me and I won
'
t be angry anymore.
'

His silence pinned me to my seat for what seemed like infinity, but the dashboard clock told me not even a minute had passed.When he finally turned to look at me, I fled, unable to meet his eyes, stumbling out of the seat and practically falling on the road. Ripping the keys out of my bag I dashed to my car, fumbling with the keys before I managed to open the door and dive in. My ears were stinging, my nose beginning to tickle as blood rose to cover my humiliation. I screeched off. I didn
'
t know if Saad had gotten out of his car or come after me. I didn
'
t know what he had said, if he had said anything at all, when he turned to look at me. I never looked back.

At the FTC traffic light I read my story on the back of a truck and wept, not caring that the hawkers could see me. Then the accident happened. The last time Saad had seen my face, it must have looked like my mother
'
s.

NAMAZ PARHO ISS SAY PEHLAY KAY TUMHARI NAMAZ PARHI JAYAY

GRAFFITI

~

T
he marionette on the hospital bed began a dance of agitation. The bed rattled, IV shook, things beeped and the canola sighed resignedly to itself and withdrew from flesh without much prompting. Adil squawked
‘
what
'
s happening to her?
'
to the nurses who rushed in from the station outside to join red nails. They ignored him and set about pinning my arms to my side with practiced ease. People flooded into the room, Dr Shafiq in the front, and Adil was quickly ushered out with a
‘
we
'
ll let you back in as soon as we can.
'
I settled, soon, but Dr Shafiq was looking worried. A tiny frown line marred his otherwise smooth forehead as he chewed pensively on his lower lip. The nurses flocked around him like bees to honey. How come there were such few male nurses? And female doctors?

‘
This is not the best possible thing that could have happened,
'
Dr Shafiq said to no one in particular.

‘
Yes sir,
'
a nurse murmured as if in response to a private conversation. One of her colleagues shot her a curious glance.

‘
I remember this happened to that mother of four we had in here last month,
'
she chimed in.

‘
The mother of four, right,
'
the doctor replied,
‘
do you recall what we did?
'

The first nurse prattled something as he nodded his head, their limbs seemed to move independently of their mouths. He was unusual, this one. Not stingy with what he knew, not afraid of burdening their poor female brains with matters too complex for them to understand. No wonder they adored him. And that they adored him was obvious, to everyone but the good doctor himself, of course.

Dr Shafiq remained clueless. That
'
s the attractive thing about very smart people, they
'
re oblivious to the emotional undercurrents that swirl around them. I wished I had been smart in my lifetime, but what difference would it have made? Would life be easier to wrestle into submission if we were governed by impulses like pleasure and principle rather than insecurity and guilt? Would that have enabled me to rise above the emotional constipation and misdirected frustration that riddled my own household? Then again, who knew what the doctor
'
s home life was like, or what he was like with his wife, if he had one. Maybe he slapped her. Twice. Every morning.

‘
Have Dr Altaf on standby,
'
he was saying to the nurse nearest the door,
‘
if the pressure doesn
'
t ease soon we might have to try and relieve it ourselves.

‘
You
'
re a pretty girl,
'
he remarked to my limp form suddenly,
‘
don
'
t make me do ugly things to your cranium.
'

He walked out, most of the others scuttling after him. Two of the nurses gave me the evil eye as they passed.

Pressure? What pressure? Who was he talking to? What was he talking about? And was that really my ex-boyfriend standing playing cricket with Adil in the corner?

AAP NAY KIS SAY BAAT KARNI HAI?
MAINAY SIRF AAP SAY BAAT KARNI HAI

PHONE PICK UP LINE IN THE DAYS BEFORE CALLER ID.

~

I
t
was
my ex-boyfriend Omar playing cricket with Adil in the corner. They were using three IV poles as the wicket. And a taped tennis ball. Didn
'
t they realize this was a hospital? Someone could get hurt.

‘
She
'
s awake,
'
Adil grunted as he bowled

‘
CHAKKA!
'
Omar roared as he swung the bat. The window shattered. Adil was going to be cut to ribbons by the flying glass, except there wasn
'
t any. He turned to me and smiled.

‘
Ashoo, you won
'
t believe who
'
s here to see you!
'
he sounded annoyingly cheerful, like he
'
d discovered a million rupees in his bottle top.

‘
Hello Ayesha,
'
Omar stood by the bedside looking distinctly uncomfortable, shoulders hunched and hands tucked into his pockets in a stance I knew well. He
'
d used it frequently in class when delivering presentations or answering questions. It meant he was shy, and scared. Not that he
'
d ever admit it of course. Show me the man who can be honest about his feelings, and I
'
ll show you the sari and lipstick hidden in the back of his closet.

Omar looked down at me and ran a finger parallel to my arm, almost but not quite touching it, respecting propriety. Astral or not, I felt a tingle where my spine would be.
‘
Last time I was in a hospital the situation was reversed. I was the one in that bed.
'

‘
Oh yeah,
'
Adil looked quizzical, but uninterested.
‘
You remember?
'

‘
I was just a kid when you two were together,
'
Adil said, flustered,
‘
that is, I assumed you two were together. I mean, I don
'
t think we
'
ve ever really met before. Didn
'
t you take a beating for her or something?
'

Adil laughed at his own joke, then shushed when Omar said,
‘
Something like that.
'

‘
No, seriously?
'
Adil asked again.

‘
Let
'
s just say I took the beating because she was the girl. I would like to state, for the record, that if your sister were a man she
'
d get beaten up at least once a week.
'

‘
Yes, she is a regular little scrapper.
'

Patronizing pigeon-holing pricks. If I had indeed been a man, my aggressiveness, for want of a better word (though strength of character did spring to mind, to be quashed by the bulldozer of my modesty) would have been seen for the asset that it was. It was a dog eat dog world regardless of whether you were a man or a woman, something that probably hadn
'
t yet permeated the membrane of love created around these two by the women in their lives. In fact, if it weren
'
t for women, most men would just up and die from emotional exhaustion, boredom and hunger. That
'
s why the savages in the tribal belt remained savages, by keeping
‘
their
'
women confined they scuppered any chances of personal evolution. But wait. Then how to explain what happened to America? Never mind, the point was if I were a man, I wouldn
'
t be a
‘
regular little scrapper.
'
I
'
d be prime minister Ayesha (President General Chairman NSC Ayesha if I wanted to have any real authority).

Ah Omar, I thought, you always made me feel so good about myself, like the things that made me different were the things that made me good. When had I lost that feeling? Was it before I met Saad? Was it because of Saad? Did my mother pinch it when I wasn
'
t looking?

‘
How
'
s your mother?
'
Omar asked.

Adil stiffened a little,
‘
Fine, fine. Doing well.
'

‘
Really? Where is she? How come she wasn
'
t fielding?
'

‘
Er … she went home. She didn
'
t bring her whites.
'

‘
Ah, okay.
'

‘
I told her to rest for a while and come back for the second innings,
'
Adil grew more confident,
‘
I hope she has a good long nap. She
'
s old. This strain might be too much for her.
'

‘
Right, I wanted to say salaam to her, that
'
s all, though I don
'
t even know if she
'
d remember me.
'

‘
I
'
m sure you
'
ll see her later if you
'
re still around,
'
Adil began to fidget, then blurted,
‘
listen, great seeing you! But I gotta jet! I really need to call my girlfriend and tell her to bring an extra pair of false eyelashes to the soyem for my mother.
'

‘
Will she be doing the make-up?
'

‘
I think so, if she agrees. I
'
d ask Ayesha who she wants, but,
'
they both looked critically at me,
‘
she
'
s so miserly with her honest opinion there really isn
'
t any point, is there?
'

‘
Of course not. Take your time.
'

Patting his shoulder in gratitude, Adil exited smartly, pulling his cellphone out of his pocket as he moved in his impatience to call Farah. How nice it would have been to be immune to reality too.

I hadn
'
t seen Omar for years. If I hadn
'
t been in a coma, and he hadn
'
t been imaginary, the silence would probably have been awkward. As it was, there was just silence. I studied Omar
'
s face as he studied mine, the broad shoulders and strong fingers, almost but not quite touching mine, awakening my old friend the magic tingle, and his tilted cheekbones rousing memories of Saad. I noted other similarities and realized that if men were commodities, I preferred one brand to all others. Consumer loyalty. Now, what would I buy with my bonus points?

The attractive:unattractive ratio for Pakistani men was something like 1:100,000. Attractive was not the same as good-looking of course; good-looking was a rarer subset, the good-looking:ugly ratio being 1:10,00,000. There were many beautiful women. Especially in Lahore.

Karachi women didn
'
t like Lahore.

It was only logical that competition for attractive men was fierce. We were supposed to be trained from birth to strive for the impossible, that is, find, tempt and land an attractive Pakistani man.

To be considered attractive in the local context, a Pakistani man had to meet most (if not all) of the following criteria:

Be rich, well connected, or (very) gainfully employed.

Not smell.

Not be cross-eyed, hunchbacked, or club-footed.

Not be non-Muslim (unless you were non-Muslim, in which case the last thing you wanted at the end of all the pointing and laughing was a Muslim).

If a man had all of the above, he automatically qualified to enter the eligible bachelor pool where further ranking was derived on the basis of questions like,
‘
was he a mommy
'
s boy, did he have a sense of humour, was he broad-minded or ultra-conservative, did he live in a joint family system, was he kind to children?
'
Omar and Saad both rated off the scale, fulfilling all the basic criteria and passing most other tests with flying colours, all except the
‘
mommy
'
s boy
'
question, which was hard to answer because neither of the two had ever introduced me to their mothers. Maybe they
'
d been deliberately flying under the mommy
'
s boys radar all along!

I wouldn
'
t be ungrateful, I hadn
'
t done too badly, considering Omar and Saad were the only two men I had ever responded to, not the only two men who had ever shown interest in me. Of course, if a Pakistani woman counted every man who had ever shown an interest in her, she
'
d go cross-eyed counting. The parliamentarians who heckled pretty women members of parliament and were obsessed with whether purdah-wearing MPs should have photo IDs were not wasting time on issues redundant to the national interest; women
were
the national interest. And occasionally even national sport, or was that hockey? I always did get my ball games mixed up. The point was, from a purely objective point of view, I hadn
'
t done too badly. House, car, cash flow, infants (mother and brother), and all without having to simper at innuendo laced songs about mattresses, horses and cholis.