Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  *

  Much like I was now. I had drifted back to the present, to my self in the hospital. Mamu and Ammi were missing, Amna Mumani was praying and blowing over me as if mystically infused carbon dioxide was going to help me wake up. But then, we all have our crutches.What was taking mine so long? If Saad showed up, maybe his presence would be strong enough to drag me out of the unpleasant memories I was recycling.

  Mr K seemed to take my silence as encouragement, aiming his body at me as he spoke. ‘You should know.You’ve studied all these new management theories,’ a slight smile indicated his contempt for them, ‘one of the signs of a top manager is the ability to realize and nurture talent.You have it. I see it.’

  ‘My job has little to do with talent, Mr Khairuddin. It’s a standardized procedure that just needs hard work and focus to be effective. Please don’t praise me unnecessarily. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Most of the men out there would like it.’

  ‘It makes me uncomfortable.’

  ‘Like your new chair? You’re very fussy, Ayesha Bibi.’

  I left quietly. If I made a fuss, people would attribute it to female hysteria, hypersensitivity, vanity, more reasons to keep women out of decision-making circles. How arrogant of that new chit of a girl to think she was so interesting that the boss, a family man, would jeopardize his reputation for her, haina? I could almost hear the gossip.

  And he was a family man! A wife. Two kids. Teenage boy and girl. The girl went to an all girls’ school. The wife weighed in at over 200 pounds and was an acknowledged bully, having terrorized the female staff at Airways’ annual Sandspit picnic the last twelve years in a row. Perhaps since the children grew further enough from her to let her see the bigger picture.

  The next day an avalanche of work began pouring onto my desk. Travel requirements, difficult agents, brochure design, trivialities that could have been competently handled by staff below me, were personally referred to me by his secretary. My work hours grew longer. For the first time in years, Adil and Ammi started eating dinner without me.

  One day I looked around my deserted floor, and realized I was being waited out. Shadows pooled in corners, paper in dark cubicles whispered in the breeze from an open window, and the only light at the end of the tunnel was the band visible under Mr K’s door.

  TAKE HO GAI

  '90S LINGO

  ~

  Thinking of that light now, I flipped again to the present. Would I see one when I died? Or would it be the reddish glow of the fires of hell reflected on the walls of the chute taking me straight down to it? Amna Mumani had finished praying and blowing Arabic flavoured air over me and was now taking a more practical approach to preserving my life. Covering all the angles, I thought, as she began questioning a nurse who had come by to check on me. ‘Any change? What’s the situation? Where is the doctor? When will his rounds bring him here? Have you seen other cases like this? Do they survive? Tell me honestly, in your experience, what are her chances?’

  What were Mr K’s chances seemed a better question.

  *

  One day the band of light under the door grew to illuminate the corridor. Mr K stood framed against its radiance, a sewage puddle of a man, looking at me hunched over my desk at the other end of the floor.

  ‘I didn’t know any one was still here.’

  Liar, I thought, but my mouth said, ‘I’m nearly done. I’ve had a lot of work in the last two weeks.’

  ‘Are you saying you have too much work?’

  ‘No, just a lot.’

  ‘Because, you know, if you want me to, I can assign it to someone else.You only have to say the word.’

  ‘No, I can manage.’

  ‘You know, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.’

  ‘But I don’t need it.’

  ‘Fine. I’m sure you know what’s best for you,’ he headed towards the exit.

  ‘Khuda Hafiz, Mr Khairuddin.’

  ‘Why don’t you call me Aslam? All my friends do.’

  ‘Khuda Hafiz, Sir.’

  ‘By the way, I forgot to mention something earlier ... I want the sales forecast for the next two quarters on my desk first thing in the morning.’

  He was gone, and so was all hope of making it back for at least a cup of tea with Ammi before she retired for the night in our ground-plus-nothing house in D’Silva town. Its simplicity, its classic utility, was an anomaly in the stacked shoebox architecture that sprang up around it over the years, just like we were.

  The explosion came after a month of nail-biting, trouble sleeping, falling hair excessive irritability and near total aversion to food and TV. I found myself unable to find joy in anything. Not family. Not food. Not TV. Pleasure in all of the little things in which we urbanites could potentially lose ourselves in the days before people reclaimed the night was suddenly denied to me.

  When I had started working at Airways, I used to feel a little tingle of pride every time I entered the office, comparing its relatively posh interior to some of the other businesses housed in the ancient Patel Court building. Now the paan spit staining every corner of the stairwell seemed to leap out at me, the cigarette butts and discarded beverage containers and food wrappers tossed carelessly into corners forced themselves upon my retinas, a chaotic display reflecting a total lack of control over my surroundings. I’d begun darting to the window that looked onto the courtyard every few minutes once it began to get dark outside, convinced I’d see an army of rats coming out in an orderly formation to march up the stairs and upon me.

  I stopped saying Salaam to the chowkidar. He stopped opening the taxi door for me.

  Even the city after sunset, post rush hour, its myriad fragrances, its graceful old buildings and brash new ones, its occasional wide boulevards just begging for speed, the city that had once seemed so vibrant and beautiful, so exciting and full of promise to me now seemed menacing and sordid on my way home each day. Writers and poets who had compared it to a whore were right, I would think on the commute – my head resting on the sweat-soiled seat back of the black and yellow taxi that carried me to and from work every day – it was a whore, a manmade, man-driven, man-gratifying whore.

  Not that I had ever met a whore.

  I even considered compromising and indulging in a little harmless flirtation just to stop the madness of the paperwork that apparently reproduced asexually and the incessantly ringing phone. The problem was, there could be no ‘harmless’ flirtation with someone like Mr K. Give him an inch and he’d think you were giving it all. So, one day, I just cracked.

  The trigger was a call from a travel agent who wanted to know when PIA was going to induct those Chinese planes into its fleet. What Chinese planes? Which fleet? More importantly, how and why would I know? I supervised a team that pitched the sales of block booking seats to travel agents.That was my job. My job did not include an up-to-date inventory of aircrafts in various airlines.

  He wasn’t asking about various airlines. He wanted to know about PIA. It was our national carrier, I worked at a Pakistani travel agency, and it should be of interest to me. Ah, I replied, so PIA aircraft inventory is critical to true patriotism? What an intelligent way of looking at things. He must be a really smart man, how sad that God had chosen him to waste such genius in a position as menial as that of a travel agent.

  He told me I was obviously a very frustrated woman and slammed the phone down.

  When I put down my headset, I noticed my hand was trembling. Life had been reduced to the cutting words of little men. It couldn’t go on.

  Mr K’s door was open, as usual, when I barged in and began yelling at him. Anger gave my already loud voice extra projection, and every head on the floor was turned towards his room when I finished my diatribe on ethics, morality and odious personal philosophies.

  ‘My dear Ayesha Bibi,’ his tone was paternal. Hurt. Concerned. ‘Reported me for what? I hope you don’t think I ...? I mean no offence to you but ...’ He beckoned his secretary inside.
/>
  ‘Rukhsana Bibi, this poor girl is very upset. Do something to calm her down. I’m going outside for a while, call me on my mobile and tell me when I can have my office back.’

  On the way out he stopped and winked at Ahsan and Shan, flabbergasted at their adjacent desks.

  ‘Women,’ he muttered, ‘they just get so emotional sometimes.’

  Rukhsana intercepted my rush towards him at the doorway and hissed, ‘Why must girls like you make such a big fuss out of little things?’

  One day I would figure out what girls like me meant.

  I pushed past her and headed for my desk to collect my things. There was no one to complain to, no one to call, nothing to complain about, even. Perhaps I had to learn what girls like me were after all.They were just like everyone else. It was a crude, but effective revenge. Ahsan and Shan were studiously looking elsewhere as I walked out.

  The elevator felt like a coffin.

  DO BACCHAY HI ACCHAY

  POPULATION CONTROL CAMPAIGN SLOGAN

  THROUGH THE ’90S

  ~

  I clawed my way back to the present, but the memory of my helplessness lingered. It magnified at the sight of my comatose body, sustained by machinery and surrounded by strangers. Even Amna Mumani, for all her loving ways and loaded breaths, wasn’t a blood relative. And wasn’t blood always thicker than water? Didn’t it protect? Didn’t it nurture? Didn’t it heal?

  The truth was that it did none of those things. We thought it did because we wanted to believe it did. It did more damage than good if you thought about it rationally. It marked us. Angered us. Weakened us. No blood, however dense and viscous it might be, could have protected me from Mr K. And it was pitiful of me to have wanted to be protected.

  Why, after so much water under the bridge, after so many eventful years had passed, was I dwelling on a man who for all his lecherousness had not actually harmed me in any concrete way?

  It was the feeling of being incapacitated. Vulnerable. The sense of being trapped in a situation not of your making which would not get any better without losing something of yourself in the process. The position I was in now.

  Chalo, I tried to cheer myself up. That time with Mr K your selfrespect was at stake, this time it’s only your life. And life is cheap.

  I laughed, it sounded fake and embarrassing even to me, and Amna Mumani’s lack of response mocked my defiance for what it was, useless. Not worth registering.

  But I knew something that was even more useless. Not to mention thick. Thicker than the legs of an Ent, the tomb of the Quaid and all seventy-two or however many there were senators rolled into one; my idiot brother Adil, who still had not made it to his only sister’s (possible)deathbed.

  To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. He was always late.

  *

  Adil was born seven years after me. I was convinced he was an accident because seven years between children suggested a blunder rather than a plan. I explained it all to him when he was old enough to understand. He had thought long and hard before speaking.

  ‘So you’re saying it was an accident that God made me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Ammi, Abba didn’t want me then?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Then it must be really hard for you.’ He gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder, suddenly seeming much older than his ten years.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To know that even though I was an accident they still love me more than they love you.’

  In the sound tradition of our household, Adil showed early signs of being aikdum tez kya? While I like to think that I overshadowed him, dwarfed his colourful personality with the brute strength of my own, I realized eventually that he was simply more selective. He knew how to pick his fights. I tilted at every passing windmill. My words were like the bullet-spray of an AK47, his had the sweet urgency of a soft sigh from a sniper rifle. It’s no wonder television beckoned him. Most current programming is about knowing when to cut in and score points off someone.

  And where was he as I lay dying? My younger brother, my only sibling. We didn’t see much of each other any more but retained our closeness. I could not believe he wouldn’t be here if he knew. He probably didn’t. We’d run up against this ‘no communication while on a shoot’ obstacle before after one of Ammi’s myriad SOS calls. How many minutes do I put my tea in the microwave for, have you seen your father’s watch I left it on my dressing table when I went to shower, I think there’s someone in the house … Adil had been firm about putting an end to it.

  ‘Ammi, you have to remember that when I’m shooting, you can only call me if there’s an emergency.’

  ‘But I only call you when there’s an emergency.’

  ‘No Ammi, you call whenever you feel like it. Now you know I love to hear your voice but I get in trouble if you keep interrupting my work. Other people mind.’

  ‘What is there to mind if a mother calls her son?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything to mind, but other people haven’t been brought up in the same way. Things are done a little differently now.’

  ‘Why do all you young people like to pretend you’re goras? If you have to pick up some of their habits, why don’t you pick up the good ones, like hygiene? I mean they learnt it from us after us, and I really feel it’s time we took it back.’

  ‘I agree with you Ammi, but you know I’m not the boss yet. The people I work for, they’re confused. They’re rebelling against our values.’

  ‘Poor things.’

  ‘Yes, it’s very sad. But these are the people I’m working with so you have to help me get along with them, okay? Even if it means I have to follow their lead.’

  ‘Okay. When have I been able to refuse you anything?’

  When indeed, wondered jealous me.

  If I was lucky enough to be witnessing one of these nauseating exchanges, Adil often shot me a triumphant grin over her shoulder as she hugged him, as if to say, ‘watch and learn’. My clashes with my mother tended to be brief and painful. To me anyway. To her, my awkward attempts at communicating the basic office etiquette of keeping personal communications to a minimum simply underscored her belief that I was rude and ungrateful. A blot on the face of a culture nurtured and preserved for centuries despite the ridicule of upstarts like me. Adil did what he liked but told her only what she needed to know, or simply lied. I told her everything, even the harsh truth, and watched her burn.

  ‘You are such a polite boy,’ she’d tell him as she shelled pistachios or peeled the white scum of oranges and he munched them in all their glorious (mother-created) nakedness. ‘Who would imagine you grew up without a father?’

  Ammi. Adil. Khairuddin. Amna Mumani. I was getting more agitated by the second. Too much had happened. Nothing was happening. I was practically alone. Worthless. Powerless. Nobody loved me. It would be best if I died. There would be no one to carry me to my grave. It would probably be unmarked. I was considering the chances of having to share my chute down to hell with Mr Khairuddin when Adil burst into the ward.

  LOVE TO SOIL PAKISTAN

  TEXT FROM CITY GOVERNMENT BANNER

  DURING CLEANLINESS WEEK IN KARACHI

  ~

  My brother had obviously been watching Indian movie reruns on cable TV because he took one look at me and went to pieces a la forlorn South Asian hero. He sobbed. He howled, he wrung his hands. At any moment, I expected him to rip his kurta into shreds, tie it all together and hang himself from the IV pole, so great was the grief he seemed compelled to express. It was really very embarrassing, but it certainly took me out of my own misery for a bit.

  What is it about our menfolk? They belittle our coping skills, mock our decision-making abilities, jibe at our emotional frailty, but when crisis time comes they just fall apart. I hadn’t expected Adil to bustle in and take charge. I would have liked it, but too many doting women (Ammi, Amna Mumani, me), had been spoiling him rotten for too long. I hadn’t expected him to dissolve into
blubbering man flesh either. Amna Mumani rigid next to him seemed a rock in a river of male ineptitude.

  ‘Can she hear me?’ Adil asked Mumani when he could speak coherently again.

  ‘I hope not,’ she replied, looking vaguely disgusted. I got the distinct impression she was resisting the urge to smack him.

  ‘I just can’t believe this could happen to her. Ayesha was just so full of energy, so alive, you know?’

  ‘She still is.Alive. She’s in a coma but we all hope she’ll come out of it.’

  ‘But she might not?’

  ‘Who can know God’s will?’

  ‘Surely the doctors can give us some hint?’

  ‘Your mamu is trying to find a doctor.’

  ‘In a government hospital? He’s going to have a hard time. One of our shows did a special on it. It was horrible.’

  I remembered that special. One of Adil’s friends had called to talk to me while doing research for it. He worked for a flashy channel on cable TV. Adil had worked for them for a while, then left because he said it was like a club for spoilt rich kids with firangi accents. He now worked for Globe. Nearly everybody did. One day all would be Globe, even if their dramas were Titanics and their anchors biased. Adil was a producer, one of their youngest at twenty-four. He was working on a standard investigative reports type show; the burning issues of the industrial city or something along those lines. I didn’t really care. I was just happy that he was happy. And that he wasn’t directing music videos for four foot pop puppets constantly pretending to be Jesus (legs spread, arms akimbo and filmed from above to create the illusion of height).