Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  One of our favourite drives took us past the row of brightly lit shaadi halls that lined both sides of one of Karachi’s most congested roads.The shaadi halls in that particular neighbourhood made for a queer juxtaposition of the sublime and ridiculous.They all featured the same basic ground plus one construction. There was a lawn.There was a hall.There was a stage.There was a buffet. And there were chairs.The personal touch, the little bit of magic that made each hall unique, was in the giant neon/freon billboard/sculpture that fronted each ‘marriage garden’. In the beginning there had probably been competing flowers arrangements at the entrance, but now the line of halls sought to outdo each other on a totally different level. Saad and I must have driven that route a hundred times, each time finding new amusement in some fluorescent interpretation of love.

  A neon-red rose reared triumphantly to the sky, its height signalling a cocky defiance to the concrete which framed it. I could grow anywhere, it bellowed to passers by, I could be in any one of you suckers right now!

  Then there was the pale green rocket poised for takeoff, presumably to carry the new couple off to colonize unexplored galaxies through ceaseless propagation. There was a cubist abstraction of multi-hued geometric shapes. A glowing ball that might have been a disco strobe or the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.A giant chicken with one dark eye, a sad (and I liked to think deliberate) reminder of the havoc wreaked on its master’s livelihood by the government’s ‘Yes/No’ pact with the frugal marriage lobby; too much army good, too much qorma bad – one dish for all and no one gets injured in the stampede to the food.

  For someone from Machhar colony, this was probably high art. Sophisticated romance. The perfect platform from which to launch what would probably be a very messy, very expensive journey.The halls could accommodate guests that average middle-class homes couldn’t, the women didn’t have to cook, and no one had to clean up afterwards.

  Theoretically, I had posited to Saad, since we’re all devout Muslims, we should all get married in mosques.

  ‘Hey Ashoo, you know with that collar you look sort of like that European Queen there was a picture of in my history textbook in school. What was her name … Marie Claire? Marie Biscuit? Marc Anthony! Marie Anthony I think. God what is taking this so long!’ Adil turned to confer with the orderly and the intern and driver up front.

  ‘Some bigshot’s in Karachi so they’ve closed a lot of the main roads,’ Adil was considerate enough to share with my comatose form, maybe I didn’t give him enough credit sometimes, ‘I wish we could all get out and put your bigwig deterrent plan into action.’

  The bigwig deterrent plan was born of one too many hours spent waiting in a mile-long line at a traffic light as roads were cleared for the imminent passing of the president or prime minister or whichever parasite happened to be in town. It proposed, and it was rough because like all my plans it was conceived, mulled over and verbalized in under ten seconds, it proposed that all the drivers in the line press down on their horns at the exact moment the motorcade was passing. After rolling up their windows first. In the second version, the front line of drivers also pelted the passing motorcade with eggs, rotten fruit, and beggars (if any of the ones that were inevitably around were light enough to toss). That way, the plan theorized, the parasites would learn to avoid the city’s roads altogether and simply fly from place to place in helicopters or, ideally, be shot from place to place via cannons. No real politician, and they were all real politicians or aspiring real politicians or they wouldn’t be playing the dirty game in the first place, no real politician would willingly, repeatedly expose himself to evidence of public dislike. Their egos couldn’t take it.That’s why they surrounded themselves with yes men, they needed to feel liked.

  I had shared that plan with Saad too. He’d suggested a simpler, more humane way to register disapproval was to write a letter to the editor. He had no issues with the horn blowing or the beggar tossing, but he felt throwing eggs was just not right, people starved to death in Karachi.

  He was just such a nice boy, I’d thought. Possibly the first Pakistani man I knew who didn’t seem the least bit perturbed that I had emotions or opinions as strong as I did.

  If I ever did marry Saad, I thought wistfully as the ambulance lurched into motion, I mean if he ever asked me to marry him, that is if I ever saw him again, maybe we’d check if the giant one-eyed chicken was free for the evening …

  It was a big ‘if’ though. Especially considering his reaction when I’d popped the question that morning. There are relationships that thrive on conflict, and relationships that celebrate calm; relationships that nurture the spirit of compromise and relationships that inflame passion. Saad and I had none of the above. What we did have, we almost never discussed. That we felt deeply for each other was recognized, acknowledged, even flaunted for shock value occasionally, but where we were headed (if in fact we weren’t simply jogging on the same spot, as my mother had suggested that morning), was never talked about.

  That first time I had agreed to have tea with him at the dhaba down the road from our office, Saad had been nervous. It was easy to think of people who had travelled or lived abroad as suave, urbane, somehow more jaded about things like dating than someone who had lived in this big old village of fourteen million people all her life, but the practiced charm I’d expected was missing that first day. He even spilt some tea on my shirt as he passed one of the tiny, chipped cups to me. I covered the awkward moment by launching into a diatribe on how sexist it was that the waiter had come to his side of the car instead of to both like he’d done for the car next to us. Saad timidly suggested it was out of respect for me. I wondered where the respect was when the same waiter was ogling schoolgirls passing down the road. But it was too early for me to be making a long, passionate speech about sexism, so I asked him if he’d deliberately spilt tea on me instead.

  ‘Were you marking your territory?’

  He turned an endearing shade of crimson and muttered something about defective cups, then began talking rapidly about the superiority of Kashmiri chai over the common shelf variety. Later, months, later, that M.O. remained constant whenever I probed, delicately of course, into the exact nature of the relationship we obviously had. Stutter. Stammer. Change the subject. I never wanted to push it. Not initially anyway, I was content to simply let things grow at their own pace. It didn’t concern me one way or the other whether he was a ‘catch’.

  That Saad was a catch was brought repeatedly to my attention by female co-workers. The other women at the factory, most of them secretaries, had never liked me much in the first place. The feeling was mutual. Excluded from their little club because I made no attempt to hide my disinterest in the things which preoccupied them (clothes, jewellery, marriage, gossip), I didn’t really care how arrogant they thought I was. But, in the great tradition of women, we all practised an overt, saccharine, civility. When it became common knowledge that Saad and I were an item though, it became apparent that I had inadvertently crossed a line. One or two who had initially responded positively to my clumsy overtures and even had lunch with me, suddenly were always ‘very busy’. Was it jealousy? Did they think I was after the boss’s son and associating with me might tarnish their precious reputations? A reputation was all a girl had after all. Would they be nicer if I went up to their table one day and said, ‘look, he’s the one who’s chasing me.’

  Probably not, I had decided. They would interpret it as further evidence of my superiority complex.

  Since I was ultimately left with no other eating companion option, Saad and I began having lunch together nearly every day. For me, a brown bread, cheese slice and tomato sandwich, or a shami kabab and paratha brought from home. For him, whatever was on the cafeteria menu. Talk about courting gastro-intestinal disaster.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he managed between spooning shit-coloured haleem into his face after I had mentioned it got that consistency because of the cotton wool they put in it, ‘how much I missed this food w
hen I was in college.’

  ‘You didn’t like American food?’

  ‘There is no such thing as American food. Chinese food. Japanese food. Thai, Mexican, Indian, Greek, even Polish food, it’s all available there, but it’s hard to like anything that can be called uniquely American.Though I guess if the portions are big and the taste is bland, it’s American.’

  ‘Big and bland, that certainly sounds American.’

  ‘You’ve never been to America have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It has its moments.’

  ‘I’m sure. I’ve actually been thinking, America should change its name to America Khan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well it’s been acting a lot like an akhrot. If America were a Pakistani, it would be a Pathan don’t you think?’

  He gave me a long considering look, then grinned.

  ‘This haleem is too good to allow me to address deep thoughts like that. I missed haleem especially.’

  ‘But you’ve been back for years. Don’t you get desi food at home?’

  ‘Are you kidding? You think my mother could serve curry to her coffee-party friends? It’s all salads and pate, truffles and quiche, that sort of thing.’

  I had no idea what quiche was, or pate. I thought he couldn’t say ‘patty’ properly and was considering why someone with exposure to so many cultures and languages couldn’t pronounce it right when he glanced at my face.

  ‘You don’t know what quiche or pate is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know what escargot is?’

  ‘Snails, aren’t they?’ I remembered a long descriptive passage in some novel or the other, scavenged from the secondhand booksellers at Khori gardens in the vain hopes of learning something useful about sex – given that there was little chance of learning anything from Ammi about it. Or had I read about escargot in the condensed book feature in the Readers’ Digest that we seemed to have a perpetual subscription to? Books. Magazines. Papers. In Urdu and English. That was one thing there had never been a shortage of in our house. That and argument. That was why both Adil and I were fluently bilingual, and fluently argumentative, but there was a slight difference between understanding a word on a page and recognizing it when you heard it.

  ‘Tukhumbalanga?’

  Now that was much easier. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Kacchaloo? Tamatar Cut? Khagina?’

  ‘Everyone knows what those are. Why are you grinning like a monkey at a traffic light?’

  ‘Because it’s such a relief to be with someone who isn’t obsessed with being something she is not.’

  ‘Patty eaters murdabad!’

  ‘Pate eaters murdabad!’

  ‘What do you mean “be with?”’ I asked casually, though my fingers were drumming on my thigh under the table.

  ‘You know, spend time with,’ his answer was also a study in casualness, and his grip on his spoon was firm.

  I dropped it. We talked about silly women who believed in urban legends like cotton wool in the haleem, and fundos with HIV infected needles lurking in shopping malls.

  We were happy just being together. Why did I listen to my mother that morning? Why did I let her push me over the line he had drawn right at the beginning?

  ALLAH KA KARAM HAI, BIRYANI GARAM HAI

  SIGN ON BIRYANI VENDOR’S CART IN SADDAR

  ~

  That marriage wasn’t all it was cut out to be, that it was certainly not deserving of the mass hysteria it seemed to provoke in Pakistani women seemed fairly evident to me quite early in life. My parents were married, and look what it did to the love they’d once presumably had for each other.

  Some women said marriage was a good idea because of the financial and emotional security guaranteed through the ‘protector and provider’. That didn’t make sense for a woman like me who had provided her own financial and emotional security pretty much as soon as she was able to. And it didn’t make sense for others like me. Oh I knew there were others. It was a big city. A big, expensive city. One income was no longer enough. And it seemed to me the balance was fundamentally off because a lot of men expected their wives to go on working after marriage but also cease and desist from showing other signs of the independence that a long time in the work place would inculcate in anyone.

  Then there were men who didn’t work at all but let their wives and daughters work and lived off their earnings, quashing any objections with a raised hand and the very convenient ‘but I’m the MAN’.

  Then again, Amna Mumani and Chotay Mamu seemed to do okay. The thing was, who knew how things really were in a relationship but the two people in a relationship? Marriage saved my Mamu from a lifetime spent under the domination of his sister, but it might have translated into a lifetime spent under the domination of his wife. He seemed happy though. Maybe he just liked being dominated.

  Still, I thought it was tragic the way so many of the girls I’d known in college had seen marriage as their ticket out of the dictatorial presence of conservative parents and into the (presumably) liberal benevolence of partners who would give them more room to be themselves. Individualism, my generations’ favourite western import, had grown increasingly popular in recent years. Nowadays everyone wanted to ‘be who I am, you know? Why can’t they just let me be myself?’ That was the beauty of individualism; one size fits all. Unleash yourself on the unsuspecting world even if your self isn’t worth the paper it’s registered on. But if all those girls really wanted to be strong, independent individuals, why did they want to diminish themselves by getting married?

  That’s what marriage meant. Being diminished. The woman being diminished while the man loomed ever larger. Two good years and then major shrinkage on the part of the female psyche once the kids popped out. Hadn’t that been the case in our family? I thought they had been happy in the early years; she had looked radiant on her wedding day, exuberant on her honeymoon, content in Shangri-La, happy at mushairas. But by the time I was old enough to notice, she frowned more than she smiled. Always tense, irritable, curt with everyone but Adil and her husband. After Abba’s departure she had turned our house into a mausoleum for her husband, but I had seen nothing during their last few years together to justify such an effort. The tears, the fruitless quest, the perennial envelope of widow white, was she just going through the motions because that’s what she thought she should do?

  And sure Mumani and Mamu seemed to have achieved a harmonious balance of give and take; he gave, she took, but other people just wouldn’t let them be.Why did you move out? Why are you living separately? Why don’t you have children? Why are you so bossy to my brother? Why are you so tolerant of her nagging? Marriage hadn’t provided a protective umbrella against family intrusiveness for them, it had ushered them into a larger tent where it was open season on anyone who had been married less time than you had.

  And then there was the story of Kulsoom and Amir. Kulsoom and I had been friends at KU. Her whole life seemed to have been spent planning her wedding. Her vivacity, intellect, energy was recycled through endless list making: wedding guests, possible menus, mehndi songs, portrait photographers, designers, etc. A suitable boy was duly produced – Amir – seven years older, good job in Saudia – a date set – deed done. The happy couple departed for shifting sands. Excited farewells. She wrote once. She didn’t write back. No news. A year later a short note. Amir with the good job was also Amir with the short fuse. She had given up a privileged, maid-fuelled existence for hell in a country where she couldn’t even drive. She wanted to leave him but her parents said she belonged in her husband’s house now. She would write more but she didn’t really have anything left to say to anybody except ‘help’ and she didn’t want to be tiresome. Mithai from her parents’ house announcing the birth of a baby girl. Ammi making pointed comments about my turn next.

  Kulsoom killed herself when her daughter was a year old.The family tried to keep it quiet, but a story like that gets around. There was no soyem for her. I missed Kulsoom
; for all the lectures she had given me, it had never really bothered her that I didn’t want the same things she did.

  I stared out of the ambulance window at the next red light. A camel looked me in the eye and winked, then turned his head slightly as if to say ‘at least you don’t have to drag sacks of horse feed across the city every day’. Go in peace friend camel, I thought. May you have the courage to bite the hand that beats you.

  Mr Khairuddin had been married too! I bet he still was. I bet his wife was still blaming other women for her husband’s behaviour and terrorizing his female staff. I bet his children were misogynistic idiots. I bet Mrs K never even considered getting divorced. Marriage. Love. Marriage. I wished I were a camel dragging horse feed across the city.

  *

  ‘Ashoo, we’re there.’ Adil leaned over as the ambulance stopped. ‘Before we go in I want to tell you something but you have to promise not to tell Ammi if you wake up … when you wake up,’ he added politely. ‘I’m getting married.’

  The siren was finally off, thank God, but who was screaming?

  HANS GAYI TO PHUNS GAYI

  COLLEGE BOY WISDOM

  ~

  As the ambulance pulled into the sprawling Agha Khan University Hospital mothership and headed for the emergency entrance at the back, Adil began filling me in on his precious, including details I would actually have preferred not to take to the grave with me, in case they kept me up during my nights underground.

  ‘Killer eyes Ayesha, killer eyes,’ he’d practically moaned. ‘I see lots of pretty girls every day, it’s part of my job, but she’s on a different level altogether. Remember the black and white films we always flick past when channel surfing, with like Noor Jehan or someone? The heroines always have perfect, flawless faces and huge eyes. Like a cow’s, only more beautiful. Of course she’s not fat like them, no, she’s more like Resham than Saima.’