Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  The bookseller he’d been squatting before said he’d never seen him before. I went there at mid-day for the next week, hiding in the lee of a store awning to avoid sight of the shopkeeper I’d verbally assaulted. Abba didn’t come back.

  I didn’t tell Adil. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t tell anyone.

  KHAIR NAAL AA, KHAIR NAAL GA

  BACK OF RICKSHAW

  ~

  And now it was too late to tell. I couldn’t tell Adil because it would mean nothing to him. I couldn’t tell Ammi because it would only hurt her and it was entirely possible she already knew. I had wanted to tell Saad. I should have.

  The soft light of evening filtered through the blinds into my room. There was still no patient in the other bed. Was that deliberate? It was probably a good thing, since Ammi and Adil arguing next to me would probably have disturbed them. Strange as it was, they were really going at it. I wasn’t important enough to cause conflict between the two. He must have told her about Farah then.

  ‘Why are you so concerned about what I say to your mamu’s wife?’

  ‘She has a name you know.’

  ‘Really? Where does she keep it? In the same place she hoards her husband’s money?’

  ‘Why are you so mean to her? She’s so good to us, and Mamu is so obviously happy with her.’

  ‘Your mamu would be happy with a watermelon if you carved a smile on it. Besides, I’m not mean to her.’

  ‘You’re not warm to her either.’

  ‘I don’t need to be. These relationships are best kept formal.’

  ‘Which relationships?’

  ‘Sister-in-law, mother-in-law …’

  ‘Daughter-in-law?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘How is that different?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. Blood is important. She’ll carry my blood.’

  ‘The sister-in-law does that too.’

  ‘Not this one, she doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s very crude. I don’t think I ever realized how crude you can be.’

  ‘I’m practical, not crude. One should be a realist.’

  ‘Like you?’ the half smile playing around Adil’s face was more mocking than vacuous. It wasn’t as if Ammi was saying anything he hadn’t heard a million times before in his life. It was just that now he had someone specific to superimpose the images of brood mare on. And he wasn’t liking it.

  ‘Funny that you’re calling yourself a realist. I want to laugh. Can I laugh or do I need your permission for that too? Am I going to need your permission forever, or just till the day I die? Or is that the day you die?’

  ‘Adil! Don’t make me think less of you!’ She was saying to him from between clenched teeth. ‘I have always seen the best in you.’

  ‘And I’m saying maybe you should admit that I’m not your perfect little boy any more, I’m a grown man.’

  ‘You’ll always be a little boy to me.’

  ‘With adult needs.’

  ‘Needs are the same regardless of how old you are.’

  ‘I’d say the physical needs tend to change a little, don’t they? I mean Ayesha and I didn’t fall fully grown out of mid-air …’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’

  ‘Aha, so I can do wrong.’

  ‘Of course you can, everyone can. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. And I know you’re just saying that to shock me.’

  ‘You won’t listen, will you? It doesn’t matter what I say, you’ll just take in whatever you want to hear and discard the rest.’

  Ammi turned back to me and returned to praying, as if to confirm what he had said, and to illustrate her utter lack of interest in what he thought of her.

  ‘You’re crazy, you know,’ Adil half-whispered, ‘we should have had you locked up a long time ago.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just brought her home to meet me one of these days, when Ayesha is better of course.

  ‘Brought whom?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The girl who’s behind all of this.’

  ‘She’s not behind anything!’

  ‘But you’re doing this for her sake.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Attacking your mother.’

  And she had tied it all together in a neat little package with a ribbon on it and handed it back to him, PERSECUTION emblazoned across the front. My mother, the master manipulator. I could only watch in awe, as Adil’s mouth opened and shut soundlessly, guppy to her barracuda.

  ‘I wasn’t attacking you,’ he finally managed.

  ‘You weren’t? I guess I was mistaken then. It must have been the “you’re crazy, you know” that just threw me off.’

  ‘But you are!’ Good for Adil, he sounded terrified, but he had decided there was no way back, ‘and you should go back on medication.’

  ‘It did nothing for me.’

  ‘It helped you.’

  ‘It made me sick!’

  ‘It passed.’

  ‘It didn’t help me, it helped make me pliable so you could deal with me better.’

  ‘And what is so wrong with that? Or are we not supposed to want things to be any easier? Are we supposed to be masochists like you?’

  ‘There is no such thing as mental illness, it’s all about willpower.’

  ‘Well you don’t have what it takes to control your mood swings.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Like you controlled them when you attacked her earlier?’

  ‘I don’t want to!’ now it was her turn to sound like a petulant child.

  ‘Okay, okay we can talk about it later.’

  ‘So you’ll bring her around to see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Farah.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘She’s a make-up artist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She does make-up and hair.’

  ‘How does that make her an artist? Sounds like a cross between a parlour girl and a barber to me.’

  ‘You haven’t even met her and already you’re criticizing her. I’m not bringing her to meet you.’

  ‘You’ll leave her just like that?’

  ‘No,’ there was a pregnant pause, then Ammi’s eyes widened as she realized the implication of what Adil had said.

  ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘If I have to. I won’t be happy about it, but I’d do it.’

  ‘Does Ayesha like her?’

  ‘Ayesha’s never met her.’

  ‘Maybe we can all meet her together then?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Right. You know Ayesha will probably be very upset that we’re not showing more concern for her.’

  ‘Probably. Your sister always has been hypersensitive as it is. Always wanting the attention on her.’

  ‘I suppose this time you could say she deserves it.’

  I wanted to leap from the bed and give them a medal for their kindness and consideration, using the ribbons to throttle them both in the process. I was picturing their panicked screams, the way their eyes would bulge from their heads, their hands beat helplessly at the air, when the voice returned.

  ‘So what is it Ayesha, life or death?’

  ‘For Ammi I don’t know, but right now I’m definitely leaning towards death for Adil.’ And my father, was that a third little voice? I had a lot of them, didn’t I. There it was again, death to Abba.

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Why? Where does gravity take you except down?’ And death to his new family. His fat wife. His ugly son.

  ‘You have very little time now.’

  ‘That’s all right, I don’t really have much to do. My family seems to be getting along fine without me.’ The bookseller that sold him books that weren’t meant for me, he should die too.

  ‘They’re terrified. They don’t want to lose you.’

 
‘And this is evident from what exactly? They’re not even talking about me.’ When had any of them ever talked about me? Abba had looked me in the eye and he had disappeared, disappeared! Fled!

  ‘Frightened people do silly things.’

  ‘I’ve decided.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘I resign.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From life. I resign from life.’

  ‘Let it go Ayesha. Just let it all go. Forgive.’

  ‘I don’t think I have much to thank you for.’ How many people was I going to forgive? And if I pretended to, He’d know I was lying.

  ‘Forget everything else, just concentrate on what’s yours, your mind, no one else can control what happens in it.’

  Truth.

  ‘Stupid people fighting all the time …’ I recited my litany of woes for reassurance.Wherever I was going, it could only be better than this.

  ‘Your mind is your kingdom, or Queendom …’

  ‘Bickering like children …’

  ‘Caliphate?’

  ‘I’m done letting them control my life!’ Abba had just walked away and left me standing by the roadside.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’

  ‘All my life I’ve wanted to resign from one crappy job after another, and now I’m going to do it.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ I shrieked, ‘I quit.’

  ‘I can’t hear you I can’t hear you I can’t hear you,’ the other Ayesha said.

  I was such a baby sometimes.

  HASAD NA KAR, MUQABLA KAR

  BACK OF BUS

  ~

  The singing ended eventually. It went on for a long time though, long enough to make me not want to be such a baby sometimes anymore. If my existence hadn’t been terribly dignified, my exit at least should be.

  ‘Where did you go?’ I inquired cautiously, not wanting to be ambushed again.

  ‘Sssh…’

  ‘You can’t shush me!’

  ‘This is important, I’m trying to listen!’

  ‘What to?’

  ‘Your doctor.’

  ‘My doctor isn’t here.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘How come I can’t hear him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Try.’

  I tried. Dr Shafiq appeared about an inch away. He was purple. And he was wearing a dupatta.

  ‘Why is he wearing a dupatta?’ I whispered sotto voce, not that there was any chance of him hearing me.

  ‘Aha! Now who’s sexist! See a purple man and you’re more concerned with why he’s wearing a dupatta …’

  ‘It just seemed the stranger of the two. And how come he’s purple anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. If you don’t know I don’t know.’

  ‘Well. You certainly act like you know it all.’

  ‘Because I’m a part of you. And you act like you know it all.’

  ‘If you were a part of me you wouldn’t disagree with me, or push me to do things I don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m not pushing you to go against anything. I just vocalize things you know but are unable to admit to yourself. I don’t actually know anything you don’t know.’

  ‘If you don’t know it all either, why don’t we both shut up?’

  ‘Fine.’

  The doctor kept fading in and out as we argued or rather bickered, like little children. Had I been saying that about Adil and Ammi a minute ago? Funny how the silly things we said came back to haunt us. Not that I was admitting to saying anything silly of course. He faded again as I questioned myself, then grew stronger as I tried to empty my mind of everything but him, and his dupatta. It wasn’t that I’d never seen a man with a dupatta on before; it was just that I’d never seen a man with a dupatta on and no make-up. He seemed almost naked.

  Oh no, now he was naked.

  Back back, I yelled, rewind! No! delete!

  Stupid Generals and their goons, we weren’t even free of apprehension in the privacy of our heads.

  Now the doctor had a beard like a Qazi, but at least he wasn’t nude any more.

  His voice was tinny too, and sounded very far away, like voices did all the time back in the days when all phones were analog and cross lines were common. He was spouting medico babble in Ammi and Adil’s direction. That, or reciting three blind mice. Which was a twisted concept for a nursery rhyme wasn’t it? Homicidal farmers’ wives with carving knives, could be a comment on inequality or discrimination or some such. Or a comment on a woman who had simply had it with the pests in her life. Like I had.

  ‘Confused dissonance symbol,’ my annoying other half said triumphantly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what he said!’

  ‘Confused dissonance symbol?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I guess it’s what’s wrong with you.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘You listen then.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do and maybe I’d succeed if you didn’t keep undermining me …’

  ‘Me undermine you? Oh I think you’ve got it backwards.’

  I tuned her out. Diffused axonal syndrome, that’s what he was saying. Diffused axonal syndrome. It sounded serious.

  ‘What’s the bottom line then?’ Adil was asking.

  ‘The bottom line is that there is no apparent reason for her coma. There is no permanent damage, no internal head trauma, no spinal cord injury, nothing but the after effects of a knock on the head. Considering she went through a windshield, your sister is very lucky or very blessed.’

  ‘Or has an especially thick skull,’ I didn’t have to strain to hear Ammi’s take on it.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Adil sounded confused.

  ‘Think of it as a form of concussion.’

  ‘So she can wake up anytime?’

  ‘Nothing physical is stopping her.’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Little me sounded quite happy, like she’d won millions on a Pakistan-India game.

  I heard it.

  ‘So why don’t you wake up then?’

  I wanted a good long sleep. I knew my chances of being able to do that after (if) I recovered consciousness were slim, so I decided to take a nap. Maybe things would seem clearer when I woke up.

  AAP JAISA KOI MERI ZINDAGI MAIN AYAY TO

  BAAT BAN JAYAY

  LYRICS OF NAZIA HASSAN ‘SUPERHIT’ SONG

  ~

  I was dreaming of piping hot pakoras; the very best thing of all about Ramadan once you grew too old to be able to extort Eidi from people. A particularly scrumptious looking specimen, steam rising from its tender brown flesh, a hint of onion peeping coyly from one green shaded slash, was hovering in mid-air in front of me whispering Ayesha, eat me Ayesha …

  This couldn’t be right.

  I could hear my mother yelling, ‘Ayesha, Ayesha.’ She would never leave me alone. Especially not now that Adil was showing signs of wanting to cast off the apron strings.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ammi turned to the woman with her, ‘she’s never been very good at listening to her mother.’

  The other woman tried to smile politely, but she looked distinctly uncomfortable and not a little alarmed. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I just couldn’t place her. A neighbour perhaps? She looked too swanky to live on our street though. Her black abaya and hijab was obviously of the finest silk, and her fingers were festooned with diamonds. There was a silk scarf tossed casually over one shoulder and two gaudy baubles that on closer examination turned out to be her eyes. She could be a rich Arab woman from a milk commercial fallen straight into my room via the TV set (I knew anything was possible after the little trip I’d had earlier). Or she could be one of those evangelical begums , the type that rose like well shod phoenixes from the ashes of 9/11 determined to turn from the flames to the light, doing one of those ‘comfort the sick’ rounds. They did things like that, in be
tween abdicating all personal responsibility for pursuing and developing thought to their glorious, laptop equipped leaders.

  ‘Can she hear you?’ the woman asked Ammi in a clipped, precise tone. The words maintained a respectful distance from each other. That kind of elocution could only be the product of an expensive schooling. Had it been her son driving the car that had caused my accident? Had she come to apologize for the fender bender? ‘So sorry but the silver casing on his phone reflected sunlight into his eyes and temporarily blinded him. As a token of our regret, perhaps you’d like to have it?’ Actually, I did. I’d never had a mobile phone, hated them because they tied you down, but maybe it was time I accepted some sort of intimacy in my life.

  ‘Your son has been a big help,’ Ammi said, and the coffee party Aunty nodded. A knot grew in my stomach.

  ‘Saad has always been a source of pride to us,’ she said smugly and all the flippancy left in my system decided to precede me to the afterlife.

  TAHJUB HAI KAI TUM KO NAMAZ KI

  FURSAT NAHIN

  TAXI

  ~

  This was Saad’s mother? This was Saad’s mother come to meet me in a coma? This was Saad’s idea of an opportune time? This was Saad’s idea of me at my best? Voiceless and immobilized? Saad wanted his mother to meet me before I died? How touching! How touched in the head!

  Note to aliens planning Pakistan landing. Correct thing to say to local emissary delegated to meet the spiky green mother ship, ‘Take me to your mother.’ Yes, we were a patriarchal society, yes we were a sexist society, but when it came to sons and their lovers, it tended to be all about Mommy. Perhaps to make up for their lack of power where anything else was concerned, mothers were allowed open season on the children’s significant others.

  It wasn’t surprising; what else could you expect from a culture where breastfeeding sometimes became a hobby? But in 2004, it just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The Karachi potential/actual daughter-in-law was leaner and meaner than her docile predecessors. She was more educated, more streetwise, more aware of her rights, and often bigger too (better diet, more exercise will do that for you).

  That’s right, I told myself, you have no reason to be nervous.

  It was ironic that most men now wanted women who were highly educated, doctors, MBAs, journalists, but in the background the boy’s mother would be feverishly hoping the education hadn’t leaked into bahu dear’s brain. Maybe Saad’s mother wasn’t like that, they were super rich after all. The super rich had their own code.You only got to know what it was if you were super rich too.