The First Feeling. (part six)

I remember a garden. Something with blue painted fences and green hedges and pink flowers. It was a loud, obvious color scheme and I remember thinking that that is never the way I would choose to decorate a garden. I’d like it more subtle and toned-down and filled with small potted plants instead of rows of loud pink roses.

I remember walking up to the garden on a brick road and it lead into a house that was a lot like one of those Victorian styled mansions we saw in Bollywood movies that were shot in America. I half-expected Shah Rukh Khan to come jump out of somewhere and burst into a song. Smiling, I walked up and saw a mirror on the door where I could see myself. This nice red shawl, this brilliant red lipstick, big round pearl earrings in each ear. My hair was complimented and auburn and I just had a problem with the roundness of my face cut, the pregnancy of it all.

The door opened, I walked inside and heard voices. I felt deeply curious because the voices were familiar and hushed. My feet scurried and I started to come closer to a room where the voices seemed the closest.

“What if she finds out, what if she finds out…”

Nah. Couldn’t be.

The door swung open. Zohaib and Ghania were less than an inch apart from each other. She was wearing pale blue satin pajamas and he was dressed in his best dress, his valima suit.

The times when you want to speak and no words come out and the times when you want to scream but nothing manifests itself, not even close, are the times that make you feel helpless and scared and completely useless. What is the point of having a voice if it can’t be used, if it can’t be utilized at the proper time?

I had little time to think about the utilitarian purposes of the vocal chords when I woke up and realized that I had been drooling all over the pillowcase. The drool was mixed with the tears from my eyes and I snapped into reality with a very sticky shake of the head.

It didn’t help that Zohaib was missing on his side of the bed.

“Z-Zohaib,” I croaked. The voice was still not helping.

“ZOHAIB!” I shouted, deliberately to check if it was still working.

The lack of response made me worried. For no reason. We were at home, everyone was sound asleep. Chances were that Zohaib was probably downstairs to get a drink of water or to attend an emergency phone call from the hospital.

I didn’t sit in bed for long. Wrapping a kaftan, I went down the stairs to see the kitchen light on. Sure enough, Zohaib was in there, as I hears his indistinct low voice. Goddamn hospitals. Never out of needs.

“I’m trying to make you understand, Ghania, if you’ll let me.”

I stopped. The whole world did. Then it faded into black and white and the only thing I heard or saw in technicolor was the sound and figure of my husband talking to my first cousin, probably the only woman in the world, after my mother, who made me feel like a chimpanzee.

At 4 a.m. Hidden in the kitchen.

When his wife was five months pregnant.

Speaking in a tone that I hadn’t heard from him since the time he had called me right after our engagement.

An earnest, helpful, kind, I’m-trying-make-an-impression-here tone.

I stood still, listening in on the conversation.

“It doesn’t matter what Baray Taya feels about feminism, you have to understand your own placein this society, you know?”

Tears were coming and sticking to my cheeks and then more tears came and washed them away.

“Look, it’s different with me and Sumera. We didn’t choose each other either, see? But I make compromises, I make it work, I do that with Sumera, don’t i? I mean this much you already know and see, don’t you?”

HE compromised? He makes it work? And it was something so obvious that he knew that Ghania would see it too? HE was the one who agreed with everything MY family said or was it I who had to simply accept every way, thought, personality that my mother in law was each day?

The tears suddenly dried up. My head was suddenly burning, instead of my eyes. This emotion I knew well. This was anger, a good friend ofmine who had been hibernating since the day I got engaged. Since the day I felt love and affection and infatuation for a man whom I spoke to in secret, a man whose baby I was carrying and a man whom I had let me touch in every emotional and physical aspect of my life.

The same man who was currently telling another woman that he had made compromises for me and didn’t really choose me as a life partner.

“There are things we all need to settle for. There are many things I could change in Sumera, if I wanted to, but I can’t. So the fact is I love Ghania – no, I mean, Sumera, I love Sumera.”

He paused. Then let out an awkward laugh.

“I meant to say, we all make sacrifices. So listen to Baray Taya and get married to Yasin, he seems like a decent fellow, I’ve met him so many times…”

He was still talking. I left the room. Quietly took the keys to the car and quietly went out through the back door. Quietly entered the garage, unlocked the gate and quietly switched on the ignition. The best thing about living in this house was how quietly everything could happen.

I switched on the radio.

“So all you people whose hearts have been broken, all you women who have had their husbands cheat on you, all you men who thought you’d found your dream woman… this is for you.”

The DJ thought “Pehla nasha, pehla khumar” was the perfect song for these group of people and I somehow agreed even if I couldn’t have agreed to his choice in any other mood. Perhaps the first woman you love, the first man you give your heart to, the first person who makes you feel like you’re on top of the world is the first person who you blame the most. They are the person who has taken the best of you, the worst of you, the most of you.

I kept driving. I threw away the cell phone. The very expensive anniversary-gift cell phone. Broke it in the middle of the road, so that no thug could benefit from the ire that was a part of that cell phone. Filled the tank and drove all the way, all night. Rested my eyes at a roadside restaurant, grabbed an instant coffee mix and began driving again. It was still early morning when I reached home. Instead of honking, which was the usual custom whenever Zohaib and I came to visit Amma and Abba, I got out of the car and knocked on the door. The honk would wake everyone up. I didn’t want that.

“Sumera Bibi! Shall I wake everyone?”

“No, I want to rest now. Don’t wake anyone up. Is anyone up already?”

“No, they’re still asleep. Everyone returned late from a wedding last night.”

“That’s alright. Here park the car. I will be in my room.”

I walked up to the familiar stairs, the stairs I had climbed all the past 22 years and felt as if they were signs of how out of place I was. I don’t belong in this house, they accused. But they somehow belonged to me.

(end of part six.)