I am sorry....

I apologize profusely
For my history
I am so sorry
For Mahmud Ghaznavi,
For Tughlaqs, for Khiljis
For Humayun, for Akber and Sher Shah Suri,
I am sorry
For plundering your temples
For torching your library
I am ridden with guilt
By the army I built
to overrun all that I considered
Haram!
Forgive me
For Afghanistan, for Pakistan
For 911
For 24/7 all I do is dwell
On the torment a mother must feel
When my brother rips her son
From forehead to heel
Regrettably I admit
That this is not the end
No matter how many times I bend
My head and repent
They will continue to hunt and kill
My fellow humans who will
Not show uniformity
To their insanity
Don't point your finger at me
I am ashamed, for my religion,
To some it is a tool
To kill my shia friends
My nation's Christians, Hindus, Ahmedis, Wahabis, Ismailis
I cannot look them in the eye
For it is my brother that does deny
Having their blood on his hands
But mine are soaked
And with a sigh
I apologize......

End of Innocence

For the past decade any nationalistic feelings I ever had have been effectively doused. I have noticed that a lot of people suffer along with me in this vicious cycle of terrorism, inflation and lawlessness yet they maintain their levels of patriotism. Hats off to their tenacity. There have been several back to back incidences in the past months that I have considered the last straw, the continued and barbaric ethnic violence, the persecution of minorities, the apathy of the rich class depicted in continued rise in prices of goods that were only a couple of years ago, in the grasp of the middle to lower middle class. Yet what has recently transpired in the so called capital of this so called great nation has cemented my dislike for my own people. Apparently a mentally unstable individual takes his family for a drive, taking not just the essential car keys and spare tire in the vehicle but a few extra condiments. Ammunition. He decides that sight seeing is not enough for the day's agenda so starts to make a little noise and get a little media attention. We all know what happened on that fateful 15th of August in Islamabad. We saw the footage one hundred times whether we wanted to or not. Every one discussed the efficacy of Zamarrud's 'heroic' act, Sikander's lack of terrorist 'skills,' Kanwal's negotiation prowess. The entity that was left out were the kids. Sure they were collateral damage and were used by their 'parents' in the most abusive manner possible but what did the rest of us do? I am sure most mothers were cringing at the footage and every time the children were shown frolicking about such a horrific scene as the one created by this insane couple. It seems no one was responsible for these little lives. Not the media, not the law enforcers, and least of all their parents. It was like watching a morbid mime as Sikander ran his last lap, everyone opened fire while this little boy ran helter-skelter holding an umbrella. According to our new national hero Zamarrud Khan, his priority was the children. I think there can not be a more blatant lie. He was untrained (not that any of the other so called law enforcers around the area were any better trained), wearing formal shoes that slipped on the tarmac, and completely thinking of how glorious it would be to sink his teeth on the media frenzy. If children were his priority he would have negotiated on his behalf more vehemently and patiently rather than going for the jugular so quickly and stupidly, right in front of the children. I must say God still pays attention to our spit of land. It was a smiling fate that save the children that day not Zamarrud Khan!

On My Way

I will need inspiration, tenacity and buckets of encouragement. Just when my life seemed to have been running on a smooth, chartered course I have placed a challenge before myself. I do not know why one day I woke up and started to rummage through my cupboards looking for my transcripts. I found only half the proof of my education and headed out the door to fight for the other half. It seems I have won this battle for a reason. I have been given my degree and it seems life now says to me, "here you go stubborn ass now what will you do?"
So I am on a quest again. I have chosen to sit for my Masters in English this year. To some this means something they did and got over with a long time ago. To me it means I get to tell my grandchildren stories from Shakespeare, read to them Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and warn them of the pitfalls of being so full of yourself that you sell your soul to the devil. I get to put on my resume that I know what I am talking about when I stand before a class of expectant teenagers waiting to hear a story. I do not know if it will lead to me becoming an author some day but it sure as hell keeps me going each day. I not just turn the pages of Milton's Paradise Lost I lose myself in the words of these Greats and bathe myself in their knowledge knowing that I grow every day every way.
It can come to you at any age this thirst for learning. This is my Renaissance. A time to stand tall and prove to all those teachers who judged my carefree attitude as a youngster. I'm on my way to striving again, I'm struggling, teasing my brain cells and loving each second of it. So here's to Mr Bacon, Dryden, Shaw, Bunyan, Donne, Marlowe, Jonson, Pope, Wordsworth and so many others that now accompany me on my journey to self discovery.

The bicycle

Dedicated to Baqar, the 11 year old who made the mistake of going to the market when the devil paid a visit to Abbas Town

It was a Sunday
Preparing for school
Doing homework
Playing with neighbors
Suddenly I wanted chips
The ones Ahmed bhai fries
Each evening.
The smell beckoned,
With a pocket full of jingling coins
I ran down to get me a box
Of those sizzling, spicy fries.
Suddenly there were flames
On my shirt
In my hair
I thought to myself
How cool, I'm ablaze
But it started to hurt
So I lay down
I saw my home had been blown
Like a faceless monster
With gaping teeth
It looked back at me
It's eyes an inferno
So tell my mom
I cannot come home
It is not there any more
But my brother's bicycle
Is hanging from the terrace
Do take it inside mom
For when it rains
It'll get all wet.

Tasneem

Her name literally means the milky river in Paradise. I always wondered how someone could be named so aptly. She had creamy white skin and the softest cheeks you ever felt. Her hands were so perfectly rounded at the fingertips they gave the impression that they were made to be looked at and admired and not have to do an ounce of work. When she smiled her eyes twinkled like that of a mischievous child trapped in a toy store. She loved happiness, I mean who doesn't right? But this one, she chased it and tried to capture it between her fingers. But it tended to elude her all her life. She was inherently kind, not just to us saps of human flesh, but to animals. I mean who notices how thirsty the birds are on a scorching summer day when all you want is to lay around in the air conditioned comfort of your house right? Who thinks about the pigeons looking for food each morning? Or how the cat that dirties your building's corridors gets hungry each afternoon. She had a knack of noticing the little things. She would remember to put a note on the refrigerator when she went out to get veggies from the vendor, so that her kids wouldn't wake up and not find her and wonder. She would regularly forget where she put her glasses and forget to wipe them clean, they were grimy, but she would remember to cook her children's favorite meals every day. She remembered to make a note of each and every call her husband got and take down a message in case he got upset and ensured that her daughter's uniform was sparkling white.
Tasneem needed to be loved in return. She had a couple of bratty children, who loved her, but forgot to show her, through their actions, exactly how much. Tasneem needed someone to give her medicine and monitor her health and diet, but she never demanded that her two children do anything for her except be around to give her company. Tasneem needed company but she didn't realize that eventually children grow up and find their own friends and forget the most important person in their lives. Tasneem needed someone who would understand her agony and sympathize with her lot in life but she got a husband that could not come to terms with the fact that he was dealt a hand by fate that he considered unfair to his superior being. And now she has left them. She's gone like the angel that protected and served and then silently slipped away without asking for anything in return. Her children yearn to tell her that she was not weak like everyone had told her all her life, she was a titan, an absolute Mohammad Ali of life. She battled her demons and whacked at the curve balls that life threw at her like a true champion. Her two brats want to let her know that they are proud to have been her children and they are whatever they are because she taught them so well. But that is the true nature of time as we know it, it flows constantly and we cannot have it back no matter how much we want. We can only hope that God has given the soul some provision of having to look at the world as it moves forward as our decaying bodies lies prostate. For if that is the case Tasneem would be smiling down on us even now, like a child trapped in a toy store.

Buraimi

A nomadic childhood has its ups and downs. The downs are many and the ups few. In short, it is not pleasant to have to leave a place you start to consider home when you are three or four or even six or seven or eight. Heck the agony of being the new kid in class completely outweighs any sense of adventure you might anticipate in exploring a new land. There comes a time when you stop making friends altogether. You stop having any expectations from strangers and invent your own ways of entertainment. Although a sad existence you grow up with one hell of a colorful imagination and the ability to chameleonize, if such a trait even exists, yourself to any surrounding. No body remembers you as their childhood friend and you know so many and such a variety of people that you really tend to forget where exactly you met them. Among the varied landscapes I got to inhabit as a kid one of the littlest spit of God's earth was named Buraimi. Al- Buraimi as the Arabs like to call everything. At the time I was there, it was an open border between Al-Ain and Oman and many of my relatives in Dubai used to drive down for the weekends, which was more of an inconvenience then blessing. When you're small all your memories depict things much larger than they actually were. Hence if you visit a place you remember as a kid you will find it to be really quite smaller than how you imagined it. Now Buraimi was so tiny that my memories also portray it as a very limited space. The only structures in the entire place(seriously) was the five or so storey high apartment that we inhabited the third floor of, a dirt road in front, across which lay my father's office. My school was a twenty to thirty minute trip into Al-Ain, which was a glorious city full of parks and villas that I got to see mostly on weekends or rushing by through my dad's car window each morning.
I made some extraordinary friends in this desolate place and formulated the most intriguing form of spending hours of afternoon time when my family insisted on taking a siesta. Lat me tell you that all my friends were imaginary. Yup they were all a figment of my imagination and boy did we have a riot of a time together. to give my 'friends' more of a character I would sit in front of the dressing table mirror and talk my own ear off. the magical thing about that mirror was that it was a perfect circle with two dissection at the left and right. Some genius had added hinges to those two dissections so that it could be moved inwards and your image multiplied manifold. Hence whenever I yearned the company of many I merely turned the two portions inwards and viola! I had a whole party to chat with. But even in my minds eye I knew that friends had to go home to their mommies, so leave they did and I still had hours to kill before anyone woke up. That was when I scrambled to the very edge of my room's window and watched the trailer that brought in the latest Toyota cars for, lucky for me, there was a showroom on the ground floor of our abode. It was thrilling to watch the shiny new paint on those four wheelers and how the workers would fold out the panels to bring down the cars on the top floor of the trailer. Like I said it was a sad existence but it taught me to depend on myself for fun rather unlike the generation today that needs so many gadgets and social outlets in order for them to have fulfilling days.

Loans for lawns!!!

One of the happiest memories of summer for me is shopping with my mother for the latest lawn prints. Summers here are so unbearable that one is not left with any fabric options to keep your skin breathing other than lawn. There was a time when one could easily purchase the length of material required for a shirt shalwar and dupatta within the attainable sum of, would you believe, 300 to 500 rupees. Lawn was considered, rightly so, an essential and a necessity for the scorching months of summer. Each year prices for a suit rose by at least 200 rupees but even that was bearable. Not to forget that this fabric doesn't do well with washing and hardly lasts longer than one season of sweat absorbing. Before the ugly monster we all now know as 'exhibitions' reared it's useless head lawn suits went for a maximum of 800 rupees. In one fell swoop the 'backyard' designers, as I like to refer to them, aided by the marketing fronts provided by their supermodel friends turned this fabric for the masses into an item of luxury, their prices touching the levels of an outfit made from silk or chiffon. As is the case with everything in our country the bandwagon was thronged and designers of minimum to maximum repute jumped aboard. Now all your see are thick thighed, paunchy, gaudy, bleached, bejeweled, ladies that need something new to blow their husband's/boyfriend's/uncle's money on. They are seen swarming these dos and hoarding the material like the sacks of sugar that are hoarded to hike the price. Not to forget that nowadays the prices range from 2000 to 8000 rupees per suit. But the rich of this country have proved that just eating citizens taxes doesn't satisfy them anymore.They would like to out do each other not only in terms of the number of maids they can hire but buy each other out at the expense of the economy. The working class is also party to this madness and here's reminding them that each time you spend 7000 rupees one a single attire you could have made seven of the same had you used your consumer discretion and not risen the demand for a fabric that is not even acceptable at a formal do.