“Every day I notice something new and beautiful in this city, and it overwhelms me!”....
COVER STORY
“Every day I notice something new and beautiful in this city, and it overwhelms me!” she exclaimed with a certain expression of awe. “There are days when I cannot believe we’re in the same country!”
“All the beauty I know”, he replied in a phony, drowsy voice that experience attested had always worked well with her, “is right here!” He pointed his finger towards her, brushing it against her back.
She nudged it away with feigned anger and standing, continued, “I’ll write to Addi and tell her about it, or should I make a trunk call?”
He was in no mood to let all his brewing romanticism be taken over by the idle talk about her elder sister or trunk calls, so he effectively silenced her by being even more romantic.
It had been four months since they were married. Two, since they had shifted to this city, the new capital of their country. They were first cousins, and belonged to a feudal clan of Sukkur; so everyone had taken it for granted that his father had only to ring some bells to land him a job in the newly formed Capital Development Authority or CDA as it was called. Going to a far-off city had been the bone of contention for many in his family, most of whom considered the short trip to Larkana to be nothing else than highway to hell. “Do you need a visa to go to Islamabad?” one of his sisters had asked him with undying curiosity.
And so refuge was sought in the form of cementing their nuptials. They had been betrothed to each other since birth. Moreover, they also liked each other - not that the lack of this endowment could have affected the family’s decision anyway - but it worked all the better for them to get married then.
“Do you realise we have loved each other since we were born?” she asked him once - not admitting to herself it was something she had stolen from a Sindhi magazine.
“Not since we were born. Long before that. We have loved each other since love was born”, he replied in Sindhi - and she cringed at the intended cheapness of his dialogue, despite her towering threshold for such matters.
Later, when they lay in bed, something occurred to her, “It’s strange. This city is the same age as our marriage. Maybe these are connected - our stories being eerily linked to the fate of this city?”
“Hmm …” he murmured and she knew better than to broach the topic anymore: everything she said now would be met first with a confirmatory and then an affirmative ‘hmmm’ from his side. They lay in companionable silence in the darkness, nothing to disturb them save for the occasional drift of summer winds and a cricket’s muffled shrieks. He loved listening to her talk; even her words, when she wrote him letters, had a way of speaking to him. But this soothing, comfortable silence between them took things to a new level altogether.
************
Farhan stomped his foot on a dry leaf to break the silence. Kashaf, her attention won by the act, pointed towards the old tree, so they could sit in its shade for a while. Farhan and Kashaf, or Mr and Mrs Farhan as they so desperately wanted to be called these days were on their honeymoon trip. They meant to go all the way up to Hunza, and had stayed in Islamabad for a night where Farhan’s cousin had brought them to Fatima Jinnah Park (or ‘F-9 Park’, as he insisted sounded better) for bowling.
As they reclined against the bark of the tree, replenishing their vitality with the city’s freshness; the two of them - the cousin having rushed to the car on forgetting something - they saw an old couple pass by, moving in calculated strides across the walking track. Catching their glimpse of the couple at about the same time, Kashaf and Farhan brought up distinct anecdotes from their minds to go with the vista. Kashaf was reminded of how they said Islamabad was either for the newly-wed or the nearly-dead; and found it brazenly fitting that the scene right there presented both the propositions in untainted exposure. Farhan remembered how his father used to say that if you live too long with either your spouse or your dog, you end up looking alike. And he found the stark resemblance between the old man and woman haunting, even if his observation was masked by the shadows of the night.
Kashaf shifted towards Farhan, imploring him to focus on something he had already noted: the old couple walked in impeccable steps, one’s movements being in absolute synchrony to the other’s.
They smiled, the younger ones, for then everything like this was exceedingly fantastic for them. Kashaf, for once, even thought of taking their picture and putting it up on Facebook, with “Life-goals!” to go with the post. It was only after the old couple had dwindled into the darkness that an unpleasant thought arose in Kashaf’s gut: what if this show of affection between the old couple had ceased to be out of wonderful longing, but only existed on the foundations of hideous dependency - devoid of passion, fuelled by habit?
************
“Of all the things I love about this city, the presence of all the four seasons just about tops the list!” she said while opening the windows, just as a spray of unruly monsoon hit her right in the face. He looked up, putting the documents on the side-table and joined her in what was, essentially, another of her unwonted outbursts of love for this city.
“Let’s go for a drive”, he offered, adamant on preserving her childish, almost infective, excitement for some more time.
Minutes later, they were seated in their Mazda as it rushed passed the cacophony of Silver Oaks and Palms towards the margin of the city. The incessant splatter of rain failing on the car isolated them from the surroundings, and they both were secretly grateful for it. He put in a cassette of Farida Khanum’s recordings in the car-tape, which wouldn’t work after blurting out just two lines:
“Waqt ki Qaid Mein, Zindagi hai magar.
Chand ghariyaan yehi hain Jo azaad hain!”
Seeing his expression on the tape’s failure, she touched him teasingly on the nape of his neck, where it always tickled him. He was about to respond when a thundering bolt of lightning struck somewhere in the distance, and the lights of the city went out. They approached the base of Margalla, where the construction of the country’s largest mosque was in full swing. They had often questioned its unconventional, pyramidal structure; but would always choose to go with the Turkish architect’s good sense and Islamabad’s forwardness. “Madam, your driver ought to take you back now”, he started.
“A little further?”
“Margalla. Abode of snakes. I’d very much choose to die by the lightning of your love than be devoured by snakes!”
She laughed. She had by now adjusted to his sense of humour, or whatever semblance he possessed of the trait.
On the way back, the downpour, which had previously been producing the most enchanting music, discontinued. While they were driving through the 7th Avenue, she slapped the tape in an act of desperation - and out came the words:
“Inko kho ker meri jaan-e-jaan.
Umer bhar na tarastay raho!”
To her surprise, he swerved the car to the side and all of a sudden, killed its engine.
Just then, a butterfly flew from his heart and flapping its flamboyant wings, entered hers. It stayed there for a while, then went beyond them and erupted into a lone cloud.
It started raining again.
************
It was raining when Khayam came to Islamabad - a welcome departure from the state of inhumane humidity in his Karachi. He had come to do a feature on the capital for a leading magazine, on this city that many a tourists had reported resembled the sleepy suburbs of Europe. The editorial staff had first recommended him Lahore, but the idea had petrified him. So much had already been written on that city that he saw no escape from others’ fondness of Lahore in his own writing. He had started his current piece with the amusing, “Welcome to Islamabad - the city of seat-belts”, for these had been among the most striking things to him. It unsettled him, this city. To see that those running his country were capable of such immaculate planning and organised functioning; but they only did that when they really wanted to.
And the want was conspicuously present in other cities of the country only by its absence. To get more insight into the city, he had been put into contact with an old CDA official and his wife. They sat in Serena Hotel, and after customary greetings, went about discussing the city. Khayyam had covered all the latest gimmicks - the National Monument, the recent Malls, the popular hiking trails, the future projects like Grand Hyatt; so he was more inclined towards questioning them about its history. He asked about the historic village of Saidpur before its conversion into an exhibition and the old man remembered it with striking clarity. He touched upon the subject of the troublesome Lal Masjid and the old woman dug out from memory their association with it as the oldest mosque of the city. It went on like this - the old couple mused about the city philosophically. They almost always said the same thing, but one’s views seemed consciously disconnected from the other’s. Khayyam even thought there to be some invisible chasm between them, before he reminded himself sternly of the narrowing chasm he had with the deadline for this piece. When he was done, the journalist expressed his gratitude to the old couple. As he was leaving, he felt as if he had been talking, not to individuals, but to the extensions of the city itself. He felt sorry for the lack of any other identity on the old couple’s part.
To be continued ...
