I was an early bird at the New Year party. But I wanted to leave right away which my hosts would not allow. I tried to convince them that I might have inadvertently left cooking stove in my kitchen on, an alibi they would not accept. I had always let my stew to cook over a low flame. Many friends kept watch over me. During the animated celebrations, everybody stood guard on me. The fault was mine because I had always been a notorious party animal.

All my efforts to escape were foiled. I was reduced to a psychedelic that Freud would have liked to experiment on. I had the feeling that if I didn’t reach my flat on the upper story of the apartment, my doctoral thesis which I had been working on for so many years would be lost in the inferno. (The great fires of London and Chicago came to my mind.)

The high pitched music appeared focused on me. As a mermaid took off her jaguar pelt, I somehow winked. This she mistook for a nocturnal invite and led me to an ante-room. To her utter dismay, I used the opportunity to escape. Once out of the party arena, I ran up and down the stepped slopes of Beyoglu district and the Gezi Park near the Byzantine Church in Taksim. It turned out to be quite a marathon. No taxi or dolmu was available while the whole city of Istanbul was celebrating the New Year’s Eve.

Though out of breath, I had to keep running. People gaped at me in bewilderment; they wouldn’t step forward to help a stranger like me in trouble, even if they wanted to. The fact that I had left my stove on was like announcing, “The Sky is falling!”

I kept running, slipping many times over sheets of snow. At the sharp turns, I barely missed running into revellers, unmindful of my acrobatic feats that I was involuntarily exhibiting. A stout, tall man went after the cigarette stub that I had dropped to relieve myself of extra burden. But I was more worried about my flat that was supposedly on fire and hopefully not.

I took another, shorter route to Farabi Sokak. In Turkey, there are two locations named after the Muslim philosopher: one where I lived — my humble flat was adorned with watercolours from Old Lahore — and the other in Ankara, called Farabi Caddesi, where the Pakistan Embassy is located. The (then) ambassador, Sheikh Altaf, had showed interest in acquiring some of my works, but he never got back to me on that.

To my horror, as I returned to my flat I actually saw it on fire. It was more terrifying than the scenes from the many Vincent Price movies that had often been screened uncensored at Gulistan cinema in Lahore, by Abrar ul Haq. I saw flames of all shades of VIBGYOR were dancing out of the top-storey window.

Allah, God, Bhagwan, Ahura Mazda, Tengri… whatever you name may call the Almighty by, I pleaded with them all. Meanwhile, everyone in the district had flung open their apartment windows, and yelled in unison. Fire-brigade bells were heard intermittently, from near and afar.

Frantically holding the master key to my apartment with trembling hands, I ran up the winding stairs. On each floor I had to press the light button again. I felt like Marcel Duchamp’s (painting), Nude Descending a Staircase, duly illuminated by lights filtering through the various flats.

But I was not to succumb to the lure that Mara’s three daughters had baited Lord Buddha with, during the latter’s final meditations, circa 530 BC. I inserted the key, rotating it clockwise. I pushed the door open, and rushed to the kitchen. Much to my surprise, the stove was off, and was as cold as the freezing temperatures on New Year’s Eve. Believing that my prayers had been answered, or some miracle had happened, I collapsed on my room bed.

Gathering my senses, I tried to get the hang of the situation. I used my eighth(!) sense to solve the puzzle. I went downstairs, and from across the lane, looked at my flat, which was still brightly lit. Coloured images from the big neon signs installed atop different buildings across the street were reflected in the glass panes of my window, which I had taken for the ‘Great Fire’.

I realised that when the Byzantine Church bells started to toll at a high pitch, at zero hour, I had taken that for the fire-tenders (it wasn’t a repeat of Ernest Hemingway). Again, at midnight, the revellers had the tradition of throwing open all windows from where everyone would yell in unison: “Yeni Y l n z Kutlu Olsun!” (Happy New Year)

I hailed a taxi, returned to the party venue — the house of Saadet Cetin. Most guests had left by then. To the rest, I narrated my story. They were so surprised that they refused to buy it. They said, “Bunu inanacak kadar sarhos degiliz!” (We are not drunk enough to believe all this)

(To be continued)

Note: FREE painting and drawing classes at House of NANNAs on Sundays, from 11am to 2pm.

The writer is founding member of the Lahore Conservation Society and Punjab Artists Association, and former director of NCA Art Gallery. He can be reached at ajazart@brain.net.pk