Silk Tether

by Minal Khan

  He did not click right away. Countless shifts of the camera in different angles, much zooming and moving. What was he taking a picture of? I looked. A distant boat was visible in the sea. Against the backdrop of the sunset. I’m sure the zoom managed to capture an even clearer vision of the scene. I heard the faint click of the shutter.

  “Are you a photographer?” I asked without thinking.

  He seemed taken aback. Not a word had been exchanged between us for over an hour. For a moment he looked as if he had quite forgotten how to speak. Then he seemed to regain himself. “Yes. More of a Sub-Zero. I freeze moments.” He didn’t smile at his joke. His expression did not change at all. I smiled nonetheless.

  After a pause he continued, “The beach is just beautiful, don’t you think? It’s a canvas,” he added, looking at my painting, “of opposing landscapes. The sea, the sand, the sky. And it’s put together quite strangely, right? The sea is a symbol for life and it merges with coarse, desert sand at the shore.” He pointed ahead. “The fertile clashing with the barren. So strange. And if you look further upwards,” his finger now moved slightly higher, in the direction of the horizon, “you can see the sky meshing with the sea. Everything is so—connected. And because we’re sitting here on the sand, we’re linked to the skies as well. Can you imagine?”

  “All creations bound together,” I marveled aloud. “It’s pretty amazing. We humans consider ourselves so far removed from nature, but we’re both so connected. We derive from nature.”

  “And to nature we return. Buried under damp earth,” he looked down at the coarse brown sand. “Our bodies are left here, and our souls depart heavenward. A bit of us here on Earth, a bit of us in the sky.”

  His words fell like sweet music on my ears. I had never had such a conversation with a boy, any boy. Every other one I had come across seemed preoccupied with the usual: drugs, cars, girls. Some often put on philosophical acts to impress girls, I knew that. But not him. These were genuine words, sincere, original. For that split second, I felt like I could bare my soul to him, give him liberty to know my mind.

  “So we’re both here to capture a moment,” he chuckled. “My tool of choice is a camera, yours a paintbrush.”

  “My ammo is my paint, and yours is your reel of film.”

  “But look at the world of difference,” he took out a picture from his camera bag, a previous shot of a sunset, and placed it next to my painting. “One simple difference between the two images. One lacks imagination, the other doesn’t,” he nodded at my watery sunset.

  “Then why have you chosen to do photography?”

  “Because I don’t have imagination,” he laughed easily. “I just observe. And wonder. I think that things are in their perfect state as they are. Imagination would ruin that, wouldn’t it?”

  “You seem imaginative to me,” I responded.

  “Then you have misread me. Another concoction of your imagination.” He smiled. “Nature, who creates nature?” A sudden redirection.

  “God.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But that’s what I believe, anyway. Do you follow a religion?”

  “I will follow a religion, one day, when I know enough about all of them.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I blurted. “You can’t just pick and choose a religion like it were an item on a menu.”

  “Yeah? And give me one good reason why not.”

  “You just can’t.”

  “Exactly. That’s not you talking. That’s your society, your education. Not you.”

  “But it’s a conscious decision,” I said. “I choose to practice, and to believe, when I don’t need to.”

  He looked me straight in the eye. Squinted at me under camel’s lashes. “All right, let’s put practice aside for a second. What do you know of your religion?”

  “I guess I know the fundamentals, the basics. What to do, what not to do. Don’t drink, fast during the month of Ramadan, pray five times a day.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Hmmm. General historical stuff. Like the life of our Prophet, how he spread Islam from Makkah to Madina, again more dos and don’ts learned from his life.”

  “Ok. Let me put it this way. You know who your first Prophet is. And you know who your last Prophet is. Do you know who came in between? And don’t just tell me names. Tell me their significance.”

  I was tongue-tied. “Why do I need to have microscopic knowledge of every historical fact in order to be a follower? I feel like my intention is enough.”

  “And that’s the difference between you and me,” he smiled calmly. “You take on a religion and then seek to understand it. I understand a religion and then choose it.”

  I had nothing to say. My blood was racing through my body, and my heart thumped loudly. I knew that I’d remember those words, and when the time came and I was safely locked up in my room, I’d consider what he said in great depth, turn it over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it. But not now. I had to move ahead with the conversation. I had to pretend as if those words hadn’t made the huge impact on me that they had.

  And why did he look so confident? A steady smile played on his face. He was adamant in his belief. And he seemed to have that way that made even the most blasphemous theory sound so, so legitimate, and so logical. I knew I’d never be convinced. But that didn’t stop me from wondering. Why were his words absurd to me? Because I had never heard anyone declare such sacrilegious thoughts so freely?

  I had always heard of atheists. But they had never occupied a specific category in my mind. I regarded them in the same way I did Hindus and Christians; non-believers. Because it was only a question of whether you believed in the one God or not, right? If you did, you were a believer, and if you didn’t, you weren’t. And here I was sitting before a real atheist, in the flesh. It sent a shiver of excitement and fear to my stomach, as if I were seeing a villainous movie character come to life.

  “I’m not an atheist,” he said, reading my thoughts. “I don’t hate the idea of religion. I just need to find my religion, whatever it may be, instead of having it handed down to me, like some kind of heirloom.”

  “And is that what you’ve been doing your entire life? Searching for a religion?”

  “Yeah. I’m trying to find signs. Signs of God. God always makes Himself felt in some way or the other, doesn’t He?” He paused, and said slowly, “Sometimes when I look at the sunrise, at dawn, I imagine it to be a sign. God is imploring us to witness his miracle; the birth of day. He performs it every single day, at the same time in the morning. And we always miss it. We’re sleeping soundly while God works his wonders. And we only see the sun in terms of what it provides us; its function. It makes the plants grow, it gives us light, warmth, energy. Never do we consider what it truly is.”

  “A sign of God,” I said faintly.

  “Yes,” he whispered excitedly. “A sign of God. Does it really matter which God it is? Allah, Bhagwan, Ahura Mazda, they’re all the same to me!” He raised his hands in triumph. “We’re just so entwined in our own religions, busy defending them, fighting for them, dying for them, that we’ve forgotten to stop and appreciate the beauty of God. Appreciate God himself.”

  Our conversation flowed. We moved on to the political crisis in the world; the Islamic Middle East versus the West. “The conflict is really just all about religion; Muslims defending their religion because they’re so sure America is threatening its stability. Why the insecurity? I don’t get it!’

  “I feel like you might be confusing terror with religion,” I said. “The real problem is miscommunication. We don’t get where they’re coming from; they don’t understand what our intentions are. Religion hasn’t caused this conflict. It’s misinterpretation: terrorists failing to understand the true essence of Islam; the West failing to understand the true word of Islam correctly. I read somewhere that misinterpretation is what really creates terrorism and what creat
es prejudice. When they go hand in hand, I feel like conflict is bound to occur.”

  We spoke till the baby-pink twilight turned violet. The wind became chillier and blotted the sky in sudden gusts. We talked about Iran’s nuclear program, the earthquake, about death and the afterlife. Each disconnected topic seemed to merge into the other smoothly, and swiftly, like big waves merging into the smaller ones at the shore. I was jolted when my watch suddenly caught my eye. It was getting late. I had to make it home before nighttime.

  The stars were beginning to appear; faint white pearls in the sky. I looked at the boy and wondered if he had to go home, too. It didn’t seem like it. I imagined he came here every day, to just sit in the sand and take snapshots of the sea while the day breezed by.

  “I should be leaving now,” I said, finally. I fumbled for my paints and brushes. I turned around to gather my painting of the sunset. But it was gone.

  I turned to him in shock. “My painting! Where is it? Did you see my painting fly away? I need to hand it in tomorrow! Did you see it?” My voice trembled in the cold.

  His expression remained solid. “Yeah, I did,” he said slowly. Before I could erupt he said, serenely, “Your heart was never in it. It was a waste.” He grinned lightly, revealing dimples.

  My heart rate quickened in angst, and then slowed down, and slowed even more. I imagined the boy talking to me while my back was turned towards my painting. I pictured him, mid-conversation, seeing my paper toss away with the breeze, not telling me. And he continued talking, glancing at the paper as it moved further and further away; tossing over the sand and bending with every gust of wind, until it landed on the clay of the shore, and a large wave undulated into the sand, washing away my sunset first, and then engulfing the whole paper in a second wave.

  I wasn’t angry. Even though I knew I’d receive a battering from my teacher the following day and would quite likely have to start on a new sheet, I felt slightly relieved to be rid of that sunset.

  I gathered my belongings: the paintbrushes with the bristles clumped together; the plate of pencils, now disordered; and the palette of paints. I said good-bye to him and started walking back to where I had come from. I wondered whether he saw me in the same way as the paper; drifting away rapidly and unsteadily, further until I was just a speck on the sand.

  I was struck by a sudden realization: I didn’t know this boy’s name. He didn’t know mine. I hadn’t asked him which school he belonged to. I didn’t know his age. I will never see him again. And even as the thought stung me, I didn’t dare turn around and catch a last glimpse of him. I walked slowly on the now cool sand. I felt like I had entered a different realm and was now walking away from it, away and out into the real world. I was leaving a dreamy setting; a watery-blue sky, misty sand, and a mysterious photographer, posed in stillness with a camera in his hand.

  I was walking out of a beautiful painting. But my heart ached to be trapped in it, like the fishing boat in the boy’s picture.

  8

  As Alia and I were growing up, we had been fascinated by how similar our names were. “Ayla, Alia, we’re practically name twins!” she had said excitedly, when we were thirteen. She had longed to do something daring with this phenomenon. “We could change the spelling of our names,” she said. “Replace the ‘y’ in your name with ‘i’ and it will become ‘Aila.’ We’ll be Aila and Alia! Oh, what fun! It will confuse everyone!” She roared in glee.

  “And why not the other way round?” I argued. “You can replace the ‘i’ in your name with a ‘y.’ ‘Alya.’ That will even make more sense.” Years on, I couldn’t understand why I got touchy over the matter of a simple “y”. It was only a letter. But it was one-fourth of my name. And even though it seemed absurd, I didn’t want to compromise on one-fourth of my identity. Alia didn’t seem to be too bothered about it, though. “Okay,” she shrugged. “I’ll become Alya.” She beamed at me excitedly, perfectly happy to have shed her old self.

  For the next two months, we became a rage at school. Alia filled in her new name in school books and tests. Sometimes we purposely left out our last names to confuse teachers. After another month, we’d switch and I’d change the spelling of my name while she kept hers. It was wicked fun for us to have merged into one. As we gleefully manipulated our names on test papers, it didn’t nab at either of us that we were now almost indistinguishable.

  And we were the only ones who seemed to take pleasure in this name change game. Our teachers became further and further irritated. They’d mistakenly enter my marks in Alia’s record and hers in mine. We convulsed into giggles when our known-to-be-absent-minded Urdu teacher returned our tests back one day. She had written on the top of my test sheet, “Good work, Alia!” On the top-hand corner of the real Alia’s sheet, she had written, “Needs improvement, Alya.” We trembled in laughter as we both went up to our teacher and tried to explain that our names were different. She had tensed her eyebrows in alarm and confusion, trying to figure out who was who. It was a fun, unforgettable, moment.

  For our teachers, however, it was unforgettable because it drove them to sheer aggravation. When it spiraled out of hand, they felt compelled to call our parents and inform them of our “unabashed gimmick.” But by the time that had happened, Alia and I had already given up our antics. I had told Alia that we had to put a stop to it before we were punished severely. But that was only a cover.

  That day after the Urdu test episode, after the comical aspect of the scene had worn off, I felt dejected. She had thought us both Alia. My identity had, in a small but consequential way, been erased from everyone’s minds. What had started off as mere fun had led to a complete blend of our identities, till we were no longer separate, or whole.

  Once I placed my index finger in front of me, right before my nose. My one finger blurred into two indistinct fingers before my eyes. That is what we had become: two indistinct blurs that when seen from afar, were one. I kept moving my finger back and forth, away from my eyes and then closer. It dizzied me, but it was a rhythmic movement. A bittersweet feeling. I didn’t want to be half of Alia anymore. I was Ayla! But that day I felt like a nobody.

  Isn’t that how every human feels when they perceive a threat to their name? It is that feeling that makes us feel slightly unworthy and compelled to correct others when they mispronounce our names. It makes us feel insecure if someone but misplaces a letter in our names. It tugs at us, like a cold sore, if someone we consider dear remembers us fondly but can’t seem to recall our name. Who wants to be remembered without a name? What’s in a name? Everything, I thought. It is a birth-given label, like a barcode on every book that, though we may like it or not, distinguishes us. It gives us security. We are living in a globalized world now, where people take on multiple identities as easily as trying out new outfits. Our name is now the only real, permanent truth to us.

  It can’t be threatened, like our lives can.

  Even the names of criminals and bombers live on after they perish. After sixteen years of trying to understand who I really was, trying to assess my character and my flaws, I realized that it was pointless to have a fixed impression of myself. I was constantly changing, my character shedding traits and acquiring new ones, like a cargo handler unloading old stock and taking on the new. But self-discovery could be dizzying and disheartening. It gave me relief to realize that my traits defined me less than my name did. I was Ayla. It was that simple. Ayla. That is all I needed to be.

  ~

  Spring came and sneaked away. The monsoon season had begun. The chill in the air was moist, saturated with raindrops and the sweat of toiling rice farmers. Water flowed in the streets and gathered in giant mud puddles. A month had passed since that day at the beach. And yet every time I went out into the night, I felt as if I was there at the beach all over again. I could feel the same wind sweep over my legs and make me shiver despite the heat. It was a fearless wind, one that surrounded and lingered, engulfed. It had pushed me away from the strange photographer.
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  “Wow, you are really brave, having a conversation like that with a random stranger by yourself at the beach,” Alia said over the phone when I told her about my encounter with the boy. “My mom would have hit the roof if she found out I did that.” Alia was a free soul, but her wings could only unfurl so much. She was bound by dogmatic values, perhaps even more than I was.

  Alia came from a strict Punjabi family. Her parents were more flexible than other staunch members of the clan, but still firm with their traditions. Alia had recounted numerous tales of how a cousin or an aunt in the family had been admonished when they blemished the family name. Her cousin, Shaista, had been spotted at a coffee shop with a few friends from school; two girls and a boy. Her parents had been outraged, less because they had been lied to than the fact that their daughter had been seen with a boy. Shaista was locked up in her room for a month, unable to go out, to receive telephone calls, to greet guests.

  Girls in Alia’s family were strongly discouraged from going out and mixing with boys, or even any “loose” girls. The clench of the iron fist of values was far tighter than on most other girls belonging to other sects in Pakistan. Many of Alia’s relatives had donned the hijab, though most women just modestly covered their heads with dupattas. Alia’s mother had tried to reform Alia as well; screening her jeans and T-shirts to make sure they were not revealing or tight-fitting, and intermittently going through her phone to find out who she was befriending.

  Her mother, Nasreen Aunty, had not always been like this, said Alia. She herself married late, at twenty-six, when the bulk of girls in her community had been wedded at sixteen and seventeen. She had studied abroad, in England, when her parents had given up trying to find suitors for their restless daughter. She had obtained her degree in finance and after five years returned to a hostile Karachi, where even her relatives refused to talk to her. She had wanted to pursue a career, work in the textile industry, but her family came down hard on her. She was ridiculed and gossiped about to the point where she could not continue any more. She succumbed to the pressure and married two years after arriving home.