Tunnel Vision

by Shandana Minhas

  To be considered attractive in the local context, a Pakistani man had to meet most (if not all) of the following criteria:

  Be rich, well connected, or (very) gainfully employed.

  Not smell.

  Not be cross-eyed, hunchbacked, or club-footed.

  Not be non-Muslim (unless you were non-Muslim, in which case the last thing you wanted at the end of all the pointing and laughing was a Muslim).

  If a man had all of the above, he automatically qualified to enter the eligible bachelor pool where further ranking was derived on the basis of questions like, ‘was he a mommy’s boy, did he have a sense of humour, was he broad-minded or ultra-conservative, did he live in a joint family system, was he kind to children?’ Omar and Saad both rated off the scale, fulfilling all the basic criteria and passing most other tests with flying colours, all except the ‘mommy’s boy’ question, which was hard to answer because neither of the two had ever introduced me to their mothers. Maybe they’d been deliberately flying under the mommy’s boys radar all along!

  I wouldn’t be ungrateful, I hadn’t done too badly, considering Omar and Saad were the only two men I had ever responded to, not the only two men who had ever shown interest in me. Of course, if a Pakistani woman counted every man who had ever shown an interest in her, she’d go cross-eyed counting. The parliamentarians who heckled pretty women members of parliament and were obsessed with whether purdah-wearing MPs should have photo IDs were not wasting time on issues redundant to the national interest; women were the national interest. And occasionally even national sport, or was that hockey? I always did get my ball games mixed up. The point was, from a purely objective point of view, I hadn’t done too badly. House, car, cash flow, infants (mother and brother), and all without having to simper at innuendo laced songs about mattresses, horses and cholis.

  Now if only I could escape the awful things that happened to unmarried women.

  Everyone knew about the strange things happened to unmarried women, they got all cranky and inquisitive, focused either on living vicariously or not living at all. I knew portly matrons who cornered newly married women and demanded juicy details of their wedding night to compensate for their own lack of sex. What a terrible terrible fate.

  Frustrated souls, deprived even of the forbidden knowledge of self-satisfaction, they scoured every available periodical, paper or book for any hint of titillation that might bring the monsoon down on their arid plain. The most disturbing of all were the tummy-rubbers. The tummy-rubbers were a particularly odious variation of the theme of the typical spinster, being plump and apple-cheeked rather than taut and spare as if consumed by inner fire. They used their kindly aunt appearance to lure young married women into hugs they wouldn’t freely dispense to their angular spinster friends, fearing no doubt that envious bones might perforate their still cherished notions of married bliss. Once a victim was held tightly in that embrace, the tummy rub began. The tummy rub was a slow, constant, almost sensual drag of the hand across the belly, testing for bulges, bumps, possibly an extra breast? Did they feel a tingle when they felt evidence of consummation? A thrill when they realized the slender, taut physique would soon spread and congeal like their own? Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of unmarried women? According to Ammi, I would of course find out first-hand.

  Watching Omar with the luscious cheekbones watching me, I wondered what had held me back. What had kept me from skipping across the bridge of courtship onto the pastures of bliss on the other side?

  ‘Yes Ayesha,’ Omar settled himself comfortably on the foot of the bed and began to massage my big toe, ‘do tell what held you back?’

  ALLAH AAP KO CHAND SA BETA DAY

  POPULAR BEGGAR LINE

  ~

  Women got fat, men lost interest. ‘I didn’t want to get fat Omar.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Which portent of doom came first, the ageing rooster or the fossilized egg?

  ‘I didn’t love you.’

  ‘How is that relevant? How many people here marry for love?’

  Truth.

  ‘I was too young.’

  ‘You were more than old enough.’

  ‘There was something really important that I needed to do.’

  I had yet to come to terms with what had happened to my father.

  ‘Tell me all about it.’

  So he could hear me after all.

  Tired, stressed, just beginning to plumb the depths of Ammi’s madness, Omar had been little more than a diversion for me. A pleasant detour from an otherwise bumpy road. A flyover, if you like, but the destination remained the same. My friends had thought I was mad when I told them as far as I was concerned our relationship had no future.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Kulsoom had spluttered, ‘what kind of idiot thinks these things? That’s precisely why you should get married, all this emotional dislocation business will fly out of the window soon enough.’

  ‘Disconnection, not dislocation. I haven’t broken anything.’

  ‘I think you have. You should have a CAT scan in fact, because I think it’s your brain. Are you sure those thugs didn’t beat you up too?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there’s no point. My mind is made up, and you’re dismissing everything I’m saying as nonsense anyway.’

  ‘But it is nonsense! Do you know how many girls on this campus are interested in him and jealous of you? Do you know how few men there are like him in Pakistan? Do you know some people have to import them? I’m just pointing this out because it seems to have passed right through your colander of a mind.’

  ‘Well, you can tell those girls they’ll have their chance soon enough.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to break up with him already!’

  ‘It’s been more than two years, Kulsoom.’

  ‘Two years isn’t such a long time. Most engagements are longer. Give him a chance.’

  ‘We’re going to graduate soon and I want to walk away from this hellhole with no attachments.’

  ‘That’s the exact opposite of what a sane woman would want. Everyone will say you wasted your entire college education.’

  I didn’t dignify that with a response.

  ‘You know sometimes I do think you’re arrogant. You think you’re better than the rest of us.’

  ‘Because I don’t want the things you do? So the things you want are the right things and anything else is wrong? That makes you arrogant, not me.’

  Kulsoom stiffened a little, ‘No I’m not saying I know I’m right and you’re wrong. I could be wrong. I’m just saying I believe in the pattern that has been laid for me. And I can’t help feeling they’re the right things because there don’t seem to be any other things.’

  ‘Sure there are.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Work. Art. Science, even. Some people dedicate their whole lives to research.’

  ‘Most of those people are men.’

  ‘There are women too.’

  ‘Very few. And they’re also married.’

  ‘So if I don’t get married, it won’t be worth anything.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. You know you’re already worth something.’

  ‘Then what value will a husband add to my life that I can’t get on my own?’

  ‘Respectability. No one takes single women seriously here, and single working women might as well walk around with targets on their backs. Every man you come in contact with will make a play on you.’

  ‘And I’ll repel it.’

  ‘That won’t make a bit of difference and you know it. You remember that lady professor in the Visual Arts department who was unmarried? The boys harassed her and the girls hated her. Even her colleagues were so catty to her. She had to leave, you know.’

  ‘So even an odious, abusive, sloth of a husband is better than no husband at all? You’re an educated woman K, how can you believe such things?
’

  ‘Because I’m a realist. I’ve read the same books you have, I watch the same TV, wear the same clothes, I even dream of the same things sometimes. The difference is I know where dreams end and reality begins.’

  ‘Don’t you think we’re a little too young to be getting married?’

  ‘Do you live in a box? Anytime after puberty is the right time! We’re the perfect age! And we have degrees. Girls like us are what everyone wants right now. And you even have a wonderful man who’s willing to risk his all for you and yet you’re spouting garbage about not being ready. No one’s ever ready to be married, not even married people. Besides, you won’t be complete until you’re married and a mother.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘The Quran.’

  And that was the end of that argument. You couldn’t argue about religion. We just didn’t know how to without getting all upset about it.

  Kulsoom had been like a runaway locomotive once she’d gathered momentum. I missed her.

  ‘I missed you too.’ Kulsoom was sitting on the other side of Omar. ‘You should have written to me more. Maybe one friend was all it would have taken to keep me from killing myself.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Omar,’ Kulsoom winked at him across my feet, ‘when will she understand everything is her fault?’

  ‘Thirty-four per cent, at least, of the total population suffers from depression and anxiety, and that’s only in this city!’ I waved frantically to get their attention but they ignored me. ‘You don’t get to leave that kind of baggage behind, ever, not even if you leave the country. How was I supposed to help you if you were so far away?’

  In 20-20 hindsight, even her insistence on marriage being the balm for all womanly ills seemed the desperate belief of a dreamer, not a realist. She had to believe there was some bond or person out there who had the power to raise her above her own pain. When she realized it wasn’t true, she couldn’t deal with it.

  ‘Why do we insist another person will make it all better?’ I whispered to them, tired of the shouting. I had been the only one of my friends to disavow that belief, at least in public. That was another one of those ubiquitous dichotomies of life in the Land of the Pure, the public face and the private face.

  ‘You know why she left you don’t you?’ Kulsoom turned to Omar.

  He looked at her in silence. His cheekbones seemed to be getting sharper by the second. A nimbus of light appeared to frame his face. His shoulders seemed to be expanding to fill the room.

  ‘She wanted to impress the First Years with what a rebel she was. The independent woman idea was just getting to be popular then.’

  I turned away, fuming. When I looked down again, Kulsoom had gone. Omar and I were alone again. The telephone by my bed began to ring. It rang incessantly, insistently. I ignored it. Omar finally picked it up.

  ‘Ayesha.’

  He listened to the sound at the other end of the line. The phone was to his ear, but I could hear it clearly. It sounded like a thousand multi-clawed insects trying to dig through the roof.

  ‘Tell them I’m not here,’ I blurted suddenly.

  ‘You tell them.’ He held the phone towards me.

  ‘Do it for me please.’

  ‘I can’t Ayesha. You don’t like it when people try to help you.’

  Truth.

  Somewhere someone was playing music.

  ‘Are you thinking about the dancing?’ Omar whispered gently into my ear. The noise of the claws on the roof had diminished. Now I could hear some sort of tribal beat, like the trash you hear on FM on weekends these days.

  ‘I’m thinking about the dancing.’

  SUB CHALAYGA

  BACK OF RICKSHAW.

  ~

  ‘Do you even know any of these people?’ he had called after me as I’d stalked out of one particularly bleak foray into Karachi’s nightlife.

  ‘No, and I don’t want to,’ I had shuddered at the thought of the man who had come up to dance behind me, so that I was caught between the two of them like the filling of a sandwich. Omar had not seemed to mind, in fact he’d smiled a greeting to the other man, but I had been so offended I had pushed him away and left. Pushed Omar, that is, not the other guy. Another reason I was angry. Why couldn’t I vent my rage at its triggers and not its hapless witnesses? I’d ask my mother, but she obviously didn’t know.

  ‘Slow down Ayesha, what’s your hurry?’

  ‘I want to get as far away from here as possible.’

  ‘We were only dancing. It was just a bit of fun.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go back and have some more fun? I can get home myself.’

  ‘It’s late. You know you can’t get home by yourself looking like that this late. I’ll never let you take a cab alone.’

  ‘Then I guess you better drop me home.’

  ‘Whatever the boss wants.’

  We eventually found the car, parked some distance away and settled into it. Omar turned on some music, but I reached over and turned it off. It agitated me further, accelerated the pounding in my head.

  ‘Okay,’ Omar whistled, ‘I guess we won’t be listening to any music then.’

  We drove in silence for a while.

  ‘How can you go to these things week after week? Same people, same places, same music, same trivial conversation and fake smiles, no one makes eye contact but everyone wants to touch, how can you bear it?’

  ‘Bear it? I like it. It’s relaxing. It takes away some of the tension of the week, uses up some of that excess energy.’

  ‘Why can’t you use that energy for something more constructive?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know … social work or something.’

  Omar laughed, ‘Okay, next weekend we’ll go give a heroin addict a bath. Would you like that?’

  I had laughed despite myself.

  ‘I’m being earnest and meaningful, how can you laugh?’ Omar had mimicked my angry face and I had laughed again.

  ‘Ayesha, Ayesha, Ayesha, you know there’s a song about you? I’d play it for you but you’d only get angry again.’

  I had smiled, feeling quite silly now the rage had passed.

  ‘We don’t have to go to these parties if you don’t want to,’ he had continued.

  ‘But you like to go, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t really care.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll do something else.’

  ‘Like what? What is there to do in Karachi for a couple? Or for anyone, for that matter? Eat out. Go to the beach. Go to someone’s house. You can’t go to the movies with a girl because the films are crap and some moron is always trigger-happy with a laser light plus using the bathroom puts you at risk for at least a million communicable diseases.’

  ‘There’s always sport.’

  ‘Where? Cricket on the street? Me running between the wickets in my tight kameez? That’ll be a big hit. No, Omar, I know this is your idea of fun. And I don’t want you to stop having any.’

  ‘So you’ll go next week?’

  ‘No, you’ll go next week. Without me.’

  ‘How can I go alone?’

  ‘You don’t have to go alone.’

  ‘But you just said you won’t come, and I’m not going to take Fahad!’

  Fahad was one of Omar’s still gawky friends. Invites to private parties were hard to come by without the right connections, and Fahad never got any. He was constantly begging Omar to take him along. Omar had promised to, the second Fahad got a date. End of the Fahad Party quest.

  ‘There are lots of women who would be only too happy to go with you.’

  ‘But I have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that,’ I began.

  Omar pulled over.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, worried by the look on his face.

  ‘So talk.’

  ‘I can talk while you drive.’

>   ‘No, I want to give you my full attention, and I want you to listen to me before you say anything, okay? This is important.’

  ‘Okay. But I really think I should go first,’ a stone settled into the pit of my stomach. I liked Omar, really liked him, I didn’t want to make this any more awkward than was absolutely necessary.

  ‘No. You always get to go first. For once I’m going to take the lead. Considering what I’m going to say, I hope it’s a healthy precedent,’ his cheekbones glinted in the lights of a passing car as he smiled softly. My heart rate accelerated. Where was the overzealous police force when you really needed it? What I wouldn’t give for a tullah demanding a nikahnama.

  ‘Ayesha,’ Omar took a deep breath and launched into it, ‘my mother wants to meet you.’

  ‘Why?’ I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. He looked surprised.

  ‘Why? Because she wants to know all about this girl I’ve been spending so much time with.’

  ‘How does she know about me? I’ve never been to your house alone, and you have so many female friends.’

  ‘It’s quite obvious you’re not like my other female friends. Who do you think helped me select that bracelet I gave you on your birthday? Can you imagine me walking into a jeweller’s by myself? They’d eat me alive. I’d have walked out having paid thousands for an empty satin lined box.’

  ‘That’s scary.’

  ‘What’s scary?’

  ‘That a boy can be so close to his mother.’

  ‘It’s not like she’s my best friend or anything but yes, I am close to her, she is my mother. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said glibly, thinking that it was almost unhealthy, soliciting help from your mother to seduce a girl. Though Omar’s seduction attempt, it was becoming apparent, sprang from that time-honoured cliché of ‘pure’ intentions.

  ‘Anyway, she wants to meet you,’ Omar tried again.

  Running over the dialogue in my head, there seemed no easy way to drop the bomb, so I just blurted out, ‘I can’t meet her!’

  ‘I know you can’t meet her right now, but maybe in a few days you can come over for tea and …’

  ‘And what?’