Obscurities

by Nahid Husain

  “Don’t cry, Shayana, please don’t cry.” But without warning they flooded out, slowly and silently as always.

  F***, I told myself. F***. Get over it. But I never could. I looked all over my room, at the poster signed by the International Awareness Committee, at the vibrant shades of my painting, at the black symbols of music that I could now recognize, at the tee from a volunteer event lying on the ground, at my Brackenridge Hospital ID. I looked at all the things that I had so carefully tried to fill the void in my life with. But somehow it always remained empty. As soon as I managed to fill it to the top, someone would pull everything out and shatter it, so that once more, I would be left to collect the broken pieces

  *

  “Aapi, get up! It’s 6:40!” Somewhere, in the middle of blurred dreams, I heard my sister.

  “Five more minutes,” I mumbled.

  “Aapi, GET UP! It’s 6:55!!”

  I jumped out of bed with a growing sense of alarm inside me.

  “Pari! Why didn’t you wake me up earlier??” I yelled.

  “I tried! You never wake up!”

  “I never heard you. I told you…”

  A voice filtered through my hysteric rage,

  “Beta, don’t yell early in the mornings. We have been trying to wake you up since a long time. Every morning you do this…”

  “Ma, I do not. Everybody always—” another voice added to the conniption.

  “Naanu, breakfast is ready. Come down immediately.”

  “I’m coming, aunty,” I yelled even louder. “One minute!”

  “Aapi, it’s 07:00!”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m coming.”

  “Beta, if you don’t have breakfast today, I’m not going to speak to you for the rest of the day.”

  “Ma, I will.”

  I rushed to the bathroom in a foul mood, figuring out the times in my head. I had exactly three minutes in the bathroom and a couple more to dress. The car’s horn blew as I was donning my pre-ironed uniform. I rushed downstairs like a madwoman.

  “Aunty, I can’t find my socks!”

  Aunty stood with a glass of milk in her hands at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Beta, drink your milk!”

  “Husaina Bai, don’t let her go if she hasn’t had her milk,” a voice hollered from upstairs.

  “Aunty, where are my socks?”

  “Aapi, the car’s come.”

  “I know. I’ m coming.”

  “Beta, drink your milk!”

  “Aunty, I don’t have time!”

  “Tie your shoelaces,” Aunty yelled.

  But I was off, shoelaces trailing as always, my schoolbag thumping against my back, to the packed white car that would take me to school.

  Jeez, it can get quiet in here, I thought as I got out of my bed and hurriedly put on my jeans and a T-shirt. My roommate was still sleeping, although this was rare. She wasn’t home many nights. Even when she did come home, she was up and about long before me. The University Tower chimed three-fourth of its tunes and almost instinctively, I turned my head to look outside the window in its direction. I could make out the image of my 27-story high freshman dormitory in the distance, its blue glass windows reflecting the sunlight. It held a lot of memories, that glittering building.

  It was where I had spent my first year in America, among elitist rich kids from India, a multitude of ABCDs (American-Born Confused Desis). Some were party types and some were sorority types with their cutesy airs and eternal problems with everything. Unfortunately, I thought they were my ticket to friendship. To social life, yes, but definitely not to friendship.

  As I metamorphosed from accented-international student to Ms. ‘Liberal-find-yourself’, to ‘Pseudophilosophical-Everything’s-a-learning-experience’, trying to ‘fit in’ somewhere, I kept losing myself in an abyss of delusion. There were lots of social suicides, lots of naïve assumptions and lots of tears. I smiled. Yes, that was 16-year-old-international-student-me alright.

  Life is definitely less turbulent now. I had learned to say con-SER-vative instead of conser-VA-tive, ob-LI-gatory instead of ob-li-GA-tory, and learned to write color instead of colour. Learned that a rubber was different from an eraser and you do not, DO NOT, never, ever, ask to borrow a rubber in class. Learned that it was okay not to spend your weekends getting drunk at Paradox.

  The tick-tocking of the polished wood clock on my wall reminded me that I was going to be late for class. Making sure I had my keys and ID, I staggered downstairs after my three minutes in the bathroom. I was too tired to hurry. Sometimes, while I walked to class across the West Mall of my campus, with the University Tower looming beside me, I felt like I was in another dimension; in a nucleus with 50,000 people milling around me.

  The West Mall was the pantheon of activity at the University of Texas at Austin. It had its own aura, a charm that was only enhanced by the plethora of students recruiting for their respective organizations, with neatly lined tables and colored banners rustling slightly in the wind; the urgent laments of a Christian missionary; or a student group passionately rallying pro-choice on stage. On one side of the West Mall stood the Undergraduate Library, or the UGL. It was four stories high, gray, well-lit by white fluorescent lights, and the most prosaic and unimaginative edifice ever constructed, hence earning the appropriate epithet, ‘The UGLY’.

  The sanctuary for many a study rat, it became my haven too during my second year of college. I grew to love its banal gray-and-white interior, the sound of pages rustling in the Reference Room, and the mad frenzy that gripped its usually placid atmosphere during finals. Cups of coffee and packets of Doritos smuggled to the third floor were what kept us all-nighters alive during this time. It was this building that housed my social life during my sophomore year, my brief hellos with acquaintances as I wiled away time between my poorly scheduled classes in the Electronic Information Center, checking my e-mail. Some days I would even feel the exciting paradox: my Hotmail account listed a myriad of names nine thousand miles away who knew me better than anyone in this room ever would.

  *

  I smoothed my green and white uniform and got out of the car, shoelaces trailing behind me. The humid October morning was distinctive of the Sharjah sun but it was still cooler than the 110 F afternoons. I walked through the large, green-and-white gates across a cobbled courtyard into a two-story concrete building that housed my classroom. Since there was still time for class, I left my school bag there and walked outside to the Pit, a depressed arena that was the pantheon of activity at Ibn Seena English High School.

  While the boys played either Heads or volleyball inside it, the girls spent countless minutes of their free time walking endlessly around it, talking, discussing, conspiring, arguing, laughing, cementing friendships and relationships, as they discussed in the minutest detail every moment of their lives.

  It was a different time, that small cocoon that I was so ensconced in that I lost myself in the abyss of euphoria. It was a different place, that small desert city in the tiny horse-shaped United Arab Emirates, on the very tip of the peninsular boot of Arabia. It was a place where I was queen, Ms. She-Has-It-All in school and ‘What is Naanu doing?’ at home. Where the sounds of laughter at lunch time were higher than any other sound in the world. Where Daddy insisted that he was putting on weight and therefore his children had ceased to love him, and where Ma was convinced that all of us would faint due to frailty if we didn’t take our vitamins every day. Where Pari imitated the way Mrs. Kapoor walked in school, and where Ali made all of us learn the height of Mount Everest and the depth of Marianna’s Trench in feet and meters. And where Shayana threw her tantrum fits, indulged in endless banter so that the whole family knew of Rin’s mother’s uncle’s cousin’s weeding, and told everyone she knew she was doing to die at 45.

  The dance rehearsals continued throughout mid-terms, volunteer work and co-op duties. They did, however, manage to make a dent in my invariable routine that I had perfected by now, beginning of Junior Yea
r. There were many Organic Chemistry zombie nights, many left-feet catastrophes. There were many times when I was convinced that I had some kind of sadistic steak in me for wanting to kill myself, but I managed to stay sane.

  * * *

  He finally broke the ice. “So, are you always this cold to your dance partners?”

  “Depends.”

  “Hopefully not on them wanting to ask you out.”

  “And why would they want to do that?”

  “I mean, you don’t have to agree if you don’t want to…what do you want me to say…that I’m madly in love with you even though we’ve barely exchanged 12 words in conversation, 10 of which were ‘Hi!’ and that I would be eternally honored if you would please grace me with your presence at the coffee shop across the street?”

  I smile in spite of myself.

  “Something to that effect. But I don’t date.”

  “Well, at least you smile.”

  “An old eccentricity.”

  “Do you drink coffee?”

  “Sorry, just gave it up.”

  “Are you going to give up staring at me during rehearsal breaks too?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “If you don’t drink coffee, yes.”

  “Well, that’s unconditional love for you.”

  “Nope, its conditional friendship.”

  “As in precursor to unanticipated love?”

  “No, as in do you ever lighten up?”

  “Only when I don’t have Organic Chemistry homework.”

  “I promise that you will survive.”

  “Unfortunately.” I smiled.

  “For me. I can’t pay for your coffee many more times.”

  “What! You haven’t even paid for it once!”

  “No, only for enduring your company.”

  “You, sir, are getting more obnoxious by the minute.”

  “Why, I do believe I might be able to surpass you.”

  “Not if you keep trying to be chivalrous by asking out girls who stare at you.”

  “But this one has beautiful eyes.”

  “Well, praise be to the Almighty… You actually really do like me…” My sarcasm had reached its limit.

  “You’re wrong. I love you.”

  *

  “Shayana! Phone!” Ma yelled from upstairs. Daddy, Shaima, Ali and I were sitting downstairs talking as we waited for the call to the morning prayer. It was 05:30 in the morning. Only a couple of people would call me at this ungodly hour.

  “Shayana, I need the 28th Sum from exercise III in Math,” Maia ordered.

  I groaned. “Maia, its 05:30 in the morning.”

  “I know, come on, Nans, please. And oh yes, I nearly forgot. I’m going out with Steve again this evening so you know the story. Don’t call my house because I am supposed to be with you, and if my mom calls tell her that I am in the bathroom or something and call me at this number that I am going to give you in a second and I will call her back.”

  “Mai, not again. Where are you both going to be?”

  “Some party. I think it’s at Renita’s place.”

  “I am not doing this.”

  “Yes, you are. Please, Nans. Come on. I never get to see him.”

  “Okay. But last time though. Let me get my math book.”

  “Okay. Here it is. I remember this one. Even I was stuck on it. You just have to convert the cubic centimeters to cubic meters in the question. Otherwise you get a weird answer.”

  “No wonder. I knew there were too many decimal places in my answer. I have to call Shehriar later to tell him the answer since he was stuck on this one too. The party number is 5567853. OK then, see you in school. Bye!”

  My heart thumped as I hung up. Shehriar Ahmed, who must have been the reason for my existence. I was Shayana Hasan, Straight ‘A’ Student, Head Girl of Ibn Seena High. He was Shehriar Ahmed, who head-banged and listened to Sepultura via hidden earphones in class. And, of course, we fell in love.

  I noticed him the day he transferred to our section. The first thing he did was draw all the curtains in class so that the sun lit up the classroom.

  “Shehriar, the sun’s in my eyes,” some girl squeaked from the back. I looked up at him from my desk. He sauntered back to his.

  As days passed, I fell deeper and deeper in love. He insisted on wearing a red cap and the wrong-colored shoes to school and on being thrown out of class every other day for violating the dress code. He swore that he worshipped the devil and that there was no God. He hated being ignored and turned up the volume on his Walkman so that the music blared out from it if you didn’t pay attention. I spent every moment of my free time watching him play basketball. And he actually called me up one day to ask what the Literature assignment was, although I had my doubts about his sudden interest in Shakespeare.

  *

  I looked at Michael’s face above the candlelight as we were having coffee at Mojo’s. It was a cold, January evening and both of us were freezing because neither had remembered to wear a jacket. It had been four months since I had finally reluctantly given in to what Michael had called his ‘irresistible charm’ and agreed to go out.

  I looked at the star-studded sky in contentment. My life had changed so much within the last few months that it was difficult to imagine that it had ever been otherwise. Michael was telling an anecdote, and I watched as his blue eyes crinkled into a smile. A college couple next to us was blowing bubbles. As some of the bubbles blew across our table, Michael put out his palm so that they landed on it and burst.

  “Michael, stop. Let them be,” I protested.

  “I’m not doing anything. They’re the ones that are doing the bursting.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mike, sometimes I think you’re a little insane.”

  “I’m completely insane. About you.”

  “Be quiet. But seriously though, bursting bubbles could say a lot about a person.” I looked at him mischievously. He did not return the look. Instead, they took on a cold tint that I had never seen before.

  “Mike, what’s the matter?” I was a little frightened of the answer, even as I asked the question.

  “But then no one should live in a bubble anyway.” He was directly looking at me now and I could not mistake the look in his eyes.

  “What exactly are you saying, Mike?”

  “That it’s over.”

  *

  We finally had an entire conversation in the Pit without Literature notes or basketball.

  “So are you coming to Maia’s party on Friday?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I answered. “It’s her birthday. And she’s one of my best friends.”

  It was the middle of January in my senior year in high school. We were already signing autograph books and T-shirts.

  “Here’s my autograph book,” I offered impulsively.

  He smiled. “Shayana, come on. You can’t be serious about autograph books.”

  I was offended. “I totally am. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. I just enjoy seeing you get all emotional.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “No.” He gaze suddenly shifted past me and he looked as though he was about to say something. I looked at him expectantly for a second and suddenly knew what he was going to say.

  “Shehriar, no, don’t say it,” I interjected in alarm.

  “I have to. I love you. I love the way you smile, the way your eyes twinkle when you laugh, the way you wave your hands about when you talk, the way strands of hair fall onto your face, the way you get upset easily…”

  “Shehriar, there are exactly four months left until we can see each other every day. After that, I don’t know where I’II be and you don’t know where you will”

  “So what? Who cares? We’re together now!”

  “You will care in a couple more moths, Shehriar. It will hurt much more. Let’s not go there. Let’s just remain the way we are.”

  “Shayana, don’t say that, please. You must be heart
less.”

  “If I was, I wouldn’t be saying what I know is true.”

  “OK, go. I suppose love is not an obsession.”

  “No. Only the most supreme emotion.”

  *

  I see him everywhere, everywhere in the denimed bodies that I unconsciously move through, my eyes forever searching, for that one face, that one built, that one gait, that could only be him. I rise and fall in hope and disappointment, as my vision dictates, as blurry lines become sharp outlines that I wish made up the rugged profile of somebody else’s face. But he isn’t real. Just an image, of hope, of my idol. And he is gone, leaving me in a galaxy of pain and shattered dreams. Dreams that weren’t conducive to materialization in the first place, but dreams that somehow lent a reason to hope.

  Sometimes I feel I will see him suddenly and that one second of greeting between us will let loose a new flood of unbearable aching that must follow the consequent separation.

  At other times, I feel he will appear. He will see in my eyes the passion, and remove the strand of hair from my face, and crush me in his embrace, and at that time I will realize that there is no other time and no other moment more sublime or consecrated than this. But then reality will gently intervene and I will break away. And I know that passionate moment will never happen. And suddenly I don’t want it to. Because my love is not an obsession. And my God not an emotion.

  *

  Some days, I feel very content. Somewhere, among the large black letters saying ‘CLINTON ACQUITTED’, amidst the sound of pages turning at the UGL and in the Irish Celtic music playing in my co-op kitchen, a little voice is saying, “Life is Beautiful.” I count off the items on my mental checklist one by one: doing fine in class, social life is good, exercise is twice a week, attending my organization meetings regularly, volunteering the hospital… And even keeping up with painting for adequate recreation. Perfect, I say to myself, as I walk down the west Mall of my campus, feeling incredibly proud of the 50,000 students around me, of the University Tower outlined against the cornflower sky, and of the huge multicolored banners canvassing for events. My friend joins me for lunch at the Student Union. We have a woman-to-woman talk about boyfriends, alcohol and whatnot. Then I set off for home.