Doctor, Can You Give Me Something for the Pain?

Outside the dhobi’s, I watch as a woman in a mauve lace shalwar kameez sashays down the street. The only play of color and light on this tar blighted stretch of Karachi cityscape, apart from the trash heap, all heads turn towards her. One foot swings out only to land right in front of the other, so the hips sway without ever disturbing the balance of the center. The pendulum movement advertises her sinuous grace as her jhumkas flashing in the sun draw eyes to it, she toys with the attention in a way I, a battle hardened veteran of the streets of Pakistan’s most progressive city, would not dare. That’s because, I realize as she tosses her hair back over one shoulder and I catch her profile, she’s a hijra.

It figures. The bearded, mullah shallu wearing chicken man and his brother are all smiles as they usher her past the sign proclaiming the bird flu to be a Jewish conspiracy against Muslim poultry merchants into their shop, and I know they would manage only a brusque, barely concealed contempt for a real woman who dressed and acted that way. Women, I have come to realize after six years of listening to Friday sermons originating from the four mosques around our area, really are the enemy where some people are concerned. Left to their own devices, they are ceaseless, wilful temptation. They are perversion. Not like this nice hijra, he has ball bearings, and everyone knows they always roll in the right direction should you care to chop and toss.

I am outside the dhobi’s because I need him to do some emergency ironing. Fifty-six items of infant and toddler clothing to be exact. It piled up over the last week when I got sick. The adult clothing and bed linen I would send to the dhobi, but it seemed like a betrayal to send the kids’ stuff. I thought I would have done it by now, but I’m still sick. Sure we can do it, the dhobi nods under his Mashallah sign, at the standard rate of five rupees an item. Let me get this straight, I think, you will charge the same for a long sleeved mans shirt and a toddler’s vest? A single bed sheet and a baby’s boxers? A kurti and a bib? I want to ask him how this can be true but I am afraid if I do he will nod sagely and say ‘they are equal in a way that man and woman can never be.’ So I nod, take my receipt, leave. As we drive off a group of boys catch the kid they were chasing and pull his hair and twist his arms till he starts to cry.

In the car, suddenly melancholic, I ask the driver if he thinks it’s ok to hit children. Never! The D is shocked. He lives in a joint family system and his father in particular will not stand for it. Why just the other day he gave Nasreen (D’s wife) two tight slaps across her face for being rough with their toddler. And what does your family do for fun when it isn’t open season on bahus I want to ask, but I keep the peace. My exit strategy is in place. A learner’s license rests in my pocket, I will practice more once I’m better, and then it will be forever adieu to random men reinforcing the sense of inferiority superimposed onto my gender. I mull over the advice I have received in my quest to learn driving so far.

I have had three different instructors. My friend O, who made me take the wheel on a crowded main road, believes what I need to be a good driver in Karachi is confidence. I should go at ninety, stick to the right, and remember that when it comes to right of way size is everything. Girlfriend M on the other hand believes that before getting behind the wheel I should find my center, and when driving not go over forty, stick to the left, and remember to treat all communal spaces and resources with respect. My driver, whom I have practiced with the most, feels having a philosophy is like having a hobby. And who has time to knit nowadays? He says I should go at sixty, stay in the middle and jam all traffic behind so I won’t have to stress about being overtaken. And if I have an accident? Aap ladies hain. I can get away with it.

Reassuring as it is to add ‘in case of accident’ to the list of situations where my gender is actually an advantage in my homeland, it still seems to be a very short list. A very very short list. The only other entries so far are ‘Given preference in nursing school and Montessori training courses.’ ‘First choice of casting director in Pushto porn flick or local music channel.’ What else can I put on it? Pay bills in separate line, yep, that’s a good one. Next?

I am home from the dhobi’s, the waterman is at the door, and I have still not thought of anything. Inspiration strikes as he gallantly wrestles the heavy bottles into the door for me, then wanes as he caresses my fingers when I hand him the payment. I withdraw my hand and bolt the screen door. He whistles as he skips down the stairs.

On my cell there is a missed call from a new friend. E is a European who married a Pakistani and moved to our motherland last year. Thanks to scores of experiences across the sexism-harassment spectrum, over the last few months she has gone from being a gregarious, vivacious person to an agitated, nervous wreck. The last time I spoke to her she was nearly in tears because she’d gone for a walk and a rickshawwala had pulled up next to her and hissed ‘I want to fuck you’. She had encounters like that with frightening regularity before she learnt to ask herself the really important questions, for e.g., do I really need to go for a walk and how much better would a good cup of coffee actually make me feel. One more woman off the sidewalks, that’ll even out the visual male female ratio nicely.

When E asks me why so many people here, both men and women, seem to practice misogyny, I smile and pretend she is talking about a kind of uber trigonometry I know nothing of. First chance I get, I’ll whisk her off to one of those new cafes, where reality doesn’t go because it can’t afford the cappuccino. There, I will gesture approvingly through the haze towards the many fashionably dressed young women and earnestly assure her that things are changing. Sure most women still don’t get the meat on the bone, or fair wages, and the Hudood Ordinance remains in place while affordable, quality healthcare for mothers is as elusive as fine sugar, but there are at least four women smoking in here!

I write this on the eve of 23rd March. On TV any number of Pakistan’s new media generation’s female luminaries are swinging their fashionably thin hands and gushing about how much they love their country and how wonderful it is. I want to feed them intravenously, and tell them they deserve to know why it doesn’t always love them back.